"Matting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and scrupulously clean. Save for the bed and a plain black-painted box beneath the bed, there was no furniture. The well-scrubbed boards were covered with a strip of Chinese matting and the only ornamentation in the room was supplied by a tiny red lacquer vase which stood ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... new, and the Persian pattern-birds flying among bluish reeds—produced the effect of a dream in summer, ethereal figures floating before one's languid eyes. The lowered blinds, the matting on the floor, the Virginia jasmine clinging to the trellis-work outside, produced a refreshing coolness which was enhanced by the splashing in the river near by, and the lapping of its wavelets on ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... apparently done with the fibres of some dyed bark. They rub their bodies with scented cocoa-nut oil as well as turmeric. The canoes were neatly constructed, had outriggers, and much resemble those of Tongatabu; the sails were triangular, and formed of matting. No weapons were observed in the possession of any of the natives; they said they had two muskets, which had been procured in barter from some European ship. We landed on a sandy beach, and were received by a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... port, were painted white. The walls of the cabin, the deck-beams, and the underside of the deck were also painted white with gilt mouldings; a few pictures—one of which was the portrait of a lady—were securely fastened to the walls; the floor was covered with fine matting, and a large writing-table with three or four solid, substantial-looking chairs completed the furnishing of ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... they asserted, in her chamber, or, what may now be more correctly styled, her boudoir. It was a room about fourteen feet square, the sides of which were covered with a beautiful paper, representing portions of the history of Paul and Virginia: the floor was covered with fine matting, with here and there a small Persian carpet above it. Small marble tables were decorated with a variety of ornaments and French perfumes, or vases filled with the splendid flowers of a tropical clime. There was a large window at each end of the room, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... if you please, and in case the housecleaning man gets all the ice cream up from under the sitting-room matting, and makes a snowball of it for the poll parrot to play horse with, I'll tell you next about Bully and ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... 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 summer gets a ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... its green blinds of cane hanging down, and its matting on the floor, and its easy-chairs and tables, made a pretty room to look at. In the twilight, the fragile figure, pale, thin, dressed in white, would have lent interest even to a stranger. To the doctor, I suppose, it was only a "case." He pushed the blinds aside and stepped ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... old, lay with a pike beside him: e had three contusions in the head, three strokes across the brow, a bayonet wound in the throat under the ear, and other wounds in the body—I counted fifteen wounds in that single carcase. Some were bringing handkerchiefs, others bed furniture, and matting to cover up the faces of the dead. O God! sir, it was a sight for a sabbath morn that, I humbly implore Heaven, may never be seen again. Poor women crying for absent husbands, and children frightened into ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... plank fittings to confine the mules. The mules are ranged along either side of the deck, seventy mules on each side, heads facing inward, and with posts and a two-inch plank separating them from the remainder of the deck, and into stalls of six mules each. Cocoanut matting is provided for them to stand on, and a plank nailed along the deck for them to brace their feet against when the vessel rolls. Nothing could be more happily arranged than this, providing the mules were unanimously agreed about remaining inside the railed-off space, and providing the monsoons ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... it yesterday, and found a 'buddha' coming out of the lotus, looking very freshly gilt and well cared for. There were in the temple two or three priests, who seem to live there; at any rate, one was asleep on the matting, which, as I told you, is in Japanese houses laid on the top of a bed of straw. They are charmingly soft and clean, as all shoes are put off on entering. The natives use neither tables, chairs, nor beds. They lie, sit, and feed on this matting. They have made considerable ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... found our house neatly laid with mats, and looking comparatively inviting. The firebrands had been carried out, leaving only the coals in the center of the floor, surrounded by stones to protect the matting. The house was of thatched sides and altogether looked very much like the native houses ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... roots of various herbs and trees; the expressed or distilled oils of different plants; fruits in the green, dried, or preserved state; starches obtained from the roots or trunks of many farinaceous plants; fibrous substances used for cordage, matting, and clothing, as cotton, Indian hemp, flax, coco-nut coir, plantain and pine-apple fibre; timber and fancy woods. These substances, in the aggregate, form at least nine-tenths in value of the whole imports ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... 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
... 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 fire-proof warehouse they caught glimpses of costly ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... several minutes she stood silent. With the exception of her mother's pleasant parlor in Old England, she had never before seen any thing which seemed to her so cosy and cheerful as did that little room, with its single bed, snowy counterpane, muslin curtains, clean matting, convenient toilet table, and what to her was fairer than all the rest, upon the mantel-piece there stood two small vases, filled with sweet spring flowers, whose fragrance filled the apartment with delicious ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... industrial occupations without leaving home, for various industries which do not require complicated machinery are practised in the villages by the peasants and their families. Wooden vessels, wrought iron, pottery, leather, rush-matting, and numerous other articles are thus produced in enormous quantities. Occasionally we find not only a whole village, but even a whole district occupied almost exclusively with some one kind of manual industry. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... wander, Leave the cornfields to the plowman, Leave the forests to the weary, Leave the heather to the rover, Leave the copses to the stranger, Leave the alleys to the beggar, Leave the courtyards to the rambler, Leave the portals to the servant, Leave the matting to the sweeper, Leave the highways to the roebuck, Leave the woodland-glens to lynxes, Leave the lowlands to the wild-geese, And the birch-tree to the cuckoo. Now I leave these friends of childhood, Journey southward with my husband, To the arms ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... clothing the 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 ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... appear, that we may not be like idolaters, no not in things which are in themselves indifferent, when we know they do use them superstitiously. 2. What warrant is there for this gloss, that the law forbiddeth the cutting round of the corners of the head, and the matting of the corners of the beard, to be used as signs of immoderate and hopeless lamentation for the dead, and that in no other sense they are forbidden? Albeit the cutting of the flesh may be expounded to proceed from immoderate grief, and to be a sign of hopeless lamentation; yet this cannot be ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... the old clock ticking away a solemn "I-told-you-so!" in the corner. I made one step toward the kitchen to send a message by one of the maids, but recoiled at the suggestion that this would publish a lovers' quarrel. So I retreated along the hall, my footsteps making no noise on the India matting, and entered the parlor again like a thief. I sat down by the table: "Bessie will certainly come back: she will get over her little petulance, and know I ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... usage, stood crosswise in the corner behind the door, and reflected in the dim mirror he saw his own face looking back at him. A film of dust lay over everything in the room, over the muddy blue of the walls, over the strip of discoloured matting on the floor, over the few fine old pieces of furniture, fallen now into abject degradation. The handsome French bed, placed conveniently between door and window, stood naked to the eyes, with its cheap husk mattress rolled half back, and its bare slats, of ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... perfectly white. Outside of these two skins was a large square sheet, which was either wove or knit. This fabric was the inner bark of a tree, which I judge from appearances to be that of the linn tree. In its texture and appearance, it resembled the South Sea Island cloth or matting; this sheet enveloped the whole body and the head. The hair on the head was cut off within an eighth of an inch of the skin, except near the neck, where it was an inch long. The color of the hair was a dark red; the teeth ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... held a place so anomalous. From Mr. Martin Hume's Modern Spain I 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
... belonging to it; this latter is fitted with a bamboo screen, table and chairs, and a hanging lamp, and is for all intents and purposes a sitting-room. The bedroom also is furnished with a view of securing coolness; the floor is covered with matting, and the furniture is not very luxurious; its chief feature is a tremendous bedstead. Now, a Javan bedstead is quite sui generis, and requires a ground plan. The ordinary size is six feet square. It is completely covered ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... stand for a moment on her feet. Her daughters now bought the strip of Axminster carpet and laid a path across the bedroom, and another one from the bedroom door to the great chair in the sitting-room, so that her feet might not note the straw matting on the floor ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... leather to the value of about twenty-five thousand roubles a year, and which is disposed of on their account in Rybeeck. In the districts where the forest-trees mostly consist of lindens, the inhabitants are principally engaged in the manufacture of matting, which, according to its greater or less degree of fineness, is employed either for sacking or sail cloth, or merely as packing mats. The linden-tree grows only on moist soils, rich in black humus, or vegetable mould; but will not grow at all in sandy soils, which renders it comparatively ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... 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. Within the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... arrival, they relieving us in the line. The officer's mess accommodation was somewhat limited and it was found necessary to form two battalion messes, Headquarters and half the officers occupying a fairly comfortable dug-out with matting roof for a shade. The other mess was constructed by Captain Fyfe, who worried the Adjutant for working parties until he had dug a large enough hole in the ground as he considered would be necessary. The next problem was to get some sort ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... this railroad cut lay the refuse of the shanties,—bottomless buckets, bits of broken chairs, tomato cans, rusty hoops, fragments of straw matting, and other debris of the open lots. In the summer-time a few brave tufts of grass, coaxed into life by the warm sun, clung desperately to an accidental level, and now and then a gay dandelion flamed for a day or two and then disappeared, ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... about him in indecision. Before him lay one of the largest of the storehouses that surrounded the tower. With his torch in one hand he went in at the open door. In the large shed lay the chests and cases, the hemp, linseed, straw and matting that had been used in packing the vessels and works of art with which the palace had been newly furnished. This he knew; and now, looking up at the stars once more and seeing that the second hour after midnight had almost ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in true republican style. It is probably of ancient construction, as I perceived two beams projecting from the low ceiling, in the manner of the beams in a ship's cabin. Prints commemorative of political events, and the old family portraits, hung about the room; common straw matting covered the floor, and two candlesticks, bearing sperm candles, ornamented the mantle-piece. The personal appearance of the ex-President himself corresponds with the simplicity of his furniture. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... century, during the period Genroku, when Asano Takumi no Kami[104] disembowelled himself in the palace of a Daimio called Tamura, as the whole thing was sudden and unexpected, the garden was covered with matting, and on the top of this thick mats were laid and a carpet, and the affair was concluded so; but there are people who say that it was wrong to treat a Daimio thus, as if he had been an ordinary Samurai. But it is said that in old times it was the custom ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... well-laid mud, whitewashed and with tiled roof; but the ordinary cultivator's house is one-roomed, with an angan or small yard in front and a little space for a garden behind, in which vegetables are grown during the rains. The walls are of bamboo matting plastered over with mud. The married couples sleep inside, the room being partitioned off if there are two or more in the family, and the older persons sleep in the verandahs. In the middle of the village by the biggest temple will be an old pipal tree, the trunk encircled by an earthen or ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... vague fear of meeting a bull. To guard against such contingencies she frequented the more populous watering-places, where she installed herself impersonally in a hired house and looked on at life through the matting screen of her verandah. In the care of such a guardian, it soon became clear to Lily that she was to enjoy only the material advantages of good food and expensive clothing; and, though far from underrating these, she would gladly have exchanged them for ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the fair, curving beach, below the white houses scattered on the declivity, clustered the Indian lodges, with their amber-brown matting, so soft and bright of hue, in the late afternoon sun. The first afternoon I was there, looking down from a near height, I felt that I never wished to see a more fascinating picture. It was an hour of the deepest serenity; bright blue and gold, with rich shadows. Every ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Willoughby a formidable front. His head-piece was gone, his breastplate dinted, his right sleeve a rag hanging from his shoulder about a naked arm. He was splashed from head to foot with blood, and there was blood from a scalp-wound that he had taken matting his hair and mixing with the grime of powder on his face to ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... stained and defaced by damp, had been whitened, so that the brown and golden tones of the books in the latticed cases told against it with delightful effect. The floor was covered with a cheap matting, and there were a few simple chairs and tables. A wood fire burnt on the old hearth. Marcella's books and work lay about, and some shallow earthenware pans filled with home-grown hyacinths scented the air. What with the lovely architecture of the room itself, its size, its books ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I took in that room, in the book shelves always full, in the pretty rugs and the cool matting and the dainty drapery, all girls can imagine. It was my own Snuggery, and I kept it in the loveliest good order, ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... a grandeur of its own. There are lakes of many kinds. One named for the painter, now dead, who many times sketched and dreamed on its shores, is a beautiful ellipse; and its entire edge carries a purple shadow matting of the crowding forest. Its placid surface reflects peak and snow, cloud and sky, and mingling with these are the green and gold of pond-lily glory. Another lake is stowed away in an utterly wild place. It is in a rent between three granite peaks. Three thousand feet of precipice bristle above ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... shillings to get a new cocoa-matting for the front room floor," she said, decidedly. "The bricks strike as cold as a grave since the old matting ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... 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 to lay their ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... won the favour of playgoers. Sir Henry Wotton writes in 1613 of a new play produced at the Globe Theatre, "called 'All is True,' representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry VIII., which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to 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 a while to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous." "Supers" must surely have been employed on this occasion. It is clear, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... than a hundred years ago, the surf spray has been swept by the on-shore evening breeze into every chink and cranny of the whole building, and hence the place is mouldy—mouldy to an extent I, with all my experience in that paradise for mould, West Africa, have never elsewhere seen. The matting on the floors took an impression of your foot as a light snowfall would. Beneath articles of furniture the cryptogams attained a size more in keeping with the coal period than with the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... in a large space at the back of the Great Pagoda, trustfully open to the soft blue night, otherwise strictly encompassed with matting; for in these changed and money-making days, there was an official box-office at the entrance and no admittance without cash payment! The stage was only raised a foot or two from the ground, and a long ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... little tea-shop with the depressed feeling of a man who is expiating an offence which he bitterly repents. Violet was waiting for him at one of the tables shut off from the main room by a sort of Japanese matting hanging from the ceiling. He resigned his stick and hat with a sigh to one of the trim waitresses, and sat down ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thirty, prepared with admirable adaptation for that purpose, and well ventilated. It contained, besides apartments for the pastor, a fine reading room, where a number of foreign papers were regularly filed, and a good library kept. Its roof was flat, and above this was another covering of matting which formed a fine sheltered promenade. Indeed, a building could hardly have been planned ashore, comprising more commodious, convenient, or comfortable quarters, and I am indebted to its cool retreat for the remembrance of many an hour ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... me, still stirred gently from the air of someone who had recently gone past them. The long green leaves waved to and fro like hands. Then I went stealthily forward down the narrow space, proud even that I had this command of myself, and so carefully that my feet made no sound upon the Japanese matting on ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... To dream of matting, foretells pleasant prospects and cheerful news from the absent. If it is old or torn, you will have vexing things come ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... frightful evil of surface pollution of the whole country, from the people habitually fouling the fields, roads, streets, and watercourses. Long trenches are dug, at about one foot or less in depth, at a spot set apart, about 200 or 300 yards from dwellings. Matting screens are placed round for decency. Each day the trench, which has received the excreta of the preceding day, is filled up, the excreta being covered with fresh earth obtained by digging a new trench adjoining, which, when it has been used, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... by nature, owed but little to the decorations of art; nevertheless, the roughness of the walls was concealed by a rude but comfortable arras of matting; four or five of such seats as the robbers themselves could construct were drawn around a small but bright wood-fire, which, as there was no chimney, spread a thin volume of smoke over the apartment. The height of the cave, added to the universal reconciler (custom), prevented, however, this evil ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... alone in a spacious and magnificent apartment, whose walls were tapestried with striped blue and white satin, and whose carved ceiling was richly gilt and decorated. The tall Venetian mirrors, the costly furniture, the beautifully fine Indian matting, every thing in the room, in short, convinced him that he was in the favoured abode of wealth, and rank, and luxury. A lamp, suspended by silver chains, shed a soft light over the apartment. Federico's position was a doubtful, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... same morning after the storm, she too ascertained that her shutters could not be opened. But Gabriella did not go down into the kitchen for hot water to melt the ice from the bolts and hinges. She fled back across the cold matting to the high-posted big bed and cuddled down solitary into its warmth again, tucking the counterpane under her chin and looking out from the pillows with eyes as fresh as flowers. Flowers in truth Gabriella's eyes were—the closing and disclosing blossoms ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... her smart white dress looked new. There was no fear of delay for painting and patching. Clean cocoa-nut matting was spread upon the floor of the little decks fore and aft; the brass rails dazzled our eyes with their brilliance; the windows of the roofed cabin were brighter than the Ko-hi-nur, the day I went to see it in the Tower of London; basket-chairs, with pink and blue ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... 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 ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... the clock on the tower has a triple face, one face showing the hour of the day, one showing the day of the week, and the third, the day of the month. The heavy doors were open, but a curtain of matting hung over the entrance. A ragged, barefoot boy ran before us, and, drawing aside the matting that we might enter, extended his hand for a penny. We walked over the beautiful inlaid mosaic marble floor, and beheld handsomely ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... scene of devastation and ruin; they might have dated from centuries ago. Broken weapons, thousands more of brass cartridges, and sometimes even a soldier's bloodstained tunic could be seen among the weeds. This must have been the site of another camp of Chinese soldiery. Abandoned straw matting showed where rough huts had once been built line upon line. But all these hosts ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... rough board planed, and painted in soft and cheerful tints. I would have the walls pleasantly colored, or covered with delicate, or bright, or warm-hued paper. The floor should be either tiled, or hidden under carpets, durable, if possible, at any rate, decent. Straw or rope matting is better than brown, yawning boards. There you have things put upon an entirely new basis. At no immoderate expense there is a new sky, a new earth, a new horizon. If a boy is rich and can furnish ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... 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. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... till I saw him hunt up a proper place to hide them. The place he chose was between the leaves of a book. He would push a pin far in out of sight, and then go after another. A match he always tried to put in a crack, under the baseboard, between the breadths of matting, or under my rockers. He first placed it, and then tried to hammer it out of sight. He could seldom get it in far enough to suit him, and this worried him. Then he would take it ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... four deep. They are furnished with gimbals, the cross-pieces being connected by a rafter. On the other side there is a small platform, four feet square, and furnished with a roof, under which they are accustomed to keep their provisions. These pirogues have a triangular sail, which is made of matting woven from bandanus leaves, and is attached to two yards. In tacking about they drop the sail, and turn the mast towards the other end of the canoe, to which, at the same time, they have passed the fastening of the sail, so that the pirogue moves ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Scirpus 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 was abundant in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... beams being of "Niu sau," a native palm, [5] the cross-pieces and main supports being enormous bits of hard wood. The smaller supports of the sides are generally the trunks of tree-ferns. The doors in most of the huts are a strip of native matting or fantastically-painted "tapa" cloth, fastened to two posts a few feet inside the hut. In some huts there are small openings in the walls which answer for windows. The hearth was generally near one of the doors in the centre of the hut, and fire was produced by rubbing ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... miserable imposture. The reality is no more like it than the Five Points are like the Garden of Eden. They received me in a great court, paved with marble slabs; around it were broad galleries, one above another, carpeted with seedy matting, railed with unpainted balustrades, and furnished with huge rickety chairs, cushioned with rusty old mattresses, indented with impressions left by the forms of nine successive generations of men who had reposed upon them. The place was vast, naked, dreary; its court a barn, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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
... must 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, breaking ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... and in order to lighten the canoe proposed to leave most of our heavy stores in the hut until our return. After a long consultation one of them consented to go. His wife got ready his blanket and a piece of cedar matting for his bed, and some provisions—mostly dried salmon, and seal sausage made of strips of lean meat plaited around a core of fat. She followed us to the beach, and just as we were pushing off said with a pretty smile, "It is my husband that ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... 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 ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... appreciated by Nurse Periwinkle, whose ward and private bower were cold, dirty, inconvenient, up stairs and down stairs, and in every body's chamber. At the Armory, in ward K, I found a cheery, bright-eyed, white-aproned little lady, reading at her post near the stove; matting under her feet; a draft of fresh air flowing in above her head; a table full of trays, glasses, and such matters, on one side, a large, well-stocked medicine chest on the other; and all her duty seemed ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... accommodation of the chapar-khana, at Heeya; but, providing the road continues good, I promise myself to polish off the sixty miles between here and Kasveen, to-morrow. The chaparkhana sleeping apartments at Heeya contain whitewashed walls and reed matting, and presents an appearance of neatness and cleanliness altogether foreign to these institutions previously patronized; here, also, first occurs the innovation from "Hamsherri" to "Sahib," when addressing me in a respectful manner; it will be Sahib, from this point clear ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... over which the piache had been performing his extraordinary dance when they interrupted him, and which had the appearance of being simply a bundle of ordinary matting. But Stukely's eye happened to have been resting upon it while he spoke, and he had distinctly seen ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... clashing of the huge leaves of a young fan palm, {78a} growing not ten feet from the window. It has no stem as yet; and the lower leaves have to be trimmed off or they would close up the path, so that only the great forked green butts of them are left, bound to each other by natural matting: but overhead they range out nobly in leafstalks ten feet long, and fans full twelve feet broad; and this is but a baby, a three years' old thing. Surely, again, we are in the Tropics. Ten feet farther, thrust all awry ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... too late. She would have led her lover away, for, young as she was, Lilian Archer had a woman's intuition, if not many a woman's wit. All on a sudden, unheard because of moccasined feet and the doctor's Indian matting, Harris stood in the doorway. He did not seem to look at Willett. His eyes at once sought her, and seemed closing to a slit as they encountered even the tempered light of declining day—the curious habit common to so many who have long scouted in the ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... 'Sheep, I wonder much Who could have made you such. You're far the fattest I have found; I'll take you for my eating.' And on the creature bleating He settled down. Now, sooth to say, This sheep would weigh More than a cheese; And had a fleece Much like that matting famous Which graced the chin of Polyphemus;[23] So fast it clung to every claw, It was not easy to withdraw. The shepherd came, caught, caged, and, to their joy, Gave croaker to his ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Carpets are better not made of 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 ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... in the interval, turned round the corner of the pi-pi, and, under the guidance of the venerable Marheyo, was soon out of sight. His departure oppressed me with melancholy, and, re-entering the dwelling, I threw myself almost in despair upon the matting of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... 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. As we worked, we argued out whether it was right to say as ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... 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
... become partly dry, they are hulled between two small stones, one of which is stationary, while the other is worked by the hand power of two men who rotate it quickly. Further drying of the hulled berry follows. It is then put into bags of closely woven aloe fiber, lined with matting made of palm leaves. It is next sent to the local market at the foot of the mountain. There, on regular market days, the Turkish or Arabian merchants, or their representatives, buy and dispatch their purchases by camel train to Hodeida or Aden. The principal primary market ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... The King's 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 ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... Menou, made me gape a little. I amused myself by looking round the dining-room, in which we then were, the furniture and appearance of which rather improved my opinion of Creole civilization and comfort. The matting that covered the floor was new and of an elegant design—the sideboard solid and handsome, although prodigiously old-fashioned—tables, chairs, and sofas were of French manufacture. On the walls were suspended two or three engravings; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... inches in circumference, respectively, four feet from the ground. The bark is of a bright cinnamon color, and, in thrifty trees, beautifully braided and reticulated, flaking off in thin, lustrous ribbons that are sometimes used by Indians for tent-matting. Its fine color and odd picturesqueness always catch an artist's eye, but to me the Juniper seems a singularly dull and taciturn tree, never speaking to one's heart. I have spent many a day and night in its company, in all kinds of weather, and have ever found it ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... when there was no copper coinage, they were used as small change, six for a halfpenny; and Stephens says the Central Americans use them to this day. A mat in Mexican is petlatl, and thence a basket made of matting was called petlacalli—"mathouse." The name passed to the plaited grass cigar-cases that are exported to Europe; and now in Spain any kind of cigar-case is ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... 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 ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... '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 enormous ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... be kept all winter by laying them in a heap in the cellar, with the concave side upwards to hold in the liquor. Sprinkle them every day with strong salt and water, and then with Indian meal. Cover them with matting or an ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... grown. There you have the type of a fibre best suited for 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 fur, I have already ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... the timberline. This is the fine Alaska cedar (C. Nootkatensis), the lumber from which is noted for its durability, fineness of grain, and beautiful yellow color, and for its fragrance, which resembles that of sandalwood. The Alaska Indians make their canoe paddles of it and weave matting and coarse cloth from the fibrous ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... are left free, and it hangs evenly, covering the left side, but leaving the right open, except from the loose part of the edges falling upon it, unless when the mantle is fastened by a girdle (of coarse matting or woollen) round the waist, which is often done. Over this, which reaches below the knees, is worn a small cloak of the same substance, likewise fringed at the lower part. In shape this resembles a round dish-cover, being quite close, except in the middle, where there is a hole just large enough ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... Ashatea; and I can assure you she received us in the most hospitable manner. You will like to see the beautiful dome-shaped wigwam her people built for us, with a divan all round, and the floor covered thickly with matting. We felt quite like Indian princesses, when she escorted us into it. It is divided by a curtain into two portions. The inner serves as our bedroom, and the outer as our drawing-room. As there is space for a fireplace in the centre, ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... hundred feet, it is ceilinged with baskets of Mexican orchid, as close as they will fit. Upon the left hand lie a series of glass structures; upon the right, below the level of the corridor, the workshops; at the end—why, to be frank, the end is blocked by a ponderous screen of matting just now. But this dingy barrier is significant of a work in hand which will not be the least curious nor the least charming of the strange sights here. The farmer has already a "siding" of course, for the removal of his produce; he finds it necessary to ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... knife, and into this the wedge of the graft is inserted, and fastened either by means of a small pin passed through the stem and graft about half-way up the slit, or by binding round them a little worsted or matting, the former being preferred. The worked plants are then placed in a close handlight or propagating frame, having a temperature of about 75 degs., where they are kept moist by sprinkling them daily with water; they must be shaded from bright sunlight. ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... 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 ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... a remarkable state of affairs exists. The first floor has been washed out completely and the second, while submerged, was badly damaged, but not ruined. The walls, floors and pews were drenched, and the mud has collected on the matting and carpets an inch deep. Walking is attended with much difficulty, and the undertakers and attendants, with arms bared, slide about the slippery surface at a tremendous rate. The chancel is filled with coffins, strips of muslin, boards, and all undertaking accessories. Lying across ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... shoulder, led the way, flag in hand, followed by the pagazis carrying spears of bows and arrows in their hands, and bearing their share of the baggage in the shape either of bolster-shaped loads of cloth and beads covered with matting, each tied into the fork of a three-pronged stick, or else coils of brass or copper wire tied in even weights to each end of sticks which they laid on the shoulder; then helter-skelter came the Wanguana, carrying carbines in their hands, and boxes, bundles, tents, cooking-pots—all ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... 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 ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... daybreak they go into a separate lodge, which is closed up so as to be totally dark. A small hole is then made in the roof, through which the medicine-man, with a bunch of feathers, brushes in the souls, in the shape of bits of bone and the like, which he receives on a piece of matting. A fire is next kindled, by the light of which the medicine-man sorts out the souls. First he puts aside the souls of dead people, of which there are usually several; for if he were to give the soul of a dead person to a living man, the man would die instantly. Next he picks out the souls ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... had contrived to make the cellar a little more comfortable. They managed to get some straw, and with two or three old sacks made a bed for the mother and the baby and Moxy on the packing-case. They got also some pieces of matting, and contrived to put up a screen betwixt it and the rickety door. By the exercise of their art they had gained enough to keep them in food, but never enough to pay for the poorest lodging. They counted themselves, however, better off by much than if they had been crowded ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... of June under a branching apricot tree. We sat very close together upon the same stool in a house about as big as a bee-hive, which we had built for our exclusive use out of old planks. Our dwelling was covered with pieces of foreign matting that had come from the Antilles packed about some boxes of coffee. The sunbeams pierced the roof, which was of a coarse straw-colored material, and the warm breeze that stirred the leaves of the trees about ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... and as she lay waiting the house seemed to grow more and more silent. She heard something rustling on the matting and when she looked down she saw a little snake gliding along and watching her with eyes like jewels. She was not frightened, because he was a harmless little thing who would not hurt her and he seemed in a hurry to get out of the ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... contained a single small room like a very clean box with wooden frame, opaque paper walls, and pale golden matting. The only wall which seemed at all substantial presented the appearance of an alcove. In this niche there hung a long picture of cherry-blossoms on a mountain side, below which, on a stand of dark sandalwood, squatted a bronze monkey holding a crystal ball. This was ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... 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 ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... one across the hall—and rather shabby, with its matting soiled and torn, its cheap iron bedstead and painted washstand and chairs. Lizette however ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... various hiding places, the drawers of his bureau, the table drawer, under the straw matting in the corner, but none seemed satisfactorily secure. Under the matting was, at first thought, ideal, but, after secreting it there and getting into bed, he remembered that Martha had declared his ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... each width six inches longer than necessary. Then unravel the ends and tie the cords together. When the matting is taken up to be cleaned it cannot unravel and ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... 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 candle, more ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... harem, and this visit, with the explanations and commentaries given me by such a guide, had been most interesting. One room was a perfect gem, and I cannot resist the pleasure of describing it. It was very large, circular, the floor covered with very fine matting. All round it was a little raised platform, covered with divans. The walls were entirely formed of great mirrors, in splendid rococo frames of carved wood, gilt. It was evidently the room in which the harem festivals were held. Between the mirrors were eight little ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... contingent expenses. We visited the Mosk of Mohamet Ali in the Citadel, the Mosk of Hassen and others. Attendants at the doors provided us with slippers, for no one is allowed to tread the fine carpet (or matting?) of these holy temples with his shoes. Hats must be kept on, however. A large mosque generally consists of porticoes surrounded a square open court, containing a fountain or tank in the center. Here every Mussulman washes his hands and feet before he goes to prayers. They ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... have immediate delivery. We had explained at some length that this was important, and why. He waved us off with the assurance that we need give ourselves no uneasiness in the matter—that, in all probability, the matting we had purchased as a floor basis would be there ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Mahdi, the Missing Link, was some what dark, and the terrible form of the mystery loomed in the dusk, heavy and formidable. He was as big as a man, somewhat lank, and covered with coarse hair the colour of cocoanut matting. This afternoon, when the early patrons entered, they found him hanging limply by one arm, like a ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... of an Arab sheikh, gave her some rice-water, and bade her keep out of the sun, but it was no use. She took fright at the idea of living with the dead, and wandered into the desert no one knows whither, and was seen no more. So completely was Berbera cleared out now, that even the matting and sticks which formed the booths, with two or three exceptions, were packed on the camels and carried away. We were now alone, and nobody came near us; our two Abbans had begged and obtained permission to go with their families to their homes in the hills ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... fineable offence by the city police regulations. Among the Brobdignagian sedges that in some parts of the island fringe the Altamaha, the nightshade (apparently the same as the European creeper) weaves a perfect matting of its poisonous garlands, and my remembrance of its prevalence in the woods and hedges of England did not reconcile me to its appearance here. How much of this is mere association I cannot tell; but whether the wild duck makes its nest under its green arches, or the alligators and snakes ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... floor 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 ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... silence at first, began to jump round it with shouts of triumph. Selina looked on grimly, with knitted brow; she was not yet fully satisfied. "Can't you get any more sticks?" she said presently. "Go and hunt about. Get some old hampers and matting and things out of the tool-house. Smash up that old cucumber frame Edward shoved you into, the day we were playing scouts and Mohicans. Stop a bit! Hooray! I know. You come along ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... went thither, and knelt down on the checked matting. There were two books of engravings containing portraits of famous people, some old volumes of verse, some new ones, ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... 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 lake ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... the fourth there was an open corridor, with arches to imitate a cloister. All was strong and barren, and only about the varnished staircase was there any sign of comfort. There the ceiling was panelled in oak; and the banisters, the cocoa-nut matting, the bit of stained glass, and the religious prints, suggested a mock air of hieratic dignity. And the room Mr. Hare was shown into continued this impression. Cabinets in carved oak harmonised with high-backed chairs glowing with red Utrecht velvet, and ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... not think I am like a grisette, and this is not a garret. Look around, and see if I am not very nice here. What can be purer and cleaner than this matting, which still smells of the sweet groves of Ceylon. See my chairs and sofa—did you ever see such incomparable chintz? the white ground covered with roses and blue-bells! Here are my books, there my flowers, and this—you ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... eaten it he would have become her guest. Amongst the older Badawin it was sufficient to spit upon a man (in entreaty) to claim his protection: so the horse-thieves when caught were placed in a hole in the ground covered over with matting to prevent this happening. Similarly Saladin (Salah al-Din) the chivalrous would not order a cup of water for the robber, Reynald de Chatillon, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... inconvenient method gave place to a more ingenious invention—the employment of "standard values," beings or material objects serving as a common measure for all the rest:—their choice varied with the time, place, and people—e.g., certain shells, salt, cocoa-seeds, cloth, straw-matting, cattle, slaves, etc.; but this innovation held all the remainder in the germ, for it was the first attempt at substitution. But during the earliest period of commercial evolution the chief effort at invention consisted of finding increasingly more simple methods ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... new building—the evenest light comes from the north. Cement floor—good for cleaning but bad for the girls, so we are to have cork matting for them to stand on. Slide-in seats under the tables—that's so that a girl may stand or sit at ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... and drew away the matting which concealed some portion of this strange-looking object. It was a skeleton so old that the bones had turned to a dull grey. Yet so far as regards its limbs, it was almost complete. Quest glanced ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dead the chattels of the deceased are unloaded from the wagons or unpacked from the backs of ponies and carefully arranged in the vault-like tomb. The bottom, which is wider than the top (graves here being dug like an inverted funnel), is spread with straw or grass matting, woven generally by the Indian women of the tribe or some near neighbor. The sides are then carefully hung with handsome shawls or blankets, and trunks, with domestic articles, pottery, &c., of less importance, are piled around in abundance. The sacrifices are ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... was at least clean,' said Robson, as he ushered them in; and Mary felt as if it were a great deal more. It was rudely built, and only the part near the hearth was lined with matting; the table and the few stools and chairs were rough carpentry, chiefly made out of boxes; but upon the wall hung a beautiful print from Raffaelle, of which she knew the giver as surely as if his name had been written ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... summer's day streamed in through the lofty window, shedding a blaze of light upon all within, upon the smooth matting that had replaced the patched old carpet, upon the old chest that held so many of her dearest treasures, upon the broad expanse of black velvet whereon were hung the most precious things she owned, two swords in their scabbards ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... the pirates were able to hold out so long lay in the fact that their prows were surrounded by a thick matting made from a certain palm-leaf, which, although it could not prevent shot from passing through, concealed the men who lay behind it, and so prevented the riflemen of the gun-boat crew from taking ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... servant to another till I finally reached the Torishihimari or mistress of ceremonies. By clock-work she offered me a seat on the floor, a fan and congratulations. This last simply because I was me. The house was ancient and beautiful. The room in which I sat had nothing in it but matting as fine as silk, a rare old vase with two flowers and a leaf in formal arrangement, and an atmosphere of aloofness that lulled mind and body to restful revery. After my capacity for tea and sugared dough was tested, the little serving maid ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... 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 down to cover him from head to foot. Apparently ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... desk, at which were high stools, backed up against the pickets; a big round stove occupied the centre; a safe crowded one corner. Blue print maps decorated the walls. Coarse rope matting edged with tin strips protected the floor. A single step down through a door led into a painted private office where could be seen a flat table desk. In the air hung a mingled odour of fresh pine, stale tobacco, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... a rare plant in Europe, growing on old sacks, matting, carpets, and similar refuse. It is generally found in cellars. I think it is not known on wood nor recorded in the United States. It resembles carbonized horse hair and was called "horse hair usnea" by old Dillenius. Our photograph ...
— Synopsis of Some Genera of the Large Pyrenomycetes - Camilla, Thamnomyces, Engleromyces • C. G. Lloyd
... and looked at us in astonishment. "Dot and Esther! in the name of all that is mysterious; huddled up like two Chinese gods on the matting. Why, I took Esther for a heap of clothes in the twilight." Of course I told him how it happened. Dot was naughty and would not move, and I was keeping him company. Allan hardly heard me out before he had shouldered Dot, crutch and all, and was walking off with ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... center of a square of orange-colored matting, he saw a white woman sitting. She was drinking tea out of an egg-shell of a cup, and after putting down the cup she would carefully massage her lips with the point of her little finger. This movement puzzled the newcomer until he suddenly realized ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... he stood upon the door-steps to answer all the inquiries of curious neighbours, which was his department. His presence and example diffused such alacrity among the persons employed, that, in a few hours, the house was emptied of everything, but pieces of matting, empty porter-pots, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... being hung with some dark stuff which swallowed up the light, terminated funereally at the farther end in the still deeper gloom of an alcove. Two or three huge chests, one bearing the remnants of a meal, stood against the walls. The middle of the floor was covered with a strip of coarse matting, on which a small table, a chair and foot-rest, and a couple of stools had place, with some smaller articles which lay scattered round a pair of half-filled saddle-bags. The slighter and smaller of the two figures I had seen stood beside the table, wearing a mask and riding cloak; and by her ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... thrashing the Wazir, he took his handmaid and fared homewards. Al-Mu'in also went his ways at once, with his raiment dyed of three colours, black with mud, red with blood and ash coloured with brick-clay. When he saw himself in this state, he bound a bit of matting[FN35] round his neck and, taking in hand two bundles of coarse Halfah-grass,[FN36] went up to the palace and standing under the Sultan's windows cried aloud, "O King of the age, I am a wronged man! I am foully wronged!" So they ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... a room kept for the most part closed during the summer days when the family lived chiefly on the verandas or in the wide open hall There lingered about it the foreign scent of cool clean matting, mingled with a faint odor of rose which came from a curious Japanese jar that stood on the ample hearth. Through the green half-closed shutters the air came in gentle ripples, sweeping the filmy curtains back and forth in irregular undulations. A few tasteful pictures hung upon ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... 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 ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Anything in the shape of long litter should be avoided. When nothing else is at hand, litter that has already been broken and shortened by previous use is best. With this the box floor should be thickly covered, and matting of the material prevented by constant turning. A good bed for the horse with laminitis is peat-moss mixed with short straw. This, without being dragged into irregular heaps, remains springy and elastic with but little attention. Better than all, however, especially ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... White matting covered the floor. Heaps of music were upon the table and the piano. There were few books to indicate the taste or studies of the owner beside these sheets and volumes of music, and they were everywhere. All that ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... They had been within a toot of him; had nearly stepped on him; were so close that he heard their whisperings and cursings. But they never suspected his hiding place. He was simply rolled in a great mass of old floor matting, at one side of the house, which was covered with dust and leaves, and bits of straw, to give it the appearance of having been there, just as it seemed, for months. After the schooner sailed, McGowan succeeded in ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... covered with a light rush matting. This she carefully rolled up, starting at the door. One half of the floor was uncovered without revealing the existence of any trap. She attempted to pull the table into the centre of the room, better to roll the matting, but found it fixed to the wall, and going down on her knees, ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... composed of ripe barley, toasted, pounded, and kneaded to a kind of porridge in leathern bags like Turkish tobacco-pouches. The object was to save the teeth, of which the Guanches were particularly careful.] or parched grain. The articles of dress were grass-cloth, thick as matting, and tamarcos, or smock-frocks, of poorly tanned goatskins. They had also rough cords of palm-fibre, and they seem to have preferred plaiting to weaving; yet New Zealand flax and aloes grow abundantly. Their ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... two glaring lanterns. Captain B—— handed us out. My child, startled from a deep sleep, was refractory, and would not trust himself out of my fond keeping. When finally I had struggled with him in my arms to the landing, I saw in the shadow a form coiled on a piece of striped matting. Was it a bear? No, a prince! For the clumsy mass of reddish- brown flesh unrolled and uplifted itself, and held out a human arm, with a fat hand at the end of it, when Captain B—— presented me to "his Royal Highness." Near by was his Excellency ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... world's atlas than rule a kingdom. Higher up the twenty-foot walls, heads of sambhur, markor, and the lesser deer of the Himalayas showed dimly in the light of one lowered lamp. Skins of bear and leopard, and one or two costly Persian prayer-rugs, partially hid the groundwork of dusty matting, taken over with the bungalow from its former occupant, and in places revealing the stone floor beneath. The broad mantel-shelf was given over to books, a motley crowd in divers stages of dilapidation. 'The Master ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... remember on one occasion, when he was making a call, he stopped short in his walk in the midst of a declamation on some subject, and said, 'You have a brick floor here.' The hostess confessed that it was true, though she hoped that it had been disguised by double matting and a thick carpet. He said that his habit of always walking enabled him to tell accurately the material ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... pure every thing 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 has just ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... in motion about every eight to twelve hours. The screws in rotating upon their axes are slowly propelled horizontally. They thus effectually turn the grain and leave it perfectly smooth. This turning prevents matting of the roots, the regulation of temperature and exposure to air being effected by means of the cold air from the echangeur. When the grain is sufficiently grown it is elevated to the kilns. For forty hours it remains upon the top floor. It is then dropped ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... his wrangling officers to bring Guatemotzin before him, that he might adjust the difference between them. He charged them, at the same time, to treat their prisoner with respect. He then made preparations for the interview, caused the terrace to be carpeted with crimson cloth and matting, and a table to be spread with provisions, of which the unhappy Aztecs stood so much in need. His lovely Indian mistress, Dona Marina, was present to act as interpreter. She stood by his side through all the troubled scenes of the conquest, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... fibre of cocoanut husk is largely employed in the manufacture of coarse matting. A part of this is obtained from tropical America, but it is a regular export of British India, where it ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... two stories, the upper half being a cozy lounging-room, with wide windows and a fine outlook over the water. The unplastered walls were hung with Indian blankets; lounging-chairs and a broad seat under the windows, colored matting on the floor and a few prints pinned upon the Navajoes gave further ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... floor, the two tables, the roll-top desk, and here and there a chair. White paper began to heap up in the corners. Magazines—"my contemporaries," said the proud editor—began their limitless flood. And the matting on the floor was soon worn ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... v.; intersection, interdigitation; decussation^, transversion^; convolution &c 248; level crossing. reticulation, network; inosculation^, anastomosis, intertexture^, 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^; rivulation^. cross, chain, wreath, braid, cat's cradle, knot; entangle &c (disorder) 59. [woven fabrics] cloth, linen, muslin, cambric &c V. cross, decussate^; intersect, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... were cheered by the prospect of success, and with the Oxfords leading they entered the fight, and after four hours of continuous struggle surrounded and destroyed or captured the enemy force. The Turkish troops, concealed in deep ditches protected from the scorching rays of the sun by grass matting, fought on with dogged determination and were with difficulty dislodged. The British troops exposed to the pitiless heat, and exhausted from lack of sleep and from having had no water since the previous day, suffered ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... in a churn which was nothing more than a skin vessel three feet long, of the shape of a Brazil-nut, suspended from a rude tripod; this they swung to and fro to the tune of a weird Kurdish song. Behind one of the tents, on a primitive weaving-machine, some of them were making tent-roofing and matting. Others still were walking about with a ball of wool in one hand and a distaff in the other, spinning yarn. The flocks stood round about, bleating and lowing, or chewing their cud in quiet contentment. All seemed very domestic and peaceful except the Kurdish dogs, which set upon us with loud, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... together in the passage downstairs, where the cocoanut matting was—with the hole in it that you always caught your foot in if you were not careful. Martha's voice could be heard in ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... made certain of a good deal, Mr. Holmes. I knew that someone had entered the house cautiously from without. I next examined the corridor. It is lined with cocoanut matting and had taken no impression of any kind. This brought me into the study itself. It is a scantily furnished room. The main article is a large writing-table with a fixed bureau. This bureau consists of a double column of drawers, with a central ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... grace Rested silence and perfume. No sound reach'd the place. In the white curtains waver'd the delicate shade Of the heaving acacias, through which the breeze play'd. O'er the smooth wooden floor, polished dark as a glass, Fragrant white Indian matting allowed you to pass. In light olive baskets, by window and door, Some hung from the ceiling, some crowding the floor, Rich wild flowers pluck'd by Lucile from the hill, Seem'd the room with their passionate presence ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... silence. They both paused, helping each other as if by pre-arrangement, and Victor Durnovo suddenly felt that he must go. He rose, and picked up the whip which he had dropped on the matting. There was no help for it—the united wills of these two people were too ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... Woman's 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 ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... ceremony, or paying the slightest attention to me, he took possession of my whole house. Several servants, in the livery of nature, followed him with the various articles necessary to the convenience of the Royal visitors. He immediately ordered that the whole floor should be covered with matting, and had every thing placed as he thought proper, leaping about all the while with both feet in the air, as if his life depended on the velocity of his motions. No one of the servants pleased him; his tongue ran incessantly; ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... rugs, use a heavy varnish after the floors are coloured. This treatment we suggest for more or less formal rooms. In bedrooms, put down an inexpensive filling as a background for rugs, or should yours be a summer home, use straw matting. ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... soldier's wife, ought to have been less alarmed; but she was in a land where every thing was strange. "We were literally sleeping out in the open air; as there were no doors, windows, or venetians to close, and every breath of wind agitated the frail walls of bamboo and matting, I was awoke in the night by the musquitto curtains blowing up; the wind had risen, and came every now and then with sudden gusts; but its breath was so soft, warm, and dry, that I, who had never ventured to bear a night-blast in Ceylon, felt that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various |
