United States or Comoros ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The agent was very kind; he sent a boy to the house with the keys every time the express wished to deliver any of our goods. Finally, the carpet dealer having reported the carpets laid, Sophronia, I, and our newly engaged servant, started by rail to Villa Valley, three double-truck loads of furniture preceding us by way of the turnpike.
Eastern curtains veiled the windows, the floor was piled with Persian carpets, and a wide divan heaped with cushions and draped with bright Bedawin rugs ran along one side of the room. There were narghilehs and chibouques, and cups of filigree and porcelain for the dispensing of delectable Arab coffee.
The ground, always damp now, had quite the appearance of an Irish bog; and if the straw that was placed underneath the skins to make our bed a little softer was not removed every other day, the steam rose even through the old carpets that adorned our abode. At last I could stand it no longer: I was afraid of falling ill.
In the glare on the upper terraces there were many people men, women, children; some of the men vainly endeavoring to fix and work unused hose-pipes; others dragging away furniture, curtains, carpets that lay in heaps near the central hall; the greatest number of them struggling with ladders, advancing and recoiling in front of the low block at the further end of the building.
Her life is smothered out of her with comforts; we have too many rooms, too many carpets, too many vases and knick-knacks, too much china and silver; she has too many laces and dresses and bonnets; the children all have too many clothes: in fact, to put it scripturally, our riches are corrupted, our garments are moth-eaten, our gold and our silver is cankered, and, in short, Marianne is sick in bed, and I have come to the agency office for distressed women to take you out to attend to her.
But it was too late, now, to retrace her steps of error. The carpets were already in the hands of the upholsterers, and a few days would see them on the floor. "I must tell him about them," said Cara to herself, about a week after her act of folly, as she sat, towards the close of day, brooding over what she had done. "To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
The floor was covered with soft carpets; cushioned divans invited the fatigued to rest, and the brilliant illumination of the terraces, courts, and gardens diffused a light almost equal to that of day. Refreshments of the most delicate kind made it difficult for Europeans to remember that they were so far from their native country.
Merchants bringing silk and spices, camphor and ivory, pearls and scents and carpets from the Levant and from the hot lands beyond it, all came to port in Venice.
Just think: how is Marianne to furnish her house here without French papers and English carpets? those American papers are so very ordinary, and, as to American carpets, everybody knows their colors don't hold; and then, as to dress, a lady must have gloves, you know, and everybody knows no such things are made in America as gloves."
There were no sewing or knitting machines, save the deft hands that plied the needle. Carpets were seldom seen. The floors of the spare rooms, as they were called, were painted almost invariably with yellow ochre paint, and the kitchen floor was kept clean and white with the file, and sanded.
Word Of The Day