"Neatness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... king's, are more numerous, certain, and direct, than those on the other side. This is the case, even if we consider the external evidence: but when we weigh the internal, derived from the style and composition, there is no manner of comparison. These meditations resemble, in elegance, purity, neatness, and simplicity, the genius of those performances which we know with certainty to have flowed from the royal pen; but are so unlike the bombast, perplexed, rhetorical, and corrupt style of Dr. Gauden, to whom they are ascribed, that no human testimony ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... place where, as an article grew shabby or worn, a new one was purchased. The furniture looked poor, and the carpets almost threadbare; but there was such a dainty spirit of cleanliness abroad, such exquisite neatness of repair, and altogether so bright and cheerful a look about the rooms—everything so above-board—no shifts to conceal poverty under flimsy ornament—that many a splendid drawing-room would give less pleasure to those who could see evidences of character ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... house, the streets were crowded with spectators, who ran to see so extraordinary and magnificent a procession. The dress of each slave was so rich, both for the stuff and the jewels, that those who were dealers in them valued each at no less than a million of money; besides the neatness and propriety of the dress, the noble air, fine shape and proportion of each slave were unparalleled; their grave walk at an equal distance from each other, the lustre of the jewels curiously set in their girdles ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... condition of the English agricultural labourer and the French peasant proprietor is irrelevant and inconclusive. In the cottage of a small owner at Osse, for instance, we may discover features to shock us, often a total absence of the neatness and veneer of the Sussex ploughman's home. Our disgust is trifling compared with that of the humblest, most hard-working owner of the soil, when he learns under what conditions lives his English compeer. To till another's ground for ten or eleven shillings a week, inhabit a house from which ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... allow that his disorderliness was anything more than personal, always contending that he had a love of order and neatness with regard to his surroundings and arrangements. Yet here is a sketch of the condition of his living-room, as seen by one of his friends: 'The most exquisite confusion reigned in his house. Books and music were scattered in all directions; here the residue of a cold luncheon, there ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... commonly called fairies, though there are many different kinds of fairies in Fairyland, have an exceeding dislike to untidiness. Indeed, they are quite spiteful to slovenly people. Being used to all the lovely ways of the trees and flowers, and to the neatness of the birds and all woodland creatures, it makes them feel miserable, even in their deep woods and on their grassy carpets, to think that within the same moonlight lies a dirty, uncomfortable, slovenly ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... apartment agreeably warm, was smartly polished, and was evaporating cheerful music out of a bright teakettle. Through a door partly ajar could be seen another room, covered with a rag carpet, and the companion of the first in simplicity and neatness. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... oil-painting in youth from a little Jew animalcule, a smouch called Burrell, a clever sensible creature though; but I could make no progress either in painting or drawing. Nature denied me correctness of eye and neatness of hand, yet I was very desirous to be a draughtsman at least, and laboured harder to attain that point than at any other in my recollection, to which I did not make some approaches. My oil-paintings were to Miss ——— above ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... and, on the coquette fixing His ardent eyes, though blushing, In language full of neatness, And tones of lute-like sweetness, This song began ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... other hand certain success ought to be achieved by the good-natured, intelligent, reliable man who continually wins friends; the truthful man who has a fine reputation for thrift, honesty, neatness, and love for his work. He seems entirely worthy of success. Yet for reasons that baffle himself and his friends it sometimes happens that such ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... laugh, Ned," said Obed. "You're just as black as we are. This thing of changing your boarding house every night by violence and the use of firearms doesn't lead to neatness. If fine feathers make fine birds then we three are about the poorest ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... somewhat elongated face, as though he had pored over big books too much, a sort of air of pathos and aloofness from things. His mouth strikes you as being rather meager, until he smiles, which is quite often, for, glory be, he has a good sense of humor. But besides that he has a neatness, a coolness, an impersonal sort of ease, which would make you think that he might have stepped out of one of Henry James's earlier novels of about the time of the Portrait of a Lady. And I like him. I knew that at once. He's effete and old-worldish ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... we descended gradually into the beautiful valleys of the Tyrol, leaving the snow behind, tho' the white peaks of the mountains were continually in sight. At Bruneck, in an inn resplendent with neatness—we had the first specimen of a German bed. It is narrow and short, and made so high at the head, by a number of huge square bolsters and pillows, that you rather sit than lie. The principal covering is a bag of down, very properly denominated ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... Amsterdam there are a number of dairy villages where cheeses are made, and some of them are almost always visited by travellers. They are great curiosities, in fact, on account of their singular and most extraordinary neatness. Cleanliness is, in all parts of the world, deemed a very essential requisite of a dairy, and the Dutch housewives in the dairy villages of Holland have carried the idea to the extreme. The village which is most commonly visited by strangers who go to Amsterdam, is ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... be remarked in the country life is the miserableness of many of their houses; there are men of five thousand a year in Ireland, who live in habitations that a man of seven hundred a year in England would disdain; an air of neatness, order, dress, and proprete, is wanting to a surprising degree around the mansion; even new and excellent houses have often nothing of this about them. But the badness of the houses is remedying every hour throughout the whole kingdom, for the number of new ones just built, or building, ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... logs, part of which remained. It was much the same with the barns and stables, for while they were stoutly built of framed timber or logs one end of most of them was lower than the rest, and in some cases consisted of poles and sods. Even to her untrained eyes all she saw suggested order, neatness, and efficiency. The whole was flanked and sheltered by a big birch bluff, in which trunks and branches showed up through a thin green haze of tiny opening leaves, though here and there uncovered twigs still cut in lace-like tracery against the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... transportation improved; and metallic currency gradually found its way into the settlements. When Mrs Simcoe, the wife of the lieutenant-governor, passed through the country in 1792, she was struck by the neatness of the farms of the Dutch and German settlers from the Mohawk valley, and by the high quality of the wheat. 'I observed on my way thither,' she says in her diary, 'that the wheat appeared finer than any I have seen in England, and totally free from weeds.' And a few months later an anonymous ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... commended for the good taste displayed in the mechanical execution of the works. Type and paper are everything that could be desired, and the volumes are set off with a gilt top which adds to their general appearance of neatness.—Herald, Rochester. ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... gracious mood came over his lady. It was just a Swiss farmhouse of many storeys, the lower one for the cows and other animals, and the rest for the family and industries. All was clean and in order, with that wonderful outside neatness which makes Swiss chalets look like painted toy houses popped down on the greensward without yard or byre. And these people were well-to-do, and it was the ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... and to us not very clear instruction, Rose slipped up the secret stair. She saw Camille come in and gravely unpack his little portmanteau, and dispose his things in the drawers with soldier-like neatness, and hum an agreeable march. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... she dressed herself with neatness and care and impatiently awaited his coming. She was sure it must be long past the usual hour when at last the door opened and Violet came in with the waiter of bread ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... descanted on the glories of field life, on the freshness of the night, on the brilliance of the June foliage; for the next two hours he ardently proclaimed the surpassing beauty of Thisbe's eye, the glossiness of her plumage, the neatness of her claw, and he wound up with a mad twenty minutes of piercing monotony as he depicted the depth of his devotion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... to endure much without the relief of striking out with manly blows. An enemy guessing his case and possessing the infernal gift whose joy is to dishearten and do hurt with courteous despitefulness, may plant a poisoned arrow here and there with neatness and fine touch, while his bound victim can, with decency, neither start, nor utter brave howls, nor guard himself, but must sit still and listen, hospitably supplying smoke and drink and being careful not to make ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... report rendered at the close of 1825 Ashmun showed that the settlers were living in neatness and comfort; two chapels had been built, and the militia was well organized, equipped, and disciplined. The need of some place for the temporary housing of immigrants having more and more impressed itself upon the colony, before the ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... fashion of the Prince de Talleyrand; a gold cross, hanging from a strip of blue ribbon with a white border, indicated an ecclesiastical dignitary. The outlines beneath the black silk stockings would not have disgraced an athlete. The exquisite neatness of his clothes and person revealed an amount of care which a simple priest, and, above all, a Spanish priest, does not always take with his appearance. A three-cornered hat lay on the front seat of the carriage, which bore the ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... Card Executed at the office of the Oneonta Weekly Journal with neatness and dispatch and on reasonable terms, Job Printing of ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... that such ornaments might bring was in reality only a cloak for loose thinking and feeble observation. Even the style of the eighteenth century was not quite his ideal; it was too elegant; there was an artificial neatness about the form which imposed itself upon the substance, and degraded it. No, there was only one example of the perfect style, and that was the Code Napoleon; for there alone everything was subordinated to the exact and complete expression of what was to be said. A statement of law can have no place ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... "Khayzaran" the rattan-palm. Those who have seen this most graceful "palmijuncus" in its native forest will recognize the neatness ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... when she noticed anything different from what she had been accustomed to in a house where there was a small family, and, in consequence, plenty of space. She unpacked her trunk and hung up her clothes with care and neatness which the Ethels admired. Ordinarily they would have praised her frankly for doing well what they sometimes failed to do well, but they had not yet recovered from the constraint that her remarks on the way home had thrown over them. It was ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... therefore inferred, that he could not immediately detect me. Accordingly I sent him an epigram which I had made, and an English version of it, as from the original. He commended the latter, but said, that it wanted the neatness of the Roman. When I undeceived him, he ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Cousin Phil is so fond of. He is at Aunt Harriet's often on Sunday evenings. He's a good looking young man, dressed with the greatest neatness, and is very polite to everybody in ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... smoke to escape; the remainder of the roof is covered with a treble coat of birch bark, and between the first and second layer of bark is about six inches of moss; about the chimney clay is substituted for it. On entering one of the houses I was astonished at the neatness which reigned within. The sides of the tenement were covered with arms,—bows, arrows, clubs, axes of iron, (stolen from the settlers) stone hatchets, arrow heads, in fact, implements of war and for the chase, but all arranged in the neatest order, and apparently every man's property ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad
... solitude or society came all alike to John. You would as soon expect a pine-tree to be out of sorts, as his hard, honest face, and muscular frame. John was never sick, or disturbed in any way; he performed his own domestic duties with a neatness and regularity known to few housekeepers, and was a faithful and most uncompromising guardian of the toll-bar. I well remember how our young imaginations were impressed with the fact, that no man could pass, without, as it ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... her bolstered up in the bed, with her pale countenance emaciated with pain, and every thing about the room proclaiming the most abject poverty. Her daughter sat sewing at the head of the bed, watching every want of her mother, and active with her needle. The perfect neatness of the room, told how faithful was the daughter in the discharge of her painful and arduous duties. But her own slender form and consumptive countenance showed that by toil and watching she was almost worn out herself. This noble girl, by night and by day, with unwearied attention, endeavored ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... with the air of a man who has remembered something which he had overlooked, shoved a sock in his guest's mouth and resumed his packing. He was what might be called an impressionist packer. His aim appeared to be speed rather than neatness. He bundled his belongings in, closed the bag with some difficulty, and, stepping to the window, opened it. Then he climbed out on to the fire-escape, dragged the suit-case after him, ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... years since I had seen her, the exquisite neatness of the letter, its careful paragraphing, its margins so accurate as to give the impression that she had drawn a faint margin line with a lead pencil and then erased it—all these were as indicative of Emily Benton as—well, as the letter ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... removed, in some degree, the shyness and embarrassment which Peveril originally felt in Bridgenorth's presence and which the tenor of his first remarks had rather increased than diminished. Deborah's promised banquet was soon on the board; and in simplicity as well as neatness and good order, answered the character she had claimed for it. In one respect alone, there seemed some inconsistency, perhaps a little affectation. Most of the dishes were of silver, and the plates were of the same metal; instead ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... indulges in an illustration, and those which he gives are far from lively; it is only at rare intervals that his logical ingenuity in stating some intricate argument clothes his thought in language of corresponding neatness. He has, in fact, the faults natural to an isolated thinker. He gives his readers credit for being familiar with the details of the labyrinth in which he had wandered till every intricacy was plainly ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... poorer settlers, having more hard work to do than before, very frequently become slatterns; but the ladies, accustomed to a refined neatness, feel that they cannot degrade themselves by its absence, and struggle under every disadvantage to keep up the ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... by a lady's hand. Not only were our walks covered with snow-white sand and the borders ornamented with beautiful agates that we had collected in the neighbourhood, but the interior of our house was the perfection of neatness: the floor was covered with white sand beaten firmly together to the depth of about six inches; the surface was swept and replaced with fresh material daily; the travelling bedsteads, with their bright green mosquito curtains, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... did nothing to damp his hopes, but played her part bravely and well to spare him the anguish of remorse that secretly wrung her own heart. She met us with a cheerful countenance, admired the neatness of the parlour, the glowing fire, ate her share of porridge, and finding the eggs cooked hard, declared she could not abide them soft. Then she would see her father work his lathe (to his great delight), and begged he would make her some ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... together that they touched each other, and, as thorns taper from base to point, the spokes touched one another along their whole length, from circumference to centre. This apparatus is always made with great neatness. It is laid over a hole 18 inches deep, dug in the beast's path, and the noose of a cord, of which the other end is secured to a log, is laid closely within the upper hoop. When the beast treads on the apparatus, he crashes through the thorns, but, on withdrawing his foot from the hole, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... wagons rolled, drawn by sleek army mules; flower gardens blazed forth in gorgeous colors; women and children, all clean and white and American, were sitting upon the porches or playing in the yards. Everywhere was a military neatness; the town was like the officers' quarters of a fort, the whole place spick and span ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... arm. Mr Abel, who had a quaint old-fashioned air about him, looked nearly of the same age as his father, and bore a wonderful resemblance to him in face and figure, though wanting something of his full, round, cheerfulness, and substituting in its place a timid reserve. In all other respects, in the neatness of the dress, and even in the club-foot, he and the old gentleman were ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... especially insist, Giotto's genius is not to be considered as struggling with difficulty and repressed by ignorance, but as appointed, for the good of men, to come into the world exactly at the time when its rapidity of invention was not likely to be hampered by demands for imitative dexterity or neatness of finish; and when, owing to the very ignorance which has been unwisely regretted, the simplicity of his thoughts might be uttered with a childlike and innocent sweetness, never to be recovered in times of prouder knowledge. The ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... concerts, with a very small orchestra, which were given in "Apel's house"; in 1781 they migrated to the Gewandhaus, and by this name the concerts were afterwards known. In still later days Mendelssohn became conductor, and for brilliance and neatness the concerts were famous throughout the world; then Reinecke came and they became the most slovenly in the world—in this fine quality of slovenliness not even our London Philharmonic Society could hope to rival them; ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... of their excessive neatness there remained traces of Jan and the children in the rooms. The flowers on the dinner-table proclaimed that they had been arranged by another hand than Lalkhan's. He was certain of that without Lalkhan's assurance that ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... brook, we left the common behind us, and entered a more cultivated and enclosed country, where arable and pasture ground was agreeably varied with groves and hedges. Descending now almost close to the stream, our course lay through a little gate, into a pathway kept with great neatness, the sides of which were decorated with trees and flowering shrubs of the hardier species; until, ascending by a gentle slope, we issued from the grove, and stood almost at once in front of a low but very ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... above all his setting aside the last national element in Latin poetry, the Saturnian measure, and substituting for it the Greek hexameter. That the "multiform" poet executed all these tasks with equal neatness, that he elaborated hexameters out of a language of by no means dactylic structure, and that without checking the natural flow of his style he moved with confidence and freedom amidst unwonted measures and forms—are so ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... opera. The guests were the Count and Countess Olisco, Count Tornik, Don Cesare Carpazzi, and Prince Minotti. Don Cesare Carpazzi, a thin swarthy youth, sat just across the corner of the table from Nina. Although his appearance was one of great neatness, it was all too evident, if one observed with good eyes, that the edges of his shirt had been trimmed with the scissors until the hem narrowed close to the line of stitching; and his evening clothes in a strong ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... translation of Montaigne down to the present hour. That tradition has always welcomed copious, well-informed, enthusiastic, disorderly, and affectionate talk about books. It demands gusto rather than strict method, discursiveness rather than concision, abundance of matter rather than mere neatness of design. "Here is God's plenty!" cried Dryden in his old age, as he opened once more his beloved Chaucer; and in Lowell's essays there is surely "God's plenty" for a book-lover. Every one praises "My Garden Acquaintance," "A Good Word for Winter," "On a Certain Condescension ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... plate-racks, containing shells; there are rows of these of one size and shape, which mark them off as dinner plates or bowls; others are as obviously tureens. They are arranged primly as in a well-conducted kitchen; indeed, neatness and cleanliness are the note struck everywhere, yet the effect of the ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... life, both before and since the war, had only increased a natural instinct for order and seemliness. The pretty blue paper, the fresh drugget, the photographs on the wall, the flowers, and the delicate neatness of everything delighted him. He went round looking at the pictures and the few books, perfectly conscious that everything which he saw had a more than common interest for him. The room seemed to be telling ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pass muster with disputants in search of a verbal triumph, but to any man seriously concerned for the welfare of the nation must appear childishly irrelevant. The welfare of the State cannot turn upon the neatness of a tu quoque; retorts are not reasons, and had every Unionist, down from the Duke of Devonshire to the present writer, pressed in 1886 for the retention of the Irish members at Westminster, the controversial ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... His neatness compelled a second glance, and the second look at him proved interesting. The boy's face was bright, cheerful and attractive, for with all the innocence written upon it there was also the knowledge of good and evil, together ...
— Irish Ned - The Winnipeg Newsy • Samuel Fea
... curtained windows, and, to add to the general sense of melancholy, a cold, raw wind was blowing down from the North Sea and a drizzling rain had set in. Though La Panne is within easy range of the German batteries, which could eliminate it with neatness and despatch, it has, singularly enough, never been bombarded, nor has it been subjected to any serious air raids. This is the more surprising as all the neighboring towns, as well as Dunkirk, a dozen miles beyond, have been repeatedly shelled and ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... the wards expecting to find something of the neatness and order which in the Richmond hospitals ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... looked about a man came up. He was elderly and dressed with extreme neatness in old-fashioned dark clothes, but he had the unmistakable look of a gentleman's servant. Though there was a small car in the road, he was obviously ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... how long they had been travelling in this easy manner, when they found the vehicle again descending to the earth, where it rested before a white house, that had every appearance of neatness and comfort, though not ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... with the Warreners, who looked with surprise on the neatness which prevailed in this crowded little room. On the ground, by the walls, were several rolls of bedding covered over with shawls, and forming seats or lounges. On the top of one of the piles two little children were fast asleep. ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... accents of the thrush from on high, always retard my steps, that I may listen to the delicious music." And the Farmer is no less interested in "the astonishing art which all birds display in the construction of their nests, ill provided as we may suppose them with proper tools; their neatness, their convenience." At some time during his American residence he gathered the materials for an unpublished study of ants; and his bees proved an unfailing source of entertainment. "Their government, their industry, their quarrels, their passions, always present me with something ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... little kitchen leaning her elbows on the table. She was a tall, thin, sallow girl, aged twenty-three, by nature slatternly and careless but trained by Anna into superficial neatness. Her drab striped cotton dress and gray black checked apron increased the length and sadness of her melancholy figure. "Oh, Lord!" groaned Miss Mathilda to ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... thing manufactured by these people, there appears to be an uncommon degree of neatness and ingenuity. Their cloth, which is the principal manufacture, is made from the morus papyrifera; and doubtless in the same manner as at Otaheite and Tongataboo; for we bought some of the grooved sticks ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... Andrew Brewster never thought anything was too good for that young one." Then she burst out with a sob louder than her sister's. Eva had usually a coarsely well-kempt appearance, her heavy black hair being securely twisted, and her neck ribbons tied with smart jerks of neatness; but to-day her hair was still in the fringy braids of yesterday, and her cotton blouse humped untidily in the back. Her face was red and her lips swollen; she looked like a very bacchante of sorrow, and as if she had been on ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... class belonging to our navy. By invitation of Lieutenant Bartlett, I went on board of her between ten and eleven o'clock. The crew and officers were assembled on deck to attend Divine service. They were all dressed with great neatness, and seemed to listen with deep attention to the Episcopal service and a sermon, which were read by Commander Montgomery, who is a member of ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... school, but they did not keep him from study. The year 1828 saw the beginning of another great work, "Eudosia, a Poem on the Universe"; it was "printed" with even greater neatness and labour; but this, too, after being toiled at during the winter months, was dropped in the middle of its second "book." It was not idleness that made him break off such plans, but just the reverse—a too great activity of brain. His parents seem to have thought that ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... door, made a perpetual crepuscular atmosphere within. The bare floor, walls, and low ceiling were spotlessly clean and white; and an iron cot with heavy brown blankets spread smoothly and a wooden bench in one corner, constituted the furniture. Scrupulous neatness reigned everywhere, but the air was burdened with the odor of carbolic acid, and even at mid-day was chill as the breath of a tomb. Where the doors were thrown open, they resembled the yawning jaws of rifled graves; and when closed, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the country, where the soros is of considerable size, and generally resembles a cistern. The taste manifested in the interior of these chambers seems also to denote a later period in the history of the arts; the skill and neatness visible in the carving is admirable, and there is much of ornament displayed in ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... cheese; little trim houses, with tall roofs, and great windows of many panes; gazebos, or summer-houses, hanging over pea-green canals; kind-looking, dumpling-faced farmers' women, with laced caps and golden frontlets and earrings; about the houses and towns which we pass a great air of comfort and neatness; a queer feeling of wonder that you can't understand what your fellow-passengers are saying, the tone of whose voices, and a certain comfortable dowdiness of dress, are so like our own;—whilst we are remarking on these sights, sounds, smells, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it with butter, he seated himself on a bench, looked round at his four whitewashed walls, counted the beams of the ceiling, made a mental inventory of the household goods hanging from the nails, scowled at the neatness which left him nothing to complain of, and looked at his wife, who said not a word as she ironed the albs ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... Gipsies—Yetholm (Kirk), a small village nestling at the foot of the Cheviots in Roxburghshire. Here I saw the abode of the Queen, a neat little cottage, with well-trimmed garden in front. Inside all was a perfect pattern of neatness, and the old lady herself was as clean 'as a new pin.' As I passed the cottage a carriage and pair drove up, and the occupants, four ladies, alighted and entered the cottage. I was afterwards told that they were much pleased with their visit, and that, in remembrance of it, each of the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... her suddenly—'Put fresh ink in my inkstand.' Like a person who had done the same thing a hundred times before, she took the bottle, removed the cotton, washed them both, put in the cotton again, and poured in fresh ink, doing it all with the utmost neatness and dexterity. So I said to myself, 'A peasant's wife would known nothing about inkstands—she ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the sly as she moved about the room. He decided that she did not appear a day older. There was the same plump, erect figure, the same neatness, the same fair skin and fair hair, the same little nose, the same twinkle in the eye—only perhaps the twinkle in the eye was a trifle less cruel than it used to be. She was not a day older. (In this he was of course utterly mistaken; she was ten years ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... hint with a neatness of retort almost worthy of his mother. "You have your own merciful disposition to blame, if I return to the subject," he replied. "My cousin cannot forget your kindness ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... swabbed daily; the slave deck is scraped and holy-stoned; and, at nine o'clock each morning, the captain inspects every part of his craft; so that no vessel, except a man-of-war, can compare with a slaver in systematic order, purity, and neatness. I am not aware that the ship-fever, which sometimes decimates the emigrants from Europe, has ever ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... and to damp my desire of becoming acquainted with my cousins. I passed on, with a feeling of disappointment bordering on disgust, when I came to a room which went far to redeem the character of the sex in my estimation. Here all was neatness and propriety: every thing was either in place, or only enough out of it to indicate the recent occupation of the room, or to show the taste or talent of the occupant; such as a book left half open ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... advanced no less quickly. One uniform fashion spread from the Mediterranean throughout central and western Europe, driving out native art and substituting a conventionalized copy of Graeco-Roman or Italian art, which is characterized alike by its technical finish and neatness, and by its lack of originality and its dependence on imitation. The result was inevitable. The whole external side of life was lived amidst Italian, or (as we may perhaps call it) Roman-provincial, furniture and environment. ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... Army or Navy officers hadn't been doing any hard work that would ruffle the neatness of their uniforms," finished Tom triumphantly, "and there you are! I can dress up on Sundays or holidays, but on the work days, when I'm a civil engineer, I want to wear clothes that show that I'm not afraid to tackle the rough and ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... substituted drain-pipes set on end; the first of those ideas which have won commendation from great authorities. Drain-pipes do not encourage insects. Filled with earth, each bears a showy plant—lobelia, pyrethrum, saxifrage, or what not, with the utmost neatness, making a border; and they last eternally. But there was still much stooping, of course, whilst I became more impatient of it. One day a remedy flashed through my mind: that happy thought which became the essence or principle ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... were honest enough. The real profits were derived from quite a different source. Three master dips—pickpockets—were waiting for you as you moved off; they attended to your case with neatness and dispatch. Their work was expedited for them by reason that already they knew where you carried your valuables. Once Marr ran his swift and practiced fingers over your body he knew where your watch was, your wallet, your purse for small change, ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... brig "Peacock," mounting ten guns, and carrying a crew of two hundred and ten men. In one respect, she was a model ship. Among naval men, she had long been known as "the yacht," on account of the appearance of exquisite neatness she always presented. Her decks were as white as lime-juice and constant holystoning could keep them. The brasswork about the cabins and the breeches of the guns was dazzling in its brilliancy. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Giotto and Angelico, both hill-bred. And generally, I believe, we shall find that the hill country gives its inventive depths of feeling to art, as in the work of Orcagna, Perugino, and Angelico, and the plain country executive neatness. The executive precision is joined with feeling in Leonardo, who saw the Alps in the distance; it is totally unaccompanied by feeling in the pure Dutch schools, or schools of the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... mentioning. They know how to make a coarse kind of matting, and a coarse cloth of the bark of a tree, which is used chiefly for belts. The workmanship of their canoes, I have before observed, is very rude; and their arms, with which they take the most pains in point of neatness, come far short of some others we have seen. Their weapons are clubs, spears or darts, bows and arrows, and stones. The clubs are of three or four kinds, and from three to five feet long. They seem to place most dependence on the darts, which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... happiness. He was best known as a translator, and gave to the press a vast number of the novels of Dumas and other Frenchmen. He slept little, and it was his habit to sit by his table, in his chamber, from eight o'clock in the evening until nearly morning, plying his pen with neatness and rapidity, and with an unusual command of good English, though his style was sometimes defective in finish, and he never acquired much skill in punctuation. His original compositions, chiefly in magazines and newspapers, were very numerous, and on a vast variety ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... to maintain neatness and order within and without his roadside. Unselfish exertion in this behalf pays. He who beautifies the roadside benefits mankind and himself alike. A dirty and shabby dwelling gives a traveller a mean idea of its inmates. A cosey and ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... were seeds and implements for immediate use. Every stray leaf and bit of waste was brought by the children to a corner appropriated to it, covered with earth, and left to become dressing for the beds; thus teaching at once the chemistry of Nature and the value of neatness and economy. To another corner the children were encouraged to bring all the stones and shells they could find; and thus a rock-grotto ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... Wednesday morning, and the entire strength of the Depot had turned out on parade. The Colonel, tall and dignified in the faultless neatness of undress uniform, was standing in his characteristic attitude, with his hands behind him and his head thrown slightly back. His blue eyes looked out, grave and watchful, from under the peak of his fatigue cap, and the tense interlocking of his gloved fingers ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... sailing in the Firth, your black schooner, the neatness of her, and the pride, and I said, 'It is my son's ship you are'; and when she was at an anchor in the calm water I was watching for the little boat to be coming to the shore, but the darkness was down and your ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... artistic line we already excelled every other people, viz., the application of the principles of taste in beautifying homes, churches, structures intended for business, such as exchanges, railway stations, and bridges, cars, and all kinds of machinery. We led the world, too, in propriety and neatness of apparel, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... hastily picture to yourself a forlorn-looking establishment, you will be moving straight away from the fact. Neatness, order, excellence, are prevalent qualities in all the details of the main house's inward garniture. The furniture is old-fashioned, rich, French, imported. The carpets, if not new, are not cheap, either. Bits of crystal and silver, visible here and there, are as bright as they are ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... familiarity and alertness of one who, as general Moultrie used to say, was born a soldier. In fact, he appeared never so happy, never so completely in his element, as when he had his officers and men out on parade at close training. And for cleanliness of person, neatness of dress, and gentlemanly manners, with celerity and exactness in performing their evolutions, they soon became the admiration and praise both of citizens and soldiers. And indeed I am not afraid to say that Marion was the 'architect' of the second regiment, and laid the foundation of that ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... to attend to me, so I remained leaning against the bulwarks close to the gangway, watching their operations. I was surprised to find that there were no guns or carronades of any kind in the vessel, which had more of the appearance of a fast-sailing trader than a pirate. But I was struck with the neatness of everything. The brass work of the binnacle and about the tiller, as well as the copper belaying-pins, were as brightly polished as if they had just come from the foundry. The decks were pure white, and smooth. The masts were clean-scraped and varnished, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... good position in this big Eastern city. She had made good and been promoted until her wages not only kept herself with strict economy, but justified her in looking forward to the time when she might send for her next younger sister. Her deft fingers kept her meagre wardrobe in neatness—and a tolerable deference to fashion, so that she had been able to annex the "gentleman friend" and take a little outing with him now and then at a moving picture theatre or a Sunday evening service. She had met and vanquished the devil ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... insipid society. Unlike Thomas Carlyle, in avoiding the faults of rhetorical culture, he did not become a literary barbarian. In refusing to comb his hair like a prig, he did not go to the extreme of making himself horridly uncomely. His sentences are unsurpassed for neatness, are as graceful as they are quaint and clear. The writings of Sydney Smith rarely attain the perfect grace which uniformly distinguishes Elia; yet he never attempts magnificence, and he so unites brilliancy and plainness as to make his statements seem equally felicitous to the rude ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... rapidity in his homely task. A shining needle darted in and out of the gray cloth, and the rent that had seemed hopeless was being closed up with neatness and precision. No one derided him because he was engaged upon a task that was usually performed by women. The Army of Northern Virginia ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a luxuriant wood. He entered, oppressed with heat and fatigued, but observed, on walking up to the porch 'smothered with honeysuckles,' as I think Cowper expresses it, that everything around bore the character of neatness and simplicity. The hollyhocks were tall and finely variegated in blossom, the pinks were carefully tied up, and roses of all colours and fragrance stood around in a compacted form like a body-guard forbidding the rude ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... out on deck, where the neatness, precision, and martial splendor of everything he saw, quite captivated his young imagination. When they entered the harbor at Fortress Monroe and salutes were fired, yards manned, and flags dipped by the ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... tone of serious poetry has in it, like Alfieri's, a note of self-conscious stoicism and somewhat arrogant self-control; while as a comic writer he is but too apt, like too many transalpine wits, to mistake filth for fun, and to measure the neatness of a joke by its nastiness. Dirt for dirt's sake has never been the apparent aim of any great English humorist who had not about him some unmistakable touch of disease—some inheritance of evil or of suffering like the congenital ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... sometimes legally married. Many had gardens, and families of half-caste children, whose strength and beauty were noted by all who saw them. The whaler's helpmate had to keep herself and children clean, and the home tidy. Cleanliness and neatness were insisted on by her master, partly through the seaman's instinct for tidiness and partly out of a pride and desire to show a contrast to the reeking hovels of the Maori. As a rule she did her best to keep her man sober. Her cottage, thatched ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... accordingly went over all her decks, asking me many questions; more particularly about any thing that appeared to him different from what he had been accustomed to see in French ships of war. He seemed most struck with the cleanliness and neatness of the men, saying "that our seamen were surely a different class of people from the French; and that he thought it was owing to them we were always victorious at sea." I answered, "I must beg leave to differ with you: I do not wish to take from the merit of our men; but my own opinion is, that ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... is desired—and neatness in making a skin is everything—remember particularly not to overstuff it; it will really require just about half as much packing as you would at first imagine sufficient to fill it. Be careful as to the set of the wings, at the shoulders especially; ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Bellarmine on the one hand, and numberless Anglican writers on the other. But I soon found, as others had found before me, that it was a tangled and manifold controversy, difficult to master, more difficult to put out of hand with neatness and precision. It was easy to make points, not easy to sum up and settle. It was not easy to find a clear issue for the dispute, and still less by a logical process to decide it in favour of Anglicanism. This difficulty, however, had no tendency whatever to harass ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... of his host, our Englishman had looked around with increasing surprise at the contents of the parlor. The furniture was of the most simple description, yet marked by a certain neatness and gracefulness of arrangement, indicative, as he could not but think, of a cultivated taste. The same mingling of even rude simplicity of material and tasteful arrangement prevailed in the chamber to which his host now conducted him, and where the luxury, for such he had learned to regard ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... speeches to their hearts' content, and deliver up their captives. Three separate buildings, one for the captives from each of the colonies, with the officers' quarters, the soldiers' cabins, the kitchens, and the ovens, were inclosed within the fort, and the whole was kept in a neatness and order such as the savages had ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... could be generous and splendid upon great occasions, but which he husbanded when there was no need to spend it. He never indulges in needless extravagance of rhetoric, lavish epithets, profuse imagery. He lays his opinion before you with a grave simplicity and a perfect neatness.(36) Dreading ridicule too, as a man of his humour—above all an Englishman of his humour—certainly would, he is afraid to use the poetical power which he really possessed; one often fancies in reading him that he dares not be eloquent when he might; that he does not speak above ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with humour, and his full double chin shook over his shirt of common calico. He had grown very large from his long inaction, and it was with a perceptible effort that he moved himself upon his slender crutches. Yet despite his maimed and suffering body he was dressed with a scrupulous neatness which was almost like an air of elegance. As he chatted on easily, Carraway forgot, in listening to him, the harrowing details in the midst of which he sat—forgot the overheated, smoky kitchen, the common pine table ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening; it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing their faces. But in all vessels this broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides, it was the stronger men in the Town-Ho that had been divided into gangs, taking turns ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... what they said or did. I think I could devote a dozen pages to the single man who was placed next to me. I was interested in him from the outset. The first thing that struck me about him was an air of neatness, even fastidiousness, about his person—though he wore no stiff collar, only a soft woollen shirt without a necktie. He had the long sensitive, beautiful hands of an artist, but his face was thin and marked with the pallor peculiar to the indoor worker. I soon learned that ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... have added that there was a good deal more in some men than in others. Those who have the largest share of it may be humorists, but wit demands only a clear and nimble intellect, presence of mind, and a happy faculty of expression. This perfection of phrase, this neatness, is an essential of wit, because its effect must be instantaneous; whereas humor is often diffuse and roundabout, and its impression cumulative, like the poison of arsenic. As Galiani said of Nature that her dice were always loaded, so the wit must ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... mother, who hates dirt and loves neatness, and does not like to hear her girls called tom-boys, may and does find it hard to cultivate this free out-door life for her girls even when easy means make the matter less difficult than it is for the caged dweller in cities during ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... this new invention books can be kept and entries copied with the same neatness and speed of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 50, October 21, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... by this partial exposure. Captain Pipon observes, 'it was pleasing to see the good taste and quickness with which they form little shades or parasols of green leaves, to place over the head, or bonnets, to keep the sun from their eyes. A young girl made one of these in my presence, with such neatness and alacrity, as to satisfy me that a fashionable dressmaker of London would be delighted with the simplicity and elegant taste of these untaught females.' The same young girl, he says, accompanied them to the boat, carrying on her shoulders, as a present, a large basket of yams, 'over such ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... in her joy and confusion at the combination of neatness and daring which there had been in making so discreet and yet so unmistakable an allusion to the new and brilliantly successful play by Dumas, she broke down in a charming, girlish laugh, not very loud, but so irresistible ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... restaurants, and other buildings—mostly let as furnished apartments—form the outer edge of the triangle. A good road separates these from the Jardin Darralde, which is likewise triangular, and planted with trees and shrubs in the most agreeable manner, both for neatness and shade. In the centre is the band-stand, and a bed of roses surrounds it. This is a general description, but it does not speak of beauty, and we thought that Eaux Bonnes was undoubtedly ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... come from, Thad?" asked Smithy; who, despite his girl-like neatness of person and belongings, and dainty ways, was close to the leader, his face whiter than usual, but his eyes flashing ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... a neatness which made Cleggett open his eyes, replying with a counter so shrewd and close, and of such a darting ferocity, that Cleggett, although he met it faultlessly, ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... for himself. He packed with the neatness and rapidity derived from long experience of travel. As a matter of fact, he could not afford a manservant any more than he could allow himself quarters more luxurious than the rather grimy bedroom in Bury Street which housed him during his transient ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... empty; and barnacles and eel-grass cling to the piles of the crumbling wharves, where the sunshine lies lovingly, bringing out the faint spicy odor that haunts the place—the ghost of the old dead West India trade! During our ride from the station, I was struck, of course, only by the general neatness of the houses and the beauty of the elm-trees lining the streets. I describe Rivermouth now as I came to ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... with a mistaken idea of neatness, rake up the leaves that scatter themselves over the sward in fall, thus removing the protection that Nature has provided for the grass. Do not do this. Allow them to remain all winter. They will be entirely hidden by the snow, if any falls, and if there is none they are not unsightly, ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... was able to haul off from the coal hulk, and the greater part of the afternoon was occupied by the crew in washing down the decks and paint work, cleaning up generally, polishing brasswork, and restoring the little vessel to her normal state of immaculate neatness; during which Jack and the two Montijos took a final run ashore, for it had been decided that, failing the occurrence of anything to cause an alteration of their plans, they would leave for Cuba on the ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... made long extracts from Prior, Gay, and Fenton. Although there was a considerable number of epitaphs, riddles, and fables, nearly all the jests were well known and trite. But the subjoined have a certain amount of neatness. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... and every piece of furniture in it, were cleaned; even the cobwebs and dust were cleared away, and the sofa and table brought from the corner to the centre of the room; the melancholy little prisons were removed; and when Amine's work of neatness was complete, and the sun shone brightly into the opened window, the chamber ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... were their epirams. Of these we have several specimens, and the art of composing them seems to have been assiduously cultivated, as might naturally be expected from the court life of the poets, and their constant endeavours after terseness and neatness of expression. Of kindred character were the parodies and satirical poems, of which the best examples were the Silli of Timon and the Cinaedi ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... rather a sentimentalist, rather a poseur, he affected a concise emphatic style, played chess very well, betrayed a belief in will-power, and earned Britten's secret hostility, Britten being a sloven, by the invariable neatness of his collars and ties. He came into our magazine with a vigour that we ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... curtsied "good-night" to the missionary and his wife, and went to the dormitory escorted by the junior teacher. This room was the very picture of neatness. The whitewashed walls were decorated with Biblical pictures and illuminated texts, and the beds, with blue counterpanes and snow-white linen, were without crease or wrinkle. On each bed, near the foot, the occupier's shawl was folded, and the manner of folding varied considerably. Small prizes ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... we reached Mons, where we found a good house, of unexceptionable neatness: of course we were in no haste to quit it the next day. The distance to Brussels was so short that we took it leisurely, reaching the Hotel de l'Europe at three. It was a fete, on account of the anniversary of the arrival of Leopold, who ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... boots that betrayed their age in spite of a late polishing at the hands of an energetic and carefully directed bootblack, and a broad leather belt from which only half an eye was required to see that a holster had been detached with a becoming regard for neatness. His hair was thick and sun-bleached; his eyes, dark and unafraid, met the stern gaze of the captain with directness and respect; his lips and chin were firm in repose, but they might easily be the opposite if relaxed; ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... over in silence, and then the perpetrator utters an "excuse me," that reminds one of a bright new patch set upon an old faded garment. Not that such a patch is unworthy of respect when worn by honest poverty, and set on with a neatness that makes it almost ornamental. This is like the "excuse me" of a truly, well-bred man, apologizing for an offence he regrets; while the "excuse me" of the habitually rude man is like the botched patch of the sloven or the beggar, who wears it because the laws ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... marched as one man; the evolutions wherein they were deployed, moved in echelon, or wheeled into position; and their sureness and quickness in the manual of arms. Then, too, the cleanliness of the barracks impressed them, and the personal neatness of the khaki-clad men, not to mention the very desirable things to eat evolved by ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... must examine every little article," said Mrs. Hamilton, laughing, "or I shall decidedly fancy this extreme rapidity cannot have been productive of neatness, which last I rather ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... waiting to greet her, and where the great light of the Godhead would shine around them all. She grew to hate her life, the dull barrier of the flesh that stood between her and her ends. Still she ate and drank enough to support it, still dressed with the same perfect neatness as before, still lived, in short, as though Arthur had not died, and the light and colour had not gone ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Revolution, much more than doubled. The population of some has multiplied sevenfold. The streets have been almost entirely rebuilt. Slate has succeeded to thatch, and brick to timber. The pavements and the lamps, the display of wealth in the principal shops, and the luxurious neatness of the dwellings occupied by the gentry would, in the seventeenth century, have seemed miraculous. Yet is the relative importance of the old capitals of counties by no means what it was. Younger towns, towns which are rarely or never mentioned in our early history and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... old, which, if I could have got it, for half its value, I should much like to have bought. I sat in the cool of the church while he sat in the doorway, which was still in shadow, snipping and snipping, and then sewing, I am sure with admirable neatness. He made a charming picture, with the arched portico over his head, the green grass and low church wall behind him, and then a lovely landscape of wood and pasture and valleys and hillside. Every now and then he would come and chirrup about Joachim, for he ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... slope is a seat called the MEDINA HERMITAGE (formerly the summer-residence of the gentleman named on the pillar): the house is characterized by simplicity and neatness: and its greatest ornament is a large verandah, having a broad trellis roof, beautifully intertwined with the sweetest varieties of climbing plants. From its very elevated situation, it commands a rich display of the country from ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... strong, and nicely balanced. The tackle he produced was not of the fancy order, but his lines were of fine strong linen, and his hooks were of good shape, clean and sharp, and snooded to the lines with a neatness that indicated the hand of a man who had been where he learned to wear little gold rings in ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... sufficiently amalgamated the mass, he rolled up a little ball of it, placed the ball upon his crooked thumb as a boy does a marble, and shot it into his mouth without losing a grain. Thus he despatched his meal, and I could not but marvel at the neatness and dexterity which he displayed, with scarcely more need of a finger-bowl at the end than the most delicate feeder you shall see ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Brook. They tilled their own garden, raised their own "sarse," kept their own cow; and I have heard one say that "Toah's garden had the finest damask roses in the world, and her house, and all around it, was the pink of neatness." ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... roads more sandy than they had supposed possible, so that it was a very limp and demoralized Theodora who landed, three hours later, on her aunt's piazza. Theodora was always destructive to her toilets, and in some mysterious manner she had parted with all of her starch and most of her neatness, in the course of the last nineteen miles. Once inside the cool, dark house, with a glass of lemonade in her hand, however, Theodora forgot ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... distinct in the character of his clothing and the easy grace of his bearing. Instead of the jeans overalls and the coatless shoulders to which she was accustomed, she saw a white shirt and a dark coat, dust-stained and travel-soiled, yet proclaiming a certain predilection toward personal neatness. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... care of the house devolved upon her. Mrs. Whitney would read for hours to Aunt Patty; often the old lady went soundly asleep. To be sure, matters were not attended to with the niceness of Mrs. Underhill; but Barbara was a treasure with her German neatness, and Bridget kept her kitchen at sixes and sevens. Mr. Theodore brought home one guest or three, with the same indifference; and if Ben's mother could have seen the cheerful manner in which Delia hurried about and arranged ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... you must first show me something saved by your own economy and self-sacrifice.' To my children I hold out similar inducements—a prize for the largest amount of plain needlework, every stitch of which I make it my duty to examine through a magnifying glass; a prize for scrupulous neatness in dress; and for scripture knowledge. I have children in my Sunday-schools who can answer any question upon the Old-Testament history ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the exhibits of hygienic glazed tiles arranged around a desert lecture-theatre. Hygienic tiles stimulate the eye vigorously rather than relax it by any aesthetic weakness; and the crematory appliances are so attractive as they are, and must have such an added charm of neatness and brightness when alight, that one longs to lose a relative or so forthwith, for the mere pleasure ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... as a "reserved, isolated, dreamy man, of high-strung nerves, proud spirit, and fantastic moods," with a haunting sense of impending evil. His home was poor and simple, but impressed every visitor by its neatness and quiet refinement; Virginia, accomplished in music and languages, was as devoted to her husband as he was to her. Both were fond of flowers and plants, and of household pets. Mrs. Clemm gave herself ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... house there was a visitor. This was a slight young man of medium stature, who had not the appearance of more than twenty-five years of age, for all that, as a matter of fact, he was just over thirty. He was dressed with so scrupulous a neatness as to convey, in spite of the dark colour of his garments, an impression almost of foppishness. There was an amplitude about his cravat, an air of extreme care about the dressing of his wig and the powdering of it, and a shining ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... was lighter, straight and trim of figure, with an erectness and exactness of carriage which marked him as a soldier at some part of his life. He was clad with extreme neatness, well booted also, and sat his mount with the nonchalance of the trained horseman. His own garb and face showed not the slightest proof that he ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... taught that different values are attached to different degrees of labour, as well as to the skill and neatness ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... Nan, there's a good lady," said Patty, jumping up, and urging Nan out the door. "Skippy-skip, before father comes up to learn the latest news from the seat of war. Tell him everything is all right, and I'm earning my living with neatness and despatch, only working girls simply can't get into chiffons and dine ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... later that the general is extremely punctilious about certain things. The staff is expected to be in the dining room five minutes before meals are served. A punctual man himself, he expects others to be punctual. The table must always be the epitome of neatness, the food ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... set his mind at ease. The place was in the same state of neatness and order as when he and Harding locked up ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... and red roofs, that are dotted over the uneven surface of the ground. The whole site is owned by the company, and inhabited by its officials and overseers. It has its own church, shops, schools, hospital, workmen's clubs, bakeries, and its air of neatness and well-being contrasts pleasingly with the ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... we are become, we are still old Flemish, if not at heart, yet on the surface. Even in French Flanders, at Douai and Saint Omer, as I understand, in the churches and in people's houses, as may be seen from the very streets, there is noticeable a minute and scrupulous air of care-taking and neatness. Antony Watteau remarks this more than ever on returning to Valenciennes, and savours greatly, after his lodging in Paris, our Flemish cleanliness, lover as he is of distinction and elegance. Those worldly graces he seemed when a young lad to hunger and thirst ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... Mr. Williams' camp on the 28th of January, driving to Hoogly on the river of that name, and thence following the grand trunk-road westward towards Burdwan. The novelty of palkee-travelling at first renders it pleasant; the neatness with which every thing is packed, the good-humour of the bearers, their merry pace, and the many more comforts enjoyed than could be expected in a conveyance horsed by men, the warmth when the sliding doors are shut, and the breeze when they are open, are all fully appreciated on first starting, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... each year going away to college, bringing back the fruits of their work and planting the seeds of them at home. The log cabin was rapidly disappearing, the frame cottages were being built with more neatness and taste, and garish colors were becoming things of the past. Indeed, a quick uplift through all the mountains was perceptible to any observant eye that had known and knew now the hills. To the law-makers at ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... the handicraft of archery and the technique of shooting, he was most exacting. Neatness about his tackle, care of his equipment, deliberation and form in his shooting were typical of him; in fact, he loved his bow as he did no other of his possessions. It was his constant companion in life and he took it with him on his last ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... he went on to the biologists' cubicle, shared, to their mutual satisfaction, by Day and Nelson. There the prevailing note was neatness, and to Day's mechanical skill everyone paid tribute. The heating, lighting and ventilating arrangements [Page 278] of the hut had been left entirely in his charge, and had been carried out with admirable ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... of the people the moment you were in Peru was considerable, and striking was the neatness of the buildings. Iquitos was a pleasant little city, the streets of which needed paving badly, but were otherwise well aligned and tidy. There were numbers of foreigners there, including a small English colony ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... wide, and extending from the shore of the lake nearly a quarter of a mile inland. In the center stood a log hut, neatly and carefully built. A few flowers grew around the house, and the whole bore signs of greater neatness and comfort than was usual in the ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... whirled round and round, clawing and snapping at the empty air, roaring and bawling with rage, scourged in flesh and insulted in spirit. As he swung, the bean-pole searched out the different parts of his anatomy with a wonderful degree of neatness and precision. Between rage and indignation the grizzly nearly exploded. A moving-picture camera was there, and since that day that truly moving scene has amazed and thrilled countless thousands ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... was spread on the shanty floor, and the neatness of the ground before it, and around the little opening, gave evidence of the neatness and interest of Julia Fabens. All declared it a pleasant afternoon, and just in the nick of time for a sugar party. Uncle Walter was called on for a story, ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... furniture, all breathed the same peace. Nothing in the house was new, but everything had been preserved with such care that nothing looked old. Yet the owners were not what is called old-maidish; that is to say, they were not superstitious worshippers of order and neatness. ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... huts were uncommonly convenient. There was an unusual air of neatness. A superficial observer would have called the slaves happy. Yet they were living under a severe, subduing discipline, and were over-worked to a degree that shortened life."—Channing on Slavery, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society |
