"Taffety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fair cedar houses of Panama, but lost the plate ship with all the gold and silver out of the churches. How he tortured a poor wretch who chanced to wear a pair of taffety trousers belonging to his master, with a small silver key hanging out, it is better not to repeat. The men only got two hundred pieces-of-eight each, after all their toil, for their Welshman was indeed a thief, and bilked his crews, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... him open the door, or see him after he came in, he had the opportunity of feasting his eyes, with gazing on the thousand charms she was mistress of; all which were displayed to a great advantage by the shadowy light which gleamed from the stage thro' a thin crimson taffety curtain, which she had drawn before her, to the end she might neither be seen by others, nor see any thing herself which might take off her ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... enormous hoop, which set out a petticoat ornamented with gold or embroidery; they fastened a long train round their waists, and concealed the undress of the rest of their clothing by a long cloak of black taffety which enveloped them up to the chin. The chevaliers d'honneur, the ladies in waiting, the pages, the equerries, and the ushers bearing large flambeaux, accompanied them to the King. In a moment the whole palace, generally so still, was in motion; the King kissed each Princess on the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... intimate friendship between Lord Cobham and himself which is not to be overlooked in the light of coming events. The French were all dressed in black, a colour Raleigh did not possess in his copious wardrobe, so that he had to order the making of a black taffeta suit in a hurry, to fetch which from London he started back late on Saturday night after bringing the Duke safe down to Basing. It was on the next day, if the French ambassador said true, that he had the astounding conversation with Elizabeth about Essex, at the end of which, after ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... French doll," suggested Ronny. "I have a pale blue net frock made over flesh-colored taffeta. It will be sweet for you. Shorten the skirt and it will make a stunning French doll costume. I have heelless blue dancing ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... rather short, and under ones of three rows of lace: neck-dress of lace. Cap also of lace, resting flat upon the front of the head, and forming folds behind, trimmed with bows of ribbon, of rose-colored taffeta, below the lace to the depth ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... with yellow silk floss. Terry, in the history of his "Voyage to the East Indies," made about the middle of the seventeenth century, says: "The natives show very much ingenuity in their manufactures, also in making excellent quilts of their stained cloth, or of fresh-coloured taffeta lined with their prints, or of their satin with taffeta, betwixt which they put cotton wool, and work ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... will say nothing but what is true. When I undid the door, one man stood there, and he, to seeming, a man of no extraordinary appearance. He was wrapped in a taffeta cloak of a scarlet colour, and with a red lining. He seemed as if he might have been in his time a very handsome man, but there was something of paleness and sorrow in his face—a long love-lock and long hair ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... during his Parisian days, his love for artificiality had led him to abandon real flowers and to use in their place replicas faithfully executed by means of the miracles performed with India rubber and wire, calico and taffeta, paper and silk. He was the possessor of a marvelous collection of tropical plants, the result of the labors of skilful artists who knew how to follow nature and recreate her step by step, taking the flower as a bud, leading it to its full development, even imitating ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... which thou would'st truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why thou should'st be so superfluous to demand ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... got sight of a small ship which we chased towards Tercera with our pinnace, the weather being calm, and overtook her towards evening, when we found in her 30 tons of good Madeira wine, besides woollen cloth, silk, taffeta, and other goods. Coming on the 14th to the island of Flores, it was determined to take in fresh water, and such fresh provisions as the island afforded; wherefore manning our boats with about ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... a discomposed countenance. At once, however, she advanced, and with a cry of greeting, enveloped Miss Betty in a brief embrace, to the relief of the latter's confusion. It was Fanchon Bareaud, now two years emancipated from St. Mary's, and far gone in taffeta. With her lustreful light hair, absent blue eyes, and her gentle voice, as small and pretty as her face and figure, it was not too difficult to justify Crailey Gray's characterization of her as one of those winsome baggages who had made an air of feminine ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... tutelar deities appeared on the stage. They were followed by a band of foresters clad in Lincoln green, with bows at their backs. The first deity wore a white linen tunic, with flesh-coloured hose and red buskins, and had a purple taffeta mantle over his shoulders. In his hand he held a palm branch, and a garland of the same leaves was woven round his brow. The second household god was a big brawny varlet, wild and shaggy in appearance, being clothed in the skins of beasts, with sandals of untanned ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the shoulder consisting of a gold rose, enclosed in a garter wrought with pearls of damask gold. Lastly came the Bishop of Winchester, the prelate of the Order, wearing his mitre, and habited in a robe of crimson velvet lined with white taffeta, faced with blue, and embroidered on the right shoulder with a scutcheon of Saint George, encompassed with the Garter, and adorned with cordons of blue silk mingled ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ignorance; Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit; And I will wish thee never more to dance, Nor never more in Russian habit wait. O! never will I trust to speeches penn'd, Nor to the motion of a school-boy's tongue, Nor never come in visor to my friend, Nor woo in rime, like a blind harper's song. Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, Three-pil'd hyperboles, spruce affectation, Figures pedantical; these summer-flies Have blown me full of maggot ostentation: I do forswear them; and I here protest, By this white glove,—how white the hand, God knows!— Henceforth my wooing mind shall ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Here. Listen. Three years ago our taffeta skirts ran from thirty-six to thirty-eight yards to the dozen. We paid from ninety cents to one dollar five a yard. Now our skirts run from twenty-five to twenty-eight yards to the dozen. The silk costs us from fifty to sixty cents a yard. Silk skirts used to be a luxury. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... her as though she were convinced that contact with the big cities and hospitals and surgical cases must surely have left an unfavorable impress. "But you haven't changed—I do believe! Why, child, you're even prettier! Is that taffeta, my dear? How much did ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... one golden crown for the making of the robe and the cloak, as well as for furnishing white satin, taffeta, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... in a white net over apricot taffeta with a bunch of sunset roses tucked into the black velvet ribbon sash that ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... close under Sylvia's eyes. It was covered with as many layers as a worm in a cocoon. There were beads on lace, the lace incrusted on other lace, chiffon, fish-net, a dimly seen filmy satin, cut in points, and, lower down, an invisible foundation of taffeta. Through the interstices there gleamed a revelation of the back itself, fat, white, again like a worm ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the great hall, where the Queen and the company took their places, and the drums beating and trumpets sounding. A gentleman entered the hall carrying a spear or pike covered with taffeta of the bridegroom's colours, all but the head, which was silver, worth about twenty crowns; he stood by the bride, holding the spear in the middle, both ends of it about breast-high, and the bridegroom was brought and placed ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... brocade, trimmed with tulle, and surrounded with three flounces, falls, cloud-like, from her girdle, which is set with cameos and unpolished pearls. With her left hand she raises slightly her skirts, revealing the embroidered gimps of a white taffeta underskirt, flashing in the moonlight. Small, unpolished pearls ornament the bands of her short sleeves; on her fingers are rings, set with diamonds and costly emeralds; and her wrists are clasped ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... two methods of making a shirred crown of fabric in which taffeta, satin, georgette, or velvet may be used. Velvet is especially beautiful made up in this way. The first method is the preferred. Cut a circular piece of material, having a diameter the length of the crown from front ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... by turbans, when their jeweled stomachers and tight-laced stays held their bodies as tightly as would a vise, when their high-heeled shoes were as unyielding as if made of wood, and their trails of taffeta, often as much as fifteen yards long, and great feathered head-dresses compelled them to turn round as slowly as strutting peacocks? How could the men, with their buckram-stiffened coat-shirts, execute any other dance, when their elaborate powdered wigs compelled them to carry their ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... water twenty-four hours before it is required to write with. In order to read it the paper must be wetted in a basin of water and then held to the fire; the secret writing then appears white and may easily be read until the paper gets dry. You may write in this manner on white taffeta or white linen, especially lawn; and as a token when anything is written on a piece of taffeta or linen a little snip can be cut off from one of the corners. Friend, if so be that you have letters, transcribe their message in the ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... that is to say—out of Campbell's edition. There is a good deal of taffeta in some of Tom's prefatory phrases, but his work is good as a whole. I like him best, though, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... Gibraltar back to the smoke, and they had not been there many minutes when Montgolfier jumped from his seat, and, throwing open the door of the room, called to his landlady. A great idea had occurred to him, and, to carry it out, he required some light, silky material, called taffeta. This the good landlady quickly supplied, and when she entered the room some time later, she found her lodger holding the taffeta, which he had formed into a bag, over the fire. As the smoke filled it, it certainly ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... crimson silk and wraps several times round the body, with a loop at the end in which the sheath of the kris hangs. They wear short drawers reaching halfway down the thigh, generally of red or yellow taffeta. There is no covering to their legs or feet. Round their heads they fasten, in a particular manner, a fine, coloured handkerchief, so as to resemble a small turban; the country people usually twisting a piece of white or blue cloth for this purpose. The crown of their head remains uncovered ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... wrap with puffs of pink taffeta and knots of silver ribbon which went with the gown. Becky with a sudden impulse put it on. She stripped the cap from her head, and wound her bronze locks in a high knot. She ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... straw bonnet, lined with pink taffeta; then the father and daughter went down the winding street ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom. She lifted her arms, she leaned ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... characteristic gestures; and the autumn sunlight, falling through the plain glass windows, shone on his temples. Immediately below him, in a front pew, sat his mother, a dried little old woman, with beady black eyes and a pointed chin, which jutted out from between the stiff taffeta strings of her poke bonnet. She gazed upward, clasping her Prayer-book in her black woollen gloves, which were darned in the fingers; and though she appeared to listen attentively to the sermon, she ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... particularly agreeable. There are few people who do not like the sheen of a soft silk, the sparkle of light on a "taffeta," and the richness of the silk that "can stand alone." Its delicate rustle is charming, and the "feel" of it is a delight. It has not the chill of linen, the deadness of cotton, or the "scratchiness" of woolen. It pleases the eye, the ear, ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... Brewster-Smith, her favorite Concentrated Breath of the Lily always in advance, rustled into the darkened parlor, her stride hitting vigorously into her black taffeta skirts. Even as she shook hands with Mr. Evans, she jerked the window shade to its height, so that her smoothness and coloring shone out above ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... her unhappy, had promised to some day take her over to see Felix in Sur Varne. Then she smiled, and made a pretty farewell courtesy, and suddenly snatching from her dark hair a crimson ribbon of Lyons taffeta, she tied it about Felix's sleeve, declaring, "There! thou must keep this token, and be my little knight!" for the Lady Elinor had many lofty notions in ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... given away by her father, wore a dress of pale bridegroom. She was attended by the hat, and carried a bouquet, the gift of the pink taffeta silk and a large dark blue bridegroom's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... wearing on this occasion a drab taffeta silk dress with transparent sleeves and a low neck. She wore a rose in her hair, a necklace, and long gloves, because she said she wouldn't have time to dress again before going out ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... attire—a very quaint and pleasing dress, that might have served the Queen herself; for she had a forepart with body and sleeves, of ginger-coloured satin, which, in my judgment, must have cost by the yard some thirty shillings, lined with murrey taffeta, and laid down and guarded with two broad laces of gold and silver. And her hat, sir, was truly the best fashioned thing that I have seen in these parts, being of tawny taffeta, embroidered with scorpions ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... of the drama. There entered, I say, a woman of twenty to twenty-two years of age, diminutive in body, superlative in audacity and grace. Neat and clean hose and shoes, short, black flounced petticoat, a linked girdle, head-dress or mantilla of fringed taffeta caught together at the nape of her neck, and a corner of it over her shoulder, she passed before my eyes with swaying hips, arms akimbo, and moving her head to and fro as she looked about her ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... but began to play with her long gold chain. Her bosom swelled out the black taffeta of her corsage, and, with her eyelashes slightly drawn together, she lowered her chin like a turtle-dove bridling up; then, with ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... his apology to Rosaline and his appeal at the end of the play to "honest plain words," he shows a deep underlying seriousness. The soul of quick talkative mirthful Biron is that he loves beauty whether of women or of words, and though he condemns "taffeta phrases," he shows his liking for the "silken terms precise" in the very form of ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... home and sat late talking with my wife about our entertaining Dr. Clerke's lady and Mrs. Pierce shortly, being in great pain that my wife hath never a winter gown, being almost ashamed of it, that she should be seen in a taffeta one; when all the world wears moyre;—[By moyre is meant mohair.-B.]—so to prayers and to bed, but we could not come to any resolution what to do therein, other than to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the gray old pile known as Berkhampstead Castle. The bright sunlight of an early English spring streaming through the latticed window plays upon the golden head of a fair young maid of ten, who, in a quaint costume of gold-striped taffeta and crimson velvet, looks in evident dismay upon the antics of three merry boys circling around her, as she sits in a carved and high-backed oaken chair. In trim suits of crimson, green, and russet velvet, with curious hanging sleeves and long, ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... few minutes later. This answer being opened and laughed at, Miss Bangle had only to contrive a rejoinder, which being rather more particular in its tone than the original communication, led on yet again the happy schoolmaster, who branched out into sentiment, "taffeta phrases, silken terms precise," talked of hills and dales and rivulets, and the pleasures of friendship, and concluded by entreating ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... devices except those sanctioned by the company. Most of them lessen instead of increase efficiency. A woman in her home where calls are infrequent may hide her telephone behind a lacquered screen or cover it with pink taffeta ruffles, but in a business office it is best to make no attempts to beautify it. It is when it is unadorned that the ugly little instrument gives its ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... woman, with clear-cut features, and brown hair drawn backward under a cap of lace very stiffly starched. Her tight fitting dress of blue taffeta was open in front, and looped up behind in order to show an elaborately quilted petticoat of light-blue camblet. Her white wool stockings were clocked with blue, her high-heeled shoes cut very low, and clasped with small silver buckles. From her trim cap to her ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... except for his hat. The emperor wore a rich robe of cloth of gold of cramoisy, and his son was in a robe of green damask. As to their people, both suites were very brave, jewelry and cloth of gold being as common as satin or taffeta. Monseigneur received the emperor in a little chamber decorated with hangings from Holland ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... "extravagant" girl with her flowered taffeta silk, or plain satin, or brocade dress. There is at once the effect of richness and elegance. No matter how sweet and pretty she is, you at once decide that you never could afford to dress her. But that taffeta cost, perhaps, only a dollar a yard. The satin, ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... arrayed in a crisp blue taffeta, came bustling to meet them. But not before Fanny's swift gaze had penetrated the assembled guests. Yes! there was Wesley Elliot's tall figure. He was talking to Mrs. Henry Daggett at the far end of the ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... thirteenth century, Bruges was the great mart for silk. The stuffs then known were velvet, satin (called samite), and taffeta,—all of which were stitched with gold or silver thread. The expense of working materials was therefore very great, and royal ladies condescended to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... order, and desires that the priest may not be jeered for the gallantry of his splendid apparel. He bequeaths to various parish churches and persons, "My vestment of crimson satin—my vestment of crimson velvet—my stole and fanon set with pearl—my black gown faced with taffeta," &c. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the coral taffeta trousers Someone had brought her from Ispahan, And the little gold coat with pomegranate blossoms, And the coral-hafted feather fan; But she ran down a Kentish lane in the moonlight, And skipped in the pool of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... Fustian and taffeta were less costly, but frequently used in important work, as also were sarcenet and camora. Velvet and satin were of later date, not occurring until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Baudekin, a good silk and golden weave, was ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison |
