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Nightcap

noun
1.
An alcoholic drink taken at bedtime; often alcoholic.
2.
A cloth cap worn in bed.
3.
The final game of a double header.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Nightcap" Quotes from Famous Books



... face. Whate'er these dire forebodings meant, In joy the marriage-day was spent; The marriage-day, you take me right, I promise nothing for the night. The bridegroom, drest to make a figure, Assumes an artificial vigour; A flourish'd nightcap on, to grace His ruddy, wrinkled, smirking face; Like the faint red upon a pippin, Half wither'd by a winter's keeping. And thus set out this happy pair, The swain is rich, the nymph is fair; But, what I gladly would forget, The swain is old, the nymph coquette. Both from the goal together ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... represent a general rejoicing over the Triumph of Death. It shows a churchyard and porch filled with skeletons, who blow trumpets of all sorts and sizes; one beats frantically upon a pair of kettle-drums, and another, wearing a woman's nightcap, with a broad frill border, plays ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... that her intimacy with this monk gave room for some suspicion that her privacies with him were not all employed about the care of her soul. Afterward, to ridicule her yet more, King Albert sent her a hone to sharpen her needles, and swore not to put on his nightcap until she had yielded to him. But under perilous circumstances Margaret was never at a loss how to act. She acted here with the utmost prudence, trying first to gain the favor of the peers of the state, and solemnly promising to rule according ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... agitating Grodman's door-knocker. In a moment the first floor window was raised—the little house was of the same pattern as her own—and Grodman's full, fleshy face loomed through the fog in sleepy irritation from under a nightcap. Despite its scowl the ex-detective's face dawned upon her like the sun upon an occupant ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... residing at Aycliffe, he was lying wide awake one morning at early dawn in the height of summer when his father came into his bedroom dressed just as he was accustomed to dress—red waistcoat, etc.—but with the addition of a tasselled nightcap which he sometimes kept on during the day. His father had been ailing for some time, and said to him, 'Crawford, I want you to make me a promise before I die.' His son replied, 'I will, father; what ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... the inky interior of the wheelhouse. Up overside rose the whisper of rushing waters; from underfoot came the rhythmic beat of the engines far below. O'Neil shook off his mood and began to wonder idly how long it would be before Captain Johnny would be ready for his "nightcap." ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... come on till the next session. I believe that the Great Gentlemen at Whitehall were, for a long time after my conviction, in a mind for Hanging me. 'Twas thought a small matter then to stretch the neck of a Boy of Twelve, and children even smaller than I had worn the white Nightcap, and smelt the Nosegay in the Cart. Indeed, I think the Ordinary wanted me to be Finished according to Law, that he might preach a Sermon on it, and liken me to one of the Children that mocked the Prophet, and was so eaten up by the She-Bears that came out ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... opened her window cautiously, and thrust out her head, minus her false hair, and enveloped in a cotton nightcap. ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... systematic glorification and the systematic depreciation of particular forms. The Apollo Belvedere would make as poor a figure in the foreground of a modern landscape as a fisherman in jack-boots and red nightcap on a pedestal in the Vatican. Claude's or Turner's figures may be absurd, when taken by themselves; but the absurdity consists in taking them by themselves. Turner, it is said, could draw figures well; Claude probably could not; (he is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... near the Commandant's house we saw in the square about twenty little old pensioners, with long pigtails and three-cornered hats. They were drawn up in line. Before them stood the Commandant, a tall, old man, still hale, in a dressing-gown and a cotton nightcap. ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... outer skin of the man. He had shabby slippers on his feet. His hair was black, still unmixed with gray, stiff, somewhat bushy, and had apparently been acquainted with neither brush nor comb that morning, after the disarrangement of the pillow; and as to a nightcap, Uncle Abe probably knows nothing of such effeminacies. His complexion is dark and sallow, betokening, I fear, an insalubrious atmosphere around the White House; he has thick black eyebrows and an impending brow; his nose is large, and the lines about his mouth ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... he closed his door, and locked himself in; double locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... smells dreadfully of anisette, arranges her little parcels in that immense basket of abominations which all old women carry in their laps. She rubs her mouth and eyes with her dusty cambric handkerchief, she ties up her nightcap into a little bundle, and replaces it by a more becoming head-piece, covered with withered artificial flowers, and crumpled tags of ribbon; she looks wistfully at the company for an instant, and then places her handkerchief before her mouth:—her eyes roll strangely about ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... not ashamed of her domestic occupation. She came in wiping the suds from her hands on her apron, and gave us a very hearty and friendly welcome. She was a short, stout, middle-aged woman, with a very pleasing countenance; and though only in her coloured flannel working-dress, with a nightcap on her head, and spectacled nose, there was something in her frank good-natured face that greatly prepossessed us in ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... dreary domestic virtue. It always rose, rode, dined, at stated intervals. Day after day was the same. At the same hour at night the King kissed his daughters' jolly cheeks; the Princesses kissed their mother's hand; and Madame Thielke brought the royal nightcap." ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... were made on them. People ridiculed the old bachelor and his nightcap, just because they knew so little about him, or it. Alas! let no one desire such a nightcap. And ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances, 'united in a common element of dust.' Books lay on tables, and below tables; here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature, and Bluecher Boots. Old Lieschen (Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and general ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... the curtain, instead of the lovely yellow-haired doll in her ruffled nightcap, she saw an ugly little black face staring at her, and a tiny hand holding the sheet fast. Nelly gave one scream, and flew downstairs into the parlor where the Sewing-circle was at work, frightening twenty-five ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... and little children, who stood in displeased surprise at their father's emaciation and at his nightcap, and uttered exclamations of delight at the sight of the beautifully dressed altar. But Jack's mother did not appear. Madame Belisaire knows not what to say. She has hinted that M. D'Argenton may be ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... beginning to the end, to those who have imagination enough to follow you in your airy flights; and to those who complain, I suppose nothing less than an illustrated edition, with a large gallows on the last page, with Donatello in the most pensive of attitudes, his ears revealed at last through a white nightcap, would be satisfactory. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... some way. For this reason, as well as for others, M'Carthy prudently hesitated either to arouse his loyalty or disturb the tranquility of his family, and after joining him in a tumbler of punch, or what O'Driscol termed his nightcap, he retired to bed, where, however, he could not for a considerable time prevent himself from ruminating, with a good deal of seriousness, upon the extraordinary interview he had had ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... a poetical angler is this, for the Dordogne runs close by in the shadow of prodigious rocks and overhanging trees. What a noble and stately river I thought it, as the old ferryman, with white cotton nightcap on his head, punted me across! I took the greater pleasure in its breadth and grandeur here because I had seen it an infant river in the Auvergne mountains, and had watched its growth as it rushed between walls of rock and ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... journey from Nice to Turin, describes how he ascended "the mountain Brovis," and on the top thereof met a Quixotic figure, whom he thus pictures: "He was very tall, meagre, and yellow, with a long hooked nose and twinkling eyes. His head was cased in a woollen nightcap, over which he wore a flapped hat; he had a silk handkerchief about his neck, and his mouth was furnished with a short wooden pipe, from which he discharged wreathing clouds of tobacco-smoke." This scarecrow turned out to be an Italian marquis; and no doubt the singularity of his ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... the incarnation of respectability and dignity, despite bed-gown and slippers and the nightcap covering his high, bald crown, made no presence of ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... the morning, it came into their heads to go and knock up Johnson, and see if they could prevail on him to join them in a ramble. They rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the Temple, till at last he appeared in his shirt, with his little black wig on the top of his head, instead of a nightcap, and a poker in his hand, imagining, probably, that some ruffians were coming to attack him. When he discovered who they were, and was told their errand, he smiled, and with great good humour agreed to their proposal: 'What, is it you, you dogs! I'll have a frisk with you.' He was soon ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... number of small tugs moored alongside, and one or two bigger craft—fruit boats, I judged, which used to ply in the Aegean. They looked pretty well moth-eaten from disuse. We stopped at one of them and watched a fellow in a blue nightcap splicing ropes. He raised his eyes once and looked at us, and then kept ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... was not gone to bed!" exclaimed Blaize, "I had just taken a couple of rufuses, and was about to put on my nightcap, when, hearing a noise without, and being ever on the alert to defend my master's property, even at the hazard of my life, I stepped forth and ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Carthame, blissfully ignorant of the fact that she had neglected to remove her nightcap, stood up in her place, with her wrapper gathered about her in a statuesque fashion, and in a tragic tone uttered ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... it," said one of the boys with a laugh; "so we put a nightcap on." She drew back, and turned very pale. "Cousin Harry, there are drops of blood on this cotton. ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... desire to die. He was well punished for his silliness by being made very unwell, and by being, moreover, shut up in his room for some days. No punishment for his youthful transgressions was, however, so effectual as being sent in a nightcap to a neighboring church. "Who knows," says he, "whether I am not indebted to that blessed nightcap for having turned out one of the most ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... business of State to the QUEEN, and even her sleep must give way to that.' It did; and, to prove that she did not keep them waiting, in a few minutes she came into the room in a loose white nightgown and shawl, her nightcap thrown off, and her hair falling upon her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but perfectly ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... would here end their ride for the day by 'smiling' with the worthy Corporal, and wash down any of their former improprieties with a sip of his ne plus ultra, which was always kept in reserve for a special nightcap. There was a special magnetism about the snug little bar-room, always trim as a lady's boudoir, which induced the desire to tarry awhile, as if that visit were destined to be the last; so it frequently happened that a jolly party was compelled to grope slowly ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... proverb; and your citizen, In's grogram suit, gold chain, and well-black'd shoes, Bears under his flat cap ofttimes a brain Wiser than burns beneath the cap and feather, Or seethes within the statesman's velvet nightcap. Read me my Riddle. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... merry-faced chap he is!' observed Arthur, when the red nightcap had been pulled off in an obeisance of adieu, as they went to seek for the others, and witness their ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... inquiries, both sides of the question, and should be glad if they would point out to me the name of a Gipsy whom they could look up to and consider as a good pattern for them to follow. Here they began to scratch their heads, and said I had put them "a nightcap on." "Upon my soul," said one, "I should not know where to begin to look for one," and then related to me the following story:—"The Devil sent word to some of his agents for them to send him the worst man they could find upon ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... largely due to dyspepsia and an active imagination. He said that the Devil troubled him less at night when he took a good "nightcap," which made him sleep soundly. He found that the Devil could not stand music, being a sad and sombre personage; just as, long before, music was found a sovereign recipe for the melancholia of King Saul. But the surest specific ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... Dublin and took his degree in medicine, after playing a famous practical joke. A certain medical professor was wont to lecture in bed. One night he left town unexpectedly. Lever, by chance, came early to lecture, found the Professor absent, slipped into his bed, put on his nightcap, and took the class himself. On another day he was standing outside the Foundling Hospital with a friend, a small man. Now, a kind of stone cradle for foundlings was built outside the door, and, when a baby was placed ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... won't ever think of that. Besides, you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the difference in the world; Juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight before she goes to bed, and she's got on her night-gown and her ruffled nightcap. Here are the costumes for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... to know whether any robbery that had been committed by the most desperate of the French, or whether any of their acts, were more infamous than this? Of what consequence was it to any man, whether he was plundered by a man with a white feather in his hat, or by one with a nightcap on his head? If there could be any difference, the solemnity with which the thing was done was an aggravation of the insult. The poorer sort of the French could plead distress, and could also say that they had ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... the neck, you know, like the women's-rights people. Then the murder of the hair has to be concealed, so they put on a nightcap, and hide that with a veil, and then bring her into the bishop to tell him it's all ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... like the lapping of a hundred waves, or as the "Robin Crusoe, Robin Crusoe," of the parrot smote upon the ear of the terrified islander of Defoe; but at last I wake, to view, by the dim firelight, this vision: Mrs. B. is sitting up beside me, in a listening attitude of the very intensest kind; her nightcap (one with cherry-coloured ribbons, such as it can be no harm to speak about) is tucked back behind either ear; her hair—in paper—is rolled out of the way upon each side like a banner furled; her eyes are rather wide open, and ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... follows is, to say the least of it, a perplexing performance. It has no plot in particular. The scene is laid in a lodging-house, and the discomforts of one Monsieur Choufleur, an elderly gentleman in a flowered dressing-gown and a gigantic nightcap, furnish forth all the humor of the piece. What Monsieur Choufleur has done to deserve his discomforts, and why a certain student named Charles should devote all the powers of his mind to the devising and inflicting of those discomforts, is a mystery which we, the audience, are never permitted to ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... so, and undressed themselves while the advocate and I went on talking at the table, with our backs turned to them. As soon as they had gone to rest, the advocate took the bed on which he found his nightcap, and I the other, which was only about one foot distant from the large bed. I remarked that the lady by whom I was captivated was on the side nearest my couch, and, without much vanity, I could suppose that it was not owing only ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... old dame was sitting up in bed, her great frilled nightcap tied beneath her chin, her hawk's eyes full of life and fire, although her face was very pinched and blue, and there were lines about her brow and lips which told the experienced eyes of the sick nurse that she was ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Pepys-like touch, "I for a little while fancied myself a military man, and it pleased me." He got scandalously drunk on one occasion, and showed reprehensible levity on others. He bored Johnson by inquiring too curiously into his reasons for not wearing a nightcap—a subject which seems to have interested him profoundly; he permitted himself to say in his journal that he was so much pleased with some pretty ladies' maids at the Duke of Argyll's, that he felt he could ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... Mrs. Callender, on looking from one of her windows one day, observed that the head of her rival's husband, who was at the moment recreating himself in his garden, was comfortably set off with a splendid new striped Kilmarnock nightcap. Now, when Mrs. Callender saw this, and recollected the very shabby, faded article of the same denomination—"mair like a dish-cloot," as she muttered to herself, "than onything else"—which her Thomas wore, she determined on instantly providing him with a new one; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... here is a genuine old beau, with the unmistakable self-consciousness of one who has been a favorite of the sex, but who has slowly decayed in the midst of his cosmetics; here saunter along a couple of actors with the air of being on the stage. These people all have the "nightcap" habit, and drift along towards the bar-room—the last brilliant scene in the drama of the idle day, the necessary portal to the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... belly, with good capon lin'd,"—the justice, having hung up his hat, wig, and cloak, puts on his nightcap, and, with a goblet of superior capacity before him, sits in solemn cogitation. His left elbow, supported by the table, and his right by a chair, with a pipe in one hand, and a stopper in the other, he puffs out the bland vapour with the dignity of an alderman, and fancies himself as great as Jupiter, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... season of general merriment this palisade also was mirth-provoking because (the weather being such as was virtually unprecedented in these parts) a light snow had fallen during the night, so that each head seemed to wear a nightcap. ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... gown her figure seemed more than usually grand and broad. She bent her head, and with shining, wet eyes looked from under her brows at Dolly, a thin little pitiful figure in her patched dressing jacket and nightcap, shaking ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... been walking the deck for some time with a great mattress on his shoulders, knowing full well that were he to relinquish it for an instant, some other person would seize on it, now stretches his bed upon the deck, wraps his cloak about his knees, draws his white cotton nightcap tight over his head and ears; and, as the smoke of his cigar rises calmly upwards to the deep sky and the cheerful twinkling stars, he feels himself exquisitely happy, and thinks of thee, ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray

... place, And brave prince William show'd his lamp-black face: The morn was cold, he views with keen desire 15 The rusty grate unconscious of a fire; With beer and milk arrears the frieze was scor'd, And five crack'd teacups dress'd the chimney board; A nightcap deck'd his brows instead of bay, A cap by night—a stocking all ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... who was quite hungry after his run, eat up poor grandmother. Indeed, she was not enough for his breakfast, and so he thought he would like to eat sweet Red Riding-Hood also. Therefore he dressed himself in granny's nightcap and got into bed, and waited for the child to knock at the door. But he ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown

... moment Mrs. Ellsworth chose to appear, habited once more in a hurriedly donned dressing gown, a white silk scarf substituted in haste for a discarded nightcap. Panting with anger, and fierce with curiosity, she had forgotten her rheumatism and abandoned her martyred hobble for ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... feet are separated, and the figure becomes not ungraceful. A white night-gown in b is introduced; in a it is her day-gown, and dark; the back of the chair in b is treated more ornamentally; in a a plain frilled nightcap is hung on the chair, changed in b to a more grotesque and "Gamp-like" headgear. Nothing can be better in a than the effect of light from the rushlight on the floor. This is helped by the lady's figure, which is darkened in a, and thrown out by the ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald

... where I wondered how fine ladies' trains and noses could go, and were received in a dark small den by the philosopher, or rather devot, for he spurns the name of philosopher: he was in a dirty reddish night-gown, and very dirty nightcap bound round the forehead with a superlatively dirty chocolate-coloured ribbon. Madame Recamier, the beautiful, the elegant, robed in white satin trimmed with white fur, seated herself on the elbow of ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... what I said to her as I stood for a moment beside the old woman's bed was, "Does she never show you her eyes then? Have you never seen them?" Miss Bordereau had been divested of her green shade, but (it was not my fortune to behold Juliana in her nightcap) the upper half of her face was covered by the fall of a piece of dingy lacelike muslin, a sort of extemporized hood which, wound round her head, descended to the end of her nose, leaving nothing visible but her white ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James

... had on a pair of stout canvas trousers, and a pair of sailors' thick shoes. Jack wore a red flannel shirt, a blue jacket, and a red Kilmarnock bonnet or nightcap, besides a pair of worsted socks, and a cotton pocket-handkerchief, with sixteen portraits of Lord Nelson printed on it, and a Union Jack in the middle. Peterkin had on a striped flannel shirt—which he wore outside his trousers, and belted round his waist, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... fear, is neglecting your master. Be sure," and my mother's lips approached close to Mrs. Primmins' ear, "be sure that you—air his nightcap yourself." ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the pioneer as a huge barometer to forecast the weather. "How is the mountain this morning?" the farmer asked in harvest time. "Has the mountain got his nightcap on?" the housewife inquired before her wash was hung on the line. The Indian would watch the mountain with intent to determine whether he might expect snass (rain), or kull snass (hail), or t'kope snass (snow), and seldom failed in his conclusions. So that day I scanned the mountain top, ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... had three hours to spare; so we sent our luggage—that is, my trunk—to the Worcester Depot, and walked leisurely ourselves. I had a little shopping to do, to complete my outfit for the journey,—a very little shopping,—only a nightcap or two. Ordinarily such a thing is a matter of small moment, but in my case the subject bad swollen into unnatural dimensions. Nightcaps are not generally considered healthy,—at least not by physicians. Nature has given to the head ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... they were saying. At last the Baronne rushed into my room to discover what the noise was. She looks perfectly odd when going to bed; a good deal seemed to have come off; she is as thin as a lath; and on the dressing table was such a sweet lace nightcap, with lovely baby curls sewed to its edge, and when she put that on she did look sweet. It isn't that she has no hair herself, it's thick and brown; but she explained that having to wear a nightcap ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn

... in the nightgown and nightcap and lying in the bed ready for little Red Riding-Hood's entrance. The combined effect of the rug and the head and the thought of Cuthbert had made him hotter and crosser than he ever remembered having felt before. He was conscious of a wild ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton

... that one evening he made the Princess stay up very late, until at last, being desirous of sleep, she bade him leave her. He then went to his own room, and there put on the handsomest and best-scented shirt he had, and a nightcap so well adorned that nothing was lacking in it. It seemed, to him, as he looked at himself in his mirror, that no lady in the world could deny herself to one of his comeliness and grace. He therefore promised himself a happy issue to his ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... end to the career of one of the best "spouters," and caused the retirement of the favorite "singing chambermaid," the affair was postponed till February, when Washington's birthday was always celebrated by the patriotic town, where the father of his country once put on his nightcap, or took off his boots, as that ubiquitous hero appears to have done in every part of the ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... to his pillow with a delightful sense of his own importance, and led him to confide to the nightcap on the pillow beside him that "Mr. Evatt is a man of vast insight and discrimination." Regrettable as it is to record, the visitor, before seeking his own pillow, mixed some ink powder in a mug with a little water and proceeded to add to a letter ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... punishment, she was immediately transformed into a black woodpecker; and ever since that day the wicked old creature has wandered about the world in the shape of a bird, seeking her daily bread from wood to wood and from tree to tree." The red head of the bird is supposed to represent the red nightcap worn ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman

... by French Patriotism to the frantic chorus of the "Marseillaise?" Depend on it, Madam, that high and low in this city on Tuesday were not altogether at their ease, and that the bravest felt no small tremor! And be sure of this, that as his Majesty Louis Philippe took his nightcap off his royal head that morning, he prayed heartily that he might, at night, put it on ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")

... where she was going, or what she intended to do?" Mahony inquired of his wife that night as she bound the strings of her nightcap. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... wig must come off and a nightcap take the place. In the morning that wig must go on, with never one look in the glass. Soon two persons called, both leaders in social life, one of them a physician, who had suddenly lost every spear of hair. ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... you think you could produce a nightcap model of the Sandringham, or is it quite impossible for one who reads your paper to be anything ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various

... I was so scared last night that I disremember. She took off her rigging before she went to bed. Don't you think I'd personify a pretty good old woman, gentlemen—ha! ha!—for a lady of my age? What's that, Mr. Little? You wish I'd make you a present of that nightcap, to remember me by? Of course; I've no further use for it. Of course I haven't. It's one of Bridget's, that I borrowed for the occasion, and I've got to give it back to her. Have some coffee, Mr. Grayson—do! ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... in this river, two of the nobles, or head men of the natives, came on board to visit him, who were naked like the rest, except that their aprons were much larger, and one of them had a handkerchief on his head, embroidered with silk, while the other wore a nightcap of green satin[22]. Observing their cleanliness, or civility, the general treated these people courteously, and gave them victuals, apparel, and other things, of which they seemed to make but small account; and by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... Bartley still found himself wakeful. He knew that he should not sleep if he went home, and he said to himself that he could not walk about all night. He turned into a gayly-lighted basement, and asked for something in the way of a nightcap. ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... bed, propped up by pillows. His silver hair strayed from under a nightcap; he wore a light blue bedroom jacket; its color matched that of his restless eyes; his arms were under the clothes from the elbows down. He was rather flushed, but did not look seriously ill, and greeted Doctor ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... the name of great guns don't you both shut up, you confounded magpies? Here I am dying of hunger, and I didn't bring my nightcap to go to bed here, either!—— Now here's the upshot of the matter: You owe me a great deal; but it's not an even sum—there are fractions in it, and I go in for clean transactions. Moreover, my tastes are modest. I've enough ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... he was led before the general, though that officer looked, to his boyish eyes, more like a woman than a stalwart fighting-man. His tall body was enveloped in a great, shaggy fur coat right down to the feet, and a white nightcap covered his head. Nothing but the moustache on the pale face indicated the warlike calling of the man ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... editor, a man of the name of McGuffog, was subsequently hanged by order of General Osbourne. Public opinion endorsed this act of severity. My great-uncle, Mr. Phelim Settle, was present and saw him with the nightcap on and a file of his journals around his neck; when he was turned off, the applause, according to Mr. Settle, was deafening. He was a man, as the extracts prove, not without a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the wrong, loyal to her own sex—and all the weakest of that dear miscellany, nourishing, cherishing next her soft heart, voicelessly flattering, hopes that she would have died sooner than have acknowledged. She tore off her nightcap, and her hair fell about her shoulders in profusion. Undying coquetry awoke. By the faint light of her nocturnal rush, she stood before the looking-glass, carried her shapely arms above her head, and gathered up ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... anon to the tragic deeps. In spite of my sleepiness I was held spellbound and the musician had concluded with certain barbaric grunts before I had the curiosity to rise. It came from somewhere in the gallery of the inn, and as I stuck my head out of my door I had a glimpse of Oliphant, nightcap on head and a great bagpipe below his arm, stalking ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... ladies, very kind," Carew was observing, with a perfectly grave face, as he drew out a handkerchief of spotty red cotton and a khaki-colored nightcap. "Look, Weldon! These fit my complexion to a charm, and will be wonderfully warm and comfortable. What is ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... me, my dear Vicar, that if all the bishops followed your example and slept on their wrath against heresy, they would wake up and find nine-tenths of the heretics back in the fold. Indeed I wish your good lady would let you pack your nightcap and come with us. You could hire ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... of space became more and more lighted with star-points, the hearth-fires to other homes of worlds, I thought how local, after all, is the great cone of shadow we men call night; for it is only nature's nightcap for the nodding earth, as she turns her head away from the sun to lie pillowed ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... forgotten these long years. She must have been a tall woman, that mother of Em's, for when he stood up to shake out a dress the neck was on a level with his, and the skirt touched the ground. Gregory laid a nightcap out on his knee, and began rolling up the strings; but presently his fingers moved slower and slower, then his chin rested on his breast, and finally the imploring blue eyes were fixed on the frill abstractedly. When Em's voice called to him ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... course of sensational novels induced a nervous distemper. Magdalena, hearing the sound of pacing footsteps in the hall one night, arose and opened her door. Mrs. Yorba, arrayed in a red flannel nightgown and a frilled nightcap, was walking rapidly up and down, talking to herself. Magdalena persuaded her to go to bed, and the next morning sent for the doctor. He prescribed an immediate change of scene,—travel, if possible; if not, the country. Magdalena undertook to carry ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... Daumier appears in neither of these forms he sees it in Madame Chaboulard or Madame Fribochon, the old snuff-taking, gossiping portress, in a nightcap and shuffling savates, relating or drinking in the wonderful and the intimate. One of his masterpieces represents three of these dames, lighted by a guttering candle, holding their heads together to discuss the fearful earthquake at Bordeaux, the consequence ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... At this intimation, Mr. Jorrocks clambered down, and was speedily surrounded by touts and captains of vessels soliciting his custom. "Bonjour, me Lor'," said a gaunt French sailor in ear-rings, and a blue-and-white jersey shirt, taking off a red nightcap with mock politeness, "you shall be cross." "What's that about?" inquires Mr. Jorrocks—"cross! what does the chap mean?" "Ten shillin', just, me Lor'," replied the man. "Cross for ten shillings," muttered Mr. Jorrocks, "vot ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... a favorable proposition whereon to rest the issue of the dialogue. So I put an end to it by calling for my nightcap. Methinks, I hear you wish to Heaven I had called a little sooner, and so spared you the ennui of such a sermon. I did not interrupt them sooner, because I was in a mood for hearing sermons. You, too, were the subject; and on such a thesis, I never think the theme long; not even if I am ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... herself at five o'clock of a wet November morning, and with her own hands lit the kitchen fire, and made the brothers a breakfast, and served it to them herself. Majestically arrayed in a boundless flannel wrapper, a shawl, and her nightcap, she sat and watched them eat, as complacently as a hen beholds her chickens feed. Yet she gave the cook warning that day for venturing to make and carry up to Mr. Moore a basin of sago-gruel; and the housemaid lost her favour because, when Mr. Louis was departing, she brought ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... and lightning, that continued with great violence for several hours: in the midst of this tempestuous weather, he (having a great mind to clear his afternoon's expenses) stripped off all his apparel, except his nightcap, shoes, and breeches, and went to Squire Rhodes's. Nothing could possibly look with a more deplorable appearance than this naked and wretched spectacle, in such dreadful weather: the landlord with pity regarding ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... light, converging and concentrating in one radiance that should make the whole visible. But such was his bad fortune, not another word of the manuscript was he able to read that whole evening; and, moreover, while he had still an inch of candle left, Aunt Keziah, in her nightcap,—as witch-like a figure as ever went to a wizard meeting in the forest with Septimius's ancestor,—appeared at the door of the room, aroused from her bed, and shaking her ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... knocked softly at the door, and being bid to open it, I found the major in his sister's ante-chamber warming her posset. His dress was certainly whimsical enough, having on a woman's bedgown and a very dirty flannel nightcap, which, being added to a very odd person (for he is a very awkward thin man, near seven feet high), might have formed, in the opinion of most men, a very proper object of laughter. The major started from his seat at my entering into the room, ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... port; but with few of the Gascon sort, who absolutely believed they WERE port. George III. believed in West's port and thought Reynolds's overrated stuff. When I saw West's pictures at Philadelphia, I looked at them with astonishment and awe. Hide, blushing glory, hide your head under your old nightcap. O immortality! is this the end of you? Did any of you, my dear brethren, ever try and read "Blackmore's Poems," or the "Epics of Baour-Lormian," or the "Henriade," or—what shall we say?—Pollok's "Course of Time?" They were thought to be more lasting than brass ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... off his nightcap (though he wore it in the daytime, it really was a nightcap). And Reddy Woodpecker was so amused that he shouted at the top of ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey

... history is, that on the 9th of September, 1705, being in his one and twentieth year, he was washing his teeth at a tavern window in Pall Mall, when a fine equipage passed by, and in it a young lady, who looked up at him; away goes the coach, and the young gentleman pulled off his nightcap, and instead of rubbing his gums, as he ought to do out of the window till about four o'clock, he sits him down, and spoke not a word till twelve at night; after which, he began to inquire, if anybody knew the lady. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... you'd be the right man. Kara! Fix the doctor a drink. We might as well have a nightcap—then I'll go back to the house and listen to Henry and Anne's screams about poor mistreated Douglas, and then back to Albertsville tomorrow. Duty ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone

... snapper bonbons, filled with all sorts of things made of paper, and soon one boy was wearing an apron, another a nightcap, and the like. Dora got a yellow jacket, and Nellie a baker's cap, while Grace skipped around wearing a poke hat over a foot high. There was plenty of laughter, and the old folks did not hesitate to join in. Nuts and raisins followed the ice-cream, and then the ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)

... curtain around the top. She was partly undressed, and was undoing her hair and brushing it out. It was very curly and all fluffed out in a shining white fuzz around her fat, pink face, full of soft wrinkles; but in a moment she was braiding it up again and putting on a tight white nightcap, which she ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... lean lovingly toward us. The dark pine masses stood silent as in breathless adoration; the dazzling snow lay like a garment over all the open spaces in soft, waving folds, and crowned every stump with a quaintly shaped nightcap. Above the camps the smoke curled up from the camp-fires, standing like pillars of cloud that kept watch while men slept. And high over all the deep blue night sky, with its star jewels, sprang like the roof of a great cathedral from ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor

... filled with the idea that you have fallen a victim, of which in my calmer moments I have in vain endeavoured to dispossess him—Every morning we are wakened up at an unseasonable hour by a furious ringing at the door-bell—Joe Manton pulls off his nightcap and slowly descending the stairs opens the door and finds Mr. Thorn, who enquires distractedly whether Miss Ringgan has arrived; and being answered in the negative gloomily walks off towards the East river—The state of anxiety in which his mother ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... door opened; there was a glow of soft light from the lamp, and Samoylenko's huge figure appeared all in white, with a white nightcap on his head. ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... opened his ice-box, and helped himself to a stiff 'nightcap' before turning in, Desmond joined the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... sent him a nightcap, finely wrought by a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth (Tatler, No. 141). The "nightcap" was a periwig with a short tie and small round head, and embroidered nightcaps were worn chiefly by members of the ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... that of a soldier who is tied neck and heels; or rather resembling the attitude in which we often see fellows in the public streets of London, who are not suffering but deserving punishment by so standing. He had a nightcap belonging to Molly on his head, and his two large eyes, the moment the rug fell, stared directly at Jones; so that when the idea of philosophy was added to the figure now discovered, it would have been very difficult ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... Calvins, Bonjour, Gloria Vanderbilt. headdress, headgear; chapeau [Fr.], crush hat, opera hat; kaffiyeh; sombrero, jam, tam-o-shanter, tarboosh^, topi, sola topi [Lat.], pagri^, puggaree^; cap, hat, beaver hat, coonskin cap; castor, bonnet, tile, wideawake, billycock^, wimple; nightcap, mobcap^, skullcap; hood, coif; capote^, calash; kerchief, snood, babushka; head, coiffure; crown &c (circle) 247; chignon, pelt, wig, front, peruke, periwig, caftan, turban, fez, shako, csako^, busby; kepi^, forage cap, bearskin; baseball cap; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... couldn't tell me what year it was when old John Cann took the Saucy Codfish over Black Tooth Reef and laid her alongside the Spaniard in the harbour there, and up comes the Don in his nightcap. "Shiver my timbers," he says in Spanish, "but there's only one man in the whole of the Spanish Main," he says, "and that's John Cann," he says, ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne

... Anne was fast asleep, and Judy lay awake, tossing restlessly in the gray light of the dawn, the little grandmother came in, in a flannel wrapper, with her curls tucked away under a hand-made lace nightcap. ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey

... the first Earl is dead. They think he had done something in India which he could not answer for—that the house was rebuilt on a scale unusually large to give him a suite of secret apartments, and that he often walks about the woods and crags of Minto at night, with a white nightcap, and long white beard. The circumstance of his having died on the road down to Scotland is the sole foundation of this absurd legend, which shows how willing the vulgar are to gull themselves when they can find no one else to take the trouble. I have seen people who could read, write, and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... set his horse to the river, He swam to Newbury town, And he called up Justice Sewall In his nightcap and his gown. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... of my feet on the stones—everybody was asleep. The church clock struck three as we drew up at Dr. White's door. John rang the bell twice, and then knocked at the door like thunder. A window was thrown up, and Dr. White, in his nightcap, put his head out and said, "What ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell

... there was great excitement among the poultry. Passing round its angle, Walter saw coming toward them a quaint-looking old woman, in what appeared to be a white scalloped nightcap. She had a pan of corn in her hand, and was attended by a retinue that would have rejoiced an epicure's heart. Chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and Guinea fowls thronged around and after her with an intentness on the grain and a disregard of one another's rights and feelings ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... to one's own countrymen. It is not that the Englishman abroad is particularly entertaining, for the Frenchman is infinitely more vivacious; nor that he is peculiarly stolid, for he yields in that to most of the German students who journey on the faith of a nightcap and a pipe; or that he is especially boring, for every American whom one meets whips him easily in boredom. It is that he is so nakedly and undisguisedly English. We never see Englishmen in England. They are too busy, too afraid of Mrs. Grandy, too oppressed with duties and responsibilities ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... Flora came running into the sitting-room where Sophia was, as pale as death, and in her hand she held a queer, old-fashioned frilled nightcap. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... persons heard it, and at the first repetition of the yell, two or three windows were angrily opened. A head in a white nightcap looked out from the ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... how that'll work, gemmen," answered the policeman, solemnly. "I goes to the overseer—werry good sort o' man—but he's in bed. I knocks for half an hour. He puts his nightcap out o' windy, and sends me to the relieving-officer. Werry good sort o' man he too; but he's in bed. I knocks for another half-hour. He puts his nightcap out o' windy—sends me to the medical officer for a certificate. Medical officer's gone to a midwifery case. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... me with absolute enthusiasm. He was too rheumatic to be shaken hands with, but he begged me to shake the tassel on the top of his nightcap, which I did most cordially. When I sat down by the side of the bed, he said that it did him a world of good to feel as if he was driving me on the Blunderstone road again. As he lay in bed, face upward, and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... opened the bed door and sprang out to the rescue, his red woollen nightcap upon his head. But his help was of little use. We managed to get the cat away from his prey; but the bird was fatally injured, blood was dripping from his neck as the good man took him up ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... "My nightcap!—and never to have any comfort in this," said Riccabocca, drawing the cotton head-gear; "and never to have any sound sleep in that," pointing to the four-posted bed. "And to be a bondsmen and a slave," continued Riccabocca, waxing wroth; "and to be wheedled and purred at, and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... said Captain Dalgetty, "is, next to a good evening draught and a warm nightcap, the best shoeinghorn for drawing on a sound sleep. And since your lordship is pleased to take the trouble to tell it, I shall rest your patient ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... folded, sat in the morning light and heat, contemplating the wine-shop and the street. In both, there were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but now with a manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this crooked significance in it: "I know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how easy it has grown for me, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... handling of heavy implements of toil. And then you will think of city home-comings after the theatre or the ball; of the quiet half-hour in front of the dying cannel; of the short cigar and the little nightcap, and of the gentle passage bedward, so easy in that warm and slumberous atmosphere that you hardly know how you have passed from weariness to peaceful dreams. And there will come to your spirit a sudden passion of humiliation and revolt that will make you say ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... pocket-handkerchiefs, two pairs of shoes, two pairs of socks, and a pound and a half of snuff. The others were in general less well set up with shirts,*2* some few had cloaks, and one (P. Sigismundo Griera) a nightcap; but all of them had their snuff, the only relic of their luxurious mission life. Manuel Vergara, their Provincial, testifies in a paper sent with the list that most of the clothes were taken from the common stock, and all the snuff. What sort of treatment they endured ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... before bedtime, I had made such speed as to find the miller's family still lingering about the fireplace with preacher number two seated in the lay circle. That night I slept with the parson, who sat up in bed in the morning, and after disencumbering himself of a striped extinguisher nightcap, electrified the other sleepers by announcing that this was the first time he had ever slept with a Yankee. After breakfast the parson, armed with staff and scrip, signified his purpose to walk with me during the day, as it was no longer dangerous ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... that night, and after she had taken off her lace headdress and put a frilled nightcap over her lonesome little knot of gray hair and said her prayers, she composed herself on her pillow with a patient sigh, and lay watching Marg'et Ann crowd her burnished braids into her close-fitting cap without speaking; but after the light ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham

... Little Playmate, who was riding immediately before me, screamed out sharp and shrill, and I hastened up to her, thinking she had fallen upon a misfortune. I found her palfrey with ears pricked and distended nostril, gazing at a head in a red nightcap which was set out of a hole ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... have the same character of not being his—of not being anybody's. Yet this old man wears these clothes with a certain unaccustomed air of being dressed and elaborated for the public ways; as though he passed the greater part of his time in a nightcap and gown. And so, like the country mouse in the second year of a famine, come to see the town mouse, and timidly threading his way to the town-mouse's lodging through a city of cats, this old man passes in ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... just as jolly, round, red Mr. Sun pulled his own nightcap off. At first Johnny couldn't think where he was. He blinked and blinked. Then he rolled over. "Ouch!" cried Johnny Chuck. You see he was so stiff and sore from his great fight the day before, that it hurt to roll over. But when he felt the smart of those wounds, ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess

... I went to bed I paid them a parting visit; they were huddled together in their nest of cotton-wool, sleeping soundly. And I was up at an unheard-of hour next morning, to have a bout with them before going to school. I found Alexandre, in his nightcap and long white apron, occupied with the soins de proprete, as he said. He cleaned out the cage, put in fresh food and water, and then, pointing to the fat old couple, the grandparents, who stopped lazily a-bed, sitting up ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... address some insignificant remark to him now and again, but nobody really took any notice of what he had to say. He had survived his strength, his usefulness, his very wisdom. He wore long, green, worsted stockings pulled up above the knee over his trousers, a sort of woollen nightcap on his hairless cranium, and wooden clogs on his feet. Without his hooded cloak he looked like a peasant. Half a dozen hands would be extended to help him on board, but afterward he was left pretty much to his own thoughts. Of course he never did any work, except, perhaps, to cast off some rope ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad



Words linked to "Nightcap" :   cap, nightgown, drink, double feature, game, nightdress, twin bill, night-robe, nightie, gown, doubleheader



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