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Mattress   Listen
noun
Mattress  n.  
1.
A large pad stuffed with hair, moss, or other suitable soft material, and quilted or otherwise fastened, used as or in a bed, to support the human body while lying down. (Written also matress)
2.
(Hydraulic Engin.) A mass of interwoven brush, poles, etc., to protect a bank from being worn away by currents or waves.
innerspring mattress A variety of mattress (1) having springs inside to provide a flexible support; it is considered more comfortable than a stuffed mattress.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mattress" Quotes from Famous Books



... holy sorrow, but usually it is converted into orgies of unholy joy. When an Irish man or woman of the lower order dies, the straw which composed the bed, whether it has been contained in a bag to form a mattress, or simply spread upon the earthen floor, is immediately taken out of the house, and burned before the cabin door, the family at the same time setting up the death howl. The ears and eyes of the neighbours ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... length locked in, she had time to look round her prison. It was a small, square, whitewashed cell, completely unfurnished; all the furniture had to be brought from Marnell Place. Not much was allowed. A mattress and blanket by way of bed, a stool, and a crucifix, were the only articles permitted. The barred window was very small, and very high up. Here Margery was to remain until September. The days rolled wearily on. Lord Marnell occasionally visited her; but not often, and he was her sole visitor. ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... somewhat. Few at home realize that these are merely tents, and sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their blanket is spread on a layer of pine or hemlock twigs, or some leaves. No cots; seldom even a mattress on the ground. It is pretty cold. I go around from one case to another. I do not see that I can do any good, but I cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop with him and sit near him ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... "Soucin lent a mattress, which I have arranged just the other side of the wall. That is your room. With plenty of blankets you should be comfortable enough ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... doctors have been debating over the case. It's a comfort that they have made up their minds at last, and that I can be moved as soon as there is a place ready for me. Father is ordering a spinal carriage from London with the latest conveniences, like the suburban villas. I believe you lie on a mattress or something of the sort, which can be lifted and put down in the carriage. Such a saving of trouble! It is wonderful how cleverly ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... strip of scrubbed planks within the four unconcealed corners. The absence of the usual settee was striking; the teak-wood top of the washing-stand seemed hermetically closed, and so was the lid of the writing-desk, which protruded from the partition at the foot of the bed-place, containing a mattress as thin as a pancake under a threadbare blanket with a faded red stripe, and a folded mosquito-net against the nights spent in harbor. There was not a scrap of paper anywhere in sight, no boots on the floor, no litter of any sort, not a speck of dust anywhere; no traces of pipe-ash ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... twentieth century. I still don't know how Shelton managed to make his patients do it, but my guess is that he must have been a very intimidating guy. Shelton was a body builder of some renown in his day. I bet Shelton's patients kept a few books and magazines under their mattress and only took them out when he wasn't looking. If I had tried to enforced this type of sensory deprivation, I know my patients would have grabbed their clothes and run, vowing never to fast again. I think it is most important that people fast, and that they feel so good about the experience ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... on. As soon as we halted for the night we would don our dry clothes from the rubber bags, and, when supper was over, would prepare a bed. If any kind of boughs or willows were to be had, we cut a quantity and, laying them in regular order near together, formed a sort of mattress which was very comfortable. If these were not to be had, the softest spot of sand was the next choice. In putting the river suit on in the morning, there was often something of a shock, for it was not always thoroughly dry. At length the welcome ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... the other, "and get a mattress. Bring it and lay it on this table. My brother is ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... hit upon a happy contrivance for keeping out the sun from my tent. I lay my carpet on the sandy floor of my tent, and with my table and the frame of my bed I make a wooden covering over. On the top I place my mattress and thick blankets, I then lay myself down underneath; and am perfectly protected from the sun above, whilst the cool breeze enters at the bottom of the tent. There is, then, not a person in the caravan who suffers ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... did I begin to suspect that there was a still in the immediate neighborhood. Soon after supper I pleaded fatigue and was shown up a flight of stairs, or rather a ladder, to a sort of attic. There was a husk mattress there, and a pile of rather dirty-looking blankets. But in those hills you learn to put up with what you can get. I was glad to have found ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham

... bed and, trembling with excitement, ran silently down the long, bare hall to her brothers' room. It was a big chamber above the dining-room. Its only furniture was two beds; a big old four-poster, where John and Malcolm slept on a lumpy straw mattress, and a low "bunk" or box-like structure on casters, where the little boys, Archie and Jamie, lay tossed about in a tangle of bare limbs and blankets. Elizabeth brushed back her hair from her sleepy eyes, and peered into the dim room. The green paper blinds were partly raised, and she ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... collars; *six pairs winter socks; *six pairs summer socks; *four pairs summer drawers; *three pairs winter drawers; *six pocket-handkerchiefs; *six towels; *one clothes- bag, made of ticking; *one clothes-brush; *one hair-brush; *one tooth-brush; *one comb; one mattress; one pillow; *two pillow-cases; *two pairs sheets; one pair blankets; *one quilted bed-cover; one chair; one tumbler; *one trunk; one account-book; and will unite with his room- mate in purchasing, for their common use, one looking-glass, ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... his apparently feeble frame could not endure the last wedges, the executioner was ordered to stop. He was unbound and laid on a mattress, and a glass of wine was brought, of which he only drank a few drops; after this, he made his confession to the priest. For, dinner, they brought him soup and stew, which he ate eagerly, and inquiring of the gaoler if he could have something more, an entree was brought in addition. One ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... grimly and set about her unpacking. The particularly knobby bundle which had fascinated Felicia proved to be a rocking chair, enwrapped by the canvas tent. There was a compact little cooking outfit, several large books on Occultism, an air mattress, two pink quilts, a pink pillow and a suitcase of clothing. One burro was loaded with provisions, consisting of olive oil, sugar, coffee, ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... of a 'urry, Miss Esther. I reckon you wouldn't feel so pleased if you'd got to do it," added Anna, laughing. "I'll give you the duster and brush in a minute. You lend me a hand with this, if you will," turning the mattress on Poppy's bed, "and I'll be ready in half the time; it's ever so much quicker done if there's two at it; you see, when one's alone, one wastes so much time running round and round ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... side saddle, pack saddle; pommel. bed, berth, pallet, tester, crib, cot, hammock, shakedown, trucklebed[obs3], cradle, litter, stretcher, bedstead; four poster, French bed, bunk, kip, palang[obs3]; bedding, bichhona, mattress, paillasse[obs3]; pillow, bolster; mat, rug, cushion. footstool, hassock; tabouret[obs3]; tripod, monopod. Atlas, Persides, Atlantes[obs3], Caryatides, Hercules. V. be supported &c.; lie on, sit on, recline on, lean ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... saying I had given the sheets to some of those poor soldiers; and if the matter came to knowledge, the wretched fellows ran risk of the galleys. This made my young men and attendants, especially Felice, keep the secret of the sheets in all loyalty. I meanwhile set myself to emptying a straw mattress, the stuffing of which I burned, having a chimney in my prison. Out of the sheets I cut strips, the third of a cubit in breadth; and when I had made enough in my opinion to clear the great height of ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... you go make up the bed in the boarder's room. Turn the mattress, mind! An' stretch the sheets good an' smooth, like I learned you to do. Francie, you get the hot-water bottle, quick, so's I can fill it! Sammy, you go down to the cellar, an' tell Mr. Snyder your mother will be much obliged if he'll turn on a' extra spark o' steam-heat. Tell'm, ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann

... his spell of debauch, played a score of parts. First he was aggressive, asserting his rights as a man and the ship's master, and demanding the key of the door. Then he was warlike, till his frenzied attack earned him such a hiding that he was glad enough to crawl back on to the mattress of his bunk. Then he was beseeching. And then he began to be troubled with zoological hauntings, which occupied him till the baking air cooled with the approach ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... the pleasures of the flying hours, she began to regain strength and color, her languor disappeared, she spent the day in the soft blissful air with her books or work, her mother knitting and nodding near by; while John, if not sick himself, yet feeling very miserable, lay on a mattress on the deck, sometimes dozing, sometimes following with his eye the graceful lines and snowy dazzle of the perfect little yacht as mast and sheet and shroud made their relief upon the sky; sometimes listening ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... man by nature, but he would lie awake nights, his clumsy wits galloping and frisking under the lash of the alcohol, and fancy himself thrashing his wife, till a sudden frenzy of rage would overcome him, and he would shake all over, rolling upon the bed and biting the mattress. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... The address on my second paper was that of a basket-maker, whose house was pointed out to us. We were very cordially received there, and taken to a room containing a bed provided with a sommier elastique. But there was no mattress, no sheet, no blanket, no bolster, no pillow—everything of that kind having been requisitioned for the German ambulances; and I recollect that two or three hours later, when my father and myself retired to rest in that icy chamber, the window of which was badly broken, we ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... lodging. Then preparing the intended sacrifice—a slave (which was their custom at times), a turtle, a large shellfish, or a hog—without an altar or anything resembling one, they placed it near the sick person, who was stretched out on the floor of the house on a palm mat (which they use as a mattress). They also set many small tables there, laden with various viands. The catalona stepped out, and, dancing to the sound of gongs, wounded the animal, and anointed with the blood the sick person, as well as some of the bystanders. The animal was then drawn slightly to one side and skinned and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... some kind of remembrance to be left with them. But we did not accept their invitation to walk up, but passed down the yard, by heaps of manure and refuse of all kinds, by another kraal, where a bucket containing coal was burning, and a young man lay stretched on a dirty mattress, and a little bantam kept watch beside him, to the steps of another caravan, where, from the sounds we heard, high jinks were going on with some children. At the sound of a tap on the door there was an instant ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... face, when in repose, was like the conventional pictures of Christ. His fascinations destroyed the peace of many a woman; and it was only after many years of self-indulgence that he married the faithful Mathilde Mirat in what he termed a "conscience marriage." Soon after he went to his "mattress-grave," as he called ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... me," said the other man. "They tied my daughter to her bed, and afterward they set fire to her mattress." ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... the little girl take the clothes off the bed, one at a time, and put them on two chairs near the windows, being careful not to let the blankets get on the floor. She beat the pillows well, and turned the mattress up over the foot of the bed so the air could get underneath it. The white spread she kept by itself, and had Margaret help fold it up in its creases. "Nothing wrinkles more easily," she told Margaret, "and a ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton

... Lucian. But he was fallen on evil times and evil tongues; while Lucian, as witty as he, as bitter in mockery, as happily dowered with the magic of words, lived long and happily and honoured, imprisoned in no "mattress-grave." Without Rabelais, without Voltaire, without Heine, you would find, methinks, even the joys of your Happy Islands lacking in zest; and, unless Plato came by your way, none of the ancients could meet you in the lists of ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... fleein' through the air an' drappin' bombs on her dwellin' hoose an' her hen-hoose, no forgettin' her pig-hoose. Mornin', noon an' nicht, she kep' speirin' at me if I was prepared to meet ma Maker, maybe wantin' a leg. Oh, I was rale vexed for her, I tell ye, but when she took the mattress aff ma bed to protect her sewin' machine frae bombs, I says to masel': 'If I've got to dee, I wud like to dae it as comfortable as I can, an' I'm sure ma Maker'll no objec' to that . . . an' so, ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell

... equipment of one of these human ant-hills, called a home, is about as primitive as the building itself. There is, of course, a bed or cot: it is about {215} half knee-high, and the heavy twine or light rope knitted together after the fashion of a very coarse fish-net is the only mattress. The coarse grain which serves for food is stored in jars; the meagre supply of clothing hangs in one corner of the room; there are no chairs, knives or forks. The stove or fireplace is a sort of small clay box for the fire, with an opening on top for the kettle or oven. In one corner ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... in the room as he said the words. Even in broad daylight, I could see that he glanced round him with apprehension. He was shaking quite visibly. The room was decidedly old-fashioned, but the greater part of the furniture was modern. The bed was an Albert one with a spring mattress, and light, cheerful dimity hangings. The windows were French—they were wide open, and let in the soft, pleasant air, for the day was truly a spring one in winter. The paper on ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes

... reading this book?" One wonders if one could not get a coloured page in the middle of the Atlantic or the North American Review or Everybody's and at least make a great book as prominent as a great soap—almost make it loom up in a country like a Felt Mattress or a Toothbrush. ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... round, and contained all the stores for their own use, such as tea, sugar, coffee, cheeses, hams, tongues, biscuits, soap, and wax candles, wine and spirits in bottles, besides large rolls of tobacco for the Hottentots or presents, and Alexander's clothes; his mattress lay at the bottom of the wagons, between the lockers. The wagon was covered with a double sail-cloth tilt, and with curtains before and behind; the carpenter's tools were also in one of the ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... prison some day like your son George. I may tap you on the head to-morrow, and away go pleasure and honours, feasts and beauty, friends, flatterers, French cooks, fine horses and houses—in exchange for a prison, a keeper, and a straw mattress like George Gaunt's." And then my lord would defy the ghost which threatened him, for he knew of a remedy by which he could baulk ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... skill required, as no shape was necessary; but they answered the purpose, and were afterwards hung up in his stable to the great delight of the younger visitants to the Jardin, who often went expressly to see the elephant's boots. When he and his guide stopped for the night, a mattress used to be thrown down on the floor for the latter; but, after a few nights, the elephant discovered how comfortable it was, and under pretense of sharing the accommodation, at length nightly pushed Auguste off, and stretched his own huge ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... spasms brought howls of mirth from the black fellows. Negro women were in the crowd, grinning, a little frightened, but curious. Some were in Mother-Hubbards; one had her hair half combed, one side in a kinky mattress, the other lying flat and greased down ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... cry and began to fold them back swiftly, finding on each the trace he sought. When the mattress was at last laid bare, he pointed to a narrow slit that did not penetrate ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... night and day and cannot write anything. I am nearly worn out. We shall go to Elmira ten days hence (if Livy can travel on a mattress then,) and stay there till I have finished the California book—say three months. But I can't begin work right away when I get there—must have a week's rest, for I have been through ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... in the forest of Brozeliand, in Brittany, under tall oaks whose tops soar like green flames toward heaven. Alas! I envy thee those trees and the fresh breeze that moves their branches, brother Merlin, for no green leaf rustles about my mattress-grave in Paris, where early and late I hear nothing but the rolling of vehicles, hammering, quarrelling, and piano-strumming. A grave without repose, death without the privileges of the dead, who have no debts to pay, and need write neither letters nor books—that ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... surly friend for one, but he had already turned his back upon me and was in full retreat to the forecastle to finish his interrupted night's rest. I therefore opened out the bundle and found that it consisted of a straw mattress, a flock pillow, and a pair of blankets, all of which I at once proceeded to arrange in the bunk, as best I could, by the dim light which entered the open door from the main cabin. Then I most thankfully removed my clothes—for the first time since the springing ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... and spread out the old coat over it; and she had dropped asleep almost as soon as she lay down. But, although his own bed of sage-brush was tolerably comfortable, even to one accustomed all his life to the finest springs and hair mattress that money could buy, and although the girl had insisted that he must rest too, for he was weary and there was no need to watch, sleep would not come to ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... instrument case he had brought he took out a spectroscope. He turned back the mattress and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... know, boys," he said, "as a bed-maker I can beat the owner of that prehistoric old corn-husk mattress out in the suburbs with one ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... be bored there. I am. My wife is as gay as Lady Macbeth, and my daughters as cheerful as Regan and Goneril. I daren't sleep in what they call my bedroom. The bed is like the baldaquin of St. Peter's, and the pictures frighten me. I have a little brass bed in a dressing-room, and a little hair mattress like an anchorite. I am an anchorite. Ho! ho! You'll be asked to dinner next week. And gare aux femmes, look out and hold your own! How the women will bully you!" This was a very long speech for a man of few words like my Lord Steyne; nor ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... foot of our MacTavish's mattress, under a spare blanket lifted from that warrior in his sleep, lay a large pink pig. Both were occupied in peaceful and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various

... the robes of my floor mattress. Drawing a box to the bedside I again took his hands between mine and prepared ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... relief he straightened them and folding the sheets into two small but bulky packages, put them into his pockets. Evidently the apartment had been thoroughly ransacked by Takakika. Drawers were opened, bags turned inside out, the bed torn apart, and the mattress ripped. But where was the control? Armitage felt about the Jap's clothing and then feverishly began going over the line of search pursued by the spy. So engrossed had he been in the struggle with Takakika that he had forgotten his intention ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... she was to him. Mathilde, we know, was unhappy about the visits of the smart young lady who talked Shakespeare and the musical glasses so glibly, and who held her husband's hand as he lay on his mattress-grave, and wore a general air of providing him with that intellectual companionship which was so painfully lacking in his home. Yet we who know the whole story, and know her husband far better than she, know how little she really ...
— Old Love Stories Retold • Richard Le Gallienne

... remember how scared we both were that somebody might break into the room and steal it and how we used to hide it under the mattress every night and take it out again when ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... did so the man's hands, white, well formed, well kept. He half expected a further demand, as the purse contained only a few small bills and some change, the bulk of his money being secreted about the mattress, as was his habit; but the man turned with peculiar abruptness to the opposite section, as one who had a definite object in view and was in haste to accomplish it. Darrell, his faculties alert, observed that the section in front of Whitcomb's was empty; he recalled ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... Mathematician matematikisto. Matrimony geedzeco. Matrix utero. Matron patrino. Matron patronino, estrino. [Error in book: potronino] Matter sxtofo. Matter materialo. Matter (pus) puso. Mattock pikfosilo. Mattress matraco. Mature matura. Mature maturigi—igxi. Maturity matureco. Maul bategi. Maxillary makzela. Maxim proverbo. Maximum maksimumo. May (month) Majo. May-bug majskarabo. Mayhap eble. Mayor urbestro. Maze labirinto. Mazurka mazurko. Me (al) mi, min. Meadow herbejo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... it, doubled in three for a pillow; a mere shred of patchwork counter-pane, and a blanket; and under that, and peeping out a little on either side beyond the loose clothes, two faded chair cushions of horsehair, laid along together for a sort of makeshift mattress. When Trottle got into the room, the lonely little boy had scrambled up on the bedstead with the help of the beer-stool, and was kneeling on the outer rim of sacking with the shred of counterpane in his hands, just making ready to tuck ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens

... from the bed. The pillows were stuffed with valuable furs; fine linen and embroideries filled the bolsters. The feather-sack contained dresses of rich and costly fabrics,—the styles showing them to be at least twenty years old. And in the mattress were stowed away the dinner and tea services of silver, together with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... lost, and turned in. Not so Mendouca, he would not give them up; moreover, he refused to leave the deck—declaring that now he had lost his two mates he had nobody on board that he could trust in charge—preferring to have a mattress laid for him upon the skylight bench, where he snatched catnaps between the intervals of wearing ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... Redruth in the gallery between the cabin and the forecastle, with three or four loaded muskets and a mattress for protection. Hunter brought the boat round under the stern-port, and Joyce and I set to work loading her with powder-tins, muskets, bags of biscuits, kegs of pork, a cask of cognac, and my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the concierge entered, made an excuse for being late, took off his vest, and cast a look of defiance at the furniture. Then he hurled himself at the bed, grappled with the mattress, got a half-Nelson on it, and balancing himself, turning half around, hurled ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... of a wave crest, and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board and drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It is almost certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably out upon the ocean as if he felt sure that it was a great soft mattress. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... faithfully when the letter was concluded, and when Lena dropped it out she saw him pick it up and start up the steep hillside. Without undressing she blew out the candle and curled herself upon the mattress on the floor. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... same, and introduce the reader to the cabin of Lieutenant Vanslyperken, which was not very splendid in its furniture. One small table, one chair, a mattress in a standing bed-place, with curtains made of bunting, an open cupboard, containing three plates, one tea-cup and saucer, two drinking glasses, and two knives. More was not required, as Mr Vanslyperken never indulged in company. There was another cupboard, but it was carefully ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... too vague to know, A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed; And he, exploring fifty feet below The rosy ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon

... her. The chorus were in the next room. The room in which they had been sitting till that moment was too small, and was divided in two by cotton curtains, behind which was a huge bed with a puffy feather mattress and a pyramid of cotton pillows. In the four rooms for visitors there were beds. Grushenka settled herself just at the door. Mitya set an easy chair for her. She had sat in the same place to watch the dancing and singing "the time before," when they had made merry there. All the girls ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... space between the stove and the wall four planks had been put together as if to make a large receptacle for apples; there were no apples, however, inside, but something Heidi had no difficulty in recognising, for it was her very own bed, with its hay mattress and sheets, and sack for a coverlid, just as she had it up at the hut. Heidi clapped her hands for joy and exclaimed, "O grandfather, this is my room, how nice! But where ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri

... bedding than we had enjoyed the night before. Two of the least fragile of the bedsteads, which stood by the wall of the hut, had been stuffed with heath, then in full flower, so artificially arranged, that, the flowers being uppermost, afforded a mattress at once elastic and fragrant. Cloaks, and such bedding as could be collected, stretched over this vegetable couch, made it both soft and warm. The Bailie seemed exhausted by fatigue. I resolved to ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... her health gave way. At the end of April her condition was hopeless; she lay upon "a rude bed formed of boxes, but covered with a soft mattress," and thus, her husband beside her, she died in the heart of the great continent for which she and those most dear to her ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... perplexed by that until I find a thermometer beside six switches on the wall. Above this switchboard is a brief instruction: one switch warms the floor, which is not carpeted, but covered by a substance like soft oilcloth; one warms the mattress (which is of metal with resistance coils threaded to and fro in it); and the others warm the wall in various degrees, each directing current through a separate system of resistances. The casement does not open, but above, flush with the ceiling, a noiseless rapid fan pumps air out of the ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... thou comest to the market-street of the money-changers, at the upper end of whereof thou wilt find the shop of Master [FN198] Abu al- Sa'adat the Jew, Shaykh of the shroffs, and wilt see him sitting on a mattress, with a cushion behind him and two coffers, one for gold and one for silver, before him, while around him stand his Mamelukes and negro-slaves and servant-lads. Go up to him and set the basket before him, saying 'O Abu al-Sa'adat, verily I went ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... had begged to be laid on the bare ground, that he might die as a penitent. Toward midnight, as he still asked it, they lifted him on the little mattress of his bed and placed him on it upon the floor. There he lay, very quiet, whilst midnight tolled from the great churches of the city. The Fathers knelt beside him, praying silently with him, or giving him from time to time the crucifix ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.

... contributed to make her admire him; and if we could peep into Fanny's bed (which she shared in a cupboard, along with those two little sisters to whom we have seen Mr. Costigan administering gingerbread and apples), we should find the poor little maid tossing upon her mattress, to the great disturbance of its other two occupants, and thinking over all the delights and events of that delightful, eventful night, and all the words, looks, and actions of Arthur, its splendid hero. Many novels had Fanny read, in secret and at home, in three volumes and in numbers. Periodical ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of walnut and hickory, with its cords of rawhide, was gone, and in its stead the Morrises had built a wide bunk against the inner wall of the apartment, with a mattress of straw and a pillow of the same material, for feathers were just then impossible to obtain. Under the window was a wide bench made of a half log, commonly called a puncheon bench, and the flooring was likewise of puncheons, that is, split logs with the flat side smoothed ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer

... flues, or by all. Next, a comfortable bed, of almost any material, except cotton and feathers, though the latter might be indulged in during the severest season; but it is better to dispense with them in toto, and use instead a mattress of hair, husk, moss, or straw. These even should be frequently aired, but only upon bright sunny days, and occasionally changed altogether for new material. In place of heavy cotton counterpanes use woollen ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... eat it, but with less relish than they do the blades, which are sweeter and more nutritious. The former are much used for mattresses, being preferred to moss, as they are cleaner, and easier manufactured. When mixed with coarse cotton, and properly prepared, they will make a mattress but little inferior to curled hair: price about fifty cents per cwt. The average price of this grain may be set down at forty cents per bushel; and the yield on upland in some parts of the State may be stated at ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... restless; they see a funeral cortege of black men in spotless white robes; they bear a black corpse in a white shroud. The body is hastily deposited within the area on its bed of stone and mattress of charcoal. The vultures swoop down to the feast. In a short while, satiated, they rise on heavy wing and lazily resettle ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... down on a straw filled mattress outside their door. I heard Mr. Adams open the window and get into bed. Then Doctor Franklin began to expound his theory of colds. He declared that cold air never gave any one a cold; that respiration destroyed a gallon of air a minute and that all the air in the room would be consumed ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... from our stores beforehand, so that he might have a little food, with a dash of brandy in it, to recover him after the fatigue of the journey down the mountain. By the time we had laid him out on a mattress in a cool tent, with the fresh air blowing about him, and had made him eat the meal prepared for him, he really began to look ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... that officer with his valise rolled in a blanket and used as a bolster, while the owner lay on his back gazing dreamily up at the stars. A trooper was silently making down the bedding of the other officers. The sand was soft and dry, no campfire was needed, no tent, no mattress. All four were hardened campaigners and the ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... I had a room with bath. The bath was at the stream some fifty yards away, but such discrepancies are minor affairs in the midst of such big elemental things as were all about me. My mattress was of young cherry shoots, and never did king have a more royal bed, or ever such refreshing sleep. And, while I slept, I grew inside, for the soft music of the pines lulled me to rest, and the subdued rippling of my bath-stream ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... of the room stood an iron camp-bed without curtains. There, on a worn mattress, lay King Friedrich, the terror of Europe, without coverlet, in an old blue roquelaure. He had a big cocked-hat, with a white feather [hat aged, worn soft as duffel, equal to most caps; "feather" is not perpendicular, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... poetry, hung round his bed, quite other than fit sails for the Stygian boat. They had made the bed as different as the vine in summer from the vine in winter. A quilt of red satin lay in the place of the patchwork coverlid. Everything had been changed. He thought the mattress felt soft under him—but that was only a fancy, for he saw before the fire the feather-bed intended to lie between him and it. He felt like a tended child, in absolute peace and bliss—or like one just dead, while yet weary with the struggle to break free. He seemed to recall ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... morning, between leaving Clancy and getting back to the dock again, I spent in cleaning up and overhauling my home outfit. My mother couldn't be made to believe that store bedding was of much use—and she was right, I guess—and so a warranted mattress and blankets and comforters and a pillow were made into a bundle and thrown onto a waiting wagon. Then it was good-by to all—good-by to my cousin Nell, who had come over from her house, good-by and ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... on the little electric lamp, and by its rays they inspected the apartment. It was a bedroom, and in one corner was an old bedstead and on it a musty straw mattress. In another corner was a closet ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)

... To expedite the extraction, she drew out an arm and amputated it, and finding the extraction still difficult, she cut off the head and completely emptied the womb, including the placenta. She bound a tight bandage around her body and hid the fetus in a straw mattress. She then dressed herself and attended to her domestic duties. She afterward mounted a cart and went into the city of Viterbo, where she showed her sister a cloth bathed in blood as menstrual proof that she was not pregnant. On returning home, having walked five hours, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... yet more sad than heroic, was poor Heine on his "mattress-grave." Most pathetically did he lay himself down, this "soldier in the war for the liberation of humanity." Of the last time that Heine left the house before yielding to disease, he says: "With difficulty I dragged myself to the Louvre, and almost sank down as I entered the magnificent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... Colonel heard 'Hello! Yes, this is H.Q.,' he sat motionless waiting to hear what message was coming through. When his meal was finished he resisted an impulse to 'phone' all the forward trenches, asking how things were, unlaced his boots, paused, and laced them up again, lay down on a very gritty mattress in a corner of the cellar, and tried to sleep. For the first hour every rattle of rifle fire, every thud of a gun, every call on the telephone brought him up on his pillow, his ears straining to catch any further sound. After ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... clothiers, it was slipping out from under the control of the town gilds by its location in the country. The same thing occurred in other cases, even without the intermediation of a new employing class. We hear of mattress makers, of rope makers, of tile makers, and other artisans establishing themselves in the country villages outside of the towns, where, as a law of 1495 says, "the wardens have no power or authority to make ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... and there will be two twins, one a perfect model, the other what Mrs. Lynde calls a 'holy terror.' There will be a little room upstairs over the porch, where old dreams hang thick, and a big, fat, glorious feather bed which will almost seem the height of luxury after a boardinghouse mattress. How do you ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... one of them going over to Tom's house at that hour. So the doctor retired to the spare bedroom, Sherwood and Arthur occupied a broad couch or divan in the little parlor, where Tom Walsh and his young cousin slept even more comfortably on an extra mattress on the floor. Everyone was in good spirits, although tired and very sleepy; and the sun was high in the heavens before any ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler

... stand back and examine the pictures of a pink Moses in a nest of purple bullrushes, or complain because the bureau does not harmonize with the wall paper. Neither do you criticize the blue and saffron roses that form the rug pattern. 'Deedy not! Instead you warily punch the mattress to see if it is rock-stuffed, and you snoop into the clothes closet; you inquire the distance to the nearest bath room, and whether the payments are weekly or monthly, and if there is a baby in the room next door. Oh, there's nothing like living in a boarding-house ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... covering the "split bottom" of the native bed. There is no other mattress, and the "split bottom" constitutes the springs. Once accustomed to it, the bed ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... head, she was taken to that of her surrogate guardian, the change being as necessary medically as it was judicially. The removal was made with the utmost caution, and was calculated to produce a great public effect. Pierrette was laid on a mattress and carried on a stretcher by two men; a Gray Sister walked beside her with a bottle of sal volatile in her hand, while the grandmother, Brigaut, Madame Auffray, and her maid followed. People were at their windows and doors to see the procession pass. Certainly ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... shoulders. "I tell him it serves him right," she said, cuttingly. "A sensible person keeps his money under his mattress and not in a tin machine by a window which anyone can get at. I wonder we've not been murdered ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... be said that Tom Parker had ever labored arduously at anything, nevertheless he had followed his calling faithfully, and the peculiar exigencies of that calling had made of him a light and fitful sleeper. He had so often used the earth as a mattress and his saddle as a pillow, that sunup invariably roused him, and as a consequence he liked to tell people that he could do with less sleep than any man in Texas. That was, in fact, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... work when I left home," Darrin informed him. "If I hadn't felt that I could endure a little fatigue, then I'd have remained at home and looked for a job sleeping in a mattress factory's show-room." ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock

... at every turn against the corner of a box, or the broad shoulders of the Tartar driver. The correct way of preparing for a journey in this primitive region is to half fill your cart with hay, lay your baggage upon it as a kind of pavement, and cover the whole with a straw mattress, upon which you recline, walled in with rolled-up wrappers to keep you from being absolutely battered to bits against the sides of the vehicle. You then provide yourself with a hatchet and a coil of rope, ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... I can only get rid of this world, it's all I ask,' she said; 'if the other one isn't any better, why, it can't be any worse! Feel under the mattress and you'll find money enough to last three or four years. It's all she'll ever get, for she hasn't a soul now to look to for help. That's the way we human beings arrange things,—we, or the Lord, or the Evil One, or whoever it is; ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... especially those which come from the quarry-works. Here we often find the Field-mouse sitting on a grass mattress, nibbling acorns, almonds, olive-stones and apricot-stones. The Rodent varies his diet: to oily and farinaceous foods he adds the Snail. When he is gone, he has left behind him, under the overhanging stones, mixed up with the remains of other victuals, an assortment of empty shells, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... is a long chalk below temperance, but it's better than drunkenness any day. And if a man can't get on without three-finger nips, let him take the pledge. There are one or two here to-night who would be the better for it. But, to my thinking, total abstinence is like a water mattress. It is good for a sick man, and it's good for a man with a weak will, which is another kind of illness. But temperance is for those who are in health. There is a text in the Bible about wine making glad the heart of man. That's a good text, and one to go on. As often as not ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... face, but she still couldn't function. He picked her up and tossed her back into the room. From the broken mattress on the bed, he dug out a coil of wire and bound her ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... little by little he crept out of the alcove. "You are sitting alone there," he said, and sat down at the table in his nightcap and pants. He was wearing a knitted nightcap, one end of which fell loosely over his ear. He looked like a genuine old farmer, one that had money in his mattress. And Karna, who was moving to and fro while the menfolk ate, had a round, comfortable figure, and was carrying a big bread-knife in her hand. She inspired confidence, and she too looked ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... my neighborhood," he panted, "they say Turner is a devil. Whatever happens, it's not your mix-in. Better—better tuck your gun under your mattress and forget you've got it. You've got ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... rectangular holes are cut in the back-board just in front of the hind legs and behind the shoulders they will be useful later in shaping the body by sewing back and forth with a mattress needle and cord. Drive a row of lath nails into the top and bottom edges of the back-board about half their length at 2 inch intervals. They will enable you to build up first one side, then the other of the body by winding down excelsior with wrapping cord. These ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... to be blind, Yet a hundred people with good eyes would listen to him all night; For they took great enjoyment in the heaven of his mind, And were glad when the old blind poet let them share his powers of sight. And there was Heine lying on his mattress all day long, He had no wealth, he had no friends, he had no joy at all, Except to pour his sorrow into little cups of song, And the world finds in them the magic wine that his ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer

... case we found three pillows and a mattress had got wet. If the wetting is from salt water they will have to be soaked in fresh. The other pillows that got wet have not felt dry since, but still I have had to lie upon them; the deck-chairs are in the ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... from the intense heat as well as I could by taking the mattress from the bed and erecting it as a bulwark before the window, with only enough space reserved on the top so as to look out, I anxiously observed the animals in the opposite room. Immediately opposite the window through which I gazed was ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... sheath-knife Jock was not long in piling under the sheltered underside of a great rock over which the heather grew, such a heap of heather twigs as Ralph could hardly believe had been cut in so short a time. These he compacted into an excellent mattress, springy and level, ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... unable to leave the hard cork mattress on the camp-bed in Fred's tent. They went again to the commandant, this time determined to force ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... without his "nigger," as the Boy said, slyly indicating that it was he who occupied this exalted post. These two soon had the bunks made out of the rough planks they had sawed with all a green-horn's pains. They put in a fragrant mattress of spring moss, and on that made up a bed of blankets ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... o' the puir wafilly budy akinda drave the fear awa frae me; an' I maskit a cup o' tea, an' crackit awa till her till we got her cowshined doon. Their back winda had been blawn in, and Dauvid had tried to keep oot the wind wi' a mattress; but the wind had tummeled baith Dauvid an' the mattress heels ower gowrie, an' the wife got intil a terriple state. They cudna bide i' the hoose ony langer, an' i' the warst o't a', they cam' awa through a shoer o' sklates, ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond

... which enveloped them with radiance. Then Mathieu pulled up Marianne's pillows, set the counterpane in order, and forbade her to stir until he had tidied the room. Forthwith he stripped his little bedstead, folded up the sheets, the mattress, and the bedstead itself, over which he slipped a cover. She vainly begged him not to trouble, saying that Zoe, the servant whom they had brought from the country, could very well do all those things. But he persisted, replying that the servant ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... noise like a clatter of old iron was heard on the Place; it was the "Hirondelle" coming in, and he remained with his forehead against the windowpane, watching all the passengers get out, one after the other. Felicite put down a mattress for him in the drawing-room. He threw himself upon it and ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... servants had already furnished, after the handsomest fashion, and had spread with prayer rugs and silken carpets and had placed on the divans a pair of mattresses, each worth an hundred dinars. On every mattress they had disposed a rug of skin fit for a King and edged with a fringe of gold; and a-middlemost the shop stood a third seat still richer, even as the place required. Then Taj al-Muluk sat down on one divan, and Aziz on another, whilst the Wazir seated himself ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... to the suggestion and they proceeded to make up their couch without loss of time. They did not have to go outside the circle of firelight for their mattress, for the wild rice grew all around the blazing tree. All they had to do was to pull it up in great handfuls and stack it ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... minutes thereafter the two men who had gone with Sam Davis returned with the spring from Benton's bed and a light mattress. They laid the injured logger on this and covered him with a blanket. Then four of them picked it up. As they started, Stella heard one say to ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... silence all, the last mysterious preparations begin. At length it is announced that all is ready. Forthwith the whole company rush back, and find the walls embellished by a series of little shelves, about a foot wide, each furnished with a mattress and bedding, and hooked to the ceiling by a very suspiciously slender cord. Direful are the ruminations and exclamations of inexperienced travellers, particularly young ones, as they eye these very equivocal accommodations. "What, sleep up there! I won't ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... ordinary circumstances sleeps very soundly, his ear attuned only to certain things. So Kingozi hardly stirred on his cork mattress, although the lions roared full-voiced satisfaction when they left the rhinoceros, and the yells of the hyenas rose to a pandemonium when at last they were permitted to join the feast. Likewise the nearer familiar noises ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... forced her way through the group that surrounded the mattress, and silently took her place beside her husband. Her features had changed so terribly within a few moments that a murmur of pity ran through the group of men that ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... there was an iron bolt on the door, and the walls of bare logs were solid. Waring stood his gun in one corner, and laid his pistols by the side of the bed,—for there was a bed, only a rude framework like a low-down shelf, but covered with mattress and sheets none the less,—and his weary body longed for those luxuries with a longing that only the wilderness can give,—the wilderness with its beds of boughs, and no undressing. The bolt and the logs shut him in safely; he was young and strong, and there were his pistols. 'Unless ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... my thin Sunday pants till I felt for all the world like the ventilating pipe on an ice-chest. I could see why Phil was wearing the bed-clothes; what I was suffering for just then was a feather mattress on each side ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... desirable than a double bed. If it is low, four-inch blocks should be placed under each leg, the casters having been removed to prevent slipping. The bed should be so placed that it can be reached from either side by the nurse and physician. The mattress may be reenforced by the placing of a board under it if there is a tendency to sag in the middle. Over this mattress is securely pinned the strip of rubber sheeting or table oilcloth. A clean sheet covers mattress and ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... gathered upon it, refused any view of things without save in two or three places where the glass was broken; by these apertures, and at every point of the framework, entered a sharp wind. In one corner stood an iron bedstead, with mattress and bedding in a great roll upon it; a shaky deal table and primitive chair completed the furniture. Ornament did not wholly lack; round the walls hung a number of those coloured political caricatures (several indecent) which are published by some Italian newspapers, and a ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... had had many invitations, but he refused them all. With a morbid feeling that because his carelessness caused the fire he ought to do penance and not allow himself to be comfortable, he pulled a pillow and a mattress from the pile of goods into the empty room adjoining, and threw ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston

... simple, honest peasant, and it seemed very strange to Nekhludoff to hear it from the lips of a prisoner in the garb of disgrace and in prison. While listening to him, Nekhludoff examined the low cot, with its straw mattress, the window, with its thick iron bars, the damp, plastered walls, the pitiful face and the figure of the unfortunate, mutilated peasant in bast shoes and prison coat, and he became sad; he would not ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... time, Mr Carker, though the winner, had mounted high into the Major's good opinion, insomuch that when he left the Major at his own room before going to bed, the Major as a special attention, sent the Native—who always rested on a mattress spread upon the ground at his master's door—along the gallery, to light him to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... of rooms that bore the number seven on their door that Mr. Magee's choice fell. A large parlor with a fireplace that a few blazing logs would cheer, a bedroom whose bed was destitute of all save mattress and springs, and a bathroom, comprised his kingdom. Here, too, all the furniture was piled in the center of the rooms. After Quimby had opened the windows, he began straightening ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... over it, revolver in one hand, a pair of handcuffs in the other. He lost his balance on top of the shaky heap; strove desperately to recover it, scrambled like a cat in a tub, stumbled, rolled over on a mattress. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... ago, in the world that was slowly coming back to her, the idea of sleeping in the bunk of a Chinaman she had seen killed would have revolted her, now, it did not trouble her at all. She only knew that a mattress and clean sheets were heaven, even if she had to sleep with a revolver under her pillow. Then in a day or two she only put the revolver there as a matter of routine. The "Chinks" gave evidence that so far from making trouble they ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... incompatible with dignity. He had been lieutenant-general in the army. Upon one occasion, after a battle in which he had taken part, one of the Rhingraves who had been made prisoner, fell to his lot. The Duc de Coislin wished to give up to the other his bed, which consisted indeed of but a mattress. They complimented each other so much, the one pressing, the other refusing, that in the end they both slept upon the ground, leaving the mattress between them. The Rhingrave in due time came to Paris ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... unfold thyself!" and as he spoke the magic table appeared before their eyes. The hostess, struck dumb with astonishment, at once became covetous and resolved to have the napkin for herself. So that night she placed the goodman in a handsome apartment where there was a beautiful bed with a soft feather mattress, on which he slept more soundly than ever he had done in his life. When he was fast asleep the cunning hostess entered the room and stole the napkin, leaving one of similar appearance ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... matting, stood the wreck of a table, superannuated, and maimed of a leg, but propped by two chairs that with broken arms sympathized with each other. In the other, a cheap excess of Chinese bedstead, that took the whole room to itself; and a mattress!—a mutilated epitome ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... supplantin' furriner because Ruby said 'twas low manners for bride an' groom to go to church from the same house. So no sooner was the Lewarnes out than he was in, like shufflin' cards, wi' his marriage garment an' his brush an' comb in a hand-bag. Tresidder sent down a mattress for en, an' he slept there ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... we started with a bedding and a Hookah and a pack of cards and a big lamp. We made the bed (a mattress and a sheet) on a platform on the bank. There were six steps, with risers about 9" each, leading from the platform to the water. Thus we were about 41/2 feet from the water level; and from this coign ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji

... air heavy and musty, but here the soft night breeze was drifting in. On a table, in odd conjunction, stood the remains of a meal, a roll of bandages, and a half-burned candle; and finally, against the wall lay a bed of a sort, a mattress piled with ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... retribution because of the things which she had confiscated in payment of her debt. She had little of Minna Eddy's strength of confidence in her own proceedings. She had, however, consoled herself by the reflection that possibly nobody knew that she had taken them. She had hidden them away under her mattress, and slept uneasily on the edge of the bed, lest she break the cups and saucers. If it had not been so early in the morning, presumably too early for visitors from the City, she would not have dared show herself at the station. In these days she sewed behind closed doors, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... one side of this were small lockers, one designed to hold tools and spare parts of the engine, the other serving as a pantry. On the other side was a low, broad seat extending the whole length of the cabin, and on this was a cushion which at night served as a mattress for the owner of ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport

... next morning, when the door burst open, and Anna, tear-stained and sobbing, threw herself into the room and, hurling herself to the bed, flung herself at his feet, which, owing to his immensity of stature, were protruding slightly over the end of the mattress. 'Take me with you!' she cried repeatedly. 'No, no, no!' replied the Tsar, equally repeatedly. At length, worn out by her pleading, the poor woman fell asleep. It was dawn when the Tsar, stepping over ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... the saloon to where her brother was back in his own cabin, lying upon his mattress, looking terribly weak and ill. His face brightened though as he saw me, and he too held out ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... thus easily established. This is just the method of the simple and sensible Germans, who never wait for elegant upholstery. A pair of plain parallel bars, a movable vaulting-bar, a wooden horse, a spring-board, an old mattress to break the fall, a few settees where sweethearts and wives may sit with their knitting as spectators, and there is a Turnhalle complete,—to be henceforward filled, two or three nights in every week, with cheery German faces, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... dimensions of a man's bunk was 6 feet long, 2 feet wide and 2 feet high, and they were arranged in tiers of four, with a four inch board on either side to keep one from rolling out. The Government had furnished no bedding at all. Our bedding consisted of one blanket as mattress and haversack for pillow. The 25th Infantry was assigned to the bottom deck, where there was no light, except the small port holes when the gang-plank was closed. So dark was it that candles were burned all day. There was no air except what ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson

... in writing in the book of gold. In the second scene, the angel stands at the foot of the couch, and holds the book towards Ben Adhem for him to read the names written therein. The couch can be formed by placing a small mattress on a few low boxes, and covering the whole with bed clothes, on the outside of which should be a white quilt. It must be placed in the foreground, at the right of the stage. Place a plaster pedestal near the side of the couch, on the top of which ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... for her dislike to tobacco was well known, and she answered in the same jocular tone: "Do you not think that a mattress stuffed with these leaves would be very ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... silent affair, and when it was over the squaw handed Margaret a blanket. Suddenly she understood that this, and this alone, was to be her bed for the night. The earth was there for a mattress, and the sage-brush lent a partial shelter, the ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... stand on the ladder and press against the ceiling directly over it, a well-oiled trap door will open soundlessly and lead you into Lola's bedroom above the shop. In front of the window with the blue curtain is a worn bed, the hard mattress neatly covered with a counterpane. At the head of the mattress is a mended tear. It is in this mattress that Lola hides photographs of extraordinary military and naval importance. ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak

... still. Then suddenly he began pressing hard on the mattress with both hands, bracing himself up in the bed. Her mother leaned closer towards him. He threw himself over slantways, and with his head bent as if it was broken, dropped into ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair

... earthen basins, which they manufacture, or in half-gourd shells or calabashes. They sleep in nets of cotton, very large and suspended in the air; and although this may seem a very bad way of sleeping, I can vouch for the fact that it is extremely pleasant, and one sleeps better thus than on a mattress. They are neat and clean in their persons, which is a natural consequence of their perpetual bathing; but some of their habits ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober

... the horse a little out of the shadow as he spoke, and helped me inside the little house on wheels, where I found a mattress that proved a most acceptable rest; and then we drove slowly and quietly off, and gradually ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning

... crown might have fatal consequences. Helen, on this, observed that the king was more important than the crown, and that the best way would be to keep them together; so she wrapped up the crown in a cloth, and hid it under the mattress of his cradle, with a long spoon for mixing his pap upon the top, so, said the queen, he might take care of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... will answer at a pinch; it has an aromatic smell; but it is too stiff and humpy. Hemlock is smoother and more flexible; but the spring soon wears out of it. The balsam-fir, with its elastic branches and thick flat needles, is the best of all. A bed of these boughs a foot deep is softer than a mattress and as fragrant as a thousand Christmas-trees. Two things more are needed for the ideal camp-ground—an open situation, where the breeze will drive away the flies and mosquitoes, and an abundance of dry firewood within easy reach. ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... according to their custom, and sat with him by way of solace and diversion, till midnight, when they craved permission to withdraw. He gave them leave and they retired to their houses; after which there came in to him a slave-girl affected to the service of his bed, who spread him the mattress and doffing his apparel, clad him in his sleeping-gown. Then he lay down and she kneaded his feet, till sleep overpowered him; whereupon she withdrew to her own chamber and slept. But suddenly he felt ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... of coolness it was now; the slightest mistake would be fatal. The keys had slipped from the mattress of the divan, and now lay just beyond reach of my fingers. Rapidly I changed my position, and sought, without undue noise, to move the keys ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... place was Natura obliged to take up his lodging:—he lay down, indeed, on the ragged dirty mattress, but durst not take off his cloaths, so noisome was every thing about him:—fatigued as he was, he could not close his eyes till towards day, but had not slept above two hours before the peasant who had served him as a guide, and had also stayed ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... Dissolution no corruption whatever was revealed at Glastonbury, nor any blame recorded against its management. It was still doing splendid work, having daily services and extending its educational influence for miles around. There was but scanty comfort for its inmates, who rested on a straw mattress and bolster on their narrow bedstead in a bare cell, and whose food, duties and discipline were marked by an austere simplicity. Nor were they idle, these monks of Glastonbury—some taught in the abbey school, others toiled in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... lightly up the stairs after the Terror. In less than two minutes the deft hands of the Twins had dealt with the bed; and their intelligent eyes were eagerly scanning the hapless unprotected bedroom. Erebus sprang to the shaving-brush on the mantelpiece and thrust it under the mattress. The Terror locked Captain Baster's portmanteau; and as he placed the keys beside ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson



Words linked to "Mattress" :   feather bed, bed, mattress cover, palliasse, tick, air mattress



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