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More "Calico" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at her clean calico dress, and she saw that it was faded and patched. A bright rose color flitted over her cheeks, and when she looked up, tears stood in her eyes. Mary did not say any more; but she watched Fanny all the forenoon, and saw that she had made her feel very unhappy. When they went out to play, she went ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... brown apron, whose face proclaimed that she lived much in the open air. Perhaps she lived so much in it as to disdain bonnets, for she wore none—a red cotton handkerchief, fellow to the one on Charley's head, being pinned over her white calico cap. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... used to know something about that myself, in the Spanish war. Now let's see what I remember. Watch this. And somebody keep an eye on that hill and report if a blue calico dress is ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... poet, communicating his designs in a stage soliloquy, disguised himself in a tow wig and beard, and a railway rug turned up with yellow calico; and the scene shifting to the palace, he introduced himself to the Elderly Princess as the greatest of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Angeles. In a few days he moved on shore, took up his quarters at Larkin's house, and established his headquarters, with Captain Turner as his adjutant general. One day Turner and Warner were at my tent, and, seeing a store-bag full of socks, drawers, and calico shirts, of which I had laid in a three years' supply, and of which they had none, made known to me their wants, and I told them to help themselves, which Turner and Warner did. The latter, however, insisted ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... warned me in time. I had thought of sending over a sack of flour occasionally, or a few bolts of calico to help on the good work. You’ve ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... Indians for painting their bodies; among civilized communities its principal use is for colouring butter, cheese and varnishes. It yields a fugitive bright orange colour, and is to some extent used alone, or in conjunction with other dyes, in the dyeing of silks and in calico printing. It contains a yellow ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... were of unpainted wood, but the wood was perfectly fresh, and smelt pleasantly of resin. The window was preposterously small, with only four squares of glass in it, and it was curtained with mere calico, but the calico was rose-coloured, which imparted a delightfully warm glow to the room, and the view from the window of pine-woods and cliffs, and snow-fields, backed by the distant sea, was magnificent. Two little beds in the corner furthest from the window looked so snug that ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... wore linses [flax] petticoats and 'bedgowns' [like a dressing-sack], and often went without shoes in the summer. Some had bonnets and bedgowns made of calico, but generally of linsey; and some of them wore men's hats. Their hair was commonly clubbed. Once, at a large meeting, I noticed there but two women that had on long gowns. One of these was laced genteelly, and the body of the other was open, and ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... picked up a guide—will he let me say a friend?—an Aberdeenshire Scot, who hurried out fresh from his bath, his trusty cutlass on his hip, and in heavy shooting-boots and gaiters; for no clothing, be it remembered, is too strong for the bush; and those who enter it in the white calico garments in which West-India planters figure on the stage, are like to leave in it, not only their ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... able to stand no end of wear. It was fashioned for the habitant's use into roomy trousers and a long frock coat reaching to the knees which he tied around his waist with a belt of leather or of knitted yarn. The women also used this etoffe for skirts, but their waists and summer dresses were of calico, homemade as well. As for the children, most of them ran about in the summer months wearing next to nothing at all. A single garment without sleeves and reaching to the knees was all that covered their nakedness. ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... a tail jerked spasmodically, in its struggle to wag. Then with two or three delirious yelps of joy he started madly down the lane. At the sound of his voice the door of the gray house opened. A tall, thin woman in a bluish homespun skirt and red calico waist came out, and moved slowly across the yard to welcome the ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... into Cummins' face, and he pointed to a calico-covered box standing upon end in a ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... policeman, talking to her down the area. Punch is independent and original in this respect. His strange creed seems to be, that human nature is human nature,—whether, in its feminine department, you robe it in silk or calico, and, in its male department, button a red coat over the breast of an officer of the Guards, or put the coarse jerkin on the broad back of the industrious toilsman. And according to this whimsical belief, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Tops for Convenient Holders.—For soft, convenient holders use old stocking tops. Take two thicknesses, cut in squares, bind all around with some bias pieces left from calico dresses and sew a ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... immediately the water began to flow. I turned triumphantly on Mrs. Carkeek, who had grown suddenly red in the face. Her eyes were fixed on the cork in my hand. To keep it more firmly wedged in its place somebody had wrapped it round with a rag of calico print; and, discoloured though the rag was, I seemed to recall the pattern (a lilac sprig). Then, as our eyes met, it occurred to me that only two mornings before Mrs. Carkeek had worn a print gown of that same ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... soliloquy as he glanced ahead and noticed the trim figure of Medaine Robinette swinging along the road, old Lost Wing, as usual, trailing in her rear, astride a calico pony and leading the saddle horse which she evidently had become tired of riding. A small switch was in one hand, and she flipped it at the new leaves of the aspens and the broad-leafed mullens beside the road. As yet, she had not seen him, and Barry hurried toward her, jamming his cap into ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the visiting chief from Vait-hua found welcome among the waiting natives, while Titihuti of the tattooed legs took her seat beside me. She had combed her Titian tresses and anointed them with oil till they shone like the kelp beds of Monterey. Her tunic was of scarlet calico, and she carried in her hand a straw hat with a red ribbon, to put on when she entered the church. "Kaoha!" I said to her, and she smiled, displaying her even, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... European calico clothing has not been adopted by these people, even in the district where they are in touch with the missionaries. Indeed I may say that the people, happily for their own health, show no inclination to wear more clothing; and no doubt ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... would have struck terror to the sad-eyed aesthete, but an artist who liked to see colors burn and glow on the canvas would have been glad to paint her: a little frock of buttercup yellow calico, bare neck and arms, full of dimples, hair that put the yellow calico to shame by reason of its tinge of copper, skin of roses and milk that dared the microscope, red smiling lips, one stocking and ankle-tie kicked off and five ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... half. The twilight darkened, and the fire brightened, and in the light of the fire the two sat and talked; till a door opened, and in the same flickering shine a figure presented itself which Mr. Dillwyn remembered. Though now it was clothed in nothing finer than a dark calico, and round her shoulders a little white worsted shawl was twisted. Mrs. Barclay began a sentence of introduction, but Mr. ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... three, Tillie hid her "Ivanhoe" under the pillow of her bed when she went up-stairs to change her faded calico school dress for the yet older garment she ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... funeral garlands. In the churchyard and at the tavern-door, were groups of peasants, waiting for divine service to begin. They were clothed in their holiday dresses. The men wore breeches and long boots, and frock-coats with large metal buttons; the women, straw hats, and gay calico gowns, with short waists and scant folds. They were adorned with a profusion of great, trumpery ornaments, and reminded Flemming of the Indians in the frontier villages of America. Near the churchyard-gate ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... her eyes there rolled, steadily, the biggest, roundest tears I ever saw. They ran down her cheeks, formed a stream in the first groove of her double chin, overflowed it, and dripped drop, drop, a drop at a time, on the breast of her stiffly starched calico dress, and from there shot to ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... crevices, various garments, and such as were apparently fitted for all ages and conditions, and for either sex. British and American uniforms hung peaceably by the side of each other; and on the peg that supported a gown of striped calico, such as was the usual country wear, was also depending a well-powdered wig: in short, the attire was numerous and as various as if a whole parish were to be equipped ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... a thumb toward the house, and in the tense silence Hardy could clearly discern the sound of women's voices. Now you could ride the Four Peaks country far and wide and never hear the music of such voices, never see calico on the line, or a lace curtain across the window. There were no women in that godless land, not since the Widow Winship took Sallie and Susie and left precipitately for St. Louis, none save the Senora Moreno and certain strapping Apache squaws who wore buckskin tewas ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... questions of a practical kind much discussed, is that of a patent process for contracting the fibres of calico, and of obtaining on calico thus prepared colors of much brilliancy. It is regarded by chemists as likely to lead to valuable results. In the British Association, it was described as the discovery that a solution of cold but ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... first time he was able to look away from his food long enough to notice that Elsie was wearing a fresh pretty frock of blue-dotted calico. He ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... driving, and sitting by him was Mrs. Fewkes in a faded calico dress, her shoulders wrapped in what was left of a shawl. Fewkes was letting old Tom take his own way, which he did by rushing with all vengeance through every bad spot and then stopping to rest as soon as he reached a good bit of road. The old man was thin and light-boned, with a ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... squeaked like a frightened locomotive temperament! His "boughten" sack coat, fitting him all over, similar to a wet shirt on a broom-handle, was pouched out at the pockets with any quantity of numerous articles, in the way of books and boots, pamphlets and perfumery, knick-knacks and gim-cracks, calico, candy, &c. His vest was short, but that deficiency was made up in superfluity of dickey, and a profusion of sorrel whiskers. Having got into the store, he very leisurely walked around, viewing the hardware, separately ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... at her side within the circle of her arm, his head against her shoulder and his eyes wide with a delicious horror as he gazed upon a calico book whose pages were brilliant with the tragedy of the three bears, which she was reading very slowly and with many explanatory annotations. Crimie balanced himself against her knee and beat with a spoon against the back of the book and whooped up the situation in every ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... hours of the day or night these several articles arrived. Often quite late in the evening—and this happened more than once—an old fellow, pinched and wheezy, would sneak in, uncover a mysterious object wrapped in a square of stringy calico, fumble in his pocket for a scrap of paper, put his name at the bottom of it, and sneak out again five, ten, or twenty dollars better off. Once, as late as eleven o'clock, a fattish gentleman with a hooked nose and a positive dialect, assisted another ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... approval or disapprobation concerning the state of affairs behind the green shutters. It was a warm night and the big round moon sailed serenely in a cloudless, blue sky. Mrs. Tuckley had put on a clean calico wrapper, and planted herself with the indomitable Stella on her steps, "to ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... down from the house a bed and mattress, which she supplied with sheets, pillows, blankets, and a quilt. Then Uncle Nathan, the carpenter, took a large wooden box and put shelves in it, and tacked some bright-colored calico all around it, and made a bureau. Two or three chairs were spared from the nursery, and Diddie put some of her toys on the mantel-piece for the baby; and then, when they had brought in a little square table and covered it with a neat white cloth, and placed upon ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... pictured to myself the slaves—a miserable, squalid, half fed, ill—clothed, over—worked race—and their masters, and the white inhabitants generally, as an unwholesome—looking crew of saffron faced tyrants, who wore straw hats with umbrella brims, wide trowsers, and calico jackets, living on pepper pot and land crabs, and drinking sangaree and smoking cigars the whole day; in a word, that all that Bryan Edwards and others had written regarding the civilisation of the West Indies was a fable. But I was agreeably undeceived; for although I did ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... The calico sun-bonnet trembled, and the little gray eyes flashed indignantly as she said, "That man never wanted my red heifer a bit more than ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... of idlers, torn and dirty. The sick girl lived on the second floor, with her grandmother and one sister, and as the strangers entered, she shrunk still further back into the corner where she was sitting. A strip of faded calico lay upon her lap, and now and then she would put a stitch in it, but oftener she raised it to her face and wiped away the tears that were constantly falling. Her grandmother seemed troubled and sad as the doctor looked thoughtfully upon her, and when he asked ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... to know everything. In all the glory of its newness Emmy Lou brought her Second Reader to school. Hattie was scandalised. She showed her reader soberly encased in a calico cover. ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... girls—modest, rosy, bright-eyed school-girls, such as you are a-thinking of—are scarce as hen's teeth in this great city, and not to be found in profuseness anywhere. They went out with pink calico sun-bonnets, and ain't likely to come in again yet awhile, I tell you! Republican institutions can be carried to a great extent; and our young ones have found it out, and trample down all the good, wholesome old fashions before their ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... the world would have been utterly changed; but Antony might equally have been proof against a robe with high neck and tight sleeves. Mrs. Rayne's face always seemed to crown her costume like a rose out of green leaves, yet I cannot but think that if I had seen her first in a calico gown and sitting on a three-legged stool milking a cow, I should still have thought her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... Town mean enough not to. By Easter Day, in that Southern region, the new grass was well started, and grass gave a beautiful yellow color to the eggs boiled with it. Onions colored them a soft, pale green, and logwood, black; but the most esteemed egg of all was a calico-egg. You got a piece of new calico from your mother, or maybe some of your aunts, and you got somebody (most likely your grandmother, if she was on a visit at the time) to sew an egg up in it; and when the egg was boiled it came out all over the pattern of the calico. My ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... Poor, in Boston, in 1784; a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1786; a sea captain in 1789, and was afterwards a merchant of Boston. He, with his brother Appleton, was one of the first to introduce into New England the art of printing calico,—producing a coarse blue and red article on India cotton. Their place of business was at the corner of Buttolph Street. Captain Prentiss' residence was in a stone house, near the head of Hanover Street, the ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... coming a step forward and clasping her hands, "do you mean to say I must attend the ball in a calico dress after all? But I'm going, nevertheless, if I dance ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... which escaped from the knot at her neck, and stuck out there and dangled about her face in spite of the attempts made to gather it under the control of the high horn comb holding its main strands together. The lankness of her long figure showed in the calico wrapper which seemed her sole garment; and her large features were respectively lank in their way, nose and chin and high cheek bones; her eyes wabbled in their sockets with the sort of inquiring laughter that spread her ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... differed widely from that of the English. Their first step was to compel the natives to embrace Christianity. Their second to make of them docile and obedient laborers, raising spice and other products, for which they received in payment calico, beads, ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... moustache was attached. The other cheek was adorned with red and blue paint. The hair was twisted into a high peak and further decorated with the wings of a seagull. A man's hair-seal waistcoat trimmed with red flannel hung from the shoulders and from this streamed yards of brilliant colored calico strips ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... possesses those elements of character which lead them to pursue with zeal and courage things they have been taught to regard most creditable, is capable of being civilized. We now pay the Indian for his lands in agricultural tools, in muskets and powder, in blankets and cheap calico— and in education; but the smallest item is education. If half the money which the government is liable to pay for Indian troubles during the last year, could be appropriated to a proper system of education, we should hear of no more serious Indian wars. But I have not time to pursue the subject. ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... dancers, they were of various kinds and sorts. The women had that air which gave them the stamp of a quarter; they wore loose blouses, tucked in plaid skirts, or dark blue skirts, or multi-coloured calico skirts (if you have seen the lithographs of Steinlen you may reconstruct the picture with no difficulty) and they danced in that peculiar fashion so much in vogue in the Northern outskirts of Paris. The men seized them tightly and they whirled to the inexorable music when it was ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... she didn't mean to send them home; and O, how I loved her. It seemed to me I loved her for the first time in my life, for I never knew before how good she was, or how beautiful! Her head was tied up in a handkerchief, and she wore a faded calico dress and a tow apron, but I thought she looked like an angel. I lay flat at her ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... girls must meet as often as we can, during the coming week, to make aprons and neckties out of print. Only one apron and one necktie is to be alike, and Walt Haley and Mr. Dilloway are going to give us as much calico as we need." ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis
... "Six calico shirts, twenty-four francs; as many linen shirts, forty-eight francs; let us say seventy-two. That makes four hundred and sixty-eight francs altogether.—Say five hundred, including cravats and pocket-handkerchiefs; a hundred francs ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... preparing him the best dinner she could to cheer him when he came home at noon. To add a touch of grace she decided to set a bowl of petunias in front of him. He loved the homely little flowers in their calico finery, like farmers' daughters at a picnic. Their cheap and almost palpable fragrancy delighted him when it powdered the air. She hoped that they would bring a smile to him at noon, for he ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... there is some chemical which prevents the portions printed from taking the dye, consequently these remain white or a different color. This is called the "resist" process. Another process is to first dye the cloth and then print on some chemical which, when the calico is steamed, discharges the color. This is called the "discharge" process. Sometimes this weakens the goods in the places where the color ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... far as I am aware. But a drink on the sly could always be had at one of the hard-goods stores, in the back office behind the pile of metal saucepans; or at one of the dry-goods stores, in the little parlor in the rear of the bales of calico. At the present time I believe that there are two or three open bars in Salt Lake, Brigham Young having recognized the right of the "Saints" to "liquor up" occasionally. But whatever other failings they may have, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... snarling as a prudish English woman proclaiming her conjugal rights, coquettish as a great lady, though more frank, and ready for everything; a perfect lionne in her way; issuing from the little apartment of which she had dreamed so often, with its red-calico curtains, its Utrecht velvet furniture, its tea-table, the cabinet of china with painted designs, the sofa, the little moquette carpet, the alabaster clock and candlesticks (under glass cases), the yellow bedroom, the eider-down quilt,—in short, all the domestic ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... would be a part of her wedding finery. She put on her Indian gala dress of beaded buckskin with the colored porcupine quills—and then she smiled cunningly and drew a dress of red-and-blue striped calico over her head and settled the folds of it about her with little, smoothing pats, so that the two white women, Rosemary and Jean, should not notice any unusual bulkiness ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... a bundle, tied up with a piece of chimney line, or window line in the cover of a calico ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... from two comedians in calico, beating each other about the body, he rose with an audible "Pish!" and made his way out. He stopped in the street to scribble on his card, "Will you see me?—G. F." and took it round to the stage-door. The ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a parcel, wrapped up carefully in doeskin to protect it from the appleseeds; and turned foolish in the face, as bits of ribbon and calico fell out upon ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... which sent her six feet into the air the Calico Cat landed four-square in Mr. Peaslee's chicken-yard, almost on the back of the dignified rooster, which fled with a startled squawk. She dodged like lightning across the chicken-yard, between cackling and clattering hens, went up the wire-netting walls, leaped ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... false conclusions, and sentimental twaddle. These facts teach us that to-day we find women engaged in the following occupations, among others:—in cotton, linen and woolen weaving; in cloth and flannel making; in mechanical spinning, calico printing and dyeing; in steel pen and pin making; in the preparation of sugar, chocolate and cocoa; in manufacturing paper and bronzes; in making glass and porcelain and in glass painting; in the manufacture of faience, majolica ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... the missionaries by letting the word slip out that on such a day there would be a killing and a barbecue. Promptly the missionaries would buy the lives of the victims with stick tobacco, fathoms of calico, and quarts of trade beads. Natheless the chiefs drove a handsome trade in thus disposing of their surplus live meat. Also, they could always go ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... poetical idea of "sweet simplicity" always and everywhere. Not that the rich gown is in itself objectionable, or the inexpensive dress intrinsically beautiful. It is not invariably true that "beauty unadorned is most adorned." It is not true that a "simple calico" is more charming than a sheeny silk, nor is cotton edging to be compared with ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... parasol was a big paper box. Mell lifted the lid. A muff and tippet lay inside, made of yellow and brown fur like the back of a tortoise-shell cat. These were beautiful, too. Then came rolls of calico and woollen pieces, some of which were very pretty, and would make nice doll's ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... moment, there arrived at the bottom of the inside steps, a small girl, very black, very solemn, and very erect, with her hands folded in front of her very straight up-and-down calico frock, her features expressive of a wooden stolidity which nothing but a hammer or chisel could alter, and with large eyes fixed upon a far-away, which, apparently, had disappeared, leaving the eyes in ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... Miss Hepzibah herself was not a pretty picture. She was a woman of thirty-five or thereabouts; with a thin, brown, hard-looking face; sharp, twinkling gray eyes; and a long, grim, resolute mouth. She wore a short skirt of dark material, a lilac calico jacket, and a huge white apron. On ordinary occasions her head was adorned by a cap of fearful workmanship and dimensions, but in the heat of her work she had thrown it off, and her scanty brown hair was fastened tightly back in a ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... him. With one half of her attention upon the white cotton socks she was knitting for her spouse and the other half on the gate of her small garden through which her "chile" would come, she sat in her doorway awaiting him. She was splendidly arrayed in her new purple calico and a big white apron, just from under the iron. Her gayest bandanna "hankercher" covered her tightly "wropped" locks from view and the snowiest of "neckerchers" was crossed over her ample bosom. Her kind, black countenance was soft with thoughts ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... thought my courage revived. I heard voices in the next room, the pounding of a flat-iron, and a frequent step across the floor. I gave a loud rap. The door opened, and Eleanor herself appeared. She had on a spotted calico gown, with a string of gold beads around her neck. She held in her hand a piece of fan coral. I felt myself turning all colors, stammered, hesitated, and believed in my heart that she would think me a fool. Very likely she did; for I really ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... centuries of washing had polished and rounded them exquisitely. These pebbles always played an important part every winter evening, for with the greatest regularity the old people would put them into the chimney-place where a wood fire blazed and crackled; afterwards they slipped them into calico bags of a flowered pattern, also brought from the Island, and took them to bed where they served to keep their feet warm ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... the fragrance of the evergreen and eyed the candy longingly. The distribution of presents was not to come off until after the cantata. They peeped out at the sea of faces in front of the brown calico curtains separating the stage and dressing rooms ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... heard the story of spinning on the Commons, for her own grandmother had told it. But she had an idea that the world would go on rather than retrograde. For now they were turning out cotton cloth and printing calico and making canvas and duck, and it was the boast of the famous Constitution that everything besides her armament was made ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... her. She had lived among people, and had learned something of their gait and carriage. Money we know will do almost everything, and no doubt money had had much to do with this. It is very pretty to talk of the alluring simplicity of a clean calico gown; but poverty will shew itself to be meagre, dowdy, and draggled in a woman's dress, let the woman be ever so simple, ever so neat, ever so independent, and ever so high-hearted. Mrs. Stanbury was quite alive to all that her younger daughter was losing. Had she not received two offers of marriage ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... sleeping regular, and spending quiet evenings in the room, washing out and mending and pressing and all. It ain't no cinch even then, lemme tell you. Do you think I'd have ever asked a gay bird like you to come over and room with me if I hadn't seen you begin to fade like a piece of calico, just like my ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... washing dishes. On her feet she would barely have reached the rim of the great dish-pan, but on the soap-box she did very well. A grimy calico apron trailed to ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... were falling from my lips, we approached the end of our journey, the Roslin Inn house heaving in sight, at the door of which me and Peter louped out, an hostler with a yellow striped waistcoat, and white calico sleeves, I meantime holding the naig's head, in case it should spend off, and capsize the concern. After seeing the horse and gig put into the stable, Peter and I pulled up our shirt necks, and after looking at our watches, as if time was ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... does not allow the colour of the eyes or of the eyebrows to be seen, but in order to prevent the costume from hindering the movements of the mask, he must not wear anything underneath, and in winter a dress made of light calico is not particularly agreeable. I did not, however, pay any attention to that, and taking only a plate of soup I went to Muran in a gondola. I had no cloak, and—in my pockets I had nothing but my handkerchief, my purse, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was organized in Manchester, one of the new industrial cities dominated by modern ideas, crowded with factories, and populous with laboring men and women, a fit center for such an agitation as was to precede the downfall of the tax on food. In Manchester, too, in the person of a calico-printer named Richard Cobden, the agitation found its mainspring and ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... only by payment of various useful articles that we secure any service done or purchase any native produce. Money is unknown. Fruit and vegetables, figs, fish, crabs, fowls, we buy with iron tools, pieces of calico, and the like; and if our supply of these gives out, we have to draw upon the store of things needed by ourselves; and blankets and hardware come to be minus. Then, forgetting this, which it is easy to do, all the world without is a world of glorious beauty. How I wish I could shew it to you! These ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... completely removed by placing about a stone weight of it in any convenient vessel, pouring over it a quart of boiling water, and mixing thoroughly the fluid and solid. In an hour or two the whole is to be thrown upon a filter made of calico, when the water will pass through the filter, carrying with it all the impurities, and the purified salt, in fine crystals, will remain upon the filter. The solution need not be thrown away: boiled down to dryness it may be given as salt to cattle; or, if added in solution to the dung-heap, ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... obeyed, Bryda and Betty seating themselves on either side of their grandfather, while Dorothy Burrow stood before him, her stout red arms uncovered, her elbows stuck on either side of her thick waist, and the frills of her big calico cap blown ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... fire. Arrowhead and Chingachgook crawled to the cover, and lay in wait like snakes, with their arms prepared for service, while the wife of the former bowed her head between her knees, covered it with her calico robe, and remained passive and immovable. Cap loosened both his pistols in their belt, but seemed quite at a loss what course to pursue. The Pathfinder did not stir. He had originally got a position where he might aim with deadly effect through the leaves, and where he could watch the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... self-exposure. A beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snowdrift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would be unendurable—in the opinion of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... in old age the scrupulous neatness which had characterized her youth, when promoted to the post of seamstress and ladies' maid, she had ruled the servants' realm at "Elm Bluff" with a sway as autocratic as that of Catherine over the Muscovites. Her black calico dress, donned as mourning for her master, was relieved by a white apron tied about the ample waist; a snowy handkerchief was crossed over the vast bosom, and a checked white and black turban skilfully wound in intricate folds around ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... pushed forward and took their seats, until at last— Could that be Nan? Poor Patty's cheeks burned with mortification as she saw her pressing eagerly forward among the rest, her freckled face beaming with satisfaction. Instead of the beautiful blue dress, she had on a faded calico, considerably outgrown, and her coarse every-day boots with copper tips, half laced up, and much the worse for wear. But, in striking contrast, the blue bow was perched proudly on the top of her head. Then she had forgotten her pocket-handkerchief, and poor Patty ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... after the chapel, which is small, and by no means striking, into which I was led, was the ancient refectory, where there were some hundreds of criminals, condemned for several years to close imprisonment, or the galleys, weaving calico. I never in my life saw so many ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... adjoining the mill, a performance not at all surprising when it is remembered that up to this time the greater part of his life had been spent in the open air, and that his still growing muscles must have eagerly welcomed tasks like this, which gave him once more the exercise that measuring calico and weighing out groceries failed to supply. Young Lincoln's bodily vigor stood him in good stead in many ways. In frontier life strength and athletic skill served as well for popular amusement as for prosaic toil, and at times, indeed, they ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... yard, spinnin' rooms, weave room, blacksmith shop and shoe shop. Dere was wild turkeys on de place, deer in de cane brakes and shad in de Catawba River. De Indians fetch their pots and jars to sell, and peddlers come to big house wid their humps on their backs and bright yards of calico and sich things de missus lak to feel and s'lect from. I see money then, but I never see a nigger wid money in his ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... come in, and an unusual glimpse of the new foreroom rug was afforded the spectators. Everything was as neat as wax, for Diadema was a housekeeper of the type fast passing away. The great coal stove was enveloped in its usual summer wrapper of purple calico, which, tied neatly about its ebony neck and portly waist, gave it the appearance of a buxom colored lady presiding over the assembly. The kerosene lamps stood in a row on the high, narrow mantelpiece, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... cowardly, mean, and avaricious. Cowardly, because they persistently refused the duel. Mean, because all classes worked, and there seemed among them no arrogance of birth. Avaricious, because they crouched to the planters with calico and manufactures, or admired their bullying for the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... a green calico bag, and, emptying the contents into her hand, picked out from among brass buttons and bits of broken glass a silver coin, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... never need care for any American opinion" (and Warren studied her face, as the fine silhouette was illumined by the nearby deck light), "for in my country a princess is recognized whether she wear ermine robes, or a calico shirtwaist and a ragged skirt. You see,—a republic is at least well illuminated. We're not afraid of the light!... However, I imagine that your title will be changed before another year, and in that case you will have no ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... own making, capable of turning shafts of from 3 to 6 inches diameter; and they hired a strong Irishman to drive the wheel and assist at the heavy work. Their first job was the erection of a cullender, and their next a calico-polishing machine; but orders came in slowly, and James Lillie began to despair of success. His more hopeful partner strenuously urged him to perseverance, and so buoyed him up with hopes of orders, that he determined to go on a little longer. They then ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... of calico, a pot of red wagon paint, and a pretty gal and make a show to fill any theater on Broadway for six months—if I'm let alone," answered Mr. Rooney, with the assurance that moves mountains. "That Lindsey is one good actor with ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... door but Betsey Ann, looking the picture of happiness, and dressed very neatly in a clean calico dress, and white cap and apron. Betsey Ann's slipshod shoes and her rags and tatters were things of the past; she looked an entirely ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... proud boast of an enlightened country, a free press. Schools admitted by private arrangement. Nothing to raise a blush in the cheek of youth or shock the most fastidious." Mim swearing most horrible and terrific, in a pink calico pay-place, at the slackness of the public. Serious handbill in the shops, importing that it was all but impossible to come to a right understanding of the history of David without ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... platform of her new kitchen stoop. The bright flood of May-morning sunshine completely enveloped her girlish form, clad in a simple, fresh-starched calico gown, and shone in golden patches upon her light-brown hair. She had a smile on her face, as she looked down at the milk boy standing on the bottom step—a smile of a doubtful ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... only I've tried to tell one and I don't recollect that he ever did that. . . . Humph! . . . A suit of clothes. . . . Four hundred dollars. . . . Solomon in all his glory would have looked like a calico shirt and a pair of overalls alongside of me, eh? ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... have given Heaven to get earth. Is that a good bargain? Is it much wiser than that of a horde of naked savages that sell a great tract of fair country, with gold-bearing reefs in it, for a bottle of rum, and a yard or two of calico? What is the difference? You have been fooled out of the inheritance which God meant for you; and you have got for it transient satisfaction, and partial as it is transient. If you are not Christian people, you have to buy this world's wealth and goods at the price of God and of your own souls. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... comfortable. The house lies at the west end of the town. It is one room inside, but has, I believe, a separate cooking shed. In the verandah in front is placed a table, an ivory bundle chair and a gourd of water, and I am also treated to a calico tablecloth, and most thoughtfully screened off from the public gaze with more calico so that I can have my tea in privacy. After this meal, to my surprise Ndaka turns up. Certainly he is one of the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... have been safe for a very child. Half the peasantry had come in from the outlying environs of Villette, and the decent burghers were all abroad and around, dressed in their best. My straw-hat passed amidst cap and jacket, short petticoat, and long calico mantle, without, perhaps, attracting a glance; I only took the precaution to bind down the broad leaf gipsy-wise, with a supplementary ribbon—and then I felt ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... sung,—"Sleep, little one, like a lamb in the fold,"—and she had answered that she "couldn't be sleepy, athout auntie would hurry quick to come in with a drink of water," there was a strange arrival. Nathaniel, the waiting man, ushered into the parlor a droll little old woman, dressed in a short calico gown, with gay figures over it as large as cabbages; calf-skin shoes; and a green pumpkin hood, with a ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... over the top of all. Sleep was out of the question, even for the weary seamen; the groans and cries were most heartrending. The doctor and his assistant were up all night attending to the poor captives. At Majunga calico was purchased to clothe them. In the morning they went through the same cleansing process as the night before, when the warm sun, and decks washed down, made things look more cheerful. The dhow having been ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... cash-box in Mr Verloc's hand. But when she understood that her brother was "capering all over the place downstairs" she swung out in one sudden movement on to the edge of the bed. Her bare feet, as if poked through the bottom of an unadorned, sleeved calico sack buttoned tightly at neck and wrists, felt over the rug for the slippers while she looked upward into ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... sewn together, with a small outlet at the top); for it we pay twopence, which is equal to more than a shilling in London. The water that he brings he pours into a large earthern jar, which keeps it cool, and to it is attached over the mouth of the jar a sieve which is made of thick unbleached calico: if this were not done, hundreds of little red worms would get into the jar, because the water in Palestine is full of them. A law was made by the Jews that to drink water that had not been passed through a sieve was a sin; and, as little children are taught not to ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... a comprehensive answer than at first you might believe. Visitors at Mackinac, Traverse, Sault Ste. Marie, and other northern resorts are besought at certain times of the year by silent calico-dressed squaws to purchase basket and bark work. If the tourist happens to follow these women for more wholesale examination of their wares, he will be led to a double-ended Mackinaw-built sailing-craft with red-dyed sails, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... calico sunbonnet surmounted the cap with the explanatory ruffle. She carried a fan of turkey feathers, and with appropriate gesticulation, it aided in expounding to Mrs. Dicey the astonishing news that Nate had found a gold mine on vacant land, and had ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... millions of Americans buy and use more than five hundred millions of Asiatics —buy and use more than all of China, all of India and all of Africa. One civilized man has a thousand times the wants of a savage or of a semi-barbarian. Most of the customers of England want a few yards of calico, some cheap jewelry, a little powder, a few knives and a few ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... it'll do no harm." Hutchinson began to chuckle. "They're talkin' o' gettin' out th' fife an' drum band an' marchin' round th' village with a calico banner with 'Vote for T. Tembarom' painted on it, to show what they ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... more economical in the end. As an instance of the solid comfort of these apparently frugal folks, let me mention their homespun linen sheets. My hostess showed me some coarse bed-linen lately woven for her in the village. Calico sheets, she said, were much cheaper, but she preferred this durable home-spun even at three times the price. An old woman in the village still plied the loom, working up neighbours' materials at ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the broad toe of his boot between door and jamb. His elbows and shoulders did the rest, and he backed in, dragging Mr. Crymble, and paid no attention whatever to a half-dozen vigorous cuffs that Mrs. Crymble dealt him from behind. He doubled Mr. Crymble unceremoniously into a calico-covered rocking-chair, whipped off the hard hat and hung it up, and took from Mr. Crymble's resisting hands the little valise that he had clung to ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... up an auction block before the door of the hotel and auction her off to the highest bidder, hadn't we?" suggested Helen, who had been rummaging in her bag. "Here, Bella! If you want a shirt-waist to take the place of that calico blouse you have on, here is one. One of mine. And I guarantee it will fit you better than Heavy's did. She wears ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... was just out of linsey-woolsey dresses and wore trousers buttoned to a calico waist, she began preparing him for college. The old lady had loved a college man in her youth, and she judged Harvard by the Harvard man she knew best. And the Harvard man she saw in her waking dreams, she created ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... at now, Christie," he went on swiftly. "But you don't need to be afraid. I'm going to be a friend to you, and you can be mighty glad you got rid of Willoughby so easily. Why, I can buy you diamonds where he couldn't give you a calico dress. Come on, let's stop this foolishness. I took a liking to you back there in the stage, and the more I've thought about you since the crazier I've got. When I succeeded in pumping Willoughby dry, and discovered you wasn't ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... of Rhodes to the strips of red and green and pink calico banding his arms, their fluttering ends very ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... price of its oil except when compelled to do so by competition. The largely increased output of crude oil, the improved methods of refining, the greatly lowered cost of transportation would have lowered the price of coal oil without the philanthropy of the Standard Oil Company. Iron, steel, calico, woolen goods and a thousand other commodities have within almost the same period suffered much larger reductions than coal oil. But even if the Standard monopoly had voluntarily lowered the price of its products, ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... that exists is entirely in provisions, principally in ghaseb, or millet, which is imported from Damerghou. The system adopted is entirely one of barter—the Aghadez money consisting of turkedi,[8] or dark-coloured cotton for female clothing made in Soudan, Egyptian leather for sandals, English calico, white shawls, cloves, pepper, pearls, &c. All these objects are imported, the only manufactures of Aghadez being leather-work (sandals and saddles) and coloured mats. I do not know what materials are used in tanning. The Fezzanee gets assistance, according to my fighi, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... on to de fact dat gals is dead easy when a feller comes spielin' ghost stories and tryin' to make up, and dat's why she won't listen to no soft-soap. She says she caught yer dead to rights, huggin' a bunch o' calico in de hot-house. She side-stepped in to pull some posies and yer was squeezin' de oder gal to beat de band. She says it looked cute, all right all right, but it made her sick. She says yer better git busy, and make a ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... Line, playing with his Yard-stick, and perhaps about to take the measure of an unmade piece of calico; when Mabel, with a wild cry of joy, sprang from a small boat to his side. The meeting was too much. They divided a good square faint between them this time. At last Philander found his utterance, and said, "Do they think of me at Home, do they ever ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... death by years of neglect, sprang to life for an instant in this cry of agony. She dropped on her knees beside the bruised body, wiping the blood from his face with the sleeve of her nightdress. A dark red stain spread over the coarse, common calico. And she kissed passionately the bleeding lips, heedless of the sour smell of alcohol that tainted his breath. The bricklayer groaned feebly. With a sudden movement she stripped the coat from her shoulders, and covered him as if to protect him from ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... walls. To and fro went Martha Stevens, doing what she could, bandaging hurts till the bandages gave out. She tore into strips what cloth there was in the little meagre house—her sheets, her towels, her tablecloths, her poor wardrobe. When all was gone she tore her calico dress. When she saw from the open door a man who could not drag himself that far, she went and helped him, with as little reck as may be conceived of ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... affords a fine study of the 'dirty picturesque,' with clothes mostly home-made; sheepskin cloaks; fustanellas or kilts, which contain a whole piece of calico; red leggings, and the rudest of sandals; Turkish caps, and an occasional pistol-belt. The Palikar still struts about in all his old bravery; and the bourgeois humbly imitates the dingy garb of Southern Italy. The people have no taste for music, no regard for art, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... primly over the back. The high bed and bureau and a shining mahogany table suggested an era of "plain living" far, far remote from the day of Turkish rugs and Japanese bric-a-brac, and Aunt Jane was in perfect correspondence with her environment. She wore a purple calico dress, rather short and scant; a gingham apron, with a capacious pocket, in which she always carried knitting or some other "handy work"; a white handkerchief was laid primly around the wrinkled throat and fastened with a pin containing a ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... ghastly confederates holding midnight conventions in subterranean caves. He passed whole mornings in his study, immersed in gloomy reverie, stalking about the room in his nightcap, which he pulled over his eyes like a cowl, and folding his striped calico dressing-gown about him like the ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... over the captain which I could see he found it impossible to resist. Donna Isabel had once more resumed her feminine attire, having stitched together for herself a wardrobe from the ship's stores of cloth and calico, and Hartog begged from me three of the rubies which I had found in the Valley of Serpents, which he presented to her, and which she wore sewn on to a black ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... the ins and outs of it. I believe he's to be one of Mr Palliser's private secretaries if he becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer. Perhaps he doesn't tell;—only I think he does all the same. He always calls me Lady Glen-cowrer. He comes out of Lancashire, and made calico as long as he could get any cotton." But this happened in the bedroom, and we must go back for ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... moved silently down the avenue passed and went on; the man solid and compact, as if well-fed, his face as he turned, however, giving the lie to such impression, but his keen alert eyes seeing every shade of difference in the merest scrap of calico or tufts of hair. For the woman, it was plain to see why the needle had been of small service, her wandering, undecided blue eyes passing over everything to which the man's hook ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... visiting each other's houses. Every girl had her album in which her friends wrote their names, and usually they were able to contribute an original stanza; or, if not, a line from the hymn-book, or a sentiment from the school reader or Bible. They dressed in calico in summer and in winter linsey-woolsey, and wore at their work ample aprons of osnaburg, a small checked blue and white cloth. Vice was unknown; at least the annals record no ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... A new calico dress of a blue ground, with a bright yellow vine rambling up its lengths, adorned her round, plump figure; her glossy black hair was plaited, and surmounted with a huge red bow, the ends of which fluttered out bravely; as she stepped ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... meeting. He and his daughter spent a great part of the afternoon in arranging the platform and decorating the back wall with a Union Jack, two or three strings of cardpaper-flags that had not seen the light since Coronation Day, and a wall-map of Europe with a legend below it in white calico letters upon red Turkey twill,—"DO GOOD AND FEAR NOT." It had served to decorate many occasions and was as appropriate to this as to any ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... are the itinerant vendors of hot foods and confections. Stove, fuel, supplies and appliances may all be carried on the shoulders, swinging from a bamboo pole. The mother in Fig. 63 was quite likely thus supporting her family and the children are seen at lunch, dressed in the blue and white calico prints so generally worn by the young. The printing of this calico by the very ancient, simple yet effective method we witnessed in the farm village along the canal seen in Fig. 10. This art, as with so ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... and bow-legged, and freckled, and sandy. He had red hair and small, twinkling, grey eyes, and—what often goes with such things—the expression of a born comedian. He was dressed in a ragged, well-washed print shirt, an old black waistcoat with a calico back, a pair of cloudy moleskins patched at the knees and held up by a plaited greenhide belt buckled loosely round his hips, a pair of well-worn, fuzzy blucher boots, and a soft felt hat, green with age, and with no brim worth mentioning, and no crown to speak of. He swung ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... this nauseous wrapping-gown, therefore pray get me another suit with all possible expedition; for this is my eternal aversion.—[Exit TAILOR.] Well but, Tam, you don't tell me what has driven you to Scarborough.— Mrs. Calico, are not you of my mind? Semp. Directly, my lord.—I hope your lordship is pleased with your ruffles? Lord Fop. In love with them, stap my vitals!—Bring my bill, you shall be paid to-morrow. Semp. I humbly thank your ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... his miraben, an' you can rikker him bissin', or chiv him apre a wardo, an' jal andurer an' kek jin it. An' dovo's what the Rommany chal kaired to the baulor, pash the sim kris; an' as he bissered it avree an' pakkered it adree a gunno, he penned shukkar adree the baulor's kan, "Calico tute's rye hatched my bavol, an' the divvus I've hatched tute's; an' yeckorus your rye kaumed the kris would del mandy kushti bak, and kenna it has del mengy kushtier bak than ever ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... Seacove, and though Biddy was in a great hurry to get to Pier Street, she was rather interested in the other shops also. At the draper's, Mrs. Vane made some small purchases, as to which Alie showed great concern. One was of pretty pink glazed calico and of some other shiny stuff called 'chintz'—white, with tiny lines of different colours; she also bought some red cotton velvet and neat-looking white spotted muslin, and several yards of very narrow ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... himself of two, though he had not the excuse of a pipe to be filled. One he coyly tucked above his left ear and one he lighted. Then he sat gracefully back upon his heels and drew smoke into his innermost recesses, a shrunken little figure of a man in a calico shirt of gay stripes, faded blue overalls, and shoes that were remarkable as ruins. With a pointed chip in the slender fingers of one lean brown hand—a narrow hand of quite feminine delicacy—he cleared ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... front. He also stopped with putty the worst gaps between the slabs. At Ocock's Auction Rooms he bought a horsehair sofa to match his armchair, a strip of carpet, a bed, a washhand-stand and a looking-glass, and tacked up a calico curtain before the window. His books, fetched out of the wooden case, were arranged on a brand-new set of shelves; and, when all was done and he stood back to admire his work, it was borne in on him afresh with how few creature-comforts ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... exaggeration by the snowy white turban wound about his brow. His eyes, by contrast, were singularly light. He wore over his white shirt a long green tunic of very light silk, woven along its edges with arabesques in gold; a pair of loose calico breeches reached to his knees; his brown muscular calves were naked, and his feet were shod in a pair of Moorish shoes of crimson leather, with up-curling and very pointed toes. He had no weapons other than the heavy-bladed knife with ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... both patrols were in position, and they signified this to Mr. Elliott by holding up their patrol flags. Chippy had made the flag for the Ravens, and made it very well too, cutting the raven out of a scrap of an old green curtain, and stitching it on to a piece of calico. When the umpire saw the patrol flags raised above the gorse clumps which hid the patrols, he blew a long blast on his powerful ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... rear, while he looked on beseechingly and helpless. Then he would try the other side, still failing to swing himself into the saddle. He would grow more and more flustered. His wife, in her clean muslin cap and spotless calico wrapper, with her little lads and lasses—one, two, three—would then step out on the pavement to give cautious advice. The would-be Yeoman would become more and more nervous, while his comrades rode by with jeering glances, and the passengers stood still. Little ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... draper's is not usually counted an interesting kind of shop by children—she was much entertained by watching and listening to the conversation of the farmers' wives and others over their purchases. The way they tugged at merino, and rubbed calico between their fingers to see that there was not too much 'dressing' in it, made her feel as if it would be very difficult indeed to be sure of a 'genuine article,' as the shopman called all his ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... Her calico dress was faded and, in places, strained to the bursting-point, showing that it was "store-bought" and had never been fitted to Mrs. Day's bulbous figure. She wore a pair of men's slippers very much down at the heel, and pink ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... Peter's head now that interests me, and the droop of his shoulders. They always remind me of Leech's sketch of Old Scrooge waiting for Marly's ghost, whenever I come upon him thus unobserved. To-night he not only wears his calico dressing-gown—unheard-of garment in these days—but a red velvet cap pulled over his scalp. Most bald men would have the cap black—but then most bald men have not Peter's ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... themselves up like logs of wood or trusses of hay before a row of lurid lamps, to admire some painted men and women mincing up and down the stage, or peer through two telescopes at forests of painted calico and moons cut out of pasteboard, or listen to hackneyed airs which have been sung and resung a hundred times—worn up, in short, like ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... squirrel. Her breathing was soft, though she had come down a steep mountainside, and as fragrant as the breath of the elder bushes that dashed the banks with white sprays of blossom. She brought with her to the greens and grays and browns of the woodland's heart a new note of color, for her calico dress was like the red cornucopias of the trumpet-flower, and her eyes were blue like little scraps of sky. Her heavy, brown-red hair fell down over her shoulders in loose profusion. The coarse dress was freshly briar-torn, and in many places ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... her ragged and outgrown clothing, her shabby shoes, in the fresh beauty of her face. In every pulse-beat that stirred her white throat, in every calm breath that faintly swelled the faded pink calico over her breast, he felt that he had proved his own vulgarity in the presence of his betters. A sullen resentment arose in ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... all washed her face slowly and with a methodic thoroughness which characterized her—having lived for ten full years with no realization of hours and minutes as a measure for her actions. She dried her face quite as deliberately upon her starched calico apron. Then she spent a few minutes trying to catch a baby trout in her cupped palms. Never had Billy Louise succeeded in catching a baby trout in her hands; therefore she never tired of trying. Now, however, that rash promise nagged at her and would ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... came through by stage. I'll never forget the morning the first stage train came. Men had use for their money then, though many of them used gold weighed out in little scales. Flour was a dollar and a half a pound, calico fifty cents a yard, and eggs five dollars a dozen. Shoes were priceless. One man bought a pair for thirty dollars. I remember that Robert and I wanted to give our neighbor's little girl a birthday present. After ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... her heels, passed Ann Gossaway's cottage the next morning on her way to the post-office—her daily custom—the dressmaker, who was sitting in the window, one eye on her needle and the other on the street, craned her head clear of the calico curtain framing the sash and beckoned ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... my belt, extracting fresh cartridges. We sank, breathing hard. Her eyes were wide, and bluer than any deepest summer sea; her face aflame; her hair of purest gold—and upon her shoulder a challenging oriflamme of scarlet, staining a rent in the faded calico. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... saying a good deal. He was about twenty-five years old. I can see him now in my mind's eye, with his torn and patched trousers held to his form by a pair of suspenders made out of sheeting, with his calico shirt as dirty and black as the earth, and his uncombed hair sticking through the holes in his old battered hat. In winter I used to pity him, for his shoes were so old and worn out that he must have suffered in the snow and slush; yet Joe had a jovial, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... little baroness, what had become of you? Where were your long soft muslin petticoats and your fine white satin corsets? Where were your transparent linen chemisettes? Mme. General had coarse petticoats of starched calico. Mme. General wore such a corset! Mme. General had such a crinoline! My poor skirts of lace and satin were abominably stiffened and tossed about by the hard crinoline hoops. As to the basque, the strange thing happened ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... neighbouring farm for milk. He heard her quick step on the shingle, and he stood still in the middle of the floor to meet her. She had on a short dress of pink calico and a square of blue-and-white-plaided flannel thrown over her head. She came in like the breath of the spring Sabbath. Her face was rosy, her lovely lips slightly apart, her blue eyes dewy and soft and bright and brimming with love. She lifted her ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... To say nothing of their own feelings, and ours, we could not disgrace the Red Cross by sending that stately gray-haired mother and the three delicate young ladies out into the world equipped by our alleged bounty in scanty calico 'Mother Hubbards,' men's cow-hide brogans, and scare-crow headgear. So we picked out what would answer—here and there a garment which might be altered, the only pair of shoes in the place that came near to fitting one of the ladies, ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... soup and the smoking dish which she served to him without speaking. The room, carefully kalsomined, was made gay by the sudden light of a flame of branches in the tall and wide chimney ornamented with a festoon of white calico. In frames, hooked in good order, there were images of Ramuntcho's first communion and different figures of saints with Basque legends; then the Virgin of Pilar, the Virgin of Anguish, and rosaries, and blessed palms. The kitchen utensils shone, in a line on shelves ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... You have heard, I dare say, of those wonderful spinning-machines which take in at one end a mass of raw cotton, very like what you see in wadding, and give out at the other a roll of fine calico, all folded and packed up ready to be delivered to the tradespeople. Well, you have within you, a machine even more ingenious than that, which receives from you all the bread-and-butter and other sorts of food you choose ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... collar and bosom being one of those "notions" that "Boston," and consequently New England "folks," entertained of the becoming in a gentleman's toilette. Mrs. Cass had laughingly forewarned me that not only calico shirts but patch-work pillow-cases were an indispensable part of a travelling equipment; and, thanks to the taste and skill of some tidy little Frenchwoman, I found our divan-pillows all accommodated in the brightest and most ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... genius. That seventeenth-century un-scientist has more feeling for folkways in his calloused left hand than you'd find in all the Colonial Survey. How do you suppose the Old Order maintains itself in Pennsylvania, a tiny Deitsch-speaking enclave surrounded by calico suburbs and ten-lane highways? They mind their business and leave the neighbors to theirs. The Amish have never been missionaries—they learned in 1600 that missionaries are resented, and either ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... the "Cutie" column was supposed to cater particularly. More than once the more personal note was touched, and the girl spoke of her coming to the Certina factory, a raw slip of a country creature tied up in calico, and of Dr. Surtaine's kindness and ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... burdens. In a word, I have heard my Aunt Judith say, that in her youth it was usual for respectable young women to take service with more thriving neighbors or friends, for the annual allowance of their board and a single calico gown, at four and sixpence a yard,—as the price was before mills were ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... Toffey imported, for Costuming, shawls, crepe at $1 per yard, silk, skein-silk, twist, ribbon, velvet at 90c. per yard, drab-cloth, flannel, braid, handkerchiefs, buttons and button-moulds, gloves, suspenders, calico, vest patterns, pins, chrome-yellow, "bearskin" at 82c. per yard, dress handkerchiefs, beads, buckles, silk flags and ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... was coming next. Rising from her chair, Augusta led the way to a door which opened out of the sitting-room, and gently turned the handle and entered. Eustace followed her. The room was a small bed-room, of which the faded calico blind had been pulled down; as it happened, however, the sunlight, such as it was, beat full upon the blind, and came through it in yellow bars. They fell upon the furniture of the bare little room, they fell upon the ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... any other carnivorous animal. My correct card specified eighty "entries;" but, although the exhibition only opened at two o'clock, and I was there within an hour after, I found the numbers up to 100 quite full. The interesting juveniles were arranged within rails, draped with pink calico, all arrayed in "gorgeous attire," and most of them partaking of maternal sustenance. The mammas—all respectable married women of the working class—seemed to consider the exhibition of their offspring ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... and a shining mahogany table suggested an era of "plain living" far, far remote from the day of Turkish rugs and Japanese bric-a-brac, and Aunt Jane was in perfect correspondence with her environment. She wore a purple calico dress, rather short and scant; a gingham apron, with a capacious pocket, in which she always carried knitting or some other "handy work"; a white handkerchief was laid primly around the wrinkled throat and fastened with a pin containing a lock of gray hair; her cap was of black lace and ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... white and her lean face was wrinkled and leathery with time and storm and exposure to the winds of the hills. Still, old as she seemed to be, she walked alertly, with the swinging grace of the true mountain woman. She was very plainly dressed in a one-piece gown of dark calico. Her head was not covered at all, and the white hair took on a tinge of gold from the distant campfire. Her black eyes were sharp, yet kindly ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... a step forward and clasping her hands, "do you mean to say I must attend the ball in a calico dress after all? But I'm going, nevertheless, if I dance in a ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... to May, on Mondays and Tuesdays, the market is held on a large open space in the centre of the village. Abyssinians bring horses, mules, cattle, and honey; the Egyptian merchant displays in his stall, calico, shirtings, hardware, and gaudy prints. Arabs and Takruries arrive with camels laden with cotton and grain. The market-place is now a crowded and exciting scene: horses are tried by half-naked jockeys, who, with whip and heel, drive at a ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... her voice, but from her eyes there rolled, steadily, the biggest, roundest tears I ever saw. They ran down her cheeks, formed a stream in the first groove of her double chin, overflowed it, and dripped drop, drop, a drop at a time, on the breast of her stiffly starched calico dress, and from there shot to ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... abominations of art, was scrupulously pomatomed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a little cap of quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their heads. Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey were striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes—though I must confess these gallant garments were rather short, scarce reaching below the knee; ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... slave to my husband," and so forth. The little tribe, hoisting two flags of red and white calico with green palm-fronds for staves, dared the foe to attack it; after a loss of four killed and sundry wounded, all ran away manfully, leaving their goods at the mercy of the conqueror. Shaykh Hasan el-'Ukb was assisted ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... surprise, a brilliant rosette, while more surprising still, in his hand he carried a flag of somewhat homely construction, formed by tacking one of the small Union Jacks, which abounded in the town to-day, to the end of a deal wand—probably the roller from a piece of calico. Henchard rolled up his flag on the doorstep, put it under his arm, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... qualified persons from examination, and so robbing them of their license and their bread, had an overpowering interest to exclude qualified women from medicine. They had the same interest as the watchmakers' union, the printers', the painters' on china, the calico-engravers', and others have to exclude qualified women from those branches, though peculiarly fitted for them; but not more so than they are for the practice of medicine, God having made them, and not men, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... was in the air though down in that calle there was yet enough of the wintry rawness to chill the tip of Don Ippolito's sensitive nose, which he rubbed for comfort with a handkerchief of dark blue calico, and polished for ornament with a handkerchief of white linen. He restored each to a different pocket in the sides of the ecclesiastical talare, or gown, reaching almost to his ankles, and then clutched the pocket in which he had replaced the linen handkerchief, as if ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... dog and the calico cat Side by side on the table sat; 'Twas half-past twelve, and (what do you think!) Nor one nor t'other had slept a wink! The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate Appeared to know as sure as fate There was going to be a terrible spat. (I wasn't there; I simply state ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... the Big House. Presently these might have been discovered to be a man and a woman; the former tall, thin, dark and stooped; his companion, tall as himself, quite as thin, and almost as bent. The garb of the man was nondescript, neutral, loose; his hat dark and flapping. The woman wore a shapeless calico gown, and on her head was a long, telescopic sunbonnet of faded pink, from which she must perforce peer forward, looking neither to the right ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... ginger: the drugs were beniamin, frankincense, galingale, mirabolans, aloes zocotrina, camphire: the silks, damasks, taffatas, sarcenets, altobassos, that is, counterfeit cloth of gold, vnwrought China silke, sleaued silke, white twisted silke, curled cypresse. The calicos were book-calicos, calico-launes, broad white calicos, fine starched calicos, course white calicos, browne broad calicos, browne course calicos. There were also canopies, and course diaper-towels, quilts of course sarcenet and of calico, carpets like those of Turky; whereunto are to be added the pearle, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... Colonel," she said, "confident that such men as you will win for us yet. Oh, we hear what is going on. They print news on wall-paper, but we get it somehow. We have our diversions, too. It takes a thousand dollars, Confederate money, to buy a decent calico dress, but sometimes we have the thousand dollars. Besides, we have taken out all the old spinning-wheels and looms and we've begun to make our own cloth. We don't think it best that the women should spend all their time mourning while the men ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... gaunt woman, in a loose, faded, calico dress, and she stood at the door of a cabin ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... put under our care. Any donations will be received at my house. Should any believers have tables, chairs, bedsteads, bedding, earthenware, or any kind of household furniture to spare, for the furnishing of the house; or remnants, or pieces of calico, linen, flannel, cloth, or any materials useful for wearing apparel; or clothes already worn, ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... you, fellows," said Jesse, who was rather proud of his overland trip by himself, "the fur trade isn't what it used to be. At those posts you don't see just furs and traps, and men in blanket-coats, and dog-trains. In the post here they had groceries, and axes, and calico dresses, and hats, just like they have in a country store. I peeked ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... me. Men are nice creeters, but you don't want to see too meny of 'em to once, likeways with wimmen. Josiah looked to me at that moment some like a calico dress that you have picked out of a dense quantity of patterns of calico at a store, it looks better to you when you get it away from the rest. Josiah Allen looked good ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... late critic, Pete availed himself of two, though he had not the excuse of a pipe to be filled. One he coyly tucked above his left ear and one he lighted. Then he sat gracefully back upon his heels and drew smoke into his innermost recesses, a shrunken little figure of a man in a calico shirt of gay stripes, faded blue overalls, and shoes that were remarkable as ruins. With a pointed chip in the slender fingers of one lean brown hand—a narrow hand of quite feminine delicacy—he cleared the ground of other chips and drew ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... one which affords much sport to the fisherman; it runs to a large size, as has been stated, but does not often take the fly. Its curious name is said to be derived indirectly from Dickens and the time of his tours in the United States, which produced a Dolly Varden craze in hats and some kinds of calico patterns, of which one with pink spots was supposed to be the correct Dolly Varden pattern. On seeing this fish for the first time, some young lady is supposed to have exclaimed that it was a "Dolly Varden trout," and the name appears to have been generally ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... on one side of the counter, Douglas figured on the other. "As a storekeeper," says Mr. Ellis, "Mr. Lincoln wore flax and tow linen pantaloons—I thought about five inches too short in the legs—and frequently he had but one suspender, no vest or coat. He had a calico shirt such as he had in the Black Hawk War; coarse brogues, tan-colour; blue yarn socks, a straw hat, old style, and without a band." It is recorded that he preferred dealing with men and boys, and disliked to wait on the ladies. Possibly, if his ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... a quick, gasping sob, and Clemence looked up, as she finished, to see a little figure in faded blue calico, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... duty; a good mother is the most precious type of common individual a community can have, and to let a woman on the one hand earn a living as we do, by sewing tennis-balls or making cardboard boxes or calico, and on the other, not simply not to pay her, but to impoverish her because she bears and makes sacrifices to rear children, is the most irrational aspect of all the evolved and chancy ideas and institutions that make up the modern State. It is as if we believed our ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... a calico dress pattern to a poor woman, when his attention was drawn to the entrance of Frank Courtney, who entered his store, valise ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... I had three hives of bees which I received into my house. Each doorway was closed, and the hive placed upon a piece of calico; the corners were brought over the top, leaving a loop by which the hive was suspended from the ceiling. The hives were taken down about the 14th of March; two were healthy, but all the bees in the third were dead. There was a ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... impudent as a Spanish woman, snarling as a prudish English woman proclaiming her conjugal rights, coquettish as a great lady, though more frank, and ready for everything; a perfect lionne in her way; issuing from the little apartment of which she had dreamed so often, with its red-calico curtains, its Utrecht velvet furniture, its tea-table, the cabinet of china with painted designs, the sofa, the little moquette carpet, the alabaster clock and candlesticks (under glass cases), the yellow bedroom, the eider-down quilt,—in short, all the domestic joys of a grisette's ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... rug was afforded the spectators. Everything was as neat as wax, for Diadema was a housekeeper of the type fast passing away. The great coal stove was enveloped in its usual summer wrapper of purple calico, which, tied neatly about its ebony neck and portly waist, gave it the appearance of a buxom colored lady presiding over the assembly. The kerosene lamps stood in a row on the high, narrow mantelpiece, each chimney ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a girl not yet out of short dresses stood behind the counter, measuring out some calico for a woman in a scoop shovel-bonnet. The girl's face was as mirthful as Mike's, and her black eyes twinkled with mischief. She heard all that was said, and read the youth like a book. He looked more at her than at her mother, and could not help being pleased with ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... introduced to his family. I caught a glimpse once of his wife, a pretty little Mameluco woman, as she was tripping with a young girl, whom I supposed to be her daughter, across the backyard. Both wore long dressing-gowns made of bright-coloured calico print, and had long wooden tobacco-pipes in their mouths. The room in which we slept and worked had formerly served as a storeroom for cacao, and at night I was kept awake for hours by rats and cockroaches, which ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... weight upon their backs, and they will immediately commence demonstrating how he can draw easier when there is an immense weight upon his back. The husband generally exchanges his things for whiskey, rice, and tobacco, while the wife buys calico and knick-knacks. Sometimes they get "a right smart chance o' things" together, and have a "party at home," which means a blow-out among themselves. Sometimes they have a shucking, which is a great affair, even among the little farmers in Upper Georgia, where, ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... merchant princes. These suffering ones now would be glad to have the crumbs that once fell from their fathers' table. That worn-out, broken shoe that she wears is the lineal descendant of the twelve-dollar gaiters in which her mother walked; and that torn and faded calico had ancestry of magnificent brocade that swept Broadway clean without any expense to the street commissioners. Though you live in an elegant residence and fare sumptuously every day, let your daughters ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... a little girl I played 'Andy-over' with a ball, in the moonlight. Later I went to parties and dances. Calico, chambric and gingham were the materials which our ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... more contented with her brown calico gown and blue-checked pinafore; envy changed to compassion; and if she had dared she would have gone ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... visits home Edith had seen her former lover driving along the road. The sister who had married the blacksmith said that he was stingy, that his wife had nothing to wear but a cheap calico dress and that on Saturday he drove off to town alone, leaving her to milk the cows and feed the pigs and horses. Once he encountered Edith on the road and tried to get her into the wagon to ride with him. Although ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... day, and affording a pleasant harbor for tribes of flies and predatory bands of spiders. Even the looking-glass, a miserably cheap construction which distorted every face whose owner had the hardihood to look into it, stood upon a draperied altar of starched muslin and pink glazed calico, and was adorned with frills of lace and ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... further and they came to what Betty always called a "calico" cottage, which is to say, a cottage made of scrim, and white-washed. Windows belonged to it, and a door, and a garden ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... and women were all colored people and, like the race the world over, were most fantastically and gaily clothed. The women wore bright-hued calico dresses, and brighter bandana handkerchiefs on their heads. The men wore flaming neckties, gay shirts, and, in some cases, tall white or ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... the luncheon hamper and the tea basket, and while the girls unpacked the food, Phoebe stood shyly by and watched the proceedings. With a heightened color she glanced from Billie's and Elinor's neat skirts and pongee blouses to her own faded calico dress. She spread out her brown fingers stained with berry juice, and looked at them ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... and sitting by him was Mrs. Fewkes in a faded calico dress, her shoulders wrapped in what was left of a shawl. Fewkes was letting old Tom take his own way, which he did by rushing with all vengeance through every bad spot and then stopping to rest as soon as he reached a good bit of road. The ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... parties were not such elegant affairs, though sometimes they were even more fun, like the Fergusons' calico ball, where I wore my grandmother's gingham, and prunella shoes; or the party the Sumner Light Guards gave, which was the prettiest of all on account of the young men's uniforms, and the way we sat around the little refreshment tables between dances with our ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... immediately, and sent Mary a piece of pretty calico for the outside. The last-maker made a last for her, and over this Mary sewed the calico vamps tight. Her brother advised her to try platted packthread instead of hemp for the soles; and she found that this looked more neat than the hemp soles, and was likely to last longer. ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... Nankin, we had first of all the honour to ride with the master of the house about two miles; the state he rode in was a perfect Don Quixotism, being a mixture of pomp and poverty. His habit was very proper for a merry-andrew, being a dirty calico, with hanging sleeves, tassels, and cuts and slashes almost on every side: it covered a taffety vest, so greasy as to testify that his honour must be a most exquisite sloven. His horse was a poor, starved, hobbling creature, and two slaves followed him ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... was 'bout right. Feller cain't possibly keep busy all th' love in his system, workin' it off on nothing but a pet hoss or gun; thar's allus a hell of a lot you didn't know you had comes oozin' out when a proper piece o' calico lets ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... experienced in such matters, take with you an experienced friend. Cheap goods generally prove the dearest in the end. The following rules may assist you in this respect, if under the necessity of relying upon your own judgment. Be careful, in purchasing articles, such as linen, calico, &c., for a specific purpose, to have it the proper width. A great deal of waste may be incurred, by ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... followed by MRS. GABBLE, who wears a calico dress, has her sleeves rolled up, her apron thrown over her head, and has altogether the appearance of having just left ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... I took the skinniest rack-a-bones in the tribe. The old hag! She was too lazy to earn her salt, and was the biggest fool that ever wore calico." ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... as they row home at the close of day. The pathos in the woman's voice was so exquisite, its notes so true, that Madge's blue eyes filled with tears. None of the four friends stirred until the song was over, and the girl in her faded calico dress and bare feet had disappeared into ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... day she augmented her store, until she had two kittens, one little white pig with a curly tail, half a dozen soft piepies, one kid, and many inanimate articles, such as broken bottles, dishes, looking-glass and gay bits of calico. When the little thing became sleepy she would toddle through the long grass to a corner, whence the river could be heard fretting against its banks, and lie there: she said the water sang to her. Finding that this was her favorite spot, the old nurse ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... cotton or calico stimulate the skin too much by the points of the fibres, though less than flannel; whence cotton handkerchiefs make the nose sore by frequent use. The fibres of cotton are, I suppose, ten times shorter than ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... camped to watch for pack trains. About ten o'clock next morning four drivers, mounted, came past our camp with a pack-mule train. As soon as they saw us they rode for their lives, leaving us the booty. This was a long train, and packed with blankets, calico, saddles, tinware, and loaf sugar. We hurried home as fast as we could with these provisions, and on our return while passing through a canon in the Santa Catilina range of mountains in Arizona, met a white man driving a mule ...
— Geronimo's Story of His Life • Geronimo
... at first sad and lonely, but soon found plenty of consolation in his new home. The name of his adopted father was "Keeps-the-Spotted-Ponies." He was known to have an unusual number of the pretty calico ponies; indeed, he had a passion for accumulating property in the shape of ponies, painted tents, decorated saddles and all sorts of finery. He had lost his only son; but the little pale-face became the adopted ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... she compromised matters by sitting down on the deck. Then she placed the small bundle beside her, and hurriedly took the rag-doll from her pocket, into which it was stuffed head down, pulled its calico skirt from over its head, propped it up against the coaming of the door, and told it not ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... but something. When he got there, he was surprised to find a boy examining his trap. It was not an agreeable surprise, for the boy was Jack Midnight; the very last person in the world with whom he desired to have any dealings. It was the same Jack who dishonestly made way with Charley's calico rooster. Bertie was angry. Without stopping to inquire into the circumstances, as he would have done if it had been any other boy, he at once jumped to a wrong conclusion. He thought that Jack was plotting mischief, and ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May
... Having no fine thin canvas to search the meal through, I could not tell what to do. What linen I had was reduced to rags: I had goat's hair, enough, but neither tools to work it, nor did I know how to spin it: At length I remembered I had some neckcloths of calico or muslin of the sailors, which I had brought out of the ship, and with these I made three small sieves proper ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... don't it, John?" said Mrs. Sedley to her husband; and that night in a conversation which took place in a front room in the second floor, in a sort of tent, hung round with chintz of a rich and fantastic India pattern, and double with calico of a tender rose-colour; in the interior of which species of marquee was a featherbed, on which were two pillows, on which were two round red faces, one in a laced nightcap, and one in a simple cotton one, ending in a tassel—in a CURTAIN LECTURE, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... also numbers of nice young men, who, being the burning and shining lights of fashionable society (after their day's work behind the counter is ended), come to be bored by the old comedy, with a heroism which proves how immeasurably superior to the influences of tape and calico are their youthful souls. By the by, it is one of the unavoidable desagrements of New York society that the wearer of the elegant dress is often conscious that her partner in the waltz knows precisely how many yards of material compose her skirt, and exactly ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... conducted by our friend Bill Peppel, at whose house we passed the night, and whom I understood to be the King's most confidential minister. His Majesty received us in a very easy friendly manner, and in what he perhaps considered a fine dress, consisting of a neat striped fine calico shirt, a pair of white trowsers, and a silk cap with a long tassel. We talked on a variety of subjects, selecting those which we supposed were interesting to him, such as the regular trade in palm-oil, and the illicit one in slaves, but our conversation principally ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... the arm; bang! tumbles out the flat roll and turns half a dozen somersets, as if for the fun of the thing; the six yards of calico hurry over the measuring nails, hunching their backs up, like six cankerworms; out jump the scissors; snip, clip, rip; the stuff is wisped up, brown—papered, tied, labelled, delivered, and the man is himself again, like a child ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Hartog, she nevertheless exerted an influence over the captain which I could see he found it impossible to resist. Donna Isabel had once more resumed her feminine attire, having stitched together for herself a wardrobe from the ship's stores of cloth and calico, and Hartog begged from me three of the rubies which I had found in the Valley of Serpents, which he presented to her, and which she wore sewn on to a ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... however, was an uninvited guest, for just as Bab and Betty sat down on the porch steps, in their stiff pink calico frocks and white ruffled aprons, to repose a moment before the party came in, a rustling was heard among the lilacs and out stepped Alfred Tennyson Barlow, looking like a small Robin Hood, in a green blouse with a silver buckle on his broad belt, a feather in his little ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... and the City once more showed its patriotism by subscribing L10,000; the Bank gave L200,000. A platform was erected near the Royal Exchange for the receipt of contributions. Among others, a wealthy calico printer, Robert Peel, father of the statesman, felt the call of duty to give L10,000. He went back to Bury (Lancashire) in some anxiety to inform his partner, Yates, of this unbusinesslike conduct, whereupon the latter remarked, "You might as well have made it L20,000 while ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... temperament! His "boughten" sack coat, fitting him all over, similar to a wet shirt on a broom-handle, was pouched out at the pockets with any quantity of numerous articles, in the way of books and boots, pamphlets and perfumery, knick-knacks and gim-cracks, calico, candy, &c. His vest was short, but that deficiency was made up in superfluity of dickey, and a profusion of sorrel whiskers. Having got into the store, he very leisurely walked around, viewing the hardware, separately and minutely, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... woman's figure. Probably she was asleep: but she might be ill or injured. It was a lonely spot, so it occurred to him that it was proper for him to investigate. Accordingly, he stepped to her side and bent over her. From her calico dress, which was her only covering, she evidently belonged to the laboring class. She was a large, coarse-looking woman, and was lying, in what appeared to Gorham to be drunken slumber, on her bonnet, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... "Take mine," cries Wilson; and cries Stokes, "Take mine." A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties, Where Spitalfields with real India vies. Like Iris' bow, down darts the painted clew, Starred, striped, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue, Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new. George Green below, with palpitating hand Loops the last 'kerchief to the beaver's band— Up soars the prize! The youth, with joy unfeigned, Regained the felt, and felt the prize regained; While ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and may be brought hither from Cochin in great abundance if the Portugals would be quiet men. It is about two yards broad or better and very strong cloth, and is called cachade Comoree. It would certainly sell well in England for sheeting." Here we see the genesis of the calico trade. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... to dress in silk, Pauline, instead of calico. I wish you could,' and Polly's eyes rested on her with a world of love ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... the iron ore as lies under the sand, but there it is, and when wanted it can be worked. I like a man to show his wust side forefront. There's many a man's character is like his wesket, red plush and flowers in front and calico in rags behind hid ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... shelf and laugh as I saw her stand by the half hour before the glass, giving an extra twist to her curl and an additional dash of white powder on her hair—now fretted because the powder was too thick, now fretted because it was too thin? She was as proud in cambric and calico and nankeen as Harriet is to-day in white tulle and organdy. I remember how careful she was when she ran me along the edges of the new dress. With me she clipped and notched and gored and trimmed, and day and night I went click! click! click! and it seemed as if she would ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... 6 coils of clothes line. 3 coils of wallaby line (like window-blind cord) for nose lines. 5 hanks of twine. 2 long iron needles for saddle mending (also used as cleaning-rod for guns). 2 iron packers for arranging stuffing of saddle. Spare canvas. Spare calico. Spare collar-check. Spare leather, for hobbles and neck-straps. Spare buckles for same. Spare bells. Spare hobble-chains. 6 lbs. of sulphur. 2 gallons kerosene, to check vermin in camels. 2 gallons tar and oil, for mange in camels. 2 galvanised-iron water ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... end of the town. It is one room inside, but has, I believe, a separate cooking shed. In the verandah in front is placed a table, an ivory bundle chair and a gourd of water, and I am also treated to a calico tablecloth, and most thoughtfully screened off from the public gaze with more calico so that I can have my tea in privacy. After this meal, to my surprise Ndaka turns up. Certainly he is one of the very ugliest men—black or white—I have ever seen, and I fancy one of the best. He is ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... trouble of taking the cargo ashore. The officers were dressed in the costume which we found prevailed through the country,— broad-brimmed hat, usually of a black or dark brown color, with a gilt or figured band round the crown, and lined under the rim with silk; a short jacket of silk, or figured calico (the European skirted body-coat is never worn); the shirt open in the neck; rich waistcoat, if any; pantaloons open at the sides below the knee, laced with gilt, usually of velveteen or broadcloth; or else short breeches and white stockings. They wear the deer-skin shoe, which is of a dark brown ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the rags could no longer be pierced. One seized my bonnet, with which he decked himself, and ran in the streets. Indeed, all who found such, rushed frantically around town, by way of frolicking, with the things on their heads. They say no frenzy could surpass it. Another snatched one of my calico dresses, and a pair of vases that mother had when she was married, and was about to decamp when a Mrs. Jones jerked them away, and carried them to her boarding-house, and returned them to mother the other day. Blessed be Heaven! ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... poorer sort (white calico with red spots, costumes), but amongst them there was a girl in a black dress sewn over with gold half moons, very high in the neck and very short in the skirt. Most of the ordinary clients of the cafe didn't even look up from their games or papers. I, being alone ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... chapel, which is small, and by no means striking, into which I was led, was the ancient refectory, where there were some hundreds of criminals, condemned for several years to close imprisonment, or the galleys, weaving calico. I never in my life saw ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... old—older almost than any city in the United States, or at least older than a great many of our considerable cities. But you would think this was at the beginning. There are the natives, and there are the dogs, just as they were when Sir Alexander came through. Perhaps they didn't have so much calico then. Of course they didn't have repeating-rifles then, and surely not steel traps. But they talked the same language, and in my opinion they had about as much religion then ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... satin draperies, the high, transparent cap, the crisp fichu crossed over the breast, which set off to advantage the charming little plump figure with its rounded lines—could fail to recognise the same characteristics which sparkled about the wearer of the pink calico domino in which she frolicked incognito 'till she was tired' at a ball given by the Duke of Wellington in 1814, or of the eight blue feathers which crowned the waving tresses of her flaxen ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... house-servants were all called in to family worship, as usual; and when that had been attended to, Elsie uncovered a large basket which stood on a side-table, and with a face beaming with delight, distributed the Christmas gifts—a nice new calico dress, or a bright-colored hand-kerchief to each, accompanied by a ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... to the mast," she cried, and after that it was all a joke. The home-made couch, with the calico cushions and the cowhide spread, was a matter for mirth. She sat down upon it to try it, and was informed that chicken wire makes a fine spring. The rickety table, with tobacco, magazines, and books placed upon it in orderly piles, was something to smile ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... "should die to be moped up in that nutshell of a house." With a little sigh as she foresaw the opposition she should probably meet with from Guy, Maddy went on with her toilet, which was soon completed, as it did not take long to arrange the dark calico dress and plain linen collar which she wore. She was not as fresh-looking as usual that morning, for excitement and fatigue had lent a paleness to her cheek, and a languor to her whole appearance, but Flora, who glanced anxiously after her as she went out, muttered to herself, "She was never more ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... roots of her hair, for what she carried in her heart was too precious to tell, but she meant to be a poet. Even then, in the pocket of her calico dress lay a little book and a stubbed lead pencil, and in the book was already the beginning of her great epic. Her father had said the epic was a thing of the past, that in the future none would be written, for that it was a form of expressions that belonged to the ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the Mevrouw Kink's square of glazed yellow calico, roller, cord, and all, at the impatient wrench of the big, heavy hand.... The window was blocked with heavy bodies, topped by brown, white, or yellow faces; the street was a sea of them, all staring with greedy, curious eyes at the little Englishwoman who was a prisoner, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... not!" cried Mrs. Tree, sitting bolt upright. "You never told me a word, Willy Jaquith. What Providence was thinking of when it made this generation, passes me to conceive. If I couldn't make a better one out of fish-glue and calico, I'd give up. Bah! ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... retinue were "clad in the Moorish habite, cassocks of colored cloth or silk, with buttons and loopes; over this an ALHAGA or white woolen mantle, so large as to wrap both head and body; a shash or small turban; naked legg'd and armed, but with leather socks like the Turks; rich scymeters, and large calico-sleeved shirts. The ambassador had a string of pearls oddly woven in the turban. Their presents were lions and estridges (ostriches.) But the concourse and tumult of the people was intolerable, so as the officers could keep no order."] and his men of strange faces, in strange ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... in calico jackets to look like cloth, some in brown holland petticoat-trousers and big boots, all with very large buckles. Last Super rolls on a cask, and pretends to keep it. Other Supers apply their mugs to the bunghole and drink, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... in reply,—"Touching the two yards of calico, or young Davy's London Granny?" For she had more than one ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... a cab and drove to the Somerset Club for breakfast. Even the fashionable quarters had the air of untidy domesticity to which no excess of heat ever degrades the European cities. Care-takers in calico lounged on the door-steps of the wealthy, and the Common looked like a pleasure-ground on the morrow of a Masonic picnic. If Archer had tried to imagine Ellen Olenska in improbable scenes he could not have called up ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... doorway of the Davis cabin when I approached to pay my respects. She was wearing a linsey petticoat and a short gown for an overskirt. Her mass of wonderful hair was partly confined by a calico cap, and on her feet were my gift moccasins. She believed she was conforming to the frontier standard of dress, but she was as much out of place as a butterfly at a bear-baiting. Before I could speak she was advancing toward me, her hands on her hips, her head tilted back, ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... you," cried Lanigan, springing to his feet, and throwing the end of his cigar out of the window; "but I say, Calthy, have you any of that fire-blaze calico with the rocket sparks that's been on hand ever since ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... a strong one-horse dray which we loaded with about 10 cwt. of provisions, in the form of flour, tea, sugar, salt, ship biscuits, a small quantity of spirits for medicinal use and tobacco. Also two small calico tents, some cooking utensils and blankets, with bush tools, ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... that had lost all claims to pattern had become a soft blur, the result of age and alkali. However, it was one of the proudest possessions of the Bar T outfit and showed that old Beef Bissell knew what the right thing was. A calico shroud hid a large, erect object against the wall farthest away from the windows; an object that was the last word in luxury and reckless expense—a piano. The walls were of boards whitewashed, and the ceiling was just ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... about? Heman got his start tradin' over in the South Seas. Sellin' the Kanakas glass beads and calico for pearls and copra—two cupfuls of pearls for every bead. Anyhow, that's the ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... an identifying eye, at first, as if they perceived that she was a new girl, but as if new girls were such an old story that they could not linger long over one girl of the kind. Certain of the young ladies after they went up stairs came down in long, dismal calico aprons that covered them to the throat, and with an air of being so much absorbed in their work that they did not know what they had on. They looked at Cornelia again, those who had seen her before, and those who had not, made up for it by looking at her twice, and Cornelia began to wonder if ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... chance even to sit in the game. We 'll get you, and get you early, see if we don't. There are other things besides money in this world, and you 've got your price, just as well as every other man. Perhaps it's silk, perhaps it's calico; but you bet it's something, for you 're no angel. By God, I believe I could ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... struck it, Luke. He knows about enough to be clerk in a country store—and I suppose he'll fetch up there some day. You know what that means—selling sugar, and tea, and dried apples to old ladies, and occasionally measuring off a yard of calico, or selling a spool of cotton. If I couldn't do better than that I'd hire out as a ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... Renfrewshire, Scotland, situated on the Levern, 7-1/2 m. S.W. of Glasgow by the Glasgow & South-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 9855. Founded in 1773, it has gradually absorbed the villages of Arthurlie, Dovecothall and Grahamston, and become a thriving town. The chief industries include bleaching, calico-printing, cotton-spinning, weaving, iron and brass founding, engineering and the manufacture of sanitary appliances. Neilston (pop. 2668), about 2 m. S.W., has bleachfields and print-works, and 2 m. N. by E. lie Hurlet, where are important manufactures ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... of Mrs. Bishop through the window. She was hurriedly shedding a large calico apron, and met us as we were on the steps of the veranda. A woman trained in the conventionalities of society could not have conducted herself better than did this American wife of an American farmer, and I was proud of her as if she had been my own mother. She had ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... example; but as we were not qualified by years of arduously won sanctity to stand stark naked in the presence he conceded us a clout apiece torn from a filthy length of calico that some one had tossed in a corner. And he tore another piece of filthy red cotton cloth in halves, and divided it between us to twist around our heads. ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... lines. And it seemed to settle the fact that it was she who had done the signaling! But would not this also make her cognizant of the taking of the dispatch-box? He reflected, however, that the room was apparently occupied by the mulatto woman—he remembered the calico dresses and turban on the bed—and it was possible that Miss Faulkner had only visited it for the purpose of signaling to her lover. Although this circumstance did not tend to make his mind easier, it was, however, presently diverted by a new arrival ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... were at first called by the British "regulars," "a rabble in calico petticoats," as a term of contempt. Their uniform consisted of tow linen or homespun hunting shirts, buckskin breeches, leggings and moccasins. They wore round felt hats, looped on one side and ornamented with a buck tail. They carried long ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... 8).—To make a good hem, your stuff must be cut in the line of the thread. Highly dressed stuffs, such as linen and calico; should be rubbed in the hand, to soften them, before the hem is laid. Your first turning should not be more than 2 m/m. wide; turn down the whole length of your hem, and then make the second ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... each other as possible. Every evening found Mr. Whitelaw a punctual visitor in the snug panelled parlour, and at such times the bailiff insisted upon his daughter's presence; she was obliged to sit there night after night, stitching monotonously at some unknown calico garment—which might well from the state of mind of the worker have been her winding-sheet; or darning one of an inexhaustible basket of woollen stockings belonging to her father. It was her irksome duty to ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... a local commoner, stood by the hedge of one of the vegetable gardens. What had been red calico once made up his torn shirt; but his face!—it was like that of an angel in a tawny mask covered with spots of dirt and dust. Wings are for light feet, but what can the earth do? Only dust and clay cling to ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... man looked at these details with an expression of pleasure that seemed to have something rather sad in it; his eyes roved from the kitchen to the roof, with a motion that showed a deliberate purpose. The rosy glow of the rising sun fell on a calico curtain at one of the garret windows, the others being without that luxury. As he caught sight of it the young fellow's face brightened gaily. He stepped back a little way, leaned against a linden, and sang, in the drawling tone peculiar to the west of France, the following Breton ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... I were a salesman," continued Roswell; "but I don't like being an errand boy. I'd just as lives go to the post-office for letters, or to the bank with money, but, as for carrying big bundles of calico under my arm, I don't like it. I was walking on Madison Avenue the other day with a ten-pound bundle, when the boot-black came up, dressed handsomely, with a gold watch and chain, and exulted over me for carrying ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Stevens, doing what she could, bandaging hurts till the bandages gave out. She tore into strips what cloth there was in the little meagre house—her sheets, her towels, her tablecloths, her poor wardrobe. When all was gone she tore her calico dress. When she saw from the open door a man who could not drag himself that far, she went and helped him, with as little reck as may be conceived of ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the mother. "That wicked Harriet! Here Amelia, I have a morsel of crust here. I saved it yesterday for baby; moisten it in water, and tie it up in this piece of calico: he will suck it; it will keep him quiet; I can bear anything but ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... I put a piece of whalebone in my skirt, and me calico gown looks as big as the great ladies. But then ye says true, I hasn't but two gowns to me back, two shoes, to me feet, and one bonnet to me head, barring the old hood you ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... ponies is named Calico, because he is marked so queerly. His hair grows in such funny little streaks and stripes and patches that he looks as if he had been painted that way on purpose. He was a clown pony in a circus one ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... like a lamb in the fold,"—and she had answered that she "couldn't be sleepy, athout auntie would hurry quick to come in with a drink of water," there was a strange arrival. Nathaniel, the waiting man, ushered into the parlor a droll little old woman, dressed in a short calico gown, with gay figures over it as large as cabbages; calf-skin shoes; and a green pumpkin hood, ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... minor fruits of this session were two bills introduced by Lord Ashley; one for the regulation of juvenile labour in calico-print works, and the other to provide for the better care of lunatics. The former of these bills was a supplement to Lord Ashley's exertions in former sessions, for the protection of persons employed in factories. In introducing the latter, Lord Ashley startled the house by some distressing statements ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... housekeeping in turn. The very first morning I was admitted behind the scenes. "If you want anything before breakfast," said one of the young ladies, as the evening circle was breaking up, "come down into the butler's room and get it." And to the butler's room I went; and there, in a calico fitted as neatly as the rich silk of the evening before, with no papers in her hair, with nothing but a richer glow to distinguish the morning from the evening face, with laughing eyes and busy hands, issuing orders and inspecting dishes, stood the very girl with whom I was to begin ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... most of the coal is in the Northern parts of England, almost all of these works were set up in them, and people flocked to get work there, so that the towns began to grow very large. Manchester was one, with Liverpool as the sea-port from which to send its calico and get its cotton. Sheffield and Birmingham grew famous for works in iron and steel, and so on; and all this tended to make the manufacturers as rich and great as the old lords and squires, who had held most of the power in England ever since, at ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... slave, the European trader offered his wares divided into ten portions, each portion being regarded as a "piece," without counting the parts which made it up. Thus, ten coarse blankets made one piece, a musket one piece, a keg of powder weighing ten pounds was one, a piece of East-India blue calico four pieces, ten copper kettles one piece, one piece of chintz two pieces, which made the ten for which the slave was exchangeable: and at length he became commercially known as a "piece of India." The bounty of thirteen livres was computed in France upon the wholesale value of the trinkets ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the soiled calico was no longer shaken by convulsive sobs. Lucy turned toward the patient watcher on the woodpile, and in spite of her swollen lids and blood-shot eyes, Peggy knew it was the old Lucy looking up at her. "Well?" she demanded cheerfully. ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... an auction block before the door of the hotel and auction her off to the highest bidder, hadn't we?" suggested Helen, who had been rummaging in her bag. "Here, Bella! If you want a shirt-waist to take the place of that calico blouse you have on, here is one. One of mine. And I guarantee it will fit you better than Heavy's did. She wears ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... hard-featured woman, in a clean cotton gown, and clean brown apron, whose face proclaimed that she lived much in the open air. Perhaps she lived so much in it as to disdain bonnets, for she wore none—a red cotton handkerchief, fellow to the one on Charley's head, being pinned over her white calico cap. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... men were in the parade. They were dressed exactly alike in the tight blue calico trousers and kimono of jacket length which the Japanese farmer ordinarily wears. Each man had the usual obi (waist scarf) tied round his kimono, and in the obi was thrust the small cotton towel which Japanese carry with them ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... yore styled "bagman," to the concern. Somewhere about 1825 or 1826, we find him transplanted to Manchester, in partnership with two other persons of the same craft and trading position, where they enjoyed the patronage of the late Mr Richard Fort, an extensive calico-printer, at, and in his latter years member for, the borough of Clitheroe in the north of Lancashire. He leased to them one of his print-works near Chorley, and such, it is understood, was the success of the trio, that when, after a partnership ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... hadn't gone with father, so I could have seen mother, Sally, Candace, and Laddie when first they met the new teacher. The shock showed yet! Miss Amelia had taken off her smothery woollen dress and put on a black calico, but it wasn't any more cheerful. She didn't know what to do, and you could see plainly that no one knew what to do with her, so they united in sending me to show her the place. I asked her what she would like most to see, and she said everything ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... make out the figures in the wagon. There were two. One was a portly and plainly clad old countryman, with a prominent nose, a double chin, and fat hands decorated with pinchbeck rings. Beside him sat an old woman, as fat as himself, wearing a faded calico gown, a "coal-scuttle" bonnet, and a ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... everywhere ribbons fluttered and beads jingled, and the men had spurs to their high boots which gave a pleasing clinking when they clapped their heels together. Overhead, hung to the ceiling, were festoons of bright pink paper roses and still brighter green glazed calico leaves; the tables were spread with linen cloths, and literally threatened to break down under the weight of pewter dishes filled with delicacies of every sort and kind—home-killed meat and home-made sausages, home-made bread and home-grown wine. The Magyar peasant ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... largest amount I could earn at teaching was six dollars a week, and our school year included only two terms of thirteen weeks each. It was an incessant struggle to keep our land, to pay our taxes, and to live. Calico was selling at fifty cents a yard. Coffee was one dollar a pound. There were no men left to grind our corn, to get in our crops, or to care for our live stock; and all around us we saw our struggle reflected in the lives of ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... the opening beheld a band of men moving in single file along the track they had just left. They were most of them nearly naked, with only short calico breeches which did not quite reach to their knees, but all had muskets on their shoulders and cross-belts on their dark bodies, one of which belts sustained apparently a cartridge-box, the other a bayonet. Their own thick hair was all the cap they wore, excepting two or three men ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... years in chains. The travellers took compassion on him, and released him from bondage. His chains were struck off with a hammer, and, once on his feet, a freedman, he seemed scarcely to believe the fact; when, however, attired in a clean calico shirt, he strutted about and soon came to make his new master his best bow. On his body were numerous spear-wounds. He had been captured by the Watuta, who had cut off several of his toes. This man never deserted them during the journey, accompanying them to Cairo, having ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... changed instantly. A slow smile, and then laughter—the doting laughter of the child-lover, to whom even the naughtiest phases are dear—replaced it. And, indeed, Hope Carolina did seem a sweet and comical figure in her low-necked, short-sleeved calico, with her brass toes hitched in the paling fence somehow, and her cropped head rising barely above it. Excitement, too, had lent a warmer pink to her apple cheeks, and her blue eyes were like deep and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... made, they made them out of poplar wood and gave us straw ticks to sleep on. I got two calico dresses a year and these were my Sunday dresses and I was only allowed to wear them on week days after they were almost worn out. Our shoes were made right on ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... appliances may all be carried on the shoulders, swinging from a bamboo pole. The mother in Fig. 63 was quite likely thus supporting her family and the children are seen at lunch, dressed in the blue and white calico prints so generally worn by the young. The printing of this calico by the very ancient, simple yet effective method we witnessed in the farm village along the canal seen in Fig. 10. This art, as with so many ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... his soliloquy as he glanced ahead and noticed the trim figure of Medaine Robinette swinging along the road, old Lost Wing, as usual, trailing in her rear, astride a calico pony and leading the saddle horse which she evidently had become tired of riding. A small switch was in one hand, and she flipped it at the new leaves of the aspens and the broad-leafed mullens beside the road. As yet, she had not seen him, and Barry hurried toward her, ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... was dressed? In a "petticoat and loose gown." The loose gown was a calico jacket that hung about the waist in gathers, and the petticoat was a moreen skirt that came down almost to the ankles. Then her feet—I must confess they were bare. Nearly all the little children in Perseverance went barefooted ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... shooting-jacket; but after that comes a long flowing skirt, which you certainly would not see on any man or boy at home. The Cingalese men bestow a good deal of attention on this skirt. Poorer people have it made in white or blue calico, but others use very handsome India stuffs, which must have cost ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... useless. A temperate meal was partaken of, and a hymn sung by the undaunted little company; and pipes and tobacco having been plentifully placed in the hut, the sides of which were decorated with pieces of gay colored calico, and a few knives and trinkets, as pretended gifts to the Chiefs, nothing remained but to await the arrival ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... pinto or calico horse in his string the horse-trader drifted toward the distant town of Concho, accompanied by a lazy cloud of dust, a slat-ribbed dog, and a knock-kneed foal that insisted on getting in the way of the wagon team. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... but his face betrayed neither fear nor any other emotion. He was standing with his back to the doorway of his bedroom. A thick curtain of navy blue calico concealed the interior of this room from the view of any one in the living room, and Larmer had seen no one but ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke
... had its peculiar charm, and her brilliant skin and hair so dazzled the masculine beholder that he took note of no small defects; but Waitstill was beautiful; beautiful even in her working dress of purple calico. Her single braid of hair, the Foxwell hair, that in her was bronze and in Patty pale auburn, was wound once around her fine head and made to stand a little as it went across the front. It was a simple, easy, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... upon Russia leather; an oval-shaped medallion is cut out in the centre; a piece of blue silk is gummed on under the leather so as to show within the oval; both leather and silk are then lined with calico and stretched upon a small embroidery frame. The front and back of the purse are made all of one piece, the centre of which is the bottom; after the embroidery is completed a piece of leather is added on each side to give the necessary fullness. Four flowrets ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... brocades which trail along the Prado, hiding pertinaciously the exquisitely small feet of the wearers, would be confined in Paris to the elegantes who promenade the Bois de Boulogne or the Champs-Elysees in carriages. Here the wife and the daughter of the poorest shopkeeper disdain chintz and calico; nothing short of silk or velvet is considered decorous except within doors. But, having made this confession, I must add that the general effect is charming, and as for beauty, both of face and figure, especially ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... yer yaller hair all a-blowsin' at loose eends, stiddier bein' plaited up stiff an' tight an' personable, an' yer face burned pink in the sun, stiddier like yer skin ginerally looks, fine an' white ez a pan o' fraish milk, an' the flabby, slinksy skirt o' that yaller calico dress 'thout no starch in it, a-flappin' an' whirlin' in the wind—shucks! I dun'no' whut the man could hev thought o' you-uns, ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... was darkening, with only a single patch of orange-coloured sunlight upon the bare floor. Back and forth went the little body. He could see the bare feet with the stubby toes, escaping as by miracle the ever-threatening rocker. There was a small square of blue-calico-covered back, two little pigtails of hair tightly tied with scraps of baby-blue ribbon, and—the voice. It was as fine and high as wind blowing across a hair and with a curious, ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... siege in 1689. Of his invention the French Academy of Sciences declared that by its means he had "done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man." James Blair (1804-84), born in Perth, Scotland, was the inventor of the roller for printing calico; and Robert M. Dalzell (1793-1873) was inventor of the "elevator system" in handling and storing grain. Samuel Colt (1814-62), inventor of the Colt revolver, and founder of the great arms factory at Hartford, Conn., was of Scots ancestry on both sides. He was also the first ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... was left, with no one to care for it, to grow up at the poorhouse with the other wretched orphan children, who wore calico dresses all alike and had little to eat ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... Phonograph, sternly, addressing the Marquis. "Air you willing to patch up the damage you've did this ere slab-sided but trustin' bunch o' calico by single-footin' easy to the altar, or will we have to rope ye, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... still, their costumes, for the most part, comprising stamped cotton and white dimity gowns, coarse shift (osnaburg), country cloth, and black quilted petticoats. In the backwoods and the primitive German settlements the women all wore the short gowns and petticoats, also tight-fitting calico caps. In summer, when employed in the fields, they wore only a linen shift and a petticoat of home-made linsey. All their clothing, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... ther ol' sky scout was 'bout right. Feller cain't possibly keep busy all th' love in his system, workin' it off on nothing but a pet hoss or gun; thar's allus a hell of a lot you didn't know you had comes oozin' out when a proper piece o' calico lets you next." ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... people of the poorer sort (white calico with red spots, costumes), but amongst them there was a girl in a black dress sewn over with gold half moons, very high in the neck and very short in the skirt. Most of the ordinary clients of the cafe didn't even look up from their ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... then rinsing, very much in the manner of Christians. But it was impossible not to look at the women. The female followers of the Prophet had, as they always have, some pretence of a veil for their face. In the present instance, they held in their teeth a dirty blue calico rag, which passed over their heads, acting also as a shawl. By this contrivance, intended only to last while the Christians were there, they concealed one side of the face and the chin. No one could behold them without wishing that the eclipse had been total. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... ashore. The officers were dressed in the costume which we found prevailed through the country,— broad-brimmed hat, usually of a black or dark brown color, with a gilt or figured band round the crown, and lined under the rim with silk; a short jacket of silk, or figured calico (the European skirted body-coat is never worn); the shirt open in the neck; rich waistcoat, if any; pantaloons open at the sides below the knee, laced with gilt, usually of velveteen or broadcloth; or else short breeches and white stockings. They wear the deer-skin shoe, which is of a dark brown ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the second mate. That is he devouring those huge slices of cold beef with so much gusto, while Langley mutters, "Will he never have done!" He with the blue jacket, bedizzened so plentifully with small pearl buttons, the calico shirt, and fancifully-knotted black silk cravat ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... spinning wool on the big wheel, dressed in her light calico short-gown and brown quilted petticoat; her arms were bare, and her hair was gathered away from her flushed cheeks and knotted behind her ears. The roof sloped down on one side, and the light came from a long low window under ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... where she went in with her aunt—and a draper's is not usually counted an interesting kind of shop by children—she was much entertained by watching and listening to the conversation of the farmers' wives and others over their purchases. The way they tugged at merino, and rubbed calico between their fingers to see that there was not too much 'dressing' in it, made her feel as if it would be very difficult indeed to be sure of a 'genuine article,' as the shopman called ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... a rusty black hood, a faded red shawl, and an old calico dress. Her general look was that of poverty. She turned as she heard the sound of steps, and, turning, chanced to face Aunt Stanshy. Thereupon the two women both swung round and looked away, like neighboring vanes struck by opposite currents of wind. Aunt Stanshy ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... though I hadn't yet found my girl, I knew she was somewhere in the valley waiting for me; and I felt somehow, when the grasshoppers ate up every thing, as if I had been jilted. Actually, it pierces me with a pang now to think of those useless pegs on which so often my imagination hung a pink calico dress ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... handed it to her, and she hugged it to her in an ecstasy of delight. Then she held it off and looked at it, and hugged again, and for very joy she wept. It was only a poor little rag doll with face and hair grotesquely painted upon the cloth, and dressed in printed calico—but it was a doll—a real one—the first that Emily had ever owned. It had been the dream of her life that some day she might have one, and now the dream was a blessed reality. Her happiness was quite beyond expression as she lay there on her ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... Indian peasant already, in the case of wheat, undersells the English farmer, and it seems merely a question of time as to when the Indian operative will undersell his Lancashire rival, and when perhaps calico will come to England, as it once did, from Calicut. And no doubt, some such thoughts were passing through Cobden's mind when he once said, "What ugly ruins our mills will make." We are, however, a considerable way from such remains as the reader ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... all over, the children's mother (Donee felt as if she was her mother too) called her in, and took out of that same cupboard a roll of the loveliest red calico. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... Men are nice creeters, but you don't want to see too meny of 'em to once, likeways with wimmen. Josiah looked to me at that moment some like a calico dress that you have picked out of a dense quantity of patterns of calico at a store, it looks better to you when you get it away from the rest. Josiah ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... she's on to de fact dat gals is dead easy when a feller comes spielin' ghost stories and tryin' to make up, and dat's why she won't listen to no soft-soap. She says she caught yer dead to rights, huggin' a bunch o' calico in de hot-house. She side-stepped in to pull some posies and yer was squeezin' de oder gal to beat de band. She says it looked cute, all right all right, but it made her sick. She says yer better git busy, and make a sneak for ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... the walls were well chinked in the cracks, and neatly whitewashed. A home-made rag carpet covered the floor. Two beds stood foot to foot in the back part of the room, and a third in the corner by the fireplace. On the wall, over the beds, hung various articles of clothing,—a dozen calico dresses, several pairs of pantaloons, and coats, turned wrong side out. In the corner, between the window and the fireplace, stood a bureau, covered with a white muslin cloth, the borders ornamented with open-work made by drawing out the horizontal threads in narrow strips and knotting the others ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... of corduroy trousers, known to the care-free as "pants," which were held together by numerous patches of what had once been brilliantly colored calico. A pair of suspenders, torn into two separate straps, made a belt for himself and a collar for his dog. The trousers had probably been secured during a fit of absent-mindedness on his part when their former ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... and costume as a modern artist would paint them. For native coloring, there were typical specimens of northern Indians, grunting their jargon amid the babel of other tongues; and groups of squaws wandered through the irregular streets in gaudy blankets and red calico. The only civilizing element to be seen was the camp of engineers, running the survey ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... people has to be brought by sea from other places. The walls of the churches and of the best houses are neatly whitened, both within and without, and the beams, posts, and doors are all adorned with carved work. Within they are ornamented with good pictures, and rich hangings of tapestry or painted calico, brought from Spain. The houses of Payta, however, were not of this description, though their two churches were large and handsome. Close by the sea there was a small fort, armed only with muskets, to command ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... of breath, she paused, and fumbling in a large black calico pocket which hung loosely at her side, attached to her ample waist by a string, she drew out with great care a rather large, square-looking missive, and then rising from her chair with much fluttering of her black ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... experimental smiles on them. The boy was a clear brown-eyed fellow with butternut trousers up to his arm-pits, and a wool hat all out of shape. The little girl looked red-faced and precise, the color from her lips having evidently become diluted through her skin. Over a linsey petticoat she wore a calico belted apron. The belt was as broad as the length of aunt Corinne's hand, for in the course of the morning aunt Corinne furtively measured it. Although it was June weather, this little girl also wore stout shoes ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... tramp. She snaps out, "We can't feed everybody that comes along," and shuts the door in my face. Yesterday I was the centre of admiring crowds in the richest city of its size in America; to-day I am mistaken for a hungry-eyed tramp, and spurned from the door by a woman with a faded calico dress and a wrathy what - are? look in her eye. Such is life in the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... nuts, and, on a long shelf, large cakes of maple sugar and all kinds of dried herbs and sweet flag; spinning wheels, a number of small white cotton bags filled with bundles, marked in ink, "silk," "cotton," "flannel," "calico," etc., as well as ancient masculine and feminine costumes. Here we would crack the nuts, nibble the sharp edges of the maple sugar, chew some favorite herb, play ball with the bags, whirl the old spinning wheels, dress up in our ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... held to be equally inoffensive; now it is a fact that the great bulk of cotton goods are dyed with the aniline colors by the agency of these harmless chemicals. But of late years the dyers of certain goods, and the calico printers generally, have found an advantage in the use of tartar emetic, and other compounds of antimony, to fix aniline colors; besides this, some colors are fixed in calico printing by means of an arsenical alumina ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... but it was a clean room. Floor and window and cupboard-door were as clean as water could make them; and the bed, while it looked hopelessly hard and dreadful to Mrs. Roberts, was really a pattern of neatness and purity to every dweller in that attic. There was a straw tick, covered with a dark calico spread, which did duty as a sheet, and the boy who lay on it was covered by a patched quilt that had been mended, and was clean. Wonderful things these to say of such a locality! Mr. Roberts suspected it, and Dr. Everett ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... undeviating regularity, this official has his hands more than usually full. For, once a month, certain printed bills, called Mess-bills, are circulated among the crew, and whatever you may want from the Purser—be it tobacco, soap, duck, dungaree, needles, thread, knives, belts, calico, ribbon, pipes, paper, pens, hats, ink, shoes, socks, or whatever it may be—down it goes on the mess-bill, which, being the next day returned to the office of the Steward, the "slops," as they are called, are served out to the men ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... you take my advice, and get a calico suit and a sunshade. Never mind the look of the thing. You be comfortable. You've no idea of the heat on the Continent at this time of the year. English people will persist in travelling about the Continent in the same stuffy clothes that they wear at home. That's how so many of them ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... all,' said she; 'I thought as I went by you would like to hear that I have a letter from the family, and all's well. I have got a pretty little job to do for Master Willy. He is to have a set of new shirts sent out directly, made of very fine thin calico, because his own are too thick. See, here is the stuff I have ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... have struck terror to the sad-eyed aesthete, but an artist who liked to see colors burn and glow on the canvas would have been glad to paint her: a little frock of buttercup yellow calico, bare neck and arms, full of dimples, hair that put the yellow calico to shame by reason of its tinge of copper, skin of roses and milk that dared the microscope, red smiling lips, one stocking and ankle-tie kicked off and five pink toes calling for some silly woman to say "This ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... spent his time assiduously ransacking the deserted shops, and in addition to his huge bundle of bedding and his long string of straw hats he now possessed a miscellaneous assortment of plunder, in which were a bolt of calico, a pair of shoes, a collection of cooking-utensils, an umbrella, and—strangest of all—a large gilt-framed mirror. The safety of these articles seemed to concern him far more than his own. Spying ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... do no harm." Hutchinson began to chuckle. "They're talkin' o' gettin' out th' fife an' drum band an' marchin' round th' village with a calico banner with 'Vote for T. Tembarom' painted on it, to show what they ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... gave gaudy cloths or knives or, when all the knives were given away, a cutlass or a gun; and when at last the only canoes in sight were speeding toward shore like comets with tails of red flannel and purple calico, we ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... were all colored people and, like the race the world over, were most fantastically and gaily clothed. The women wore bright-hued calico dresses, and brighter bandana handkerchiefs on their heads. The men wore flaming neckties, gay shirts, and, in some cases, tall white or gray ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... Father regularly went out to work with them, and was the first to bring water, to cut wood. They all took a pride in the camp. They kept the bunk-house scrubbed, and inordinately admired the new mattresses, stuffed with fresh straw and covered with new calico, which Mother made for them. In the evenings the group about the camp-fire was not so very different from any other happy family—except that there was an unusually large proportion of bright eyes ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... the time Ruth would have chosen for a tete-a-tete with her aunt. She was longing to be alone, to think quietly over what had happened, and it was difficult to concentrate her attention on pink and yellow calico, and cut out colored royal families, and foreign birds, with a good grace. Happily Mrs. Alwynn, though always requiring attention, was quite content with the half of what she required; and, with the "Buffalo Girls" and the "Danube River" tinkling ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... care if I were a salesman," continued Roswell; "but I don't like being an errand boy. I'd just as lives go to the post-office for letters, or to the bank with money, but, as for carrying big bundles of calico under my arm, I don't like it. I was walking on Madison Avenue the other day with a ten-pound bundle, when the boot-black came up, dressed handsomely, with a gold watch and chain, and exulted over me for carrying such ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... corporation of Lowell is generally understood by Englishmen. I confess that until I made personal acquaintance with the plan, I was absolutely ignorant on the subject. I knew that Lowell was a manufacturing town at which cotton is made into calico, and at which calico is printed—as is the case at Manchester; but I conceived this was done at Lowell, as it is done at Manchester, by individual enterprise—that I or any one else could open a mill at Lowell, and that the manufacturers there were ordinary traders, as they ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... from one or other of the acquaintances whom he sought. The net result of the night's campaign was half-a-pint of 'four-half.' The front of a draper's shop in Kennington tempted him sorely; he passed it many times, eyeing the rolls of calico and flannel exposed just outside the doorway. But either courage failed him or there was no really good opportunity. Midnight found him still without means of retiring to that familiar lodging in the New Cut. At half-past twelve sleet began to fall. He discovered a ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... "Old Masters," as all the world knows, are manufactured as readily, and almost as extensively, as calico. It is not, however, so well known that "old and rare editions" of books are produced nowadays. The passion of book-collectors has given a new impulse to this business. Within a few months the beautiful editions of the classics of the Elzevirs and the Stephens have been ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... another actress, "get this woman into your dressing room and get the number five on her quick. Make her up for this part, understand? You there, Eddie, run get that calico skirt and black-satin waist off Miss St. Clair and hustle 'em over to Miss Harcourt's room, where this lady will be making up. Come on now! Move! Work quick! We can't be ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... weathers, invariably walk ten miles a day, and leap five-barred fences on horseback. Yielding to "the inexorable law of a stern necessity," I went to the Rock House, and a very pleasing girl produced a suit of oiled calico. I took off my cloak, bonnet, and dress. "Oh," she said, "you must change everything, it's so very wet." As, to save time, I kept demurring to taking off various articles of apparel, I always received the same reply, and finally abandoned myself to ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... have been in a turmoil; they have been thinking about who will be Alderman from the Fifth Ward; they have been thinking about politics, great and mighty questions have been engaging their minds, they have bought calico at five cents or six, and want to sell it for seven. Think of the intellectual strain that must have been upon that man, and when he gets home everybody else in the house must look out for his comfort. A woman who has only ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to milk her. After two hours he returned with a rueful face and a few drops of whitish fluid in the milk pail, saying that that was all he could get. On Mr. K. going out, he found, instead of our "calico" cow, a brindled one that had been dry since the spring! Our cow has gone off to the wild cattle, and we are looking very grim at Lyman, who says that he expected he should live on milk. I told him to fill up the four-gallon kettle, and an hour afterwards ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... book-muslin cap and handkerchief, so scrupulously arranged that one might have associated with her for six months without ever discovering a spot on the former or an uneven fold in the latter. Asenath, who followed, was almost as plainly attired, her dress being a dark-blue calico, while a white pasteboard sun-bonnet, with broad ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... which they manifested at the beginning of the work did not flag, but it must be confessed that toward the close of the excavations it became necessary to incite their enthusiasm by prizes, and, to them, extraordinary offers of overalls and calico. They at first objected to working in the cemeteries, regarding it as a desecration of the dead, but several of their number overcame their scruples, even handling skulls and other parts of skeletons. The Snake chief, Kopeli, however, never worked with the others, ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... of a graceful stature, and regal carriage, of a mild aspect, and low voice; his attendants were dressed in white cotton or calico, of whom some, whose age gave them a venerable appearance, seemed his counsellors, and the rest officers or nobles; his guards were not ignorant of firearms, but had not many among them, being equipped, for the most part, with bows ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... sizes, chiefly of No. 4 and No. 6. Every one, at my desire, had provided himself with two pair of strong trowsers, three strong shirts, and two pair of shoes; and I may further remark that some of us were provided with Ponchos, made of light strong calico, saturated with oil, which proved very useful to us by keeping out the wet, and made us independent of the weather; so that we were well provided for seven months, which I was sanguine enough to think would be a sufficient time for ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... to screw into the handle, will form an instantaneous shelter from sun or rain during a halt on the march, as a few strings from the rings will secure it from the wind, if pegged to the ground. Waterproof calico sheeting should be taken in large quantities, and a tarpaulin to protect the baggage during the night's bivouac. No vulcanised India-rubber should be employed in tropical climates; it rots, and becomes useless. A ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... reproached as self-exposure. A beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snowdrift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would be unendurable—in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... with the others, had been running hopelessly to and fro, or cowering in groups against the copse, when suddenly they uttered a cry—their first—of joyful welcome. And with that shout, the man she most despised and hated, Sol. Catlin, mounted on a "calico" mustang, as outrageous and bizarre as himself, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... whar might ye hev got him?' 'He was offered to me by a fr'en' o' me boyhood,' sez he; 'he's a pinto mustang,' sez he, 'from Californy, whar they breed 'em.' 'What's a pinto hoss?' sez I. 'The same ez a calico hoss,' sez he; 'what they have in cirkises, but ye never see 'em that color.' En he was right, for when I looked him over I never DID see such a soft and silky coat, and his mane and tail jest glistened. 'It IS a little ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... Vincent, whereas Mrs. Roden, as all the world perceived, did not spend half the money. But who does not know that a lady may repudiate vanity in rich silks and cultivate the world in woollen stuffs, or even in calico? Nothing was more certain to Mrs. Demijohn than that Mrs. Vincent was severe, and that Mrs. Roden was soft and gentle. It was assumed also that the two ladies were widows, as no husband or sign of a husband ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... smell Indians; I can sure smell 'em, Otto—can you?" Otto sniffed, and whispered back, "Yes, plain!" "We are ambushed! Drop!" and the two soldiers sunk in the snow. A few feet in front of them lay a dark thing; crawling to it, they found a large calico rag, ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... farms and the town was saved. I was terribly disappointed, and the succeeding days were too flat and dull to be endured. I got through them by playing at soldiering for the remainder of the summer, making forts and wooden guns and gay uniforms out of bright bits of calico, cocked hats of paper stuck full of cock tail feathers. I had also a long-handled lance which had come down in the family from Revolutionary times with which I charged the woodpile and the hen house, made of sods, at an angle in the orchard wall. Through this I thrust ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... Hart—that a man was busily employed in brushing the dirt off a pair of boots, early on the morning succeeding the events narrated in the last chapter. He was habited in a coarse-striped waistcoat, with black calico sleeves, and blue glass buttons; drab breeches and leggings. A bright red handkerchief was wound in a very loose and unstudied style round his neck, and an old white hat was carelessly thrown on one side of his head. There ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... while Young was content with poor apparel and poor living,—but spent her time in keeping guard on the other. The woman in silk knew that were she to leave her lodgings for half a day without the knowledge of the woman in calico, the woman in calico would at once reveal everything to the police. But when she understood the point which had been raised and made as to the postmark,—which she did understand thoroughly,—then she comprehended also her own ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... decorated with limp bunches of bluebells, and her neck and wrists with twisted daisy chains. She skipped up to Honoria and held out a basket. Within it, in a bed of fern, lay a May-doll among a few birds' eggs—a poor wooden thing in a single garment of pink calico. ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... my landlady—who is a saint in spectacles and calico—looked at me one morning at the breakfast table and said, VERY gently, 'You must go to town to-morrow, Master, and ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... companion, who was much pleased and very proud to occupy such a place. "Oh no, you're not. You're a young and simple thing, Mabyn. These two behind us will go on talking now for any time about yards of calico and crochet-needles and twopenny subscriptions, while you and I, don't you see, are quietly driving them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... useful, for it is a sheet as well as a cloak; being simply a blanket with a slit in the middle to admit the wearer's head. A sheet of strong calico, saturated with oil, makes a ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... an' a Frinch cruiser named Lebolt, an' a boot-leggin' tree-spotter named Creed, that lives in Hilarity, an' a couple av worthless divils av sawyers that's too lazy fer honest wor-rk, but camps t'rough th' winter, trappin' an sawin' bird's-eye an calico ash on ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... afternoon, the Countess had purchased some Lyons silks, one of the clerks, Peter Niburg, was free at last. At seven o'clock, having put away the last rolls of silk on the shelves behind him, and covered them with calico to keep off the dust; having given a final glance of disdain at the clerk in the linens, across; having reached under the counter for his stiff black hat of good quality and his silver-topped cane; having donned the hat and hung the stick to his arm with two swaggering ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the skinniest rack-a-bones in the tribe. The old hag! She was too lazy to earn her salt, and was the biggest fool that ever wore calico." ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... the Orang Kaya came in full dress (a spangled velvet jacket, but no trowsers), and invited me over to his house, where he gave me a seat of honour under a canopy of white calico and coloured handkerchiefs. The great verandah was crowded with people, and large plates of rice with cooked and fresh eggs were placed on the ground as presents for me. A very old man then dressed himself in bright-coloured cloths and many ornaments, and sitting at ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... children, clad in calico, barefoot and bareheaded, came romping out of a log cabin on the outskirts of the town, and waved their hands to the passengers. They climbed on the sagging gate in front of their humble domain, and laughed for joy to see the monstrous caravan come clattering out of the unknown, bearing ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the demands of the natives had caused us to run very short. You know it is only by payment of various useful articles that we secure any service done or purchase any native produce. Money is unknown. Fruit and vegetables, figs, fish, crabs, fowls, we buy with iron tools, pieces of calico, and the like; and if our supply of these gives out, we have to draw upon the store of things needed by ourselves; and blankets and hardware come to be minus. Then, forgetting this, which it is easy to do, all ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... of Travancore. The Nilgiris and Shevaroy Hills are found here, as are also the Cauvery and Vaigai Rivers. The cotton districts best known are Coimbatore and Tinnevelley, both of which are admirably situated and well watered. The Calicut of fame which gave rise to the name Calico is also in this district. Tinnevelley lies almost at the extreme south of India on the Gulf of Manaar opposite to Island of Ceylon. Its cotton is well known, but is of a poor type. As far back as 1847, experiments carried out under the superintendence of Dr. Wright proved that this district ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... number of unpretentious Hindu temples, and the Maharaja is said to be quite punctilious in his observance of religious forms. He was absent from the city, but several brothers of his were seen driving, clad in long garments of gaudy-colored striped calico, and wearing small turbans; the dress of the women was also peculiar, the skirt being so full that as they walked they resembled balloons; they are noted for wearing a profusion of jewelry,—necklaces by the half-dozen, bracelets sometimes nearly to the elbow, ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... un-scientist has more feeling for folkways in his calloused left hand than you'd find in all the Colonial Survey. How do you suppose the Old Order maintains itself in Pennsylvania, a tiny Deitsch-speaking enclave surrounded by calico suburbs and ten-lane highways? They mind their business and leave the neighbors to theirs. The Amish have never been missionaries—they learned in 1600 that missionaries are resented, and either ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... curing such skin diseases as scaly eczema, and other eczema which is not moist or pustulous; also for burns and scalds. Some of the extract is to be laid thickly on the cleansed skin with a camel hairbrush, and a thin layer of cotton wool to be spread over it, the whole being fastened with a calico or gauze bandage. This should be changed gently once ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... long as you please." The old fellow got up, and walking stiffly went to the window, drew aside the red calico curtain and looked out. "Don't see much promise of a clear-up," he said. "Not a star in sight. I always dread the rainy season; it makes people look sad, and I want to see them bright—I am most agreeable to them when they're bright. Still, I understand that nothing is more ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... wistful face, crowned by a curling tousle of matted, reddish-brown-gold hair. Such a neglected, sordid little figure, with thin drab shoulders sticking out of a ragged calico frock. She was quite startled. She had never seen herself in any glass before, though a cheap, square, wooden-framed mirror hung on the wall of the bar-room, with a dirty clothes-brush on a hook underneath, and there were swing toilet-glasses ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the crown and front; and I have a dress of gros d'Afrique, too, trimmed with double folds piped on. For every-day I have a new black mousseline with white clover leaves on it, and an all-black French chally to wear to dinner. I don't wear my black and white calico at all. Next summer aunt means to have me wear white almost all the time, with lavender and violet ribbons. I shall have a white muslin with three skirts and a black sash to wear to parties and to ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... a prosperous town of Lancashire, on the Irwell, 7 m. NW. of Manchester; manufactures cotton, calico, and paper; has bleaching and dye ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... bodies; among civilized communities its principal use is for colouring butter, cheese and varnishes. It yields a fugitive bright orange colour, and is to some extent used alone, or in conjunction with other dyes, in the dyeing of silks and in calico printing. It contains a yellow colouring matter, bixin, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... this moment that, on raising my eyes, I saw Babet's white skirts standing out against the dark ground at the top of the pathway. I recognized her printed calico gown, which was grey, with small blue flowers. I sunk down deeper in the grass, I heard my heart thumping against the earth and almost raising me with slight jerks. My breast was burning now, I no longer felt ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... Wilson; and cries Stokes, "Take mine." A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties, Where Spitalfields with real India vies. Like Iris' bow, down darts the painted clew, Starred, striped, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue, Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new. George Green below, with palpitating hand Loops the last 'kerchief to the beaver's band— Up soars the prize! The youth, with joy unfeigned, Regained the felt, and felt the prize regained; While ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... educated to believe the men of the North cowardly, mean, and avaricious. Cowardly, because they persistently refused the duel. Mean, because all classes worked, and there seemed among them no arrogance of birth. Avaricious, because they crouched to the planters with calico and manufactures, or admired their bullying for the sake ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... years later, they were comparatively civilised. At the Peake we were enabled to re-shoe all our horses, for the stony road up from Port Augusta had worn out all that were put on there. I also had an extra set fitted for each horse, rolled up in calico, and marked with its name. At the Peake I engaged a young man named Alec Robinson, who, according to his account, could do everything, and had been everywhere, who knew the country I was about to explore perfectly well, and who had frequently met and camped with blacks from the ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... a hill a short mile south of it—the last hill I remember having seen till I reached Venice and looked across over the lagoons to the Euganian hills on the main land to south-west. The most notable thing I saw in Bologna was an awning of sheeting or calico spread over the centre of the main street on a level with the roofs of the houses for a distance of half a mile or so. I should distrust its standing a strong gust, but if it would, the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... I'm sort of surprised. I expected she'd tell me to quit worrying, Cat can take care of himself. She starts pulling Susan's latest kittens out from under the sofa and sorting them out as if they were ribbons: one gray, two tiger, one yellow, one calico. ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... cap, the crisp fichu crossed over the breast, which set off to advantage the charming little plump figure with its rounded lines—could fail to recognise the same characteristics which sparkled about the wearer of the pink calico domino in which she frolicked incognito 'till she was tired' at a ball given by the Duke of Wellington in 1814, or of the eight blue feathers which crowned the waving tresses of her ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... eager light came into Cummins' face, and he pointed to a calico-covered box standing upon end in a ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... the tall grass by the roadside and shook her red curls from her eyes. She gave a breathless gasp and began fanning herself with the flap of her white sunbonnet. A fine moisture shone on her bare neck and arms above her frock of sprigged chintz calico. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... candle-berry, and by using cane moulds, which Jack first suggested to me, I succeeded in giving my candles the roundness and polish of those of Europe. The wicks were for some time an obstacle. I did not wish to use the small quantity of calico we had left, but my wife happily proposed to me to substitute the pith of a species of elder, which ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... for the explanation. You have heard, I dare say, of those wonderful spinning-machines which take in at one end a mass of raw cotton, very like what you see in wadding, and give out at the other a roll of fine calico, all folded and packed up ready to be delivered to the tradespeople. Well, you have within you, a machine even more ingenious than that, which receives from you all the bread-and-butter and other sorts of food you choose to put into it, and returns it to you changed into the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... had sprung up on the diggings, the news that the "toffs" were to divide their profits had created the widest interest, and in every calico shanty and in every six-by-eight tent the organising genius of the "field," Mr. Jack Scarlett, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... blue-gray; but as a substitute in warm weather, they were allowed to wear gowns, except on public occasions; and on these occasions they were permitted to wear black gowns. Seldom, however, did any one avail himself of this permission. In summer long gowns of calico or gingham were the covering that distinguished the collegian, not only about the College grounds, but in all parts of the village. Still worse, when the season no longer tolerated this thin outer garment, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... off her calico waist, and thrust her firm white arms into the flaring silken sleeves of the wedding-gown. Her neck arose from it with a grand curve. She stood before the glass and strained the buttons together, ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... goods of the very worst quality, charging them at the highest prices, and as these consisted principally of tobacco, salt, iron, sirih and pieces of calico they lasted no time, and had to be frequently replaced. As a matter of course this fraudulent manner of trading made the poor Sakais' debts amount to fabulous proportions and then their swindling creditor dictated the conditions he best ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... about. He told Miss Betty they would fix me up and let me go stay a week at my sister's Christmas. He went back to town, bought me the first shoes I had had since they took me. They was brogan shoes. They put a pair of his sock on me. Miss Betty made the calico dress for me and made a body out of some of his pants legs and quilted the skirt part, bound it at the bottom with red flannel. She made my things nice—put my underskirt in a little frame and quilted it so it ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... glimpse of the new foreroom rug was afforded the spectators. Everything was as neat as wax, for Diadema was a housekeeper of the type fast passing away. The great coal stove was enveloped in its usual summer wrapper of purple calico, which, tied neatly about its ebony neck and portly waist, gave it the appearance of a buxom colored lady presiding over the assembly. The kerosene lamps stood in a row on the high, narrow mantelpiece, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... which fashion demands should be worn, will fade in course of time; and though they matched the natural hair perfectly at first, they will finally present a lighter tint. If the hair is brown this can be remedied. Obtain a yard of dark brown calico. Boil it until the color has well come out into the water. Then into this water dip the hair, and take it out and dry it. Repeat the operation until it shall be of ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... readiness. The motions, sometimes approaching the grotesque in the lean and elderly chorus-lady as she bobbed about the limited space, courtesying, twirling, pirouetting, her blonde hair done up in kids,—herself in the abbreviated toilet of pink calico sack and petticoat reserved for home hours, changed to unconscious grace and innocent abandon in the light, clean-limbed child, who learned with quickness akin to instinct, and who seemed to follow Norma's movements almost before ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... cup of woe. As the minutes dragged wearily along, Jimmy Sears reviewed the story of his thraldom. He thought of how, in his short-dress days, he had been put to rocking a cradle; how in his kilted days, there had been ever a baby's calico dress to consider; how, from his earliest fishing-days, there had been always a tot tagging after him, throwing sticks and stones in the water to scare the fish; and how, now in his swimming and cave-dwelling days, there was ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... the hall door. Donald and Dorothy, neatly brushed,—cool and pink of cheek, and very crisp in the matter of neck-ties,—stood at one window of the supper-room. The flaxen-haired waitress, in a bright blue calico gown and white apron, watched, tray in hand, at the other. A small wood-fire, just lighted, was waking into life on the hearth. Old Nero was dozing upon the rug, with one eye open. And all—to say nothing of the muffins—were waiting for Mr. George, whom the D's had not seen ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... the clutch of commerce and back him on the orator's platform, he deserves the gratitude of generations. And all this I say as a businessman who fully recognizes that commerce is just as honorable and a deal more necessary than oratory. But there were other men to sell thread and calico, and God had special work for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... respects, a far different personage from his great-coated prototype in England. He is in general extremely dexterous in the art of driving, though his costume is of a most grotesque description. Figure to yourself a slipshod sloven, dressed in a striped calico jacket and an old straw hat, alternately arranging the fragile harness of his horses, and springing again upon his box with surprising agility; careless of the bones of his passengers, and confident in his skill and resources, he scruples not frequently ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... of Patras still affords a fine study of the 'dirty picturesque,' with clothes mostly home-made; sheepskin cloaks; fustanellas or kilts, which contain a whole piece of calico; red leggings, and the rudest of sandals; Turkish caps, and an occasional pistol-belt. The Palikar still struts about in all his old bravery; and the bourgeois humbly imitates the dingy garb of Southern Italy. The people have no taste for music, no regard for art, no respect for antiquities, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... years, which the mother had always guarded sacredly. One was the certificate of her mother's marriage. The girl did not know what the others were. She had never looked into them closely, but she knew that her mother had counted them precious. These she pinned into the bosom of her calico gown. Then she ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... acid, in combination with alumina, may be held to be equally inoffensive; now it is a fact that the great bulk of cotton goods are dyed with the aniline colors by the agency of these harmless chemicals. But of late years the dyers of certain goods, and the calico printers generally, have found an advantage in the use of tartar emetic, and other compounds of antimony, to fix aniline colors; besides this, some colors are fixed in calico printing by means of an arsenical alumina mordant; it need not be mentioned ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... I can't afford so much now. One can't have doctor's bills, and other luxuries as well. What shall I have to take into hospital? Will they allow me to wear my own things? I don't think I could get better in a calico night-dress! Pretty frills and a blue ribbon bow are as good as a tonic, but will the authorities permit? Have you ever seen ribbon bows in ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... they were of various kinds and sorts. The women had that air which gave them the stamp of a quarter; they wore loose blouses, tucked in plaid skirts, or dark blue skirts, or multi-coloured calico skirts (if you have seen the lithographs of Steinlen you may reconstruct the picture with no difficulty) and they danced in that peculiar fashion so much in vogue in the Northern outskirts of Paris. The men seized them tightly and they whirled to the inexorable ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... any further opposition, which, he felt, would now be useless. A temperate meal was partaken of, and a hymn sung by the undaunted little company; and pipes and tobacco having been plentifully placed in the hut, the sides of which were decorated with pieces of gay colored calico, and a few knives and trinkets, as pretended gifts to the Chiefs, nothing remained but to await the arrival ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... Saturday afternoon appointed the play had been well learned by the four actors. Everything being ready, this cosy little sitting-room was now shut off from view by a calico curtain which was stretched across the stage by long strings ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... days past the old hands were busy about some work, which they kept concealed from the youngsters, or the green hands, to which class I belonged. Everything went on as usual till eight bells had been struck at noon, when an immense garland, formed of ribbons of all colours, bits of calico, bunting, and artificial flowers, or what were intended for them, was run up at the mizzen-peak. On the top of the garland was the model of a ship, full-rigged, with sails set and colours flying. Scarcely had it gone aloft, when I ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... their suspense, and with a twinkle in his eye proceeded slowly, "I was sort of loafin' around town one day about two weeks ago when I come across a Seminole, who, I reckon, had been sent in by his squaw to trade for red calico and beads," he paused for a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... immediately into cold water, to prevent the texture of the article being injured. Fresh ink-spots are removed by a few drops of hot water being poured on immediately after applying the chloride of soda. By the same process, iron-mould in linen or calico may be removed, dipping immediately in cold water to prevent injury to the fabric. Wax dropped on a shawl, table-cover, or cloth dress, is easily discharged by applying spirits of wine; syrups or preserved fruits, by washing in lukewarm water with a dry cloth, and ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... that buffoon that travesties the travesty? Who is that old cripple alighted from his donkey-cart, who dispenses doggrel and grimaces in all the glory of plush and printed calico?" ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... mules; they are the very poorest animal you can get. They cannot stand hard work, and once they get diseased and begin to lose strength, there is no saving them. The Mexicans call them pintos, or painted mules. We call them calico Arabians or Chickasaws. They have generally bad eyes, which get very sore during the heat and dust of summer, when many of them go blind. Many of the snow-white mules are of the same description, and about as useless. ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... ran—but he had nearly reached the town-gate, when his limbs, while strained to their utmost energy, suddenly failed beneath him. A rifle-shot had struck him in the vertebra of the neck, causing instantaneous death. Meanwhile, King Ben Cracko had made a bolt to escape, but was seized by his long calico robe; which, however, gave way, leaving him literally naked in the midst of his enemies. A shot brought him to the ground; but he sprang to his feet, still struggling to escape. He next received two bayonet wounds, but fought like a wild beast, until two or three men flung themselves upon him, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... coal is in the Northern parts of England, almost all of these works were set up in them, and people flocked to get work there, so that the towns began to grow very large. Manchester was one, with Liverpool as the sea-port from which to send its calico and get its cotton. Sheffield and Birmingham grew famous for works in iron and steel, and so on; and all this tended to make the manufacturers as rich and great as the old lords and squires, who had held most of the power in England ever since, at the Revolution, they had got it away from the ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... [flax] petticoats and 'bedgowns' [like a dressing-sack], and often went without shoes in the summer. Some had bonnets and bedgowns made of calico, but generally of linsey; and some of them wore men's hats. Their hair was commonly clubbed. Once, at a large meeting, I noticed there but two women that had on long gowns. One of these was laced genteelly, and the body of the other was open, and the tail thereof drawn up ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... on in his own course, storing his mind with the wealth found in books. He was promoted from one position of trust to another— became a traveller for his house—secured a large connection, and eventually started in business as a calico printer at Manchester. Taking an interest in public questions, more especially in popular education, his attention was gradually drawn to the subject of the Corn Laws, to the repeal of which he may be ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... what was mere rags; I had goat's hair, but neither knew I how to weave or spin it; and had I known how, here were no tools to work it with. All the remedy that I found for this, was, that at last I did remember I had among the seamen's clothes which were saved out of the ship, some neckcloths of calico or muslin; and with some pieces of these I made three small sieves, but proper enough for the work; and thus I made shift for some years; how I did afterwards, I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... represents a piece-bag, and is a very great labor and space-saving invention. It is made of calico, and fastened to the side of a closet or a door, to hold all the bundles that are usually stowed in trunks and drawers. India-rubber or elastic tape drawn into hems to hold the contents of the bag is better than tape-strings. Each bag ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the walls it was blackened by flaring tallow-candles. The papering, a greasy, dirty gray paper, preserved the fingermarks of all the previous occupants of the room from the time it had first been hung. The furniture, also, was in keeping with the room,—a walnut bedstead with faded calico curtains, a chest of drawers, a table, two chairs, and a ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... fell over the city Betty would steal out in her disguise of a farm-hand, in the buckskin leggins, one-piece skirt and waist of cotton, and the huge calico sunbonnet, going about her secret business, a little lonely, unnoticed figure, and in a thousand unsuspected, simple ways she executed her plans and found out such things as she needed to know to aid ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... children, who are put through excruciating practices to please a British public, and they would have done well at the same time if they had taken steps to prevent the warping influence of a vagrant's life having its full force upon the tribes of little Gipsy children, dwelling in calico tents, within the sound of church bells—if living under the body of an old cart, protected by patched coverlets, can be called living in tents—on the roadside in the midst of grass, sticks, stones, and mud; and they would have done well also if they had put out their hand ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... sport," and "scared to back her painted plug against their thoroughbreds." They were honorable lads and would have felt honor-bound to respect Mrs. Ashby's wishes. But not having heard, they gave Beverly "all that was coming to her for riding a calico nag," though said "nag" was certainly a ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... years there has been an enormous increase in the production of these preparations, and the time will come when their application in dyeing and calico printing will become so general as to completely supersede the employment of the raw materials. The manufacture of these extracts, to be thoroughly successful, requires to be so conducted as to secure the perfect ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... my life I have been shocked more than once, mostly, while living in North Carolina. For instance, in 1876, when it was supposed that Tilden had been elected, the young men of Odell's store thought it a good joke and decorated my fence with black calico. Our colored cook, thinking it would hurt our feelings, stripped it all off early in the morning before we got a sight of it, much to our regret. But Madam was equal to the emergency and had the girl ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... of middle age, not good-looking in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but nevertheless she looked good. She was dressed with extreme plainness, in a cheap calico; but though cheap, the dress was neat. The children she addressed were six in number, varying in age from twelve to four. The oldest, Harry, the hero of the present story, was a broad-shouldered, sturdy boy, with a frank, ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... sixty years ago, lie on the shelf and laugh as I saw her stand by the half hour before the glass, giving an extra twist to her curl and an additional dash of white powder on her hair—now fretted because the powder was too thick, now fretted because it was too thin? She was as proud in cambric and calico and nankeen as Harriet is to-day in white tulle and organdy. I remember how careful she was when she ran me along the edges of the new dress. With me she clipped and notched and gored and trimmed, and day and night I went ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... nothing on that subject, and we want to learn nothing. Their occupation as trade-journals devoted to the art and science of government is gone. Other periodicals devoted to a specialty, whether iron, coal, calico or the Thirty-nine Articles, show judgment and compassion on their readers when a "slack" time comes by turning miscellaneous and slipping in choice literary tidbits among their regular "shop" items. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... so suddenly arrested the steps of Hetty was dressed in a calico mantle that effectually protected all the upper part of her person, while a short petticoat of blue cloth edged with gold lace, that fell no lower than her knees, leggings of the same, and moccasins of deer-skin, completed her attire. Her hair fell in long dark braids ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... print, calico apron, linen collar. Afternoon dress: Some lighter print, muslin apron, linen collar and cuffs. Sundays: a neat alpaca dress, linen collar and cuffs, or frill tacked into the neck of the dress, a black apron, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... a gully running into the Newanga was a typical Australian humpy. It was built entirely of bark. Roof, back, front, and sides were huge sheets of stringy bark, and the window shutters were of the same, the windows themselves being sheets of calico; also the two doors were whole sheets of bark swung ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... sayin', though I fared no better at the next shop nor the next, there was one good woman I come to in a little shop in a back street, an' she was a resemblin' of yourself, miss, an' she took an' set me up in my trade, a givin' of me a few remnants o' colored calico, God bless her! I set to with my needle, an' I dressed myself as like a proper clown as I could, an' painted my face beautiful, an' from that time till they was able to do some'at for theirselves, I managed ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... painting, dyeing, and calico-printing; and its value is so great, the proprietor of a serpentine tract in Shetland, where chromate of iron was found by Professor Jameson, cleared, in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... the hind limbs to prevent the mare from kicking. A clean sheet should be held beneath the womb, and all filth, straw, and foreign bodies washed from its surface. Then with a broad, elastic (india-rubber) band, or in default of that a long strip of calico 4 or 5 inches wide, wind the womb as tightly as possible, beginning at its most dependent part (the extremity of the horn). This serves two good ends. It squeezes out into the general circulation the enormous mass of blood which engorged and enlarged the organ, and it ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... associated with her for six months without ever discovering a spot on the former or an uneven fold in the latter. Asenath, who followed, was almost as plainly attired, her dress being a dark-blue calico, while a white pasteboard sun-bonnet, with broad cape, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... don't care, so long as you are rich, what you do. Well, I am sure I can't do any thing about it. I don't know how to live without money,—that's a fact! and I can't learn. I suppose you would be glad to see me rubbing around in old calico dresses, wouldn't you? and keeping only one girl, and going into the kitchen, like Miss Dotty Peabody? I think I see myself! And all just for one of your Quixotic notions, when you might just as well keep all your money as not. That is what it is to marry a reformer! I ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... out there and dangled about her face in spite of the attempts made to gather it under the control of the high horn comb holding its main strands together. The lankness of her long figure showed in the calico wrapper which seemed her sole garment; and her large features were respectively lank in their way, nose and chin and high cheek bones; her eyes wabbled in their sockets with the sort of inquiring laughter that spread her wide, loose mouth. She was barefooted, ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... business with Mr. Edward Morris (who afterwards purchased and sold the Van Mine near Caersws), under the style of Messrs. Morris and Savin. Mr. Savin's mind, however, was not entirely concentrated on measuring cloth and calico. He took a keen interest in the life of the town, and was an energetic supporter of local institutions. Elected to the Town Council in 1856, he was mayor in 1863, and appointed alderman in 1871, ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... who hurried out fresh from his bath, his trusty cutlass on his hip, and in heavy shooting-boots and gaiters; for no clothing, be it remembered, is too strong for the bush; and those who enter it in the white calico garments in which West-India planters figure on the stage, are like to leave in it, not only their clothes, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... never oppressive in the day and the nights are always cool. Day temperatures of 120 deg. or more are not uncommon in the valleys in July and August, but the humidity is so slight that such high readings do not produce the discomfort the figures might imply. In his calico shirt and breeches the Navaho is quite comfortable, and in the cool of the evening and night he has but to add a blanket, which he always has within reach. The range between the day and night temperature in summer is often very great, but the houses are constructed to meet these ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... necessary to change her gown. It was her habit to dress with exceeding simplicity and extreme neatness. She could not afford anything pretentious in dress, and she would make no false pretense. Besides, she owned no better gown than the one of French calico, which she was ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... Buffalo, calico, cargo, echo, embargo, grotto, hero, innuendo, motto, mosquito, mulatto, negro, portico (oes or os), ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... backs. Under these enormous loads they travel from six to seven miles a day. The average load of the Thibetan tea-carrier is, says Gill, from 240lbs. to 264lbs. Gill constantly saw "little boys carrying 120lbs." Bundles of calico weigh fifty-five catties each (73-1/3lbs.), and three bundles are the average load. Salt is solid, hard, metallic, and of high specific gravity, yet I have seen men ambling along the road, under loads that a strong Englishman could with difficulty raise ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... with which that young lady greeted him was not enough to relieve his embarrassment, he would have forgotten it in the utterly new and changed aspect she presented. Her extravagant walking-costume of the previous day was replaced by some bright calico, a little white apron, and a broad-brimmed straw-hat, which seemed to Rand, in some odd fashion, to restore her original girlish simplicity. The change was certainly not unbecoming to her. If her waist was not as tightly pinched, a la mode, there ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... necessities of exisence{sic} climbed up and up. The largest amount I could earn at teaching was six dollars a week, and our school year included only two terms of thirteen weeks each. It was an incessant struggle to keep our land, to pay our taxes, and to live. Calico was selling at fifty cents a yard. Coffee was one dollar a pound. There were no men left to grind our corn, to get in our crops, or to care for our live stock; and all around us we saw our struggle reflected in ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... had emerged from the depths of a dark closet, and now tossed a limp calico print ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... her red curls from her eyes. She gave a breathless gasp and began fanning herself with the flap of her white sunbonnet. A fine moisture shone on her bare neck and arms above her frock of sprigged chintz calico. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... very quiet and looking at the cash-box in Mr Verloc's hand. But when she understood that her brother was "capering all over the place downstairs" she swung out in one sudden movement on to the edge of the bed. Her bare feet, as if poked through the bottom of an unadorned, sleeved calico sack buttoned tightly at neck and wrists, felt over the rug for the slippers while she looked upward ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... K. LATIFOLIA.—Calico Bush, or Mountain Laurel. Alleghanies, Canada, and Western Florida, 1734. A favourite shrub in every garden where the conditions of soil will allow of its being successfully cultivated. In peaty soil, or light, friable loam and leaf soil, it forms a dense, round-headed bush, often ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... in the twelfth century. The 'dalmatic' was a garment whose fashion was taken to be borrowed from Dalmatia. (See Marriott.) England now sends her calicoes and muslins to India and the East; yet these words give standing witness that we once imported them from thence; for 'calico' is from Calicut, a town on the coast of Malabar, and 'muslin' from Mossul, a city in Asiatic Turkey. 'Cordwain' or 'cordovan' is from Cordova—'delf' from Delft—'indigo' (indicum) from India—'gamboge' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... by ones and twos and threes to change their books at the Vicarage lending library. The books were covered with black calico, and smelt of rooms whose windows were ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... to remain alone outside; she compromised matters by sitting down on the deck. Then she placed the small bundle beside her, and hurriedly took the rag-doll from her pocket, into which it was stuffed head down, pulled its calico skirt from over its head, propped it up against the coaming of the door, and told ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... is embroidered upon Russia leather; an oval-shaped medallion is cut out in the centre; a piece of blue silk is gummed on under the leather so as to show within the oval; both leather and silk are then lined with calico and stretched upon a small embroidery frame. The front and back of the purse are made all of one piece, the centre of which is the bottom; after the embroidery is completed a piece of leather is added on each side to give the necessary fullness. ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... gown and a palm in my hand.' So then I knew she was wandering like, as I'd heard say folks did when they was very sick; for she hadn't any gown at all on, without you might call Mrs. Whitmarsh's old faded calico sack one, nor nothing in her hand neither. So pretty soon she dropped to sleep again, and I did too. And I slept later 'n common. The sun was shining right into my eyes when I opened 'em. I thought 't would trouble ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... decided that the first blow should be in the form of a great burlesque masquerade that was to leave the house of Paco Gomez at twelve o'clock and parade the streets. In a carriage drawn by four oxen arrayed in pink calico, with their horns adorned with branches there were three mummers which were supposed to represent Fernanda Estrada-Rosa, her father, and Garnet, the latter in a cocked hat. From time to time the carriage stopped, and they performed such a ridiculous farce ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... wife. At twelve the only difference marked by Jake was the removal of the securities to Quimby's breast pocket, and of the diamond-studded chain to Mrs. Quimby's neck. The former were too large for the pocket, the latter too brilliant for the dark calico background they blazed against. Jake, who was no fool, noted both facts, but had no words for the situation. He was absorbed, and he saw that Quimby was absorbed, in watching her broad hand creeping over those diamonds and huddling them up in a burning heap against her ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... unsteadily to the corner of the room, and from its place behind a calico curtain he took ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... than the limited capital which had contributed its quota to the public burdens. In a word, I have heard my Aunt Judith say, that in her youth it was usual for respectable young women to take service with more thriving neighbors or friends, for the annual allowance of their board and a single calico gown, at four and sixpence a yard,—as the price was before mills were ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... pair immediately, and sent Mary a piece of pretty calico for the outside. The last-maker made a last for her, and over this Mary sewed the calico vamps tight. Her brother advised her to try platted packthread instead of hemp for the soles; and she found that this looked more neat than the hemp soles, and was likely to last longer. She platted the ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... Manchester was, and the subject began to be discussed throughout the country. An unknown man by the name of Poulton was the first to gain attention by his popular harangues; and he was soon followed by Richard Cobden,—a successful calico printer. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... the younger was born on the 1st of March 1826, at Thornliebank, near Glasgow. His father, George Donald the elder, is noticed in an earlier part of the present volume. Sent to labour in a calico print-work in his tenth year, his education was chiefly obtained at evening schools, and afterwards by self-application during the intervals of toil. In his seventeenth year he became apprenticed ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... for their ugliness and curious costumes. The little girl usually wore soiled silk gowns, and had her hair tied up with bits of twine. The boy appeared in a suit of yellow calico spotted with black, looking very much like a canary bird who had fallen into an inkstand. On festival occasions he wore white cloth raiment, with red ribbons stuck here and ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... adopted the rule of numbering heads every five, six or ten years, recognizing latterly as well, more and more, the importance of numbering other things, until men, women and children have come to be embedded in a medley of steam-engines, pigs, newspapers, schools, churches and bolts of calico. For twenty centuries this taking of stock by governments had been an obsolete practice, until revived by the framers of the American Constitution and made a vital part of that instrument. The right of the most—and not of the richest, the best, the bravest, the cleverest, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... a big paper box. Mell lifted the lid. A muff and tippet lay inside, made of yellow and brown fur like the back of a tortoise-shell cat. These were beautiful, too. Then came rolls of calico and woollen pieces, some of which were very pretty, and would make nice doll's ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... pack our goods upon oxen. The cattle, unused to such burdens, caused great delay by 'bucking' and wallowing in the snow. There was also much confusion as to what articles should be taken and what abandoned. One wanted a box of tobacco carried along; another, a bale of calico, and some thing and some another. But for this delay we would have passed the summit and pressed forward to California. Owing to my lameness, I was placed on horseback, and my foot was tied up to the saddle in a ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... frugal, and sober population. It is a pleasing but pernicious fallacy to imagine, that the influence of an intriguing mandarin is to be presumed whenever a buyer shows a preference for native over foreign calico. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... its way through the bottom of the vessel. The foremast, which is considerably smaller and stepped well forrard, is in like manner devoid of any kind of stay. Each mast sets one enormous sail of graceful shape, and but loosely made of a coarse, native material, resembling cheap calico. The cloths, running vertically, are interwoven with the bamboo reefing battens, and though but lightly stitched together, seem capable of withstanding an ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... home-made apartment. The walls, floor, and ceiling were of unpainted wood, but the wood was perfectly fresh, and smelt pleasantly of resin. The window was preposterously small, with only four squares of glass in it, and it was curtained with mere calico, but the calico was rose-coloured, which imparted a delightfully warm glow to the room, and the view from the window of pine-woods and cliffs, and snow-fields, backed by the distant sea, was magnificent. Two little beds in the corner furthest from the window looked so snug ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... of two, though he had not the excuse of a pipe to be filled. One he coyly tucked above his left ear and one he lighted. Then he sat gracefully back upon his heels and drew smoke into his innermost recesses, a shrunken little figure of a man in a calico shirt of gay stripes, faded blue overalls, and shoes that were remarkable as ruins. With a pointed chip in the slender fingers of one lean brown hand—a narrow hand of quite feminine delicacy—he cleared ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... prudish English woman proclaiming her conjugal rights, coquettish as a great lady, though more frank, and ready for everything; a perfect lionne in her way; issuing from the little apartment of which she had dreamed so often, with its red-calico curtains, its Utrecht velvet furniture, its tea-table, the cabinet of china with painted designs, the sofa, the little moquette carpet, the alabaster clock and candlesticks (under glass cases), the yellow bedroom, the eider-down quilt,—in short, all the domestic joys of a grisette's life; and ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... entry, so that whatever breeze there was might come in, and an unusual glimpse of the new foreroom rug was afforded the spectators. Everything was as neat as wax, for Diadema was a housekeeper of the type fast passing away. The great coal stove was enveloped in its usual summer wrapper of purple calico, which, tied neatly about its ebony neck and portly waist, gave it the appearance of a buxom colored lady presiding over the assembly. The kerosene lamps stood in a row on the high, narrow mantelpiece, each chimney protected from the flies by a brown paper bag inverted over its head. Two plaster ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... sad and lonely, but soon found plenty of consolation in his new home. The name of his adopted father was "Keeps-the-Spotted-Ponies." He was known to have an unusual number of the pretty calico ponies; indeed, he had a passion for accumulating property in the shape of ponies, painted tents, decorated saddles and all sorts of finery. He had lost his only son; but the little pale-face became the adopted brother of two handsome young women, his daughters. This made him quite popular ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... slip of a thing, a trifle too tall for her years, perhaps, yet with no lack of development apparent in the slim, rounded figure. Her coarse home-made dress of dark calico fitted her sadly, while her rumpled hair, from which the broad-brimmed hat had fallen, possessed a reddish copper tinge where it was touched by the sun. Mr. Hampton's survey did not increase his desire for more intimate acquaintanceship, yet he recognized anew her ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... had been fitted, a pair of felt slippers was brought and added to the collection; then sundry yards of calico and flannel, and brown holland, some stockings, and what Jessie thought the most wonderful of all, a pair of cotton gloves and some little ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... lived much in the open air. Perhaps she lived so much in it as to disdain bonnets, for she wore none—a red cotton handkerchief, fellow to the one on Charley's head, being pinned over her white calico cap. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the calico for the sail at Brannigan's," she said, "and made it himself. Peter Walsh told me that. I'm bound to say it doesn't sit badly; but of course you can't really tell about the sit of a sail when the boat's off the wind. I'd like to ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... college, and the higher school for girls. At the other end of the town are the inn, the post and telegraph office, the Romanist church and schools, and up by the Angrogna the Baptist chapel and manse. On the rivers are cotton and flour mills, and dye and calico-printing works. These establishments have attracted many Piedmontese to the town, which, from this and other causes, have made the Romanist population ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... the hill, flowed in a marble conduit through the open hall. As she looked she was aware of two old brown faces anxiously gazing after her. Giacomo and Assunta were chattering eagerly in the doorway, the black of his butler's dress and the white of his protecting apron making his wife's purple calico skirt and red shoulder shawl look more gay. They caught the last flutter of the girl's blue linen gown as it ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... him, about ten leagues off the city of Nankin, we had first of all the honour to ride with the master of the house about two miles; the state he rode in was a perfect Don Quixotism, being a mixture of pomp and poverty. His habit was very proper for a merry-andrew, being a dirty calico, with hanging sleeves, tassels, and cuts and slashes almost on every side: it covered a taffety vest, so greasy as to testify that his honour must be a most exquisite sloven. His horse was a poor, starved, hobbling creature, and two slaves followed him on foot to drive the poor creature along; ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... you think she was dressed? In a "petticoat and loose gown." The loose gown was a calico jacket that hung about the waist in gathers, and the petticoat was a moreen skirt that came down almost to the ankles. Then her feet—I must confess they were bare. Nearly all the little children in Perseverance went barefooted ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... these trifles, Eleanor was in the grandmother's room looking at several marvelous patch-work quilts. The old dame told Eleanor the story connected with each quilt; and one, the unusual one of silk pieces, as well as worsteds, patched in with calico, velvet and other odd materials, was said to be made of a collection of famous bits from gowns worn by the ladies of ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... were home made, they made them out of poplar wood and gave us straw ticks to sleep on. I got two calico dresses a year and these were my Sunday dresses and I was only allowed to wear them on week days after they were almost worn out. Our shoes were made right ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... fragment of cracked mirror was nailed to the door. She faced it, rapidly undoing the glossy masses of her hair; then lifting her gown, she buckled the army belt underneath, slipped the revolver into it, smoothed out the calico, and crossed the floor to the bed again, at the foot of which a pair of woman's coarse, low shoes stood on the carpetless floor. Into these she slipped ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... jacket and a brown cashmere gown there were only four sovereigns left out of the ten. She spent one of these upon some pale pink cashmere for an evening dress, and half a sovereign on gloves, as she knew Miss Wendover liked to see people neatly gloved. Ten shillings more were spent upon calico, and another sovereign went by-and-by at the bootmaker's, leaving the damsel with just twenty shillings out of her quarter's wage; but as the need of pocket-money at Kingthorpe, except for the Sunday offertory, was nil, she felt herself passing rich in the possession of that last remaining sovereign. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... hardly any confession, transfigured in the luminous halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snowdrift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would be unendurable—in the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... deeply, brought out from under his frock a little bag made of coloured calico, and handed it to me. It contained a crown piece and a medal with the effigy of the Black Virgin of Chartres, which I kissed fervently, shedding tears of tenderness and repentance. The little friar took out of his large pockets a parcel of coloured prints ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... end came. One morning, the brown calico frock was changed for an India silk, and the little school bonnet, with its blue veil, for a new one, covered with artificials. She was accompanied by an elderly lady, and looked nervous and excited. I was troubled at the tremulous, uncertain expression of her face. The next day I read her ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... his time assiduously ransacking the deserted shops, and in addition to his huge bundle of bedding and his long string of straw hats he now possessed a miscellaneous assortment of plunder, in which were a bolt of calico, a pair of shoes, a collection of cooking-utensils, an umbrella, and—strangest of all—a large gilt-framed mirror. The safety of these articles seemed to concern him far more than his ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... clothes off him, and has occasion to be taken up in the night, and if he have not a flannel gown on, is likely to catch cold; on which account I recommend it to be worn. The usual calico night-gown ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... Hamilton started out in the dinghy for Lusitania Bay. They had already made a step and sprit, and, with a calico sail hoisted, the frail craft ran before a light breeze. Having a fair wind they made good headway along the coast, dropping in at a gentoo penguin rookery en route, and collecting about two hundred ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the children's mother (Donee felt as if she was her mother too) called her in, and took out of that same cupboard a roll of the loveliest red calico. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... short time we were abreast of the canoe, passing her to leeward. A dark-skinned man, lightly clad, sat in the stern steering with an oar. His sail was a piece of calico spread on a slender yard, the mast being scarcely thicker than the yard. Not till we were close to him did he perceive us. Lifting up his hands towards the ship, he pointed to his mouth, making an imploring gesture at the same time. Apparently he was trying to speak, but ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... and she recognized them in an instant. She and the Captain—the latter all grins—came in from the direction of the kitchen, K. D. B. wearing a neat blue calico gown and an apron that was really a marvel of cleanliness ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... adopted by the School of Musketry, Randwick. Five specially selected Australian Landscapes in panels, each measuring 60 inches by 36 inches, reproduced in natural colours. Price, unmounted, 3s. 6d. each (postage 1s. 8d.); mounted on calico, ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... cold meat and bread upon the oil-cloth covering of the table, she asked him eager questions about the Major and Mrs. Lightfoot, which he aroused himself to parry with a tired laugh. She was tall and thin, with a wrinkled brown face, and a row of curl papers about her forehead. Her faded calico wrapper hung loosely over her nightgown, and he saw her bare feet through the cracks in her ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... second glance he saw that it was a woman's figure. Probably she was asleep: but she might be ill or injured. It was a lonely spot, so it occurred to him that it was proper for him to investigate. Accordingly, he stepped to her side and bent over her. From her calico dress, which was her only covering, she evidently belonged to the laboring class. She was a large, coarse-looking woman, and was lying, in what appeared to Gorham to be drunken slumber, on her bonnet, the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... acquired ideals of the Eastern visitor he had a red sofa tidy draped round his shoulders, and there was a tired-looking hen-feather caught negligently in his back hair; and his squaw displayed ornamented leggings below the hems of her simple calico walking skirt. But these adornments, I gathered, constituted the calling costume, so ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... was created at this point by the appearance of old Mammy Jane, dressed in a calico frock, with clean white neckerchief and apron, carrying the wonderful baby in honor of whose naming this feast had been given. Though only six weeks old, the little Theodore had grown rapidly, and Mammy Jane declared was already quite large for his age, and displayed signs of an unusually ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... stretch of the desert with the Sphinx looking out over it century after century; in place of the shower coming down through the dirty air to wash the dirty roofs, a storm breaking over the sea-shore rocks, or beating down on the broken wreck; instead of the drabbled calico of the factory girl and her face old before its time, the satins of Vandyck's beauties, and the fair looks of Sir Peter Lely's heroines; instead of Manchester mayors and masters of factories, Tintoret's noble Venetian counsellors and doges, and Titian's Shakspearian ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... bright, blazing fire we could see that the walls were papered with illustrated journals, arranged with feminine taste and discrimination. The furniture was extemporized and adapted from candle-boxes and packing-cases, and covered with gay calico or the skin of some animal. The armchair of the helpless Jim was an ingenious variation of a flour-barrel. There was neatness, and even a taste for the picturesque, to be seen in the few details of the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Mellony and her mother entered the little house where they lived, and the young girl sank down in the stiff, high-backed rocker, with its thin calico-covered cushion tied with red braid, that stood by the window. Outside, the summer night buzzed and hummed, and breathed sweet odors. Mrs. Pember moved about the room, slightly altering its arrangements, now and then looking ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... won't pay. So the manufacturer weaves bad silk, and makes shoddy cloth, and the wine-merchant doctors his wine, and the brewer his ale, and the milkman puts water into his milk, and the butterman sells butter made of Thames mud, and the calico is dressed with chalk, and the ready-made clothes come to pieces because the thread's ends are not fastened, and the farm work is half done, and the whole trade and commerce of the country is one great system ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... in her drives with her aunt. But there the heavy lumbering vehicles seemed various in their purposes and intent; here every van, every waggon and truck, bore cotton, either in the raw shape in bags, or the woven shape in bales of calico. People thronged the footpaths, most of them well-dressed as regarded the material, but with a slovenly looseness which struck Margaret as different from the shabby, threadbare smartness of ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... very quickly. That exhibition of dainty underwear, which flattered his pride as a father, would have driven girls used to sewing their own calico shifts quite crazy: there would have been no holding them; and, besides, artistes might come in at any moment. It would not do for Lily to be seen half-dressed like that; and she realized this herself, like a sensible little lady, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... but as we were not qualified by years of arduously won sanctity to stand stark naked in the presence he conceded us a clout apiece torn from a filthy length of calico that some one had tossed in a corner. And he tore another piece of filthy red cotton cloth in halves, and divided it between us to twist around our ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... town next Friday. it was going to be in Portsmouth but there was another circus got the the circus grounds ferst and so they are coming to Exeter. me and Pewt and Beany are going to get a gob poasting bills. the bill poaster was in town today with a red and blue and gold cart with 2 calico horses and put up the big bills. he only had 2 big ones and dident have enny others and cant get them until Wensday nite and he wants me and Pewt and Beany to put them up in the nite so that when the peeple get up in the morning they can see them ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... directs us to attire ourselves in the garments disgorged from the portentous-looking bundle. They consist of a pair of black calico trousers, a dark, lapelled coat, a leathern semicircular apron, buckled on behind—the strap of which serves to hook a small lantern on in front—and a terrible brimless felt hat, which we feel to be a curse the moment we put it on, and ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... presents types which are all its own. Here are the cotton operatives who work the small proportion of mills still remaining within the bounds of Manchester—the spinners, minders, reelers, reed-makers, and the rest; here are the calico-printers and dyers, the warehousemen and lurrymen; and here too are the sellers of 'fents,' and all the other thousand and one small trades and occupations which live on and by the poor. The quarter has one broad thoroughfare or lung, which on a sunny day is gay, sightly, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... difficulty in getting a sufficient supply of plaited cocoanut leaves for the walls and roof of our house. By the 14th, we had the walls and roof finished, when all our party moved into it. We had a curtain of unbleached calico put up between the teachers' end and ours, and curtains for doors and windows, but were glad to get into it in that unfinished state: the weather was breaking, and we felt anxious about the teachers sleeping in the tent when it rained, and ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... rosy-cheeked woman were looking at him so strangely and pleasingly. They seemed to thank him and caressingly beckoned him, and besides those eyes he saw nothing. The woman was dressed like the city women. She wore shoes, a calico waist, and over her black hair she had a peculiar kerchief. Tall and supple, seated on a pile of wood, she repaired sacks, quickly moving her hands, which were bare up to the elbows, and she smiled at Foma all ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... enterprise was a success. Barnesville was fifteen miles distant, and the farmers, their wives and daughters, were glad enough to stop at the Cross-roads for their calico dresses and store-coffee. By doing so they were saved a long ride and gained superior conversational advantages. "D'Willerby's mighty easy to ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... would "shave that hair off his upper lip." Then John greeted his sister cordially, and was presented to Miss Dunton. Instead of sitting down, he pushed right on into the kitchen, where Huldah, in a calico frock and a clean white apron, was baking biscuit for tea. She had been a schoolmate of his, and he took her hand cordially as she stood there, with the bright western sun ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... his knees, whispering, "I smell Indians; I can sure smell 'em, Otto—can you?" Otto sniffed, and whispered back, "Yes, plain!" "We are ambushed! Drop!" and the two soldiers sunk in the snow. A few feet in front of them lay a dark thing; crawling to it, they found a large calico rag, covered with blood. ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... not describe his bride's dress. But he describes his own. "I might give you," he says in his Souvenirs, "a picture of our happy nuptial day. I might tell you at length of my newly dyed hat, my dress coat with blue facings, and my home-spun linen shirt with calico front. But I forbear all details. My godfather and godmother were at the wedding. You will see that the purse did not always respond to the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... me a basin of cold water in the morning, and not possessing a towel clean enough for a white man, he insisted that I should use his wife's newly starched calico apron to wipe my face and hands upon. When I offered him money for the night's accommodation and the excellent oyster breakfast that his wife prepared for me, he said: "You may gib my wife whateber pleases you for her cooking, but nuffin for de food or ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... forseeing that he would follow her—exactly as he did. Another instant, and the pair were off along a little by-path, toward the main road and the pursuit of the searching party. As they struck into the smoother going Molly touched the calico pony with her whip ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... I pulled off my blue apron, and wrapped the bundle in it, which before was made up in a piece of painted calico, and very remarkable; I also wrapped up my straw hat in it, and so put the bundle upon my head; and it was very well that I did thus, for coming through the Bluecoat Hospital, who should I meet but the wench that had given me the bundle ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... name of the Big Beard, because of a peculiar grass that fringed it. On its bank had stood a village of the Crow Indians, and here a half-breed trader had settled. He bought the red man's furs, and gave him in return bright-colored beads and pieces of calico, paints, and blankets. In a short time he had all the furs in the village; he packed them on ponies, and said good by to his Indian friends. They were sorry to see him go, but he told them he would soon return from the land of the paleface, bringing many gifts. Months passed; ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... straw bonnet, scarf of striped, apple-green gauze, and turkey-feather fan. She came to town but once in three months, and made of each visit a field day. Every store was called at, for buying must be done for herself and her plantation to last until Christmas-tide. Lutestring, calico, chintz and prunella, linsey and osnaburg; gilt-edged paper, sticks of wax, and fine black ink; drugs of sorts, bohea, spice, and china were bought and bestowed in brown paper parcels in corners of a vehicle ample as Cinderella's pumpkin coach, while Jamaica sugar and ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... for many a year there was precious little of it in the country for anybody. Eggs sold at six cents a dozen in trade, and five-cent calico was exchanged at twenty-five cents a yard. Wheat brought fifty cents a bushel in trade. To get cash for it before the Portage Railway was built, it had to be hauled to Milwaukee, a hundred miles away. On the other hand, food was abundant,—eggs, chickens, ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... by holding up their patrol flags. Chippy had made the flag for the Ravens, and made it very well too, cutting the raven out of a scrap of an old green curtain, and stitching it on to a piece of calico. When the umpire saw the patrol flags raised above the gorse clumps which hid the patrols, he blew a long blast on his powerful whistle, and ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... to gather the modest flowers which so cleverly hide their secrets behind the prettiest and neatest curtains that for all the world look like printed calico. ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... steadily, the biggest, roundest tears I ever saw. They ran down her cheeks, formed a stream in the first groove of her double chin, overflowed it, and dripped drop, drop, a drop at a time, on the breast of her stiffly starched calico dress, and from there shot ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
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