"Petticoat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... petticoat, Like little mice, stole in and out, As if they feared the light. But O! she dances such a way, No sun upon an Easter day Is half ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... heard of it, she would probably have said, "The cross of Christ upon us. God be good to the misfort'nit crathur." For she was not of at all an implacable temper, and would, under the circumstances, have condoned even the injury that obliged her to appear at Mass with a flannel petticoat over her head until the end of her days. Yet she did hold the Tinkers in a perhaps somewhat too unqualified reprobation. For there are tinkers and tinkers. Some of them, indeed, are stout and sturdy ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... glow of evening—she saw it all again. And as if afraid that her brain, now strained like a body on the rack, would suddenly snap, she threw up her arms, and began to take off her dress, as if she would hush thought in abrupt movements. In a moment she was in stays and petticoat. The delicate and almost girlish arms were disfigured by great bruises. Great black and blue stains were spreading ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... idea, mate," said the boatswain. "Never you trust a petticoat with dollars. They're all as false as water; you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... good to be so brusque about non-penitentiary offences, but skilful and lovely concealments in gardening were his hobby. To another he whispered, "My dear sir, tell your pretty house her petticoat shows!" and to yet another, "Take all those shrubs out of the middle of your lawn and 'plant out' with them every feature of your house which would be of no interest to you if the house were not yours. Your house's morals may be all right, but ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... Ffolliot's suggestion it had already been arranged that a blouse instead of a flannel petticoat should this year be given to the younger women. The other ladies had fallen in graciously with the idea (they were inclined to enthuse over the "sweet young bride"), and according to custom one Miss Tibbits, ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... after I'd once got ma start in London, before I was appearing regularly in the East End halls. I was a great favorite there; the Jews, especially, seemed to like me fine. One Sunday I was down Petticoat Lane, in Whitechapel, to see the sichts. I never thocht anyone there wad recognize me, and I stood quietly watching a young Jew selling clothes from a coster's barrow. But all at once another Jew came up to me, slapped me on the ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... natives of Old England; all contrasted with the rough aspect of one or two hack settlers, negotiating sales of timber, from forests where axe had never sounded. Sometimes a lady passed, swelling roundly forth in an embroidered petticoat, balancing her steps in high-heeled shoes, and courtesying, with lofty grace, to the punctilious obeisances of the gentlemen. The life of the town seemed to have its very centre not far from an old mansion, that stood somewhat ...
— The White Old Maid (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that mixture of respect and ease, which shewed she was accustomed to converse with her superiors. She was dressed in a blue homespun gown, (the sleeves of which were drawn up to her elbows and the lower part tucked through her pocket-hole,) a black stuff petticoat, black stockings and shoes with the soles more than half an inch thick. She wore also, a large white apron, and a neat and by no means unbecoming cap. She informed us her husband was a gardener's labourer, that supported his family by his daily work, and by the proceeds ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... round so warm that it would be absurd for them to dress up as we do. The king's dress on grand occasions was a crown of gay-coloured feathers, and a sort of Scotch kilt of the same material, with a cloak over his shoulder. The queen also wore a petticoat, and so did little Chickchick, but not a rap else, nor did they seem to think it was necessary. The king's name was Rumfiz, and her majesty was called Pillow. They were an amiable couple, and remarkably fond of each other. When I observed that everything in the island was ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... don't you come, says he; what should I come for says I; if you don't come to me, I'll come to you, says he; I shan't come to you I assure you, says I. Upon which he run up, caught me in his Arms, and flung me upon a Chair, and began to offer to touch my Under-Petticoat. Sir, says I, you had better not offer to be rude; well, says he, no more I won't then; and away he went out of the Room. I was so mad to be ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber
... one appeared from inside the garden. Between two tall thick raspberry hedges, which, like green walls, almost closed in an arch at the top, came a young girl. Face and form those of a child just beginning to develop, dressed in a white chemise and petticoat, and carrying in her upturned overskirt ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... harvest-field she was always the foremost in the band of reapers; dressed in her tight green-cloth boddice, clean white apron, red stuff petticoat, and neatly blacked shoes; her beautiful features shaded by her large, coarse, flat, straw hat, put knowingly to one side, more fully to display the luxuriant auburn tresses, of the sunniest hue, that waved profusely in rich natural ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... and I could see that he considered the matter settled. He and Combrisson left the kitchen and I remained alone with madame, who proceeded to take her fringe out of the curl-papers, and to exchange her petticoat and red flannel jacket for a somewhat rusty black dress. Whilst performing her toilette she eyed me carefully. I noticed that since she had inspected the jewellery she had involuntarily assumed a more respectful ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... off my silk gown to begin with, because the slightest noise from it on that still night might have betrayed me. I next removed the white and cumbersome parts of my underclothing, and replaced them by a petticoat of dark flannel. Over this I put my black travelling cloak, and pulled the hood on to my head. In my ordinary evening costume I took up the room of three men at least. In my present dress, when it was held close about me, no man could have passed through the narrowest spaces ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... importance in the building, ever to earn the smug immortality of such a statue. I am sorry to say the places I cared for were those same low-lived, straggling, squalid, dangerous regions which hung at one end of respectable little Sendennis like dirty lace upon a demure petticoat. In the early days of my acquaintance with those regions I must confess that I entered them with a certain degree of fear and trembling; but after a while that feeling soon wore off, when I found that no one wanted to do me any harm. Indeed, the dwellers in those parts were generally too much ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... half, medium length, in that dark shade that always gives me ideas. Her dress was a simple thing that did not have a store label on it, and so I dug the stitches for a bit and decided that it had been hand made. Someone was a fine dress-maker because it fitted her slender body perfectly. Her petticoat was store type. It was simple and fitted, too, but it had a label from Forresters in the hem. Her bra was a Graceform, size thirty two, medium cup, but the girl on the bed did not have much need for ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... oblivious to the lovely daughter whom he had crushed as a bruised flower, the haughty woman who had defied him in his wrath, and the administration of the million sterling which was the golden monument over his yawning grave! The silk-petticoat Council of Notables in Delhi decided by a tidal-wave of womanly intuition, that the gallant and debonnair Major Alan Hawke would marry "the lovely and accomplished heiress," and so the white-bosomed beauties of the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... provisions to do a thorough day in the grounds and galleries of the Crystal Palace, ending with the fireworks at close quarters. We went in a river steamboat down to Greenwich, and fired by that made an excursion to Margate and back; we explored London docks and Bethnal Green Museum, Petticoat Lane and all ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the entire factory, adding the two office girls; the model, who was wont to run around our part of the world now and then in a superior fashion, clad in a scanty pale-pink-satin petticoat which came just below her knees and an old gray-and-green sweater; plus various male personages, full of business and dressed in their best. Goodness knows what all they did do to keep the wheels of industry running—perhaps they were salesmen. They had the general appearance of earning ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... in the spirit of party that he embroidered a petticoat for the Holy Virgin, solely with the view of pleasing and cajoling the clergy; for, in his heart, Ferdinand is rather a devotee to pleasure than religion. In his habits he is remarkably domesticated; he rises at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... that delights the world. The dress—a short kilt of calabash fibre—rather set off than concealed their charms, and though destitute of petticoat they were wholly unconscious of indecorum. These beautiful domestic animals graciously smiled when in my best Kenyamwezi I did my devoir to the sex; and the present of a little tobacco always secured for me a ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... ye, lads?" he continued, in a hoarse whisper, "there's a petticoat aboard! and, as sure as my name's Bill Gibbs, here goes for a look; for there's nothing like lamplight for the ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... queerest was a monster velvet glove hanging on the nail that by rights belonged to the bellows. The Painted Lady always put on this glove before she would touch the coals, which diverted Tommy, who knew that common folk lift coals with their bare hands while society uses the fringe of its second petticoat. ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... it! I was saving the money to buy myself a silk petticoat," Fanny defended herself. "I wanted to know just once before I died what and how it felt like to rustle up the church aisle instead of slinking down it on a Sunday morning. But I just think a silk petticoat isn't worth thinking about when ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... for Drosera rotundifolia is sun-dew, and in Gloucestershire the Primula auricula is the tanner's-apron. The Viola tricolor is often known as "three faces in a hood," and the Aconitum napellus as "Venus's chariot drawn by two doves." The Stellaria holostea is "lady's white petticoat," and the Scandix pecten is "old wife's darning-needles." One of the names of the Campion is plum-pudding, and "spittle of the stars" has been applied to the Nostoc commune. Without giving further instances of these odd plant names, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... sloped perhaps I may sail in consort. The walks won't be swept, of course, and that dainty scarlet petticoat will look like an ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... unable to sleep, both on account of the heat, and, strange to say, of the perfect quiet which prevailed. Next morning a large canoe was seen coming off from the shore, in which was seated a white headed old negro in a glazed cocked hat, a red hunting coat on his shoulders, a flannel petticoat round his waist, and a pair of worsted slippers on his feet. The pilot, who had remained on board, notified to the captain, with great formality, that he was King Dingo, coming to receive his dash or payment for allowing us to trade ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... equal of all he met, scarcely deigning to acknowledge the king himself as his superior. This son of Africa was presented to me by the duc de Richelieu, clad in the picturesque costume of his native land; his head ornamented with feathers of every colour, a short petticoat of plaited grass around his waist, while the richest bracelets adorned his wrists, and chains of gold, pearls, and rubies, glittered over his neck and hung from his ears. Never would any one have suspected the old marechal, whose parsimony was almost proverbial, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... bonnets with great flapping curtains to keep off the sun, and gloves to prevent their hands being wounded by the stubble. There was one wearing a pale pink jacket, another in a cream-coloured tight-sleeved gown, another in a petticoat as red as the arms of the reaping-machine; and others, older, in the brown-rough "wropper" or over-all—the old-established and most appropriate dress of the field-woman, which the young ones were abandoning. This morning the eye returns involuntarily to ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Kitty, who was fond of dramatic phrases. "Arabella's petticoat is spandy clean, and I won't have it used to ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... already taken off her wreath and her dress, and she was in her petticoat, unlacing her boots, while Jean was finishing his cigar, and looking at her out of the corners of his eyes. It was an ardent look, more sensual than tender, for he felt more desire than love for her, and suddenly with a brusque movement, like a man who is going to set to work, he took off ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the two children down the grassy path and through a short stretch of woods to the neighbor's. As they returned, Hannah saw a queer looking figure digging roots in the woods. Her waistcoat and petticoat were red; her old apron green. She wore a black hat over a white linen hood tied under her chin. It was Goody Walford. Friendly Old Bluff darted to her side, while Hannah seized Jacob's hand and ran for home. Her haste and fright moved the little fellow ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... by little, a restrained step and carriage, somewhat like a woman's, so that in ordinary masculine dress they may be discovered by their walk: one would say that they walk like women dressed in men's garments. The free stride in a narrow petticoat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... are!" Miss Wayland continued. "Look at Virginia there, as Queen Elizabeth! Her train is my old party cloak turned inside out, and her petticoat—you ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... his wife, a round, buxom, laughter-loving dame, with black eyes, a tight well-laced bodice, a green apron, and a red petticoat edged with a slight silver lace, and judiciously shortened so as to show that a short heel, and a tight clean ankle, rested upon her well-burnished shoe,—she, of course, felt interest in a young man, who, besides being very handsome, good-humoured, and easily satisfied with the accommodations her ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... woman's tailor, wilt thou make as many holes in an enemy's battle as thou hast done in a woman's petticoat? ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... fill'd with many a system; But classic authors,—he ne'er mist 'em. Thus having furbish'd up a parson, Dame Baucis next they play'd their farce on. Instead of homespun coifs, were seen Good pinners edg'd with colberteen;[4] Her petticoat, transform'd apace, Became black satin, flounced with lace. "Plain Goody" would no longer down, 'Twas "Madam," in her grogram gown. Philemon was in great surprise, And hardly could believe his eyes. Amaz'd to see her look so prim, And ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... at the sight of what he had not yet happened to see, a mountaineer in his full national costume. The individual Gael was a stout, dark, young man, of low stature, the ample folds of whose plaid added to the appearance of strength which his person exhibited. The short kilt, or petticoat, showed his sinewy and clean-made limbs; the goat-skin purse, flanked by the usual defences, a dirk and steel-wrought pistol, hung before him; his bonnet had a short feather, which indicated his claim to be treated ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... so quick. Heimert seized hold of her and dragged her through the doorway just as she was, clad only in a dressing-jacket and a thin petticoat. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... voted by his kin the family dullard, it was decided to make a clergyman of him. But to this the young man objected, chiefly, according to his own story, because the clerical gown looks too much like a petticoat. At all events, after having equipped himself with a set of theological tomes, and peeped cursorily into them, he grew so discouraged that he went to the bookseller and exchanged them for a set of law-books. Not that ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... make a molehill appear as a mountain, a Jew's-harp sound like a trumpet, and a daisy smell like a violet. Thou canst make cowardice brave, avarice generous, pride humble, and cruelty tender-hearted. In short, thou turnest the heart of man inside out, as a juggler doth a petticoat, and bringest whatsoever pleaseth thee out from it. If there be any one who doubts all this, let ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... He call'd me euen now (my Lord) through a red Lattice, and I could discerne no part of his face from the window: at last I spy'd his eyes, and me thought he had made two holes in the Ale-wiues new Petticoat, & ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... uncovered. Her hair, divided into four plaits, fell over her dazzling white shoulders, scarcely concealed by a veil of silk worked in gold, which fell from the back of a cap studded with gems of the highest value. Under her blue-silk petticoat, fell the "zirdjameh" of silken gauze, and above the sash lay the "pirahn." But from the head to the little feet, such was the profusion of jewels—gold beads strung on silver threads, chaplets of turquoises, "firouzehs" ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... and face are swathed in a "sari" or shawl of shot gold and purple, which only allows her heavy black eyes to appear above its folds. The street is alive with men in white; some wear long white coats buttoned down over the kind of white petticoat called a dhoti, others have the curious habit of wearing their shirts outside their trousers like a kilt, but you soon get used to this, and cease to notice it. That fellow in a tall extinguisher cap made of lamb's wool ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... Princeton, Maine, are experts at this work.] And this dress she shaped like those worn of old. [Footnote: This remark indicates the lateness of the Micmac version of this very old myth.] So she made a petticoat and a loose gown, a cap, leggins, and handkerchief, and, having put on her father's great old moccasins,— which came nearly up to her knees,—she went forth to try her luck. For even this little thing would see the Invisible One in ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... is inaccurate. But truly this is a new Japan to me, of which no books have given me any idea, and it is not fairyland. The men may be said to wear nothing. Few of the women wear anything but a short petticoat wound tightly round them, or blue cotton trousers very tight in the legs and baggy at the top, with a blue cotton garment open to the waist tucked into the band, and a blue cotton handkerchief knotted round the head. From the dress no notion of the sex of the wearer could ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... in her arms. Her face was a mass of puckers burnt through by coal-black eyes. Her mouth was so tucked and folded inward that she appeared to have swallowed her lips. In the daytime she wore a black silk cap tied under the chin, and a dimity short gown over a quilted petticoat. Tante-gra'mere was rich in stored finery. She had inherited brocades, and dozen dozens of linen, including sheets and napkins. Her things were washed by themselves and bleached on their own green, where the family washing ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... says I, yet upon my knees and stooping to view them 'neath her petticoat, "though now I see I might better them by trimming and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... cuff neglectful and thereby Ribbons to flow confusedly; A winning wave, deserving note In the tempestuous petticoat." ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... "Bless me, a petticoat!" he cried. "Well, he's told the truth for once. She's veiled. Ashamed of her face or ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... as aforesaid shall take out a coarse shirt and a pair of trousers, or petticoat, for each negro intended to be taken aboard; as also a mat, or coarse mattress, or hammock, for the use of the said negroes. The proportions of provision, fuel, and clothing to be regulated by the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... PETTICOAT TROWSERS. A kind of kilt formerly worn by seamen in general, but latterly principally by fishermen. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... and married some oder sailor maybe! Dat is what dey petticoat women often do," said Sam with a wink, sticking his ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... goddess, Ann, I'm only poor Hermy Chesterton—with a hole in one stocking and the lace on her petticoat torn, and her other things—well, look here!" and up whirled gown and petticoat, "see what a state ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... Tezezreat Sticks Taginaste Taginast A palm-tree Tahuyan Tahuyat A blanket, covering, or petticoat. Ahemon Amen Water 381 Faycag Faquair Priest or lawyer Acoran M'koorn God Almogaren Talmogaren Temples Tamoyanteen Tigameen Houses Tawacen Tamouren Hogs Archormase Akermuse Green figs Azamotan Azamittan Barley meal fried in ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... resting on her left hand, was embedded in the large cushion. A large coil of her tawny hair, displaced, had spread loosely over the dark green of the sofa. The left foot hung limp over the edge of the sofa; the jutting angle of the right knee divided sharply the drapery of her petticoat into two systems, and her right shoe with its steel buckle pressed against the yielding back of the Chesterfield. The right arm lay lissom like a snake across her breast. All her muscles were lax, and every full curve of her body tended downward in response to the negligent pose. Her eyes were shut, ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... was steward to General Sharp, of Houston, near Uphall, had a terrier dog which gave many proofs of his sagacity. Upon one occasion his wife lent a white petticoat to a neighbour in which to attend a christening; the dog observed his mistress make the loan, followed the woman home who borrowed the article, never quitted her, but accompanied her to the christening, and leaped several times on her knee: nor did he lose sight of her till the piece of dress ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... be soft, warm, and light in weight, covering all parts of the body with equal warmth. Tight bands and long, heavy skirts should never be used, the dress and petticoat being just long enough to keep the feet covered and warm. If from the first a baby is "held out" always after being nursed, it learns to urinate at that time, and the clumsy diapers can be dispensed with in a few months. No ordinary pins should be used, and as few safety pins ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... of the Church in the power of the infidels, and at once forgot the unnatural crimes of their two kings. They thought only of their piety, and with joy the news was carried throughout New Spain, that one of their previous kings had consecrated his imprisonment to embroidering a petticoat for the Virgin Mary; and when this announcement was followed by another, a little more apocryphal, that the most holy image had, by a nod, signified her acceptance of the present, there could no longer ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... areas the breech-clout was nearly universal with men, and the cincture or short petticoat with women. Even in Mexico and Mayan sculptures the gods are arrayed in gorgeous breech-clouts. The foot-gear in the tropics was the sandal, and, passing northward, the moccasin, becoming the long boot in the Arctic. Trousers and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that the woman seemed to be habited in a brown coloured petticoat, waistcoat, and a white hood; such a one as his wife's sister usually wore, and that her countenance looked extreamly pale and wan, with her teeth in sight, but no gums appearing, and that her physiognomy was like to that of his ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... in Lydgate's tone, as if he felt that she would be injuring him by any fantastic delays. Rosamond became serious too, and slightly meditative; in fact, she was going through many intricacies of lace-edging and hosiery and petticoat-tucking, in order to give an answer that would at ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... is half open, and gives me a prospect into that of Mad. de L, which is on the opposite side of the passage. She has not yet put on her cap, but her grey hair is profusely powdered; and, with no other garments than a short under petticoat and a corset, she stands for the edification of all who pass, putting on her rouge with a stick and a bundle of cotton tied to the end of it.—All travellers agree in describing great indelicacy to the French women; yet I have seen no accounts which exaggerate it, and ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... cost; there is no money in the colonies now for such display:—I refer to the celebrated attire of the pet slaves and belles affranchies of the old colonial days. A full costume,—including violet or crimson "petticoat" of silk or satin; chemise with half-sleeves, and much embroidery and lace; "trembling-pins" of gold (zpingue tremblant) to attach the folds of the brilliant Madras turban; the great necklace of three or four strings of ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... deformed. He wore a "motley" suit of discordant colours to make him ridiculous, and correspond with the incongruity of his mind and actions—a dress similar to the hundred patched paniculus centunculus of the Roman mimes. Sometimes he wore a petticoat or calf-skin to resemble an idiot. Finally, he had his head shaved and wore a cowl to make him like a monk, as his buffooneries would thus have a stranger character, and the nobles had no great affection for the church.[50] The domestic fool was common in the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... beard. They had broad chests and square shoulders, and well-made backs and legs, which showed the strength possessed by them. They were pleasant-looking people. The men wore a short kilt, with a poncho over their shoulders; the women, a petticoat of larger dimensions. ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... lace scarf, and green silk hood, and my petticoat with the border newly purfled. Hark! 'Tis the bell for prayers. Be quick with my pantofles:—not those, wench—the yellow silk with silver spangles. Now my rings and crystal bracelets. I would not miss early matins to-day for the best jewel ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... standing on a great gray crag at the foot of the fall. She looked extremely picturesque at a little distance, giving a nice bit of local color to the scene with her scarlet legs; but on a nearer approach, much of the value of the color disappeared before the unromantic facts of a pale-face petticoat and patent-leather gaiter-boots. I have noticed several of the younger people here with brown hair and blue or gray eyes, significant that the aboriginal blood is being gradually diluted. In another generation or two, there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... eat their turkey with sausages, and who have cut their religion for the sake of dangling at the heels of fashionable Christians. These people are "swelling" upon the profits of the last generation in St Mary Axe or Petticoat Lane. The founders of their families have been loan-manufacturers, crimps, receivers of stolen goods, wholesale nigger-dealers, clippers and sweaters, rag-merchants, and the like, and conscientious Israelites; but their children, not having fortitude to abide by their condition, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... a shrewd thrust. Zephyr ought to have come in an ulster, and offered Aurora a warm petticoat. However, in spite of all difficulties, I brought off my recollections of the Derby of 1886 in triumph, and am now waiting for the colored portrait of Ormonde with Archer on his back,—Archer, the winner ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was quite as glorious in her array. She had easily discovered a bridesmaid's costume in her wardrobe, bodice with intercrossing stripes, short petticoat in green woolen, mauve stockings, straw hat with artificial flowers, a suspicion of black on the eyelids and of rouge on the cheeks. There you have the provincial stage beauty, and if she and her husband like to play a village piece after the ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... as well as literature, how often have we risen from those tables, to pursue together the not too swiftly flying petticoat, through the terrestrial firmament of shining streets, aglow with the midnight sun of pleasure, a-dazzle with eyes brighter far than the city lamps—passionate pilgrims of the morning star! Ah! we go on such quests ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... 'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green, An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat—jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen, An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot, An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot: Bloomin' idol made ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... trouble has the scent of a perfume used by a lady. I smell here the petticoat of the princess. Behind the member of parliament is Jozwowicz, just as behind the evening dress there is the morning gown. What a ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... which seemed neither very shrewd nor very simple. This young lady had caught a glimpse of the glistening stranger while standing at the threshold and had forthwith put on a laced cap, a string of beads, her finest kerchief and her stiffest damask petticoat, in preparation for the interview. Hurrying from her chamber to the parlor, she had ever since been viewing herself in the large looking-glass and practising pretty airs—now a smile, now a ceremonious dignity of aspect, and now ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... principally composed, I think, of figures representing the Nile and the Tiber, who loll upon their elbows and preside over the gushing water; and between them, against the facade of the Senator's Palace, there is a statue of Minerva, with a petticoat of red porphyry. Having taken note of these objects, we went to the museum, in an edifice on our left, entering the piazza, and here, in the vestibule, we found various old statues and relics. Ascending the stairs, we passed through a long gallery, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... who has entire command of her body. She was well gowned also for such an excursion. Her short, green cloth skirt did not impede her movements, and high, stout shoes gave her firm footing. She had removed her jacket, and in her bright pink silk blouse and abbreviated petticoat, with the glow of the morning on her usually pale face, she looked almost girlish; but her face was not that of girlhood. It was without lines, and the heavy masses of her golden-brown hair were quite unstreaked with ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... those of any southern people, in tightly-sitting pantaloons—braccae, as they were called—of gaily variegated tartans, precisely similar to the trews of the Scottish Highlander—a much more ancient part of the costume, by the way, than the kilt, or short petticoat, now generally worn—and these trews, as well as the streaming plaid, which he wore belted gracefully about his shoulders, shone resplendent with checkers of the brightest scarlet, azure, and emerald, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... any day, of Paddy Murphy, in the "Happy Man," making his baggage-wagon, commissariat and camp-chest of a one-headed drum, ready to fall in love with the first neat pair of ankles that peeped from beneath a well-kept petticoat, a little regardless of any proprietorship in the same ankles, other than that vested in the actual owner, and splendidly indifferent as to either the time or the mode of his death, whenever that death should become a matter ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... not notice this. He was busy identifying the tutor. 'Gad! it is old Thomasson!' he cried, for he too had been at Pembroke. 'And a petticoat! And a petticoat!' he repeated. ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... both fair and white, With gold embroidered gorgeously; Thy petticoat of sendal right: And these I bought thee gladly. Greensleeves was all my joy! Greensleeves was my delight! Greensleeves was my heart of gold! And who but my ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... (the Fair Family or the Fairies) haunting the neighbourhood. However, she went, and returned as soon as she could; but on coming back she felt herself not a little terrified on seeing, though it was mid-day, some of 'the old elves of the blue petticoat,' as they are usually called; however, when she got back to her house she was rejoiced to find everything in the ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... flannel petticoat," said the girl promptly without the least embarrassment in the exigencies of the case. "Just turn your back, please, Mr Jupp, and I'll take mine off and ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... eighteen or twenty, dressed, fantastically, in a sort of blue riding-jacket, with tarnished lace, her hair clubbed like that of a man, a Highland bonnet, and a bunch of broken feathers, a riding-skirt (or petticoat) of scarlet camlet, embroidered with tarnished flowers. Her features were coarse and masculine, yet at a little distance, by dint of very bright wild-looking black eyes, an aquiline nose, and a commanding profile, appeared rather handsome. She flourished the switch she held in ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... umbrella shrank to the en-tout-cas, and the en-tout-cas to the open parasol; unless the movement is arrested, in the course of time a lampshade will be reached, and ultimately, say, fifty years hence, the Genee of the period will have nothing more of skirt and petticoat than some kind of fringe round the waist, indicating, like our coccygeal vertebrae, or the rudimentary limbs of the whale, a ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... hides his wive's corset and petticoat, it is governin' without the "consent of the governed." And if you don't believe it, you ort to have peeked round them barrells, and seen Abagail's eyes. Why, they had hull reams of by-laws in 'em, and preambles, and "declarations of ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... formerly nude, and the women wore only a leaf petticoat, but I gather that they were a decent people; now both sexes are prudish. A man would never go nude before me—only once or twice has it happened to me, and then only when they were diving.... Amongst themselves they ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... with a mighty moo, got up and joined the others. Ann sat up and clung to Rudolf, while the Knight-mare who was standing close beside her, laid a protecting hand upon her shoulder. When she saw what had been holding her down, she gave a little shriek. It was a small spotted cow in a red flannel petticoat. She wore stout button boots on her hind feet, and she now reared herself upon these to flourish two angry hoofs over the sleek head of a little man in a white linen coat who held a tiny mirror in one hand and a pair of pincers in the other. Ann took ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... an event that papa desires and mamma dreads. It seems to the mother that it is the beginning of her being forsaken. She looks with tearful eyes at the petticoat laid aside for ever, and murmurs to herself, "Infancy is over then? My part will soon become a small one. He will have fresh tastes, new wishes; he is no longer only myself, his personality is asserting itself; he is ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... his clothes that were lying about over him and covered them with a white petticoat she had taken off. Without losing her calm, she lay down, half-naked, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... figure of Gwen stood at the bowl, her back was towards him; she was sponging her face gingerly. Her hair, all blowsed from the pillow, was tied in a stiff little pigtail, standing out from her slender, childish neck. Her arms were bare to the shoulder. She wore a bodiced petticoat of pink flannelette, which hardly reached her knees. Siegmund felt slightly amused to see her stout little calves planted so firmly close together. She carefully sponged her cheeks, her pursed-up mouth, and her neck, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... for you if you are ever tempted to forget my lessons. If you fail to send me letters, or if those you send are not what they ought to be, I think the desk will cry shame upon you. And if you ever go an hour with a hole in your stocking, or a tear in your dress, or a string off your petticoat, I hope the sight of your work-box will make ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... quays there was a stir of life as great as that to be seen on the quays of Paris. Foreign sailors in outlandish garments and of harsh-sounding, outlandish speech, stalwart fishwives with baskets of herrings on their heads, voluminous of petticoat above bare legs and bare feet, calling their wares shrilly and almost inarticulately, watermen in woollen caps and loose trousers rolled to the knees, peasants in goatskin coats, their wooden shoes clattering ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... go to market in the moon, And buy some dreams together, Slip on your little silver shoon, And don your cap and feather; No need of petticoat or stocking— No one up ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... lady, I stepped in as lightly as I had stepped out. She again insisted I should not ride backward, and I for my former reason refused to change my place, till one of those abrupt gentlemen exclaimed.—'What, my young buck, are you afraid of a petticoat?' 'Oh fie!' said the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... after seeing him off I stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes filled with kindness as he sat by the deathbed and hearing his kind wisdom. That day I had seen a woman digging in a patch of bog under the grey sky. She wore a red petticoat, a handkerchief was tied round her head, and the moment she caught sight of us she flung down the spade and ran to the hovel, and a man appeared with a horn, and he blew the horn, running to the brow of the hill. I asked the driver the reason of their ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... a wild and scarcely judicious selection. She put on crimson silk stockings, and tucked into her bag a pair of crimson satin shoes. Her dress consisted of a black velvet skirt over a crimson petticoat, and her bodice was of crimson silk very much embroidered and with elbow-sleeves. Round her neck she wore innumerable beads of every possible color, and twisted through her lovely hair were some more beads, which shone as the light fell on them. ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... was right sorry he couldn't put her on the strength of the battery, but the regulations kept women nurses at the base-hospitals, and anyway (for we broke everything them days, and there wasn't enough red-tape left to play cat-and-my- cradle with) Captain Howard hated the sight of a petticoat, and was dead set against women anywheres. I don't know what they had ever done to him, but I'm just saying it for a fack. But, however it was, Marcus said the old lady had to be kept out of sight, or else the ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... of pink and gold brocaded silk, faded a little here and there but still extremely imposing, and the sleeve was part of a dress, which was worn by a lady who lay on the stone seat asleep in the sun. The rosy gold dress fell open over an embroidered petticoat of a soft green colour. There was old yellow lace the colour of scalded cream, and a thin white veil spangled with silver stars covered ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... idea pockets were worn in a little slit in the front seam," said my visitor. "It shows how long it is since I have been 'in the know.' No doubt front pockets came in with the bicycles. No. It is very kind of you. But, except for that old dyed moreen petticoat, the things won't do. I always was particular about dress, and I never was more so than I am at this moment. You don't happen to have an old black ulster with all the buttons off, and a bit of mangy fur dropping off the neck? ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... this dream?" asked Nijeradze, opening wide his oriental, somewhat sheepish eyes. "Whence this beauteous child, this comrade in a petticoat?" ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... they appear in a very singular costume, peculiar to Lima, and consisting of two garments called the Saya and the Manto. Of the saya there are two kinds. The one called the Saya ajustada, was formerly in general use, but is now seldom seen. It consists of a petticoat, or skirt of thick stiff silk, plaited at top and bottom, in small fluted folds, drawn very close together at the waist and widening towards the ankles, beneath which the saya does not descend. It is tight to the form, the outline of which it ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the idea of I-cannot-tell-what-about notion that I have not made you half so comfortable as I ought to have done, and a melancholy sense of the dull prospect you have before you on your return home. Then I think I will make my new gown; and now I consider the white petticoat will be better candle-light worth; and then I look at the fire, and think, if the irons was but down, I would iron my Gowns—you having put me out of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... a buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bedgown made of blue-checkered linen, tied round the waist and descending to the hips, from whence there is a considerable length of linsey-woolsey petticoat. For Lisbeth is tall, and in other points too there is a strong likeness between her and her son Adam. Her dark eyes are somewhat dim now—perhaps from too much crying—but her broadly marked eyebrows are still ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... discovery, that she loves; and she has made her first step into the gay world; and now she comes back to her retirement to think the whole over by herself. It seems a dream to her, that she who sits there now reeling yarn in her stuff petticoat and white short-gown is the same who took the arm of Colonel Burr amid the blaze of wax-lights and the sweep of silks and rustle of plumes. She wonders dreamily as she remembers the dark, lovely face of the foreign Madame, so brilliant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... former occasion, pale in her pale winding-sheet, with the violets of death upon her cheeks, but gay, sprightly, jaunty, in a superb travelling-dress of green velvet, trimmed with gold lace, and looped up on either side to allow a glimpse of satin petticoat. Her blond hair escaped in thick ringlets from beneath a broad black felt hat, decorated with white feathers whimsically twisted into various shapes. In one hand she held a little riding-whip terminated by a golden whistle. She tapped me lightly with it, and ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... that it was very queer she should have crept past my door, in that stealthy manner. I was puzzled, and, for one brief moment, the thought occupied my mind, that it was not she, but some fresh mystery of the house. Then, as I caught a glimpse of her old petticoat, the thought passed as quickly as it had come, and I half laughed. There could be no mistaking that ancient garment. Yet, I wondered what she was doing; and, remembering her condition of mind, on the previous day, I felt ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... On a vase in the British Museum, Minerva appears with her aegis on her breast, and clothed in a petticoat and upper tunic worked in sprays, and a border of kneeling lions. On another Panathenaic vase she has a gown bordered with fighting men, evidently the sacred peplos. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... however, insisted on locking the doors and securing her window. There were no blinds, and she hung a petticoat inside the glass. Laughing at her old-maidish precautions, they let her have her way. As a further safeguard against nervousness during the night, she had one of her nieces to ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... in her chamber, and she was middling old, Her petticoat was satin and her stomacher was gold. Backwards and forwards and sideways did she pass, Making up her mind to face the cruel looking-glass. The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass As comely or as kindly or as young as ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... raised in front; the top of the head is a tissue of hair, and the back has something of a woman's style of head-dress. Sometimes she also wears a hat; her bodice, laced behind, crosswise, is made something like our doublets, her chemise bulging out all round her petticoat, which she wears rather badly fastened and not over straight. She is always very much powdered, with a good deal of pomade, and almost never puts on gloves. She has, at the very least, as much swagger and haughtiness as the great Gustavus, her father, can have had; she is ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... another according to their strength,—and the toughest or luckiest gets to land, and becomes Premier. A more entirely unbeautiful class of Premiers was never raked out of the ooze, and set on high places, by any ingenuity of man. Dame Dubarry's petticoat was a better seine-net for fishing out Premiers than that. Let all Nations whom necessity is driving towards that method, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... lass—whose only covering (for country women at work in those days dispensed with the ornament of a gown) is a green bodice and red petticoat, neither of them over ample—brings out his fishing-rod and basket, and the man, having tied up his hose with some ends of string, examines ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... see that the prudent young woman had on a sensible red flannel undershirt, and as she turned around and around in the mazes of the dance, with the ecstatic groom, an equally sensible gray woolen petticoat was in plain view. A hurdy-gurdy furnished the music and the greensward was their ballroom floor. Everyone danced, old and ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... began Miss Dulcie, growing radiant at the thrilling question, 'I have been thinking of making up my art needlework tunic—the pale green, you know, with garlands of passion flowers, worked in crewels—over a petticoat of the faintest primrose.' ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... of Sha'aban."[FN204] But when Al-Hayfa heard the words of the women she was glad and gave herself joy and sensed an oppression of pleasure, whilst her vitals palpitated and she perspired in her petticoat-trowsers.[FN205] Then she went down to the gateway which she bade be thrown open, and seeing Prince Yusuf she smiled in his face and welcomed him and greeted him. He returned her salam with sweetness of phrase and softness of words, when said she to him, "Well come and welcome and good cheer ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... in "Water Babies," with a "shining clean stone floor and curious old prints on the wall and a cuckoo clock in the corner," Here some dozen children sit on benches "gabbling Chris-cross," while a nice old woman in a red petticoat and white cap hears them ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... for the disasters of the war, and even before its conclusion the young emperor was adjured by some of the most responsible among his own subjects to shake himself free from the baneful restraint of "petticoat government," and himself take the helm. In the following years a reform movement, undoubtedly genuine, though opinions differ as to the value of the popular support which it claimed, spread throughout the central and southern provinces of the empire. One ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... conducted more systematically. On crutches I hobbled round St. Paul's and through the Abbey. I saw the Tower, the Albert Memorial, and all the sights that I could remember or the taxi-driver think of sufficient importance to need a visit. I even went down Petticoat Lane. But most of all I did the theatres, four in one day, returning to the hospital at 1.30 A. M. Next day I repeated and enlarged the dose, returning a little later, but the following morning I was summoned before the O. C. He said: "It is reported to me that you have ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... here in the greatest profusion, many of the women having their arms completely covered with them, as well as their legs from the ankle to the knee. Round the waist they wear a dozen or more coils of fine rattan stained red, to which the petticoat is attached. Below this are generally a number of coils of brass wire, a girdle of small silver coins, and sometimes a broad belt of brass ring armour. On their heads they wear a conical hat without a crown, formed of variously coloured beads, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... venerate Florence as the seat of literature and of the fine arts; but, that its taste for classic story should descend to the peasants of the country, occasioned her both surprise and admiration. The Arcadian air of the girls next attracted her attention. Their dress was a very short full petticoat of light green, with a boddice of white silk; the sleeves loose, and tied up at the shoulders with ribbons and bunches of flowers. Their hair, falling in ringlets on their necks, was also ornamented with flowers, and with ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... to be laid aside for one of boisterous gambolling, for on the green sward Morva stopped, and with a bow to Tudor picked up her blue skirt in the thumb and finger of each hand, showing her little feet, which glanced in and out beneath her brick-red petticoat. She was within two yards of Gethin, where he stood still as a statue, scarcely breathing lest he should disturb the happy pair, his eyes and his mouth alone showing the merriment and fun which were ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... the iniquitous projects of usury were defeated; and the rich, as well as the poor, went to borrow at the Mont de Piete. To obtain a sum for the discharge of a debt of honour, a dutchess here deposited her diamond ear-rings; while a washerwoman slipped off her petticoat, and pawned it to satisfy ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... flaunting with ribbons and shining with trinkets, the same Betty who used to deal out pecks of potatoes and superintend her basket of cantaloupes in the Jersey market, in pasteboard bonnet and linsey petticoat. Her companions were of the infamous class. If Arthur were still in the city, there is no doubt that the mother and son might renew the ancient terms of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... cruel to expect much of him. It is true that he has his bosom friend to fall back upon, but if you could see that friend as we see him these days you wouldn't be sure whether it was true or not. The old woman, who had the peddler-and-petticoat episode, was not in it the same day with your brother's friend! I do assure you. And anyhow—even if he still has brains—his writing apparatus is all done up in arnica, so there ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... by some as stomacher; by others as petticoat, or the slit or opening in those garments. Cf. Wb. It is often used figuratively for woman, as here. Placket and pot ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... own room, but not alone, for her maid was unpacking, and the gown, petticoat, shoes, gloves, and flowers designed for that evening were being spread out upon the bed. The girl was in no humour to enjoy the finery which she had chosen with so much delight. She turned her back upon it all, and, pulling up the blind, gazed moodily out of the window ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... not listening. There are times in the life of every man when a petticoat is more attractive to him than all the ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... that is no affair of the painter. A picture of Lady Londonderry, in the costume of Queen Elizabeth, by a Frenchman is amazingly like. There is a story about this dress which only proves the advantages of making experiments before any grand display. The petticoat of the Virgin Queen, as personated by her ladyship, was so thickly covered with diamonds, that the substratum of material could scarcely be seen; and nothing could be more splendid than the effect; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various |
