"Modish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tables and glistening braziers form part of the scene in which the marriage contract is being signed. The costumes are those of the time of Goya. An old beau is marrying a young and beautiful girl. With affected grace and a skipping minuet step, holding a modish three-cornered hat under his arm, he approaches the table to put his signature in the place which the escribano points out with an obsequious bow. He is arrayed in delicate lilac, while the bride is wearing a white silk dress trimmed ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... want from me?" Mrs. Feinermann gasped. Her hat was awry, and what had once been a modish pompadour was toppled to one side and shed hairpins with every palsied nod of her head. "I ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... speak more intelligibly, his simple and nervous diction is often wire-drawn into a flashy and feeble paraphrase, and his imagery as well as humour, sometimes annihilated by abbreviation. Nay, to make him the more modish, the good lady is at pains to patch up his style with unnecessary phrases and flourishes in the French taste, which have just such an effect in a translation of Homer, as a bag-wig, and snuff-box would have ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Temple, Mr. Turner by name, and Mr. Fanshow of Gray's Inn, both lawyers, and of Mr. B.'s former acquaintance, very sprightly and modish gentlemen, have also welcomed us to town, and made Mr. B. abundance of gay compliments on my account to my face, all ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... state that in the earlier part of the seventeenth century bands or collars—bands stiffened and standing at the backward part, and bands falling upon the shoulder and breast—were articles of costume upon which men of expensive and modish habits ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... at his trade I doubt), and having lately considered with my wife very much of the inconvenience of my going in no better plight, we did resolve of putting me into a better garb, and, among other things, to have a good velvet cloake; that is, of cloth lined with velvet and other things modish, and a perruque, and so I sent him and her out to buy me velvet, and I to the Exchange, and so to Trinity House, and there dined with Sir W. Batten, having some business to speak with him, and Sir W. Rider. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Penfield Evans strode into the somnolent afternoon, turning down Huron Street. At the remote end of the block and before her large frame mansion of a thousand angles and wooden lace work, Mrs. Harvey Herrington's low car sidled to her curb-stone, racy-looking as a hound. That lady herself, large and modish, was in the act of ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... window, showed her reflection quite plainly. She was suddenly inspired to take the soft taffeta girdle from the waist of her dark blue muslin gown, and bind it turban-wise about her head. The effect was pleasingly modish and conventional, and she quickened her steps—satisfied. There was a tingle in the air that set her blood pleasantly in motion, and she established a rhythm of pace that made her feel almost as if she were walking to music. Insensibly her mind took ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... meant. She went back over the morning's experience, beginning with her dressing-room, when before her mirror she donned her new and very pretty silk dress and arranged all her faultless toilet, adjusting the modish hat that became so well her own type of beauty, fitted on the fresh, dainty gloves that should clasp her beloved music when she should open her throat and sing like a glad bird, delighting in its song, however ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... phrase Won the heart of this sentimental Quaker, At what gold-laced speech of those modish days She listened,—the mischief ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... I said, having gathered the previous day that this was a popular American toast. She stared at me rather oddly, but made no comment other than to announce her departure on a shopping tour. Her bonnet, I noted, was quite wrong. Too extremely modish it was, accenting its own lines at the expense of a face to which less attention should have been called. This is a mistake common to the sex, however. They little dream how sadly they mock and betray their own faces. Nothing I think is more pathetic than their trustful unconsciousness of the tragedy—the ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... of winding along the banks of the river, as far as the church, that she might see the fine new monument raised to the memory of Lady Modish. Her sisters insisted on going to the next village, as they wanted to buy muslin for a doll's frock. After some little altercation on each side Caroline, with affectionate condescension, gave way to her sisters' inclination, though, as eldest, she had the right of choice, saying she could ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... and never with the short o of m[)o]derate, m[)o]dest, or our present word m[)o]dern. And the law under which Shakespeare uses the word is this: whatsoever is so trivial as to fall into the relation of a mere shape or fleeting mode to a permanent substance, that with Shakespeare is modish, or (according to his form) modern.[29] Thus, a weak, trivial argument (or instantia, the scholastic term for an argument not latent merely, or merely having the office of sustaining a truth, but urged as an objection, having ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... stood in the immediate circle of light projected by the lamp. He seized them and examined them carefully. This man was short and slight, was dressed in well-made cloth clothes; his hair was held in at the nape of the next in a modish manner with a black taffeta bow. His hands were clean, slender, and claw-like, and he wore the tricolour scarf of office round his waist which proclaimed him to be a member of one of the numerous Committees ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... not even the serious-minded daughters of the Pilgrims; but the only dolls that were advertised in colonial newspapers were the "London drest babys" of milliners and mantua-makers, that were sent over to serve as fashion plates for modish New England dames. A few century-old dolls still survive Revolutionary times, wooden-faced monstrosities, shapeless and mean, but doubtless well-beloved and cherished in ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... boat,—nay, lay back, calm thyself or I take my wagging tongue away; if thou dost so much as stir again, I leave thee. Thou art to go to a great house over there and see grand folks with fine airs and modish dress. Wilt be glad to see outside of convent walls? 'Tis nine years since I brought thee here a babe of six, and have nursed thee well to this hour, and thy strength and health and beauty show the care given thee." She suddenly arose and went to the window to hide if possible her ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... me," said Jin Vin; "since I have given up skittles and trap-ball for tennis and bowls, good English ale for thin Bordeaux and sour Rhenish, roast-beef and pudding for woodcocks and kickshaws—my bat for a sword, my cap for a beaver, my forsooth for a modish oath, my Christmas-box for a dice-box, my religion for the devil's matins, and mine honest name for—Woman, I could brain thee, when I think whose advice has guided ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... with him?" said a flippant modish lady to his Grace of Osmonde one morning. "How will she know how to bear herself like ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... she said simply: "I am, but how did you know? I don't remember ever seeing you," he took note of her modish blue riding-dress with divided skirts and patent-leather boots. There was a clean freshness about her person, a smiling candor in her eyes, and a fine, frank girlishness in her face that attracted him beyond measure. She appeared to be about twenty ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... down to Harrow to see Jolly, he never quite knew which of them was the elder, and would sit eating cherries with him out of one paper bag, with an affectionate and ironical smile twisting up an eyebrow and curling his lips a little. And he was always careful to have money in his pocket, and to be modish in his dress, so that his son need not blush for him. They were perfect friends, but never seemed to have occasion for verbal confidences, both having the competitive self-consciousness of Forsytes. They knew they would stand by each other in scrapes, but there ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the simple house dresses she had worn at the ranch. She had noticed that forenoon that both Belle and Hortense Starkweather were dressed in the most modish of gowns—as elaborate as those of fashionable ladies. With no mother to say them nay, these young girls aped every ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... kind of animal—something between a harrier and a skylark, but wholesome and human too, a denim dryad, the spirit of health, joy and beauty, a creature good to look at, in spite of her envy of the fashionable Miss Peggy McGuire with her modish hats, cerise veils and ear puffs, her red roadsters and her beaux. Poverty sat well upon Beth and the frank blue eyes and resolute chin gave notice that whatever was to happen to her future she was honorable ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... dogs," said Rhoda. "Mrs Vane is the one for pets; that is, whenever they are modish. She carries dormice in her pocket, and keeps a lapdog and a squirrel. When the mode goes out, she gives the thing away, ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... delicacy kept Lilly to her room that bright cold Sunday. She did her breathing exercises; washed out some handkerchiefs and stockings; tightened the buttons on a pretty new brown coat with a touch of modish stone-martin fur at the collar which she had purchased, not without qualms, for twenty-seven dollars and a half, ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Her hand, held fast in Guy's, rested on his knee; Nan's charming head, with its modish dressing, lay against her shoulder. What more could a mother ask? Across the fireplace, Sam Burnett, most satisfactory of sons-in-law, and Margaret, Guy's best beloved, who had made the year one long honeymoon to him—so ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... that his marriage "was not, perhaps, in consequence of the attachment of romance, but I have no cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... years ere he to manhood came, Song from celestial heights had wandered down, Put off her robe of sunlight, dew and flame, And donned a modish dress to ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... jauntiness about him. His eyelids were red. His face had the doughy look of one whose sleep has been brief and feverish. As he came toward his mother you noticed a stain on his coat, and a sunburst of wrinkles across one leg of his modish brown trousers. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... color in Grace's cheeks. In her modish frock of the black which she affected, and which was this morning of fine serge set on by a line of fur at hem and wrist, and topped by a little hat of black velvet which framed the vividness of her glorious hair, she looked the woman of the world, so that ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... street, utterly ignoring the presence of Captain Morton who was pretending to be deeply buried in the National Tribune, but who was watching the Judge and trying to summon courage to speak. The Judge unbuttoned his modish gray coat that nearly reached his heels and put his hands behind him for a moment, as he puffed ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... the chairs luxurious, and his feet sunk deep in the nap of the velvet carpet. The equipment of the white, commodious bathroom was perfection, and no article of furniture was missing from his bedroom that could contribute to the comfort of a modish young man accustomed to ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... Liverpool docks, is the Dutch galliot, an old-fashioned looking gentleman, with hollow waist, high prow and stern, and which, seen lying among crowds of tight Yankee traders, and pert French brigantines, always reminded me of a cocked hat among modish beavers. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Plutus in the shape of a young sprightly beau, trimmed up in all the foppery of the fashion; for they had hitherto always associated with the idea of an usurer old age and rusty apparel. After divers modish congees, he begged to know to what he should attribute the honour of their message; when Ferdinand, who acted the orator, told him, that his friend Count Melvil, having occasion for a sum of money, had been directed to a gentleman of his name, "and, I suppose," ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... was harped upon by a host of theologians and moralists after him, whenever, as was constantly the case, they had occasion to raise their voice against that dreaded enemy, enthusiasm. There were many who inveighed against 'the new modish system of reducing all to sense,' when used to controvert the doctrines of revelation. But while with vigour and success they defended the mysteries of faith against those who would allow nothing but what reason could fairly grasp, and while they dwelt upon the paramount authority ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... softness; a frou-frou of temperament as well as of frills; a face of childlike clarity set with two gay eyes; hair dressed to tempt and cajole; a little figure of thin frailty that gave her a beautiful delicacy of appearance; little, modish, manicured hands. ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... Merrilies, standing on her rock, stretched on her bier with "her head to the east," and Dirk Hatterick (equal to Shakspeare's Master Barnardine), and Glossin, the soul of an attorney, and Dandy Dinmont, with his terrier-pack and his pony Dumple, and the fiery Colonel Mannering, and the modish old counsellor Pleydell, and Dominie Sampson,[138] and Rob Roy (like the eagle in his eyry), and Baillie Nicol Jarvie, and the inimitable Major Galbraith, and Rashleigh Osbaldistone, and Die Vernon, the best of secret-keepers; and in the Antiquary, the ingenious and ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... it for thee to have dipt thy hand In odors wafted from Arabian land? Ah! what avails thy scented solitaire, Thy careless swing and pertly tripping air, The crimson wash that glows upon thy face, Thy modish hat, and coat that flames with lace! In vain thy dress, in vain thy trimmings shine, If the Parisian snuff-box be not thine. Come to my nose, then, Snuff, nor come alone, Bring taste with thee, for taste is ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... of our neighbourhood are touched with an indescribable character of place; they are not the throngs of anywhere else. They are not exactly Fifth Avenue; they are not the Great White Way. They are nice throngs, healthy throngs, care-free throngs, modish throngs in the modes of magazine advertisements. And all ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... girls, ranging in age anywhere from sixteen to twenty—three very pretty, obviously conscious of their modish garments and wanting everyone else to be conscious of them, too; another, Rosalyn Crane, tall and tanned and strong in limb and shoulder, with frank dark eyes and red lips which smiled and displayed regular, gleaming-white teeth. Robin liked her best, and Rosalyn ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... and modest little kerchiefs swelling with the quick throbbing of their adventurous hearts. We were told that one of these women, after seeing the quartermaster's wife riding a bicycle in her very short and modish skirt, straightway took two deep tucks in her own long saya, train and all. Verily, the spirit of that Filipina in an American would have emboldened her to ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... known by the name of Jeremiah Bossolton, was a gentleman considerably more inclined to breadth than length. He was exactly five feet one inch in height, but thick and solid as a milestone; a wig of modern cut, carefully curled and powdered, gave somewhat of a modish and therefore unseemly grace to a solemn eye; a mouth drawn down at the corners; a nose that had something in it exceedingly consequential; eyebrows sage and shaggy; ears large and fiery; and a chin that would have done honour to a mandarin. Now Mr. Jeremiah Bossolton had a certain peculiarity ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... like a modish wife, Thy winds and rains for ever are at strife; So termagant awhile her thunder tries, And when she can no longer ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... "adventurer" writ all over his well-groomed person. He was young, good-looking, his nails were beautifully polished, his pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle. These were of a soft putty shade; his coat was bottle-green, and his hat of the latest modish shape. ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... pictures which to-day look so natural to us were regarded with distrust. Not even the shepherd, much less the warrior or the demigod, inhabited these quiet scenes. A picture which any rural gentleman could see from his front door, smacked too little of art for the modish town. Moreover, Constable, no doubt sighing for something lighter and more brilliant, was accustomed, in a vain effort to rival the clear light of out-of-doors, to use the lightest colors of his palette. On a varnishing ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... when his apprenticeship expired, instead of beginning, as was expected, to walk the Exchange with a face of importance, or associating himself with those who were most eminent for their knowledge of the stocks, he at once threw off the solemnity of the counting-house, equipped himself with a modish wig, listened to wits in coffee-houses, passed his evenings behind the scenes in the theatres, learned the names of beauties of quality, hummed the last stanzas of fashionable songs, talked with familiarity ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... was the first time for many years that Willoughby Hall had been occupied by any other than caretakers; and Fairhaven, to confess the truth, was a trifle ill-at-ease before the modish persons who now tenanted the old mansion; and consoled itself after an ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... tollerable for the future, I perswaded my Consort to abridge her self of some superfluous Charge which we cou'd not well bear any longer. First we disposed of our Coach, and then our Acquaintance was reform'd of Course; by Degrees a multitude of modish Visitors dwindled away into two or three formal Matrons, which at last ended in a Decent Apartment in a Monastery, where she spent her Time agreeably enough when I was in the Camp. Hitherto the main matter which pall'd all my Joys, was the impossibility of a Restoration, ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... allegories, in which the passions, the vices, and even the habits of mankind were personified. Lighter ethical topics were served up in letters from Philotryphus, Septimius, or others ending in us, and in communications from Flirtilla, Jack Modish, and Co. Eastern tales and apologues, meditations on human life, essays on morality, inquiries as to whether the arts and sciences were serviceable or prejudicial to the human race, dissertations on the wisdom and virtue ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... begun, and fear not, if the action of the play demand a lion, but that he shall be a beast of Peter Quince's picking. The ladies shall not be frighted, for our chief comedians will enact modish people of ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... neither handsome nor revealed aught which might stir vague, deep currents of romance, Missy regretted that even Arthur had seen her in such a sorry plight. She wished he might see her at a better advantage. For instance, galloping up on a spirited mount, in a modish riding-habit—a checked one with flaring-skirted coat and shining boots and daring but swagger breeches, perhaps!—galloping insouciantly up to take ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... to the College of Edinburgh for a tutor to educate his sons, Malloch was recommended; and I never heard that he dishonoured his credentials. When his pupils were sent to see the world, they were entrusted to his care; and having conducted them round the common circle of modish travels, he returned with them to London, where, by the influence of the family in which he resided, he naturally gained admission to many persons of the highest rank, and the highest character—to wits, nobles, and statesmen. Of his works, I know not whether ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... Ogilvie was not. She might even have passed him in the street. That he was the man she had known was beyond question, but there was a puffiness under the eyes and a fulness about the cheeks that altered the general effect of his appearance, and in spite of his modish dress and elaborate manners he seemed to have grown just a little coarse. Still, remembering what a bird of passage he had been, and the many experiences he must have had by land and sea, all that was not to be wondered at. It was really remarkable, everything ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... that still, when I attempt spelling a word aloud, which is not often,—for I find the process a perilous one,—the aa's and ee's, and uh's and vaus, return upon me and I have to translate them with no little hesitation as I go along, into the more modish sounds. A knowledge of the letters themselves I had already acquired by studying the signposts of the place,—rare works of art, that excited my utmost admiration, with jugs, and glasses, and bottles, and ships, and loaves of bread upon ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... her own aggravations: with all her airs Clary was not a match for the indomitable, unhesitating, brazen (with a golden brazenness) women of fashion. Poor Clary had been the beauty at Redwater, the most modish, the best informed woman there; and here, in this world of London, to which Sam had got her an introduction, she was a nobody; scarcely to be detected among the host of ordinary fine women, except by Sam's reflected glory. This was a doubtful boon, an unsatisfactory rise in the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... a work set forth of such perfection, Will praise it self, and doth not beg protection From flatter'd greatness. Industry and pains For gen'ral good, his aim, his Countrey gains; Which ought respect him. A good English Cook, Excellent Modish Monsieurs, and that Book Call'd Perfect Cook, Merete's Pastery Translated, looks like old hang'd Tapistry, The wrong side outwards: so Monsieur adieu, I'm for our Native Mays Works rare and new, Who with Antique ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... a very fine figure, and a good though I don't think a handsome face. He is tall, and very upright, and his appearance and address are at once manly and fashionable, without the smallest tincture of foppery or modish graces. In short, I like him vastly, and think him every way ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... two women stood there at the gate together, they presented a striking contrast: Sophie in her black, modish garments, with the look upon her face of the woman who has been loved, and who has bloomed because of it; Miss Matthews, a faded shadow of what she might have been if love ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... a fresh realization of the beauty of the star as she lay under the dazzling electric glow, and in particular I noticed the small amount of make-up she had used and the natural firmness of her flesh. She was dressed in a modish, informal dinner dress, of embroidered satin, cut fairly low at front and back and with sleeves of some gauzelike material reaching not halfway to her elbow, hardly ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... altered deportment would have delighted the author of "Sartor Resartus." With his modish and correct clothes, his self-respect seemed to have returned. He carried himself differently, there was a confident ring in his tone. He studied the menu which Wingate passed him, through a well-polished eyeglass, and one could well have believed that he ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... they were discussing came leisurely down a path, her books under one arm, the other hand holding a class paper which she examined in a cursory way as she walked. She wore a dark skirt and a simple shirtwaist, both quite modish and becoming, and her shoes were the admiration and envy of half the girls at the school. Dorothy Knerr used to say that "Mary Louise's clothes always looked as if they grew on her," but that may have been partially accounted for by the grace of her slim form and her ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... the elegance of his clothes, and the modish languor of his lounging figure, Barnabas at once recognized him as a gentleman par excellence, and immediately the memory of his own country-made habiliments and clumsy boots arose and smote him. The solitary prisoner seemed in ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... was of white lace, softly draped with white chiffon. On the modish tunic were love-knots of pale blue velvet, and a border of tiny pink rosebuds. The head-dress, of gold filigree, was a heart pierced by a dart; and on Patty's left shoulder, a dainty little figure of Cupid ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... can acquit ourselves to our friends of the great world for the details of such an unfashionable courtship, so well as by giving them, before they retire for the night, a dip into a more modish view ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... because of their size, which was normal, but in definition of their prices. There were "little" dressmakers as well, and "little" tailors. In special session they confided to one another the names or addresses of any of these who happened to be especially deft, or cheap, or modish. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... Allah! It is Mar Jiryis himself!" "May we be helped through him!" "Now our church will wear a richer and more modish look!" exclaimed ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... soft reproach in his voice, "I have been sore mistook in you if you are one to be guided by the rabble." And he waved a hand toward the modish throng. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... poet was not without a degree of prescience; the luxury of eating spiders has never indeed become "modish," but Mons. Lalande, the French astronomer, and one or two humble imitators of the modern philosopher, have shown this triumph over vulgar prejudices, and were epicures ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... possible to appreciate too highly the tact, judgment, and research displayed by the editor; and rarely indeed, so far as externals are concerned, has the typography of Scotland appeared to better advantage. It is a book decked out for the drawing-room in a suit of the newest pattern,—a tall, modish, well-built book, that has to be fairly set a-talking ere we discover from its tongue and style that it is a production not of our own times, but of the times of Charles and the Commonwealth. The good, simple minister of Kilwinning would ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Adonais, pray, That on this memorable morning We twist those lovely lines astray, As modish maid, her charms adorning A trail may twine of eglantine Into the formal "set" of Fashion. Yet wouldst thou gladly lend thy line To present need; for patriot passion, Love of the little sea-girt land, Has ever fired our English singers. Of England's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... language as to remain settled and unaltered; this stile is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... cards— like a hundred greater and lesser follies of the mind—were straws floating along the current of British life, intellectual and social, during the reign of George the Second. This was the case, in spite of the enlightening influences of religion, science, and philosophy. Modish society was addicted to matters over which argument was hardly worth while—in which respect we find modish society the same in all epochs. Our ancestresses particularly were often charming women, and almost as often sensible women; but, like the men of Athens, they were too superstitious. ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... had to be thus occupied. Never forget it! The modish adaptation of woven fabrics to the female contour becomes increasingly complex and minute and exacting and time-occupying in precise proportion as the amount of time increases for ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... and Fighting: who, had he liv'd in our Days, would have made an excellent Town Bully, I wish there were not too much reason to say a modish Gentleman. But tho' old Homer took this way, Virgil, who writes with much more Judgment and Exactness, and follows him in many things, here thought fit to leave him; making his Hero, as I've said, not only brave and prudent, but for the most part virtuous. Which would much better ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... the line of vehicular sensationalism, a modish wicker-bodied phaeton and a minute pony-cart were seen on a pleasant afternoon to issue from a driveway far up a street that now has a name, but which used to be adequately identified by saying "up toward the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... seconds I had vaulted forth from between the high posts, splashed into a funny old wooden tub bound together with brass rims, whirled my black mop into a knot, slipped into the modish boots, corduroys, and a linen smock, and was running out into the peculiar moon-dawn with the swiftness of ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... them, after all, when they arrived at the theatre, the Sphinx and Lady Dolly. The older feminine presentment sent her belittling gaze over their heads and beyond them from the curtain; Lady Dolly turned a modish head to greet them from the front of the box. Lady Dolly raised her eyes but not her elbows, which were assisting her a good deal with the house in exploring and being explored, enabling Colonel John Cummins, who sat ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... sutler, yet, on the other hand, we cannot forgive the poet if he spins his thread too fine, and does not substantiate his romance by the municipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity and pity. I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer the company of plow-boys and tin-peddlers, to the silken and perfumed amity which only celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle,[302] and dinners at the best taverns. The end of friendship is a commerce ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... parade their charms, the courtly dresses of those beauties of Bird-cage Walk, by St. James's Park, where "Lady Betty Modish" was born—full, long, bouffant brocades, hair piled high, long and graceful scarfs, and gloves reaching to the elbow. Even the rouge and powder were a mask to hide the cheek which did or did ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... last of the three fountains done on the grounds by women, and decidedly the most feminine. "Mrs. Longman hasn't quite caught the true note," the architect remarked. "The base of the fountain is interesting, though I don't care for the shape. But the figure itself is too prim and modish. Somehow I can't think of Ceres as a proper old maid, dressed with modern frills. The execution, however, shows a good deal of skill. The frieze might be improved by the softening of those sharp lines ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... Madame, it is no modish thing, The bookman's tribute that I bring; A talk of antiquaries grey, Dust unto dust this many a day, Gossip of texts and bindings old, Of faded type, ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... modish grace, Delirium of the Carmagnole, Fair France has known. How will she pace This frantic dance, and to what goal? Beginning in triumphant sport, She's tremulous now, with terror cold. The whirl so dizzies, she breathes short; The serpent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... may be learned the genius of the age, the debates of the learned, the follies of the ignorant, the bevues of government, and the mistakes of the courtiers. Pamphlets furnish beaus with their airs, coquettes with their charms. Pamphlets are as modish ornaments to gentlewomen's toilets as to gentlemen's pockets; they carry reputation of wit and learning to all that make them their companions; the poor find their account in stall-keeping and in hawking them; the rich find in them ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... observer's eye than heretofore. For all that, she looked no older; her self-assertion, though more elaborate, was not a bit more impressive, and the phrases she used, the turn of her sentences, the colour of her speech, very little resembled anything that would have fallen from a damsel bred in the modish world. Her affectation was shot through with spontaneity; her impertinence had a juvenile seriousness which made it much more amusing than offensive; and a feminine charm in her, striving to prevail over incongruous elements, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... Tilghman, jeeringly. "Some of us have hands to kiss and some regiments to fight. Harkee, macaroni. The general thinks 't would be a pity to spot those modish buskins and gloves. So much ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... familiar feature, "Fops' Alley," having disappeared from the auditorium, the modish thing for unattached men was to make up a party and hire an omnibus-box; and from that position to pronounce judgment upon the legs of the dancers pirouetting in wispy gauze on the stage. Then, when the curtain fell, they would be privileged to go behind the scenes ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... the older students. A few of these sat near Odo, disdainfully superior in their fob-chains and queues; and as the boy glanced about him he met the fixed stare of one of the number, a tall youth seated at his elbow, and conspicuous, even in that modish company, for the exaggerated elegance of his dress. This young man, whose awkward bearing and long lava-hued face crowned with flamboyant hair contrasted oddly with his finical apparel, returned Odo's look with a gaze of eager comprehension. He too, it ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... very definite understanding with her. I had feared it might be rather a delicate matter, talking to her at once, you know—and we needed to hurry—but she's a woman one can talk to. She's made heaps of money, and the poor thing is society-mad—so afraid the modish world won't take her at her true value—but she talked very frankly about marriage—really she's cool-headed for all the fire she seems to have—and the short of it is that she's determined to marry some one of the smart men here in New York. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... Italy, blind to its natural beauties, blind to its art, unhappy till she gets into the "hurrah" of St. Moritz. We follow her hence, note her trailing her petty misery—boredom because she can't spend extravagantly—through modish drawing-rooms; then a fresh hegira, Europe, a divorce, the episode with Peter Van Degen and its profound disillusionment (she has the courage to jump the main-travelled road of convention for a brief term) and her remarriage. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... them; only I think of them twenty times as often as all the beauties I have spoken of. And yet she is neither the twentieth part so beautiful as the plainest of these Court beauties, nor so witty as the dullest I have named, nor so modish—that is the great matter—as the most obscure. I cannot tell what makes me dote on her, except that she is a capricious as her whole sex ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... sincerity, let it be repeated: for the service of domnei was never, as some would affect to interpret it, a modish and ordered affectation; the histories of Peire de Maenzac, of Guillaume de Caibestaing, of Geoffrey Rudel, of Ulrich von Liechtenstein, of the Monk of Pucibot, of Pons de Capdueilh, and even of ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... stood before him, smiling, and he saw that her usual modish house dress was changed for the regulation white duck and peaked ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... neatly-made little man of fashionable, even of modish, cut, spare, smart and whimsical, with a clean-shaved, small-featured face, large, shining brown eyes, abundant and slightly-waving brown hair, that could only be parted, with the sweetest sorrow, in the centre of his well-shaped, almost philosophical head, and movements light and temperate ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... as a Von. I will tell you. Today comes Frau Nirlanger by me and she says: 'Frau Knapf, I wish to buy clothes, aber echt Amerikanische. Myself, I do not know what is modish, and I cannot go ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... aches: ay, do, do, smart limb, ache head, and sprout horns; but I'll be hanged before I'll pity you:—you must needs be married, must ye? there's for that; [Beats his own head.] and to a fine, young, modish lady, must ye? there's for that too; and, at threescore, you old, doting cuckold! take that remembrance;—a fine time of day for a man to be bound prentice, when he is past using of his trade; to set up ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... inexpensive foulard frock—No glasses hid her blue eyes. Her hair was not torn back and screwed into a knot, but might have been dressed by Alice's maid—and her hat, the simplest thing possible, was most becoming, with the proper modish "look."— ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... Goldsmith's Prentice a pretty Trick; For having been abroad about some business, and coming home i'th' evening, a young Spark, exceeding Beauish, (with a New Modish Suit of Cloaths on) that had been drinking hard all Day, would need be picking of me up, when I did'nt at all intend it. But seeing him so earnest for a Bout, that I cou'd'nt get rid of him, I had him to a House I was acquainted with by th' way, and there after a heartening Cup or two, and having ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... what periwigged phrase Won the heart of this sentimental Quaker, At what gold-laced speech of those modish days She listened—the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... censures of his enemies or praises of himself, and they only could be expected to peruse them, whose passions left them leisure for the contemplation of abstracted truth, and whom virtue could please by her native dignity without the assistance of modish ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... shells; couches of sea-grass were overspread with cloth beaten from palm fibre; heavy curtains hung at the doors; ranged on shelves were ornaments and carved calabashes, while there was a profuse array of feathered cloaks and other modish millinery ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... fifty. Her face, thin and not much lined, was of the sort that ages gracefully, so that you thought in youth she must have been a much handsomer woman than in fact she was. Her hair, not yet very gray, was becomingly arranged, and her black gown was modish. I remembered having heard that her sister, Mrs. MacAndrew, outliving her husband but a couple of years, had left money to Mrs. Strickland; and by the look of the house and the trim maid who opened the door I judged that it was a sum ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... Command, a Woman of a tolerable Genius, who will apply herself diligently to her Exercise for the Space of but one half Year, shall be able to give her Fan all the Graces that can possibly enter into that little modish Machine. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins was still pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master said was inaudible in the library, but the man hurried out in front of him, and was heard clattering down the evil ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... bead, Wi' virls and whirlygigums at the head. The Goth was stalking round with anxious search, Spying the time-worn flaws in every arch; It chanc'd his new-come neibor took his e'e, And e'en a vexed and angry heart had he! Wi' thieveless sneer to see his modish mien, He, down the water, gies him ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the others—radiant with untried health,—some gentle, plaintive spirit from a sadder sphere. Her clinging blue robe appeared too heavy for the frail body; her fair curls and carefully arranged chignon were too modish for the ethereal yet anxious countenance; the massive wedding-ring seemed too coarse a bond for the almost transparent hand which trembled nervously on the cover of the Serious Call. Sara, in black velvet and sable, with ostrich plumes ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... satin-smooth hair and a soft, ripe glow on her round cheeks. Her eyes were big and brown and velvety, under oddly-pointed black brows, and her crooked mouth was rose-red. She wore a smart brown suit, with two very modish little shoes peeping from beneath it; and her hat of dull pink straw, wreathed with golden-brown poppies, had the indefinable, unmistakable air which pertains to the "creation" of an artist in millinery. Priscilla had a sudden stinging consciousness that her own hat had ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... influences which affected Raeburn. In any case, his later portraits, especially of women, possess qualities of charm and beauty which, while never merely pretty or meretricious, connect them in some measure with the more modish and less sincere and virile work of Lawrence. But otherwise—and, unlike his southern contemporaries, he never sacrificed character to elegance or subordinated individuality to type—the evolution of his style continued on purely personal lines. The pictures painted between 1810 and his death, while ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... fine coloring and clear eyes, silently agreed with her. The widow made a charming picture in her modish tea-gown, and the physician, watching her with an appraising eye, acknowledged the beauty which had captivated all Washington. Mrs. Brewster had carried her honors tactfully, a fact which had gained her popularity even among the dowagers and match-making mothers who take an active part ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... enters on the floor, He is a foppish knight; The first to be in modish dress, He studies day and night. Observe his habit round about, - Even from top to toe; The fashion late from France was brought, - He's ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... these staid and decorous people looked straight before them in an attitude of quiet expectancy. A few little children turned on me their round, curious eyes, but no one else stared at the blundering stranger, whose modish coat, with a sprig of wild roses in its buttonhole, made him rather a conspicuous contrast to the other ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... while don't run after 'respectable working girls'; they leave that to things who wear 'Modish Men's Clothing'—with braided cuffs and pockets slashed on the bias!—and stand smirking on corners we have to pass going home. Do you think I'd do my hair becomingly, and—and all ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... Jevne it might be said that she was real where Ray was artificial, and artificial where Ray was real. Everything that Miss Jevne wore was real. She was as modish as Ray was shabby, as slim as Ray was stocky, as artificially tinted and tinctured as Ray was naturally rosy-cheeked and buxom. It takes real money to buy clothes as real as those worn by Miss Jevne. The soft charmeuse in her graceful gown was real and miraculously draped. The cobweb-lace ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... There were no more of those disconcerting and high-flown forensics in her greeting. There was the winning candor of old friendship in her smile and he flushed boyishly in his frank delight. She presented him to Mrs. Stanton and that lady's modish coolness did not dampen his spirits, which had become plainly exuberant. In fact, he paid very little ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... a bow and some arrows upon which, he said, he'd been working for days. When he returned, laden with luxurious contributions to the evening meal, the camp had still another guest. Keela was sitting by the fire. Philip eyed with furtive approval the modish shirtwaist, turned back at the full brown throat, and the ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... about the big drinking room of the Cafe Sinister after his angry parting with Elsie Welcome, looked up suddenly and saw the street door open. He stood still staring. The new arrival was Mary Randall. She wore a smart tailored suit and a modish hat. Druce noted these details of costume, the shining bronze hair, the fresh complexion and the trim figure. He ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... as to rise also, and join in the sport? it would but interrupt some tale of scandal, or some description of a toupee. Active wit, however despicable when compared with intellectual, is yet surely better than the insignificant click-clack of modish conversation," casting his eyes towards Miss Larolles, "or even the pensive dullness of affected silence," changing their direction ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... grown so common a fashion, that a modish man condemns it; a man of garniture and feather is above ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... knife, dear girl, cuts love, they say— Mere modish love perhaps it may: For any tool of any kind Can separate ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... the patronage of London society. For him a pretty girl is a pretty girl, and it is enough. He seats her comfortably in a chair and paints her as she is. One cannot imagine him turning her into a nymph, a shepherdess, or a priestess of Hymen, or painting her with a very modish coiffure on her head and a pair of blue-ribboned sandals on her bare feet. These things Reynolds did habitually and moreover put his figures in attitudes with up-rolled eyes and extended arms and filled out his larger canvases with altars and tombs and allegorical attributes. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... upon young women whom they endow with good looks. In the half-freedom of the past year she had bought her own clothes, with only the nominal supervision of Miss Waring's assistant; and in her new spring raiment she was very much the young lady, and decidedly a modish one. Dan glanced from her to the young people at a neighboring table. Among the girls in the party none was prettier or more charmingly gowned than Marian. In the light of this proximity he watched her with a new attention, and he saw that her father, too, studied her covertly, as though ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... me. I hate to part with those to whom I am become attached. Mrs. Pryor there sometimes talks of leaving me, and says I might make a more advantageous connection than herself. I should as soon think of exchanging an old-fashioned mother for something modish and stylish. As for you—why, I began to flatter myself we were thoroughly friends; that you liked Shirley almost as well as Shirley likes you, and she does not ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... elder, without being regularly handsome, had a noble appearance and an aristocratic air. She was graceful, intellectual and refined. Her toilette was as finished as Miss Champlin's, but she was not as fresh, in spite of what De Fersen said. The younger, Nancy Hunter, is not so modish, but a perfect rosebud. Her character is gay: she is always laughing, and has beautiful teeth—a thing not common in America." But Vauban, who on this occasion acted as master of ceremonies, promised the prince a greater treat for the morrow, and took him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... suggestion here and there, after the secret freemasonry of her sex. "You are well rid of this forsworn captain, dear Mistress Thankful; and methinks that with hair as beautiful as yours, the new style of wearing it, though a modish frivolity, is most becoming. I assure you 'tis much affected in New York and Philadelphia,—drawn straight back from the forehead, after this manner, as ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... the modish dress, with its touches of lace; to a pearl-and-amethyst brooch that held Mrs. Milo's collar; to the fresh gloves and the smart shoes. She recognized good taste even though she did not choose to subscribe to it; also, she recognized cost values. She looked up with a mysterious smile. "Well," ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... oppress the reader with a sense of languor and unreality; for its creator poured into its pages a tide of passion unknown to his frigid and stilted predecessors, and dared to depict Nature as she really is, not as she was misrepresented by the modish authors and artists of the age. Some persons seem shy of owning an acquaintance with this work; indeed, it has been made the butt of ridicule by the disciples of a decadent school. Its faults and its beauties are on the surface; Rousseau's own estimate is freely ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... and looked up. The impression I got was of a modish and very much up-tilted hat and of a veil which hid everything beneath its brim and the collar of a long, loose coat. These and nothing much besides; for the single post-lamp left the platform in ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... M. Radisson back; and down they came—dish-water—and coffee leavings—and porridge scraps full on the crown of my fine young gentleman, drenching his gay attire as it had been soaked in soapsuds of a week old. Something burst from his lips a deal stronger than the modish French oaths then in vogue. There was a shout from the rabble. I dragged rather than led M. Radisson pell-mell into a shop from front to rear, over a score of garden walls, and out again from rear to front, so that we gave the slip to all those officers now running ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... the author of the "Faery Queen," translated and admired Du Bellay and Ronsard; to some critics of our own time this taste seems a modish affectation. For one, I have ever found an original charm in the lyrics of the Pleiad, and have taken great delight in Hugo's amazing variety of music, in the romance of Alfred de Musset, in the beautiful cameos of Gautier. What is poetical, if not the "Song of Roland," the only true national ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... felicity" of the artist with the absurd travesties worn on our American stage, we can better understand the pleasure which filled Mr. James's heart. What, for example, would Madame Nathalie have thought of the modish gowns which Mrs. Fiske introduces into the middle-class Norwegian life of Ibsen's dramas? No plays can less well bear such inaccuracies, because they depend on their stage-setting to bring before our eyes their alien aspect, to make us feel an atmosphere with which we are ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... While his needs are too great; and thus is he constantly hampered. Many the things I had done; but then the cost of such changes Who does not fear, especially now in this season of danger? Long since my house was smiling upon me in modish apparel! Long since great panes of glass were gleaming in all of the windows! But who can do as the merchant does, who, with his resources, Knows the methods as well by which the best is arrived at? Look at that house over yonder,—the new one; behold with what splendor 'Gainst the background ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... made her appearance, accompanied by a very pretty, modish, affected young lady, Miss Annabella Luttridge, her niece. Her little coquettish airs were lost upon Clarence Hervey, whose eye was intently fixed upon the door, watching for the entrance of Mr. Vincent. He was one of the dinner party, and he came up soon after ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... smart pretty Fellows in Bristol are numbers, some Who so modish are grown, that they think plain sense cumbersome; And lest they should seem to be queer or ridiculous, They affect to believe ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... imperative. The result is that, in order to keep up a decent appearance, the former habitually live hand-to-mouth to a greater extent than the latter. So it comes, for instance, that the American farmer and his wife and daughters are notoriously less modish in their dress, as well as less urbane in their manners, than the city artisan's family with an equal income. It is not that the city population is by nature much more eager for the peculiar complacency that comes of a conspicuous consumption, nor has the rural ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... varies with the speed; For Queen of Beauty or for Sausage King The Customer is always on the wing— Then praise the nymph who regularly earns Small profits (if you please) but quick returns. Our modish Venus is a bustling minx, But who can spare the time to woo a Sphinx? When Mona Lisa posed with rustic guile The stale enigma of her simple smile, Her leisure lovers raised a pious cheer While the slow mischief crept from ear ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... scarce a sycophant was fed by pride; Where ne'er was known the form of mock debate, Or seen a new-made mayor's unwieldy state; Where change of fav'rites made no change of laws, And senates heard, before they judg'd a cause; How would'st thou shake at Britain's modish tribe, Dart the quick taunt, and edge the piercing gibe? Attentive truth and nature to descry, And pierce each scene with philosophick eye; To thee were solemn toys, or empty show, The robes of pleasure, and ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Pamela, this is but a faint sketch of the conduct I must have expected from my wife, let her quality have been what it would; or have lived with her on bad terms. Judge then, if to me a lady of the modish ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... They play'd the very devil with their rhymes. They hope'd Apollo a new set would send us; And then, invidiously enough, Place'd modish verse, which they call'd stuff, Against the ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... lately been the repository of seven eggs and| |a box of figs, and told how she and her husband | |happened to be arrested last evening as shoplifters.| | | |As she talked, her husband, Charles Ewart, | |thirty-one years old, sat disconsolately in a cell, | |his modish green overcoat somewhat wrinkled, the | |careful creases in his gray trousers a bit less | |apparent, and his up-to-the-minute gray fedora a | |trifle out of shape and dusty. Nevertheless, he | |still retained the mien of dignity with which he met| |his arrest in the grocery ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... fine-shaped, expressive face, to which great speaking eyes and a mouth half pensive, half smiling, lent an air of rare distinction. These were the eyes which in after years Anne would half close in a roguish way, as when, for instance, she meditated a brilliant stroke as Lady Betty Modish, and then, opening them defiantly, would make them glisten with the spirit of twinkling comedy. These were the eyes, too, which would shine forth such unutterable love when she played Cleopatra that one might well ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Hear me. In the theatre properties is a fine dress for Lady Modish and two more for Peggy and Susan Careless. Not perhaps what such ladies might expect, but passable. And—I know men. There's not a man will look at their gowns for looking at their faces, though the suits are well enough when all's said. I vow, ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... to be a very fashionable and leisurely throng—so long had he been absent from people either modish or easeful. He felt himself to be hopelessly outside all this youth and brilliancy and merriment, and he looked upon it ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... tact, to which Goethe bore grateful testimony, she set herself to correct his manners and his tastes. He had brought with him his Frankfort habits of speech, and these under protest he was forced to give up for the modish forms of the smooth-speaking Leipzigers.[20] Before Frau Boehme took him in hand, he assures us, he was not an ill-mannered lad, but she impressed on him the need of cultivating the external graces of social intercourse and even ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... rest—Thou know'st my meaning—The old Business of the Silver-World, Ned; by Fortune, it's a mad Age we live in, Ned; and here be so many—wicked Rogues, about this damn'd leud Town, that, 'faith, I am fain to speak in the vulgar modish Style, in my own Defence, and railly Matrimony ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... I think of the tiny shoes she affected—patent-leather ones mostly, with a seam running straight up the middle (and you may guess the exact date of our comedy by knowing in what year these shoes were modish); the string of fat pearls she so often wore about her round, full throat; the white frock, say, with arabesques of blue all over it, that Felix Kennaston said reminded him of Ruskin's tombstone; or that other white-and-blue ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... platform of his car to meet her when his train passed the home city from whose suburbs she had come in. His eager eye fell delightedly on the trimly modish figure his sister presented; he would be proud to take her back into his car. He knew just how two or three sleepy fellows of his own age, in chairs near his own, would sit up when they saw him return with this radiant girl. Dot certainly ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... the Seine found fitter place For courtly wit and modish grace, Than by the Indus. There right well His facile talent served his Chief; And England hears with genuine grief That ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... front of the Winnebago House, and he went to get it. But at the instant of unhitching, Miss Grierson's trap was driven up and the untying of knots paused while he stepped from the curb to stand at the wheel of the modish equipage. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... had suddenly shown him something beyond caprice, beyond accident of mood or temper. The true woman had spoken; all outer modish garments had dropped away from her real nature, and showed its abundant depth and sincerity. All that was roused in him this moment was never known; he never could tell it; there were eternal spaces between them. She had been speaking to him just now ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he came home, he pleased his father much by his graceful behavior and elegant attire. "This day," says Mr. Pepys in his diary for August 26, 1664, "my wife tells me that Mr. Pen, Sir William's son, is come back from France, and came to visit her. A most modish person grown, she says, a fine gentleman." Pepys thinks that he is even a bit too French in his manner ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... hand to confine a wandering tress. The young man saw a small, very simply dressed girl, with a flushed face and bright, deep eyes. The small white hat crowned a great tangle of wonderful reddish gold hair. She held herself with the grace which is born of natural health and no modish training; the strong hazel stick, the scratched shoes, and the wet fringes of her gown showed how she had spent the afternoon. The young man, having received an excellent education, ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... venerable as civilization itself, and as transient as the fad of the hour. Democratic institutions and universal educational privileges have bred a social mass intelligent and responsive enough to be modish, but lacking ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... having been fallen heavily asleep in, upon breezy porches, of hot summer afternoons. In the windows are small vases of alabaster, fly-specked Parian and plaster figures, and dolls with stiff wooden limbs and papier- mache heads, a sort of dolls no longer to be bought in these days of modish, blue-eyed blondes of biscuit and sturdy india-rubber brunettes. The show-case is full of an incredible variety, as photograph albums, fishing-hooks, socks, suspenders, steel pens, cutlery of all sorts, and curious old colored prints of Adelaide, and Kate, and Ellen. ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... "True, yet not true," he said. "Good Form demands that men should look half dead, And women semi-frozen. Yet Nature lives beneath these modish masks Somewhere, sometimes, with energy that tasks Caste's rigid ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... the outworks, called the Place of Arms, is where the Archery Club resort during the season for exercise; no spot certainly could be more convenient: though by the bye, there is a degree of modish gaiety on such occasions, which is not altogether in character (at least to a picturesque eye,) with the solemnity of a ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... to fine linen, a well-fitting mouse-coloured great- coat furred in black, a pair of tight trousers of fashionable cut, and a hat of inimitable curl. After all, it was more likely that I should have recognised our visitors, than that they should have identified the modish gentleman with the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the open space between the ivy-clad posts; her face and hands were soft tinted by the glow from the reflecting east, her hair was like a bronze relief against the dark green of the mountain. She was dressed in white—a modish gown of rich Irish lace. One instantly likened this rare young creature ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... lower part of her body. The ministrants had clothed it in the old black- silk dress, with its spreading seams and panels of different materials. It reminded Peter of the new dress he had meant to get his mother, and of the modish suit which at that moment molded his own shoulders and waist. The pitifulness of her sacrifices trembled in Peter's throat. He pressed his lips together, and nodded silently to the black Ladies ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... not appeared in this disguise for more than seventy years; in fact, not since he had so frightened pretty Lady Barbara Modish by means of it, that she suddenly broke off her engagement with the present Lord Canterville's grandfather, and ran away to Gretna Green with handsome Jack Castleton, declaring that nothing in the world would induce her to marry ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... doctor, as Dunbury had taken to calling him in distinction from his uncle, was not yet arrived, as Tony had explained; but Ted, her younger brother, was very much on the scene, arrayed in all the extravagant niceties of modish attire affected by university undergraduates. At twenty, Ted Holiday was as handsome as the traditional young Greek god and possessed of a godlike propensity to do as he liked and the devil take the consequences. Already Ned ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper |
