"Bric-a-brac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he repeated; "we are Spring, Nelly—you and I.... I'll never forget the first time I heard you sing that; snowing like blazes it was,—do you remember? But I swear I felt this hot grass then in Mrs. Newbolt's parlor, with all those awful bric-a-brac things around! Yes," he said, putting his hand on a little sun-drenched bowlder jutting from the earth beside him; "I felt this sun on my hand! And when you came to 'O Spring!' I saw this sky—" He stopped, pulled three blades of grass and began to braid them into ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... all that pertained to male ceremonies, altars and temples. But the women were wild with enthusiasm, just as they are to-day with fairs and donation parties, to build churches, and they brought such loads of bric-a-brac that at last Moses compelled them to stop, as the supply exceeded all reasonable demand. But for the building of the Tabernacle the women brought all they deemed most precious, even the most necessary and convenient articles ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... weeks at Wallraven.... But it was rather a comfort, now, to feel that it didn't matter to anybody what you did, as long as Grandfather was pleased. And she felt as if she was willing to be a whole row of parlor bric-a-brac, she was so meek and so ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... especially of novels; a man who seemed to have met every noted or notorious personage of the century, and whose mind was a magazine of amusing information; an excellent musical critic, who was not afraid to criticise Sybil's singing; a connoisseur in bric-a-brac, who laughed at Madeleine's display of odds and ends, and occasionally brought her a Persian plate or a bit of embroidery, which he said was good and would do her credit. This old sinner believed in everything that was perverse and wicked, but he accepted the prejudices ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... spend the time between dinner and supper. With a crowd of women about her, she can at least cause them annoyance, which is amusement of a kind; better still she avoids a tete-a-tete with the husband whom she never sees at any other time; then there are the tradespeople, the dealers in bric-a-brac, the fine gentlemen, the minor poets with their songs, their verses, and their pamphlets; how could you get them together but for the toilet. Its only real advantage is the chance of a little more display than is permitted by full dress, and perhaps this is less ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... advantages of formaldehyde over sulphur are: (1) its nonpoisonous nature; (2) it is a very good germicide; (3) it has no injurious effect upon fabrics and objects; (4) it does not change colors; and (5) it can be used for the disinfection of rooms with the richest hangings, bric-a-brac, etc., without danger to these. Formaldehyde is evolved either from paraform or from the liquid formalin; formerly it was also obtained by the action of wood-alcohol ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... music-room, a large room on the opposite side of the hall, which Mrs. Ivy, a firm believer in the psychological effect of color, had fitted out in blue to induce a contemplative mood in the occupants. On the mantel and tables were the same miscellaneous collection of bric-a-brac that characterized the parlor. Several pictures of Gerald adorned the walls, the most imposing of which presented him seated at the piano, with his mother standing beside him, a rapt expression on her ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... that ricocheted from the Santa Fe it was Miss Dunlap's evident desire to present him with a whole housekeeping equipment as quickly as possible. Louis's desk became loaded with ornaments, his room at Mrs. Green's became filled with nearly Wedgwood vases, candlesticks, and other bric-a-brac. He acquired six mission hall-clocks, a row of taborets stood outside of his door like Turkish sentinels, and his collection of ash-receivers was ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... come to this conclusion all at once. There were days when the minds of mother and daughter were too full of sorrow and anxiety to occupy themselves with upholstery and bric-a-brac. And the day of the adjourned inquest, when Caspar Brooke was allowed to go to his own house on bail, was one of the worst ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... was a fragile piece of bric-a-brac, and that I might need him for future study, I bethought me of the banker down the street. Bankers are bound to be broad-gauged, intelligent, and conservative, so I would go to him and get at the ancient history of this neck of woods. I introduced myself, and ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... (far too full of bric-a-brac of all climes and ages), beneath the blaze of the two Empire chandeliers, which Vicary, the musical composer, had found for me in Chartres, there were ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... clipped hedges, regular parterres, etc., and that Gothic architecture came into repute. Horace Walpole was a virtuoso in Gothic art, and in his castle, at Strawberry Hill, he made a collection of ancient armor, illuminated MSS., and bric-a-brac of all kinds. Gray had been Walpole's traveling companion in France and Italy, and the two had quarreled and separated, but were afterward reconciled. From Walpole's private printing-press, at Strawberry ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... days it was still the custom to fill the living rooms with bric-a-brac. They had not discovered simplicity of living. Such rooms were museums, entailing endless labor to keep clean. The dust-demon was the lord of the household. There were a myriad devices for catching dust, and only a few devices for getting ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... the table, filled with a burning curiosity to know the whole contents of the letter, and while so doing her hair became entangled in the metal bric-a-brac of the hanging lamp. Gertrude got ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... on the walls, and costly vases and bric-a-brac all about, and it all showed such kind thought on the part of somebody, that ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... person emerge as it were out of the clay, like a second Eve; but he makes a mental reservation that it would be better if English and American sculptors would make a freer use of their chisels—of which more hereafter. Story was a light-hearted, discursive person, with a large amount of bric-a-brac information, who could appreciate Hawthorne either as a genius or as a celebrity. He soon became Hawthorne's chief companion and social mainstay in Rome, literally a vade mecum, and we may believe that he exercised more or less influence ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... embroidered drapery, may stand at one end of the room, while an ebony or mahogany cabinet, with its panel mirrors and quaint brasses, may be placed at the other end, its racks and shelves affording an elegant display for pretty pieces of bric-a-brac. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... going to put a piece of bric-a-brac a day on the newel post, buy a litter of puppies to chew up the rugs, select a butter-fingered, china-breaking waitress, pay storage on the silver and try occasionally to ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... Delicate bric-a-brac occupied gilded brackets on the walls, or crowded the statuettes upon the floor; a laughing faun held back the silken curtain that concealed the entrance to that inner room where the goddess herself presided; a soft mellow light fell upon these ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... of police. All these "institutions," which we have passed in review, are nothing more than the old salon furniture of the Empire. Beat it, dust it, sweep away the cobwebs, splash it over with stains of French blood, and you have the establishment of 1852. This bric-a-brac governs France. These ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... furnishings are surprisingly adaptable. As with people, it is largely a matter of bringing out their pleasing traits and subduing their unattractive aspects. A quaint piece of bric-a-brac that was a misfit in the city apartment may look just right on the corner of the living room mantel in your country home. The old spode platter that reposed almost forgotten on the top shelf of a closet may come into its own on the Welsh dresser ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... grand piano. Then there was more clothing—enough to last them both for the remainder of their lives—a case of repeating rifles and revolvers, another case containing ammunition for the same, and a quantity of valuable jewellery, watches, etcetera, cases of perfumery, handsome fans, bric-a-brac—in short, a sufficiency of everything to enable them to convert their humble tent into a most comfortable, elegant, and ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... OF AN INFECTED ROOM.—Carpets, upholstered furniture, hangings, bric-a-brac, or any personal clothing, the color of which may be destroyed by disinfection, should have been removed from the room at the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... in which the ceremony was to take place was the ordinary cottage parlor, with crochet work on the chairs, and a profusion of vases and bric-a-brac on the tables. The Rev. John Langdon requested Anna and Sanderson to stand by a little marble table from which the housekeeper brushed a profusion of knick-knacks. There was no Bible. Anna was the first to notice the omission. This ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... kindest of guardians and dearest of "chums," and made my Sundays and vacations real holidays. He often took me bric-a-brac-hunting to old shops unknown to all save the Parisian curiosity-seeker, and happy hours were spent on the quays among the old book-stands in that fascinating occupation for which the French bookworm ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... five room flat or cottage is more than one woman can keep spotless and allow time for anything else. Many things must be left undone. The wise woman simplifies to the last degree compatible with comfort. Useless bric-a-brac is dispensed with. "Not how much but how good," is her rule when buying. A few good things kept in place, are better than a clutter of flimsy things which pander only to an uncultured esthetic taste—and make work. Order is ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... the work of merchants with highly complex brains, who to fashion a ridiculous Chicken have taken a wing from that one, a topknot from this. I say that in such Cocks nothing remains of the true Cock. They are Cocks of shreds and patches, idle bric-a-brac, fit to figure in a catalogue, not in a barnyard with its decent dunghill and its dog. I say that those befrizzled, beruffled, bedeviled Cocks were never stroked and cherished by Nature's maternal hand. ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... room as it was! Odds and ends of furniture, the survival of various household wrecks; chipped bric-a-brac; a rug from which the pattern had long ago vanished; an old couch piled with shabby cushions; a piano with scattered music sheets. On the walls, from ceiling to foot-board, hung faded photographs of actors and actresses, most of them with bold inscriptions ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Rollo, to Jonas's amazement, and running violently about the room to the grave danger of the dainty bric-a-brac which stood on ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell
... fastened upon a boule bric-a-brac stand, on which stood an Aretine vase two feet high, of peerless form and glaze. The ticking of the great Peter Hele clock drew his attention to a work of ebony and ivory as scarcely could be believed as coming from ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... some resemblance to the handsome places he had seen at home. It was of stone, and stood upon a rise of ground, commanding a view of the sea two miles away, and the pretty village on the shore with a background of wooded hills stretching to the west. It was full of pictures and bric-a-brac, and statuary from all parts of the world, for the Colonel's father had travelled extensively, and brought home souvenirs from every country visited. Florida had furnished her quota, and stuffed parokeets and red birds, and a huge alligator skin adorned the walls of the wide hall, together ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... Peter; "if they are to be old, I won't have to do more than to ship them. In storage in Virginia there are some very wonderful old mahogany and rosewood and rugs and bric-a-brac enough to furnish the house I am building. The stuff belonged to a little old aunt of mine who left it to me in her will, and it was with those things in mind that I began my house. The plans and finishing will ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... wardrobes, with handsome brass locks and beautifully carved doors, are real works of art—very difficult to get and very expensive. Fifty years ago the peasant did not understand the value of such a "meuble" and parted with it easily—but now, with railways everywhere and strangers and bric-a-brac people always on the lookout for a really old piece of furniture, they understand quite well that they possess a treasure and exact ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... caddis worm adds to the flat spirals any dead shell that comes handy, without distinction of species, provided it be not excessively large. I notice, in its collection of bric-a-brac, the Physa, the Paludina, the Limnaea, the Amber snail [all pond snails] and even the Pisidium [a bivalve], ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... melting snow. Then she went on, casting glances at the windows of small stores, and finally stopped before a little shop, dark and uninviting, whose soiled glass front revealed odds and ends of old jewelry, watches, optical goods and bric-a-brac that had a sordid aspect. She had long ago noticed the ancient sign disposed behind the panes. ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... china, rare bits of bric-a-brac, the very broad and old-time fireplaces filled with cut boughs of the spicy fir balsam, and various antique pieces of furniture lend to the inner atmosphere of Quillcote a fine artistic and colonial effect, while not a stone's throw away, ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Frederik, puzzled. "Oh—you mean all this junk?" with a comprehensive hand wave that included Dutch clock, Dutch warming pans, Dutch bric-a-brac, and Dutch furniture. "This junk all over the house? Oh, I'll have it carted to the nearest ash heap. It isn't worth a red cent of ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... it! Why it's just ideal. It makes our pretentious homes look like cheap bric-a-brac," ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... Lawson was by no means a luxurious man. At present he was well content with a Wolseley valise, and shaved cheerfully out of a tin mug. It struck me as odd that a man so simple in his habits should have so sumptuous a taste in bric-a-brac. I told myself, as I turned in, that the Saxon mother from the Midlands had done little to dilute the strong wine of ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... the well-to-do Chinese merchants are filled with the richest of silks, the rarest of teas and the most artistic of bric-a-brac, the carvings in ivory and fancy lacquer work being especially noticeable, but close to them in the narrow streets are the abodes of vice and squalor, and squalor of the sort that reeks in the nostrils and leaves a bad taste for hours afterward in the mouths of the sight-seer. At the time of our ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... went down the wide, airy hall, Betty had a glimpse of the drawing-room through the open doors. In a confused way she noticed mirrors and statuary and portraits, handsome old furniture and rare pieces of bric-a-brac; but one thing caught her attention so that she stood a moment in round-eyed admiration. It was a large harp, whose gracefully curving frame gleamed through the shadowy room like burnished gold. Fair and tall it stood, as if its ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... elaborate furniture, rugs, pictures, bric-a-brac, and even lace curtains at the windows. The library had beautiful bookcases, writing-desk, reading-table and a lamp, easy-chairs, and everything that ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... hunter—and a very choice statuette too—appropriate for the rosewood or marble bracket of parlor or library; never the animal itself, or the hunter himself. Indeed, who wants the real animal or hunter? What would that do amid astral and bric-a-brac and tapestry, and ladies and gentlemen talking in subdued tones of Browning and Longfellow and art? The least suspicion of such actual bull, or Indian, or of Nature carrying out itself, would put all those good people to instant terror ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... strong taste for art and all that appertained to it; more especially he was devoted to the collection of old and rare bric-a-brac. There was not a curiosity shop in London that did not know him, and he was equally happy when he had discovered some dust-hidden treasure in the back regions of a secondhand furniture shop, or when he was engaged in running to earth some human vermin who up till then had lain ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... subjects, and not lose sight of the very ends for which one reads. When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written tests and examinations, one's brain becomes encumbered with a lot of choice bric-a-brac for which there seems to be little use. At the present time my mind is so full of heterogeneous matter that I almost despair of ever being able to put it in order. Whenever I enter the region that was the kingdom of my mind I feel like the proverbial bull in the china shop. A thousand ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... the two men grappled and went down, fighting furiously; Harleston letting out shouts all the while, and even managing to overturn a table, which fell with a terrific smash of broken glass and bric-a-brac, to attract attention and lead ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... therefore why had he reserved nothing for himself, why had he trusted all to the cloister? He had not even known how to arrange the pleasure of entering into himself, he had discovered how to lose the amusement of bric-a-brac, how to extirpate that last satisfaction in the white nakedness of a cell! he no longer held to anything, but lay dismantled, saying, "I have renounced almost all the happiness which might fall to me, and what am I going to ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... bronze vases from the Society of Engineers of Japan, and a striking desk-set of writing apparatus from Krupp, all the pieces being made out of tiny but massive guns and shells of Krupp steel. In addition to such bric-a-brac and bibelots of all kinds are many pictures and photographs, including the original sketches of the reception given to Edison in 1889 by the Paris Figaro, and a letter from Madame Carnot, placing the Presidential opera-box at the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... frantic, pacing up and down her little sitting room which always looked so quaintly attractive with its jumble of paintings and bric-a-brac, its distinctive furniture and draperies—all symbolic of the helter-skelter artistry which was a part of Aleta's nature. She took Frank's hand and clung ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... good working condition, but they were packed with costly machinery stolen from French and Belgian factories. Her very churches were adorned with masterpieces of art from plundered cathedrals of Western Europe and innumerable private homes possessed articles of furniture and bric-a-brac stolen from wrecked homes in France and Belgium, before they were totally destroyed. War on the part of Germany in the invaded territories of the allies ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... for the rich dilettante,—the people heard little of it, and thought less. The utensils and furniture of the middle class were fashioned only with a view to utility; there was a popular belief that beautiful things were expensive, and the thrifty housekeeper who had no money to put into bric-a-brac never thought of such things as an artistic lamp shade or a well-coloured sofa cushion. Decorative art is well defined by Mr. Russell Sturgis: "Fine art applied to the making beautiful or interesting that which ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... bedroom window in the late afternoon she discovered that she was quite tired. Ten years before she would have lain down and slept, but now she had a feeling that things needed watching: maids were cleaning down-stairs, bric-a-brac was all over the floor, and there were sure to be grocery-men that had to be talked to imperatively—and then there was a letter to write Donald, who was fourteen and in his first year ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Flemish domestic work of the best period, and the internal decoration and the furniture matched to a nicety the exterior. It was in that grave and silent abode, with Alresca, that I first acquired a taste for bric-a-brac. Ah! the Dutch marquetry, the French cabinetry, the Belgian brassware, the curious panellings, the oak-frames, the faience, the silver candlesticks, the Amsterdam toys in silver, the Antwerp incunables, and the famous tenth-century illuminated ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... despair, thinking that Barry had flown out with them. She looked out, but could not see him. Then, lest he had not left the room, she got a chair and carried it about, standing on it to examine the walls, and see if Barry was hidden among the pictures and bric-a-brac. But no Barry was there. She at last sank down, exhausted, on a sofa. She heard a wicked, little peep, and looking up, saw Barry sitting on one of the rounds of the chair that she had been carrying about to look for him. He had been there all the time. She was so glad to see him, that she never ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... dust and wipe first with a damp and then with a dry cloth all the little articles of bric-a-brac, vases, small pictures, and curios, which we prize because they are pretty, after which she sets them in a closet or drawer quite out of the way. Then, with a soft cloth fastened over the broom, she has the walls wiped down, ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... wealthy homes; you have work to do in those of the poor. If you let yourself be broken, you will have no place in either, but merely return to the dust; or, at best, you may secure a corner in a bric-a-brac cabinet—as a curiosity, and it is more glorious far to be used for fetching water by the meanest ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... suspected of getting drunk upon rare and costly vintages, and the new parlour-maid had turned out to be a Sunday reporter in disguise. The man who had come every day for ten years to wind the clocks of the establishment was dead, and the one who took care of the bric-a-brac was sick, and the housekeeper was in a panic over the prospect ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... Barrocco Bathroom Beauvais Behnes Belgium Benares "Bodies" Bohemian glass Boucher Francois Boudoir Boule, Andre Charles Bric-a-brac ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... evening he read "The City" bore evidence of the playwright's personality. The paintings and bric-a-brac, the books—mostly biography and letters—the tapestries which seemed to blend with the bowls of flowers and furniture of French design, the windows looking out on lawns, gardens, and a pond with swans upon it, the moonlight on the Cupids that kept guard at ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... with her, instead of going to the rooms he had fitted up for himself since prosperity had come to him? She had heard much of those rooms, of the multitude of books that he had put into them, of the bric-a-brac with which he had rendered them homelike and beautiful. They were in fact very simple rooms, inexpensively furnished. But Duncan had devoted a good deal of attention and an unfailing good taste to their furnishing ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... Manor had belonged to her husband's people seventy-five years before, and though, as a banker in New York, Monsieur Chalice had become an American of the Americans, at her request he had bought back from a kinsman the old place, unchanged, furniture and all. Bringing the antique plate, china, and bric-a-brac, made in France when Henri Quatre was king, she fared away to Quebec, set the rude mansion in order, and was happy for a whole summer, as was her husband, the best of fishermen and sportsmen. The Manor House stood on a knoll, behind which, steppe on steppe, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... certain Jew, whose real name was Soloman, and who at that time was well known throughout the bohemia of art and literature, with which he constantly had dealings. Father Medicis dealt in all sorts of bric-a-brac. He sold complete house-furnishings for from twelve francs up to a thousand crowns. He would buy anything, and knew how to sell it again at a profit. His shop, situated in the Place du Carrousel, was a fairy spot where one could find everything that one might wish. All the products ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... bamboozle and befog the judge and jury and defeat the ends of justice. Likewise, we still use the word "Court," signifying the place where lives royalty, even for the dingy office of a country J. P., where sawdust spittoons are the bric-a-brac and patent-office reports loom large, and justice is dispensed with. We now also commonly call the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... exactly," replied the Princess. "For the king, whose name is Roquat of the Rocks, owns a splendid palace underneath the great mountain which is at the north end of this kingdom, and he has transformed the queen and her children into ornaments and bric-a-brac with ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Ponte alla Carraja, Margery said she wished to do some shopping on Via dei Fossi, which was close at hand—that street whose shop windows are ever filled with most fascinating groups of sculptured marbles and bronzes, and all kinds of artistic bric-a-brac—and begged ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... example. After twenty years it had come to be as much a part of him as the clothes he wore. Every detail of the room was engraved in his mind with ... clarity; the old center leg table with its green covering and stained glass lamp; the mantelpiece with the dusty bric-a-brac; the pendulum clock that told the time of day as well as the day of the week and month; the elephant ash tray on the tabaret and, most important of all, ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... am delighted," he puffed. "I have been looking for you everywhere. I was in town, and I went to that bric-a-brac shop. The fan is undoubtedly ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... life with her clothes. When she marries, she carries it into her home. Decoration, not furnishing, is the keynote of all she touches. It is she who is the best patron of the elaborate and monstrous cheap furniture, rugs, draperies, crockery, bric-a-brac, which fill the shops of the cheaper quarters of the great cities, and usually all quarters of ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... a flutter of pleasant, heroic excitement all through December. Everything beautiful or rare garnered in the homes of the rich was given for exhibition, and in some cases for raffle and sale. There were many fine paintings, statues, bronzes, engravings, gems, laces—in fact, heirlooms and bric-a-brac of all sorts. There were many lovely creole girls present, in exquisite toilets, passing to and fro through the decorated rooms, listening to the band clash out the ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... these many years; her other sons as well (she had borne four); their wives and children—grown men, fashionable women, beautiful children, fat babies: the likenesses of them all were around her, standing amid china and flowers and bric-a-brac on the crowded tables and what-nots of the not inharmonious and yet shabby Victorian room. Mrs. de Tracy, it might at a glance be seen, was no innovator, either in furniture, in dress, or probably in ideas. As she was dressed now, in the severely simple black ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... system of education so beneficent that it attracted the attention of the thinking men of the world. And it is even now serving as a model upon which our entire public-school system will yet be founded—a system that works not for culture, for bric-a-brac purposes, but for character and competence. A what-not education may be impressive, but is worthless as collateral. The achievements of Peter Cooper make the average successful ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... distinguished him. "I don't think it would have run quite to a prison sentence. The burden of proof lies on the accuser. Because I am in possession of rich ore, it does not follow that I did not come by it legitimately. Ore can't be sworn to like bric-a-brac. I may have shipped this in from South Africa, so far as the law knows. Bleyer knows that. I figure he would have played his hand in ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... notices of one hundred and four poets of the present dynasty; notes on archaeological, supernatural and other topics, first published in the 9th century; notes for bibliophiles on the care of books, and on paper, ink, pictures and bric-a-brac; a collection of famous criminal cases; night thoughts suggested by a meteor. Add to the above, numerous short stories relating to magic, dreams, bilocation, and to almost every possible phase of supernatural manifestation, and the reader will have some idea of what ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... already in the street,—and in the little hallway various objects of bric-a-brac that had obtruded themselves and confused the fugitive in his blind flight were still trembling and then falling and breaking on ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... adieu, not auf wiedersehen, I fear, with his Highness," Miss Vance said, folding the note pensively. She had not meant to drive a marriage bargain, and yet—to have placed a pupil upon even such a bric-a-brac throne as that of Wolfburgh! She looked thoughtfully at Lucy's chubby cheeks. A princess? The man was not objectionable in himself, either—a kindly, overgrown boy. "He told me," said Jean, "that he was going to a house party at ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... chamber," neither a library nor a sitting-room, but a happy blending of both, with the numerous old paintings in antique Florentine frames, easy-chairs and lounges, carved bookcases crammed with books in many languages, bric-a-brac in any quantity, but always artistic, flowers everywhere, and herself the frailest ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... bric-a-brac, needless hangings, and everything that might collect dust should be temporarily removed. A profusion of pictures does not accord with the best sanitation of a room devoted to the treatment of obstetrical patients; those which are to be left upon the ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... heaped and crowded with all the riches the Boolooroo had accumulated during his reign of two or three hundred years. Piles of gold and jewels were on all sides, and precious ornaments and splendid cloths, rare pieces of carved furniture, vases, bric-a-brac and the like, were strewn about the room ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... from his cigar sail towards the long box of geraniums on the sill of the open window. He whistled to the canary that swung in a brass cage above the foliage. Then his glance wandered about the room, over the bookcases, the bric-a-brac on the mantel, the—— ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... bids gave courage to the gathering of second-hand booksellers present, who began to mingle with us, and become more familiar. The dealers in old brass and bric-a-brac pressed forward in their tun, waiting for the doors of an adjoining room to be opened; and the voice of the auctioneer was drowned by the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... a peaked roof with a window reaching far overhead, a polished floor, one or two chairs and a divan, the few necessary implements of his profession, and many canvases faced to the wall, but little or no bric-a-brac or delightful studio properties. The Painter was also conscious that her inspection included him personally, and was painfully aware that she was regarding him with the same feeling of disappointment; she quite evidently thought him ...
— Different Girls • Various
... 'as that French bric-a-brac man in the Brompton Road used to say of his pots. But ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... houses had fine pianos and other musical instruments, and in some instances impromptu dances were on whilst Confederate shells whanged through the house above their heads. It is safe to say that there was little left of valuable bric-a-brac to greet the fugitive people on their return. And it is highly probable that pianos and handsome furniture needed considerable repairing after the exodus of the "Yank." This was not due to pure vandalism, although war creates the latter, but to the feeling ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... bon-mots in a volume of table-talk, called "Arnouldiana," which will compare with anything of its kind in the French language. For a dozen years prior to the Revolution Sophie Arnould was a queen of society as well as of art; and in her elegant salon, which was a museum of art curios and bric-a-brac, she held a brilliant court, where men of the highest distinction, both native and foreign, were proud to pay their homage at the shrine of beauty and genius. There might be seen D'Alembert, the learned and scholarly, rough and independent ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... would be left after the purchase of the old Mainwaring estate, which they had heard could be bought at a comparatively low figure, the present owner being somewhat embarrassed financially; while Mrs. Mainwaring was making a careful inventory of the furniture, paintings, and bric-a-brac at Fair Oaks, with a view of ascertaining whether there were any articles which she would care to retain for their ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... that magnificent room, its treasures of art, its statues, pictures, flowers, its wonders of bric-a-brac. For the first minute my eyes were dazzled, ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... of my days, of my mental furniture? Some long afternoon I will spirit you up here in that little steel cage, and you shall peer out of my window, tapping your restless feet, while you sniff at the squalor below. You will move softly about, questioning the watercolors, the bits of bric-a-brac, the dusty manuscripts, the dull red hangings, not quite understanding the fox in his hole. You will gratefully catch the sounds from the mound below our feet, and when you say good-by and drop swiftly down those ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... disposed of, the auctioneer's assistant brought forth from a side shelf a piece of imitation marble statuary, representing three doves bearing a wreath of flowers between them. The bit of bric-a-brac looked quite nice, but as it was but imitation marble, it was not worth more than two ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... There is something artful about her skirts by which I always know her, though I can't say what it is. She was carrying an enormous parcel that might have been a bird-cage wrapped in brown paper, and she took it into a bric-a-brac shop and came out without it. She then ran rather than walked in the direction of the sixpenny-halfpenny shop. Now mystery of any kind is detestable to me, and I went into the bric-a-brac shop, ostensibly to look at the cracked china; and ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... of old chandeliers fell upon the suave outlines of colonial furniture upholstered with sage green and mulberry-colored fabrics, chimney pieces of mellow marble carved into graceful flourishes and bearing on their shelves quaint bric-a-brac, family portraits in frames that it would have been a sacrilege to furbish up—ladies dressed in the fashion of 1812, French and English gentlemen in antique uniforms, a few of these likenesses doubly precious because they were painted so naively. But this "early-American" ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... you. We have changed places, Katherine—I mean Miss Liddell. Fortune has given me a turn at last, and I have been tremendously busy. I had no idea how troublesome it is to be rich. There are compensations, however. This doesn't seem a bad sort of place"—looking round at the crowd of china and bric-a-brac ornaments and the comfortable chairs. "How did you come here, and what has been settled? Don't think me impertinent or intrusive; you know you agreed we should be friends, and you must not send ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... either side the fireplace. Lloyd, after building the agency, had felt no scruple in choosing the best room in the house and furnishing it according to her taste. Her room was beautiful, but very simple in its appointments. There were great flat wall-space unspoiled by bric-a-brac, the floor marquetry, with but few rugs. The fireplace and its appurtenances were of brass. Her writing-desk, a huge affair, of ancient and almost black ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... are going abroad; and when do you return? But that's a useless question. You hardly know when you are coming back, You will find so much to learn." My smile falls heavily among the bric-a-brac. ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... unfit for daily wear. The guardian of these defunct old carriages tells some prodigious fibs concerning them: he pointed out one carriage that was six hundred years old in his calendar; but any connoisseur in bric-a-brac can see it was built at Paris in the Regent ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was used to livin' in a place like that, though. He didn't stop to tell what anything cost, or show off any of the bric-a-brac. He just led the way through seven or eight parlors and palm-rooms, until we fetched up in the hole he'd fixed up to exercise in. It was about three times as big as the Studio here, and if there was anything missing from the outfit I couldn't have told what ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... spits were long rows of fowl and legs of mutton roasting; the great chains were being slowly turned by a chef in the paper cap of his profession. In deep burnished brass bowls lay water-cresses; in Caen dishes of an age to make a bric-a-brac collector turn green with envy, a Bearnaise sauce was being beaten by another gallic master-hand. Along the beams hung old Rouen plates and platters; in the numberless carved Normandy cupboards gleamed rare bits of Delft and Limoges; the walls ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... with attentive and much edified listeners and helpers. I organized the Channing Club, which soon included in its membership all the leading musical and dramatic talent of the town. We met weekly in the church vestry which was soon decorated by handsome pictures, scenery and bric-a-brac, the gifts of our members, making a ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... saint of his guild. Will any one dare to say that the absence of competition destroyed the desire for perfection, or lessened the beauty of products? What say you, you whose admiration for the masterpieces of past ages has created the modern trade of the sellers of bric-a-brac? ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... Vincente, of the convent of Pobla, in Aragon. When the Spanish revolution despoiled the convent libraries, Don Vincente established himself at Barcelona, under the pillars of Los Encantes, where are the stalls of the merchants of bric-a-brac and the seats of them that sell books. In a gloomy den the Don stored up treasures which he hated to sell. Once he was present at an auction where he was out-bid in the competition for a rare, perhaps a unique, volume. Three ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... wide mantel board flounced with fringed dimity, (venerable prototype of macrame and Arrasene lambrequins), would have filled with covetousness the soul of the bric-a-brac devotee; and graced ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... common mistake parents and loving friends often make in meeting the uncomfortable assertions of the child's will. When the child cries for the moon, you try to get him interested in a jack-in-the-box; and when he wants a fragile piece of bric-a-brac— you try to substitute for it a tin whistle. With a very young child, that is about all you can do. But a time comes when the child is old enough to know the difference between that upon which he has set his heart and that which you ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... accumulation of little things around the private home which in the aggregate make a great attraction, while the denizen of one of these public residences is apt to say: "What is the use? I have no place to keep them if I should take them." Mementoes, bric-a-brac, curiosities, quaint chair or cosy lounge, upholsteries, pictures, and a thousand things that accrete in a home are discarded or neglected because there is no homestead in which to arrange them. And yet they are the case in which the pearl of domestic happiness is set. You can never become as attached ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... brush-stroke that does not serve his single purpose; he admits no adventitious dainties, there is nothing to quote. Happy touches are not in his way. Should he find some part of his picture empty he will not fill it with nicely balancing daisies, clouds, or bric-a-brac; he will begin it again. To him it will seem either that he has failed to conceive his work as a whole or that he has failed to realize his conception. Similarly, you will not easily discover a favourite ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... articles such as pillows, books, handkerchiefs, inexpensive bric-a-brac, etc., on the floor. One person acts as leader and walks in a zigzag path around the obstacles, followed by the others. Then one of the party is blindfolded and told by the leader to "follow my foot-steps ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... Burke, Voltaire, and Home Tooke as producing a marked effect upon the social life of the time. Lord Robert Seymour notes in his diary for 1788 that a fashionable lady gave L100 a year to the cook who superintended her suppers; that at a sale of bric-a-brac 230 guineas were paid for a mirror; and that, at a ball given by the Knights of the Bath at the Pantheon, the decorations cost upwards of L3000. The general consumption of French and Portuguese wines in place of beer, which had till recently ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the past—it's all past at ours—the jewels have been worn by dead women, the old china, and bric-a-brac, has stood in empty houses! It's all of the dead and gone. So is the house, all the rooms are old. I should like to live in a ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... things of which his own position was the natural out-growth. His republicanism was about as genuine as his boasted indifference to money—a virtue which is not rare in bachelors who have more than they can spend. So long as he could buy as much bric-a-brac, as many knicknacks, and old books and bronzes and curious portraits and odd gloves of celebrated characters as he pleased; add a new tower and a set of battlements to Strawberry Hill every few years; keep a comfortable house in London, and have a sufficiency of carriages and ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... out to her. The turn of the stairs brought her fronting the little drawing-room and the figure of Girard, who sat leaning forward, smoking, in the Morris chair, with his elbow resting on the arm of it and his head on his hand. The books and bric-a-brac on the table beside him had been pushed back to make room for the tray containing the coffee-pot, a cup and saucer, and a plate with some biscuits. A newspaper lay on the floor at his feet. Notwithstanding the light in the hallway and the room, there was that odd atmospheric effect which belongs ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... who probably cared for them even less than his father did. There was a garret extending over the whole house, and filled with old spinning-wheels, and strings of onions, and all sorts of antiquated bric-a-brac, which was so fascinating to me that I could scarcely tear myself away from it; but Euphemia, who was dreadfully afraid that I would set the whole place on fire, at length prevailed on ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... the last gate of the enclosure, we halt in a sort of small bazaar, of whose existence we were not previously aware. It is that of the bric-a-brac merchants, and the Lord only knows what queer oddities this kind of shop can display. Ancient arms constitute the principal stock in trade; rusty yataghans, long Souss muskets; then old leather ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... with interest and approval. He was a plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London clothes fitting him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes which gave him the air of appraising people as if they were bric-a-brac. He glanced up interrogatively at ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... point his one intimate man friend, Adolph Jensen, a Swede, appeared as the deus ex machine. He had, he declared, an elder brother in New York, an art dealer. This brother had just written him, describing the millionaires who bought his pictures and bric-a-brac. His shop was crowded with them. Adolph's brother was shrewd and hard to please, but let his cher Stefan go himself to New York with his canvases, impress the brother with his brilliance and the beauty of his work, and, ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... of place"—an impertinence. The gem was unworthy of the setting. Even the barbarous taste of our time and country, which had loaded the walls of the room with pictures, the floor with furniture, and the furniture with bric-a-brac, had not quite fitted the place for this bit of the savage life of the jungle. Besides—insupportable thought!—the exhalations of its breath mingled with the atmosphere ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... hundred thousand copies. It was proposed to bring out a one-franc edition which was expected to circulate broadcast, like prayer-books. Balzac made his own calculations,—for he was eternally making calculations,—and, relying confidently upon their accuracy, allowed himself to purchase carpets, bric-a-brac, a Limoges dinner set, a silver service and jewellery, all for the adornment of the small den in the Rue Cassini. He ordered chandeliers; he stopped short of nothing save a silver chafing-dish. He piled debts upon ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... Italy, last week. He was married, you know, quite happily; an ordinary sort of person; she had money; he rather let his work go. But they were happy; a large family; a villa on a hill somewhere; pictures, bric-a-brac and bohemian intellectualism. You ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... prettiest, most girlish bindings. She could see the dainty volumes, primly ranged on the little carved oak bookcase, which Valentine was to "pick up" in Wardour-street. She fancied herself walking down that mart of bric-a-brac arm-in-arm with her lover, intent on "picking up." Ah, what happiness! what dear delight in the thought! And O, of all the bright dreams we dream, how few are realised upon this earth! Do they find their fulfilment in heaven, those ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... again last night," she said one sunny morning, when the need of hanging out her wash had brought her and Mrs. Lathrop within conversational distance; "he wants to have his rent a little lowered so as he can bric-a-brac the side of the crick himself. He says there 's stones enough to do it, only he must hire a man to help him. I told him I 'd consider it, 'n' goin' out in the dark he fell over the scraper. I declare I got a damage-suit ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... jagged hole just over a string which was stretched across one corner of the cabin, and from which dangled sundry articles of camp bric-a-brac, mostly of a tinny nature, with Uncle Eb's ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... all sides, was open, and disorderly with music. It was a large room, with three windows; and one end of it was shut off by a high screen, which stretched almost from wall to wall. A deep sofa stood in an oriel-window; a writing-table was covered with bric-a-brac, and three tall flower-vases were filled with purple lilac. But there was a general air of untidiness about the room; for strewn over the chairs and tables were numerous small articles of dress and the toilet-hairpins, a veil, a hat and a skirt—all ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... desired harmony of contraries was not attained. Past ages were to be revived upon the stage. The historic evocation possessed too often neither historic nor human truth; it consisted in "local colour," and local colour meant a picturesque display of theatrical bric-a-brac. Yet a drama requires some centre of unity. Failing of unity in coherent action and well-studied character, can a centre be provided by some philosophical or pseudo-philosophical idea? Victor Hugo, wealthy in imagery, was not wealthy in original ideas; in grandiose prefaces he attempted ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... glories back! You gentle sirs who sift the dust And burrow in the mould and must Of Babylon for bric-a-brac; Who catalogue and pigeon-hole The faded splendours of her soul And put her greatness under glass— If you could ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... mischievous creatures would make! In the first place it would accomplish the destruction of these little canaries of ours which now flit about this lovely disordered room, perching confidently upon folios and bric-a-brac and hopping blithely over the manuscripts and papers on the table. In the basement against the furnace, three beautiful fleecy little chickens have just hatched out. How long do you suppose it would be before that wicked little ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... restaurant, studio to studio, music hall to cafe chantant, Brighton to Monte Carlo, Sandown to Goodwood, were shifty, too well-dressed, too near neutrality in sex, without defined professions, known by nicknames only, spend-thrifts, spongers, bankrupts, and collectors of needless bric-a-brac.] ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... temporary stay in some German or Italian palace for the purposes of national reorganization and public weal. At the present instant she was enthroned amid cushions in a corner of the sofa, watching Olivia dispose of such bric-a-brac as had not been too remotely ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... the mirror, where she could see the face of the one who alone could retain her presence of mind under the circumstances suggested by Mr. Horace. She could also have seen, had she wished it, among the reflected bric-a-brac of the mantel, the corner of the frame that held the picture of her husband, but peradventure, classing it with the past which held so many unavenged bad dinners, she never thought to link it even by a look with her emotions of the present. ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... pressure as regards the appreciation of diminutive virgins. It was perhaps an indication of Lizzie's pertness that she very soon retired and left the Baroness on her brother's hands. Acton talked a great deal about his chinoiseries; he knew a good deal about porcelain and bric-a-brac. The Baroness, in her progress through the house, made, as it were, a great many stations. She sat down everywhere, confessed to being a little tired, and asked about the various objects with a curious ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... as knight of the brush, felt compelled to be artistic. 'Imagine a ducal palace, in the year so many hundred and something, decorated with Japanese bric-a-brac! I blush ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... my bric-a-brac dealer was a veritable Capharnaum. All ages and all nations seemed to have made their rendezvous there. An Etruscan lamp of red clay stood upon a Boule cabinet, with ebony panels, brightly striped by lines of inlaid brass; a duchess of the court of Louis XV. nonchalantly extended her fawn-like ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... Bric-a-brac there was none, although here and there, in the mass of plaster on the floor, gleamed bits of glass and china which might once have been parts of ornaments. Hawkinsite had evidently not been quite as powerful as its inventor ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin |
