"Calico" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... windows and illuminate the darkness. Some men think their mighty brains have been in a turmoil; they have been thinking about who will be alderman from the fifth ward; they have been thinking about politics; great and mighty questions have been engaging their minds; they have bought calico at five cents or six, and want to sell it for seven. Think of the intellectual strain that must have been upon that man, and when he gets home everybody else in the house must look out for his comfort. A woman who has only taken care of five or six children, and one or two ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... was, and the subject began to be discussed throughout the country. An unknown man by the name of Poulton was the first to gain attention by his popular harangues; and he was soon followed by Richard Cobden,—a successful calico printer. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... reached the corner of Little South St. He made none then; the door was opened softly, and he brought her up the stairs and into his room without disturbing or falling in with anybody. Putting her on a calico-covered settee, Winthrop pulled off his coat and ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... back from unconsciousness to a world the center of which was a girl sitting on a rock with his rifle across her knees. The picture did not at first associate itself with any previous experience. She was a brown, slim young thing in a calico print that fitted snugly the soft lines of her immature figure. The boy watched her shyly and wondered at the quiet self-reliance of her. She was keeping guard over him, and there was about her a cool vigilance that ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... stringy-bark, from the log-and-canvas front. He also stopped with putty the worst gaps between the slabs. At Ocock's Auction Rooms he bought a horsehair sofa to match his armchair, a strip of carpet, a bed, a washhand-stand and a looking-glass, and tacked up a calico curtain before the window. His books, fetched out of the wooden case, were arranged on a brand-new set of shelves; and, when all was done and he stood back to admire his work, it was borne in on him afresh with how few creature-comforts he had hitherto existed. Plain to see now, why he had preferred ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... One seized my bonnet, with which he decked himself, and ran in the streets. Indeed, all who found such, rushed frantically around town, by way of frolicking, with the things on their heads. They say no frenzy could surpass it. Another snatched one of my calico dresses, and a pair of vases that mother had when she was married, and was about to decamp when a Mrs. Jones jerked them away, and carried them to her boarding-house, and returned them to mother the other day. Blessed be Heaven! I have a calico dress! Our clothes were used for the vilest purposes, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... are like. A yard square of tough paper backed by indestructible calico—one might as well try to devour a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... house a bed and mattress, which she supplied with sheets, pillows, blankets, and a quilt. Then Uncle Nathan, the carpenter, took a large wooden box and put shelves in it, and tacked some bright-colored calico all around it, and made a bureau. Two or three chairs were spared from the nursery, and Diddie put some of her toys on the mantel-piece for the baby; and then, when they had brought in a little square table and covered it with a neat ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... the straggling column, headed in the daylight by the red Egyptian flag and at night by a lantern on a pole, wound its weary way, the advanced guard cutting a path with axes and marking the track with strips of calico, the rearguard driving on the laggard camels and picking up the numerous loads which were cast. Three long marches brought them on the 25th to Gedid. The first detachment had already arrived and had opened up the wells. None gave much water; ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... the two-horsed catafalque, that Tamara had hired; black, with white plumes, and seven torch-bearers along with it. They also brought a white, glazed brocade coffin; and a pedestal for it, stretched over with black calico. Without hurrying, with habitually deft movements, they put away the deceased into the coffin; covered her face with gauze; curtained off the corpse with cloth of gold, and lit the candles—one at the head and ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... fought each other tooth and nail. Little Biddy, more modest, as beseemed her inferior rank in the scale of being, fixed her heart upon a single flame-flower which absolutely refused to reconcile itself with the ingenuous pink of her calico frock. ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... some boy. It seems to me you are too big a toy for a little girl," said the Calico Clown to ...
— The Story of a Stuffed Elephant • Laura Lee Hope
... of the week she went to the village, this time putting on a dark delaine, instead of the snuff calico with a yellow flower. Somehow the gay dresses and curious glances did not disturb her as much as usual. A pleasant recognition was passed with a neighbor whom she had not spoken to for ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... Heman got his start tradin' over in the South Seas. Sellin' the Kanakas glass beads and calico for pearls and copra—two cupfuls of pearls for every bead. Anyhow, that's the way ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to know something about that myself, in the Spanish war. Now let's see what I remember. Watch this. And somebody keep an eye on that hill and report if a blue calico dress is charging from ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... occasionally to inquire if any of the Federal cavalry had been seen in the neighborhood, and at last stopped for the night at a little village inn. As soon as it was daybreak he resumed his journey. He had purchased at Burksville some colored calico and articles of female clothing, and fastened the parcel to the back of his saddle. As he rode forward now he heard constant tales of the passing of parties of the enemy's cavalry, but he was fortunate enough to get well round to the rear of the Federal lines before he encountered any of ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the tall grass by the roadside and shook her red curls from her eyes. She gave a breathless gasp and began fanning herself with the flap of her white sunbonnet. A fine moisture shone on her bare neck and arms above her frock of sprigged chintz calico. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... out to him. Sometimes, when his ordinary correspondents failed him, he would send in a spy disguised as a farmer driving a small load of provisions, and who would bring out some family supplies, as tea, sugar, and calico, the better to conceal his real object. Often the spy was a farmer, and sometimes quite illiterate. As it was unsafe for him to have any written paper upon his person, he was required to learn by heart the precise ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... I hunted him to bed. I had plenty of blank forms in my writing-case, and on these I took a preliminary copy of A Plea for Woman. This occupied about three hours. Then not feeling sleepy, I took down one of four calico-covered books, which I had previously noticed on a corner shelf. It was my own old Shakespear, with the added interest of marginal marks, in ink of three colours, neatly ordered, and as the sand by ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the Orang Kaya came in full dress (a spangled velvet jacket, but no trowsers), and invited me over to his house, where he gave me a seat of honour under a canopy of white calico and coloured handkerchiefs. The great verandah was crowded with people, and large plates of rice with cooked and fresh eggs were placed on the ground as presents for me. A very old man then dressed himself in bright-coloured cloths and many ornaments, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... laden with bundles, and Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, also laden. We had all been thinking of Cora Belle. Mr. Stewart had sent by mail for her a pair of sandals for everyday wear and a nice pair of shoes, also some stockings. Mrs. Louderer brought cloth for three dresses of heavy Dutch calico, and gingham for three aprons. She made them herself and she sews so carefully. She had bought patterns and the little dresses were stylishly made, as well as well made. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy brought ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... stood that dusky personage, arrayed not in her usual starched calico and white apron, but in her Sunday dress of ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... a drawing-room in the costume in which he was so much at ease. But the handsomest man of all the large company gathered there that night was Jondo, big, broad-shouldered Jondo, his deep-blue eyes bright with joy for these two. And in the background was Aunty Boone, resplendent in a new red calico besprinkled with her favorite white dots, her head turbaned in a yellow silk bandana, and about her neck a strand of huge green glass beads. Her eyes glistened as she watched that night's events, and her comfortable ejaculations of approval were like the ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... subterranean caves. He passed whole mornings in his study, immersed in gloomy reverie, stalking about the room in his nightcap, which he pulled over his eyes like a cowl, and folding his striped calico dressing-gown about him like the mantle of ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... aloes zocotrina, camphire: the silks, damasks, taffatas, sarcenets, altobassos, that is, counterfeit cloth of gold, vnwrought China silke, sleaued silke, white twisted silke, curled cypresse. The calicos were book-calicos, calico-launes, broad white calicos, fine starched calicos, course white calicos, browne broad calicos, browne course calicos. There were also canopies, and course diaper-towels, quilts of course sarcenet and of calico, carpets like those of Turky; whereunto are to be added the pearle, muske, ciuet, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... myself on one of the slab benches near a box stove, which had but one length of pipe, out of which the smoke was pouring towards an opening in the roof, glancing around on the women in their sun bonnets, the babies in their little calico caps and the men in homespun, then out of the open door into a ravine where the tops of the tall trees were beneath us, I said to myself, I've reached "that beyond." The undefined has taken shape and I have reached the place of which I could never formulate a picture. Seven years' acquaintance ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... I could not tell what to do. What linen I had was reduced to rags: I had goat's hair, enough, but neither tools to work it, nor did I know how to spin it: At length I remembered I had some neckcloths of calico or muslin of the sailors, which I had brought out of the ship, and with these I made three small sieves proper enough for ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... few days he moved on shore, took up his quarters at Larkin's house, and established his headquarters, with Captain Turner as his adjutant general. One day Turner and Warner were at my tent, and, seeing a store-bag full of socks, drawers, and calico shirts, of which I had laid in a three years' supply, and of which they had none, made known to me their wants, and I told them to help themselves, which Turner and Warner did. The latter, however, insisted on paying me the cost, and from that date to this Turner and I have been close friends. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... two Indian women. They were dressed in rough short skirts, tight-fitting calico waists and high leather moccasins. Their black hair was parted in the middle and hung free. Their swarthy features were well cut but both of the women were dirty and ill kept. The younger, heavier squaw had a kindly face, with good eyes, but her hair was matted with ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... seen before. The men seemed actuated by a desire to "pay off" in the "enemy's country" all scores that the Federal army had chalked up in the South. The great cause for apprehension, which our situation might have inspired, seemed only to make them reckless. Calico was the staple article of appropriation—each man (who could get one) tied a bolt of it to his saddle, only to throw it away and get a fresh one at the first opportunity. They did not pillage with any sort of method or reason—it seemed to be a mania, senseless and purposeless. One man carried ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... house wall and the street were carefully trained a solanum jasminoides white with waxen stars, and an abutilor, whose orange bells striped and veined with scarlet, swung in every breath of air that fluttered the spotless white cotton curtains, so daintily trimmed with a calico border of rose-coloured convolvulus. In the morning when the sun shone hot upon the front of the building, this room was very bright and cheerful, but its afternoon aspect was dim, cool, shadowy. A gentle breeze now floated across a bunch of claret-hued ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... yes, I put a piece of whalebone in my skirt, and me calico gown looks as big as the great ladies. But then ye says true, I hasn't but two gowns to me back, two shoes, to me feet, and one bonnet to me head, barring the old ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... boat song which the men chant as they row home at the close of day. The pathos in the woman's voice was so exquisite, its notes so true, that Madge's blue eyes filled with tears. None of the four friends stirred until the song was over, and the girl in her faded calico dress and bare feet had disappeared into ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... because he could not help doing it. It was his nature so to do. Circumstances made him a calico printer, but by the constitution of his mind he was a servant ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... know best. I've no objections. But if Tom's to go to a new school, I should like him to go where I can wash him and mend him, else he might as well have calico as linen. And then, when the box is goin' backwards and forwards, I could send the lad a cake, or ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... white calicoes, fine starched calicoes, coarse white calicoes, brown broad calicoes, brown coarse calicoes. There were also canopies, and coarse diaper towels, quilts of coarse sarsenet, and of calico, and carpets like those of Turkey. Likewise pearls, musk, civet, and ambergris. The rest of the wares were many in number, but less in value; as elephants teeth, porcelain vessels of China, coco ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... Lady Anne in a small, stuffy apartment on the third floor of the house in the Rue St. Antoine. Before her was a sewing-machine, and the floor of the room was littered with oddments of black calico. She herself was seated apparently deep in thought before an ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for companionship with people of greater mentality and refinement than she had been used to, quickly brought about a swift transition in the girl's nature. With the passing of the coarse shoes and calico dresses and the substitution of the kind of clothing all women of Moira's instinctive refinement and natural beauty long for, the girl became cheerful, animated, and imbued with the optimism of her years. At first old Sinclair resented the advent ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... Humboldt and Max Mueller persist in burying their laboriously heaped treasures under a load of black-letter type and words and sentences the most fearfully and wonderfully made, the skipper scatters English words with English calico and American clocks among all the isles. A picturesque fringe of pigeon English decorates the coasts of Africa, Asia and Oceanica. It might be deeper, and doubtless will be, for our mother-tongue ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... parasol was a big paper box. Mell lifted the lid. A muff and tippet lay inside, made of yellow and brown fur like the back of a tortoise-shell cat. These were beautiful, too. Then came rolls of calico and woollen pieces, some of which were very pretty, and would make nice ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... to punishment—but we'll let that pass, and go to his other transactions—for, as I reckon, it's quite punishment enough for that offence, to be jist what he is. He has traded rotten stuffs about the country, that went to pieces the first washing. He has traded calico prints, warranted for fast colors, that ran faster than he ever ran himself. He has sold us tin stuffs, that didn't stand hot water at all; and then thinks to get off, by saying they were not made for our climate. And let me ask, Mr. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... The pink calico morning dress went on without adventure. Then she carefully emptied the water from the wash-bowl into the jar, wiped it neatly and hung the towel to dry; straightened the photograph of her deceased father in its black-walnut frame; ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... assistant, who had died in Andersonville. He had made himself a pair of bag pantaloons and a shirt from pieces of meal sacks which he had appropriated from day to day. He had also the Sutler's assistant's shoes, and, to crown all, he wore on his head one of those hideous looking hats of quilted calico which the Rebels had taken to wearing in the lack of felt hats, which they could neither make nor buy. Altogether Frank looked enough like a Rebel to be dangerous to trust near a country store or a stable full of horses. When we first arrived in the prison quite a ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... various tempting trade goods, including a calico known as Turkey-red, bottles of beads, etc. This and a long conversation with the Baruga men seemed to carry some weight with them, for the Baruga soon returned with one of their number, who turned round in the canoe with his arms outstretched ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... word from a great heart! Such a word, uncouth and simple, but hot from a manly bosom, pierced silk and broadcloth as if they had been calico and fustian, and made a fashionable young lady and a bold school-boy take hands and cry together. But such sweet tears dry quickly; they dry ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... It wasn't a scene to make us very lively, Tom: we hoisted the sail, and ran on to the beach in silence. I took the child in my arms—it had been snatched out of its warm bed, poor thing, and had nothing on but a calico night gown. I took it up to the cottage, which was then Maddox's (I bought it afterwards of the widow with the money I made a-privateering), and I gave it in charge to Mrs Maddox. I did intend to have sent it to the workhouse, or something of that sort; ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... travesties the travesty? Who is that old cripple alighted from his donkey-cart, who dispenses doggrel and grimaces in all the glory of plush and printed calico?" ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of them old families. I've run into them in Yokohoma and Buenos Ayres; I've met up with them along the Yukon and down on the Mexican border. They're scattered all around, out through the Panhandle, ridin' calico ponies, with jingly spurs and more than a bushel of doo-dads on the saddle. They all come from old families, and I suppose after all it was a blessing that they had that much in their favor. Because if most of them hadn't had a family tree ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... feet of copper wire one twentieth of an inch in diameter were wound round a cylinder of wood as a helix, the different spires of which were prevented from touching by a thin interposed twine. This helix was covered with calico, and then a second wire applied in the same manner. In this way twelve helices were superposed, each containing an average length of wire of twenty-seven feet, and all in the same direction. The first, third, fifth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh of these helices ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... these women wore calico skirts, but they looked as much out of place on them as they would on the men, and I came to the conclusion that it does indeed require some art to look well in a "pinned back." These women, when their skirts were in the way of climbing up the side of the vessel, either gathered them up out ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... herself was not a pretty picture. She was a woman of thirty-five or thereabouts; with a thin, brown, hard-looking face; sharp, twinkling gray eyes; and a long, grim, resolute mouth. She wore a short skirt of dark material, a lilac calico jacket, and a huge white apron. On ordinary occasions her head was adorned by a cap of fearful workmanship and dimensions, but in the heat of her work she had thrown it off, and her scanty brown hair was fastened tightly back in a ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... from Cochin in great abundance if the Portugals would be quiet men. It is about two yards broad or better and very strong cloth, and is called cachade Comoree. It would certainly sell well in England for sheeting." Here we see the genesis of the calico trade. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... to me. Men are nice creeters, but you don't want to see too meny of 'em to once, likeways with wimmen. Josiah looked to me at that moment some like a calico dress that you have picked out of a dense quantity of patterns of calico at a store, it looks better to you when you get it away from the rest. Josiah Allen ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... the house-servants were all called in to family worship, as usual; and when that had been attended to, Elsie uncovered a large basket which stood on a side-table, and with a face beaming with delight, distributed the Christmas gifts—a nice new calico dress, or a bright-colored hand-kerchief to each, accompanied by a ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... quick"! She should hand him back the dagger "quite careless like," and never let on that she'd thought anything of it. Perhaps that was the reason why, before she went to bed, she took a good look at it, and after taking off her straight, beltless, calico gown she even tried the effect of it, thrust in the stiff waistband of her petticoat, with the jeweled hilt displayed, and thought it looked charming—as indeed it did. And then, having said her prayers like a good girl, and supplicated that she should be less "tetchy" ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... was born on the 1st of March 1826, at Thornliebank, near Glasgow. His father, George Donald the elder, is noticed in an earlier part of the present volume. Sent to labour in a calico print-work in his tenth year, his education was chiefly obtained at evening schools, and afterwards by self-application during the intervals of toil. In his seventeenth year he became apprenticed to a pattern-designer, and having fulfilled his indenture, he has since prosecuted ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... seen at the exact psychological moment, fixes forever in a man's mind his ideal garment. Thus we read of blue calico, of pink-and-white print, and more often still, of white lawn. Mad colour combinations run riot in the masculine fancy, as in the case of a man who boldly described his favourite costume as "red, with ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... in broadcloth, silk, calico, home-spun, or feathers, friends are such valuable possessions that we must pay these folks who are now announced as much attention as possible. And if we do this and in every way endeavor to make them feel comfortable ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... never succeeded in getting away from the old Port Essington track. The rains came down on them in the sickly brigalow scrubs of the Dawson and Mackenzie. Fever was the result, and they had no medicines with them—a strange omission. Their only coverings during the wet were two miserable calico tents. Their life, as told by members of the party, consisted of semi-starvation, varied by gorging and feasting on killing days, in which the Doctor apparently set the example; in fact, his character throughout comes out in anything but an amiable light, and one ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... regularity, this official has his hands more than usually full. For, once a month, certain printed bills, called Mess-bills, are circulated among the crew, and whatever you may want from the Purser—be it tobacco, soap, duck, dungaree, needles, thread, knives, belts, calico, ribbon, pipes, paper, pens, hats, ink, shoes, socks, or whatever it may be—down it goes on the mess-bill, which, being the next day returned to the office of the Steward, the "slops," as they are called, are served out to the men and ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... chemical which prevents the portions printed from taking the dye, consequently these remain white or a different color. This is called the "resist" process. Another process is to first dye the cloth and then print on some chemical which, when the calico is steamed, discharges the color. This is called the "discharge" process. Sometimes this weakens the goods in the places where ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... that the bullocks at Ambong were remarkably fine and the price of them ridiculously cheap. Two of the largest were to be purchased for about twenty-five shillings worth of calico or any other European manufacture. Wherever we went on this island, and I may say over the Indian archipelago generally, the spirit of trade and barter appeared to be universal; and if the inhabitants of Borneo were inclined ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... in the soiled calico was no longer shaken by convulsive sobs. Lucy turned toward the patient watcher on the woodpile, and in spite of her swollen lids and blood-shot eyes, Peggy knew it was the old Lucy looking up at her. "Well?" she demanded cheerfully. "It's ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... newly patched quilt were designated as "ornery" but the printed spread, patterned to imitate blue torchon lace, drew a murmur of admiration from the woman. Sary quickly changed her robe of mourning to a calico house-dress and went out, determined to speak her mind about that awful mattress! She never thought such a rich man's house would have so common a thing as "combin's"—even if it was in the ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... produced by this process, of which bright colours were characteristic. Bandanas are now commonly made of cotton and produced in Lancashire, whence they are exported. The effect is also produced by a regular process in calico printing, in which the pattern is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... have the honor to be a guest. I am a man, and silks and laces confuse me. Yet I remember three young girls in a frontier town more than forty years ago. Mary Gentry was slender—"skinny," we called her to tease her. Her dark-blue calico dress was clean and prim. Lettie Conlow was fat. Her skin was thick and muddy, and there was a brown mole below her ear. Her black, slick braids of hair were my especial dislike. She had no neck to speak of, and when she turned her head the creases above her fat shoulders deepened. I might have ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... portion being regarded as a "piece," without counting the parts which made it up. Thus, ten coarse blankets made one piece, a musket one piece, a keg of powder weighing ten pounds was one, a piece of East-India blue calico four pieces, ten copper kettles one piece, one piece of chintz two pieces, which made the ten for which the slave was exchangeable: and at length he became commercially known as a "piece of India." The bounty of thirteen livres was computed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... frettings of similar form which roughened the pillars of a somewhat later age occur on Conularia and the dorsal spines of Gyracanthus. The old corals, too, abound in ornamental patterns, which man, unaware of their existence at the time, devised long after for himself. In an article on calico printing, which forms part of a recent history of Lancashire, there are a few of the patterns introduced, backed by the recommendation that they were the most successful ever tried. Of one of these, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Probably she was asleep: but she might be ill or injured. It was a lonely spot, so it occurred to him that it was proper for him to investigate. Accordingly, he stepped to her side and bent over her. From her calico dress, which was her only covering, she evidently belonged to the laboring class. She was a large, coarse-looking woman, and was lying, in what appeared to Gorham to be drunken slumber, on her bonnet, the draggled strings of which caught his eye. He hesitated a moment, and ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... spinning wool on the big wheel, dressed in her light calico short-gown and brown quilted petticoat; her arms were bare, and her hair was gathered away from her flushed cheeks and knotted behind her ears. The roof sloped down on one side, and the light came from a long low window under the eaves. There ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... is more nearly a comprehensive answer than at first you might believe. Visitors at Mackinac, Traverse, Sault Ste. Marie, and other northern resorts are besought at certain times of the year by silent calico-dressed squaws to purchase basket and bark work. If the tourist happens to follow these women for more wholesale examination of their wares, he will be led to a double-ended Mackinaw-built sailing-craft with red-dyed sails, half pulled out on the beach. In the stern sit two ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... preparing him the best dinner she could to cheer him when he came home at noon. To add a touch of grace she decided to set a bowl of petunias in front of him. He loved the homely little flowers in their calico finery, like farmers' daughters at a picnic. Their cheap and almost palpable fragrancy delighted him when it powdered the air. She hoped that they would bring a smile to him at noon, for he could ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... white collar and bosom being one of those "notions" that "Boston," and consequently New England "folks," entertained of the becoming in a gentleman's toilette. Mrs. Cass had laughingly forewarned me that not only calico shirts but patch-work pillow-cases were an indispensable part of a travelling equipment; and, thanks to the taste and skill of some tidy little Frenchwoman, I found our divan-pillows all accommodated in the ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... muslin or calico and size it well with isinglass, then take the natural leaf, lay the sized piece of muslin over it on the under or veined side of the leaf, let the muslin remain on it till almost dry and the impression is set; then with a pair of sharp scissors cut ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... quaint old engravings and colored prints? All these were gone. Instead of the threadbare Brussels carpet patterned with huge bouquets of flowers, there was a striped rag carpet. There were a few rush-bottomed chairs, a box draped with red calico on which stood a water-bucket and a wash-pan, a cook-stove before the fireplace, and in the middle of the room a table covered with a red cloth, on which was set forth a supper of coffee, corn-cakes, fried bacon, and cold cabbage and potatoes. A fat, freckle-faced ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... you perfectly hate the beldame aunt who sent for her to come to France; you think she must have been like the old schoolmistress, who occasionally boxes your ears with the cover of the spelling-book, or makes you wear one of the girls' bonnets, that smells strongly of pasteboard and calico. ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... A calico dress of the most painfully intense pink was made with a full, plain skirt and an ill-fitting basque, which failed to accomplish a meeting with the skirt at the usual trysting-place. Over this she had a shawl of the most royal shade of purple imaginable, and instead ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... let poor Mary enjoy it. She would be so happy, if you would not bewilder her by your gloomy looks, and keep her to the hemming of your endless glazed calico bonnet strings." ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Uncle Bill Sorber wants to give Dot and me a calico pony, and that must be worth a ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... Sheriff's features lost some of their usual inscrutability and for a moment became hard and stern. Slowly he let his eyes wander comprehensively about the saloon: first, they travelled to a small balcony—reached by a ladder drawn down or up at will—decorated with red calico curtains, garlands of cedar and bittersweet, while the railing was ornamented with a wildcat's skin and a stuffed fawn's head; from the ceiling with its strings of red peppers, onions and apples they fell on a stuffed ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... calico dress, newly starched and ironed, had looked so pretty to her when she had started from home, that she had not been able to bear the thought of wearing over it this lovely afternoon her faded, mud-stained riding-skirt; and it was so short that ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... abominations of art, was scrupulously pomatomed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a little cap of quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their heads. Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey were striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes—though I must confess these gallant garments were rather short, scarce reaching below the knee; but then they made up in the number, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... have been proof against a robe with high neck and tight sleeves. Mrs. Rayne's face always seemed to crown her costume like a rose out of green leaves, yet I cannot but think that if I had seen her first in a calico gown and sitting on a three-legged stool milking a cow, I should still have thought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... so dyed. Sumac or tannic acid, in combination with alumina, may be held to be equally inoffensive; now it is a fact that the great bulk of cotton goods are dyed with the aniline colors by the agency of these harmless chemicals. But of late years the dyers of certain goods, and the calico printers generally, have found an advantage in the use of tartar emetic, and other compounds of antimony, to fix aniline colors; besides this, some colors are fixed in calico printing by means of an arsenical ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... merely, but the sensations I had at first seeing it, and which are quite different to my feelings to-day. That first day at Calais; the voices of the women crying out at night, as the vessel came alongside the pier; the supper at Quillacq's and the flavor of the cutlets and wine; the red-calico canopy under which I slept; the tiled floor, and the fresh smell of the sheets; the wonderful postilion in his jack-boots and pigtail;—all return with perfect clearness to my mind, and I am seeing them, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... western. Within five minutes both patrols were in position, and they signified this to Mr. Elliott by holding up their patrol flags. Chippy had made the flag for the Ravens, and made it very well too, cutting the raven out of a scrap of an old green curtain, and stitching it on to a piece of calico. When the umpire saw the patrol flags raised above the gorse clumps which hid the patrols, he blew a long blast on his powerful whistle, and ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... shirt, and put these on," I said, handing him a new pair of socks, and a calico shirt too small for me, but which I thought would ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... apply my mind to them. Then I ought to have some 'serious views' and 'methods' and 'principles.' Steve said 'principles,' good firm ones, you know." And Kitty gave a little pull at the bit of cambric she was cutting as housewives pull cotton or calico when they want "a good ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... piquant, tantalizing, had its peculiar charm, and her brilliant skin and hair so dazzled the masculine beholder that he took note of no small defects; but Waitstill was beautiful; beautiful even in her working dress of purple calico. Her single braid of hair, the Foxwell hair, that in her was bronze and in Patty pale auburn, was wound once around her fine head and made to stand a little as it went across the front. It was a simple, easy, unconscious fashion ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that the strange child, though thinly clad, was clean in her attire, and that some rents in her old calico frock ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... a saint in spectacles and calico—looked at me one morning at the breakfast table and said, VERY gently, 'You must go to town to-morrow, Master, and see a ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... from his post a messenger, Hhasan Aga, the Bosniac officer of Bashi Bozuk, to conduct me to the tents. The Aga was dressed in a crimson silk long coat, over which was a scarlet jacket embroidered in gold, and on his legs the Albanian full kilt, or fustinella, of white calico; his saddle cloth was of pea-green silk with a white border, and yellow worsted network protected the horse's belly from flies, also a rich cloth with tassels lay over ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... unoffending persons to read! What has not the benevolent reader had to suffer at the hands of the so-called impartial historian, who, wholly disinterested and disinteresting, writes with as mechanic an industry and as little emotion as he would have brought to the weaving of calico or the digging of potatoes, under other circumstances! Far truer, at least to nature and to some conceivable theory of an immortal soul in man, is the method of the poet, who makes his personages luminous from within by an instinctive sympathy with human motives of action, and a conception of the ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... children, clad in calico, barefoot and bareheaded, came romping out of a log cabin on the outskirts of the town, and waved their hands to the passengers. They climbed on the sagging gate in front of their humble domain, and laughed for joy to see the monstrous caravan come clattering ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... into one living mass of sympathy. All faces are turned one way, all minds are filled with one purpose. From the Puerta del Sol down the wide Alcala a vast crowd winds, solid as a glacier and bright as a kaleidoscope. From the grandee in his blazoned carriage to the manola in her calico gown, there is no class unrepresented. Many a red hand grasps the magic ticket which is to open the realm of enchantment to-day, and which represents short commons for a week before. The pawnbrokers' shops have been very animated ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... pocket a green calico bag, and, emptying the contents into her hand, picked out from among brass buttons and bits of broken glass a silver coin, which she held ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... barks at another actress, "get this woman into your dressing room and get the number five on her quick. Make her up for this part, understand? You there, Eddie, run get that calico skirt and black-satin waist off Miss St. Clair and hustle 'em over to Miss Harcourt's room, where this lady will be making up. Come on now! Move! Work quick! We can't be ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... gully running into the Newanga was a typical Australian humpy. It was built entirely of bark. Roof, back, front, and sides were huge sheets of stringy bark, and the window shutters were of the same, the windows themselves being sheets of calico; also the two doors were whole sheets of bark ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... temporarily in eclipse. They can teach us nothing on that subject, and we want to learn nothing. Their occupation as trade-journals devoted to the art and science of government is gone. Other periodicals devoted to a specialty, whether iron, coal, calico or the Thirty-nine Articles, show judgment and compassion on their readers when a "slack" time comes by turning miscellaneous and slipping in choice literary tidbits among their regular "shop" items. The five thousand should do likewise. If they will not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... kind," said the other. "Will you come into my room?" Betty followed her into a small room, simpler than any in her own servants' quarter. But it was neat, and there was an attempt at smartness in the bright calico curtains and bedspread. The furniture looked home-made, and there was no ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... large, calico-cushioned rocking-chair at the end of the porch, and had been issuing orders to Rose Mary and little Miss Amanda about the readjustment of the fragrant vine that trailed across the end of the porch over her window and on out to a trellis in the side yard. ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... even individual standpoint. Questions upon which Adam Smith and Auguste Compte, Jefferson and Hamilton disagreed, are settled by the dicta of a partisan convention—composed chiefly of political hacks and irresponsible hoodlums—with less trouble than a colored wench selects a calico gown. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... taken too much salt, carefully replacing some of it, upon economical grounds; but, considering that there was then a duty of a guinea a bushel upon this necessary article, it is not surprising. Our grandfathers paid about 6d. a pound for their salt; the commonest calico was 10d. a yard, and printed calicoes 2s. 2d. per yard. In 1793 the average price of sugar, wholesale, was 66s. 7 1/2d. per cwt., exclusive of duty. Between 1810 and the Battle of Waterloo were many times of scarcity, with wheat varying from 100s. to 126s. a quarter, and some in Royston ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... at her clean calico dress, and she saw that it was faded and patched. A bright rose color flitted over her cheeks, and when she looked up, tears stood in her eyes. Mary did not say any more; but she watched Fanny all the forenoon, and saw that she had made ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... that thought my courage revived. I heard voices in the next room, the pounding of a flat-iron, and a frequent step across the floor. I gave a loud rap. The door opened, and Eleanor herself appeared. She had on a spotted calico gown, with a string of gold beads around her neck. She held in her hand a piece of fan coral. I felt myself turning all colors, stammered, hesitated, and believed in my heart that she would think me a fool. Very likely she did; for I really suppose that she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... thousand adults, of both sexes, who are obliged to go barefoot during the winter, in the ice and snow—pregnant women and aged people in habitual danger of death from the cold . . . . It is rare to find a man with a calico shirt; but the distress of the women is still greater, if that be possible. There are many hundreds of families in which five or six grown-up women have among them no more than a single dress to go out in . . . . There are about five hundred families who have but one bed each— ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... chess with her eternal brother? or know Sulpicia, without knowing all the round of her card-playing relations? must my friend's brethren of necessity be mine also? must we be hand and glove with Dick Selby the parson, or Jack Selby the calico printer, because W.S., who is neither, but a ripe wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim a common parentage with them? Let him lay down his brothers; and 'tis odds but we will cast him in a pair of ours (we have a superflux) to balance the concession. Let F.H. lay down his garrulous uncle; ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... that Isabella Thoburn,—gifted, consecrated, wise,—was ready to go to India, they exclaimed, "Shall we lose Miss Thoburn because we have not the needed money in our hands to send her? No, rather let us walk the streets of Boston in our calico dresses, and save the expense of more costly apparel!" Thus was answered the letter written with the feather from the vulture's wing by the wayside in India. In 1870, Isabella Thoburn gathered six little waifs into her first school in India, a one-roomed ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... be useful to carvers and wood engravers not only to those who cut the fine objects of artistical design, but still more to those who cut patterns and blocks for lace, muslin, calico-printing, paper hangings, etc., as by this means the errors, expense and time of the draughtsman may be wholly saved, and in a minute or two the most elaborate picture or design, or the most complicated machinery, be delineated with the ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... built dwelling. The Indian peasant already, in the case of wheat, undersells the English farmer, and it seems merely a question of time as to when the Indian operative will undersell his Lancashire rival, and when perhaps calico will come to England, as it once did, from Calicut. And no doubt, some such thoughts were passing through Cobden's mind when he once said, "What ugly ruins our mills will make." We are, however, a considerable way from such remains as the reader ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... I took the skinniest rack-a-bones in the tribe. The old hag! She was too lazy to earn her salt, and was the biggest fool that ever wore calico." ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... quite aged, and a few gray locks straggled out from under her dingy cap, which suggested anything but a halo around her wrinkled, withered face. A ragged calico wrapper incased her tall, gaunt form, and altogether she did not make a ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... was dark calico, stiffly starched, and made according to the durable and comfortable pattern of her school-days. "All in one piece," Miss Hitty was wont to say. "Then when I bend over, as folks that does housework has ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... thinking about?' answered the scoundrel. 'Am I then—. Where do you buy your calico?' the scoundrel began after a pause. 'How much do you pay an ell? Where do you buy your linen cloth? How high does it come by the ell? Where do you ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... as he glanced ahead and noticed the trim figure of Medaine Robinette swinging along the road, old Lost Wing, as usual, trailing in her rear, astride a calico pony and leading the saddle horse which she evidently had become tired of riding. A small switch was in one hand, and she flipped it at the new leaves of the aspens and the broad-leafed mullens beside the road. As yet, she had not seen him, and Barry hurried toward ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... down to the ground. Here we were met by the women and children, who, likewise, all went through the ceremony of shaking hands with us, after which the head-woman, who was very good-looking, and was dressed in a cherry-coloured calico gown, with two long plaits of black hair hanging down her back, spread a mat for me to sit upon just outside the hut. By this time there was quite a little crowd of people assembled round, amongst whom ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey |
