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More "Gaudy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his prayers to Almighty God. Then, rising again, and putting off his clothes unto the shirt, he went to the stake, and there suffered with a young man of twenty years of age, whose name was John Leaf, an apprentice to Mr. Humphry Gaudy, tallow-chandler, of Christ-church, London. Upon Friday before Palm Sunday, he was committed to the Compter in Bread-street, and afterward examined and condemned by the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... a long look at Mary Gowd, went out to confer with the porter about the motor. Papa Gregg, hand in pockets, cigar tilted, eyes narrowed, stood irresolutely in the centre of the great, gaudy foyer. Then, with a decisive little hunch of his shoulders, he came back to ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... made of sacks Hangs from their loins; bright blankets drape their backs; About their necks are twisted tangled strings Of gaudy beads, while tinkling wire and rings Of yellow brass on wrists and fingers glow. Thus, to assuage the anger of the foe The cunning Indians decked the captive pair Who in one year have known a ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... strolled in from another department. He was a middle-aged, corpulent, and cheerful-looking man, dressed in gaudy coloured tissue, on which all manner of strange birds were depicted. He ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... a dirge, and followed by the Virgin. This procession was really pretty, but had an odd, unnatural effect amongst the fresh green trees, the smell of incense mingling with the fragrance of the flowers, and the gaudy silk and gold and plumes of feathers gilded by the soft setting sun, as they flashed along. I climbed up an old stone cross near the church, and had a good view. Everything looked gaudy when near; but as the procession wound along under the broken arches and through the green lanes, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... The road was crammed with an apparently impenetrable crowd of men and beasts, the latter—water-buffaloes, humpy cattle, and donkeys—strolling about and getting in everybody's way with perfect nonchalance, while men in strange raiment of gaudy hue pursued their lawful occupations with much clamour. The variety of smells—all ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Wishes is a more free, but equally spirited rendering of the tenth satire, which stands at the head of the later portion of Juvenal's work. In this, and in those of the subsequent satires which do not show traces of declining power, notably the eleventh and thirteenth, the rhetoric is less gaudy and the thought rises to a nobler tone. The fine passage at the end of the tenth satire, where he points out what it is permitted mankind to pray for, and that in the thirteenth, where he paints the torments of conscience in the unpunished ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... special temperament; but she was extremely fond of spending her evenings at the penny theatres, or other cheap and decidedly low places of entertainment. There she would enjoy herself, looking on with eager interest at the coarse and gaudy representations of so-called "life." She would never laugh loudly, however, or applaud noisily, although she encouraged and smiled at those who did. She was very poor, but she was always neat in her person; and the expression in her big black eyes gave her ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... of the first "friends of the negro," whose honest industry and philanthropy were darkened by a religion of sombre smugness, which almost makes one fancy they loved the negro for his colour, and would have turned away from red or yellow men as needlessly gaudy. But his wit and his politics (combined with that dropping of the Puritan tenets but retention of the Puritan tone which marked his class and generation), lifted him into a sphere which was utterly opposite to that from which ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... that he had drawn our attention to the right person, he gave us to understand, with an air of great complacency, that she was 'Olla,' his wife. While thus engaged, we were suddenly discovered, being betrayed by Mowno's gaudy tiputa, seen through the foliage by the quick eye of his better half, who immediately sprang up with a clear, ringing laugh, scattering a lapful of flowers upon the ground, and came running like a fawn towards him; the rest of us still keeping concealed. She was very pretty, graceful ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... almost entirely to himself. He spread his wings to it like a bird to the air. By degrees, as he wandered—pursued by the distant music from the drenched volcanoes—a feeling of suffocation overtook him. All these men and women about him stared and smiled, but all were breathless. They wore their gaudy clothes with an air, no doubt. The Kings struck regal attitudes. The cricketers had a set manner of bringing off dreamy, difficult catches. The actresses were properly made up to charm, and the statesmen must surely have brought plenty of empires to ruin, if insipidity ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... "and this is my parcel. I have looked through your wardrobe; your clothes are neat, fine, some of them gaudy, but all good. I can get from three to four ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... than a pell-mell gathering of many thousands of low-caste, good for nothing, idle Indians from Hindustan—not ashamed to beg, with some amount of sentiment in their nature, as exhibited in their musical tendencies and love of gaudy colours, and except in rare instances, without any true religious motives or influences. It may be worth while to notice that I have come to the conclusion that they were originally from India by observing ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... disgust, she turned her attention to the fashionable part of the audience. On the opposite side of the arena the balconies seemed like beds of flowers in bloom, blacknesses formed here and there by the hats and coats of gentlemen representing the interspaces of clay. In the midst of the flowers was a gaudy dais, on which a powerfully-built black gentleman sat in a raised chair, his majestic impassivity contrasting with the overt astonishment with which a row of savagely ugly attendant chiefs grinned and gaped on either side ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... his arms and looking down at himself, "I do think it be somewhat of a gay, gaudy, grasshopper dress; but it is a pretty thing for all that, and doth not ill befit the turn of my looks, albeit I wear it but for the nonce. But stay, Little John, here are two bags that I would have thee carry in thy pouch ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... of lower Natal amazed me. I had expected nothing nearly so tropical, so rich and vivid. There were little Mozambique monkeys chattering in the thick-set trees beside the line and a quantity of unfamiliar birds and gaudy flowers amidst the abundant deep greenery. There were aloe and cactus hedges, patches of unfamiliar cultivation upon the hills; bunchy, frondy growths that I learnt were bananas and plantains, and there were barbaric insanitary-looking ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... hold and showed what the "cranks" called their trade goods and asked to select what I thought was a fair thing in exchange for the provisions I had given them. Heavens! Such a collection of utter, utter rubbish! second-hand musical boxes in piles, gaudy lithographs, iron bedsteads, "brown paper" boots and shoes eaten half away by cockroaches. Sets of cheap and nasty toilet ware, two huge cases of common and much damaged wax dolls, barrels of rotted dried ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... of blackbirds rising in huge swarms like gnats; full-voiced meadowlarks on the fence posts; herons stalking solemnly, or waiting like so many Japanese bronzes for a chance at a gopher; red-tailed hawks circling slowly; pigeon hawks passing with their falcon dart; little gaudy sparrow hawks on top the telephone poles; buzzards, stately and wonderful in flight, repulsive when at rest; barn-owls dwelling in the haystacks, and horned owls in the hollow trees; the game in countless numbers; all the smaller animals ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... I sink under gentleness like thine. Thy sight is death to me; and yet 'tis dear. The gaudy trappings of assumptive state Drop at the voice of nature to the earth, Before thy feet—I cannot force myself To hate thee, to renounce thee; yet—Covilla! Yet—oh distracting thought! 'tis hard to see, Hard to converse with, to admire, to love - As from my soul I do, and ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... robed and crowned the monarch trod the shore; His golden hooks were decked with feathers fine, His jewelled reel ran out a silken line. With kingly strokes he flogged the crystal stream, Far-off the salmon saw his tackle gleam; Careless of kings, they eyed with calm disdain The gaudy lure, and Martin fished in vain. On Friday, when the week was almost spent, He scanned his empty creel with discontent, Called for a net, and cast it far and wide, And drew—a thousand minnows from the tide! Then came the fisher to conclude the match, And at the monarch's feet spread ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... the Procession of the Maestranza, of unascertainable antiquity. Those who took part in it came riding on horses and mules covered with gaudy trappings and carrying something to indicate their trades. The Oil-pressers, suitably dressed, carried a model of an oil-press; the Millers carried a little mill; and these two companies carried their money on trays. The Vetturini, who came next, carried their money stuck ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... heartless woman of fashion who is determined to wear aigrettes as long as her money can buy them. The best women of the world have already been educated on the bird-millinery subject, and they are already against the use of the gaudy badges of slaughter and extermination. But in the great cities of the world there are thousands of women who are at heart as cruel as Salome herself, and whose vicious tastes can be curbed only by the strong hand of the law. "Sentiment" ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... three stories high, built of light red brick, and finished with white marble. All around garish millinery shops display their showy goods. Peddlers with pushcarts lit by flickering flames, vie with each other in their array of gaudy neckties and bargain shirtwaists. Blazing electric signs herald the thrills of movie shows. And, salient by the force of extreme contrast, a plain little white posterboard makes its influence felt. It is lit by two iron lanterns, and reads simply, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... was filled by an assemblage of lords and ladies, arrayed in such gorgeous apparel that it would need a far better milliner than the writer to describe it; all the colours of the rainbow were there, and the men had their share of the gaudy hues as well as the women. Hugo was quite a sight, as he sat upon a dais, at the head of the table, with his hopeful son—the hero of ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... nature, the daisy seems perfectly intelligible. Scattered throughout the lowly places, with meekness it seems to shed beauty over its surroundings, and compensate for gaudy vesture by cheerful contentment. Wordsworth calls the daisy "the poet's darling," "a nun demure," "a little Cyclops," "an unassuming commonplace of nature," and sums up its excellences in a verse which may fitly conclude our attempt to pluck a bouquet ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... new and valuable wealth has tempted them into a single act of dishonesty. While they have generally shared with us the little they possess, they have always abstained from begging anything from us. With their liveliness of temper, they are fond of gaudy dresses and all sorts of amusements, particularly games of hazard; and, like most Indians, delight in boasting of their warlike exploits, either real or fictitious. In their conduct towards us they have been kind and obliging; and though on one occasion they seemed willing to neglect ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... inartistic, rough, coarse, distasteful, harsh, inharmonious, rude, deformed, fulsome, hideous, meretricious, rugged, disgusting, gaudy, horrid, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... come dwarf, cocksparrow, and bee, There's a ring gaudy-green in the dell, Sing, sing, ye sweet cherubs, that flit in the tree; La! who can draw tears from a well-well-well, Who ever drew ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... men's voices, which blended into a wild, barbaric chant that sounded incredibly savage, smacking of blood and war. Then, through vistas of tropical foliage appeared a procession of savages, naked save for gaudy loin-cloths. They advanced slowly, uttering deep guttural cries of triumph and exaltation. Slung from young saplings carried on their shoulders were mysterious objects of considerable weight, hidden from view by ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... maintain that the majority of this assembly is the only organ by which their sentiments can be expressed, is, to me, truly surprising. For where, in the name of wonder, should the house acquire the necessary knowledge or intelligence? Is it by turning these musty old volumes, or by rummaging these gaudy boxes which lie on your table? No! they contain none of these mysteries. How then are they to be explored? Is there any virtue or inspiration in these benches or cushions, by which they are to be communicated, or does the echo of these walls whisper the secret in your ears? No! but the echo ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... when the little New Orleans went puffing down the Ohio, in 1811, would have been doubly amazed at the splendid development in the art of boat building, could they have seen the stately Sultana or Southern Belle of the fifties sweep swiftly by. After a period of gaudy ornamentation (1830-40) steamboat architecture settled down, as has that of Pullman cars today, to sane and practical lines, and the boats gained in length and strength, though they contained less weight ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... three are right, each for its own subject. Here you have no brilliant reds, no rich warm browns; no luscious greens. The white robe and cap give us the thought of purity and simplicity; the very golden embroidery on them, which marks his rank, is carefully kept back from being too gaudy. Everything is sober here; and the lines of the dress, how simple they all are—no rich curves, no fluttering drapery. They would be quite stiff if it were not for that waving line of round tassels ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... seized upon her people, the high price of cotton favored its accumulation, and with it came new and more extravagant wants, new and more luxurious habits. The plain homespun jean coat gave way to the broad-cloth one; and the neat, Turkey-red striped Sunday frock of the belle yielded to the gaudy red calico one, and there was a sniff of aristocratic contempt in the upturned nose towards those who, from choice or necessity, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... salmon that has taken the gaudy fly, felt a check and recognised that a Power had her in hand, recognised in the light-going and fair-speaking Pinckney something of adamant, a will not to ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... dashing, reckless kind—more famous along the Pecos and Rio Grande than more really desperate men. His attire proclaimed a vanity seldom seen in any Westerner except of that unusual brand, yet it was neither gaudy or showy. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... next door; the orchard out in back where grew the apples which sometimes gave her an "upset"; the garden where grandpa spent hours and hours "cultivating" his vegetables; and grandma's own particular garden, which was given over to tall gaudy hollyhocks, and prim rows of verbena, snap-dragon, phlox, spicy pinks, heliotrope, and other flowers such as all grandmothers ought ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... of Apis. From Cairo you have proceeded to Sakkara. Or are the gaudy hue of my hair and the yeoman proportions of my shape responsible for ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... person is asked to give an opinion of something which is considered vulgar—that a gaudy article of dress will look well in ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... the great caravan route, which starts from Beni-Mora and ends, they say, at Tombouctou. For fourteen hours each day we were on the road, and each evening about nine o'clock we stopped at a Bordj, or Travellers' House, ate a hasty meal, threw ourselves down on our gaudy Arab rugs, and slept heavily till the hour before dawn, drugged by fatigue, and by the strong air of the desert. In the late afternoon of the third day of our journeying we drove into a sandstorm. A great wind arose, carrying with it innumerable multitudes of sand grains, which whirled ...
— "Fin Tireur" - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... bell gave the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew—for it contained such marvellous stained glass, deepest, purest glory of colour that I had ever seen. The solemn beauty of Notre Dame, the somewhat gaudy magnificence of La Sainte Chapelle, the stateliness of La Madeleine, the impressive gloom of St. Roch, were all familiar to us. Other delights were found in mingling with the bright crowds which passed along the Champs Elysees and sauntered in the Bois de Boulogne, in ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... cultivates his own peculiarities unhindered, Ben was considered a "character." He was a short, thick man of enormous physical strength, and he sported a beard like a quickset hedge, hence his nickname. He was clad in an entire suit of fur like an Eskimo, with a gaudy red worsted ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... opinion of her dramatic ability, her body tingled with satisfaction. Like the flame which welds the loosened particles into a solid mass, his words united those floating wisps of feeling which she had felt, but never believed, concerning her possible ability, and made them into a gaudy shred of hope. Like all human beings, she had a touch of vanity. She felt that she could do things if she only had a chance. How often had she looked at the well-dressed actresses on the stage and wondered how she would look, ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... use. Yet, although there was unmistakable evidence of its being used by a person of taste and refinement, he was surprised to see that the garments hanging in an open press were such as were used by negro servants, and that a gaudy handkerchief such as housemaids used for turbans was lying on the pretty silk coverlet. He did not linger over these details, but cast a rapid glance round the room. Then his eyes became fixed on a fanciful writing-desk, which stood by the window. For, in a handsome ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... Excellencies that divert us from, or weaken a Publick Spirit, are always False and Hypocritical, that under a gaudy out-side conceals a rotten Carcass, full of Infectious Distempers that destroy the noblest end of our Being, The doing good to one another. Vanity has always been the Refuge of little Souls, that place their Value in a False Greatness, Hyppocrisie, and great ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... a frameless crayon, thrust aside and somewhat overshadowed by a huge and garish thing in gaudy-flowered gilt, which easily caught and held the eye ...
— The Story of a Picture • Douglass Sherley
... city's distractions and with blissful unconcern of them all, partaking of a hearty lunch of insects that infest the leaves before one's eyes, one counts the bird less rare and shy than one has been taught to consider it. Whoever looks for a warbler with gaudy yellow wings will not find the golden-winged variety. His wings have golden patches only, and while these are distinguishing marks, they are scarcely prominent enough features to have given the bird ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... offer sacrifice; Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high; Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies; The shouts are, France, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... Nothing appeared too gaudy to meet the tastes of the enemy airmen, who seemed to have been given carte blanche with the paint brush. There were green planes with yellow noses, silver planes with gold noses, khaki-colored planes with greenish-gray wings, planes with ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... studiously made so. There are no articles of value in the rooms, except a few screens painted by native artists; nor are there any signs marking it out in particular as the abode of a Sovereign. The houses of the high court dignitaries are infinitely more gaudy than the royal palace, for they are decorated externally in ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... the city, but were kept moving in the mountain passes and along the coast line, on the lookout for smugglers with whom they were on the most friendly terms. They were a picturesque body of blackguards, in their hightopped boots and silver-tipped sombreros and heavy, gaudy saddles, but the shout that had gone up at their advance was due as much to the fear they inspired as to any great love for ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... roofed-in waggon, with the younger children of the company running alongside in threadbare tights and trunkhose decked with tinsel; or whether they drove through a village market-place, where yellow earthen crocks and gaudy Indian cottons, brass pails and braziers and platters of bluish pewter, filled the stalls with a medley of colour—at every turn was something that excited the boy's wonder; but Donna Laura, who had ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... advantage the young man's fine proportions and athletic figure, and where there were to be hundreds similarly arrayed, with only a difference of colour to distinguish their even ranks, the result could not differ greatly from a military parade. Indeed the costume is not more gaudy than many modern uniforms ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... a glorious summer evening. "The western sky was all aflame" with the gorgeous hues of the sunset; the air was like amber mist, and the shrill-voiced Canadian birds, with their gaudy plumage, sang their vesper laudates high in the green gloom of the ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... exposure of the gigantic conspiracy now to be laid bare in all its hideous deformity, is an inhabitant of the town of Tattlesnivel—a lowly inhabitant, it may be, but one who, as an Englishman and a man, will ne'er abase his eye before the gaudy and ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... gathering of woolly heads I had never seen. Every plantation within a circuit of five miles had sent in a representation, till the benches, the aisle, the small area around the pulpit, and the open space near the doorway, were all densely packed. On the left, the men, in gaudy cravats and many-colored waistcoats, were chatting merrily together, and enjoying themselves as heartily as a parcel of Yankees at a clambake; and on the right, the women, in red and yellow turbans, and flaming shawls and neckerchiefs, were bobbing about and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... said Perry. "But, say, I wish you'd stop talking about it, fellows. I'm going to be disappointed when I wake up and find it's only a bright and gaudy dream." ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... trailers, i.e., (Freycinetia scandens) with heavy knotted stems, as thick as a frigate's stoutest hawser, coiling up to the tops of tall ohias with tufted leaves like yuccas, and crimson spikes of gaudy blossom. The shining festoons of the yam and the graceful trailers of the maile (Alyxia Olivaeformis), a sweet scented vine, from which the natives make garlands, and glossy leaved climbers hung from tree to tree, and ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... of these, a lady has a fair opportunity for the proper display of a refined and judicious taste. All that is gaudy, needless, or even elaborate, is vulgar. Perfect simplicity, indeed, as regards, not only her own costume, but "the trappings of her palfrey," is expected, at the present day, on the part of every ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... sleepy performances, except for a tendency to jumble up metaphors, that kept the audience from the Folly just awake enough to watch for them. The hearer was proud who could repeat by heart such phrases as "let us not, beloved brethren, as gaudy insects, flutter out life's little day, bound to the chariot wheels of vanity, whirling in the vortex of dissipation, until at length we lie moaning over the bitter dregs of the intoxicating draught." Some of these ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an ancient quotation, "were never constant to one colour or fashion two months to an end." We can have no idea by the present generation, of the folly in such respects, of these early ages. But these follies were not confined to the laiety. Affectation of parade, and gaudy cloathing, were admitted among many of the clergy, who incurred the severest invectives of the poets on that account. The ploughman, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, is full upon this point. He gives us the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... of the devil, as being the most appropriate, and mounting a jackass, he rode down in his dress to the masquerade. But, as Jack was just going in, he perceived a yellow carriage, with two footmen in gaudy liveries, draw up, and with his usual politeness, when the footmen opened the door, offered his arm to hand out a fat old dowager covered with diamonds; the lady looked up, and perceiving Jack covered with ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... his book, he called aloud, "Who speaks to me?" And as he spoke he saw, or thought he saw—but I give it to you as he gave it to me—to his amazement, how the painted image of the beautiful youth that stood above the fountain seemed slowly to quicken into being, and how all the gaudy colors and gilding of the figure seemed to soften to the exquisite and tender hues of a life that was more marvellous than life. The hair of the youth was radiantly sunny, his cheeks flamed and paled with a divine ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of China, though more imposing, is not less barbaric than that of Japan; and the etiquette that accompanies it is wholly irreconcilable with the usages of the Western world. Imagine a mandarin doffing his gaudy cap, gay with tassels, feathers, and ruby button, on meeting a friend, or pushing back his long sleeves to shake hands! Such frippery we have learned to leave to the ladies; and etiquette does not require them to ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... bull-fight of the season is held on Easter Sunday. Verily, the Church is mindful of the weakness of its vassals, and shows as much indulgence as is thought needful to keep the people amused and careless of all else. I remember, when I first noticed this wearing of the most gaudy colours on Maundy Thursday, a day one would naturally expect to be one of special mourning, I was told it was allowed by the Church because on that day Pilate put the ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... fifty per cent, even more, in wages, he suddenly began to revel in a wealth that he never dreamed was possible. The more he made the more he spent. He squandered his financial substance on fine cigars, expensive clothes, and excessive drinks, while his wife bedecked herself in gaudy finery and installed pianos or phonographs in her house. No ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... that Dune was "taking it" to "take it" himself consciously at all. Olva's aloof surveying of the world about him, as a man on a hill surveys the town in the valley, made of "Cards'" last year and a half a gaudy and noisy thing. He had thought that his attitude had been nicely adjusted, but now he saw that there were still heights to be reached—perhaps in this welcome that he was giving to Dune's success he might attain his position. . . . Not, in any way, a bad fellow, this Cardillac—but ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... day's pleasure. Most of the churches have services at all hours till noon, some of them with fine classical and military music. One could not but be struck with the devotional manner of the simple women, in their queer costumes, who walked into the gaudy edifices, were absorbed in their prayers for an hour, and then went away. I suppose they did not know how odd they looked in their high, round fur hats, or their fantastic old ornaments, nor that there was anything amiss in bringing their big baskets into church with them. At least, their simple, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a square courtyard, from which an entrance led into the main building of the castle. No person had appeared to greet them, so far, although a gaudy peacock, perched upon the wall, cackled with laughter and said in its sharp, shrill voice: ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... English. These important circumstances were borne in mind by Mr Brooke. The rajah was now at Sar[a]wak, and the adventurer determined to enter the river of that name, and to proceed as far as the town. He was well supplied with presents; gaudy silks of Surat, scarlet cloth, stamped velvet, gunpowder, confectionery, sweets, ginger, jams, dates, and syrups for the governor, and a huge box of China toys for the governor's children. From Mr Brooke's own diary, we extract the following account of his position ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... say, Loveday, have I got a part in it, That I can wear a cloak in and look smart in it? Not that I care a fig for gaudy show, dear boy— But juveniles must look well, don't you know, dear boy; And shall I lordly hall and tuns of claret own? And may I murmur love in dulcet baritone? Tell me, at least, this simple fact of it— Can I beat Terriss hollow in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... his aching head, the man staggered drunkenly. Everything was confusion to him. Where was he? What ship? What voyage? The last he remembered would be setting the tune to a Dago fiddler in a gaudy saloon, with lashings of drink to keep his feet a-tripping. Now all was mixed and hazy, but in the mist one thing stood definite, a seamanlike order: "Top'sl halyards! Damn smart!" Hans laid aft and ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... overthronged by Princes and Princesses, I fancied in the bustle that the omission proceeded from forgetfulness. Consequently, I sent the tirewoman, in the Queen's hearing, to order the jewels to be brought in. Smilingly, Her Majesty replied, 'No, no! I have not forgotten these gaudy things; but I do not intend that the lustre of my eyes should be outshone by the one, or the whiteness of my teeth by the other; however, as you wish art to eclipse nature, I'll wear them to ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... He can only thereby secure the man's invaluable services. Be sure that every motive which comes not from the single eye, every motive which springs from self, is by its very essence unheroic, let it look as gaudy or as ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... up into his women's apartments, looking with but little regret, I dare say, round those cheerless nuptial chambers with all their gaudy fittings; the fine looking-glasses, in which poor Rosey's little person had been reflected; the silken curtains under which he had lain by the poor child's side, wakeful and lonely. Here he found his child's ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shining azure bird on tiptoe for flight. Sebert paid her the tribute of a quickly drawn breath, even as he took his eyes from her to scan the butterfly pages who ran to and fro, recovering the gilded rings. Yellow hair and red hair and brown hair curled on their gaudy shoulders, but no black. In all the picture there was but one figure crowned with such raven locks as had distinguished Fridtjof the Bold, and that figure belonged to a girl standing directly opposite by the mossy curb of the old ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... a trusting nature, and an overflowing heart; so that the smoke from this poor chimney has gone upward with a better fragrance than the richest incense that is burnt before the richest shrines in all the gaudy temples of this world!—Upon your own hearth; in its quiet sanctuary; surrounded by its gentle influences and associations; hear her! Hear me! Hear everything that speaks the language of your hearth ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... little Inditos," Jacqueline mused aloud. Berthe struck her pony in a tremor of fright. The American was riding ahead. "Fire and sword," Jacqueline went on, and her voice lowered to intense scorn, "they make the final tableau, but—it's gaudy, it's cheap." ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... exactly up to that I've been luxuriatin' in lately, but more fittin' to my build and class than that was, I shouldn't wonder. No Corot paintin's nor five thousand dollar tintypes of dory codders; but I can manage to worry along without them, if I try hard. Neat but not gaudy, I call it—as the architect feller said about his plans for the addition to the county jail ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of dressing the hair was discountenanced or forbidden, not less than the use of gaudy clothes and bright arms. Some of these regulations have a quaint air to readers of this generation; and as indications of manners in ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Lancaster, embrace thy king; And, as gross vapours perish by the sun, Even so let hatred with thy sovereign's smile: Live thou with me as my companion. Lan. This salutation overjoys my heart. K. Edw. Warwick shall be my chiefest counsellor: These silver hairs will more adorn my court Than gaudy silks or rich embroidery. Chide me, sweet Warwick, if I go astray. War. Slay me, my lord, when I offend your grace. K. Edw. In solemn triumphs and in public shows Pembroke shall bear the sword before the king. Pem. And with this sword Pembroke will fight for you. K. ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... the desolate remnant of my years to God. I will think more of this, my child. Not under such a plebeian's roof shouldst thou have lodged, nor from a stranger's board been fed: but at Rome, my last relative worthy of the trust is dead;—and at the worst, obscure honesty is better than gaudy crime. Thy spirit troubles me already. Back, my child; I must to my closet, and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... another it is different. The world is not his; he is the world's, and all his petty doings have its gaudy stencil blotched upon them. Yet haply even he has a heart, and somewhere in its fruitless fallows stands a poor ruin, that never was of much dignity at its best,—poor and broken, and half choked with ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... all the absurdity which it contains and all the devotion which it occasions. Bertram was first carried to the five different churches which have crowded themselves together under the same roof. The Greeks have by far the best of it. Their shrine is gaudy and glittering, and their temple is large and in some degree imposing. The Latins, whom we call Roman Catholics, are much less handsomely lodged, and their tinsel is by far more dingy. The Greeks, too, possess the hole in which stood—so they say—the cross of Our Saviour; while ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... which in after years he was remarkable—and reeked with the choicest perfumes. He wore the crimson-bordered toga of his senatorial rank, but under it, as it waved loosely to and fro, might be observed the gaudy hues of a violet colored banqueting dress, sprinkled with flowers of gold, as if he had been disturbed from some festive board by the summons ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... unequal is thy fate, Since title deck'd my higher birth; Yet envy not this gaudy state, Thine is the pride ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... larger parcels Mrs. Sieppe had drawn forth a small tin steamboat—August's birthday present—a gaudy little toy which could be steamed up and navigated by means of an alcohol lamp. Her trial trip was to be made ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... woman. He and Jacques got a fresh rig-out of clothes at once, and went down to the port to inquire about ships. Ralph was greatly amused at the aspect of the streets crowded with chattering negroes and negresses, in gaudy colors. The outlay of a few pence purchased an almost unlimited supply of fruit, and Ralph and his companion sat down on a log of wood by the wharves and enjoyed a feast of pine apples, bananas, and custard apples. Then they set about their work. In an hour both were suited. Jacques ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... before—even my portmanteau had disappeared. After a most diligent search, I discovered on a chair in a corner of the room, a small bundle tied up in a handkerchief, on opening which I perceived a new suit of livery of the most gaudy and showy description and lace; of which colour was also the coat, which had a standing collar and huge cuffs, deeply ornamented with worked button holes and large buttons. As I turned the things over, without even a guess of what they could mean, for I was scarcely well awake, I perceived ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... undertakes this! But whatever in our modern culture is thoroughly Christless, and therefore Godless, is unworthy of the name and can, therefore, claim from us no further consideration; it is mere naked rudeness and selfishness, ill-disguised by the gaudy rays of outward decency; a mere cherishing of the sensual nature which, left to itself, would soon degenerate into monstrous barbarism, of which we already see ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... clouds and winds, All things well and proper; Trailer, red and white, Dark and wily dropper. Midges true to fling Made of plover hackle, With a gaudy wing, ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... she knew, and well of each could speak, That in her garden sipped the silvery dew, Where no vain flower disclosed a gaudy streak, But herbs for use and physic not a few, Of gray renown within those borders grew. The tufted basil, pun-provoking thyme, And fragrant balm, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Dr. Absalom arrived. He had discarded his gaudy and fantastic attire of the previous day and appeared in the ordinary street dress of a European. If he had seemed imposing to Maximilian at his house in the Ghetto, he looked still more imposing to him now, shorn as he was of all oriental accessories and depending for effect ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... quarried them out of the early Roman citadel beneath; but it is at least a harmonious desolation. There are no wire-fenced walks among the ruins, no feeding-booths and cheap reconstructions of draw-bridges and police-notices at every corner; no gaudy women scribbling to their friends in the "Residenzstadt" post cards illustrative of the "Burgruine," while their husbands perspire over mastodontic ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... blossoms; then basted the paper in place around the skirt. The colors were shaded green and pink. Unable to get the floss for the blossoms, she had bought narrow pink silk braid and outlined each rose and bud, then embroidered the foliage in green. Some might have thought it a trifle gaudy, but to me it seemed beautiful, and I was ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... see that you like birds, sir," said Beckendorff to Vivian; for our hero, good-naturedly humouring the tastes of his host, was impartially dividing the luxuries of a peach among a crowd of gaudy and greedy little sparrows. "You shall see my favourites," continued Beckendorff; and tapping rather loudly on the table, he held out the forefinger of each hand. Two bullfinches recognised the signal, and immediately hastened ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... been a very terrible thing—a thing synonymous with political death. And yet in point of fact the elementary things remain much as they have always been before, and if they appear to have acquired new meaning it is simply because they have been moved into the foreground and are no longer masked by a gaudy superstructure. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... her. Where scarcely a second before she had been on the outer fringe of the crowd, she now appeared to be in the very center of it. Women were pushing up behind her, women who wore shawls as she did, only the shawls were mostly of gaudy colors; and men pushed up behind her, mostly men of swarthy countenance, who wore circlets of gold in their ears; and, brushing her skirts, seeking vantage points, ragged, ill-clad children wriggled and wormed their way deeper into the press. It was a ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... begging for a contribution towards the expenses of some music in the Saint's honour, so we gave him whatever it may have been, and his messenger departed: well satisfied. At six o'clock in the evening we went to the church—close at hand—a very gaudy place, hung all over with festoons and bright draperies, and filled, from the altar to the main door, with women, all seated. They wear no bonnets here, simply a long white veil—the 'mezzero;' and it was the most gauzy, ethereal-looking ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... at one of the tables covered with gaudy oil-cloth. Traffic was dull at the moment. A few half-grown boys noisily fared at another table; the Mexicans hung listless and phlegmatic about their wares. And it was still. The night hum of the city crowded to the wall of dark buildings surrounding the Plaza, and subsided ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... There was a chariot painted in gay colors, and men in scarlet and gold uniforms, and such music! The new dress was forgotten, and she flew down stairs and out of the door. With a troop of children she followed the gaudy chariot and gayly caparisoned horses from ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... scene of another kind. They re-entered the town by the Chinese quarter. There they found grotesque-looking houses, lit up with large paper lanterns of gaudy colours, with Chinese inscriptions or monsters on them, and long rows of Chinese characters up and down the door-posts or over the windows. Crowds of people swarmed along the streets, and strange ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... precarious, began to let me go, without them, along the 'Meseglise way,' wrapped up in a huge Highland plaid which protected me from the rain, and which I was all the more ready to throw over my shoulders because I felt that the stripes of its gaudy tartan scandalised Francoise, whom it was impossible to convince that the colour of one's clothes had nothing whatever to do with one's mourning for the dead, and to whom the grief which we had shewn on my aunt's death was wholly unsatisfactory, since ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... your rights; at least, prevent the curses of posterity from being heaped upon your memories. If you, with united zeal and fortitude, oppose the torrent of oppression; if you feel the true fire of patriotism burning in your breasts; if you, from your souls, despise the most gaudy dress which slavery can wear; if you really prefer the lonely cottage, while blessed with liberty, to gilded palaces, surrounded with the ensigns of slavery you may have the fullest assurance that tyranny with her whole accursed train, will hide ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... unequal is thy fate, Since title deck'd my higher birth! Yet envy not this gaudy state; Thine is the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... these discords and reconciling the determined opposition of the tones. He finally discovered that his first inspiration, which was to animate the fire of the weave by setting it off against some dark object, was erroneous. In fact, this rug was too new, too petulant and gaudy. The colors were not sufficiently subdued. He must reverse the process, dull the tones, and extinguish them by the contrast of a striking object, which would eclipse all else and cast a golden light on the pale silver. Thus stated, the problem was easier to solve. He ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... pure-blood Spaniards down through the yellow and brown shades of the Mestizos to the coal-black Carib and the Jamaica Negro. Scattered among them were little groups of Indians with faces like stone idols, wrapped in gaudy fibre-woven blankets—Indians down from the mountain states of Zamora and Los Andes and Miranda to trade their gold ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... sunshine, the sailing clouds in the vault of blue, the chasing shadows along the slopes, the streaming colors of blue and white and scarlet at the tip of the swaying staff, the glint and sparkle of the accoutrements of the guard, the gaudy lining of the troopers' capes, were absolutely unaltered, yet the light had gone from his eyes—following the trail to the far Ogallalla. To him who loves a woman with all his heart there is more beauty in a mud-chinked hovel in a frontier fort where she may dwell than in all "the castled crags" ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... river sedges, and the wholesome smell of the horse and the touch of the coarse hair at the shoulder, talked and breathed the old Puritan common sense back to him again. That warm-painted, melodious world he had left was gaudy nonsense; and dancing was not the same as living; and Mary Corbet was not just a rainbow on the foam that would die when the sun went in; but both she and he together were human souls, redeemed by the death of the Saviour, with ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... Broadway till they came to one of those gaudy saloons where rum and ruin are tricked out in ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... a little struck by the similarity of the place to the worship celebrated in it, and the admirable manner in which the architect has caused his work to express the public feeling of the moment. It is a pretty little bijou of a church: it is supported by sham marble pillars; it has a gaudy ceiling of blue and gold, which will look very well for some time; and is filled with gaudy pictures and carvings, in the very pink of the mode. The congregation did not offer a bad illustration of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all the other miseries of this life that had to be accepted with thankfulness. Presently the two bells in the tower began to dance, and the rapid ding-dong announced that the procession was forming. First appeared the beadle, extremely gaudy in scarlet and gold, then the cross-bearer, young men as chanters, little boys, most strangely attired in white satin knee-breeches and short lace skirts, scattering rose-leaves from open baskets at their sides; the cure came bearing the monstrance and Host, followed ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... (a very old name for the flower), and being "of great beautie, although of evil smell, our gentlewomen doe call it Jone Silverpin." This name is difficult of explanation, even with Parkinson's help, who says it meanes "faire without and foule within," but it probably alludes to its gaudy colour and worthlessness. But these names are scarcely the common names of the plant, but rather nicknames; the usual name is, and always has been, Poppy, which is an easily traced corruption from the Latin papaver, the Saxon and Early English names being ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Life and The Course of Empire. The latter were really epic poems upon canvas, done with much blare of color and literary explanation in the title. His best work was in pure landscape, which he pictured with considerable accuracy in drawing, though it was faulty in lighting and gaudy in coloring. Brilliant autumn scenes were his favorite subjects. His work had the merit of originality and, moreover, it must be remembered that Cole was one of the beginners in American landscape art. Durand (1796-1886) was an engraver until 1835, when he began painting portraits, and ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... When the gaudy ship left the gardens of the Paneum and turned into the Canopic way, the crowd pursued it in a dense mass, hallooing and shouting. Like a torrent suddenly swelled by a storm it rushed on, surging and growing at each moment, and carrying ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... by rail from Lower Roumania to the romantic and broken country surrounding Orsova are extremely interesting. The Danube-stretches of shimmering water among the reedy lowlands—where the only sign of life is a quaint craft painted with gaudy colors becalmed in some nook, or a guardhouse built on piles driven into the mud—are perhaps a trifle monotonous, but one has only to turn from them to the people who come on board the steamer to have a rich fund of enjoyment. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... lying far remote from him and his. What has he done to thee that thus, among The seeds of reason, which he sowed unmixed, Pure in my soul, thou ever must be seeking To plant the weeds, or flowers, of thy own land. He wills not of these pranking gaudy blossoms Upon this soil. And I too must acknowledge I feel as if they had a sour-sweet odour, That makes me giddy—that half suffocates. Thy head is wont to bear it. I don't blame Those stronger nerves that can support it. Mine - Mine it behoves ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... cottages of those men. Their humble dwellings were the abode of virtues, rarely found in the "cloud capt towers and [102] gorgeous palaces" of splendid ambition. And when peace reigned around them, neither the gaudy trappings of wealth, nor the insignia of office, nor the slaked thirst for distinction, could have added to the happiness ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... floated out upon the streets to tempt the miners to enter, while away an hour, and incidentally part with their well-earned dust. Some of these hells had "lady waitresses," poor, faded, blear-eyed creatures, in gaudy finery, and upon whose features was stamped the everlasting brand of God's outlawry. These dens of iniquity were only too frequently the scene of awful tragedies, and the sawdust floors drank up the blood of many a poor unfortunate. If the encounter ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... with pigtailed highbinders, cobblers, pork butchers, and pawnbrokers. The narrow streets and alleys became one seething mass of Asiatic humanity; while the painted belles came out on their balconies like butterflies, sitting among a wealth of gaudy paper flowers that looked pale in comparison with the daubs of vermilion on their cheeks and the rainbow colours ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... above, to his most high discomfort. You therefore, good friends, I lovingly exhort, To weigh such matters as will be uttered here, Of whom ye may look to have no trifling sport In fantasies feigned, nor such-like gaudy gear, But the things that shall your inward stomach cheer. To rejoice in God for your justification, And alone in Christ to hope for your salvation. Yea first ye shall have the eternal generation Of Christ, like as John in his first chapter write, And consequently ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... in a circle at her feet, and stepped out of it. She walked over to where her own clothes lay in a gaudy heap. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... three faces can be rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband. There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over- dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... is to this violence of the rain that we must attribute the verdure at the bottom of the thickest woods: if the showers were like those of a colder clime, the greater part would be absorbed or evaporated before it reached the ground. I will not at present attempt to describe the gaudy scenery of this noble bay, because, in our homeward voyage, we called here a second time, and I shall then have occasion to remark ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Around, Across, along, the gardens' shrubby maze, They walk, they sit, they stand. What crowds press on, Eager to mount the stairs, eager to catch First vacant bench or chair in long room plac'd. Here prig with prig holds conference polite, And indiscriminate the gaudy beau And sloven mix. Here he, who all the week Took bearded mortals by the nose, or sat Weaving dead hairs, and whistling wretched strain, And eke the sturdy youth, whose trade it is Stout oxen to contund, with gold-bound hat ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... of the hill on which the chapel is perched, a marvel to all new-comers by the highway of the Lake. The door was open, and we walked in. There was no light burning on the altar, nor any water in the stone basin by the door. But there was all the apparatus of worship—the gaudy toyshop above the grand altar, the tiny side chapels, with their pictures of the dying Saviour, and the confessional box, now thick with dust, and echoless of sob of penitent or counsel of confessor. It was evidently a poorly endowed chapel, the tinsel adornments being of ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... the precious metals, with pictured representations of human life, and perhaps with statuary of a rough kind, they must have added to the impression produced by size a sense of richness and barbaric magnificence. The African spirit, which loves gaudy hues and costly ornament, was still strong among the Babylonians, even after they had been Semitized; and by the side of Assyria, her colder and more correct northern sister, Babylonia showed herself a true child of the south—rich, glowing, careless of the laws of taste, bent on provoking admiration ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... supper, and I shall send this letter by them. There are no new books, no new Plays, no new novels; nay, no new fashions. They have dragged old Mademoiselle Le Maure out of a retreat of thirty years, to sing at the Colis'ee, which is a most gaudy Ranelagh, gilt, painted, and becupided like an Opera, but not calculated to last as long as Mother Coliseum, being composed of chalk and pasteboard. Round it are courts of treillage, that serve for nothing, and behind it a canal, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... conscious felons, never looking to the right or left. Being now free from anxiety, I was at leisure to observe minutely the objects around me; and here, for the first time, I noticed insects wholly different from any of the varieties found farther to the eastward. Gaudy butterflies fluttered about my horse's head; strangely formed beetles, glittering with metallic luster, were crawling upon plants that I had never seen before; multitudes of lizards, too, were darting like lightning over ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... movements anxiously from the bridge. We could now read her name—the 'Carolina'—surmounted by a gorgeous yellow decoration on her stern. She was of between two and three hundred tons burden, and was painted a light blue, with a red streak. Beneath her white bowsprit the gaudy image of a woman served as a figure-head. The two masts had been snapped short off about three feet from the deck, and the bulwarks were gone, only the covering board and stanchions remaining, so that each ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... gaudy poojah was performed. The car, filled with idols, was covered with gilding and silk, and drawn by noble bulls, festooned and garlanded. A procession was formed in front; and it opened into an avenue, up and down which gaily ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... objects quite new, and (although you have made the voyage a dozen times,) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you occupy a very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red "percale;" the windows are smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins; there are little mean strips of carpet about the tiled floor of the room, and yet all seems as gay and as comfortable as may be—the sun shines brighter than you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and what a cheery clatter of shrill quick French voices ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Italy have produced many and remarkable Orientalists, I cannot find that they have taken the trouble to translate The Nights for themselves: cheap and gaudy versions of Galland seem to have satisfied the public.[FN227] Notes on the Romaic, Icelandic, Russian (?) and other versions, will be found ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... belonging to many a different age. Carpets and chair-cushions worked in tent stitch and cross stitch and old-fashioned harpsichord; gaudy white and gold furniture of the Louis Quatorze time, mixed with the spindle-legged tables of the Queen ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... eyes rested upon a Navajo rug, I was fascinated by the gaudy thing. The more I saw, the more they appealed to the gypsy streak in my makeup. Each Navajo buck that came to my door peddling his rugs and silver ornaments was led into the house and questioned. Precious little information ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... that had to be accepted with thankfulness. Presently the two bells in the tower began to dance, and the rapid ding-dong announced that the procession was forming. First appeared the beadle, extremely gaudy in scarlet and gold, then the cross-bearer, young men as chanters, little boys, most strangely attired in white satin knee-breeches and short lace skirts, scattering rose-leaves from open baskets at their sides; the cure came bearing the monstrance ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... allow such plants as chrysanthemums, auriculas, geraniums, and many others, to be exposed to the influence of cold, frosty nights, as when the "fell destroyer" commences to exert its power all plants touched by it rapidly decay. Gladioli will now be clothed in the full glory of their gaudy, but handsome dress; they are comparatively easy to manage in well-drained spots, and being such continuous bloomers, at least three or four or even half a dozen should be in every small garden. In winter they must be covered by about six ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of knowledge perfectly fresh; and I notice in him that, instead of growing more staid and commonplace in his style as he increased in years, he grew more vigorous, until he actually slid into the excess of gaudy redundancy. I am sorry that his prose ever became Asiatic in its splendour; but even that fact shows how steadfast effort may prevent a man from writing away his originality and his freshness of manner. Observe the sad results of an antagonistic proceeding for even the mightiest ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... evenings the gambling hells were a glare of light, and music, both vocal and instrumental, floated out upon the streets to tempt the miners to enter, while away an hour, and incidentally part with their well-earned dust. Some of these hells had "lady waitresses," poor, faded, blear-eyed creatures, in gaudy finery, and upon whose features was stamped the everlasting brand of God's outlawry. These dens of iniquity were only too frequently the scene of awful tragedies, and the sawdust floors drank up the blood of many a ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... all day: I was amused. I marvel at my own versatility when I think how soon my quick spirits were excited by this gay, gaudy, noisy, idle place. The different appearance of the streets of London and Paris is the first thing to strike a stranger. In the gayest and most crowded streets of London the people move steadily and rapidly along, with a grave collected air, as if all had some business in view; here, as ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... capped tails of his sporran in front, the silver mounted dirk on one side, with its hilt of black oak carved into an eagle's head, and the steel basket of his broadsword gleaming at the other; his great shoulder brooch of rudely chased brass; the pipes with their withered bag and gaudy streamers; the faded kilt, oiled and soiled; the stockings darned in twenty places by the hands of the termagant Meg Partan; the brogues patched and patched until it would have been hard to tell a spot of the original leather; ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... that Jerusalem is disappointing he generally means that the popular worship there is weak and degraded, and especially that the religious art is gaudy and grotesque. In so far as there is any kind of truth in this, it is still true that the critic seldom sees the whole truth. What is wrong with the critic is that he does not criticise himself. He does not honestly compare what is weak, in this ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... resembled the advent of a fox in a fowl-run. For years the tradesmen of Wrykyn had jogged along in their comfortable way, each making his little profits, with no thought of competition or modern hustle. And now the enemy was at their doors. Many were the gloomy looks cast at the gaudy building as it grew like a mushroom. It was finished with incredible speed, and then advertisements began to flood the local papers. A special sheaf of bills was despatched ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... for a time; as long thoughts as I could command. The obvious course was to send for Phillida's father. Yet what could that vague and learned gentleman do that I could not? I visioned the Professor standing in this riotous, gaudy restaurant, swinging his eye-glasses by their silk ribbon and peering at Vere in helpless distaste and consternation. It was practically certain that Phil would refuse to go ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... idea of their ever being sold again. On a board, at the side of the door, are placed about twenty books—all odd volumes; and as many wine-glasses—all different patterns; several locks, an old earthenware pan, full of rusty keys; two or three gaudy chimney-ornaments—cracked, of course; the remains of a lustre, without any drops; a round frame like a capital O, which has once held a mirror; a flute, complete with the exception of the middle joint; a pair of curling-irons; and a tinder-box. In ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... salvation: no doubt nor hesitation as to any fundamental truth had ever entered their minds. We passed through a long, straight street of new red houses with blue slate roofs, all gated and gardened. Here and there a girl with her hair in pins and a rough brown apron over a gaudy frock was stoning a front step. And half-way down the street a man in a scarlet jersey, supported by two women in blue bonnets, was beating a drum and crying aloud: "My friends, you may die to-night. Where, I ask you, where—?" But he had no friends; not even a boy heeded him. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... partition. The form of the human body can be imitated by taking a suit of old garments, stuffing them with straw, and covering them with buff cambric, on which hieroglyphics can be painted. A large mask, with artificial hair, and crown made of gaudy-colored cloth, will answer for the head; a short frock of red Turkey cloth, trimmed with gold paper, should be fastened about the lower portion of the body. The idol should be seated on a pedestal sixteen inches high, which is placed on a platform three feet square and eight inches ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... may thus turn their necessary expenses into virtuous actions. In this they excel others, as much as the bee does the common butterfly; they both feed on the same flowers, but while the butterfly only gains a transient subsistence and flies and flutters in all its gaudy pride, the bee lays up a precious store for its future well-being, and may brave all the rigours of winter. Man, indeed, often encroaches on the labours of the bee and disappoints it of its reasonable hope; but no one without our own concurrence ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... realize all the absurdity which it contains and all the devotion which it occasions. Bertram was first carried to the five different churches which have crowded themselves together under the same roof. The Greeks have by far the best of it. Their shrine is gaudy and glittering, and their temple is large and in some degree imposing. The Latins, whom we call Roman Catholics, are much less handsomely lodged, and their tinsel is by far more dingy. The Greeks, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... would, the grim visage of a painted warrior met our terrified gaze, with his tomahawk in one hand, and his rifle in the other. "Perfidious villain," exclaimed Ralph, "and this is an Indian's faith." An Indian of gigantic size, dressed in all the gaudy trappings of a chief, now strode, towards us. Ralph raised his gun, and closed his eye as the sight of the weapon sought the warrior's breast. "Don't shoot, and you will be treated friendly," cried the savage in good English. ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... others which run all round the house. The floors are marble or stucco—the roofs beams of pale blue wood placed transversely, and the whole has an air of agreeable coolness. Everything is handsome without being gaudy, and admirably adapted for the climate. The sleeping apartments have no windows, and are dark and cool, while the drawing-rooms have large windows down to the floor, with green shutters kept ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... could not see the girls. Dallas was close to the door and beyond the limit of his vision. So was Marylyn, who, helpless with fright, half knelt, half lay, against her sister. What he could see was—from the south window—the gaudy Navajo blankets forming two partitions of Lancaster's bedroom, and, nearer, two partly filled sacks, some harnesses and the seat of a wagon. The other window afforded a better view. "Looks mighty comfortable," ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... even more, in wages, he suddenly began to revel in a wealth that he never dreamed was possible. The more he made the more he spent. He squandered his financial substance on fine cigars, expensive clothes, and excessive drinks, while his wife bedecked herself in gaudy finery and installed pianos or phonographs in her house. No one thought ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... hands, and Johnny had to join the ring, to make it complete. For several hours we continued our journey pretty steadily, encountering no living thing, except tern, gannets, and other sea-birds, and one troop of gaudy little paroquets, glittering in green, and orange, and crimson. These paroquets were the only land-birds we saw during the day. Max pronounced them "frights," because of their large hooked bills, and harsh discordant cries. They certainly gave Johnny, a terrible ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... painted tambourine with a bunch of bright ribbons tied to the rim; and it was hung upon the wall between the settee and the fireplace at about the height of a man's head. Of course it might be no more than it seemed to be—a rather gaudy and vulgar toy, such as a woman like Mme. Dauvray would be very likely to choose in order to dress her walls. But it swept Ricardo's thoughts back of a sudden to the concert-hall at Leamington and the apparatus of a spiritualistic show. After all, he reflected triumphantly, Hanaud had not noticed ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... partly the result of her own wish. The raw-boned, badly dressed farmers' lads, with red hands and rough hair, she quite as snobbishly ignored as she was ignored in her turn by the well-set-up, fashionably dressed young swells of the University, with their white hands, with their thin, gaudy socks tautly pulled over their ankle-bones, and their shining hair glistening like lacquer on their skulls (that being the desideratum in youthful masculine society of the place and time). Sylvia snubbed the masculine ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... in a measure, a plea for picturesque treatment of biography and of history; not by gaudy coloring and violent contrasts, striving after rhetorical effect, but in the observance of proportion, of grouping, of subordination to a central idea; not content with mere narration, however accurate in details. A narrative which fails in portrayal, in picturesque ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... elements to heighten the interest,—albeit using such elements with magnificent strength and skill. Let us be grateful that Hawthorne does not so covet the applause of the clever club-man or of the unconscious vulgarian, as to junket about in caravan, carrying the passions with him in gaudy cages, and feeding them with raw flesh; grateful that he never loses the archangelic light of pure, divine, dispassionate wrath, in piercing ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... as "a church within a church, a republic within a republic, a world within a world." Dr. Banks writes, "It is not granite walls, or gaudy furniture, or splendid books, or soft carpets, or delicious viands that can make a home. All of these may be present, and yet it be only a dungeon, if the great simplicities ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... word of the great God shall rattle from heaven against them, as it will at death or judgment; but I wish it might do it before. But alas! these excuses are but bare pretences, these proud ones love to have it so. I once talked with a maid by way of reproof for her fond and gaudy garment. But she told me, The tailor would make it so; when alas! poor proud girl, she gave order to the tailor so to make it. Many make parents, and husbands, and tailors, &c., the blind to others; but their naughty hearts, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... upon the happy days that ensued—days of gaudy summer neckties and white waistcoats, of spotless shirts and lofty collars worn but a single day by the fastidious lover. Our happiness seemed complete and I asked no more from fate. Alas! it was not destined to continue! When the bright days of summer were fading into autumn, I was ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... lustre, and saunter through the world, trailing from London to Cheltenham, and from Boulogne to Paris, and from Paris to Baden, their idleness, their ill-health, and their ennui. "In the morning of youth," and when seen along with whole troops of their companions, these flowers look gaudy and brilliant enough; but there is no object more dismal than one of them alone, and in its autumnal, or seedy state. My friend, Captain Popjoy, is one who has arrived at this condition, and whom everybody knows ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a knock at my door, and the little man handed me in a pair of yellow corduroy trousers and a large and gaudy dressing-gown. "There!" said he. "They'll keep you warm until your ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... the morning sunlight they stood out pictorially. He guessed that they were from five to six thousand feet high. The lofty, irregular, castellated line seemed like the walls of a magic city. The cliffs fronting him were composed of gaudy rocks—vermilion, emerald, yellow, ulfire, and black. As he gazed at them, his heart began to beat like a slow, heavy drum, and he thrilled all over—indescribable hopes, aspirations, and emotions came over him. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... have to come back again, my dear Emperor Joseph," Bonaparte said, as he set out for Paris, "it will be for the purpose of giving you a new position, which you may not like so well as the neat and rather gaudy sinecure ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... gentleman, and the lord are as much servants one as the other. The circumstantial difference of the one getting only his bread and wages, the second a plentiful, and the third a superfluous estate, is no more intrinsical to this matter than the difference between a plain, a rich and gaudy livery. I do not say that he who sells his whole time and his own will for one hundred thousand is not a wiser merchant than he who does it for one hundred pounds; but I will swear they are both merchants, and that he is happier than both who can live contentedly without ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... Nieuwe Kerk's many bells are rippling a silver tune over the old roofs and gables; who has drunk his beer full opposite the stadhuis at Leyden, and seen Haarlem's huge church across magnificent miles of gaudy tulips, and watched from a brown-sailed boat on the Zuider Zee a buoy on the horizon grow into the water-gate of Hoorn; who knows his Gouda and Bois-le-duc and Alkmaar and Kampen and Utrecht: this man does not ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... volumes I had browsed among—they were mostly presentation copies of contemporary novels and the National Review and the Empire Review, and the Nineteenth Century and after jostled current books on the tables—English new books in gaudy catchpenny "artistic" covers, French and Italian novels in yellow, German art handbooks of almost incredible ugliness. There were abundant evidences that her ladyship was playing with the Keltic renascence, and a great number of ugly cats made of china—she "collected" ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... covered with small tenacious, sweet-scented creepers, bearing a pale lilac blossom that exhaled a mingled odor of sea and shore. Hurlstone pointed out the cross as one of the earliest outposts of the Church on the edge of the unclaimed heathen wilderness. It was hung with strings of gaudy shells and feathers, which Hurlstone explained were votive offerings in which their pagan superstitions still mingled with their ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... combinations made in one piece and trimmed at the neck and wrists with wolverine, a pair of enormous sealskin moccasins, which gives them an awkward waddling gait, completing their attire. The hair is worn in two long plaits, intertwined with gaudy beads, copper coins and even brass trouser buttons given them by whalemen. Unlike the men, all the women are tattooed—generally in two lines from the top of the brow to the tip of the nose, and six or seven perpendicular lines from ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... of unpretentious Hindu temples, and the Maharaja is said to be quite punctilious in his observance of religious forms. He was absent from the city, but several brothers of his were seen driving, clad in long garments of gaudy-colored striped calico, and wearing small turbans; the dress of the women was also peculiar, the skirt being so full that as they walked they resembled balloons; they are noted for wearing a profusion of jewelry,—necklaces by the half-dozen, bracelets sometimes nearly to ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... bloomed flowers, a blaze of varied colours; and beyond these again were flowery thickets a very maze of green boskages besplashed with the vivid colour of flower or bird, for here were many such birds that flew hither and thither on gaudy wings, and filling the air with chatterings and whistlings strange to ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... passionately came to the conclusion that he must in some way capture his prize. Other youths were wearing gaudy ties and imperilling their Sunday bests; he was letting precious time slip. Then, too, by Farwell's advice, old Jerry was growing rigid along financial lines, and at last the States took definite shape in Jerry-Jo's mind, but he meant to have Priscilla before ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... her the tribute of a quickly drawn breath, even as he took his eyes from her to scan the butterfly pages who ran to and fro, recovering the gilded rings. Yellow hair and red hair and brown hair curled on their gaudy shoulders, but no black. In all the picture there was but one figure crowned with such raven locks as had distinguished Fridtjof the Bold, and that figure belonged to a girl standing directly opposite by the mossy curb of the old well, ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... long after they had gone to bed that night, wondering and guessing what the great place to which brother Si was going could be like, and they could only picture it as like the great white-domed city whose picture they had seen in the gaudy Bible foisted upon them by a ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... secure it again. I am delighted. I am charmed, Gabriella, to see that you have the firmness to resist, as well as the sensibility to feel. I am delighted, too, to see you in the only livery youth and innocence should wear in a festal scene like this. I abhor the gaudy tinselry which loads the devotees of fashion, indicative of false tastes and false principles; but white and pearls remind me of every thing pure and holy in nature. In the Bible we read of the white robes ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Aymara secret societies, whose members, wearing repulsive masks, are clad in the most extraordinary costumes which can be invented by primitive imaginations. Each society has its own uniform, made up of tinsels and figured satins, tin-foil, gold and silver leaf, gaudy textiles, magnificent epaulets bearing large golden stars on a background of silver decorated with glittering gems of colored glass; tinted "ostrich" plumes of many colors sticking straight up eighteen inches above the heads of their wearers, gaudy ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... administration a new coat of paint has vulgarized its ancient and venerable walls. Modern tiles have replaced the limestone slabs of its floors, worn in hollows by the tread of thousands of feet, and smart and gaudy fixtures have usurped the place of the time-worn furniture that has been consecrated by the touch of hands that Texas will never ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... preparation for his friend in the way of dressing. His long dishevelled hair came down over his neck, and his beard covered his face. Beneath his dressing-gown he had on a night-shirt and drawers, and was as dirty in appearance as he was gaudy in colours. "Sit down and let us two moralise," he said. "I spend my life here doing nothing,—nothing,—nothing; while you cudgel your brain from day to day to mislead the British public. Which of us two is taking the nearest road to ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... fellow-Passenger who came From Calais with us, gaudy in array, A Negro Woman like a Lady gay, Yet silent as a woman fearing blame; Dejected, meek, yea pitiably tame, She sate, from notice turning not away, But on our proffer'd kindness still did lay A weight of languid speech, or at the same Was silent, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... broad grin as he replied in the affirmative, while Antoine looked a little confused. He did not care much, however, for jesting. So, after getting one or two more articles—not forgetting half-a-dozen clay pipes, and a few yards of gaudy calico, which called forth from Peter a second reference to Annette—he bundled up his goods, and ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the woods and bushes, and fairly upon the broad prairie. Now and then a Shawanoe passed us, riding his little shaggy pony at a "lope"; his calico shirt, his gaudy sash, and the gay handkerchief bound around his snaky hair fluttering in the wind. At noon we stopped to rest not far from a little creek replete with frogs and young turtles. There had been an Indian ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Neale think of himself. What was true for others must be true for him. The presence of any of these persons—of Hough and Ancliffe, of himself, in Beauty Stanton's gaudy resort was sad proof of a ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... shot of yours, Egyptian," he said, "when you sent an arrow through the lioness that dared to attack my Majesty. Yes, the King owes his life to you and he is grateful as you shall learn. This slave of yours," and he pointed to Bes in his gaudy attire, "has brought the whole matter to my mind whence it had fallen, and, Shabaka," here he hiccupped, "you may have noted how differently things look to the naked eye and when seen through a wine goblet. He has told me a wonderful ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... man in a dress more sensible and becoming. The material was according to Polonius's dictum, rich but not gaudy, of some dark cherry-colored stuff with trimmings of a deeper shade. My idea of a doublet is so misty that I shall not venture to affirm that the gentleman wore a doublet. It was a loose coat of some description hanging negligently from the shoulders and looped at the throat, showing a ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... flame which welds the loosened particles into a solid mass, his words united those floating wisps of feeling which she had felt, but never believed, concerning her possible ability, and made them into a gaudy shred of hope. Like all human beings, she had a touch of vanity. She felt that she could do things if she only had a chance. How often had she looked at the well-dressed actresses on the stage and wondered how she would look, how delightful she would feel if only she were in their place. The ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... for on three sides of the meadow of battle scaffolds had been built and rows of seats had been placed. These were covered over with tapestries and hangings of divers colors—some of figured and some of plain weaving—so that the green and level meadow-land was hung all about with these gay and gaudy colors. ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... fell back to a high ridge, on the crest of which they marched and countermarched, threatening to charge down its face. Most of them were naked, and as their persons were painted in gaudy colors and decorated with strips of red flannel, red blankets and gay war-bonnets, their appearance presented a scene of picturesque barbarism, fascinating but repulsive. As they numbered about six hundred, the chances of whipping them did not seem overwhelmingly ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... copies. The school prize book is not a fine copy (1) Because it is bound in a very perishable leather; (2) Because its margins have been trimmed away and ploughed into; (3) Because it is received in a form which renders it impossible to stamp one's own individuality upon it; (4) It has gaudy and meaningless ornaments stamped down the back. The padded binding is impossible as a fine copy because it has had applied to it a wholly incongruous method of preservation. Books require to be clothed, but not to be upholstered. The ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... servant, who is well acquainted with the rules of the place, appears little disposed to show any return of gratitude for recent obligations, though even her shoes, which she displays while tying up her garter, seem by their gaudy outside to have been a present from her mistress. The civil discipline of the stern keeper has all the severity of the old school. With the true spirit of tyranny, he sentences those who will not ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the Lord Mayor and Aldermen on board, who had gone down to the extent of the city jurisdiction to meet the Queen, and have an excuse for a good dinner. The deck presented a gay scene, being covered with a military band, and the gaudy-liveried lackeys belonging to the Mansion House, and sheriffs whose clothes were one continuous mass of gold lace and frippery, shining beautifully brilliant in the midday sun. The royal yacht, with its crimson and gold pennant floating on the breeze, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... a society whose spiritual life had been nourished in the solemn mysticism of the Middle Ages, suddenly turn to embrace a gaudy paganism? The common self-respect of humanity was outraged by apostate priests who, whether under the pressure of fear of Chaumette, or in a very superfluity of folly and ecstasy of degradation, hastened to proclaim the charlatanry ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... put an exorbitant price on the flour and trinkets they give in exchange for the Indians' work, the latter ask, when selling for money, what seems more than its full value; but many who travel that way, provided with cheap trinkets and gaudy ribbons, get the ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... transatlantic trumpet, have duly arrived. My wife is properly grateful for her copy, which, indeed, impresses both of us with respect for the American skill in binding. Neither too gay to be gaudy, nor too grave, so as to affect the theological, it hits that happy medium which agrees with the tastes of most people and disgusts none. We should flatter ourselves that it is intended to represent the matter within, but that we are afraid of incurring the sin of vanity, and the indiscretion of ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... is different. The world is not his; he is the world's, and all his petty doings have its gaudy stencil blotched upon them. Yet haply even he has a heart, and somewhere in its fruitless fallows stands a poor ruin, that never was of much dignity at its best,—poor and broken, and half choked with weeds and briers; but even ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... Bordeaux wine; the haberdasher; the carpenter; the weaver; the dyer; the tapestry-worker; the cook, to boil the chickens and the marrow-bones, and bake the pies and tarts,—mostly people from the middle and lower ranks of society, whose clothes are gaudy, manners rough, and language coarse. But all classes and trades and professions seem to be represented, except nobles, bishops, and abbots,—dignitaries whom, perhaps, Chaucer is ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... and confusion wearied me, I could not get the hang of the steps. Presently an understanding matron let me slip out of the dance, and I sat down by the fiddler and dozed. Clanking spurs, brilliant chaps, fur-trimmed trappers' jackets, thudding moccasins, gaudy Indian blankets and gay feathers, voluminous feminine flounces swinging from demure, snug-fitting basques—all whirled above me in ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... knew without the telling. For when I reached Hopton my father had already been laid in the old churchyard beneath the shadow of the crumbling walls of the ruined church, which is now no longer used. They have built a gaudy new edifice farther inland, but so long as a Howard owns Hopton Hall, we shall, I think, continue to lie in the graveyard nearer ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... These sometimes gaudy handkerchiefs were not mere ornaments. They served the same purpose to which Babe was then devoting his, and as the eastern lads learned later, the silk or cotton squares formed very effective protection to nose and mouth while riding ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... vain might you delude yourself that you were a camel, horse, or bird of plumage; to Grace's thinking, there were no such animals in the religious world—her clear eye made nothing of hump, flowing mane, or gaudy feathers; that eye looked dispassionately for the wool upon your back—or the ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... of it, the builder of the trap was astounded. He laughed aloud at the absurdity. In silence he threw off the rock and lid and seated himself on the edge of the open trap. Captor and captive then gazed at each other with gravity. The errant infant's attire consisted of a calico shirt of gaudy hues, a pair of little moccasins, much frayed, and a red flannel string. This last was tied about his straggling hair, which fell over his forehead like the shaggy mane of a bronco colt and veiled, but could not obscure, the brightness of ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... sustains our pride, fortifies our prejudices, and gives pretense to delusion; to discover the true nature of human knowledge, how far it extends, how far it is real, and where and how it begins to be fantastical; that, the gaudy visions of error being dispelled, men may be accustomed to the simplicity of truth."[131] The Scriptures, according to Bolingbroke, are unworthy of our credence. They degrade the Deity to mean and unworthy offices and employments.[132] The New Testament ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... of grape-vine: the lower shoots rest upon the quiet water, but the upper masses are crowned by a white wreath of alder-blooms; beside them grow great masses of wild-roses, and the simultaneous blossoms and berries of the gaudy nightshade. Or of those winding tracks that lead here and there among the flat stones of peaceful old graveyards, so entwined with grass and flowers that every spray of sweetbrier seems to tell more of life than all the accumulated epitaphs ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... decayed look, being generally very old, and few of the owners being able to spend much in or on them. A few that look tolerably fresh, are found to be occupied by the post, the customs, or some other office, the insignia of which figure in gaudy colouring over the principal entrance. In connection with most of the palaces, the name of some architect of reputation is mentioned. They are wholly of marble; and, in many cases, round stones of a precious kind, or ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... residence in Greece, to fix their abode in Italy. But it is vain to ask questions of Melpomene; she is obstinately silent, and we only know, from strangers, her power amongst the Romans. Seneca endeavours to make her speak; but the gaudy show, with which he rather loads than adorns her, makes us think, that he took some phantom of Melpomene for the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... great success, are significant of a more extended taste for scholarship; not attended, however, with many incentives to originality of production. The nobles were still the patrons of literature, and they fancied old things which were grand, in new and gaudy English dresses. The age was also marked by rapid and uniform progress in the English language. The sonorous, but cumbrous English of Milton had been greatly improved by Dryden; and we have seen, also, that the terse and somewhat crude diction of Dryden's ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Fetter Lane smote on my ears as I came out through the archway, and very squalid and unrestful the little street looked when contrasted with the dignity and monastic quiet of the old garden. As to the surgery, with its oilcloth floor and walls made hideous with gaudy insurance show-cards in sham gilt frames, its aspect was so revolting that I flew to the day-book for distraction, and was still busily entering the morning's visits when the bottle-boy, Adolphus, ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... within two years of each other. Of course, they chose strangely. Matilda, whose beauty might have graced the head of the table in any one of three gaudy mansions on Nob Hill, chose Edward C. Tiffany, attorney, politician in a small but honorable way, man about town—and much older than she. Alice, following quietly, accepted Billy Gray, journalist—a ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... same contrast drawn between the old and the new style of fitting up shops, and carrying on business, as would be drawn at the present day by nine out of every ten common observers. The notion that the shops of the past age were plain, while those of the present are gaudy, and that the tradesmen of a past age carried on all their business in a quiet way and with little expense, is as strongly impressed on the minds of the present generation, as it is here seen to have been on those of Defoe's contemporaries, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... provisions for a second or two. Then, going over to a dunnage bag near his bunk, he pulled its contents about until he found a bright red silk handkerchief and a red flannel shirt. Their colour was too gaudy for his taste. "These things are for your squaw," ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... enough to the vanity of a vain blusterer. The King might be successful enough in sham fights; but his idea of real battles chiefly consisted in pitching silken tents of bright colours that were ignominiously blown down by the wind, and in making a vast display of gaudy flags and golden curtains. Fortune, however, favoured him better than he deserved; for, after much waste of time in tent pitching, flag flying, gold curtaining, and other such masquerading, he gave the French battle at a place called Guinegate: where they took such an unaccountable panic, and fled ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... rites and ceremonies proper to be used during a raging pestilence; the loose behaviour of married women; with other fictitious subjects, hackneyed in the schools, and seldom or never heard of in our courts of justice. These imaginary questions are treated with gaudy flourishes, and all the tumor of unnatural language. But after all this mighty parade, call these striplings from their schools of rhetoric, into the presence of the judges, and to the real business of ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... stone-built road, as straight as an arrow, ran from Cap Haitien to Millot, and that over it, Toussaint l'Ouverture, 'the Black Napoleon,' was wont to ride at breakneck speed, and Christophe, 'the black Emperor,' drove his gaudy carriage with much pomp ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... anxious than when they had entered the court. Mr. Subtle requested Gammon, whose ability he had soon detected, to sit immediately beneath him; next to Gammon sat Quirk; then Snap; and beside him Mr. Titmouse, with a staring sky-blue flowered silk handkerchief round his neck, a gaudy waistcoat, a tight surtout, and white kid gloves. He looked exceedingly pale, and dared hardly interchange a word with even Snap, who was just as irritable and excited as his senior partners. It was quickly known all over the court which was Titmouse! Mr. Aubrey scarcely ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Christopher had brought in his pocket. As they lay at full length in the sunshine upon the lifeeverlasting, the young man's gaze flew like a bird across the landscape—where the gaily decorated autumn fallows broke in upon the bare tobacco fields like gaudy patches on a homely garment—to rest upon the far-off huddled chimneys of Blake Hall. For a time he looked steadily upon them; then, turning on his side, he drew his harvest hat over his eyes and ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... of honor, with the attributes of virtue rather than with those of power. It is in the country principally that their impression makes itself felt in a very lively manner. A simple, unornamented grave there causes more tears to flow than the gaudy splendor of a cathedral interment. There it is that grief assumes sublimity; it ascends with the aged yews in the churchyard; it extends with the surrounding hills and plains; it allies itself with all the effects of Nature,—with the dawning of the morning, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... village, which did not seem to contain more than seven or eight cottages, each half-buried in trees, or overgrown with creepers, except one red brick house, that flared in all the pride of newness, and of the gaudy flowers in its spruce little garden. In the middle of the irregular square, or rather of the wide part of the village road, for it could not be called a street, stood a tall May-pole, still adorned with two or three ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... that the kitchen was the only room in the house. Mrs. Primkins had plenty of rooms, but they were too choice for every-day use. They were always tightly closed, with green paper shades down, lest the blessed sunshine should get a peep at her gaudy red and green carpets, and put the least mellowing touch an their crude and rasping colors. Nimpo thought of the best parlor with a sort of awe which she never felt toward any room ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... by Bare headed, and all bare, whilst at his scars They scoff, that ne'er durst view the face of wars. I set an Idiot's cap on virtue's head, Turn learning out of doors, clothe wit in rags And paint ten thousand images of loam In gaudy silken colours: on the backs Of mules and asses I make asses ride Only for sport, to see the apish world Worship such beasts with sound idolatry. This Fortune does, and when this is done, She sits and smiles ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... or "engages," having spent their season's gains in carousal, packed their blanket capotes and were ready for the wilderness again. They made a picturesque crew in their gaudy turbans, or hats adorned with plumes and tinsel, their brilliant handkerchiefs tied sailor-fashion about swarthy necks, their calico shirts, and their flaming worsted belts, which served to hold the knife and the tobacco pouch. Rough trousers, leggings, and cowhide shoes or gaily-worked ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... himself did not please him. There was something vulgar in his friend which he had not observed before. But perhaps it was only the result of living in London amid the bustle and competition of the Press. The old personal charm was still there under this new gaudy manner. And, after all, Gallaher had lived, he had seen the world. Little Chandler looked ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... congregation. As soon as the doors of the church were thrown open, they must have been offended by the smoke of incense, the perfume of flowers, and the glare of lamps and tapers, which diffused, at noonday, a gaudy, superfluous, and, in their opinion, a sacrilegious light. If they approached the balustrade of the altar, they made their way through the prostrate crowd, consisting, for the most part, of strangers and pilgrims, who resorted to the city on the vigil of the feast; and who already felt the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... resources for companionship. What does society offer me? Haggard, weazen old witch, bedizened in a painted mask; don't I know the yellow teeth and bleared eyes behind the paste-board, and the sharp nails in the claws hidden under undressed kid? Have not I gone around for years on her gaudy wheel, like that patient, uncomplaining goat we saw stepping on the broad spokes of the great wheel that churned the butter, and pressed the cheese in that dairy, near Udine? The dizzying circle, where one must step, step—keep time or be lost! In Winter, balls, receptions, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... got the Ot'man goin', little gaudy hunts begin. It fer us to chiv His Trousers. 'n' to round the stragglers in. Cuttin' closest to the raw, 'n' swearin' lovin' all the way, Is Artie from Molinga ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... are not prone to be too fastidious regarding the morals of their tenants. Many such hostelries were scattered throughout the theatre district of New York, and as a rule they prospered exceedingly well. Invariably they were of the same type. There was the same monotonous sameness in the gaudy decorations and furnishings; the same hilarious crowd in the cafe downstairs; the same overdressed, over-rouged women in the elevator and halls. They enjoyed in common the same class of patronage—blonde ladies with lengthy visiting-lists ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... was the Winter wild While the heaven-born Child All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies Nature in awe to Him Had doff'd her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathise: It was no season then for her To wanton with ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... with wrinkles, and more expressive of cunning than of any other quality. His dress was remarkable: in the day-time he was covered at all seasons with enormous quantities of fur; but the evening costume in which he went to the balls made a great impression, from its gaudy appearance; for his buttons as well as his knee-buckles were of diamonds. There was of course great curiosity to know who this stranger was; and this curiosity was heightened by an announcement that he proposed to appear at the theatre in the character of Romeo. There was something so unlike ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... heat. Under the leadership of the mistress of the ranch, assisted by the Mexican women, the jacal was transformed into a rustic bower; for Enrique was not only a favorite among the whites, but also among his own people. A few gaudy pictures of Saints and the Madonna ornamented the side walls, while in the rear hung the necessary crucifix. At the time of its building the jacal had been blessed, as was customary before occupancy, and to Enrique's ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... the conversation narrated in the last chapter, the clerks in the bank of Wreckumoft were not a little interested by the entrance of a portly woman of comely appearance and large proportions. She was dressed in a gaudy cotton gown and an enormously large bonnet, which fluttered a good deal, owing as much to its own magnitude and instability as to the quantity of pink ribbons and bows wherewith ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... were obviously rouged; she wore a dress of curious shot silk decorated with much lace, and her fingers were thick with jewels; a large hat with great purple feathers waved above her head. It was a fantastic and gaudy impression that she made, and there was something rather pitiful in the contrast between her own obvious satisfaction with her personal appearance and the bizarre, almost vulgar, effect of such strangely contrasted colours. She came mincing into the room with her head a little on one side, ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... costume of the devil, as being the most appropriate, and mounting a jackass, he rode down in his dress to the masquerade. But, as Jack was just going in, he perceived a yellow carriage, with two footmen in gaudy liveries, draw up, and with his usual politeness, when the footmen opened the door, offered his arm to hand out a fat old dowager covered with diamonds; the lady looked up, and perceiving Jack covered with hair, with his trident and his horns, and long tail, gave ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... now, and William tells me that his wife sings at her work just as she did eight years ago. I have no interest in this, and try to check his talk of it; but such people have no sense of propriety, and he even speaks of the girl Jenny, who sent me lately a gaudy pair of worsted gloves worked by her own hand. The meanest advantage they took of my weakness, however, was in calling their baby after me. I have an uncomfortable suspicion, too, that William has given the other waiters his version of ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... all living things, men and animals, wild or tame, and fish and gaudy fowl, rush to this flame of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Angora chaps ranging from orange and lavender to black and silky white; smooth leather chaps, and stamped, silver-ornamented and plain, with here and there an individual design, showing that the owner had selected some queerly spotted steer and tanned the pelt with the hair on to be fashioned into gaudy vest and pants. 'Twas an improvident, carefree lot who lived to-day with scarce a thought for to-morrow. The clatter of sardine and salmon cans mingled with the clink of glassware at the bar as the men who had missed the noon meal lunched ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... waist, but too likely to be justified by fact; fringed and perfumed gloves of thick white Spanish leather; lace ruffs about the neck and wrists, the open ones of immense size, the small ones closer than in the previous reign; ear-rings and love-locks: and over all, a gaudy cloak, or rather cape, reaching little below the elbow. In the youth's hand was an article of the first necessity in the estimation of a gentleman of fashion,—namely, a tobacco-box, in this instance of chased silver, with a mirror in the ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... part, inhabited by the governor, was very scantily furnished: a few old chairs, a couple of tables, and the walls whitewashed and decorated with prints of the Virgin Mary and his excellency's patron saint. The house of the priests, which adjoined the cathedral, was in much better repair, and more gaudy ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... rising in huge swarms like gnats; full-voiced meadowlarks on the fence posts; herons stalking solemnly, or waiting like so many Japanese bronzes for a chance at a gopher; red-tailed hawks circling slowly; pigeon hawks passing with their falcon dart; little gaudy sparrow hawks on top the telephone poles; buzzards, stately and wonderful in flight, repulsive when at rest; barn-owls dwelling in the haystacks, and horned owls in the hollow trees; the game in countless numbers; all the smaller animals and tiny birds in species too numerous to catalogue, all ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... however, just notice, that the charms of gaudy inartistic colouring frequently exercise a powerful sway even over minds familiar with better things; although that sway is always indicative of the decay of intellectual or moral freshness. Thus, it is remarked by an old Greek author (Dionysius of Halicarnassus), that the perfection to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... Holofernes" is announced by a great glaring, painted cloth, while the platform is occupied by a gentleman in Roman armor and a lady in Eastern attire, who are no doubt the principal characters of the play. A gaudy Harlequin and his brother Scaramouch invite the attention of the passers-by. In another booth rope-dancing of men and women is offered to the less tragically minded, and in yet another the world-renowned Faux displays the announcement of his conjuring ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... street; Battering the pavement with their coursers' feet: The greedy sight might there devour the gold Of glittering arms, too dazzling to behold: And polished steel that cast the view aside, And crested morions, with their plumy pride. Knights, with a long retinue of their squires, In gaudy liveries march, and quaint attires. One laced the helm, another held the lance; A third the shining buckler did advance. The courser pawed the ground with restless feet, And snorting foamed, and champed the golden bit. The ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... not clad for dress parade. Is it because the male is so restricted to gloom in his every-day attire that he blossoms into gaudy colors in his pajamas and dressing-gowns? It would take a Turk to feel at home before an audience in my red and yellow bathrobe, a Christmas remembrance from Mrs. Klopton, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... which always degrades and coarsens; Esther is the type of self-sacrifice which as uniformly refines, elevates, and arrays with new beauty and power. If we would reach the highest nobleness possible to us, we must stand with Esther at the gate, and not envy or imitate Ahasuerus on his gaudy throne. 'He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for My sake and the gospel's, the same ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... number four Critchley's Fancy produced no better result. A tiny double Silver Grey brought no response. Then he looked through his fly-box in despair, and picked out an old three-nought Prince of Orange—a huge, gaudy affair with battered feathers, which he had used two years before in flood-water on the Restigouche. At least it would astonish the salmon, for it looked like a last season's picture-hat, very much the worse for wear. It lit on the ripples ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... old I was when, at this time, Mr. Penn, in a neat wig with side rolls, and dressed very gaudy, aroused my curiosity as to these folks in Wales, It was long after, and only by degrees, that I learned the following facts, which were in time to have a great influence on my own life and its ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... his brow than he needed to make ends meet, he was compelled to hand the surplus over to the general funds of the Church; and if some one kindly left him some money, that money was treated in the same way. He was to be as moderate as possible in eating and drinking; he was to avoid all gaudy show in dress and house; he was not to go to fairs and banquets; and, above all, he was not to marry except with the consent and approval of the Elders. Of marriage the Brethren had rather a poor opinion. They clung still to the old Catholic ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... stage carpenters in greasy jackets, the firemen, the stage manager strutting about with his hat on his head, the supernumeraries sitting among the hanging back-scenes, the ropes and pulleys, the heterogeneous collection of absurdities, shabby, dirty, hideous, and gaudy, was something so altogether different from the stage seen over the footlights, that Lucien's astonishment knew no bounds. The curtain was just about to fall on a good old-fashioned melodrama entitled Bertram, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... assembly is the only organ by which their sentiments can be expressed, is, to me, truly surprising. For where, in the name of wonder, should the house acquire the necessary knowledge or intelligence? Is it by turning these musty old volumes, or by rummaging these gaudy boxes which lie on your table? No! they contain none of these mysteries. How then are they to be explored? Is there any virtue or inspiration in these benches or cushions, by which they are to be communicated, or does the echo of these walls whisper ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... king would have none of them. Indeed, he glared at them so fiercely that they were glad to leave him. So away and away he wandered, over field and through forest, so moody and thoughtful that many a fat buck and gaudy pheasant escaped without notice, and so careless was he whither he was going that he strayed without perceiving it over into the rajah's territory, and only discovered the fact when, suddenly, men stepped from all sides out of a thicket, and there was nothing left but surrender. ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... its flank. As for the main entrance, that was used to keep out thieves and customers, except once or twice in a year, when they entered together, i.e., when some duke or count arrived in pomp with his train of gaudy ruffians. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... was in a state of delirium; the royal equipages as they traversed the streets were followed by admiring crowds; the gay and gaudy nobles were watched by bright eyes, and welcomed by rosy lips; the civic authorities dreamt only of balls and banquets; and, in short, the rock-seated city, bristling as it was with cannon, and frowning with fortifications, appeared to have become suddenly ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... boasting but one,—advertised as a wonderful rarity,—which was very badly situated. There were plenty of traktiri, or low-class eating-houses, some of which had "numbers for arrivers"—that is to say, rooms for guests—added to their gaudy signs. These were not to be thought of. But we had been told of an establishment which rejoiced in the proud title of gostinnitza, "hotel," in city fashion. It looked fairly good, and there we took up our abode, after due ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... from the house, had escaped the flames. Maum Winnie's was larger and better furnished than any, and far more attractive in appearance. A rustic fence, built by her old husband, "Uncle Abe" (long since dead), enclosed a small yard, where grew all kinds of bright, gaudy "posies," with here and there a bunch of mint or parsley or sage, and an occasional stalk or two of cabbage. Over the little porch were trained morning-glories and a flourishing gourd vine. Beneath, on each side, ran a wide seat, where, in ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... into a large, a spacious, and a splendid Dome thro' the Conveyance of a narrow and obscure Entry. A Glare of Light suddenly breaks upon you beyond what the Avenue at first promis'd: and a thousand Beauties of Genius and Character, like so many gaudy Apartments pouring at once upon the Eye, diffuse and throw themselves out to the Mind. The Prospect is too wide to come within the Compass of a single View: 'tis a gay Confusion of pleasing Objects, too various to ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... cedars with loose mossy tresses, White powdered dog-trees, and stiff hollies flaunting Gaudy as rustics in their May-day dresses, Blue pelloret from purple leaves upslanting A modest gaze, like eyes of a young maiden Shining beneath dropt lids the ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... my mind a lovelier shrine than the gaudy box we have just been gaping at," Robert said; and then went on, answering the surprise in his companion's face: "You shall learn why by-and-by. In the mean time know that it is the dwelling ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... sight she presented! She had been painted from head to hoofs in broad stripes of red, white and blue. The white was her own natural colour, but the red and blue were a gaudy, cheap paint still partly wet. Nevertheless, the work was the work of an artist. The body was done in graceful, sweeping lines, while the legs were circled red, white and blue alternately down to each hoof. Even the ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... opposite corner of the window; presently a small round black snout, with a pair of little, fiery, blasting eyes, appeared, and a thin, black neck, glancing in the sun. The lizard saw it. I could fancy it trembled. Its body became of a dark blue, then ashy pale; the imitation of the flower, the gaudy fin was withdrawn, it appeared to shrink back as far as it could, but it was nailed or fascinated to the window sill, for its feet did not move. The head of the snake approached, with its long, forked tongue shooting out, and shortening, and with a low hissing noise. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... put ashore, and, using only the language of signs, exchanged some of the beads and gaudy trinkets for the curious articles of the savages. Endless varieties of fruit were so abundant that it was to be had for the simple trouble of plucking; while the timid natives stood in such awe of their visitors, that the thought of harming them ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... town was delightful, with its bazaar and its varied population, and he and some of his comrades were never tired of wandering about examining the shops with their curious contents, their bright-coloured scarves, their wonderful pipes, their gaudy brasswork, and their oriental stuffs and carpets. But the population were even more amusing, with the mixture of Egyptians, Arabs, and Negroes clad in every variety of garb: from the Egyptian functionary in his neat blue uniform and fez, and the portly merchant in his oriental robes, to the ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... great idea of the mighty halls dawned upon her, and filled her soul. The so-called decorations vanished from her view, and she felt as if she stood in her father's presence. She was at one elevated and humbled. As suddenly the idea faded and fled, and she beheld but the gaudy festoons and draperies and paintings which disfigured the grandeur. She wept and sped away. Now it was too late to interfere, and things must take their course. She would have been but a Cassandra-prophetess to those who saw but the pleasure ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... the rights of man, for freedom from the slavery of man to man or to drink and drugs, she has come up only as the smoke has cleared away, but always in time to demand the spoils! She has filched from the systems of philosophy of every land and age, and after bedaubing them with her own gaudy colors, has foisted them upon unthinking mankind as divine decrees and mandates! She has ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... a rum-looking couple," he said, "but I have seen plenty of men, just as gaudy, in the train of some of the rajahs who visited the camp when we were up here. I think that it is a much better disguise than the one we wore yesterday. I sha'n't be afraid that the first officer we meet ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... of acquiring knowledge beyond their reach; but as books became accessible, they were no longer needed; the printing press made the Bible, from which the plots of the miracle plays were usually derived, common among the people, and these gaudy representations were swept away by the Reformation; but they were temporarily revived in Queen Mary's time, with the other abominations of the church papal, for we find that "in the year 1556 a goodly stage play of the Passion of Christ was presented at the Grey Friers in London on ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... more cheerful now. In the first place we are less cold. The wind has dropped and we have devised various schemes for mitigating the excessive ventilation. I have hung two gaudy Arab rugs over my window, with a layer of Times between them and the bars. Some genius had an inspiration, acting on which we have pitched an E.P. tent in the mess room. It just fits and is the greatest success. Finally, I sent my bearer to speculate in a charcoal brazier. This also ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... ears. There was a broad leather blind on the hacamore, which was of the best plaited rawhide with a horsehair tie rope, but the little man did not take advantage of it to subdue his mount. Instead he reached down for his gaudy Navajo saddle blanket, offered it to the sorrel to smell, and then slid it gently upon his back. But when he stooped for his saddle the high-headed horse rebelled. With ears pricked suspiciously forward and eyes protruding he glared at the clattering ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... to ride over them. A few sombre garbed Israelites, and occasionally the Turks, attendant on official duties of the Pashalic in this part of the government, also mingle in the passing or seated crowd; when the solemn, saturnine air of the latter, with their flowing, gaudy apparel, forms a striking contrast to the daring, dirty, independent air of the almost ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... all bare, whilst at his scars They scoff, that ne'er durst view the face of wars. I set an Idiot's cap on virtue's head, Turn learning out of doors, clothe wit in rags And paint ten thousand images of loam In gaudy silken colours: on the backs Of mules and asses I make asses ride Only for sport, to see the apish world Worship such beasts with sound idolatry. This Fortune does, and when this is done, She sits and smiles to hear some curse her name, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... come back again, my dear Emperor Joseph," Bonaparte said, as he set out for Paris, "it will be for the purpose of giving you a new position, which you may not like so well as the neat and rather gaudy sinecure you now hold." ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... to see so many beautiful flowers. There were bright scarlet geraniums, and starlike sweet-scented jessamines, and the gorgeous belladonna lily, with its large blossoms of rose-colour and white; and there were not only plants in flower, but bushes, and even trees, covered with gaudy and sweetly-perfumed blossoms. There was the "sugar-bush" (Protea mellifera), the most beautiful of its family, with its large cup-shaped corollas of pink, white, and green; and there, too, was the "silver-tree" (Leucodendron argenteum), whose soft silvery leaves playing in the ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... rash Glonglim attempt to climb that dangerous ladder, without feeling alarm for his safety. At first all seemed to go on very well; but just as he was about to lay hold of the gaudy prize, there arose a sudden squall, which threw both him and his supporters into confusion, and the whole living pyramid came to the ground together. Many were killed—some were wounded and bruised. Polenap himself, by lighting on ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... dropped over the side of the rock, and lightly held the long bow which leaned against the same support. The posture was that of elegant ease, and the best calculated to bring out in clear relief the Apollo-like splendor of his figure. The luxuriant black hair streaming over the shoulders, the gaudy eagle feathers thrust in at the crown, the lustrous black eyes, the slightly Roman nose, the rows of colored beads around the neck, the dull yellow of the hunting shirt, the quiver of arrows behind ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... things to show her in his laundry. Sometimes an old, eminently respectable gentleman (?) has a package of candy for the little girls. Sometimes, again, bright-eyed young girls are attracted, like butterflies to bright flowers, to the gaudy signs of the Bowery museums. Sometimes there are other inducements, in the way of store windows, or a chance acquaintance (and they are always around, too, these obliging acquaintances), and the purchase of some trinkets, then a hotel, a room, and our little friend has eaten of the apple. ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... in the rough jacket, which appeared rent wilfully into holes; and the black, ragged, tangled locks that streamed from their confinement under a woollen cap, accorded but ill with other details which spoke of comparative wealth. The shirt, open at the throat, was fastened by a brooch of gaudy stones; and two pendent massive gold chains announced the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... fantastic procession advances, forming a double column, composed of men and women side by side. The former are stamping and the latter tripping lightly, but all are keeping time. They certainly present a weird appearance, tricked out in their gaudy apparel and ornamented with flashy trinkets. The hair of the men is worn loose; tufts of green and yellow feathers flutter over the forehead, while around their necks and dangling over their naked chests are seen strings of porcupine quills, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... still dark. She was dressed in black, with a good deal of lace about her; and on her ungloved hand Lady Caroline's keen sight enabled her to distinguish some very handsome diamond rings. The effect of the costume was a little spoiled by a large gaudy fan, of violent rainbow hues, which hung at her side; and perhaps it was this article of adornment which decided Lady Caroline in her opinion of the woman's social status. But about the man she was equally positive in a different ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... partner! To be sure, it was a comely sight for to see as how the buxom country-lasses, fresh and fragrant and blushing like the rose, in their best apparel dight, their white hose, and clean short dimity petticoats, their gaudy gowns of printed cotton; their top-knots and stomachers, bedizened with bunches of ribbons of various colours, green, pink, and yellow; to see them crowned with garlands, and assembled on Mayday, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... instead of one, and all kinds of seeds, perfumes and jewels, a scimitar, a bow, a litter, a golden vase, and a blazing fire, and amongst the living implements of the pageant, instead of the bards, gaudy courtesans, and besides the eight damsels, professors of divinity, Brahmanas, cows and pure kinds of wild beasts and birds, the chiefs of town and country-people and ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Bart., Mr. Thomas Sinclair, J.P.—a great name in the city—and the Rev. Dr. Lynd were especially prominent. Some of the teetotallers wore white sashes, which were perhaps more conspicuous than the gaudy colours affected by the Orangemen, and one body of Unionists from the suburban clubs waved white handkerchiefs, a feature which for obvious reasons can never occur in Nationalist processions. The Shepherds ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Shepherd and Bishop of souls consecrated and made it holy ground by His presence." Romaine and Fletcher often preached at Bath in the early months of the chapel's history, and the latter thus referred to his ministry: "This place is the seat of Satan's gaudy throne; the Lord hath, nevertheless, a few names here, who are not ashamed of Him, and of whom He is not ashamed, both among the ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... filled even the rude people with a certain awe and wonder, even as the majestic cathedrals of mediaeval Europe, with their imposing pomps, stimulated the poetic conceptions of the Gothic nations. Art is popular. The rude savage admires a gaudy picture even as the cultivated Leo X. or Cardinal Mazarini bent in admiration before the great creations of Raphael or Domenichino. Art appeals to the senses as well as to the intellect and the heart, and is capable of inspiring the passions as well as the loftiest emotions and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... room from the bar, roulette and faro tables, bright with varnish and gaudy with nickel trimmings, were waiting with invitations to feverish excitement. The room was a modern presentation of Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla, the bar, stimulated to the daring of Charybdis across the way, and Charybdis, the ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... a little fishing round its rim, others bringing the washing there, all skylarking and singing. Few prettier sights have I ever seen than those on that sandbank— the merry brown forms dancing or lying stretched on it: the gaudy- coloured patchwork quilts and chintz mosquito-bars that have been washed, spread out drying, looking from Kangwe on the hill above, like beds of bright flowers. By night when it was moonlight there would be bands of dancers ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... see whether you shaved to-day or last Christmas. You don't want to worry so much about your looks, none of you. I hate to say it, but you act vain, all of you kids. Honest, I'm ashamed. Look at that gaudy countenance Happy's got on—and his necktie's most as bad." He stropped his razor with exasperating nicety, stopping now and then to test its edge upon a hair from ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... showing her dazzling teeth. Like a child playing a game, she half shut the hat-box and hugged it lovingly. Then with eyes sparkling, slowly the small hand crept in—was thrust down the side and drew out with a rapturous "Ha!" a gaudy advertisement card, setting forth the advantages of smoking "Kentucky Leaf" She looked at it fondly. Then slowly, regretfully, all the fun gone now, she passed ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... this time that he, in accord with the chrysalid tendency manifested by most other millionaires, discarded his long-followed sombre method of life, and invested himself with a gaudy magnificence. On Fifth avenue, at Fifty-first and Fifty-second streets, he built a spacious brown-stone mansion. In reality it was a union of two mansions; the southern part he planned for himself, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... it impossible that anybody could dream of leaving such delightful enjoyments till daybreak. I left him staying Hilpah with flagons, and walked quietly home. But it was some time before I could get to sleep. The sound of fiddles was in mine ears; and gaudy dresses, and black hair, and Jewish noses, were fluctuating up and ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... slanting through the plain. Tall dark poplars slashed it with sombre greens. As we whizzed through the quaint little villages dashes of colour seemed doused in our faces; soldiers in horizon blue with crimson trimmings and gold on their uniforms, black Moroccans with their gaudy red fezes, flags of staff and line officers fluttering from doors and window sills, all refreshed our eyes with new, strange, gorgeous combinations of colours. And when we passed a town where no soldiers were quartered, ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... having spent their season's gains in carousal, packed their blanket capotes and were ready for the wilderness again. They made a picturesque crew in their gaudy turbans, or hats adorned with plumes and tinsel, their brilliant handkerchiefs tied sailor-fashion about swarthy necks, their calico shirts, and their flaming worsted belts, which served to hold the knife and ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... and winds, All things well and proper; Trailer, red and white, Dark and wily dropper. Midges true to fling Made of plover hackle, With a gaudy wing, ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... mental and moral masquerade, he adopted several changes in his dress, buying some clothes of very glaring patterns, and blossoming out in particularly gaudy neckties and flashy jewelry. Lest Annie should be puzzled to account for such a sudden access of depravity, he explained that his mother had been in the habit of selecting some of his lighter toilet articles for him, but this term he was trying ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... been done to her. The forestieri season sets in earlier in her case than in her sister cities. The real "Carnival de Venice" is in August, September and October now-a-days, let the calendar say what it may. Some flaunting of gaudy-colored calico, some dancing on the Piazza of St. Mark, there may be on the eve of Lent in obedience to old usages, but the dancing that really glads the Italian heart is the dancing for which the forestiere pays the piper, and the true Lenten time is that when his beneficent presence ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... a position much inferior to that of the national farce. But several circumstances now conspired to bring them into greater prominence. First, the great increase of luxury and show, and with it the appetite for the gaudy trappings of the spectacle; secondly, the failure of legitimate drama, and the fact that the Atellanae, with their patrician surroundings, were only half popular; and lastly, the familiarity with the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... in competition with the Italian housewives of the neighborhood. She was wont, indeed, to pause outside for a moment, her quick eye encompassing the coloured prints of red and yellow jellies cast in rounded moulds, decked with slices of orange, the gaudy boxes of cereals and buckwheat flour, the "Brookfield" eggs in packages. Significant, this modern package system, of an era of flats with little storage space. She took in at a glance the blue lettered placard announcing the current price of butterine, and walked around to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... costume of China, though more imposing, is not less barbaric than that of Japan; and the etiquette that accompanies it is wholly irreconcilable with the usages of the Western world. Imagine a mandarin doffing his gaudy cap, gay with tassels, feathers, and ruby button, on meeting a friend, or pushing back his long sleeves to shake hands! Such frippery we have learned to leave to the ladies; and etiquette does not require them to ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... scarcely a town or city in the State of Wisconsin that does not owe its origin, directly or indirectly, to these men. Cheap and tawdry enough were the commodities bartered for these wonderful beaver and otter pelts—ribbons and gewgaws, looking-glasses and combs, blankets and shawls of gaudy color. But scissors and knives, gunpowder and shot, tobacco and whiskey, went also in the traders' packs, though traffic in fire-water was forbidden. These goods, upon arrival at Mackinac, were sent out by canoes and ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Vrishnis and the Andhakas. At the mountain-festival of the Bhojas, the Vrishnis and the Andhakas, the heroes of those tribes began to give away much wealth unto Brahmanas by thousands. The region around that hill, O king was adorned with many a mansion decked with gems and many an artificial tree of gaudy hue. The musicians struck up in concert and the dancers began to dance and the vocalists to sing. And the youth of the Vrishni race, endued with great energy, adorned with every ornament, and riding in their gold-decked cars, looked extremely handsome. The ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... on the ledge That it might not be quite forlorn Of wind and sky, where o'er the edge, Some gaudy petal, slowly borne, Fluttered to earth in careless scorn, Caught, for a fallen piece of morn From kindling vapors loosely shorn, By urchins ragged and wayworn, Who saw, high on the stone embossed, A laughing face, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... mused aloud. Berthe struck her pony in a tremor of fright. The American was riding ahead. "Fire and sword," Jacqueline went on, and her voice lowered to intense scorn, "they make the final tableau, but—it's gaudy, it's cheap." ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... must have forgotten, so self-possessed and mightily at his ease was he. He was of the kind with whom shame strikes never very deeply, and he ruffled it gaily there, among the women, rolling his fierce eyes to ogle them seductively, tossing his gaudy new cloak with a high-born disdain—gloriously conscious that it would not rend in the tossing, like the cloaks to which grim Circumstance had lately accustomed him—and strutting it like any cock upon ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... up the tree, and one hand for scaring off the mother bird and one hand for stealing the eggs. And for hanging on behind wagons the combination positively could not be beaten. Then there would be the gaudy conspicuousness of going around with four arms weaving in and out in a kind of spidery effect while less favored boys were forced to content themselves with just an ordinary and insufficient pair. Really, there was only one drawback to the contemplation of this scheme—there'd be twice ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... glanced around her. Where scarcely a second before she had been on the outer fringe of the crowd, she now appeared to be in the very center of it. Women were pushing up behind her, women who wore shawls as she did, only the shawls were mostly of gaudy colors; and men pushed up behind her, mostly men of swarthy countenance, who wore circlets of gold in their ears; and, brushing her skirts, seeking vantage points, ragged, ill-clad children wriggled and wormed their way deeper into the press. It was a crowd composed almost ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... into the small parlor, he looked around it critically. It was plainly furnished, but it had a home-like look; there were no cheap, common ornaments, and no cheap, gaudy pictures; the few adornments on the walls were in good taste and about the room were many pretty things which a ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Cornish people that I met with in Cornwall. The streets of Helston are a trifle larger and a trifle duller than the streets of Liskeard; the church is comparatively modern in date, and superlatively ugly in design. A miserable altar-piece, daubed in gaudy colours on the window above the communion-table, is the only approach to any attempt at embellishment in the interior. In short, the town has nothing to offer to attract the stranger, but a public festival—a sort of barbarous carnival—held there annually on the 8th of May. This festival is said ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... cocked hats and crooked noses. Bundles of coarse prints, on large paper broadsides, are suspended on either side the door. Here we have the Princess Miliktris Kirbitierna;[25] yonder the city of Jerusalem, its houses and churches smeared with vermilion, which gaudy colour has also invaded a part of the ground and a brace of Russian pilgrims in huge fur gloves. If these works of art find few purchasers, they at least attract a throng of starers; drunken ragamuffin lacqueys on their way from the cook's shop, bearing piles of plates with their masters' ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... moderate means who are exposed to the constant social demands of the great cities of the world, to have a costume in which one can appear on any festive occasion, great or small, which all, gentle or simple, are alike expected to wear, which is neither rich nor gaudy, and in which every man may feel sure that he is properly dressed; and the dress fixed on for this purpose now throughout the civilized world is the plain suit of black, with the swallow-tailed coat, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... deepest winter, when the ground is petrified and the skies are low and gray, the very thought of turning up the earth, and raking and planting, awakens a thrill in the innermost recesses of the normal human heart, while a new seed-catalogue, filled with gay pictures and gaudy promises, becomes a poem, ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... reduc'd me to beg in despair, Till I met my old boy in a Cunningham fair; His rags regimental they flutter'd so gaudy, My heart is rejoic'd at my sodger laddie. Sing, Lal de ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... republic on the theory of a revolution. Eliminate the revolution, suppose the change to have been a gradual and a constitutional one, and you may discard the proud Tarquin without losing anything but a lay-figure with its more or less gaudy trappings of later myths. But it is not so with Servius; his wall and his constitution are very real and defy all attempts to turn their maker into a legend. Yet on the other hand we must be on our guard, for much of the definiteness ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... creeping and dimpling beneath the massive and sodden arches with a low gurgle, receiving a sheet of silver sheen as they stole away into the rich sunshine; and, in gazing over the rude balustrade where the gaudy butterflies flitted around, or rested by the river's brink, opening and shutting their unruffled fans; or in flinging pebbles into the placid waters, and then watching the widening circles as they swept down with the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... good taste demands should be placed in bedrooms and private sitting rooms. The ten-cent stores have done a great deal of good in educating the poor, white and black alike. These stores have everywhere sold small brown art prints of many of the great paintings, to take the place of the gaudy dust-laden ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... long balmy night, by a sunrise which repeats the colours of the sunset, but this time gaudy, dazzling, triumphant, as befits the season of faith and hope. Such imagery, it may be said, is hackneyed now, and trite even to impertinence. It might be so at home; but here, in presence of the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... upper end of the hall, as far as the dais extended, were covered with hangings or curtains, and upon the floor there was a carpet, both of which were adorned with some attempts at tapestry, or embroidery, executed with brilliant or rather gaudy colouring. Over the lower range of table, the roof, as we have noticed, had no covering; the rough plastered walls were left bare, and the rude earthen floor was uncarpeted; the board was uncovered by a cloth, and rude massive benches supplied ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... their cover dense; long, ropelike vines hung in festoons. It was very still. A colobus barked somewhere in the tops; the small green monkeys swung from limb to limb, or scampered along the rope vines, chattering. Silent, gaudy birds swooped across dusky spaces. The dripping of water reached the ear; the smell ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... accomplishments are rendered subservient to the development of moral goodness, that they may become pursuits at all worthy of an accountable being. We were not sent into this world to flutter through life, like the gaudy butterfly, only to be seen and admired. We were designed to be useful to our fellow beings; and to make all our powers and capabilities, in some way or other conducive to the happiness and welfare of ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Are of a most select and generous choice in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... a good deal about the town, and entered the cathedral with some feelings of reverence, for a part of it at least was built by Don Henry of Portugal, who founded and endowed the college adjoining. The interior of the church is in some parts gaudy, and there is a silver rail of some value. The ceiling is of cedar, richly carved, and reminds me of some of the old churches at Venice, which present a style half Gothic half Saracenic. Near the church a public garden has lately been formed, and some curious exotic trees placed ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... cactuses, alive with large hordes of antelopes (the agazin), which, bounding from rock to rock, scared by their frolics the countless host of huge baboons. The valley itself, graced by the presence of gaudy-feathered and sweet-singing birds, echoed to the shrill cry of the numerous guinea-fowls, so tame, that the repeated reports of our fire-arms did not disturb them ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... beneath a canopy—the man I soon perceived was Shin Shira himself, still clothed in the immaculate frock coat and tall hat in which I had last seen him dressed. The woman was a poor, deformed thing and pitifully plain—her gaudy dress and many jewels but ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... pattern presented, [29] but if they are not told exactly what colors to use they employ every shade, color and tint they can secure. The Basey mats are distinguished by the multitude of colors used. In general it may be stated that the chief criticism of this product is the gaudy effect produced by the colors used. In some cases the colors are well toned and harmoniously combined, but the majority of the mats produced contain vivid colors which are not all harmonious. Through ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... stopped to stare at the yokel. As is always the case when people stand in the street and gawk, a large crowd soon assembled. A military chariot stopped near the group of curious gazers to see what was going on. Soon several others were halted there, including gilded and gaudy litters, in which fashionably dressed women were being conveyed. All stared, called each other's attention to the queerly garbed ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... there is no such thing as cheap and gaudy Indian woollen stuff, should we be rigorous in our boycott of foreign flannels and memos, or make an ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... some other native trees. "Liriodendron" translated means "lily-tree," says my learned friend who knows Greek, and that is a fitting designation for this tree, which proudly holds forth its flowers, as notable and beautiful as any lily, and far more dignified and refined than the gaudy tulip. I like to repeat this smooth-sounding, truly descriptive and dignified name for a tree worthy all admiration. Liriodendron! Away with the "common" names, when there is such ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... to ascend it, and the space thus left between the mahogany and the floor, was hidden by a valance of white dimity, garnished with wide cotton fringe. Over this spacious place of repose, a patchwork quilt of the "rising sun" pattern displayed its gaudy rays, resembling some sprawling octopus, rather ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... payment, Gaudy flaars awr e'en beguile; Women may be loved for raiment, Show may blind us for ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... time to Rome. Before we could make all our arrangements, it was too late to think of journeying that day towards the dear old city; but the following morning we set forth in a rumbling, yellow post-coach, with three horses, and a shabby, gaudy postilion,—the wheels clattering, the bells on the horses' necks jingling, the cock's-plumes on their heads nodding, and a half-dozen sturdy beggar-brats running at our side and singing a dismal chorus of "Dateci qualche cosa." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... certainly suffering just now from acute 'megalomania.' The abnormal self-conceit, the inflated national consciousness, express themselves in a thousand ways, some of which are naive and harmless, whilst others are grossly offensive. They show themselves in a craving for titles and in gaudy and tasteless public buildings;[5] in the thousand and one statues of Bismarck and William I.; they reveal themselves in the articles of journalists and in the writings of historians; but above all, the German megalomania finds expression in the seven thousand speeches and ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... wherries and canoes and gondolas, and ponderous houseboats, and snorting launches, crowding the sides of the sunlit river, in full view of the crowd yonder in front of the Red Lion, and here on this nearer bank, and all along either shore, fringing the green meadows with a gaudy ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... professed to be rich. She had simply continued in her lifelong way, had simply acted rich. She well knew the gaudy delusions her admirer was entertaining, and she saw to it that nothing was said or done to disturb him. She inquired into his affairs, made sure of the substantiality of the comparatively small income he possessed, ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... as gaudy shows, Those saucy sprigs of pride The peony, the red, red rose; But give to me the flower ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... flower-tramps. Even the larkspur, beloved of children, the moss-pink, and the grape-hyacinth may sometimes be seen growing in country fields and byways. The homely and cheerful blossoms of the orange-tawny ephemeral lily, and the spotted tiger-lily, whose gaudy colors glow with the warmth of far Cathay—their early home—now make gay many of our roadsides and crowd upon the sweet cinnamon roses of our grandmothers, which also are undaunted ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... ardour of your face Was like a summer rose; One sooty smudge but seemed to grace The challenge of your nose; The gaudy thing that hid your hair Performed its ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... the breeze. There were trailers, i.e., (Freycinetia scandens) with heavy knotted stems, as thick as a frigate's stoutest hawser, coiling up to the tops of tall ohias with tufted leaves like yuccas, and crimson spikes of gaudy blossom. The shining festoons of the yam and the graceful trailers of the maile (Alyxia Olivaeformis), a sweet scented vine, from which the natives make garlands, and glossy leaved climbers hung from tree to ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... of their staffs one by one. The Taotai was brought from his residence in a magnificent sedan-chair, carried by ten or twelve bearers. The pavilion itself is a splendid structure, adorned with the most gaudy and brilliant colours, and covered with Chinese characters beautifully worked in gold. The consultation lasted for at least three hours. I had only a distant view of Kung over the heads of the soldiers. The fighting outside continued, and on the next ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... rain began to fall, Nellie ran into the large tent—her father's store—and left Harry, who, regardless of the storm, stood for fully a minute looking after her. As he was about to turn, a figure, muffled in a gaudy colored blanket, emerged from behind an adjacent tent and touched him, in a supplicating manner, on the shoulder. He turned hastily, and seeing who it was, pushed the intruding hand away. As he did so the blanket fell away from the head and shoulders of the figure, ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... on the wayside, and every now and again collected by the shrill summons of the mother; and the mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall - Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly in a ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in which they now talked overlooked the neighboring Temple house, a dignified sentry at the point where the leisured street forsook the chaffer of the town to climb amidst arching elms and maples, above whose gaudy autumn masses rose the dome of the courthouse and the spires of many churches. It was an old-fashioned Georgian structure with white columns clear-cut against its weathered brick; at either side of the low steps a great ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... flower, Which boys do flout us with;—but yet I love thee, Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout. Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air; But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau, Stripped of his gaudy hues and essences, And growing ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a dunnage bag near his bunk, he pulled its contents about until he found a bright red silk handkerchief and a red flannel shirt. Their colour was too gaudy for his taste. "These things are for your ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... fond of bright colors. Their dresses did not amount to much. They wore a short skirt and rebosa. Their head-dress covered their hair and came together in front under the chin and hung to the belt. What dress she wore must be very bright and gaudy and I have known a pretty Mexican girl with about $2.50 worth of dress on come in and purchase an $8.00 pair of shoes. If she wanted an extra nice pair of shoes she said she wanted a pair of shoes "made out of Spanish leather." Such a pair as would look nice on the dancing ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... illustrated journals. One window, revealing endless rows of dingy chimney-pots, was draped with shabby rep curtains of a dull red. In one corner, behind an Indian screen, stood a narrow camp bedstead, covered with a gaudy Eastern shawl, and also a large tin bath, with a can of water beside it. Against the wall leaned a clumsy deal bookcase filled with volumes well-thumbed and in old bindings. On one side of the tiny fireplace ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... been well discussed by many, who have unfolded the real nature of those fascinating qualities; who have well remarked, that though shewy and apt to catch the eye, they are of a flimsy and perishable fabric, not of that less gaudy but more substantial and durable texture, which, imparting permanent warmth and comfort, will long preserve its more sober honours, and stand the wear and tear of life, and the vicissitudes of seasons. It has been shewn, that these qualities often fail us when most we ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... houses. The ground was wet and comfortless; a part of the reed walls was lined with cots bearing mattresses and silk-covered pillows, a cross between a divan and a couch: the only ornaments were a few weapons, and a necklace of gaudy beads suspended near the door. I was placed upon the principal seat: on the right were the governor and the Hammal; whilst the lowest portion of the room was occupied by Mohammed Sharmarkay, the son and heir. The rest of the company squatted upon ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... at the well-known shop door, was Sylvia, holding a child, a merry dancing child, up in her arms to see the show. She too, Sylvia, was laughing for pleasure, and for sympathy with pleasure. She held the little Bella aloft that the child might see the gaudy procession the better and the longer, looking at it herself with red lips apart and white teeth glancing through; then she turned to speak to some one behind her—Coulson, as Philip saw the moment afterwards; his answer made her laugh once again. Philip saw it all; her bonny careless looks, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... extensive plain. On their right front, and at the distance of a mile, lay a town, composed of dark buildings of quaint and ancient architecture, surrounded by walls and a moat, and on the battlements of which sentries were stationed; whilst from the church tower the Spanish colours, the gaudy red and gold, flaunted their folds in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... a new coat of paint has vulgarized its ancient and venerable walls. Modern tiles have replaced the limestone slabs of its floors, worn in hollows by the tread of thousands of feet, and smart and gaudy fixtures have usurped the place of the time-worn furniture that has been consecrated by the touch of hands that Texas will never cease ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... of Sir Oskatell's favour, like an April day, suddenly change its gaudy and suspicious brightness. Sir Thomas, waning in years and ready to depart, began to consider his former misdoings. His daughter and her offspring were, by the laws of nature, justly entitled to his possessions, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... been observed by all students of Nature that bold and gaudy animals usually have means of defending themselves that make them very disagreeable to their enemies. They either have poisonous fangs, sharp spines, ferocious claws, or disagreeable odours. There are still others that ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... our usual rest day, and I stood in the open square before the huge church at Brunn, watching the motley, shifting, and clamorous crowd which had converted its very steps into a market-place. There was something strikingly Eastern in the character of the women's attire: intensely gaudy and highly contrasted; and their head-dresses the very next thing to a turban with double-frilled ends. There was also something peculiarly Catholic in the nature of the articles exposed for sale; beads, crosses, coloured pictures of saints, and tiny ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... the haberdasher; the carpenter; the weaver; the dyer; the tapestry-worker; the cook, to boil the chickens and the marrow-bones, and bake the pies and tarts,—mostly people from the middle and lower ranks of society, whose clothes are gaudy, manners rough, and language coarse. But all classes and trades and professions seem to be represented, except nobles, bishops, and abbots,—dignitaries whom, perhaps, Chaucer is reluctant ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... planning at the White House how he can get elected again. I wish Tom were here, confound you! You listen to him because he always has the facts and I'm just an embroiderer, you think. What's become of the gaudy campaign cry you were all wearing your lungs out with a few months ago? 'Fifty-four-forty or fight!' Bah! Polk twisted the lion's tail with that until after election. Then he saw he had to make you forget it, or fight England and be ruined, so he forces war on Mexico, and the country ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... debris in the end of a hollow log she took a key that unlocked the padlock of a large weatherbeaten old box, inside of which lay several books, a butterfly apparatus, and a small cracked mirror. The walls were lined thickly with gaudy butterflies, dragonflies, and moths. She set up the mirror and once more pulling the ribbon from her hair, she shook the bright mass over her shoulders, tossing it dry in the sunshine. Then she straightened it, bound ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... pompous; garish, gaudy, meretricious, gorgeous, flashy, bedizened, gay, conspicuous, tinsel. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... devoted to worse: and if two or three faces can be rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband. There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over- dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... definitely said to be the aim of ornamental art, it is difficult to arrive at a universal standard as to what constitutes beauty. What pleases one person will not always please another. The child loves glittering objects and gaudy combinations, which the mature taste of the man declares extravagant and unharmonious. Savages decorate their weapons, utensils, and their own persons with ornaments that appear uncouth and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... was a polite way of begging for a contribution towards the expenses of some music in the Saint's honour, so we gave him whatever it may have been, and his messenger departed: well satisfied. At six o'clock in the evening we went to the church—close at hand—a very gaudy place, hung all over with festoons and bright draperies, and filled, from the altar to the main door, with women, all seated. They wear no bonnets here, simply a long white veil—the 'mezzero;' and it was the most gauzy, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... sufficiently denotes its use, is a Peir[a]n or jacket, which amongst the higher classes is made of Bokh[a]ra cloth, or not unfrequently of Russian broad cloth, brought overland through Bokh[a]ra. This garment is generally of some glaring gaudy colour, red or bright yellow, richly embroidered either in silk or gold; it is very like the Turkish jacket, but the inner side of the sleeve is open, and merely confined at the wrist with hooks and eyes. A pair of loose trousers, gathered ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... into the drawing-room. It was a dusty and forbidding place, with ugly furniture and gaudy walls. No piano nor any other musical instrument stood in it. The intruder turned an angry and baffled face to the old woman, who was ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... step forward but faltered, staggered, and was obliged to lean against the mountain for support. Stains of travel were on her dress; lines of fatigue and pain, and traces of burning passionate tears, were on her face; her black hair flowed from beneath her gaudy bonnet; and, shamed out of his brutality, Rand placed his strong arm round her waist, and half carrying, half supporting her, began the ascent. Her head dropped wearily on his shoulder; her arm encircled his neck; her hair, as if caressingly, lay across his breast and hands; ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... for the butterflies took on the form of adoration. There was not a delicate, gaudy, winged creature of day that did not make so strong an appeal to my heart as to be almost painful. It seemed to me that the most exquisite thoughts of God for our pleasure were materialized in their ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... with their vices; and was admiring them for qualities which were blighting their usefulness and even threatening to make sane happiness impossible for either. It was not their real refinement that he admired, and, at times, envied; it was their showy affectations of refinement, those gaudy pretenses that appeal to the crude human imagination, like ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... are proof of this. Hence the fathers were left to their own wits in giving general directions, and to the taste of white 'artists,' and allowed even Indians to suit themselves. You will find this all through ancient Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The Indians loved the gaudy, loud, grotesque, and as it was the main thing for the fathers to gain the Indians in any lawful way possible, the taste of the latter ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... on the military maxim that success is often secured by putting on as bold a front, and making as great and startling display, as possible. But as fragrant, modest flowers usually bloom in the garden with gaudy, scentless ones, so those inclined to be bizarre made an excellent foil for the refined and elegant, and thus had their uses. There is little in the world that is not of value, looking at it ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the reign of Charles II. Georgian writers treated it somewhat as a survival, and were not always even tender to it. Says a writer in Bladud's Courier, describing a 'soire'e de beaute'' given by Lady Jersey, 'Mrs. —— (la belle) looked as silly and gaudy, I do vow, as one of the old Morris Dancers.' And many other writers—from Horace Walpole to Captain Harver—have their sneer at the Morris. Its rusticity did not appeal to the polite Georgian ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... had ushered in the summer of St. Martin, as it was called by the habitans,—the Indian summer,—that brief time of glory and enchantment which visits us like a gaudy herald to announce the approach of the Winter King. It is Nature's last rejoicing in the sunshine and the open air, like the splendor and gaiety of a maiden devoted to the cloister, who for a few weeks is allowed to flutter ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... he saw the lights of town, panelled in gold against a peacock sky. Acres and acres of blue darkness lay close-pressing upon the gaudy grids of light. Here one might really look at this great miracle of shadow and see its texture. The dulcet air drifted lazily in deep, silent crosstown streets. "Ah," he said, "here is where ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... most, he condemned his own cowardice, and broke at once those bands of friendship, which were more agreeable to him than all other sweets of life. He describes the situation of his soul under this struggle, and says, "Those who saw me, judging by the gaudy show which surrounded me, and not knowing what passed within my soul, said, speaking of me: Oh, how well is it with him! how happy is he! But they knew not the anguish of my mind; for the deep wound in my heart gave me a thousand tortures, and I was not able to ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the rest, and is content to be simply himself, that he is best; terse, vivid, sound, manly, simple. May he turn round some day, and deliberately pulling out all borrowed feathers, look at himself honestly and boldly in the glass, and we will warrant him, on the strength of the least gaudy, and as yet unpraised passages in his poems, that he will find himself after all more eagle than daw, and quite well plumed enough by nature to fly at a higher, because for him a more natural, pitch than he ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Feature-encrusted; complex; gaudy; verging on excessive. Said of hardware or (esp.) software designs, this has many of the connotations of {elephantine} or {monstrosity} but is less extreme and not pejorative in itself. "Metafont even has features to introduce random variations to its letterform output. Now ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... that you like birds, sir," said Beckendorff to Vivian; for our hero, good-naturedly humouring the tastes of his host, was impartially dividing the luxuries of a peach among a crowd of gaudy and greedy little sparrows. "You shall see my favourites," continued Beckendorff; and tapping rather loudly on the table, he held out the forefinger of each hand. Two bullfinches recognised the signal, and immediately hastened ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... its holiday-suit of feathers, pruning its wing for a flight across the summer sky. Even so different was the Dorothea of the unkempt hair, the soapy arms, the dingy apron, and the grimy face, from a gaudy damsel who emerged in the afternoon sun out of Mr. Bargrave's chambers, bright with all the colours of the rainbow, and scrupulously dressed, according to the extreme style of the last prevailing fashion ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... the little party turned to the right intent upon seeing some gaudy patchwork quilts, while the others turned to the left declaring their intention of investing all their pennies in ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... three figures, followed by a shamed-looking dog, might have been seen creeping stealthily from the boat-house at the "Swan" towards the railway station, dressed in the following neither neat nor gaudy costume: ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... that whenever they went to dinner—Gus in his baggy pepper-and-salt sack suit, his loose, lay-down collar, and his wide-toed shoes, Ma in one of her giddy, gaudy dinner dresses—it seemed as if the entire assemblage was stricken dumb and as if every eye was turned upon them in mockery and amusement. Even the waiters, Allie felt sure, noted the difference between the Briskows and the other guests, and only with ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... thing that came in her youthful way Was a gold-featured Sunflower—gaudy and gay— Who dressed himself up in resplendent array, And gazed on the sun as an equal. "Look! look!" quoth the Vine: "He's a lover of mine: "And see how the gold round his face doth shine!" So at once she began round the stem to twine; But mark ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... also have told tales to the little ones, but do thou this—' His old eyes fell on the gaudy paintings of the wall, the blue and red dome, and the flames of the poinsettias beyond. 'Tell them first of those things that thou hast seen and they have seen together. Thus their knowledge will piece out thy imperfections. Tell them of what ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... men in quilted armour went up "per order." They certainly cut not a bad figure at a distance, as their helmets were ornamented with black and white ostrich feathers, and the sides of the helmets with pieces of tin, which glittered in the sun; their long quilted cloaks of gaudy colours reaching over part of their horses' tails, and hanging over the flanks. On the neck, even the horses' armour was notched or vandyked, to look like a mane; on his forehead, and over his nose, was a brass or tin plate, also a semicircular piece on each side. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... man!—what it meant to her? It meant shelter and peace and freedom. It meant honour and kindness, and the chance to be good. Perhaps you think she would not care for that. But you do not know her. Rosa Mundi was meant to be good. She hungered for goodness. She was tired—so tired of the gaudy vanities of life, so—so—what is the word—so nauseated with the cheap and the bad. Are you sorry for her, I wonder? Can you picture her, longing—oh, longing—for what she calls respectability? And then—this chance, this offer of deliverance! It meant giving up her career, of course. It ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... along Fourteenth street, where cheap vaudevilles are strung together as glass-pearls on the throat of a wanton. Gaudy bill-boards, drenched in clamorous red, proclaimed the tawdry attractions within. Much to the surprise of the doorkeeper at a particularly evil-looking music hall, Reginald Clarke lingered in the lobby, and finally even bought ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... evening. "The western sky was all aflame" with the gorgeous hues of the sunset; the air was like amber mist, and the shrill-voiced Canadian birds, with their gaudy plumage, sang their vesper laudates high in the green gloom ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... the Steel Spud Hotel was more pretentious. The others were eating houses, stores with small windows filled with a threatening miscellany—revolvers, leather slung shots and brass knuckles, besides lumbering boots, gaudy Mackinaw jackets, gleaming knives and ammunition. Beyond the street a single car track ran precariously over the green, and ended abruptly, without roadbed or visible terminus; at one side was a rude platform, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... water, where we also parted, and I to several places about business, and so calling for my five books of the Variorum print bound according to my common binding instead of the other which is more gaudy I went home. The town talk this day is of nothing but the great foot-race run this day on Banstead Downes, between Lee, the Duke of Richmond's footman, and a tyler, a famous runner. And Lee hath beat him; though the King and Duke of York and all men almost did bet three ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... structure at the further side, which serves as a grand stand. Already buggies, dogcarts in single harness and tandem, barouches, and waggonettes are merrily rolling through the thick mist, past the frowning jail, and round the corner of the lake. Natives in gaudy coloured shawls, and blankets, are pouring on to the racecourse ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the center of a circle of dusky Indians who were squatting on the ground. Some of the braves were clothed in nondescript garments, while others were attired in gaudy blankets. These were ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... was neatly furnished, though with none of the gaudy trappings of fashion. Everything was plain and useful. On the side fronting the stream, which served the inmates as a highway, were two rooms,—a library, which was also the sitting-room, and a sleeping apartment. The library ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... but dares not show her iron rod; and power, like the raging billows, dashes its bounds with indignation, but dares not overpass them. But where thou art not, how changed the scene! how tasteless, how irksome labour! how languid industry! Where are the beauteous rose, the gaudy tulip, the sweet-scented jessamine? where the purple grape, the luscious peach, the glowing nectarine? wherefore smile not the valleys with their beauteous verdure, nor sing for joy with their golden harvest? All are withered by the scorching ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... more happy with the reflection of having made any person so, who without your assistance would have been miserable, than in the enjoyment of all the pleasures of sense (which pall in the using), and of all the pomps and gaudy show of the world. Live within your circumstances, by which means you will have it in your power to do good to others. Above all things, continue in your loyalty to his present Majesty, and the succession to the crown as by law established. Look on that as the basis ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... too sunny aspect of her history: it has not been under the full-faced smiles of heaven that her battles, revolutions, executions, and pageants have held their august procession; the rain has wet many a May-day and many a harvesting, whose traditional color (through tender English verses) is gaudy with yellow sunshine. The revellers of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" would find a wet turf eight days out of ten to disport upon. We think of Bacon without an umbrella, and of Cromwell without a mackintosh; yet I suspect both of them carried ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... why artists and moralists paint Temptation invariably in gaudy scarlet and jewels, tinted cheeks, and laughing hair. If she were always like that, morality would be gloriously triumphant; for she would attract nobody. The true Temptation of this world and flesh wears grey rags, dishevelled hair, and an ashen ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... colour or excuses? All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth; Poor wretches have remorse in poor abuses; Love thrives not in the heart that shadows dreadeth: Affection is my captain, and he leadeth; And when his gaudy banner is display'd, The coward fights and will not ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... different. The world is not his; he is the world's, and all his petty doings have its gaudy stencil blotched upon them. Yet haply even he has a heart, and somewhere in its fruitless fallows stands a poor ruin, that never was of much dignity at its best,—poor and broken, and half choked with weeds and briers; but even thus the weeds are fragrant herbs, and the briers are ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... room. If I had looked a moment longer, I should have dropped. When I came to reflect, what a change! What scenes I had gone through! How altered my state! I had dined the day before at a secretary of state's, in company with Mr. Pitt, and had been waited upon by men in gaudy liveries! I had had nobody to assist me in the world. No teachers of any sort. Nobody to shelter me from the consequence of bad, and nobody to counsel me to good behaviour. I felt proud. The distinctions of rank, birth, and ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... the second floor up—and, if I remember rightly, you have to walk some thirty-eight steps up a grand staircase before you reach it! Do you know why? Because the architect wished to compel all visitors to the building to admire a window of gaudy coloured glass half-way up the staircase. In this way they reason about nearly everything. They have not yet mastered the importance and due proportion of detail. Frequently what is to us a trifling detail is placed ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... that the system is managed in the most efficient manner. Those who can look back fifteen and twenty years, will remember that our country was literally flooded with the bulletin boards of lotteries, printed in the most gaudy and attractive colors, showing a brilliant schedule of prizes, and pledging almost certain wealth to all who would venture their money on the "grand scheme." They will also call to mind how many a victim there was to this deceptive and depraved system of legal fraud, until it became so injurious ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... covering him with his gun. "Quick, you dog!" he added, as Eagle Feather stood irresolute before him. Upon the uplifted hands Cameron slipped the handcuffs. "Come with me, you cattle-thief," he said, seizing him by the gaudy handkerchief that adorned his neck, and giving him a ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... disappointed teacher with a parable. "Let us suppose two merchants," he said, "to come to town, and offer wares for sale. The one has pearls and precious gems to display, the other, cheap finery, gilt chains, rings, and gaudy ribbons. About whose booth, think you, does the crowd press?—Formerly, when the struggle for existence was not fierce and inevitable, men had leisure and desire for the profound teachings of the Law; now they need the cheering words of ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... simple, and little likely to drive hard bargains, yet they were savages, and little accustomed to nice distinctions between their own property and that of others. Their desires once aroused for some gaudy bit of cloth or shining glass, they were ready enough to steal it, often making their booty secure by the murder of the luckless trader. It so happened, that, just before John Gallop set out with his sloop on the spring trading cruise, the people of the colony were excitedly discussing the probable ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... most high discomfort. You therefore, good friends, I lovingly exhort, To weigh such matters as will be uttered here, Of whom ye may look to have no trifling sport In fantasies feigned, nor such-like gaudy gear, But the things that shall your inward stomach cheer. To rejoice in God for your justification, And alone in Christ to hope for your salvation. Yea first ye shall have the eternal generation Of Christ, like as John in his first chapter write, And consequently of man ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... simple giant more, for he loved to dress up in gaudy clothes, a trait left over from his savage life before the young inventor ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... a country meeting-house. We often came upon an immense body of drakes sitting upon the edge of an ice-floe, looking very much like a regiment of hussars at a distance drawn up in line of battle. The duck is not so gaudy as her husband. She is quite contented in a full suit of mottled brown and olive gray, presenting a texture on the back somewhat similar to the canvas-back species of Chesapeake Bay. About half-past ten o'clock ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... hall and back again, and at the foot of the bed she spread her gaudy wares: An iridescent rubber ball glowing with six colors; a ribbon of gilt paper festooned to the crib; a gleaming Christmas star that dangled and gave out radiance; a huge brown bear standing upright, and with ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... would make his way over mountains and through forests to the banks of the Ohio, establish his head-quarters in some Indian town, and disperse his followers to traffic among the hamlets, hunting-camps and wigwams, exchanging blankets, gaudy colored cloth, trinketry, powder, shot, and rum, for valuable furs and peltry. In this way a lucrative trade with these western tribes was springing up and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... have come nearest perfection. But there are just a few things that bother me, and, no doubt, others like me. In the first place, must you make your covers as lurid and as contradictory to good design as they are? Really, I blush when my newsdealer hands me the gaudy thing. People interested in science do not usually succumb to circus ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... continued the dismal man, 'is like sitting at a grand court show, and admiring the silken dresses of the gaudy throng; to be behind them is to be the people who make that finery, uncared for and unknown, and left to sink or swim, to starve or ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... The moralists, who utter their heathenish oracles in the commonplace complaints of a heathenish discontent, tell us, that we are born but to pursue, and pursue but to be deceived. They say, that man in his career after earthly honours, is like the child that chases the gaudy insect; the pursuit idle; the object worthless. They tell us, that it is but a deceitful though a deceptive star, which beams from the summit of the distant hill; advance, and its light recedes; ascend, and a higher hill is seen beyond, and ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... managed to express themselves: Caroline in the superb attempt at overcoming her age, and Sophia in the softness of her apparel; Rose, in filmy black and pearls round her firm throat, gently proud and distant; and Henrietta was like some delicately gaudy insect, dancing hither and thither, approaching ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... my cloth. Am I not half naked? Is this the cloth I should respect—this gaudy frippery, which your citizens have made a target for ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... how much of his admiration is dependent merely upon the picture being larger than any other in the room, and having bright masses of red and blue in it: let him be assured that the picture is in reality not one whit the better for being either large, or gaudy in color; and he will then be better disposed to give the pains necessary to discover the merit of the more profound and solemn works of Bellini and Tintoret. One of the most wonderful works in the whole gallery is Tintoret's "Death of Abel," on the left of the "Assumption;" the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... apes sat sad and listless, and on the roof-ridges storks were dying. Over the branches of the trees, whose leaves were as thin as though we had had a six months' drought, the toucans and Martian parrots hung limp and fashionless like gaudy rags, and in the courtyard ground the corn-rats came up from their tunnels in the scorching earth to die, squeaking in scores ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... foreshows. Rang'd on the line oppos'd, Antonius brings Barbarian aids, and troops of Eastern kings; Th' Arabians near, and Bactrians from afar, Of tongues discordant, and a mingled war: And, rich in gaudy robes, amidst the strife, His ill fate follows him- th' Egyptian wife. Moving they fight; with oars and forky prows The froth is gather'd, and the water glows. It seems, as if the Cyclades again Were rooted up, and justled in the main; Or floating ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear 't that th' opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy: For the apparel oft proclaims the man. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true; And it ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... are we drawn aloft—that is, to the realm of the clouds: on these do we set our gaudy puppets, and then call them ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... illustrated poster which hung on a board beside the barrack door. It proclaimed the attractiveness of service in the British army. It moved him to no interest, because he had seen it every day since he first came to Ballymoy. The gaudy uniforms depicted on it excited no envy in his mind. His own uniform was of sober colouring, but it taught him all he wanted to know about the discomfort of such clothes in hot weather. His eyes wandered from the poster ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... the Repulsive; one is synonymous with purity, truth and excellence, and the other with vice and diplomacy. The world is often imposed upon when the latter counterfeits the former. Men are dazzled by the glitter and gaudy show of the pretended, and pass by, unnoticed, the less flashy attractions of the real, but I pride myself that I have never been deceived in this way. The girl that I have brought to my home is as genuine a sample of noble, good, pure and honorable ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... the map of history till we trace almost every actor in the pageant to a bloody grave, we can scarcely believe that it is a scene of joy and festivity that we are witnessing. The angel of death seems to hover over them; there is something dreadful in their rejoicing; their gaudy robes, their mantles, their vases, their fringes of gold, assume the sable hue of the grave; and, instead of a baptismal train, it seems like a funeral ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... don't." It was perfectly true. Except for the gaudy decorations and the twanging accents of the arrogant young women, Gabriella might have imagined herself in the last century atmosphere of Broad ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... maintained the retinue, and exercised more than the power of an Oriental prince. Such was the man who, prematurely worn out, and assured by physicians that he had not six weeks of life, had come to Aleppo with the gaudy escort of an Eastern satrap, had caused himself to be borne in his litter to the mud-hut of Haroun the Sage, and now called on the magician, in whose art was his last hope, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... worse: and if two or three faces can be rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband. There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over- dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... the opening of the oration; but the coarser members were stimulated to laughter by the speaker's strange appearance. D'Israeli had dressed himself in utter defiance of all conventions; he wore a dark green coat which came closely up to his chin, a gaudy vest festooned with chains, and glittering rings. His ringlets were combed in a heavy mass over his right shoulder; and it is said that he looked like some strange actor. The noise grew as he went on; his finest periods were lost amid howls of derision, and at last he raised his arms above ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Subtle requested Gammon, whose ability he had soon detected, to sit immediately beneath him; next to Gammon sat Quirk; then Snap; and beside him Mr. Titmouse, with a staring sky-blue flowered silk handkerchief round his neck, a gaudy waistcoat, a tight surtout, and white kid gloves. He looked exceedingly pale, and dared hardly interchange a word with even Snap, who was just as irritable and excited as his senior partners. It was quickly known all over the court which was Titmouse! Mr. Aubrey scarcely ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the regatta—noon—the sun just overhead. The boats draw up in line on the sparkling river, before a tent gaudy with streamers. On the bank the mayor with his staff of office, gendarmes in yellow shoulder-belts, and a swarm of summer dresses, open parasols, and straw hats. Bang! the signal-gun is fired. The ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... fox in a fowl-run. For years the tradesmen of Wrykyn had jogged along in their comfortable way, each making his little profits, with no thought of competition or modern hustle. And now the enemy was at their doors. Many were the gloomy looks cast at the gaudy building as it grew like a mushroom. It was finished with incredible speed, and then advertisements began to flood the local papers. A special sheaf of bills was ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the sad remains."—PRIOR: in Johnson's Dict., w. Hover. "Constantia saw that the hand writing agreed with the contents of the letter."—ADDISON: ib., w. Hand. "They have put me in a silk night-gown, and a gaudy fool's cap."—ID.: ib., w. Nightgown. "Have you no more manners than to rail at Hocus, that has saved that clod-pated, numskull'd ninnyhammer of yours from ruin, and all his family?"—ARBUTHNOT: ib., w. Ninnyhammer. "A noble, that is, six, shillings and eightpence, is, and usually hath ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... streets. I found that there was a masquerade at the house of a lady, with whom I had been intimately acquainted. The clamours of the mob, eager to see the dresses of those who were alighting from their carriages, the gaudy and fantastic figures which I beheld by the light of the flambeaux, the noise and the bustle, put me in mind of various similar nights of my past life, and it seemed to me like a dream, or reminiscence of some former state of existence. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... the black, ragged, tangled locks that streamed from their confinement under a woollen cap, accorded but ill with other details which spoke of comparative wealth. The shirt, open at the throat, was fastened by a brooch of gaudy stones; and two pendent massive gold chains announced the foppery ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the farther end of it, stretches his slippered feet well out upon the threshold. It is near closing time now, and many of the dealers, with their wives and children, are sitting out in front of their shops, and, if not under their own vines and fig-trees, at least under their own gaudy flannels and "loud-patterned" cotton goods, which are waving overhead in the sluggish evening breeze. Nothing can be more suggestive of lazily industrious Jewry than this short, thick-set clothier, with the curved nose, and spiral, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... was the truth. The valley stood with its steep sides raying blue from myriad wild lilacs; olives and oranges sloped down to the flat floor, where cultivated ranches and gardens were so screened by eucalyptus and pepper trees, palm and live oak, myriads of roses of every color and variety, and gaudy plants gathered there from the entire girth of the tropical world, that to the traveler on the highway trees and flowers predominated. The greatest treasure of the valley was the enthusiastic stream of icy mountain water that wandered ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... All the windows had lattices of mashrebeeyeh work fitted to them, and all these lattices were closed. Against the walls, which were as dark in colour as the mashrebeeyeh work, there were a number of carved brackets, on which were placed various extremely common things—cheap and gaudy vases from Naples and Paris, two more Swiss cuckoo-clocks, a third clock with a blue and white china face—and a back that looked as if were made of brass, a musical-box, and a grotesque monster, like a dragon with a dog's head, in rough yellow and blue earthenware. There ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... steady, sober, industrious. They dress comfortably. They adapt themselves to the season,—neither shivering in winter, nor perspiring in summer. They do not toil after a "fashionable appearance." They expend more on warm stockings than on gold rings; and prefer healthy, good bedding, to gaudy window-curtains. Their chairs are solid, not gimcrack. They will bear sitting upon, though they may not ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... object of his passion was Mrs. Elizabeth Porter, a widow, who had children as old as himself. To ordinary spectators the lady appeared to be a short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy colors, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces which were not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To Johnson, however, whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was too weak to distinguish ceruse from natural bloom, and who had seldom or never ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... a Mulatto woman. He and Jacques got a fresh rig-out of clothes at once, and went down to the port to inquire about ships. Ralph was greatly amused at the aspect of the streets crowded with chattering negroes and negresses, in gaudy colors. The outlay of a few pence purchased an almost unlimited supply of fruit, and Ralph and his companion sat down on a log of wood by the wharves and enjoyed a feast of pine apples, bananas, and custard apples. Then they set about their work. In an hour both were suited. Jacques ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... I can contentedly live at the meanest rate, and think not myself above the lowest condition, that I am also above making an exchange of my honesty for all the riches of the Indies. When I come to be proud and vain of gaudy apparel, and outside finery, then (which I hope will never be) may I rest my principal good in such vain trinkets, and despise for them the more solid ornaments of a good fame, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... heaped upon your memories. If you, with united zeal and fortitude, oppose the torrent of oppression; if you feel the true fire of patriotism burning in your breasts; if you, from your souls, despise the most gaudy dress which slavery can wear; if you really prefer the lonely cottage, while blessed with liberty, to gilded palaces, surrounded with the ensigns of slavery you may have the fullest assurance that tyranny with her whole accursed train, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... you, and your taste requires the eastern magnificence in which you were born, because this flatters your vanity and reminds you, each time you gaze upon it, that you are wealthy and powerful—you commanded your architect to set aside simple grandeur, and to build this gaudy monstrosity, which is no more like the banqueting-hall of a Pericles than I or you, Cleopatra, in all our finery, are like the simply clad gods and goddesses of Phidias. I mean not to offend you, Cleopatra, but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and, but that saw the snowy cone of Pike's Peak rising over the crest of the cliff, I might have fancied myself in the Sierra Asturias, with a beautiful gitana standing before me. The soft fawn-skin tilma, with its gaudy broidering of beads and stained quills—the fringed skirt and buskined ankles—the striped Navajo blanket slung scarf-like over her shoulders— all presented a true gipsy appearance. The plumed circlet upon the head was more typical of Transatlantic ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... a hush came over the bunch. The imitation was so perfect that every fellow could imagine again the tail end of a gaudy circus parade and the ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... sudden I thought of what Serenus said about a woman twice my size dressed in gaudy red, forever takin' after folks—What would Josiah do if she took after him? And no doubt she would, for looked at through the magnifying lens of Absence and Anxiety he looked passingly beautiful. As I thought of her I knowed what I would do. Sez I, "I ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... stood. With its roses, and broad arched windows, its bell-turret, and roofs of slate, it looked as though painted in sepia against the blue of the sky. He fixed his eyes at last on the sombre depths of the Rue Montorgueil, where fragments of gaudy sign boards showed conspicuously, and on the corner of the Rue Montmartre, where there were balconies gleaming with letters of gold. And when he again glanced at the cross-roads, his gaze was solicited by other sign boards, on which such ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... sick and ashamed when I thought of this vain and gaudy scene and the object which I supposed it ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... mortar. The woman enters into the work with intelligent zest, and when completed the whole array of blended colours is beyond the criticism of the tribe. The back of an Indian's war-bonnet and war-shirt is always more gaudy and sumptuous than the front view and this because when Indians pass each other their salutation is brief and formal. They ride right on. But after the meeting they turn in the saddle and look back to take an inventory. The wealth of the Indian, his ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... Florence,[15] while yet she was confined within the ancient boundary which still contains the bell that summons her to prayer, abided in peace, for she was chaste and sober. She had no trinkets of chains then, no head-tires, no gaudy sandals, no girdles more worth looking at than the wearers. Fathers were not then afraid of having daughters, for fear they should want dowries too great, and husbands before their time. Families were ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... were engaged in thatching an old shed as shelter from the sun, and strewing the ground with a thick carpet of palm-leaves. Ere long, a cavalcade of between thirty and forty amazons - they all rode astride - came racing up the valley at full speed, their merry shouts proclaiming their approach. Gaudy strips of MARO were loosely folded around their legs for skirts. Their pretty little straw hats trimmed with ribbons, or their uncovered heads with their long hair streaming in the wind, confined only by a wreath of fresh orange flowers, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... heaped on the grass. Here and there high circles of lights threw a strong, steady glare upon the half-clad figure of a robust acrobat, or the thin, drooping shoulders of a less stalwart sister. Temporary ropes stretched from one pole to another, were laden with bright-coloured stockings, gaudy, spangled gowns, or dusty street clothes, discarded by the performers before slipping into their circus attire. There were no nails or hooks, so hats and veils were pinned to ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... after supper, and I shall send this letter by them. There are no new books, no new Plays, no new novels; nay, no new fashions. They have dragged old Mademoiselle Le Maure out of a retreat of thirty years, to sing at the Colis'ee, which is a most gaudy Ranelagh, gilt, painted, and becupided like an Opera, but not calculated to last as long as Mother Coliseum, being composed of chalk and pasteboard. Round it are courts of treillage, that serve for nothing, and behind it a canal, very like a horsepond, on which there are fireworks and justs. Altogether ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... would cast anchor about five miles from land. The news spread through Athens, and the whole city poured out at the gate of the Piraeus, down the roads, through the vineyards, the olive woods and plantations of fig-trees, towards the harbour. The noisy joy of the populace, the gaudy colours of their dress, the tumult of carriages and horses, the march of soldiers intermixed, the waving of banners and sound of martial music added to the high excitement of the scene; while round us reposed in solemn majesty the relics of antient time. To our right ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... truth or good. It is either ignorant or malicious. The malicious form of animal magnetism ultimates in moral idiocy. The truths of immortal mind sustain man; and they annihilate the fables and mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy pretensions, like silly moths, singe their own wings and fall into dust. In reality there is no mortal mind, and consequently no transference of mortal thought and will-power." Page five hundred two: "Spiritually followed, the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... performed by an artist, of no renown, and judging by the cool reception given her by the public, not a favourite, but she was not destitute of talent. She was a young, and not very pretty, black-eyed girl with an unequal and already overstrained voice. Her dress was ill-chosen and naively gaudy; her hair was hidden in a red net, her dress of faded blue satin was too tight for her, and thick Swedish gloves reached up to her sharp elbows. Indeed, how could she, the daughter of some Bergamese shepherd, know how Parisian dames aux camelias dress! And she did not understand how to ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... grandfather's detestation of the British redcoats must have descended to me. My childhood's antipathy to wearing red enabled me later to comprehend the feelings of a little niece, who hated everything pea green, because she had once heard the saying, "neat but not gaudy, as the devil said when he painted his tail pea green." So when a friend brought her a cravat of that color she threw it on the floor and burst into tears, saying, "I could not wear that, for it is the color of the devil's tail." I sympathized with the child and had it changed for ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... by winning a scholarship which sent him on to continue his triumphant career at Cambridge. He was, I remember, extremely well connected, and even when we were all little boys together we knew that his mother's brother was Lord Holdhurst, the great conservative politician. This gaudy relationship did him little good at school. On the contrary, it seemed rather a piquant thing to us to chevy him about the playground and hit him over the shins with a wicket. But it was another thing when he came out into ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... man cultivates his own peculiarities unhindered, Ben was considered a "character." He was a short, thick man of enormous physical strength, and he sported a beard like a quickset hedge, hence his nickname. He was clad in an entire suit of fur like an Eskimo, with a gaudy red worsted ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... brotherly love and Christian fellowship well; but drunkenness and gluttony, feasting and carousing I hate, especially now when the kirk of Scotland is going in dool-weed: therefore be sober. 1. Be sober in your apparel; I think there is too much of gaudy apparel among you. 2. Be sober in your conceits. 3. Be sober in your judgments. 4. Be sober in your self-conceiting. 5. Be sober in your speaking. 6. Be sober in your sleeping. 7. Be sober in your lawful recreations. ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... the pestilential hospital, quarrelled with Sheldon over the dead, and, in anger, set her own men to work building a new, and what she called a decent, hospital. She robbed the windows of their lawn and muslin curtains, replacing them with gaudy calico from the trade-store, and made herself several gowns. When she wrote out a list of goods and clothing for herself, to be sent down to Sydney by the first steamer, Sheldon wondered how long she had made ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... stir in the gipsy encampment. Two carts were standing at the entrance to the hollow, and upon these the gipsies were piling their household goods—iron pots and kettles, bundles of rags, some gaudy crockery, and a variety of miscellaneous articles whose use it ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... him, an official of the Peshwa, to demand tribute; he would have them destroyed. Beyond, not two kos away, were a thousand soldiers,—which was a gorgeous lie,—who if he but sent a messenger would come and behead the lot, would cast the sacred bones in the gaudy bags upon the dunghill of the ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... man of gigantic stature, dressed in coarse canvas breeches, and with a handkerchief of gaudy dye twisted about his head. His bold features wore the usual Indian expression of saturnine imperturbability, and he half sat, half reclined upon the log as motionless as a piece of carven bronze, staring at Landless with large, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... where the street gets into its most tangled traffic—there has hung for many years the painted signboard of a veterinary surgeon. Its artist was in the first flourish of youth. Old age had not yet chilled him when he mixed his gaudy colors. The surgeon's name is set up in modest letters, but the horse below flames with color. What a flaring nostril! What an eager eye! How arched the neck! Here is a wrath and speed unknown to the quadrupeds of this present Long ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... plenty jasper somewhere in the world— And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? —That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line— Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... of Lucera with its stones, even as Frederick quarried them out of the early Roman citadel beneath; but it is at least a harmonious desolation. There are no wire-fenced walks among the ruins, no feeding-booths and cheap reconstructions of draw-bridges and police-notices at every corner; no gaudy women scribbling to their friends in the "Residenzstadt" post cards illustrative of the "Burgruine," while their husbands perspire over mastodontic beer-jugs. There ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Egg of Night, on Chaos hurl'd, Burst, and disclosed the cradle of the world; 415 First from the gaping shell refulgent sprung IMMORTAL LOVE, his bow celestial strung;— O'er the wide waste his gaudy wings unfold, Beam his soft smiles, and wave his curls of gold;— With silver darts He pierced the kindling frame, 420 And lit with ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... topping the Kerreri ridge, the invaders caught their first glimpse of Omdurman. Already the gunboats were steaming up to the Mahdist capital to throw in their first shells. They speedily dismounted several guns, and one of the shells tore away a large portion of the gaudy cupola that covered the Mahdi's tomb. Apart from this portent, nothing of moment was done on that day; but it seems probable that the bombardment led the Khalifa to hazard an attack on the invaders in the desert on the side away from ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... of the realistic effects obtained. But these are the result usually of experiment, not of directed knowledge. Furthermore, little thought is given to the emotional value of light, shade, and color. The flood of light and the spot of light are varied with gaudy color-effects, but how seldom is it possible to distinguish a deep relation between the ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... sometimes so beautifully and artistically coloured? Seeing that many are coloured to escape danger, I can hardly attribute their bright colour in other cases to mere physical conditions. Bates says the most gaudy caterpillar he ever saw in Amazonia (of a Sphinx) was conspicuous at the distance of yards from its black and red colouring whilst feeding on large green leaves. If anyone objected to male butterflies having been made beautiful by sexual selection, and asked why should they not have been ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... subscription lists, which show that the system is managed in the most efficient manner. Those who can look back fifteen and twenty years, will remember that our country was literally flooded with the bulletin boards of lotteries, printed in the most gaudy and attractive colors, showing a brilliant schedule of prizes, and pledging almost certain wealth to all who would venture their money on the "grand scheme." They will also call to mind how many a victim there was to this deceptive and depraved system of legal ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... I had squandered as fast as I obtained it, and had realised a considerable sum. I could not help comparing myself to a chrysalis previous to its transformation. I had before been a caterpillar, I was now all ready to burst my confinement, and flit about as a gaudy butterfly. Another week I continued my prudent conduct, at the end of which I was admitted to my superior, in whose hands I placed a sum of money which I could very conveniently spare, and received his ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... nicer resources of recent art could not render more genuinely marine; fountains disclosed the most bewitching of Naiads; and Druidical oaks, expanding, surrendered the imprisoned Hamadryad to the air of heaven. Fairies and Elves, Satyrs and Forsters, Centaurs and Lapithae, played their parts in these gaudy spectacles with every conventional requirement of shape, costume, and behavior point-de-vice, and were supplied by the poet, to whom the letter-press of the show had been confided, with language and a plot, both ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... that the present education which was given them, and their diligence in learning, fitted them for such an employment. And as for the women, whenever they saw them adorned with their mother's clothes, they threatened, that instead of their present gaudy apparel, they should be clothed in sackcloth, and confined so closely that they should not see the light of the sun. These stories were presently carried by Salome to the king, who was troubled to hear them, and endeavored ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Let us fly, Fiesco! let us with scorn reject these gaudy nothings, and pass our future days only in the retreats of love! (She presses him to her breast with rapture.) Our souls, serene as the unclouded sky, shall never more be blackened by the poisonous breath of sorrow; our lives shall flow harmoniously ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... public, who are kept at a distance by a rope fence. At last, from the main inclosure the procession emerges for the purpose of whetting and astonishing the curiosity of the public to a greater extent. The procession is headed by a gaudy band-wagon, drawn by six prancing horses with fine harness, and feathers on their heads. The riders on the saddles are in the costume of French postilions. On the other wagons come cages of lions, and in every cage is seated a lady with an olive branch in her ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... man liberated from prison; but I have reason to believe that the people are in general amazingly disappointed in my pulpit exercises. They expected great things—things gaudy, stately, and speculative,—and I gave them the simplest and most practical things I can find in the Bible, and that in the plainest way. You would be amused at the sayings of some of the plain Methodist people; they think that it is the "real pure Gospel, but they did not expect ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... were very fond of bright colors. Their dresses did not amount to much. They wore a short skirt and rebosa. Their head-dress covered their hair and came together in front under the chin and hung to the belt. What dress she wore must be very bright and gaudy and I have known a pretty Mexican girl with about $2.50 worth of dress on come in and purchase an $8.00 pair of shoes. If she wanted an extra nice pair of shoes she said she wanted a pair of shoes "made out of Spanish leather." ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... critic says that Jerusalem is disappointing he generally means that the popular worship there is weak and degraded, and especially that the religious art is gaudy and grotesque. In so far as there is any kind of truth in this, it is still true that the critic seldom sees the whole truth. What is wrong with the critic is that he does not criticise himself. He does not honestly ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... when a person is asked to give an opinion of something which is considered vulgar—that a gaudy article of dress will look well in a country ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... in the comic operas to ours is, they have no refinement or colours or subtleties to please the eye—all is gaudy and blatant. The "Merry Widow," for instance, could make one weep, it is so vulgar and changed, especially the end. But if the people prefer it like that the managers are quite right to let ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... this they follow or lead what is called the town, to furnish out these gaudy and pompous entertainments, must collect so much more from the public. It was but just before the breaking out of hostilities, that they levied for themselves the very tax which, at the close of the American war, they represented ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in order also, to show the rich furniture of the room. All poets do not revel in such gaudy trappings as I do, but I cannot write well in a bare and ill-furnished room. In these apartments there is also a window which does not show in the engraving. I have tried over and over again to write a poem in a room that had no window in it, but I cannot say that I ever wrote one under ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... came a dashy checked suit. Above it was a large Panama hat with a gaudy ribbon. A red necktie was also visible, even at a considerable distance. Between the hat and the necktie a face several degrees darker in color than the tie came into view as the distance lessened. It was Mr. Montgomery Hicks, whose ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... replied Fevrier, and striking another match he held up what he had found, dirty and crumpled, in a corner of the shop. It was a little tricolour flag of painted linen upon a bamboo stick, a child's cheap and gaudy toy. But Fevrier held it up solemnly, and of the ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... sweetheart," he cried, "and the rose you wear on your heart and—and all these rings that mar your sweet, white hand with their gaudy reds and blues. Leave only mine to prove that you are ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... Starry Campion, whose protruding stamens and fringed petals give it a certain fleeciness, are dainty enough for spring; by midsummer we expect plants of ranker growth and more gaudy flowers. To save the nectar in each deep tube for the moths and butterflies which cross-fertilize all this tribe of night and day blossoms, most of them—and the campions are notorious examples—spread their calices, and some their pedicels as well, with a sticky substance to ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... just before moon-set she was laid away so that her funeral might cast no sadness on the coming visitors. On the grave, the silent women of the household placed the treasures that had been dear to the heart of the White Chief's favorite: a string of cheap beads, a scarlet shawl, gaudy painted cup and two dead pigeons, progenitors of the flock that now cooed and fluttered in and out of the high wire enclosure back of ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... going into a large, a spacious, and a splendid Dome thro' the Conveyance of a narrow and obscure Entry. A Glare of Light suddenly breaks upon you beyond what the Avenue at first promis'd: and a thousand Beauties of Genius and Character, like so many gaudy Apartments pouring at once upon the Eye, diffuse and throw themselves out to the Mind. The Prospect is too wide to come within the Compass of a single View: 'tis a gay Confusion of pleasing Objects, too various to be enjoyed but in a general Admiration; and they ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... nearly as much as he admired himself if they had seen him setting off on horseback with his hand on his hip and his pockets full of letters and orders, at the head of quite a procession of huge white cart-horses with pack-saddles, and big brown native men with nothing on but gaudy kilts. Mighty well he managed all his commissions; and those who saw him ordering and eating his single-handed luncheon in the queer little Chinese restaurant on the beach declare he looked as if the place, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her royal brother. A man would receive quicker reward for inventing an amusement or a gaudy costume for the king than by winning him a battle. Later in life the high road to his favor was in ridding him of his wife and helping him to a new one—a dangerous way though, as Wolsey found to his sorrow when he sank his glory in poor ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... cloth bundles; while the men, moving about with violent gesticulations and loud exclamations, employ themselves in their well-known and allotted tasks. By degrees graceful forms arise, and richly-tinted pavilions, with gilded summits, glitter in the sunbeams, while gaudy banners flutter in the air. Long lines of canvas sheets appear, and spacious enclosures formed of kanauts secure the utmost privacy to the dwellers of the populous camp; while the elephants, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... the velvet carpets. There was laughter without joy—there was frivolity without merriment—there was the surface of enjoyment and the substance of woe, for beneath those painted cheeks was the pallor of despair and broken health, and beneath those whitened bosoms, half veiled with gaudy silks, were hearts that were aching with remorse, or, yet more unhappy, benumbed and ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... contribution towards the expenses of some music in the Saint's honour, so we gave him whatever it may have been, and his messenger departed: well satisfied. At six o'clock in the evening we went to the church—close at hand—a very gaudy place, hung all over with festoons and bright draperies, and filled, from the altar to the main door, with women, all seated. They wear no bonnets here, simply a long white veil—the 'mezzero;' and it was the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... other side of the street, upstairs in his dusty real estate office, with tin placards of insurance companies on the wall, and gaudy calendars tacked everywhere, Silas Buckner stands at the window counting the liars and scoundrels, and double-dealers and villains, and thieves and swindlers who pass. Since Silas was defeated for Register of Deeds he has become a pessimist. He has soured on the town, and when he ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... and how the Prince would never ride any other but himself when hunting or riding in the royal processions. 'Only think of the come-down,' he used to add, 'from having a Prince of the royal blood on your back to a common circus rider in gaudy skirts! Then my blankets and trappings were of velvet, studded with real precious stones. Now they are velveteen with glass to imitate the precious jewels. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! That I should ever ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... crowd of people was pouring through the gate of the enclosure. Fully four thousand people were already on the grounds; and a gaudy array of "side shows" at once attracted our attention. There were counters and carts for cider, gingerbread and confectionery. Loud-voiced auctioneers were selling "patent medicines" and knickknacks ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... wine. With his arms folded, and with one bandaged leg deposited upon the table, he seemed to think himself entitled to some consideration. He evidently prided himself much upon every inch of his personal appearance, but took more especial delight in calling attention to his gaudy-colored surtout. This, to say the truth, must have cost him no little money, and was made to fit him exceedingly well—being fashioned from one of the curiously embroidered silken covers appertaining to those glorious escutcheons which, in England and elsewhere, are customarily hung up, in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... up, for I had no faith in the influence of Rufus Blight, whom I had always associated with packages of tea and prizes. Penelope grown, I feared, might have become fat and florid, might speak with a twang and wear gaudy hats and gowns. My life in New York, even though I was but a quiet observer, had made me critical of women, and when I could brood unhappily over Gladys Todd's stray wisps of hair I could have little sympathy with the type of the imaginary Penelope Blight. But this morning, when the far-borne ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... which as uniformly refines, elevates, and arrays with new beauty and power. If we would reach the highest nobleness possible to us, we must stand with Esther at the gate, and not envy or imitate Ahasuerus on his gaudy throne. 'He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for My sake and the gospel's, the same ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the birth of the Republic of Labour. The story was illustrated by a drawing showing McGregor leading a vast horde of men across an open plain toward a city whose tall chimneys belched forth clouds of smoke. Beside McGregor in the picture and arrayed in a gaudy uniform was Mosby the ex-army officer. In the article he was called the war lord of "The secret republic growing up within a ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... Wisconsin, and Verona was our little village; but they both served the soul of youth as well as the real places would have done, and were as really Italian as anything else in the situation was really this or that. Heaven knows what gaudy sentimental parade we made in our borrowed plumes, but if the travesty had kept itself to the written word it would have been all well enough. My misfortune was to carry it into print when I began to write a story, in the Ik Marvel manner, or rather to compose ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... form of the roof, however, is always excessively flat, so as never to let it intrude upon the eye; and the consequence is, that, while an English village, seen at a distance, appears all red roof, the Italian is all white wall; and therefore, though always bright, is never gaudy. We have in these roofs an excellent example of what should always be kept in mind, that everything will be found beautiful, which climate or situation render useful. The strong and constant heat ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... temples of Egypt must have filled even the rude people with a certain awe and wonder, even as the majestic cathedrals of mediaeval Europe, with their imposing pomps, stimulated the poetic conceptions of the Gothic nations. Art is popular. The rude savage admires a gaudy picture even as the cultivated Leo X. or Cardinal Mazarini bent in admiration before the great creations of Raphael or Domenichino. Art appeals to the senses as well as to the intellect and the heart, and is capable of inspiring the passions as well as the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... melancholy, decayed look, being generally very old, and few of the owners being able to spend much in or on them. A few that look tolerably fresh, are found to be occupied by the post, the customs, or some other office, the insignia of which figure in gaudy colouring over the principal entrance. In connection with most of the palaces, the name of some architect of reputation is mentioned. They are wholly of marble; and, in many cases, round stones of a precious kind, or pieces ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... the ingathering of the harvest, a host of customs have been kept up from time immemorial, which have been duly noticed by Brand, while towards the close of the month we are reminded of St. Bartholomew's Day by the gaudy sunflower, which has been nicknamed St. Bartholomew's star, the term "star" having been often used "as an emblematical representation of brilliant virtues or any sign of admiration." It is, too, suggested by Archdeacon Hare that the filbert may owe its name to St. Philbert, whose festival ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... was the winter wild While the Heavenly Child All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies. Nature in awe of Him Had doffed her gaudy trim With her great Master so ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... the orchard and up on the porch. Barby was wearing an ornamental plastic head band, not too gaudy for daytime wear, but not too simple for anything dressy. She had arranged her hair so the gadget was hardly noticeable. A wave of smooth blond hair hid the little ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... your handkerchief," went on Andy. "Give us a whiff," and before the dude could stop him the younger Racer boy had snatched it from his pocket. "Whew! Yes, this is it!" he cried, holding his nose as he handed the gaudy linen back. "How did it happen, Chet? Did you drop it somewhere? It's awful!" and he pretended to stagger back. "Better ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... good-natured expression; one's first impression of him is apt to be less flattering to his head than to his heart. He is a person, however, that improves with acquaintance, and is probably more intelligent than he looks. He seems to be living here in a very plain and unpretentious manner; no gaudy stained glass, no tinsel, no mirror-work, no vain gew-gaws of any description impart a cheap and garish glitter to the place; no gorgeous apparel bedecks his ample proportions. Clad in the ordinary ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... ascended the hill of Addouna to the barracks. The cafes had closed their doors to the drinkers and domino players. The lounging Arab boys had deserted the sandy Place de la Marine. In their small and dusky bazaars the Israelites had reckoned up the takings of the day, and curled themselves up in gaudy quilts on their low divans to rest. Only two or three gendarmes were still about, and a few French and Spaniards at the Port, where, moored against the wharf, lay the steamer Le General Bertrand, in which Domini had ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... death the inhalation of deity. He breathes out, and the Universe flames forth with all her wings—her suns and clusters of suns—down to her mote-like earth, the butterfly of space, trimmed with its gaudy seasons, and nourishing on its back the ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... strangers saw nothing on each side of the street but blank houses and closed doors. But when they had passed, the curtains were parted, the doors were ajar again, and curious eyes looked after the big mailed figures, the gaudy cloaks, and the enormous cross-hilted swords of the Frenchmen. Of the poorer people in the streets and those whose business kept them abroad on that day, the men scowled resentfully at the intruders and the women drew their veils closely across their ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... Opera season opened to Mrs. Hawley-Crowles another avenue for her astonishing social activities. With rare shrewdness she had contrived to outwit Mrs. Ames and secure the center box in the "golden horseshoe" at the Metropolitan. There, like a gaudy garden spider in its glittering web, she sat on the opening night, with her rapt protegee at her side, and sent her insolent challenge broadcast. Multimillionaires and their haughty, full-toileted dames were ranged on either side of her, brewers and packers, distillers ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... further end of the Museum, reached by three steps, was a gaudy throne chair of solid gold and silver enamelled. The throne had amphoras at the sides and a sunflower in diamonds behind it. The seat was of red brocade, and the chair had very small arms. It rested on a six-legged platform with two supports ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... vast accumulations of knowledge perfectly fresh; and I notice in him that, instead of growing more staid and commonplace in his style as he increased in years, he grew more vigorous, until he actually slid into the excess of gaudy redundancy. I am sorry that his prose ever became Asiatic in its splendour; but even that fact shows how steadfast effort may prevent a man from writing away his originality and his freshness of manner. Observe the sad results of an antagonistic proceeding for even the mightiest of brains. Sir ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... dew, their song of the chaffinch and their rapturous music of the thrush. Appreciation is heightened by contrast; and the buttercup—England's gift to her little children—is pronounced far brighter than the "gaudy melon-flower" which the exiled Englishman has at ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... from below; By him the Archer,[203] with his bended bow; Near him the Bird, with gaudy feathers spread; And the fierce ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... coral blocks, and congregate beneath detached masses and loose stones. In these fervid and fecund waters life is real, life is earnest. Here, are elaborately armoured crayfish (PALINURUS ORNATUS), upon which the most gaudy colours are lavished; grotesque crabs, fish brilliant in hue as humming-birds. Life, darting and dashing, active and alert, crawling and slithering, slow and stationary, swarms ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... feeling upon him that if he refused to make another trial he would either be laughed at or looked upon as a contemptible coward, he took the long rod, with the line sufficiently drawn from the reel to allow the gaudy fly to hang down by ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... recreations of the populace. The streets themselves afforded a quaint and curious spectacle, for in promiscuous and gay confusion were seen the splendid apparel of the noble, and the modest garb of the peasant; the shining armour and waving plumes of the Christian warrior, and the gaudy fantastic habiliments of the Moslem. With them appeared the solemn and lugubrious vestments of the ecclesiastical dignitaries, and the coarse habit and shaven crown of ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... found the girl Lucretia a mere walking vanity bag: idle, shiftless, eager for compliments, and without two ideas in her vain little head. "Whoever is at the bottom of the affair, she isn't," was his mental comment. "She is just a gadfly, just a gaudy, useless insect, born without a sting, or the spirit to use ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... careless of where her smiles might fall. For her the immodest theatrical poster drooped in the windows of saloons, or caught a transient hold upon the hoardings of uncompleted buildings; brazen blare and gaudy placards (disgusting rather than indecent) invited the passer-by into cheap museums and music-halls; all the unclassifiable riff-raff that is spawned by a great city leered from corners, or slouched along ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... that does not owe its origin, directly or indirectly, to these men. Cheap and tawdry enough were the commodities bartered for these wonderful beaver and otter pelts—ribbons and gewgaws, looking-glasses and combs, blankets and shawls of gaudy color. But scissors and knives, gunpowder and shot, tobacco and whiskey, went also in the traders' packs, though traffic in fire-water was forbidden. These goods, upon arrival at Mackinac, were sent out by canoes and bateaux to the different ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... soul, pushed and jostled; past rows of gaudy tents and shows, each with its platform before it, where men and women, in outlandish livery and spangled tights, danced and sang, cracked broad jokes, beat drums, blew horns, or strove to out-roar each other in crying up their respective wares and wonders. One in especial drew my ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... for the time being is most in fashion or request. When he salutes a friend he pulls off his hat, as women do their vizard-masks. His ribbons are of the true complexion of his mind, a kind of painted cloud or gaudy rainbow, that has no colour of itself but what it borrows from reflection. He is as tender of his clothes as a coward is of his flesh, and as loth to have them disordered. His bravery is all his happiness, and, like Atlas, he carries his heaven on ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... of her father and her mother, who sought her love. Yet, strangely enough, her heart was filled not with tears, but with contempt and icy anger. She did not shrink away from him as he came towards her in his gaudy clothes, with an assumed air of insolent confidence, but sat pale and proud, as she had sat at Umgugundhlovu, when the Zulus brought their causes before her ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... the Nieuwe Kerk's many bells are rippling a silver tune over the old roofs and gables; who has drunk his beer full opposite the stadhuis at Leyden, and seen Haarlem's huge church across magnificent miles of gaudy tulips, and watched from a brown-sailed boat on the Zuider Zee a buoy on the horizon grow into the water-gate of Hoorn; who knows his Gouda and Bois-le-duc and Alkmaar and Kampen and Utrecht: this man does ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... guess it is," was the rather doubtful response, for Poly, in her swift survey of the narrow, gaudy parlor, discerned little ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... diversified patch of colour. The hue of their faces ranged from the clear olive of the pure-blood Spaniards down through the yellow and brown shades of the Mestizos to the coal-black Carib and the Jamaica Negro. Scattered among them were little groups of Indians with faces like stone idols, wrapped in gaudy fibre-woven blankets—Indians down from the mountain states of Zamora and Los Andes and Miranda to trade their gold ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... his room was open; he went in. A gnarled old woman sat on the edge of the bed; a female consoler was on either side. At the sight of Suvaroff the mourner rose and stood trembling before him, rolling a gaudy handkerchief into ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... I hate the place; I hate it—a nasty, gaudy, vulgar place, in a vulgar suburb, where nothing but money-grubbing is thought of from morning, noon, till night; how much percentage can be got out of everything; cut down the salaries of the employees; ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... moment a thin, tense-faced Hebrew girl of eighteen or nineteen came rushing in, carrying a wire basket full of typewritten sheets. She was as gaunt as a plucked spring chicken, and her cheap, gaudy clothes might have been thrown on her. She looked as if she were running to catch a train and in mortal dread of missing it. While Miss Devine examined the pages in the basket, Becky stood with her ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... deluding joyes, The brood of folly without father bred, How little you bested, Or fill the fixed mind with all your toyes; Dwell in som idle brain And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the Sun Beams, Or likest hovering dreams The fickle Pensioners of Morpheus train. 10 But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy, Hail divinest ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... person's imitation, for the poorest may thus turn their necessary expenses into virtuous actions. In this they excel others, as much as the bee does the common butterfly; they both feed on the same flowers, but while the butterfly only gains a transient subsistence and flies and flutters in all its gaudy pride, the bee lays up a precious store for its future well-being, and may brave all the rigours of winter. Man, indeed, often encroaches on the labours of the bee and disappoints it of its reasonable hope; but no one without ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... by the wayside,—where the train waited in a kind of moist dejection to be admitted, and to look dispiritedly after the passing diligence. The alert gentleman heard from what the conductor gathered from an old woman wrapped in a many-colored gaudy-patterned scarf of chintz, which, wet through, covered her head and shoulders clingingly, that this was the funeral of a poor peasant-man and his wife, who had both died suddenly and both on the same day. The old woman held ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... expression for celestial ecstasy; and to delineate the joy of heaven upon those multitudes of domes and semi-domes was a point of religious etiquette. False lights, dubious foreshortenings, shallow colourings, ill-studied forms, and motiveless agitation suited the taste that cared for gaudy brightness and sensational effects. The painters, for their part, found it convenient to adopt a mannerism that enabled them to conceal the difficult parts of the figure in feather beds of vapour, requiring neither effort ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Fresh Praise is try'd till Madness fires his Mind, The Waves he lashes, and enchains the Wind; New Pow'rs are claim'd, new Pow'rs are still bestow'd, Till rude Resistance lops the spreading God; The daring Greeks deride the Martial Shew, And heap their Vallies with the gaudy Foe; Th' insulted Sea with humbler Thoughts he gains, A single Skiff to speed his Flight remains; Th' incumber'd Oar scarce leaves the dreaded Coast Through purple Billows and a floating Host. ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... and much according to my expectations, the evening proved. There were many people all smart and gaudy, and so pert and low-bred, that I could hardly endure being amongst them; but the party to which, unfortunately, I belonged, seemed all ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... seen a pillar and a red velvet curtain, and (distantly) a fine storm of clouds and lightning. Never was a respectable old sailorman so misrepresented; but all his descendants except one regarded this gaudy daub with almost religious veneration. Every family has its one great man; the admiral was ours. His was the distinction of being the only Pendarves who had ever managed to amass a fortune. It had ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... shining on objects quite new, and (although you have made the voyage a dozen times,) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you occupy a very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red "percale;" the windows are smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins; there are little mean strips of carpet about the tiled floor of the room, and yet all seems as gay and as comfortable as may be—the sun shines brighter than you have seen ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... least suspect it. When a poor girl who owns but one jewel on earth—the priceless one that adorns and ennobles her lowliness—barters that treasure away for the cheap glitter of polished stones or the rustling sweep of gaudy silk, is not the basilisk gleam of the Mephistophelean eye visible in the sparkling of those gewgaws and the sheen of that stuff? When your friend Asmodeus, honest in his modest self-respect, is most ignominiously ignored by the stylish Mrs. Money,—her father ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the ground, Swift o'er the land the dismal rumour flies, And publick mournings pacify the skies; The laureate tribe in venal verse relate, How virtue wars with persecuting fate; [ff]With well-feign'd gratitude the pension'd band Refund the plunder of the beggar'd land. See! while he builds, the gaudy vassals come, And crowd with sudden wealth the rising dome; The price of boroughs and of souls restore; And raise his treasures higher than before. Now bless'd with all the baubles of the great, The polish'd marble and the shining plate, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... beauteous damsels whose smiles they were ambitious to deserve. True it is, their merits would make but a very inconsiderable impression upon the heart of a modern fair; they neither drove their curricles nor sported their tandems, for as yet those gaudy vehicles were not even dreamt of; neither did they distinguish themselves by their brilliancy at the table, and their consequent rencontres with watchmen, for our forefathers were of too pacific a disposition to need those guardians of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... according to the genuine and natural importance of words, will appear to be inconsistencies and absurdities.' Nor would he have gone very far astray had he put philosophy and politics under the same category. Strip the gaudy dress and trappings from an expression, and it will have a most marked result. Analysis is a terrible humiliation to your mysticism and your grandiloquence—and an awful bore to those who depend for effect on either. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... gown, nor a flashy waist with aurora borealis sleeves. There was not a curl paper, nor even a threat of crinoline. Raiment was an after thought, the mask of a tainted soul, born of original sin. Beauty was unmarred by gaudy rags; Eve was dressed in sunshine, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... process of transformation in detail, it will be sufficient to say that the next twenty minutes wrought a decided change in the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. Felix Montgomery. The former was arrayed in a suit of canonical black, not of the latest cut. A white neckcloth was substituted for the more gaudy article worn by the jeweler from Syracuse, and a pair of silver-bowed spectacles, composed of plain glass, lent a scholarly air to his face. His hair was combed behind his ears, and, so far as appearance went, he quite looked the character of a clergyman from ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... The castle glittered with gaudy furniture; sweet music was heard in every room; the whole company, who were all of the most beautiful forms that could be conceived, strove who should be most obliging to this their new guest. They omitted nothing that could amuse and delight the senses. And ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... officer, who was foolish enough to imagine he loved me, foolish enough to propose every three days for the last three years and foolish enough to bore me until in self-defense I escaped from his clutches. As for myself, at least I am not the young woman who can stand staying in that gaudy theatrical hotel for another day longer. I have done so many bold, unmaidenly things that you may believe it easy ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... finished—we ran short of trimming. I can't go out, because the Simons are coming in to afternoon tea; so you just hurry and go over to Balding's to match it. I got it there, and they had plenty. Here's a bit." She held out a fragment of gaudy sequin trimming. "I think you could finish the dress without me getting in the dressmaker again—she's that run after she makes a ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... clothes made of deer-skin; cut much in the same fashion as the garments worn by Jasper Derry. The women wore short gowns, also made of leather, and leggings of the same material; but it was noticeable that the women had leggings more ornamented with gay beads than those of the men, and they wore gaudy kerchiefs ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... flaming preface for your third volume. I see every day new musical publications advertised; but what are they? Gaudy, hunted butterflies of a day, and then vanish for ever: but your work will outlive the momentary neglects of idle fashion, and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... by the highway of the Lake. The door was open, and we walked in. There was no light burning on the altar, nor any water in the stone basin by the door. But there was all the apparatus of worship—the gaudy toyshop above the grand altar, the tiny side chapels, with their pictures of the dying Saviour, and the confessional box, now thick with dust, and echoless of sob of penitent or counsel of confessor. It was evidently a poorly endowed chapel, the tinsel adornments being of the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... ceremonies affected me, like all others of that faith, as tedious and empty. Each of the cardinals, as he entered the chapel, blew a sonorous nose; and was received standing by his brother prelates—a grotesque company of old-womanish old men in gaudy gowns. One of the last to come was Antonelli, who has the very wickedest face in the world. He sat with his eyes fastened upon his book, but obviously open at every pore to all that went on about him. As he passed out he ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... thoroughly aware of the trials her nature was enduring, and his power of sympathetic insight enabled him to read upon her countenance, in her tones, precisely what Lilian imagined she could conceal. Amid surroundings such as those of the newly furnished house, she seemed to him a priceless gem in a gaudy setting; he felt (and with justice) that the little drawing-room at Clapham, which spoke in so many details of her own taste, was a much more suitable home for her. What could be said of the man who had thus ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... concealed by a coarse straw hat, untrimmed save for some gaudy flowers embroidered on the ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... as the other. The circumstantial difference of the one getting only his bread and wages, the second a plentiful, and the third a superfluous estate, is no more intrinsical to this matter than the difference between a plain, a rich and gaudy livery. I do not say that he who sells his whole time and his own will for one hundred thousand is not a wiser merchant than he who does it for one hundred pounds; but I will swear they are both merchants, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... at bottom, are almost identical with those of the artisans. He, too, has his chariot races, his castaways, his carnivals of blood in the arena. He, too, takes us through shipwrecks, revolutions, assassinations, gaudy heroisms, abominable treacheries. But always he illuminates the nude and amazing event with shafts of light which reveal not only the last detail of its workings, but also the complex of origins and inducements behind it. Always, he throws about it a probability which, in the end, becomes ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... admitted to myself that from a woman who wilfully assumed such a name little could be hoped. Still, I would like to see her off the stage...without all those gaudy fripperies and gewgaws...merely from curiosity.... Then too, they said those actresses were ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... their glory yield To crown the Votary of Love and Joy, Misfortune's Victim hails, with many a sigh, Thee, scarlet POPPY of the pathless field, Gaudy, yet wild and lone; no leaf to shield Thy flaccid vest, that, as the gale blows high, Flaps, and alternate folds around thy head.— So stands in the long grass a love-craz'd Maid, Smiling aghast; while stream to every wind Her gairish ribbons, smear'd with dust and rain; But brain-sick ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... Moussa Isa during the second day of his own starvation, which was the third of that of his companions and the fourth of Moussa's. The Leading Gentleman, who was as rich as he was ragged and dirty, wore a very beautiful knife, which (though it reposed in a gaudy sheath of yellow, green and blue beads, fringed with a dependent filigree, or lace work, of similar beads with tassels of cowrie-shells) hailed from Damascus and had a handle of ivory and gold, and an inlaid blade on which were inscribed ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... which was all over durt, They did give him clean holland, this was no great hurt: On a bed of soft down, like a lord of renown, They did lay him to sleep the drink out of his crown. In the morning when day, then admiring[FN484] he lay, For to see the rich chamber both gaudy and gay. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... ago in St. Paul's Cathedral. It is a great pity that any attempt should be made to imitate this seemingly lost art. Far better to leave the walls of our churches to the colouring that time gives than to wash or paint them with the tints that seem to be inevitably either gaudy or dismal. ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... gathered on the branches above the heads of the sleepers, gazing down curiously and with many an inquiring twitter, as if asking whether this boy was one who would do them a mischief if it lay in his power, and the butterflies flaunted their gaudy wings within an inch of Snip's eyes; but the slumber was ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... in the quaintness of which lurks I know not what—something mysterious: dragons, emblems, symbolical figures. The sky is too glaring; the light crude, implacable; never has this old town of Nagasaki appeared to me so old, so worm-eaten, so bald, notwithstanding all its veneer of new papers and gaudy paintings. These little wooden houses, of such marvellous cleanly whiteness inside, are black outside, timeworn, disjointed and grimacing. When one looks closely, this grimace is to be found everywhere: in the hideous masks laughing in the shop-fronts ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... and a feeling that helps us to look on our place in the world with more knowledge and less apprehension—a feeling blent with some wisdom, from the numberless things it has learned? When the hour for rest has sounded—as it must sound every night and at every moment of solitude—when the gaudy vestments of love, and glory, and power fall helplessly round us; what is it we can take with us as we seek refuge within ourselves, where the happiness of each day is measured by the knowledge the day has brought us, by the ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... movement, at least, in this market; often the familiar story-tellers, surrounded by a circle of charmed listeners; sometimes, again, a group of Soudanese from Khordofan or Bournu, who parade a black he-goat, bedizened with gaudy rags because devoted to death; they will slay him in due course at some shrine; but not just now, because there is still money to be made out of his ludicrous appearance, with an incidental dance or song on their own part. Vaguely perturbing, these negro melodies and ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... day. All was dark when I reached the tavern. I looked round for the caravans. They were nowhere to be seen. All I could see, beside one or two miserable wagons, was a big cage from which, as I drew near, came the cry of a wild beast. The beautiful gaudy colored caravans belonging to ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... windows are perhaps the most characteristic features of the houses. The churches, though large, are seldom beautiful specimens of architecture; and the interior is in general extremely ornate, and decorated with gaudy gilding and pictures, and images of CHRIST and saints, disgustingly painted. The streets, wide or narrow, would appear to us somewhat gloomy and prison-like; and paint is a thing scarcely known on the exterior or perhaps interior of an ordinary house. The air of the interior of the common houses ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... shrieked compliments as the clothing of the Agha's daughter was delicately removed by the beaming negresses; and gifts of gold-spangled bonbons, wonderfully iced cakes, crystallized fruit, flowers, gilded bottles of concentrated perfume, mother-o'-pearl and tortoise boxes, gaudy silk handkerchiefs made in Paris for Algerian markets, and little silver fetiches were presented to the bride. She thanked the givers charmingly, though in a manner so subdued and with a face so grave that the visitors ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... the loose behaviour of married women; with other fictitious subjects, hackneyed in the schools, and seldom or never heard of in our courts of justice. These imaginary questions are treated with gaudy flourishes, and all the tumor of unnatural language. But after all this mighty parade, call these striplings from their schools of rhetoric, into the presence of the judges, and to the real business of the ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... dark cedars with loose mossy tresses, White powdered dog-trees, and stiff hollies flaunting Gaudy as rustics in their May-day dresses, Blue pelloret from purple leaves upslanting A modest gaze, like eyes of a young maiden Shining beneath dropt lids the evening of ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... steppes, whither or why we know not, but that the All-Father had sent them forth. And behind us [he makes them say] the rosy snow-peaks died into ghastly grey, lower and lower, as every evening came; and before us the plains spread infinite, with gleaming salt-lakes, and ever-fresh tribes of gaudy flowers. Behind us, dark: lines of living beings streamed down the mountain slopes; around us, dark lines crawled along the plains—westward, westward ever. Who could stand against us? We met the wild asses on the steppe, ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... symptom of grass having grown there in more favoured times when rain had fallen, a few puddles of water in the bed of the nullah, and one flock of sheep to keep the place alive. Gazelles were numerous, and many small birds in gaudy plumage flitted about the trees, amongst which the most beautiful was the Lamprotornis superba, a kind of Maina, called by the Somali Lhimber-load (the cowbird), because it follows ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... among many tribes of Indians to use as little clothing as possible when engaged in dancing, either of a social or ceremonial nature, the Ojibwa, on the contrary, vie with one another in the attempt to appear in the most costly and gaudy dress attainable. The Ojibwa Mid[-e] priests, take particular pride in their appearance when attending ceremonies of the Mid[-e] Society, and seldom fail to impress this fact upon visitors, as some of the Dakotan tribes, who have adopted similar medicine ceremonies ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... vain for me the flow'rets rise, And boast their gaudy pride, While here beneath the northern skies I ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... apparently at some giggling girls, who seemed to be eyeing her clothes. And the latter were indeed remarkable enough—a very loose skirt of white satin, on which all the animals of Noah's Ark were embroidered in gaudy colors; a jacket of gold cloth, like a cuirass, with sleeves of red velvet, yellow slashed; a very high cap on her head, with a mighty ruff of stiff white linen around her neck, which also had around it a silver chain hung with all kinds of coins, cameos, and curiosities, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... use they employ every shade, color and tint they can secure. The Basey mats are distinguished by the multitude of colors used. In general it may be stated that the chief criticism of this product is the gaudy effect produced by the colors used. In some cases the colors are well toned and harmoniously combined, but the majority of the mats produced contain vivid colors which are not all harmonious. Through the schools, efforts have been made to reduce the number of colors and to modify the gaudy ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... toward them with a callow youth near her own age. Her dress was some soft, pale blue material that was neither gaudy nor fantastical. But it was far from modest. Lane had to echo Blair's eulogy of this young specimen of the new America. She simply verified and stabilized the assertion that physically the newer generations of girls were markedly more beautiful ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... he wore a huge pair of goggles; and royalty in goggles suggested some ludicrous ideas. But it was in the adornment of the fair person of his dark-complexioned spouse that the tailors of the fleet had evinced the gaiety of their national taste. She was habited in a gaudy tissue of scarlet cloth, trimmed with yellow silk, which, descending a little below the knees, exposed to view her bare legs, embellished with spiral tattooing, and somewhat resembling two miniature Trajan's columns. Upon her head was a fanciful turban of purple velvet, figured with silver sprigs, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Wallace." My difficulty is, why are caterpillars sometimes so beautifully and artistically coloured? Seeing that many are coloured to escape danger, I can hardly attribute their bright colour in other cases to mere physical conditions. Bates says the most gaudy caterpillar he ever saw in Amazonia (of a sphinx) was conspicuous at the distance of yards, from its black and red colours, whilst feeding on large green leaves. If any one objected to male butterflies having been made beautiful by ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... rang'd, Like Bees o'er Gaudy Flowers; And many Thousand Loves have chang'd, 'Till it was fix'd, 'till it was fix'd on yours; But Caelia when I saw those Eyes, 'Twas soon, 'twas soon determin'd there; Stars might as well forsake the Skies, And Vanish ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... passed, with his black robe and broad hat, like a dusky mushroom amongst a bed of many-hued gillyflowers. Here and there a soldier, all colour and glitter, showed like a gaudy red tulip in bloom amidst ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... had no attraction for him. The formal black or brown derby for winter and the seasonable straw hat for summer seemed necessary to tone down the frivolity of his neckties, which were chosen with a cowboy's gaudy taste. To the day of his death Field delighted to present neckties, generally of the made-up variety, to his friends, which, it is needless to say, they never failed to accept and seldom wore. Often in the afternoon as it neared two o'clock he would stick his head above the partition between ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... drugs, she has come up only as the smoke has cleared away, but always in time to demand the spoils! She has filched from the systems of philosophy of every land and age, and after bedaubing them with her own gaudy colors, has foisted them upon unthinking mankind as divine decrees and mandates! She has foully ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... captain was a very gentlemanly Englishman; and he was all devotion to the wants of his passengers, who seated themselves on the promenade deck. The steamer belonged to the government; and she was fitted up in the most comfortable manner, though it was not so gaudy as the craft of a maharajah would have been. The ghat was at the western extremity of the crescent to which Sir Modava had alluded, and from this point the ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... availed myself of every means within my reach to render my visit agreeable to the rajah. I carry with me many presents which are reported to be to his liking; gaudy silks of Surat, scarlet cloth, stamped velvet, gunpowder, &c., beside a large quantity of confectionery and sweets, such as preserved ginger, jams, dates, syrups, and to wind up all, a huge box of China toys for his children! I have likewise taken coarse nankeen to the amount of 100l. value, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... said. "I don't know as this is much in my line. Summat a thought less gaudy'll do ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... [Endnote W] brow, Or dash Octavius from the trophied car; Say, does thy secret soul repine to taste The big distress? Or wouldst thou then exchange Those heart-ennobling sorrows for the lot Of him who sits amid the gaudy herd 760 Of mute barbarians bending to his nod, And bears aloft his gold-invested front, And says within himself, I am a king, And wherefore should the clamorous voice of woe Intrude upon mine ear?—The baleful dregs ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... looking from afar at these and a hundred similar things, lo! there came by us a gaudy, strapping quean of arrogant mien, and after whom a hundred eyes were turned; some made obeisance, as if in worship of her, a few put something in her hand. I could not make out what she was, and so I enquired. "Oh," ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... to my mind a lovelier shrine than the gaudy box we have just been gaping at," Robert said; and then went on, answering the surprise in his companion's face: "You shall learn why by-and-by. In the mean time know that it is the dwelling of Theron ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... government has placed at the disposal of homeless families. At many Stations along the line may be seen strings of these picturesque wigwams crowded with poor folk who have installed themselves within, apparently for ever. They are cultivating their favourite flowers and herbs in gaudy rows along the wooden platforms of the carriages; the little children, all dressed in black, play about in the shade underneath. The people will suffer in these narrow tenements under the fierce southern sun, after their cool courtyards and high-vaulted chambers! There will be diseases, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... moment a low, lazy sort of whistle sounded across the lawn, so low and so slow that it was apparently an unconscious accompaniment to reverie or speculation. It was quite dark except where the light shone from the hall. All the gaudy paper lanterns had been extinguished, and when the confidential notes of "Rally 'round the flag, boys," came closer, and the whistler emerged from the deeper shadows, he could only distinguish two figures at the foot of the steps, and they could ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... as she continued to peer at Eugenia through that dark cloud of tragedy, it seemed to her that Eugenia showed signs of some real human emotion. As she gazed at her in the crude brilliance of the gaudy morning sun, she saw for the first time signs of years in Eugenia's exquisite small face. There was not a line visible, nor a faltering of the firmness of the well-cared-for flesh, but over it all was a faint, hardly discernible flaccid fatigue ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... compelled to hand the surplus over to the general funds of the Church; and if some one kindly left him some money, that money was treated in the same way. He was to be as moderate as possible in eating and drinking; he was to avoid all gaudy show in dress and house; he was not to go to fairs and banquets; and, above all, he was not to marry except with the consent and approval of the Elders. Of marriage the Brethren had rather a poor opinion. They clung still to the old Catholic view that it was less holy than celibacy. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... wild animals, as well as the numerous cases in which the conspicuous colours are concealed when at rest and only become visible during rapid motion. In striking contrast to ordinary protective coloration we have "warning colours," usually very conspicuous and often brilliant or gaudy, which serve to indicate that their possessors are either dangerous or uneatable to the usual enemies of their tribe. This kind of coloration is probably more prevalent than has been hitherto supposed, because in the case of many tropical animals ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... heaven that her battles, revolutions, executions, and pageants have held their august procession; the rain has wet many a May-day and many a harvesting, whose traditional color (through tender English verses) is gaudy with yellow sunshine. The revellers of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" would find a wet turf eight days out of ten to disport upon. We think of Bacon without an umbrella, and of Cromwell without a mackintosh; yet I suspect both of them carried these, or their equivalents, pretty constantly. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition. The mark of that so-called intuition ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... touched with a snarl of triumph, and searing like a puff of flame, sounded as the boy remained for one moment with the flag in his hand looking down at the crowd below. His face was odd and elated and still. Then with the slightest gesture he threw the flag from him, and Aaron watched the gaudy remnant falling towards the many faces, whilst the noise of yelling rose ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... very first white men the inhabitants had ever seen, we were visited by prodigious numbers. Among the first who came to see us was a gentleman who appeared in a gaudy dressing-gown of printed calico. Many of the Makololo, besides, had garments of blue, green, and red baize, and also of printed cottons; on inquiry, we learned that these had been purchased, in exchange for boys, from a tribe called Mambari, which is situated near Bihe. This tribe ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the high branches of the slender poplar Shiver aloft in air their rustling leaves. Cool breaths the rising breeze, and with it wakes The worn out spirit from its state of stupor. The lazy boy springs from his mossy bed, To chace the gaudy tempting butterfly, Who spreading on the grass its mealy wings, Oft lights within his reach, e'en at his seer, Yet still eludes his grasp, and o'er his head Light hov'ring round, or mounted high in air Temps ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... lofty from below; By him the Archer,[203] with his bended bow; Near him the Bird, with gaudy feathers spread; And the fierce Eagle[204] ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... work, biting through the solid steel as if it had been mere pasteboard, the blow-pipe showering on each side a brilliant spray of sparks, a gaudy, pyrotechnic display. ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... literature. Every Christmas brings us livres de luxe in plenty, books which are no books, but have gilt and magenta covers, and great staring illustrations. These are regarded as drawing-room ornaments by people who never read. It is scarcely necessary to warn the collector against these gaudy baits of unregulated Christmas generosity. All ages have not produced quite such garish livres de luxe as ours. But, on the whole, a book brought out merely for the sake of display, is generally a book ill "got ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... that God will actually allow him to do wrong, if He can only thereby secure the man's invaluable services. Be sure that every motive which comes not from the single eye; every motive which springs from self; is by its very essence unheroic, let it look as gaudy or as ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... either to taunt or applaud a performer, as the whim moved them. Bearded miners conspicuous in red shirts; cattlemen wearing wide sombreros and hairy "chaps"; swarthy Mexicans lazily puffing the inseparable cigarette; gamblers attired in immaculate linen, together with numerous women gaudy of cheek and attire, composed a frontier audience full of possibilities. The result might easily prove good or evil, according to the prevailing temper, but fortunately the "Heart of the World" quickly caught the men's fancy, the laughter ringing loud in appreciation ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich not gaudy; For the apparel ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... man of a very different sort. A novelist undoubtedly as skilful as Blasco and a good deal more profound, he lacks the quality of enthusiasm and thus makes a more restricted appeal. In place of gaudy certainties he offers disconcerting questionings; in place of a neat and well-rounded body of doctrine he puts forward a sort of generalized contra-doctrine. Blasco is almost the typical Socialist—iconoclastic, oratorical, sentimental, theatrical—a fervent advocate of all sorts ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... Rangoon citizens claim—and around it are innumerable smaller pagodas and shrines glittering with mosaics of colored glass in imitation of all the gems known to mortals. {192} Studied closely, they appear unduly gaudy, of course, but your first impression is that you have found a real Aladdin's palace, a dazzling, glittering dream of Oriental splendor and magnificence. To these shrines there come to-day, as there have been coming for more than twenty centuries, pilgrims ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... and taken; the woman is won. By that still small voice the devil's chains are broken, the rocky heart is rent. When the congregation dissolves, she steals away to her house alone. There her eye falls on some gaudy ornaments, the instruments of her sin, and the badges of her shame. Whence this sudden strong loathing? Perhaps she grasps them convulsively and flings them on the fire, shutting her eyes that she may not see ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... free, but equally spirited rendering of the tenth satire, which stands at the head of the later portion of Juvenal's work. In this, and in those of the subsequent satires which do not show traces of declining power, notably the eleventh and thirteenth, the rhetoric is less gaudy and the thought rises to a nobler tone. The fine passage at the end of the tenth satire, where he points out what it is permitted mankind to pray for, and that in the thirteenth, where he paints the ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... masses of Coral make a world of colour in the clear seas of the tropics, a gay garden inhabited by fishes of gaudy hues. In dull seas we have, as a rule, dull creatures to match. And in bright, warm, sunny seas the fishes are also brightly coloured. A dull fish would show up amid such rich colours, so it is easy to know why Coral fish ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... around the little sitting-room. It was furnished with a carpet of bright green thrown over a foundation of linoleum, a suite of stamped magenta plush, an overmantel, gilt cornices over the windows, a piano, a table covered with a gaudy tablecloth. On the walls were hung some oleographs. The lighting of the room was of gas with incandescent mantles. There had been, apparently, judging by an odour which still remained, a great deal of beer consumed in the apartment at ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... There was a slight pause after she had spoken and then Marguerite slowly turned in order to see who this official representative of France was, whom at the young actress' request she had just agreed to receive in her house. In the doorway of the tent, framed by its gaudy draperies, and with the streaming sunshine as a brilliant background behind him, stood the sable-clad figure ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and bloated faces gave faithful witness of their habitual intemperance; and men, whose threadbare and ragged garments betokened sloth and poverty; and men, whose vulgar and ostentatious display of showy clothing, and gaudy chains, and rings and breast-pins, which they did not know how to wear, indicated dishonest pursuits; and men, whose blue jackets and bluff, brown faces showed them to be sailors; and men, whose scowling brows and fiendlike countenances marked them as villains of the ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... in another minute her gaudy plumes had vanished among the dark forest stems, as swiftly as if she had been a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... not class me with the elite if passion is what they respect," Beth said. "Passion at the best—honourable passion—is but the efflorescence of a mere animal function. The passion that has no honourable object is a gaudy, unwholesome weed, rapid of growth, swift and sure ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... carriage overtook a party of strolling jugglers, travelling in a roofed-in waggon, with the younger children of the company running alongside in threadbare tights and trunkhose decked with tinsel; or whether they drove through a village market-place, where yellow earthen crocks and gaudy Indian cottons, brass pails and braziers and platters of bluish pewter, filled the stalls with a medley of colour—at every turn was something that excited the boy's wonder; but Donna Laura, who had fallen into a depression of spirits, lamenting the cold, her misfortunes ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... then; when Shakespear dy'd Her Cowley rose, drest in her gaudy Pride. So from great Ruins a new Life she calls, And Builds an Ovid[3] when ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... end of this mantel was a blue glass vase containing a bouquet of paper roses, and on the other a plaster-of-Paris cat. Above the mantel hung a wreath of wax flowers in a glass case. In such houses were usually to be seen gaudy-colored carpets, imitation lace curtains, and a what-not in the corner that seemed ready to go into dissolution through the law ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... lawn, lined with live-oaks and china trees. In April the latter are in full bloom, their lilac blossoms hanging in dense panicles, the green leaves flecking them just enough to afford contrast, and the sombre Spanish moss depending gracefully from every branch and limb. Great gaudy butterflies are continually hovering over them and fluttering uneasily from flower to flower, and gleaming humming-birds, our own Northern summer visitors (the Trochilus colubris), are flashing from tree to tree, now poised a moment in air, now sipping ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... leaving such delightful enjoyments till daybreak. I left him staying Hilpah with flagons, and walked quietly home. But it was some time before I could get to sleep. The sound of fiddles was in mine ears; and gaudy dresses, and black hair, and Jewish noses, were fluctuating up and down before ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... removing these discords and reconciling the determined opposition of the tones. He finally discovered that his first inspiration, which was to animate the fire of the weave by setting it off against some dark object, was erroneous. In fact, this rug was too new, too petulant and gaudy. The colors were not sufficiently subdued. He must reverse the process, dull the tones, and extinguish them by the contrast of a striking object, which would eclipse all else and cast a golden light ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... built 'a smasher' on the site of the old house, behind which the 'Liza Ann,' or what there was left of it, was lying; and when the house was done, and furnished with the most gaudy and expensive furniture he could find in Boston and New York, he said it had just as good a right to a name as any body. There was Tracy Park, and Grassy Springs, and Brier Hill, and Collingwood, and he'd be dumbed if he'd be outdone by ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... saw, or thought he saw—but I give it to you as he gave it to me—to his amazement, how the painted image of the beautiful youth that stood above the fountain seemed slowly to quicken into being, and how all the gaudy colors and gilding of the figure seemed to soften to the exquisite and tender hues of a life that was more marvellous than life. The hair of the youth was radiantly sunny, his cheeks flamed and paled with a divine ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... must breathe. Life is the exhalation, death the inhalation of deity. He breathes out, and the Universe flames forth with all her wings—her suns and clusters of suns—down to her mote-like earth, the butterfly of space, trimmed with its gaudy seasons, and nourishing on its back the ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... think one of those yellow oriole birds had perched on her saddle. "That poor woman has gone and put hers up wrong side out. The effect of all those big pink roses on her white house front is most amusing. It looks as if the house were covered with a particularly gaudy piece ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... which reduced that appendage to the most absurd and infinitesimal proportions. This wonderful garment was 314 composed of a fabric which Freddy Coleman, when he made its acquaintance some few days later, denominated the Mac Omnibus plaid, a gaudy repertoire of colours, embracing all the tints of the rainbow, and a few more besides, and was further embellished by a plentiful supply of gent.'s sporting buttons, which latter articles were not quite so ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... and filled her soul. The so-called decorations vanished from her view, and she felt as if she stood in her father's presence. She was at one elevated and humbled. As suddenly the idea faded and fled, and she beheld but the gaudy festoons and draperies and paintings which disfigured the grandeur. She wept and sped away. Now it was too late to interfere, and things must take their course. She would have been but a Cassandra- prophetess to those who saw but the pleasure before them. She ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... great use to me. Nevertheless I must discuss the subject fully in my Essay on Man. When we met at the Zoological Society, and I asked you about the sexual differences in kingfishers, I had this subject in view; as I had when I suggested to Bates the difficulty about gaudy caterpillars, which you have so admirably (as I believe it will prove) explained. (429/2. See a letter of February 26th, 1867, to Mr. Wallace, "Life and Letters" III., page 94.) I have got one capital case (genus forgotten) of a [Australian] ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... up one canvas, a foot high and two feet wide, tacked over a piece of board. It was a gaudy representation of an island wrought with pathetic lack of skill. There was a conical peak at the left end smeared with a slash of purple, and over it a very red and very round sun. The land sloped away from the peak to the other end of the island, and was ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... painted with very different Colours. And such a variety we have much more admired in that lovely plant which is commonly, and not unjustly call'd the Marvayl of Peru; for of divers scores of fine Flowers, which in its season that gaudy Plant does almost daily produce, I have scarce taken notice of any two that were dyed perfectly alike. But though Pyro: such things as these, among others, keep mee from daring to affirm, that the Diversity and change of Colours does alwaies ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... to produce grand images. An immense mountain covered with a shining green turf, is nothing, in this respect, to one dark and gloomy; the cloudy sky is more grand than the blue; and night more sublime and solemn than day. Therefore in historical painting, a gay or gaudy drapery can never have a happy effect: and in buildings, when the highest degree of the sublime is intended, the materials and ornaments ought neither to be white, nor green, nor yellow, nor blue, nor ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Johnson had, after an absence of some months, come back and lived without molestation, amid the shifting population. Now and then, too, some of the older residents fancied they recognized, under slouched sombreros, the faces of some of his former "crowd" about the "Ranchman's Home," as his gaudy saloon ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... hastened to sustain her, and Hastings pleasantly offered to act in the capacity of general baiter and taker-off of fish. But Cecile, doubtless fascinated by the gaudy flies in Clifford's book, decided to accept lessons from him in the true art, and presently disappeared up the Ept with Clifford ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... one would have said that the staging had been overdone, that the clothes were too ragged, the men too gaunt and too much wounded, and that by no stretch of imagination could a band be playing "God save the King" while a square painted train called "Lou-lou" steamed in, looking like a child's giant gaudy toy, and an ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... drawn aloft—that is, to the realm of the clouds: on these do we set our gaudy puppets, and then ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... them unpalatable. Many of these, as the familiar cream yellow and black larva of the Magpie Moth (Abraxas grossulariata), are very conspicuously adorned, and furnish examples of what is known as 'warning coloration,' on the supposition that the gaudy aspect of such insects serves as an advertisement that they are not fit to eat, and that birds and other possible devourers thus learn to leave them alone. On the other hand, smooth caterpillars which are readily eaten by birds are usually 'protectively' ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... of great Mercury, Got on Thalia when she was asleep: My gaudy grandsire, great Apollo hight,[113] Born was, I hear, but that my luck was ill, To all the land upon ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... rubbing shoulders with modern specimens of clumsy early Victorian furniture. A room at the back was given up to the Delft china, but even this was spoilt by ordinary yellow arabesque wall-paper, on which were hung the rare plates and dishes, and by some gaudy window curtains, evidently recently added. The collection itself, made by Mrs. Koopman at very moderate prices, before experts bought up all the Dutch relics, was then supposed to be of great value. Our hostess conversed in good English with a ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... O best beloved of my soul, afflict you farther. Why should I thus sadden all your gaudy prospects? I have said enough to such a heart as yours, if Divine grace touches it. And if not, all I can say will be of no avail!—I will leave you therefore to that, and to your own reflections. And after giving you ten thousand thanks for your indulgent patience with me, I will only beg, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... see so many beautiful flowers. There were bright scarlet geraniums, and starlike sweet-scented jessamines, and the gorgeous belladonna lily, with its large blossoms of rose-colour and white; and there were not only plants in flower, but bushes, and even trees, covered with gaudy and sweetly-perfumed blossoms. There was the "sugar-bush" (Protea mellifera), the most beautiful of its family, with its large cup-shaped corollas of pink, white, and green; and there, too, was the "silver-tree" (Leucodendron ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... a warm knit waistcoat of a gaudy pattern, across which ran the heavy links of a gold chain. There was a tiny hole in his breast, over the heart, from which a little blood had flowed. The wound had pierced the heart, and ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... Apollo and the Muses quitted their ancient residence in Greece, to fix their abode in Italy. But it is vain to ask questions of Melpomene; she is obstinately silent, and we only know, from strangers, her power amongst the Romans. Seneca endeavours to make her speak; but the gaudy show, with which he rather loads than adorns her, makes us think, that he took some phantom of Melpomene ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... morning sunlight they stood out pictorially. He guessed that they were from five to six thousand feet high. The lofty, irregular, castellated line seemed like the walls of a magic city. The cliffs fronting him were composed of gaudy rocks—vermilion, emerald, yellow, ulfire, and black. As he gazed at them, his heart began to beat like a slow, heavy drum, and he thrilled all over—indescribable hopes, aspirations, and emotions came over him. It was more than ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... their souls engage; Teach them how arts, and arms, in thy young days, Employed our youth—not taverns, stews, and plays; Tell them the generous scorn their race does owe To flattery, pimping, and a gaudy show; Teach them to scorn the Carwells, Portsmouths, Nells, The Clevelands, Osbornes, Berties, Lauderdales: Poppaea, Tigelline, and Arteria's name, All yield to these in lewdness, lust, and fame. Make them admire the Talbots, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... Yes, Alexandria has seen some pretty shows in its time; Cleopatra had an eye to effect and so, too, had the great Napoleon. But I doubt whether the townsfolk have ever seen anything to equal the coup d'oeil engineered by d'Amade. Under an Eastern sun the colours of the French uniforms, gaudy in themselves, ran riot, and the troops had surely been posted by one who was an artist in more than soldiering. Where the yellow sand was broken by a number of small conical knolls with here and there a group, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... grew we up to Man, and still more fixt; And shall a gaudy Beauty, A thing which t'other day I never saw, Deprive my Heart of that kind Heat, And place a new and unknown Fire within? [Aside. Clarina, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... later no spot in all the world seemed so barren and desolate. The sunshine, the sailing clouds in the vault of blue, the chasing shadows along the slopes, the streaming colors of blue and white and scarlet at the tip of the swaying staff, the glint and sparkle of the accoutrements of the guard, the gaudy lining of the troopers' capes, were absolutely unaltered, yet the light had gone from his eyes—following the trail to the far Ogallalla. To him who loves a woman with all his heart there is more beauty in a mud-chinked hovel in a frontier fort where she ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... relish for argument about it. He was more secure of his intellect in the matter of peaches than inner lights. Cowed and awed as he could have been by no body of men, he followed Bluhm up a dirty flight of stairs into the assemblage of Superior Women. The office was by nature a chamber with gaudy wall-paper of bouquets and wreaths. Viewed as an office, it was well enough, but in the aesthetic, light of a Holy Ground of Ideas it needed sweeping. The paper, too, hung in flaps from the damp walls: dusty files of newspapers, an empty bird-cage, old boots, a case of medical books, a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... was not pale, but had that waxen bloom still upon it that belongs to a barber's dummy. He stood quite still, with his face towards me; and I can't tell you how horrid he looked among the tulips and all those tall, gaudy, almost hothouse-looking flowers. It looked as if we'd stuck up a waxwork instead of a statue in ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... attracted the eye of the Sachem's daughter, the Gentle Fawn; she, with a few young Indian girls, half hid among the whortleberry bushes growing luxuriantly around the smaller wigwams of the camp, were dividing their attention between the stately captives and weaving the gaudy wampums to be bestowed, with the shy little weavers themselves, upon such young braves as should be deemed worthy by the great council. Their stolen glances of admiration and pity, however, were intercepted by ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... evening sky was sinister and cold; The willows shivered, wanly lay the snow; The uncommiserating land, so old, So worn, so grey, so niggard in its woe, Peered through its ragged shroud. The lone man sighed, Poured back the gaudy dust into its poke, Gazed at the seething river listless-eyed, Loaded his corn-cob pipe as if to smoke; Then crushed with weariness and hardship crept Into his ragged robe, and ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... fair Flower in its Lustre, Which in the Garden enamels the Ground; Near it the Bees in play flutter and cluster, And gaudy Butterflies frolick around. But, when once pluck'd, 'tis no longer alluring, To Covent-Garden 'tis sent (as yet sweet), There fades, and shrinks, and grows past all enduring, Rots, stinks, and dies, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... bosom, or burned with friendship's unconsuming flame, awakes like smoldering embers fanned by desert winds and fed with camphor wood, enveloping all her world. She longs to leave the loveless life with her sullen lord; to cast from her as things accursed the gaudy robes and glittering gems; to fly with the shepherd lad to the deep cool forests of the far east and dream her life away in some black tent or vine-embowered cot—to take his hand in hers and wander on to the world's extreme ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... The gaudy rose, when Autumn comes, Finds that her beauty waneth; The holly leaf her modest green Through ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... not even reading, with an air of unconcern, it was not difficult for X. to assume one too. However, he could not but believe that he helped to fill in that vacant blank in which the sitters sank, as he passed along, himself clad in wondrous garments made of gaudy silks woven by the skilled natives of the Peninsula, while Usoof and Abu followed, bringing the towels and soap. Nor did he entirely deceive himself, since he was subsequently informed by Usoof that the "boy" of a Nyonia, or what in Singapore is called ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... of his dream. Then there came an anticlimax. The rich imagination which had been leading him on as a gaudy butterfly does a child, suddenly changed colour and dropped to earth; and there rose up in his mind the memory of the General's words: "God sets a limit to a man's doings. If he is going too far, God ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... to do God service, sir, what with the chapel-building society, and every man-jack of us setting our shoulder to the wheel, and we should all do our very best, we should get a nice, new, I won't say showy, but attractive—that's the word, attractive place—not gaudy, you know, I never would give in to that, but ornamental too—and in a word, attractive—that's it—a place to which the people would be drawn by the look of it outside, and kep' by the look of it inside—a place as would make the people of Glaston say, 'Come, and let us go up to the house of ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... taken place in her. She was no longer the cowed drudge of the last days. She was dressed in all her finery, in her white dress, with the high shiny boots over which her fat legs bulged in their cotton stockings; her hair was elaborately arranged; and she wore that enormous hat covered with gaudy flowers. Her face was painted, her eyebrows were boldly black, and her lips were scarlet. She held herself erect. She was the flaunting quean that they had known at first. As they came in she broke into a loud, jeering laugh; and then, when Mrs Davidson involuntarily stopped, ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... the spectators could make out plainly the boatmen. It could be seen that they had decked themselves out for the occasion. Their heads were bound with bright-colored fillets, their necks with gay scarves. The paddles were adorned with gaudy woollen streamers. New leggings, of holiday pattern, were intermittently visible on the bowsmen and steersmen as they half rose to give added force to ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... the sonnets to be connected with real life, it is not easy to understand why the radiant youth, "the world's fresh ornament," "only herald to the gaudy spring," etc., should need such an amount of persuasion to marry. Seventeen sonnets of great poetical beauty and felicitous language are devoted to this object. It is an exquisite treat to read them as works of art, but ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... two white chouries instead of one, and all kinds of seeds, perfumes and jewels, a scimitar, a bow, a litter, a golden vase, and a blazing fire, and amongst the living implements of the pageant, instead of the bards, gaudy courtesans, and besides the eight damsels, professors of divinity, Brahmanas, cows and pure kinds of wild beasts and birds, the chiefs of town and country-people and the citizens with ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... now and again collected by the shrill summons of the mother; and the mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall - Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly in a delicate ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old; rather spare, of a fair height and strong make. His hair, of which he had a great profusion, was red and hung in disorder about his face and shoulders. His face was pale, his eyes glassy and protruding. His dress was green, clumsily trimmed here and there with gaudy lace. A pair of tawdry ruffles dangled at his wrists, while his throat was nearly bare. His hat was ornamented with a cluster of peacock's feathers, limp, broken, and trailing down his back. Girded to his side was the steel hilt of an old sword, without blade or scabbard; and a few knee-ribbons ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... saw. He gives you not the original but a translation, and a translation, as you will presently see, far from faithful; he gives you not the scene, but the effect of the scene on his mind; and as Dickens started out to produce not a faithful picture, but a startling emotion, his scene is accordingly gaudy, theatrical, false. For observe, the wind is a respectable wind, and yet afflicted with pettiness of tyranny, and it wreaks vengeance; and this vengeance-wreaking wind does not come up flying, as you would expect of a wind, but it happens to come up leisurely, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... through the shady cypress avenue his brain cooled and he formed a resolution differing from the one that had brought him to the villa. Upon the fountain terrace they saw the man they had come to seek. Not the galliard of his last visit, but a hunted refugee, his gaudy hussar uniform soiled and torn, the ballas ruby which had buckled his aigrette shot from his hat, and a tiny rill of blood trickling from his matted hair upon the golden bees that ornamented the sky-blue ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... verdure at the bottom of the thickest woods: if the showers were like those of a colder clime, the greater part would be absorbed or evaporated before it reached the ground. I will not at present attempt to describe the gaudy scenery of this noble bay, because, in our homeward voyage, we called here a second time, and I shall then have occasion to remark ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... could not face the lighted square, Or show the street her poor, thin dress; In one close chamber, bleak and bare, She hid her burden of distress. Her happy schoolmates used to drive, On gaudy wheels, the town about; The meat that keeps a dog alive She ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... Apis. From Cairo you have proceeded to Sakkara. Or are the gaudy hue of my hair and the yeoman proportions of my ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... of some music in the Saint's honour, so we gave him whatever it may have been, and his messenger departed: well satisfied. At six o'clock in the evening we went to the church—close at hand—a very gaudy place, hung all over with festoons and bright draperies, and filled, from the altar to the main door, with women, all seated. They wear no bonnets here, simply a long white veil—the 'mezzero;' and it was the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... new, exaggerated toilettes of the actresses, their gait, even the spurious elegance of their speech, which seemed to her of the highest distinction, and with it all the tawdry magnificence of the gilding and the lights, the gaudy placard at the door, the long line of carriages, and all the somewhat unwholesome excitement that springs up about a popular play; that was what she loved, that was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ever seen a gorgeous kite, the giant butterfly of childhood, twinkling with gilding, and soaring to the sky? The children forget the string that holds it, some passer-by cuts it, the gaudy toy turns head over heels, as the boys say, and falls with terrific rapidity. Such was Esther ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... tempting spaces for decoration. Our ancestors hung their walls with trophies. Our pioneer of to-day may live in an adobe hut, but he hangs his walls with things that suggest beauty and color to him, calendars, and trophies and gaudy chromos. The rest of his hut he uses for the hard business of living, but his walls are his theater, his literature, his recreation. The wolf skin will one day give place to a painting of the chase, the gaudy calendars to better things, when prosperity ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... Cunningham was but a few blocks away. Mrs. Cunningham did not live in a flat, but in the comparative gentility of "up-stairs rooms" over a gaudy undertaking establishment. She proved to be an Irish lady with a gin-laden breath. Her eyes were blue and bleared, and looked in kindly fashion through a pair of large-rimmed and much-mended spectacles, from which one of the glasses had totally disappeared. She was affable, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... Fox, as he is called, who has just made a leap from the strict discipline of the gymnasium to the unbounded freedom of the university, will be a gray-haired man, to whom the academic title of Juvenis Studiosus will no longer apply. Here sits, with his gaudy watch-guard, the colors of his corps, one of those students by profession who have been inscribed year after year so long that they have acquired the name of Bemossed Heads. Were his scientific attainments measured by his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... parched pilgrim's On Arab sands the false mirage, which offers A lucid lake to his eluded thirst, Are gone. Around me are the stars and waters— Worlds mirrored in the Ocean, goodlier sight[ee] Than torches glared back by a gaudy glass; 70 And the great Element, which is to space What Ocean is to Earth, spreads its blue depths, Softened with the first breathings of the spring; The high Moon sails upon her beauteous way, Serenely ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... what fine Colours are to be sold at the Colour-shop, and mocks the Works of the Creator. If the best Imitator of Nature is not to be esteemed the best Painter, but he that makes the greatest Show and Glare of Colours; it will necessarily follow, that he who can array himself in the most gaudy Draperies is best drest, and he that can speak loudest the best Orator. Every Man when he looks on a Picture should examine it according to that share of Reason he is Master of, or he will be in Danger of making a wrong Judgment. If Men ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... all: The curtain is rung down, the footlights are put out, the audience has all left and gone home, the seats are vacant, and the cold walls are silent. The gaudy tinsel that appears before the footlights is exchanged for the dress of the citizen. Coming generations and historians will be the critics as to how we have acted our parts. The past is buried in oblivion. The blood-red flag, with its crescent and cross, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... when Bill stooped to add the gaudy-labeled cans to his pack that Daddy Dunnigan, of the twisted leg, volunteered the bit of advice that ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... friends, that you obey so quickly," said a man in gaudy costume as he stepped from the bushes followed by a half dozen others, evil looking fellows, all carrying guns and pistols. Ned noticed that two of the guns were rifles of long and slender barrel, ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... resembles. Across the park lies the great highway from the capital to Versailles, over which so many joyous cavalcades were wont to amble or gallop in the days of gallantry. The pace is not more sober to-day, but gaily caparisoned horses and gaudy coaches have given way to red and yellow "Rois des Belges," the balance lying distinctly in favour of the former mode of conveyance, so ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... palace at Greenwich under the same roof with the queen, with reception rooms, and royal state, and a position openly acknowledged,[159] the gay court and courtiers forsaking the gloomy dignity of the actual wife for the gaudy splendour of her brilliant rival. Tamer blood than that which flowed in the veins of a princess of Castile would have boiled under these indignities; and we have little reason to be surprised if policy and prudence were alike forgotten by Catherine ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... to an end, and, to the sound of a merry peal of bells, the well-dressed local Cossacks file out of church, and distribute themselves in gaudy streams about the hamlet, no Tatiana makes ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... the Haymarket. Farther on, he came on a young man who was grinding some very feeling ballads upon a barrel organ. Near the man, on the footpath, was a young girl of about fifteen years of age, fashionably dressed, with crinoline, mantle, and gloves, and a straw hat trimmed with gaudy feathers, but all old and terribly worn out, who, in a loud and cracked though not altogether unpleasing voice, was singing before a shop in expectation of a couple of kopecks. Raskolnikoff stopped ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... to smuggle into Mr. Jordan's library a picture of Tom Steele, one of Daniel O'Connell's henchmen, to whom he gave the title of Head Pacificator of Ireland. Many amusing stories are told of this official, of his gaudy uniform, his strut and swagger, and his pompous language. At a political meeting on one occasion, he attacked, it seems, one Peter Purcell, a Dublin tradesman who had fallen out with the Liberator ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... staggered, and was obliged to lean against the mountain for support. Stains of travel were on her dress; lines of fatigue and pain, and traces of burning passionate tears, were on her face; her black hair flowed from beneath her gaudy bonnet; and, shamed out of his brutality, Rand placed his strong arm round her waist, and half carrying, half supporting her, began the ascent. Her head dropped wearily on his shoulder; her arm encircled his neck; her hair, as if caressingly, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... swatheth mortals each hour, Yet little we reck of what's hanging us o'er; O would on the world that ye laid not such stress, That its baubles ye lov'd not, so gaudy and poor; O where are the friends we were wont to caress, And where are the lov'd ones who dwelt on our floor? They have drank of the goblet of death's bitterness, And have gone to the deep, to return never more; Their mansions ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... to their own country. Their ideas of the value of different kinds of goods rather astonished those who had dealt only with natives on the coast. Hearing it stated with confidence that the Africans preferred the thinnest fabrics, provided they had gaudy colors and a large extent of surface, the idea was so new to my experience in the interior that I dissented, and, in order to show the superior good sense of the Makololo, took them to the shop of Mr. Schut. When he showed them the amount of general goods which they might procure ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... had never professed to be rich. She had simply continued in her lifelong way, had simply acted rich. She well knew the gaudy delusions her admirer was entertaining, and she saw to it that nothing was said or done to disturb him. She inquired into his affairs, made sure of the substantiality of the comparatively small income ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... swarms like gnats; full-voiced meadowlarks on the fence posts; herons stalking solemnly, or waiting like so many Japanese bronzes for a chance at a gopher; red-tailed hawks circling slowly; pigeon hawks passing with their falcon dart; little gaudy sparrow hawks on top the telephone poles; buzzards, stately and wonderful in flight, repulsive when at rest; barn-owls dwelling in the haystacks, and horned owls in the hollow trees; the game in countless numbers; all the smaller ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... amused ourselves by looking over the beaux restes of former days, the collections of painting and sculpture, the fine plaster-casts that still remain, and the great volumes of fine engravings. It was dark when the procession made its appearance, which rendered the effect less gaudy and more striking. The Virgin, the Saints, the Holy Trinity, the Saviour in different passages of his life, imprisonment and crucifixion, were carried past in succession, represented by figures magnificently dressed, placed ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... out to-night after supper, and I shall send this letter by them. There are no new books, no new Plays, no new novels; nay, no new fashions. They have dragged old Mademoiselle Le Maure out of a retreat of thirty years, to sing at the Colis'ee, which is a most gaudy Ranelagh, gilt, painted, and becupided like an Opera, but not calculated to last as long as Mother Coliseum, being composed of chalk and pasteboard. Round it are courts of treillage, that serve for nothing, and behind it a canal, very like a horsepond, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... day, Covington found himself in front of an old-fashioned brick building standing almost significantly in the shadow of the Tombs. He paused for a moment to wonder at the enormous gaudy sign, "Levy & Whitcher's Law Offices," running across the front and side of the edifice, which impressed him with a sense of its vulgarity. The door creaked as Covington opened it and passed on into the dingy offices—even dingier than the nature of the business done in them required, ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... Jerry-Jo surlily and passionately came to the conclusion that he must in some way capture his prize. Other youths were wearing gaudy ties and imperilling their Sunday bests; he was letting precious time slip. Then, too, by Farwell's advice, old Jerry was growing rigid along financial lines, and at last the States took definite shape in Jerry-Jo's mind, but he meant ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... emancipation from rules which she has rarely seen any one else observe, and has never honoured herself, and after a few years, she becomes one of that gaudy band of Society ladies who follow with respectful imitation the giddy vagaries of the Corinthians of a lower grade. She dines often without her husband at smart restaurants, where she has constant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... staple—silks in checks of pink and white, of yellow and orange, of indigo and dark red. Some are embroidered in silk, in silver, or in gold; some are plain. All are thick and rich, none are glazed, and none are gaudy. There will also be silks from Bangkok, which are of two colours—purple shot with red, and orange shot with red, both very beautiful. All the silks are woven the size of the dress: for men, about twenty-eight feet long and twenty ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... that commonest type with which ignorance with limited resource has essayed to imitate some false ideal of finery, and produced such articles as furniture daubed with painted flowers, jute carpets, and gowns beflounced and gaudy. Yet this soul, shut off from the world now by the curtain of sleep, was spoken to by an angel who blended his own being into recollections of the day, and treated with her concerning the life that is worthy and the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... advanced toward her like a wall of fog. She pressed her two hands against it and held it off—held it off by sheer mental refusal to understand. In the courtyard at home the children were playing with their lighted animals, drawing their gaudy paper ducks, luminous with candle-light, to and fro on little standards set on four wheels. At the gate hung a tall red-and-white lantern, and over the roof floated a string of candle-lit balloons. In ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a vast square, gaudy with coloured handbills, noisy with wheels and the everlasting Neapolitan chattering of a thick-lipped, loud, degenerate dialect. There the little one-horse cabs tear hither and thither, drivers lashing their wretched beasts, wheels whirling, arms gesticulating, ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... beard lent a gleam of snow to chaps and chin; being toothless, he was an indifferent performer upon the onion. But his hearing was as keen as his eyesight. He caught Angioletto's vivacious heeltaps upon the flags, and peered from burly brows at the smart little gentleman, cloaked, feathered, and gaudy, who looked as suitable to his dusty surroundings as a red poppy to a ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... another kind. They re-entered the town by the Chinese quarter. There they found grotesque-looking houses, lit up with large paper lanterns of gaudy colours, with Chinese inscriptions or monsters on them, and long rows of Chinese characters up and down the door-posts or over the windows. Crowds of people swarmed along the streets, and strange cries, in a Babel of languages, resounded in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
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