"Wainscoting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... last stood within that room, a happy thoughtless boy. How vividly did every book and picture recall the blessed hours I had passed there, with Margaret and Alice, when the weather was wet, and we could not play abroad! It was in this apartment, with its carved oak wainscoting and antique windows of stained glass, in which we generally held our revels, turning over the huge folios in ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... are not hypocritical and vicious. Vice usually comes in the long run, and hypocrisy, which oozes from the old arches of the temples, and from the antique wainscoting of the sacristies, falls at length upon their shoulders like an unwholesome drizzling rain, but for the most part they begin with ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... was one moment too late; but running along the gunwale of a mud-scow, and jumping into a skiff, he was put on board by a black fellow. The dark cabin, wherein, descending from the sunshiny deck, it was difficult to discern the furniture, looking-glasses, and mahogany wainscoting. I met two old college acquaintances,—O——, who was going to Boston, and B——, with whom we afterwards drank a glass of wine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... table, facing a sofa covered with shiny leather, a bureau, a cupboard standing in a corner, and a few chairs: all this furniture, provided by the State, was of yellow wood. In the wall, or rather in the wainscoting of the other end, there was a closed door, which led one to think that there were other rooms behind it. As soon as Porphyrius Petrovitch had seen Raskolnikoff enter his office, he went to close the door ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... light the place looked like a barn. It seemed to be watching her sullenly as a small child watches an intruder. Odd little crackings sounded in far corners, and a whispering, starting somewhere in that upstairs hall, came slinking down the wainscoting, across the hall carpet, and out beneath the front door. She wondered what might be going on back in ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... hastily out of bed, dressed myself, and, looking about my room, perceived in the wainscoting a small door, which I had not seen the night before. It was ajar; I opened it, and saw a pretty little room looking very fresh and neat in the early dawn. Some articles of feminine apparel were lying in disorder over the back of a chair, and in a bed beside it lay the girl ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the other morning, I recall, respecting my object in borrowing a large brace-and-bit. My object, Petrie, was to bore a series of holes in the wainscoting of various rooms at The Gables—in inconspicuous positions, ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... a good scene for such a narrative, with the oak-wainscoting, quaint, and clumsy furniture, the heavy beams that crossed its ceiling, and the tall four-post bed, with dark curtains, within which you might imagine what ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the Oak Parlour. It is the only room on this floor worth showing you. My father brought the wainscoting from an old English country-house in Dorsetshire. My father's people were Torries, sir, and kept up their ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... proverbial, and has engaged considerable attention from observers of various descriptions. Smoky chimnies in a new house, are such, frequently, for want of air. The workmanship of the rooms being all good and just out of the workman's hands, the joints of the flooring and of the pannels of the wainscoting are all true and tight; the more so as the walls, perhaps not yet thoroughly dry, preserve a dampness in the air of the room which keeps the woodwork swelled and close: the doors and the sashes too being worked with truth, shut with exactness, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... but, which made the heart of Raoul beat, such griefs did it presage for her whom lately he loved so dearly; this terrible but, so significant in a woman like Montalais, was interrupted by a moderately loud noise heard by the speakers proceeding from the alcove behind the wainscoting. Montalais turned to listen, and Raoul was already rising, when a lady entered the room quietly by the secret door, which she ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have undergone in these same rooms? How many vain pleaders for mercy, do you think, have turned away heart- sick from the lawyer's office, to find a resting-place in the Thames, or a refuge in the gaol? They are no ordinary houses, those. There is not a panel in the old wainscoting but what, if it were endowed with the powers of speech and memory, could start from the wall and tell its tale of horror—the romance of life, sir, the romance of life! Commonplace as they may seem now, I tell you they ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... ascended the broad sandstone steps, and as the butler opened the door, the soft light in the hall showed the glowing red of the walls above the carved oak wainscoting, and the odor of flowers ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... she stood, it has been said, was large and gloomy, with a wainscoting of dark oak. On one of the panels was painted a picture of herself in her days of youth, innocence, and beauty; and on another, a portrait of her unfortunate husband, who appeared a handsome young man, with a stern countenance, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to the wall, stood for an instant, then stepped back, as we heard a slight clicking sound, like the snap of a spring on an old box-lid. At the same time a part of the wainscoting rolled away, leaving a ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... when she would sit in the big book-room with the ghosts walking about the draughty passages, up and down through the green baize door, looking for their swords and dirks, the beds and tables and chairs that had been sold while the rats scuttered about the wainscoting. And she got a terrible vision of her aunt looking round furtively as her hand went behind the curtain to a paper ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... Palazzo, at twice the rent it was worth, and divided the surplus with the proprietor. The apartments were inlaid with mosaic, and ornamented with columns and pilasters, in the taste of the country. M. de Montaigu, had all these superbly masked by fir wainscoting, for no other reason than because at Paris apartments were thus fitted up. It was for a similar reason that he only, of all the ambassadors who were at Venice, took from his pages their swords, and from his footmen their canes. Such was the man, who, perhaps from the same motive took a dislike ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... establishment in 1541. Tracing the history of the furniture from this time, we find Archbishop Laud, in 1634, ordering a new fair desk to be provided without delay. After the Civil War considerable repairs were no doubt needed, but it is not until 1742-43 that we find any great works undertaken. Wainscoting and pews were then erected, and we read of a furnishing of choir seats, and of stalls for the dean and prebendaries under the organ. Only slight alterations were made in these by Mr. Cottingham, but they were, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... case of fire. Dear William had my rooms fitted up on the ground floor. 'Sophronia,' he said, 'you must sleep!' I suppose it is necessary, but I am so used to lying awake. Such frightful noises in the walls, my dear John! Rats, I suppose? Has the wainscoting been examined lately, in the room you have put me in? Not that it matters in the least; I am the person in the world most easily suited, I suppose. A cot, a corner, a crust, as William says, ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... everything around her, she raised herself on her elbow, and took a long look at her new home. It could not help but seem cheerful. The bright beams of sunlight streaming in through the windows lighted on the wall and the old wainscoting, and paintless and rough as they were, Nature's own gilding more than made amends for their want of comeliness. Still Ellen was not much pleased with the result of her survey. The room was good-sized, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Captain John Parker married the daughter of Benjamin May, and afterwards resided here for many years which accounts for its still holding the name of the "Old Parker house." Here were the high-decorated wooden mantels over large chimney-places, the paneled wainscoting and ornamental cornices, which adorned many of the better houses of that period. The grounds were ample, extending to the pond and covered with a variety of fine fruit and shade trees. Now crowded by modern buildings ...
— Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain • Harriet Manning Whitcomb
... a celebrated site known as Pai-yue-kuei Shan, 'White Jade-tortoise Mountain,' and fixed upon it as the location of the new abode of the goddess. Shen I had all the spirits of the mountain to work for him. The walls were built of jade, sweet-smelling woods were used for the framework and wainscoting, the roof was of glass, the steps of agate. In a fortnight's time sixteen palace buildings stretched magnificently along the side of the mountain. Chin Mu gave to the architect a wonderful pill which would bestow upon him immortality ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... we were speaking, a store-room for colonial provisions. As for the rest of the house, he let it ready furnished to strangers. It was with unspeakable emotion D'Artagnan recognized all the furniture of the chamber of the first story; the wainscoting, the tapestries, and even that geographical chart which Porthos had so fondly studied in his ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Spaniel, who traced his descent from King Charles the Second of England, chanced to look into a mirror which was leaning against the wainscoting of a room on the ground floor of his mistress's house. Seeing his reflection, he supposed it to be ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... in sight at present," I said reassuringly, "but there is a sound of one in the offing—in the wainscoting, I mean." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... out what Ballyconal was really like, and the twelfth-century rats had crept out from the hinterland of the old wainscoting ("rich in ancient oak," the advertisement stated), to scamper over its faces by night, and door knobs had come off in its hands by day, or torn carpets had tripped it up and sprained its ankles, it ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sloping desks before them. There they still remain—because the pews are unchanged—with the dates 1720, 1730, 1740, and so on. From father to son they kept up this sacrilegious practice, hidden in the depths of the high pews. There is, behind the church, a vestry with wainscoting and more carved wood, and with portraits of bygone rectors, plans of the parish, and notes on the old parish charities, which exist no longer. Through the vestry window one looks out upon a little garden. It is the churchyard. One sees how the old cloister ran. Formerly it was ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... out from some part or other, looking larger and more wicked than ever,—drops to the floor, and charges at my feet: a sortie! I strike at him unsuccessfully with the stick: he retreats to the angle between wainscoting and floor, and runs along it fast as a railroad train,—dodges two or three pokes, —gains the door-frame,—glides behind a hinge, and commences to run over the wall of the stair-way. There the hand of a black servant ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... Shoals, and established his family on Kittery. The Bray house had been the finest in the region a hundred years before the Pepperrell mansion was built; it still remembers its consequence in the panelling and wainscoting of the large, square parlor where the young people were married and in the elaborate staircase cramped into the little, square hall; and the Bray fortune helped materially to swell ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a Henley barge to take in the deal boards from the ship, and to carry them to Fawley Court, which was done; and there I made use of them for new flooring my hall and for wainscoting of it. They were extraordinary good boards, and those of the floor were about two inches thick. There they are, and there may they long continue, for the use of me and my children; and may they put us in mind to bless God for his goodness to me in that voyage, ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... what he could with the means at his disposal to improve his appearance, and comforted by the sensation of wearing under his uniform a clean shirt of his host's, made his appearance in the spacious, high-ceiled dining room with its somber wainscoting. The elder Madame Delaherche was already there, for she was always on foot at daybreak, notwithstanding she was seventy-eight years old. Her hair was snowy white; in her long, lean face was a nose ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... was paying any heed to him, Jean Valjean had risen and had gained the antechamber unperceived. This was the very room which, eight months before, he had entered black with mud, with blood and powder, bringing back the grandson to the grandfather. The old wainscoting was garlanded with foliage and flowers; the musicians were seated on the sofa on which they had laid Marius down. Basque, in a black coat, knee-breeches, white stockings and white gloves, was arranging roses round all of the dishes that were to be served. Jean ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the homelike residence, the paneled wainscoting, the fluted pilasters, elaborately carved mantel, glazed tiles, mahogany centre-table, armchairs, the beautifully carved writing-desk, the pictures on the walls of ships under ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... would abjure my family. Yes, I would strike until this arm had utterly destroyed all those who had ventured to make themselves the enemies of the gentlest and best of creatures." And, as he said these words, Louis struck his fist violently against the oaken wainscoting with a force which alarmed La Valliere; for his anger, owing to his unbounded power, had something imposing and threatening in it, like the lightning, which may at any time prove deadly. She, who thought that her own sufferings could not be surpassed, was overwhelmed ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... too, were not infrequently secreted in these hiding places, and in the Manor House, Trent, near Sherborne, there is a strangely constructed chamber, entered from one of the upper rooms through a sliding panel in the oak wainscoting, in which tradition tells us Charles II. lay concealed for a fortnight on his escape to the coast, after the battle of Worcester. And Boscobel House, which also afforded Charles II. a safe retreat, has two secret chambers; and there are ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... was vast and full of deep shadows. The two windows set in one wall, many feet above the floor, showed two spaces of darkening sky. A single torch of aromatics flared and hissed beside the throne dais. Tremendous wainscoting covered the base of the walls, more than a foot above a man's height. It was massively carved with colossal sheaves of lotus-blooms and sword-like palm-leaves. Columns of great girth, bouquets of conventional stamens, ending in ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... There was a good floor and a wooden wainscoting that rose three feet above it. The tent was set on this wainscoting, which gave plenty of head space. A gasolene stove in one corner with a table and chairs and a cupboard formed the kitchen. A cot for Pen and a book shelf or two with a corner clothes closet and some hammock swung chairs ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... was talking with two gentlemen, strangers to Arthur, but they were on the point of leaving. Arthur stood away against the wainscoting by the corner table, waiting until they were gone, his attitude, his countenance, his whole appearance indicative ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... furnishing, was a place of echoes muffled in dust; the insidious, dank odours of corrupting wood and plaster; walls with melancholy, superimposed, stripping papers; older, sombrely blistered paint and panelled wainscoting varnished in an imitation, yellow graining. It was without a relic of past dignity. Mariana was unable to discover a souvenir of the generations of Pennys that had filled the rooms with the stir of their living. Once more outside they ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... noble old hall into which he ushered Keith, the wainscoting dark with age, and hung with trophies of many a chase and forgotten field. A number of modern easy-chairs and great rich rugs gave it an air of comfort, even if ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... room of medium size, with two French windows, which gave upon an orchard of peach and apple-trees where lush grass hid the fallen fruit. The furniture was plain and serviceable. A few prints on the wall and a wainscoting of ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... trader as fit only "for women in childbed," were now in general use. Carpets superseded the filthy flooring of rushes. The loftier houses of the wealthier merchants, their parapeted fronts and costly wainscoting, their cumbrous but elaborate beds, their carved staircases, their quaintly-figured gables, not only contrasted with the squalor which had till then characterized English towns, but marked the rise of a new middle class which was to play its part ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... square white old wooden house, standing behind a high white board fence, in two acres of gardened ground; but the fine hallway with its broad low stairway, the stately drawing-room with its carving, the library with its panelling and portraits, and the dining-room with its tall wainscoting, united to give him a sense of the pride of life in old Burymouth such as the raw splendors of the millionaire houses in New York ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... welcome reinforcement, but it diminished the rations of food that could be served during the winter, for the Fortune was not well supplied. When she set sail for England, she carried a little cargo of beaver-skins and choice wood for wainscoting to the value of L500 sterling, as a first instalment of the sum due to the merchant adventurers. But this cargo never reached England, for the Fortune was overhauled by a French cruiser and robbed of ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... ran against him with such violence in the hall that he knocked his head against the wainscoting; he tripped him up on the stairs by means of canes and sticks; and he hired his partisans who sat behind Viggo to stick pins into him, while he recited his lessons. And when all these provocations proved unavailing he determined to ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the bullet buried itself in splintering wainscoting, a cry of almost childish petulence escaped him. With but one thought, he hurled on, swung round to the head of the stairs, saw his man at the bottom, pulled ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Manger of to-day was the old-time Salle des Gardes. It is garnished with a fine wainscoting and panels of Cordovan leather. The Chambre a Coucher of Louis XIV, to the left, is to-day the Salon, and here are to be seen portraits of Louis XIV, Louis XII, Francis I, Henri IV, ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... And this spontaneous thought is excellent criticism, for three-parts of Mr. Whistler's art lies in the seeing; no one ever saw Nature so artistically. Notice on the left the sharp line of the white frock cutting against the black wainscoting. Were that line taken away, how much would the picture lose! Look at the leg that is advanced, and tell me if you can detect the modelling. There is modelling, I know, but there are no vulgar roundnesses. ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... my apartment. It was a large room, a little somber, paneled with dark wainscoting, and furnished in a stately and somber style, long out of date. There was a wide hearth, and a heavy mantelpiece, carved with shields, in which I might, had I been curious enough, have discovered a correspondence with the heraldry on the ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the low wainscoting, and Victoria drew it over beside Hilary and sat down in it. He did not seem to notice the action, and Euphrasia continued to stand. Standing seemed to be the natural posture of this remarkable woman, Victoria thought—a posture of vigilance, of defiance. A clock of one of the Austen ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the spook will have all the sea room necessary in his trap, for it will extend from just below the molding on the top of the wainscoting to the floor behind the strip of ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... with pews of curly birch, upholstered in old rose plush. The floor is in white Italian mosaic, with frieze of the old rose, and the wainscoting repeats the same tints. The base and cap are of pink Tennessee marble. On the walls are bracketed oxidized silver lamps of Roman design, and there are frequent illuminated texts from the Bible and from Mrs. Eddy's "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" impanelled. A sunburst in the centre ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... inert wainscoting, exactly as if a soul had creaked, the Senior Surgeon sensed the threatening, intrusive presence of an unseen personality. Once again he strode across the room and jerked the door open with terrifying anger ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott |
