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Calico   /kˈæləkˌoʊ/   Listen
Calico

noun
(pl. calicoes)
1.
Coarse cloth with a bright print.



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"Calico" Quotes from Famous Books



... sun go down on you," he read. "That's the third one of those reminders, Calico," he told the horse. "The wording a little different but the ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... deckhouse, and afraid 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

... would be about thirteen rupees or twenty-six shillings; in the bush the price is quadrupled. Before leaving us the Abban received at least double the original hire. Besides small presents of cloth, dates, tobacco and rice to his friends, he had six cubits of Sauda Wilayati or English indigo-dyed calico for women's fillets, and two of Sauda Kashshi, a Cutch imitation, a Shukkah or half Tobe for his daughter, and a sheep for himself, together with a large bundle ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... that they go out in all 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 ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... and pretty when seen close at hand, and from the pattern of the feathers is often called Calico-bird. The Golden Plover is darker and not so conspicuously ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... 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 a ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... resolved. His stub of 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 ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... barks at 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

... maiden? 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

... "Lambs"—Redmondese for Lamba Theta—a compliment rarely paid to a Freshman. As a preparatory initiation ordeal he had to parade the principal business streets of Kingsport for a whole day wearing a sunbonnet and a voluminous kitchen apron of gaudily flowered calico. This he did cheerfully, doffing his sunbonnet with courtly grace when he met ladies of his acquaintance. Charlie Sloane, who had not been asked to join the Lambs, told Anne he did not see how Blythe could do it, and HE, for his part, ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... 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

... a canopy almost touching the ceiling. It was hung with faded chintz, and instead of a mattress it had a billowy feather bed over which were tucked grandmother's hand-spun sheets and blankets covered by the gayest of quilts in an elaborate pattern of sprigged and spotted calico patches. The two front posts of the bed were of dark shiny wood carved in a strange design of twisted leaves and branches, and to Ann, as she looked at them by the leaping flickering firelight, it seemed as if from between these ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels

... where you are 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 his sister at all, why that settled the ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... littherary wontherr of the wurrld," says he; "and sure your lordship must have seen it; the latther numbers ispicially—cheap as durrt, bound in gleezed calico, six shillings a vollum. The illusthrious neems of Walther Scott, Thomas Moore, Docther Southey, Sir James Mackintosh, Docther Donovan, and meself, are to be found in the list of conthributors. It's the Phaynix ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Moore Africa has shaken her up by shifting her, and by giving her a lesson in local values, just as the donkey has done about linen or calico, I ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... them. But this was not satisfying; in my country there must be many better things to look at, and they could not believe I would take so much trouble with their birds and beasts just for people to look at. They did not want to look at them; and we, who made calico and glass and knives, and all sorts of wonderful things, could not want things from Aru to look at. They had evidently been thinking about it, and had at length got what seemed a very satisfactory theory; for the same old man said to me, in a low, mysterious voice, "What becomes of them when ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... with her cap strings tucked back, her sleeves rolled up, and her short, purple calico shielded from harm by her broad, motherly check apron, Aunt Betsy stood cleaning the silvery onions, and occasionally wiping her dim old eyes as the odor proved too strong for her. At another table stood Aunt Hannah, deep in the mysteries of the light, white crust which was to cover ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... a kavass—with much gold in his jacket, and a voluminous petticoat of white calico—came to inform him that his Excellency the Prince hope to see him at breakfast at eleven o'clock; and it now only wanted a few minutes of that hour. Atlee detained the messenger to show him the road, and at ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... the case differed from the others. The creature had, she said, a heavy black beard, which, was un-Indian-like, and was garbed in a dark calico gown with open sleeves, through which she plainly perceived a pair of unmistakably muscular, masculine arms. In the words ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... sandwiches, decanting buttermilk into a bottle, wrapping up slices of apple pie, and accusing Verena of having given away a basket she needed, which had always hung on a hook in the passage. When she came out into the porch, in her pink calico, which had run a little in the washing, but was still bright enough to set off her dark tints, she had such a triumphant sense of being a part of the sunlight and the morning that the last trace of her misery vanished. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... as 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 ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... 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 ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... 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 ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... her dining-room table to her kitchen, as most of Old Trail Town did in Winter, Mary had moved her cooking stove into the dining room, had improvised a calico-curtained cupboard for the utensils, and there she lived and sewed. The ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... trained by a good housekeeper to be a most admirable servant. She must be told to rise early, to attend to the sweeping of the door-steps, to open the blinds, to light the fires, and to lay the breakfast-table. She must appear in a neat calico dress, white apron and cap, and wait upon the family at breakfast. After breakfast, the gentlemen will expect her to brush their hats, to bring overcoats and overshoes, and to find the umbrellas. She must answer the door-bell as well, so should be nimble-footed ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... man and woman, who had at least reached middle age. The woman wore a neatly fitting calico gown; the man, a short pilot-coat. His pantaloons were very tight and pale. A new soft hat was pushed forward from the left rear corner of his closely cropped head, with the front of the brim turned down over ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... full-blown maturity, when assuredly it seeks, (and need seek only,) willingly proffers, and readily accepts, equality of condition—reciprocity of interchange, with all the world. "The Manchester manufacturer"—the false nom-de-guerre of a calico printer, who was not a manufacturer at all, and could scarcely distinguish a calico from a cambric at the time of writing, who erst was, is yet, perchance, the trumpeter of Russian policy, Russian principles, and Russian progress in the East and elsewhere—must be grateful for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... walls were the natural earth, the other three of sod, with holes for windows and corn-sacks for curtains. This little lady had her Saratoga trunk, which was the chief article of furniture; yet, by means of a rug on the ground-floor, a few candle-boxes covered with red cotton calico for seats, a table improvised out of a barrel-head, and a fireplace and chimney excavated in the back wall or bank, she had transformed her "hole in the ground" into a most attractive home for her young warrior husband; and she entertained me with a supper consisting of the best of coffee, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... His report is stated to have been unfavourable; and the chica, contained in a gourd labelled "Chica d'Andiguez," was then tested as to its capabilities for dyeing and printing. Fine and durable reds were found to be produced by it upon woollen, equal to those of cochineal. To mordanted calico the shades imparted were dull and heavy, but very solid. Chica is described as a very strong colouring matter, a small quantity dyeing a large amount of cloth, and as more nearly resembling lac lake than ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... these fine things, I'd be as bad as yourself, Finny darling. No: I'll wear my calico gown, and my sun-bonnet, and my strong shoes; and you'll see I can get to my work or my play without half the bother you'd ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... poor, attenuated little body was ill-assorted with plenty of any kind, and the wealth of curls mocked the poverty of her clothes. A patched shawl affected to protect her poor little shoulders, and a calico dress flapped coldly about her legs. As David turned the corner she arose, and, for all her stiffness and shivering, exclaimed, cheerily, "A merry Christmas, father!" and reached to ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... 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 ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... six shillings a week each, and a dear little house to live in. We are obliged to supply them with as much coal as they want, and candles, and a new pair of blankets on the first of every November, and a bale of unbleached calico on the first of May. You can't think how comfortable they are. And then, of course, we throw in a lot of extra things—the black velveteen dresses, and other garments ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... time in throwing the fact of my being a baker in my face, although they are a commercial, manufacturing people. Whether calico is nobler than flour, or flour than calico, I am not sure, but the subject is one for discussion, as Maeztu ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... 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 American people could never approve of its methods. They ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... 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 could ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... cut of the coat he wears. There are parents who would not mind their children's sitting beside a little darkey, but who do object most strenuously to their occupying the same bench with a dirty little Irish child. A calico dress or a coat frayed at the edges are certainly not badges of high social standing, but they are not incompatible with honesty, purity, industry and respect for God, which things create a wholesome atmosphere to live in and make the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... Rhodes to the strips of red and green and pink calico banding his arms, their fluttering ends very decorative ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... wrinkled old woman, arrayed in the outlandish calico costume of the mountains, was summoned as a witness in court to tell what she knew about a fight in her house. She took the witness-stand with evidences of backwardness and proverbial Bourbon verdancy. The Judge asked her in a kindly voice what took place. She insisted it did not amount to ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various

... is extremely plain. The houses and apartments are without carpets; the women wear calico on Sunday as well as during the week, and the sun-bonnet is their head-covering. The men wear ready-made clothing of no particular style. Cleanliness is, so far as I saw, a conspicuous virtue of the society. Dr. Keil, the president, ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... 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. King laughed ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... any degree the ideas and habits of civilization, it is only as their women sometimes put on calico gowns over their seal-skin trousers. The modification is not even skin-deep. It is a curious illustration of this immobility, that no persuasion, no authority, can make them fishermen. Inseparable from the sea-shore, the Esquimaux will not catch a fish, if he can catch a dinner otherwise. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... a light, and lit a candle. The first thing taken out of the bundle was the dummy—a net, rather larger than a man's head, tightly filled with corks; with a cord, a hundred yards in length, attached. Next were two complete suits, made of white calico; with caps, with long flaps of the same material. Next were two large rolls of India rubber webbing, about six inches wide, which they had brought from ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty

... of course, 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 ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... quantity of rokos, and other native delicacies.... Followed by several of the guests, we entered another room, which was very gaudily decorated, and furnished with a low bed, the curtains of which were of white calico, ornamented with lace, gold, silver, beads, and coloured bits of silk. At the foot of this bed was a platform, raised about half a foot from the ground, on which was spread a spotless white mat, with ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... but at first he saw only an untidy confusion of garden tools, boxes, bags and other truck, piled promiscuously about wherever space would accommodate them. Then as his eyes became more accustomed to the light, he discovered a slender, brown-haired girl in a faded, dingy, calico gown huddled on top of a pile of empty grain sacks in the darkest corner of the barn. Her face was turned from him, but from her attitude and the sound of an occasional sniff, he judged that she had been crying. Her companion on the rafters overhead was out of range of his vision; but as she scrambled ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... 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, jamming his cap into ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... 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 wishes ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... mantle of primeval forest on the hills. So much for chance. He kept a store with a side porch and square-paned windows, where hams and sides of bacon and sugar loaves in blue glazed paper hung beside ploughs and calico prints, barrels of flour, of molasses and rum, all of which had been somehow marvellously transported over the passes of those forbidding mountains,—passes we blithely thread to-day in dining cars and compartment sleepers. Behind the store ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of the front porch, a meagre little figure of a woman dressed with severe and immaculate cheapness in a purple calico wrapper, with a checked gingham apron tied in a prim bow at her back. Her hair was very smooth. She was New England austerity and conservatism embodied. She was terrifying, although it would have puzzled anybody ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... tall woman, with large blue eyes, and a remarkable quantity of yellow hair braided on top of her head. Her gown was of calico, of such a pattern as a widow ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie

... girl has a small box of bright bits of silk thread that she hoards very closely; then she possesses certain pieces of calico, nails, curtain-rings, buttons, spools and fragments of china—all of which are very dear to her heart. And why should they not be? For with them she creates a fairy world, wherein are only joy, and peace, and harmony, and light—quite ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... 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 ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... to dress in silk, Pauline, instead of calico. I wish you could,' and Polly's eyes rested on her with a world ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black

... then, must shift for herself, And lay her royalty on the shelf; She, and the beautiful Empress, yonder, Whose robes are now the wide world's wonder, And even ourselves, and our dear little wives, Who calico wear each morn of their lives, And the sewing-girls, and les chiffonniers, In rags and hunger—a gaunt array—— And all the grooms of the caravan—— Ay, even the great Don Rataplan Santa Claus ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... life people have looked down on me, passing me by like I was a Juny bug or a caterpillar, and I don't wonder. I'm merely Mary Cary with fifty-eight more just like me. Blue calico, white dots for winter, white calico, blue dots for summer. Black sailor hats and white sailor hats with blue capes for cold weather, and no fire to dress by, and freezing fingers when it's cold, and no ice-water when ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher

... 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 the ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... he explained. "Nobody home at The Dreamerie—" He took her face in his calloused hands, drew her to him. "You're sweet in that calico gown," he informed her, waiving a preliminary word of greeting. "I love you," he added softly, and kissed her. She clung ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... of cases and mounts is of two kinds—distemper and oil; that is to say, supposing paper, calico or sheeting is used for the back of the cases or mounts. Colour the paper or other material—if you wish to show a toned sky—with whiting in which a little glue-water or paste is dissolved, or with common flake-white and size (note that there ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... are most exposed; for the latter, thick woollen mittens or gloves are best; the sting is generally left when thrust into a leather glove. For the face procure one and a half yards of thin muslin or calico, sew the ends together, the upper end gathered on a string small enough to prevent it slipping over the head when put on. An arm-hole is to be cut out on each side; below is another string to gather it close to the body. As I do not expect you to work in ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... thought of that, too," she said, coolly; "about quitting you. I'm sick of it all—the getting and the spending and the crookedness. I'd put the money—yours and mine—in a pile and set fire to it, if some decent man would give me a calico dress and a chance ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... 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

... on Organic Chemistry, as applied to Manufactures, including Dyeing, Bleaching, Calico Printing, Sugar Manufacture, the Preservation of Wood, Tanning, &c. Edited by J. SCOFFERN, ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... silk, calico, home-spun, or feathers, friends are such valuable possessions that we must pay these folks who are now announced as much attention as possible. And if we do this and in every way endeavor to make them feel comfortable and entirely at home, we will soon perceive a very great difference ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... Bishopsgate! Not by the mountain grot and pine, Haunts of the Heliconian Nine: But where the town-bred Muses squall Love-verses in an annual; Such muses as inspire the grunt Of Barry Cornwall, and Leigh Hunt. Their hands no ivy'd thyrsus bear, No Evoee floats upon the air: But flags of painted calico Flutter aloft with gaudy show; And round then rises, long and loud, The laughter of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... have the private car, which I had chartered for the journey to Bukama, ready for me on my arrival. When I showed up at Fungurume the first thing I saw was Gerome's wife, with her ample proportions swathed in scarlet calico, sunning herself on the platform of the car. He could not bring himself to cook his own food although willing enough to ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... Hannah to me; I shall find her tender side. I am going to ask her about the old sea-captain and the yellow calico." ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... soft palms, so wonderfully graceful over teapot or fan, could wield a broom or even a dust-pan did necessity require. Ruth in a ball gown, all frills and ruffles and lace, was a sight to charm the eye of any man, but Ruth in calico and white apron, her beautiful hair piled on top of her still more beautiful head; her skirts pinned up and her dear little feet pattering about, was a sight not only for men but for gods as well. Jack loved ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... 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 still was an honest, youthful ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... 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 ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley

... nothing in her immediate wardrobe fitted for the venture. But from a rag-bag in the closet at the head of the stairs, she resurrected some remains of last summer's apparel. First she put on a blue calico, but the skirt was so badly torn in places that it proved insufficiently protecting. Further search brought to light another skirt, pink, in a still worse state of delapidation. However, since the holes did not occur simultaneously in the two garments, by wearing both ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston

... the property for which he was unable to pay, he suggested to his wife that she take the title of an independent empress. It is doubtful if she knew what an empress was; but she had an idea, that, if she claimed to be one, she would be able to buy some red calico at the nearest store, as well as an extra bottle of rum. So she fell eagerly into the Rev. Mr. Bosom-worth's plans. She sent word to the Creeks that she had suddenly become a genuine empress, and called a meeting of the big men of the nation. The big ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... 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. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... which replaced in 1898 one bought three years earlier by the county council from the Smollett family, who have been closely associated with the district since the time of Sir James Smollett, the novelist's grandfather. The industries of Bonhill centre in the calico printing, dyeing and bleaching which find their headquarters in the valley. Population (1891) 3843; (1901) 3333. JAMESTOWN, about 1 m. to the north-east of Alexandria, with a station on the Forth & Clyde railway from Balloch to Stirling ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... into Cummins' face, and he pointed to a calico-covered box standing upon end in a corner ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... 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 ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... white one there. She wore gloves several sizes too large for her, so I judged that her hands were small and tender, perhaps white. And there was a grace in her movements, dispite the ungainly dress and shoes, which suggested a more intimate knowledge of velvets and silks than of calico. In my mind's eye I placed her at the side of Phyllis. Phyllis reminded me of a Venus whom Nature had whimsically left unfinished. Then she had turned from Venus to Diana, and Gretchen became evolved: a Diana, slim and willowy. A sculptor would have said that Phyllis might have been a goddess, and ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... 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

... door of the house Edward Houstoun as he approached caught a glimpse of Farmer Pye himself and his men seated at breakfast. As he was not perceived by them, he passed on, without interrupting them, to the dairy, where the good dame was busy with her white pails and bright pans. A calico bonnet with a very deep front concealed his approach from Mrs. Pye until he stood beside her; but there was one within the dairy who saw him, and whose coquettish movement in snatching from her glossy brown ringlets a bonnet of the ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... The white calico curtains with red borders were, like those of the drawing-room, completely drawn before the windows, and the sun's rays passing across them, flung a brilliant light on the wainscotings, the only ornament ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... moment a poor woman, in a faded calico dress with a thin shawl over her shoulders, descended the steps that led into the saloon, and walked up ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger

... stole an admiring glance at her sister. Patty's own face, irregular, piquant, tantalizing, 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, unconscious ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Beth's great delight. All of her old things that were not rags were patches, and the shame of having them so was a continual source of discomfort to her; but Aunt Victoria, when she discovered the state of Beth's wardrobe, bought some calico out of her own scanty means, and set her to work. During these long afternoons, they had many a conversation that Beth recollected with pleasure and profit. She often amused and interested the old lady; and sometimes she drew from her a serious reprimand or a solemn lecture, for both of which ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... more nearly 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, half pulled out on the beach. ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... tied with blue ribbons for the windows in the right hand front room. The door of this house swung back with a crash, and a woman darted out. She ran at the top of her speed to the little yellow house farther down the street. Her blue calico gown clung about her stout figure and fluttered behind her, revealing her blue woollen stockings and felt slippers. Her gray head was bare. As she ran tears rolled down her cheeks and ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet

... 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 those ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... calico dress came out of the door—a strong built and rather well favored woman with blond hair ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... than any to be seen even in Germany, were collected at the landing-place; and the Greek drivers (how queer they looked in skull-caps, shabby jackets with profuse embroidery of worsted, and endless petticoats of dirty calico!) began, in a generous ardour for securing passengers, to abuse each other's horses and carriages in the regular London fashion. Satire could certainly hardly caricature the vehicle in which we were ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... with an old sky-blue drawn-silk bonnet, as a parting benediction. This, by way of distinction, for she never had possessed such an article of luxury as a silk bonnet in her life, Jenny had placed over the coarse calico cap, with its full furbelow of the same yellow, ill-washed, homely material, next to her head; over this, as second in degree, a sun-burnt straw hat, with faded pink ribbons, just showed its broken rim and tawdry trimmings; ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... freckles; she had confluent freckles, and as the spots and blotches were of different shades, one could see that they overlapped like the scales of a fish. Her head was bound tightly round with a piece of white calico, and ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... 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

... Mrs. 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 had appeared on ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... of calico, large enough for a dress and skirt, with enough over, a queer, three-cornered piece, which she pinned about the unequal shoulders for a shawl. Upon the bonnet she worked ...
— The Potato Child and Others • Mrs. Charles J. Woodbury

... of her. Go down and see her, will you, Margaret? Tell her I have a headache, or Asiatic cholera, or anything you like. I cannot possibly see her to-day. Her name is Fox—or Wolfe, I can't remember which. Bless you, child! you save my life. Show her the Calico Room. Hand me the amethyst rope before you go; I must compose ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards

... Sir Robert Peel. So called from the great quantity of printed calico with the parsley-leaf pattern manufactured by ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... poles, and hanging down to the ground. Here we were met by the women and children, who, likewise, all went through the ceremony of shaking hands with us, after which the head-woman, who was very good-looking, and was dressed in a cherry-coloured calico gown, with two long plaits of black hair hanging down her back, spread a mat for me to sit upon just outside the hut. By this time there was quite a little crowd of people assembled round, amongst whom I noticed one woman with a baby, who had her hair sticking straight out all ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... straight and neat, with a basket on one arm and a bundle under the other, stood hesitating on the edge of the curb opposite my window. Her poor old face, framed in its calico kerchief, had a wrinkle of anxiety in it. The tumbled ice heap in the street looked to her like an impassable barrier. Tiny as she was, and loaded, she had reason to hesitate. Perhaps she had eggs in her basket,—I thought of that as I looked at her ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... 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 feel it is a disgrace to them not to know how to work. I denounce the idea prevalent ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... to her sewing. Immediately the tea-things were cleared away, she fetched out the stuff, and his soul rose in rage. He hated beyond measure to hear the shriek of calico as she tore the web sharply, as if with pleasure. And the run of the sewing-machine gathered a frenzy in him ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... 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 gray ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... man laid a bright gold dollar in her hand, patted the rosy cheek, and vanished in a cloud of dust, leaving Marjorie so astonished at the grandeur of the gift, that she stood looking at it as if it had been a fortune. It was to her; and visions of pink calico gowns, new grammars, and fresh hat-ribbons danced through her head in delightful confusion, as her eyes rested on the shining ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott

... and husk. 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 enough for ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... we were off Calicut, a curious old town of nearly 50,000 inhabitants, to which belong many ancient stories and traditions. As we all know, it gives its name to that useful and familiar material—calico. This was the first point of India touched at by Vasco de Gama nearly 400 years ago, after his long voyage from Portugal. Not far from Calicut, near Mahe, a high rock rises—one of the few places in India where sea-swallows build their ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... with pleasure. "You gals look purty enough to charm a hoot owl right off'n his perch!" he shot back. Both Phyl and Sandy were wearing gay calico dresses that had ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... the saddle, and even under the screen of her calico bonnet she felt the fiery gleam of his eyes, as he stooped to take the shawl from her hand. Once more his fingers touched his hat, he bowed ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... 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 former residence of Benjamin ...
— Tea Leaves • Various

... Christian, having asked the Lord only for enough to meet but one need, she felt as if the rest belonged to the Lord and must be used for Him. So in wondering how to use it, she thought of a poor woman who needed a new calico dress, and at once bought it and gave it to her. She had but $5 left. A dear friend was in distress; his horse and carriage had been seized for failure to pay the livery bill of their keeping; he could ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... obtained similar to the semi-transparent colors of painted windows. By this means a variety of cheap painted glass may be made. Should these colors be fired in a furnace, enameled surfaces would be produced. As a substitute for albumen for fixing colors in calico printing, soluble glass has been used with a certain degree of success; also as a sizing for thread previous to weaving textile fabrics. Thus it would seem that this substance has been used for many purposes, but since its application does not seem to have been ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various

... 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

... schoolmaster, and the Government will try to prevent fire-water from being sent among you. If you shake hands with us and make a treaty, we are ready to make a present at the end of the treaty, of eight dollars for every man, woman and child in your nations. We are ready also to give calico, clothing and other presents. We are ready to give every recognized Chief, a present of twenty-five dollars, a medal, and a suit of clothing. We are also ready to give the Chief's soldiers, not exceeding four in each band, a ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

... though its journey be through but a few poor yards of space. He no longer saw a rabble, but his brothers seeking the ideal. There was no magic of poesy here or of art; but the glamour of their imagination turned yellow calico into cloth of gold and the megaphones into the silver trumpets ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... sail, and soundly too, the sleep of repentance and innocence. With the early morning the man and the boy arose, and took their way to the cove. The little fellow was clean and tidy now, dressed in a little loose calico frock, and a queer contrivance of an old bonnet fashioned out of Babette's gear, and on his feet were a pair of little canvas slippers, stitched for him by his protector. After a bath in the basin of the inlet the fire was kindled, and the simple breakfast ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... thinking about?' answered the scoundrel. 'Am I then—. Where do you buy your calico?' the scoundrel began after a pause. 'How much do you pay an ell? Where do you buy your linen cloth? How high does it come by the ell? Where do you buy ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous

... mean. I've seen lots of the younger sons of them old families. I've run into them in Yokohoma and Buenos Ayres; I've met up with them along the Yukon and down on the Mexican border. They're scattered all around, out through the Panhandle, ridin' calico ponies, with jingly spurs and more than a bushel of doo-dads on the saddle. They all come from old families, and I suppose after all it was a blessing that they had that much in their favor. Because if most of them hadn't had a family tree ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... was a girl. She was a very pretty, red-cheeked girl, and she must have stopped within a half mile or so of the camp in order to get herself up for this impressive entrance. Her dress was of blue calico with a white yoke and heavy flounces or panniers; around her neck was a black velvet ribbon; on her head was a big leghorn hat with red roses. She rode through the town, her head high, like a princess; and we all cheered her like mad. Not once did she look ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... 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 that antimony, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... 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 a similar class ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... that the parents so provided think more of the twenty-five francs than they do of the foundling. But that was the affair of the State, not of Aristide Pujol. In the meanwhile he examined the brat curiously. It was dressed in a coarse calico jumper, very unclean. The striped blanket was full of holes and smelled abominably. Some sort of toilet appeared essential. He got down and from his valise took what seemed necessary to the purpose. The jumper and blanket he threw far on the pebbly waste. The baby, stark naked for a few moments, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... "Now, fellers," he said, "we'll vamoose the ranch while Mrs. Burke turns in." He opened the way to the store-room, and the men filed out, all but Burke, who remained to put up the calico curtain with which his wife had planned to shield ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland

... to see on a man; that is, a cloth coat, or rather 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

... goloshes in the entry she heard a sound as of something running softly in the studio, with a feminine rustle of skirts; and as she hastened to peep in she caught a momentary glimpse of a bit of brown petticoat, which vanished behind a big picture draped, together with the easel, with black calico, to the floor. There could be no doubt that a woman was hiding there. How often Olga Ivanovna herself had ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the soap solution which had previously gained possession of the pores of the cuticle. As the latter process of removing the lather is the one universally adopted, the operation of washing with soap and hard water is analogous to that used by the dyer and calico printer for fixing pigments in calico, woolen, or silk tissues. The pores of the skin are filled with insoluble greasy and curdy salts of the fatty acids contained in the soap, and it is only because the insoluble pigment ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... world's gone smash. There's nothin' regular an' uniform no more. The multiplication table's gone loco. Two is eight, nine is eleven, and two-times-six is eight hundred an' forty-six—an'—an' a half. Anything is everything, an' nothing's all, an' twice all is cold-cream, milk-shakes, an' calico horses. You've got a system. Figgers beat the figgerin'. What ain't is, an' what isn't has to be. The sun rises in the west, the moon's a pay-streak, the stars is canned corn-beef, scurvy's the blessin' of God, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... wear no long or heavy dresses. Their uniform is a simple dark-blue-and-white calico dress-skirt neither long nor very full, sleeves close, yet allowing perfect freedom in the use of the arm, a simple white collar and apron, and cap of shining, spotless whiteness. Their shoes, too, are after the pattern of those which, we are told, are always worn by Florence ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... 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 door, murmured ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... get another word out of her. She filled the great soup-kettle with water, set it over the fire (Toby shuddered to see her), then she sat down to wait for the grandchildren to come home from school. She was uncommonly homely, even for an ogress, and she wore a brown calico dress that ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... 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), ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... from the provinces, and intrusted to the care of some devout dowager who keeps him without a sou; or, perhaps, to some shop assistant who goes to bed at midnight wearied out with folding and unfolding calico, and rises at seven o'clock to arrange the window; often again to some man of science or poetry, who lives monastically in the embrace of a fine idea, who remains sober, patient, and chaste; else to some self-contented fool, feeding himself on folly, reeking of health, in a perpetual ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... of the drugs which he had taken that he might continue his career. The poor old man's mental and physical condition afforded some grounds for the absurd rubbish talked about him. When his outfit was worn out, he replaced the fine linen by calico at fourteen sous the ell. His diamonds, his gold snuff-box, watch-chain and trinkets, disappeared one by one. He had left off wearing the corn-flower blue coat, and was sumptuously arrayed, summer ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... big piebald calico mules, and when we charged those Indians, those pack mules outran every saddle horse which we had, and dashing into their horse herd, scattered them like partridges. Nearly every buck was riding a stolen horse, and for some cause they couldn't get any speed out of them. We just rode ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... measure of the rooms, intending to put the same carpet in all of them,—a green carpet of the cheapest kind. He wished for the plainest uniformity in this retreat, and Madame de la Chanterie approved of the idea. She calculated, with Manon's assistance, the number of yards of white calico required for the window curtains, and also for those of the modest iron bed; and she undertook to buy and have them made for a price so moderate as to surprise Godefroid. Having brought with him a certain amount of furniture, the whole cost of fitting up the ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... than money—granny's loving thought and work. It was made out of a strong cardboard box—the lid fastened to the box, standing up at one end like the head part of a French bed. And it was all beautifully covered with pink calico, which grandmamma had had 'by her.' Granny was rather old-fashioned in some ways, and fond of keeping a few odds and ends 'by her.' And over that again, white muslin, all fruzzled on, that had once been pinafores of mine, but had got too worn to use ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... days miners would flock in crowds to catch a glimpse of that rare and blessed spectacle, a woman! Old inhabitants tell how, in a certain camp, the news went abroad early in the morning that a woman was come! They had seen a calico dress hanging out of a wagon down at the camping-ground—sign of emigrants from over the great plains. Everybody went down there, and a shout went up when an actual, bona fide dress was discovered fluttering in the wind! The male emigrant ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... were now the brave old hangings of arras which had adorned the walls of lordly mansions in the days of Elizabeth? And was it not a shame to see a gentleman, whose ancestors had worn nothing but stuffs made by English workmen out of English fleeces, flaunting in a calico shirt and a pair of silk stockings? Clamours such as these had, a few years before, extorted from Parliament the Act which required that the dead should be wrapped in woollen; and some sanguine clothiers hoped that the legislature would, by excluding ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... think of animal heat. By habit we want to know how great the heat is. We measure by a yard stick till we find we have 100 deg., 102 deg., 104 deg., to 106 deg., at this point we stop as we find too many yards of red calico to suit the size of the purse of life. Which we think cannot consume more than 106 yards of heat. We begin to ask for the substances that are more powerful than fire. We try all known fire compounds and fail. The fire department had ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still

... happen just right," said Prudy, still trembling from her fright. "You said, if I'd been wearing my calico, mother, I'd have been scorched. And you know it was only the littlest while ago I put on this blue delaine, to go to ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May

... tent, I questioned also as to sleeping accommodations. It contained a full-sized bed and one narrow cot, between which was suspended a thin calico curtain. The cooking, eating, etc., were done out ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... pair of loose trousers or bloomers—the chakchur—fastened at the waist and pulled in at the ankle, are assumed, and a ruh-band—a thick calico or cotton piece of cloth about a yard wide, hangs in front of the face, a small slit some three to four inches long and one and a half wide, very daintily netted with heavy embroidery, being left for ventilation's sake and as a look-out window. This is fastened by means ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... poor Mary enjoy it. She would be so happy, if you would not bewilder her by your gloomy looks, and keep her to the hemming of your endless glazed calico bonnet strings." ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... by others." After this declaration the fall of the Ministry was assured. Stocks fell in London from 84 to 77 points. Abuse and obloquy were heaped upon the Ministers from every quarter. Caricatures of them were stamped even on handkerchiefs and calico aprons. The Duke was mostly represented in the livery of an old hackney coachman, while Sir Robert Peel figured as a rat catcher. The King no longer concealed his dislike of Wellington, who in former days had mortally offended him ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... 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

... laundry for Ann's reception. Their mother had a plain bedstead moved in, and sent 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 ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... little people was left unrepresented in the realms of poetry until Eugene Field came!" exclaimed a noted teacher. Children listen almost breathlessly to the story of the duel between "the gingham dog and the calico cat," and to the ballad of "The Rock-a-By Lady from Hushaby Street," and the ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... little—as will be described later. The island of Cubu produces a small quantity of rice, borona, and millet and little or no cotton; for the cloth which the natives use for their garments is made from a kind of banana. From this they make a sort of cloth resembling colored calico, which the natives call medrinaque. In these islands great value is set upon the land which can produce rice and cotton, because cotton and cloth find a good market in Nueva Espana. The condition of the people will be described when I shall speak of all the Pintados ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... to the woods—go to the fields—and make an honest living; for we have in our mind's eye numbers of men whose talents are better suited to picking cotton, than measuring calico; to cutting cord wood than weighing sugar; to keeping up fencing, than books, and to hauling rails, than dashing out whiskey by the drink; and we can assure you that the occupations you are better adapted for are much more honorable in the eyes of persons whose ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stocking, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk, withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long-waisted short-gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock gave symptoms of city innovation. The sons, in short square-skirted coats, with rows of stupendous brass buttons, and their hair generally ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... Teddy lay was very pleasant, with two big windows, and the furniture covered with gay old-fashioned India calico. His mother had set a glass of milk on the table beside his bed, and left the stair door ajar so that he could call Hannah, the cook, if he wanted anything, and then she had gone ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle



Words linked to "Calico" :   material, cloth, coloured, colored, multi-colour, fabric, colorful, pied, textile, painted



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