"Decorously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, when the door-bell rang, and word was brought to Lois, who with Dosia had gone up-stairs, that it was Mr. Harker from the typometer office. The visitor, a tall, colorless, darkly sack-coated man, with a jaded necktie, had entered the little drawing-room with a decorously self-effacing step, and sat now on the edge of his chair, his body bent forward and his hat still held in one hand, with an effect of being entirely isolated from social relations and existing here solely at the behest of business. He rose as Lois came into the room, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... all, countries; and when in the summer-time there is music in the Wood at The Hague on Sunday afternoons or Wednesday evenings, the walks round about the 'Tent' are alive with servants and their lovers, parading decorously arm-in-arm. Happy fathers, too, with their wives and children in Sunday best, perambulate the grounds or rest on the seats amongst the trees and listen to the 'Bosch-muziek.' People of the better class only are members ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... having lived for nearly sixty years so decorously may perhaps be a somewhat finer performance than it sounds, but Mrs. Assheton brought as her contribution to life in general a far finer offering than that, for though she did not propose to change her ways and manner of life herself, she was ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... those gates had been thoroughly fastened before, when I came up the road from Naples—why then had they been opened since? To let out a visitor? Of course! I smiled grimly at my wife's cunning! She evidently knew what she was about. Appearances must be kept up—the Signor Ferrari must be decorously shown out by a servant at the chief entrance of the house. Naturally!—all very unsuspicious—looking and quite in keeping with the proprieties! Guido had just left her then? I walked steadily, without hurrying my pace, down ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... will not listen to me. He is for settling matters by the sword, for making forcible entries and detainers, and ousting the tenants in possession, whereby he would render himself liable to arrest, fine, ransom, and forfeiture; instead of proceeding cautiously and decorously as the law directs, and as I advise, Sir Ralph, by writ of ejectione firmae or action of trespass, the which would assuredly establish his title, and restore him the house and lands. Or he may proceed by writ of right, which perhaps, in his case, considering the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... London the only place which displayed a well-nigh stoical indifference to the progress of the rebellion. If Oxford had a good deal of Jacobitism hidden decorously away in its ancient colleges, if there were a good many disloyal toasts drunk in the seclusion of scholastic rooms, there was apparently only a feeling of curious indifference at the rival university, for Gray has put it on record that at Cambridge "they had ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... on his statues, and wrestling and boxing with her rivals in his affections? For all these are what people in love do. And let her lower her eyebrows, and give up the airs of a coquette, and assume the appearance of those that are deeply smitten. But if she is modest and chaste, let her decorously stay at home and await there her lovers and sweethearts; for any sensible man would be disgusted and flee from a woman who took the initiative in love, far less would he be likely to marry her after such ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... certainly an incongruous appearance to a dapper clergyman lately arrived from London, and missing, for the first time in his sleek, easy-going life, those social screens which in London civilization decorously conceal the frailties and vices of human nature. Clad in glossy black, of the most fashionable clerical cut, with dandy boots, and gloves of lightest lavender—a white silk overcoat hinting that its wearer was not wholly free from sensitiveness to sun and heat—the Reverend Meekin ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... on which it has been assumed that these institutions rest, and to show that their real object is to subject the many to the government of the few, as the manner is of the nations round about. The thin veil of decent falsehood, under which the caution of earlier time had decorously hid this fact, has been torn aside by the rude intrepidity of assurance which long-continued success had fostered. The problem to be solved being to prove the chief axiom of our political science, that the people have a right to self-government and to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... so with the pines. They change gowns so decorously and the new one is so like the old in its simple lines and perfect good taste that we are unaware of the transition. There is a perfection of dignity and serenity about a free-grown pasture pine that I find equalled in no other tree. These are druids of ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... Rock, but experience with them will prove that, however loose their own code, they carefully conform to the custom of others; that if they have any scars across their morals, they have also the tact and good taste to keep them decorously draped ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... interest and actuality. Tell G.J. to bring you to tea one day, quite, quite soon, will you? I'll tell him." And Molder murmured something fatuously conventional. G.J. showed decorously that he had caught his own name. Whereupon Lady Queenie, instead of naming a day for tea, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... nor have I been able to trace the statement to any authentic source. Still, there was a widespread idea that he was not overburdened with feelings of loyalty, and many people naturally wondered how he would manage decorously to entertain his ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... north the glebe was bounded by a thick wood, a rank and dense "second growth" springing from earth where had once stood, decorously apart, the monster trees of the primeval forest; a wild maze of young trees, saplings and underbrush, overrun from the tops of the slender, bending pines to the bushes of dogwood and sassafras, and the rotting, ancient stumps and fallen logs, by the uncontrollable, all-spreading vine. It was such ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... A decorously slow drive of fifteen minutes brought our party through this gay scene to a gayer one at the north gate of the President's park, where a great crowd of carriages were drawn up, waiting ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... her vanity appeased by Jerry's downfall, bobbed through the bent irons, and rose smiling decorously as Eve must have smiled when she watched Adam first ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... Scantily but decorously clad, Colonel Swalm received us, and greeted us as courteously as though we had come to present him with a loving-cup. He acted as though our pulling him out of bed at two in the morning was intended as a compliment. For affixing the seal to our ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... had eaten, the Happy Family filed out decorously and went hastily down to the stables. They did not say much, but they did glance over their shoulders ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... bunting, arches itself with electric lights, lines its curbs with temporary booths, fills its corners with shows, sells confetti until the pedestrian swims in it—and then whoops it up for a week. All around, north, south, east, west, every other street is jet-black, sleeping decorously, ignoring utterly that blare of color, that blaze of light, that boom of noise around the corner. They should worry—they're going to have a carnival themselves next week. Apropos, a San Francisco paper opened its story of ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... so many Poles and Italians there. We came to Portchester along a lovely, shady road, and it's really an old place, though it looks new. We had a river to cross named after an Indian village jokingly called "Bay Rum," but they've decorously altered it to Byram; and on its other side we were in Connecticut, which Jack pronounces precisely ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... they did, that she would not relapse into her former self and fail to impress him as she had now. But—here she was—a paragon of feminine promptitude—already standing in the doorway, accurately gloved and booted, and wearing a demure gray hat that modestly crowned her decorously elegant figure. ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... made their meal, but neither of them had ever more enjoyed eating. Beulah was still ravenously hungry, though she restrained her appetite decorously. ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Todborough and on through the environs of the city the gay cavalcade rode decorously and discreetly; but nearing Tapton Downs, the spirits of the party seemed to rise as they encountered the ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... meaning, "my life, or my head, upon the truth of this." The attendant monk behind him is terror-struck; but will follow his master. The dark Moorish servants of the Magi show no emotion—will arrange their masters' trains as usual, and decorously sustain ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... leading Italian painter. Here, in the Via Flaminia, he painted his first important mural decoration, for the dining room of Mrs. Potter Palmer's Chicago Lake Shore mansion. This work, called "The Vintage," is decorously inebriate, a vinous riot of little cupids. It led, shortly after his marriage in 1887 to Miss Maud Howe, a daughter of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, to his establishing himself in Chicago, where he did ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... I—it was our last meal together—had a snack upon the top of St. Pierre, I on a heap of stones, she standing by me in the moonlight and decorously eating bread out of my hand. The poor brute would eat more heartily in this manner; for she had a sort of affection for me, which I was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now Dinkie and Poppsy and Gershom sit about the living-room table and drink of the founts of wisdom. But we have a teacher here who loves to teach. And he is infinitely patient and kind with my little toddlers. Dinkie already asks him questions without number, while Poppsy gratefully but decorously vamps him with her infantine gazes. Then Gershom—Heaven bless his scholastic old high-browed solemnity—has just assured me that Dinkie betrays many evidences ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... visible by the shaded candlelight, in the death chamber of the old clergyman. Natural connections he had none. But there was the decorously grave, though unmoved physician, seeking only to mitigate the last pangs of the patient whom he could not save. There were the deacons, and other eminently pious members of his church. There, also, was ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... slack that afternoon, and at the early hour of four o'clock Mr. Walkingshaw resumed his overcoat and muffler. As Mr. Thomieson, his confidential clerk, decorously tucked the scarf beneath the velvet collar, he offered a word or two ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... sobbed; I was so gratefully delighted at the sight before me, and so enraptured at the continued enthusiasm of the no longer volatile people for their worthy, revered sovereign, that I really suffered from the restraint I felt of being forced to behave decorously. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... an excellent school; as different from Mr. Creakle's as good is from evil. It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honour and good faith of the boys, and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of those qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a part ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... sympathy or human contact. She now skipped irreverently from one grave to another; until coming to the broad, flat, armorial tombstone of a departed worthy—perhaps of Isaac Johnson himself—she began to dance upon it. In reply to her mother's command and entreaty that she would behave more decorously, little Pearl paused to gather the prickly burrs from a tall burdock which grew beside the tomb. Taking a handful of these, she arranged them along the lines of the scarlet letter that decorated the maternal bosom, to which the burrs, as their ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... will be matter of surprise to the staid and decorously-attired judges of the present day. "On all ordinary occasions," he wrote, "I usually wore a black velvet coat and waistcoat. The first time I saw the Chief Justice he had on a black kalimanco or camlet jacket, which I have seen ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... sort of joy, decorously flavored with grief, "that I did not know! Of course that explains everything. ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... was gradually righted up and composed. His wig, which had covered his left eye, was arranged decorously in its proper place, and the gold-rimmed spectacles pressed back so that the good man could beam mildly and gratefully upon his supposed preserver. The clerical hat, however, had lost its character beyond recovery, and though its owner was obliged to wear ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... spare them the disgrace of it; and of a certain quartermaster drawing his cutlass, daring any hand on board to haul down the flag, and being dramatically threatened with a loaded pistol by Mr. Kell, the First Lieutenant, and so brought to his senses. The fact is, that the flag came down quietly and decorously. All on board perceived that there was no help for it, and that it would be a shocking breach of humanity to imperil the lives of ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... country dance, the pair who have chosen one another, submit decorously to the restraints of courtship and frequent separations, cross hands, four go round, down outside, in the most earnest, lively, complacent fashion. If they join hands to go down the middle, and exhibit their union ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... asked me particularly to say that she has only a few minutes to stay, as she is catching a train," the footman decorously ventured. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... platitudes she had always been comfortable enough. Even that whirlwind of anger at Benjamin Wright's contempt had only roused her to buttress her shelter with declarations that she was not harming anybody. But sitting there between William King and his wife, in the midst of decorously mournful Old Chester, she knew she could never say that any more; not only because a foolish and ill-balanced youth had been unable to survive a shattered ideal, but because she began suddenly and with consternation to understand ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... Meresq and Lilla, and, having his own opinion of his brother-in-law, disapproved of it entirely. Miss Tremaine also was much too flighty for his taste, and he was very hard on Captain Delamere for not applying to him to get her decorously out of ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... concatenation. Three weeks after this came Vereker's death, and before the year was out the death of his wife. That poor lady I had never seen, but I had had a futile theory that, should she survive him long enough to be decorously accessible, I might approach her with the feeble flicker of my petition. Did she know and if she knew would she speak? It was much to be presumed that for more reasons than one she would have nothing to say; but when she passed out of all reach I felt that renouncement was ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... In the second-rate, two-rouble establishment of Anna Markovna everything is plunged in sleep. The large square parlor with mirrors in gilt frames, with a score of plush chairs placed decorously along the walls, with oleograph pictures of Makovsky's Feast of the Russian Noblemen, and Bathing, with a crystal lustre in the middle, is also sleeping, and in the quiet and semi-darkness it seems unwontedly pensive, austere, strangely sad. Yesterday here, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... by twos and threes, along the footpath beside the canal, to dance in the village outside the Zyl-Gate. They walked quietly forward with eyes discreetly downcast, but many a cheek flushed and many an ill-suppressed smile hovered around rosy lips, when the youths, who followed the girls moving so decorously along, as gaily and swiftly as sea-gulls flutter around a ship, uttered teasing jests, or whispered into their ears words that no third ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... keep the church clean, and to scatter the marsh-marigold flowers on the floor before service. He also keeps order in the congregation, pinches those who fall asleep, cuffs irreverent boys, and hustles mothers with crying children out of church as quickly and decorously as possible. ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of the fence. During the past ten days, her neighborly calls had been frequent; but she had always before now succeeded in making her escape before any one else appeared. Hubert, in the meantime, had dutifully called on his new neighbor; but he had called decorously and by way of the front gate, at a time when Billy was out with his mother for their daily drive, so Mrs. Farrington had caught no glimpse of their young neighbors who had it in their power to make such a difference in her son's life. She had been amused and interested in Billy's account ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... engendered by them grew fiercer, it became increasingly difficult to attract attention by mere academic merit. So the painters began to search for sensationalism of subject, and the typical salon picture, no longer decorously pompous, began to deal in blood and horror and sensuality. It was Regnault who began this sensation hunt, but it has been carried much further since his day than he can have dreamed of, and the modern salon picture is not ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... loving towards the teacher and Floretta Vining. Floretta leaned forward as soon as she was seated and gazed at her with astonishment, and that deepening of amiability and general sweetness which one can imagine in the face of a doll after persistent scrutiny. Ellen smiled decorously, for she was not sure how much smiling was permissible in school. When she smiled guardedly at Floretta, she was conscious of another face regarding her, twisted slightly over a shabby little shoulder ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... there are persons who urge that the engineers concerned in the making of the reservoir should be tarred and feathered to a man. Both these views are distorted and intemperate. Let us endeavour to straighten up our opinions, to walk them soberly and decorously before us in an ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... which the general public are not allowed to be spectators; but I only speak of what is done openly. I would also by far prefer a popular festival in the East to a fair in our highly-civilised states. The Oriental feasts were to me a source of much enjoyment, for the people always behaved most decorously. They certainly shouted, and pushed, and elbowed each other like an European mob; but no drunken men were to be seen, and it was very seldom that a serious quarrel occurred. The commonest man, too, would never think of offering an insult to one ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... to the foot of the crucifix, where, upon its lowest step and upon the cemented floor immediately beneath it respectively, lay two shapes decorously covered with shawls of some heavy material interwoven with gold wire, for the manufacture of which the Makalanga were famous when first the Portuguese came into contact with them. The Molimo took hold of the cloths that seemed almost as ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... merry child frolicking hither and thither round him, and the sturdy body-servant Ralph, without whom he never stirred, plodding after, while Keeper, the only dog allowed to follow to the sheepfolds, marched decorously along, proud of the distinction. Then she went up to Lady Archfield, who could not be perfectly easy as to the precious grandchild being left to his own devices in the cold, while Sir Philip was sure to run into a discussion with ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seen to be in the charge of a very dark and very silent little man, with intensely black eyes and mustache, clad in raven hues from his head to the delicate feet on which he wore patent-leather shoes. With him the amigo walked gravely up and down the deck, and behaved decorously at table; and we could not reconcile the apparent affection between the two with a theory we had that the amigo had been found impossible in his own country, and had been sent out of Ecuador by a decree of the government, or perhaps a vote of the whole ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... and orderly life rested on certain agreements and conclusions in respect to marriage and class and conduct, and that these agreements and conclusions were admirably stated in the Book of Common Prayer, and most ably and decorously advocated from the pulpit of St. John's. She would have said that she believed the agreements and conclusions because of the Prayer Book, but in fact she had primarily given in her allegiance to a social system, and supported the Prayer Book because of its support of that. Once a ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... his intention, as I am well assured, just about the time that he took his flight for Hades, to have commenced regular contributor to your journal; so great was his admiration of you, and also of the terms which you offer to the literary world. As a learned Orientalist, you could not decorously have rejected him; and yet, once admitted, he would have beggared you before any means could have been discovered by the learned for putting a stop to him. [Greek Text: Aperantologia] was his forte; ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... the wall, and speedily lifted the ladder to our side, where it leaned comfortably against the stout branches of the draper's peach vine. Willie ran nimbly up the ladder and bestrode the wall. I followed, first standing, and then decorously sitting down on the top of it. Mr. Anstruther pulled up the ladder, and replaced it on the side of liberty; then he descended, then Willie, and I last of all, amidst the acclamations of the on-lookers, a select company ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... betrayed itself in the face, not even a glimmer of curiosity. Hadria was so tickled by this finished behaviour under difficulties, that she took her cue from it, and decided to treat the matter in the same polished spirit. She too would take it all decorously for granted. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the air, but a bright cheery sun, as Rebecca walked decorously out of the brick house yard. Emma Jane Perkins was away over Sunday on a visit to a cousin in Moderation; Alice Robinson and Candace Milliken were having measles, and Riverboro was very quiet. Still, life was seldom anything ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of audience gathering all this while outside the Harvard gates. These two publics for the humorist we may call the invited and the uninvited; the inner circle and the outer circle: first, those who have tickets for the garden party, and who stroll over the lawn, decorously gowned and properly coated, conversing with one another in the accepted social accents and employing the recognized social adjectives; and second, the crowd outside the gates,—curious, satirical, good-natured in the main, straightforward of speech and quick to applaud a ready ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... most decorously. If it were a funeral, indeed, it could hardly be less given to anything approaching hilarity. There is now and then a little conversation, but the gaps are frightful—yawning chasms of silence of the sort in which you are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... others at the Kid's quaint precociousness of speech and at his frank worship of range men and range life. He had gone to some trouble to find a tractable Shetland pony the size of a burro, and had taught the Kid to ride, decorously and fully protected ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... must have a strong presumption against him of being one, whether or no. Either the clean and decorously clad man, or the dirty and indecorously clad man. ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... been decorously trying to talk of the young minister's last sermon and of the affairs of the small Scotch church of which he was an elder, and Miss Torrance was ably seconding his effort by comparing the sentiments ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... well-disciplined and well-equipped Roman conquerers: archers and men in armour appear; pilgrims' processions such as we read of in Chaucer; knights and ladies on their stately steeds. There are the ghosts of royal progresses, kings and queens, and wonderful pageantry gorgeous in array; decorously ambling cardinals and abbots with their trains of servitors; hawking parties with hawks and attendants; soldiers after Sedgemoor in pursuit of Monmouth's ill-fated followers; George IV. and his gay courtiers on the Brighton ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... in general knew what was their real interest, if they could guess with what a charm even the appearance of modesty invests its possessor, they would dress decorously from mere self-love, if not from principle. The designing would assume modesty as an artifice; the coquette would adopt it as an allurement; the pure as her appropriate attraction; and the voluptuous as the most infallible ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... should think, sir. You are always telling me how much more decorously she goes through all the honours of the tea-table. Lord, papa, what if you should give her a right to preside ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... single pair of trousers; not a pair of boots flattered the lonely doormats. In the lower hall I found the tables of the great dining-room assembled, and the chairs inverted on them with their legs in the air; but decently, decorously, not with the reckless abandon displayed by the chairs in our Long Island hotel for weeks before it closed. In the smaller dining-room the table was set for lunch as if we were to go on dining there forever; in the breakfast-room the service and the provision were as perfect as ever. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... it always departs by something appreciable. The necessary standard of living of the working community is in fact made up of two distinguishable factors: the subsistence minimum, and the requirements of decorously wasteful consumption—the "decencies of life." These decencies are no less requisite than the physical necessaries, in point of workday urgency, and their amount is a matter of use and wont. This composite standard of living is a practical minimum, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... and soon fell asleep. What the mice did the remainder of the night I never knew, so deep were my slumbers. But, as my features were intact, and my facial expression as benign as usual next morning, I inferred that their gambols had been most innocently and decorously conducted. These are samples of many similar experiences which we encountered during the three months ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... terms. The countryside had been ravaged, all the Chautauqua lecturers were hoarse, industry was at a standstill, misery and despair were widespread. Even the indomitable Chuff himself was a little nonplussed. Better (he thought) one man indubitably, decorously, publicly, and legally drunk, than millions of citizens privily attempting to cajole raisins ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... both together became aware that these could not possibly be the steps of a proprietor. The approaching feet halted decorously without, and instead of the door's bursting open there came only a manly knock upon it. Carlisle looked at her mother, and found that her mother was looking at her with quite a tense expression. This certainly was not the way they had ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a fighting man, one who took a positive joy in battle, and like an old Norseman, seemed to think that thus only could a man decorously die. This amazed me, a peaceful person who loves quiet and a home. Still, I gave way, partly to please him, partly because I hoped that we might discover something of interest, and still more because, having ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... of the hall, and facing the benches for visitors, the Shaker fraternity were ranged. The hats and straight straw bonnets hung decorously upon the wall over their heads: here and there a sky-blue shawl or one of faded lilac hung beneath the headgear. Across the wide apartment it was difficult to distinguish faces. I scanned closely the sisterhood—old, withered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... to each other. This request having been foreseen was immediately complied with, and a great silver loving-cup with two handles and filled with a compound of Holland gin, sugar, and spice, with a moderate amount of water, was brought and presented to the governor who tasted decorously, and then passed it to the sachem, who seizing both handles carried it to his mouth and drank with an air of stern determination, as one who would not allow personal distaste to interfere with public obligations. The cup ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the archers of the Cinquantaine, and the banner of their great Dragon, who appeared again upon a lofty pole, swallowing a fish; by a band of sweet music and of singers chanting melodiously their "cantiques and motets"; by all the burgesses of Rouen walking decorously two by two; by the choir-boys of the Cathedral and two hundred of the clergy, the canons in violet, and the greater dignitaries in soutanes of red silk; by the officiating canon, and lastly by the Archbishop himself, blessing the people as he ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... from his chair and slipped on a coat, pushed the prospectus he was writing under a heap of documents—one at least of which bore a striking family likeness to a county court writ—and welcomed his visitor decorously ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... noise and no confusion. No stocks were called, and there was no central ring for bidding, as at the Bourse and the New York Gold Room; but they quietly bought and sold. Some of the leading firms had desks or tables at the side, and there awaited orders. Everything was phlegmatically and decorously done. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the body to the elbows, and then crossed decorously on the breast. Barrant walked round to the other side of the bed, knelt down by the edge of it, and examined the underneath part of the arm. A single livid ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... crystal parapets were retreating. Dimmer and more dim the gorgeous host became. In words of perfect piety Epicurus pictured them in the felicity of the ideal. There, they had no heed of man, no desire for worship, no wish for prayer. It was unnecessary even to think of them. Decorously, with every homage, they ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... meant, though he did not know how decorously to say it, was that she must not think that he could be moved by any tall beauty, towards the splendour of whose possessions his revered grandmother ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... thoroughly into the spirit of the performance; he bore his part in the service bravely, and, being furnished with another book, lent effective aid with the anthem. He stood up decorously as the choir filed out after the Grace, and then sat down again in his seat to listen to the voluntary. Mr Sharnall determined to play something of quality as a tribute to the unknown tenor, and gave as good ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... their hands — the efforts of a band of six or seven artists on the pipe and tabor, who kept up a quavering strain of what they doubtless believed to be music. To the united melody thus produced, a string of a dozen or so of ladies, in their full war paint, were decorously going through the monotonous evolutions of a popular dance, waving their arms about, gesticulating, and at the same time lingering, as it were, over the ground, and comporting themselves in that staid, yet fitfully ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... speak of was a dismal one of sleety snow. My own room seemed to me cheerier than the lonely parlour, where I could not have had good Mary Quince so decorously. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... they were a well-suited couple, and a certain pleasure filled the beholder's mind as they moved decorously up and down the long aisle formed by the double row of tables—the man entirely indifferent to his surroundings, dancing in this Parisian supper-place precisely as he would have danced in a London ball-room; the woman following ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... witness the solemnity, the cattle were made to pass through the flames, in the order of their dignity and age, commencing with the horses and ending with the swine. The ceremony having been duly and decorously gone through, a neighbouring farmer observed to the enlightened owner of the herd, that he, along with his family, ought to have followed the example of the cattle, and the sacrifice to Baal would ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... shoulder-straps—both dark blue, the one with F. L. on it, the other with C. G. Also, a sword. She wears them. Finally, they granted her the salute. I am witness that that ceremony is faithfully observed by both parties—and most gravely and decorously, too. I have never seen a soldier smile yet, while delivering it, nor ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... such a trial to sustain as this! By no possible supposition could Miriam explain the identity of the dead Capuchin, quietly and decorously laid out in the nave of his convent church, with that of her murdered persecutor, flung heedlessly at the foot of the precipice. The effect upon her imagination was as if a strange and unknown corpse had miraculously, while she was gazing at it, assumed the likeness ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hearts of a congregation, how many of them would be seen to be occupied with business or pleasures, or some favourite pursuit, even while they sit decorously in their pews! How many of them hear the preacher's voice without one answering thought or emotion! How many could not for their lives tell what his last sentence was! No marvel, then, that, as soon as its last sound has ceased, down ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... nicest flow of fancy about Mother's fear of mice, the bill was laid decorously on its face beside him. Still talking, but hesitating somewhat, he took a peep at the bill. It was for ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... old regime restrained his surprise at these democratic doings, smiled decorously, and withdrew. Jocosity slipped out at his dignified heels. The man before the fire drank deep in self-communion, and his face was grave. For the first time that crowded day he could look his future in the face. Yet, evoked by a woman's handclasp in the long ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... was a study—astonishment, indignation and fun each struggling for the mastery. At last his face broadened, and his eyes twinkled, and he leaned back in his seat and indulged in a long, loud, hearty laugh. Tode's eyes twinkled, but he waited decorously ...
— Three People • Pansy
... was Easter, and, dressed in a new suit of puce-colored ferrandine, with fresh ruffles of finest lace, and a new plume in my hat, I walked decorously beside my aunt through the thronged streets, every one dressed in his best and every one going the same way—to the Church of the Madeleine, to see the First Consul attend service. The sun was shining, birds ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... tolerance of most, but to the scandal of a few. Those curious, consulting the yellowed files of the newspapers, can read little protests—signed with nom de plumes—from young women, complaining that young men of their acquaintance, after calling decorously on them, would cross quite openly to the house over the way. Yet they were powerless, for a year or so at least, to break up ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... that Richard might have an exalted opinion of him, Ripton hinted decorously at a somewhat intimate and mysterious acquaintance with the sex. Headings of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... To refrain from ordering Genet out of the country at once required a strong effort of self-control; but he wished to keep the peace as long as possible, and he proposed to get rid of him speedily but decorously. He resolved also that no more such outrages should be committed through his absence, and the consequent differences among his advisers. He continued, of course, to consult his cabinet, but he took the immediate control, more definitely even than before, into his ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... tell you that I have sent Summers express, with a note to Lady Ellinor begging her to come here? I did not see, on reflection, how I could decorously accompany Miss Trevanion alone, without even a female servant, to a house full of gossiping guests. And even had your uncle been well enough to go with us, his presence would but have created an additional cause for wonder; so as soon as ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... holding white curly dogs in their curved arms; the coachmen in front of them seemed carved in plum-colored broadcloth; only by watching the groom's eyelids could one ascertain that they were flesh and blood. Young girls, two, three, and four, cantered by; their linen habits rose and fell decorously, their hair was smooth. Mounted policemen, glorious in buttons, breathing out authority, curvetted past, and everywhere and always the chug-chug-chug of the gleaming, fierce-eyed motor cars filled one's ears. They darted past, ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... prepared. There was a savoury smell of soup, which we could not help inhaling while we gazed on death. The cooks too were in attendance, and though they, as became them, did all in their power to look decorously dismal, well as they managed their faces, they could not so divest themselves of their professional peculiarities, as not to awaken thoughts which involuntarily turned to ludicrous or festive scenes. Their very costume was at variance with the general ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... platform, or stage, as it may be called. The long table, with its accompaniment of chairs, had been pushed back against the wall, and the pianoforte stood in the centre of the platform. The room was quite full, and the men appeared, for the most part, disposed to behave quietly and decorously. There were only some half a dozen young fellows who seemed at all inclined to be noisy or boisterous, and they occupied seats in the centre of the room. Johnson occupied a chair on one side of the platform, and Ralli balanced him on the opposite side. Johnson appeared rather surprised ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... tone of sentiment which is almost mawkish. Giants, dragons, and angelic champions carry us into a spurious fairy land, where the knight-errant is a preacher in disguise. Fair ladies and love matches, however decorously chastened, suit ill with the sternness of the mortal conflict between the soul and sin. Christiana and her children are tolerated for the pilgrim's sake to whom they belong. Had they appealed to our interest on their own merits, we would have been contented to wish them well through their difficulties, ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... a swift movement in the pupils of the valley man's eyes. It was an expression closely correlated to laughter, but the muscles of his face were still, and he remained decorously grave. ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... slight tremor in her voice, and, Roger could almost have sworn, tears in her eyes. The officers averted their eyes decorously, while Roger gazed at her with aloof impersonality, simply curious. He watched her score her point and wondered just how far she intended to pursue the advantage. What was her plan? Was she, after all, technically innocent, able to prove the fact? Or was this a bold stratagem, to ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... vastly gracious! Thanks to Don Martino I mend apace. Oh, yes, and shall soon be strong enough to die decorously, I trust, and in such fashion ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... fashion of things. Mrs. Hayden represented the outposts in the days of Richardson and Davenport—had Honora but known it. This great house was all so different from anything she (and many others in the city) had ever seen. And she stood gazing into the drawing room, with its curtains and decorously drawn shades, in a rapture which her aunt and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... woman by this, and it was befitting that he claim his wife. He rode with Hawise Bulmer and her baby to Ambresbury, and at the gate of the nunnery they parted, with what agonies are immaterial to this history's progression; the tale merely tells that, having thus decorously rid himself of his mistress, the Prince went into Lower Picardy alone, riding at adventure as he loved to do, and thus came to Entrechat, where his wife resided with her mother, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... stepped inside the private office cautiously. He was a little old man, as black as soot, wrinkled and bald except for a fringe of white wool, cut decorously short, that ran over his ears and around his head. There was nothing of the stage "uncle" about him: his black suit nearly fitted him; his shoes shone, and his straw hat was banded with a gaudy ribbon. In his right hand he ...
— Options • O. Henry
... her long life she went to the funeral of a relative, leaning decorously upon the arm of a kinsman. At the churchyard a countryman pushed forward between her and the coffin. She thereupon disengaged her arm from that of her squire and struck the countryman in ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... Ossaroo for an explanation. Ossaroo only smiled significantly in reply, evidently able to explain this mysterious phenomenon; but enjoying the surprise of his companions too much to offer a solution of it as long as he could decorously withhold it. ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... his office as clerk he held the position of choirmaster. At church on Sunday he sat at the west end, the boys of the village sitting behind him, and it was part of his duty to see that they behaved themselves decorously. Should a boy make any disturbance Fewson's hand fell heavily on the offender's ears, and so sharply that the sound of the blows could be heard throughout the church. Such incidents as this were by no means uncommon in churches ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... to Hugh. Then openly, yet decorously, "Ahem!" she said as they lapsed into waiting attitudes. But the mate was not to be ahemmed, and while he hearkened on to the critic she could do no better than hammer the small of her back and smooth into it a ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... this family was united and happy, and amid their sorrow felt a pure joy in the prospect of a comfortable and prosperous future. The old man, who resolved to amend after the example of his son, and to pass the remainder of his life more decorously, agreed, even without any persuasion, to make over the uncontrouled management of the property legally to his son, who was now of age. It was settled that the mother and son should go first to their new estate, to arrange every thing, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... character, the clearest sense, and—she was the faithful echo of the baroness. The second was a pretty girl. She represented the other pretty girls. Then the baroness spoke. She said it was of the first importance to do this thing decorously and in order. When men had suppers they never invited women. They wanted to have a good time, and women spoiled it. She was not in favor of an "invitation entertainment." She supposed that what they wanted was a society, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... did not stop my ears that night, but I opened my eyes and saw hundreds of my fellow-creatures, all with some strange delusions, many with ferocious and vicious propensities, yet all kept in order by a few warders, a handful of girls, and all behaving as decorously as in a real ball-room. And the question which would haunt me all the way home was, which are the sane people, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Decorously having tea on the terrace in the June afternoons, knowing herself the centre of interest, Harriet's heart sang with a wild inward delight. She smiled; she could afford the friendliest interest for everyone's affairs. When ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... was reproved for his lack of dignity, which was shown in his wearing stockings "footed up with another color;" that is, knit stockings in which the feet were colored differently from the legs. He also was found guilty of having jumped over the fence instead of decorously and clerically walking through the gate when going to call on one of his parishioners. Rev. Joseph Metcalf of the Old Colony was complained of in 1720 for wearing too worldly a wig. He mildly reproved and shamed the meddlesome women of his church by asking them to come to ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... noticed, naturally, that Johanson had not been forward to the Lord's Supper even when the cellar-master had been helped up the aisle from the poorhouse seat near the door, and Gull and the half-mad poet had decorously followed. At this he had hardly been surprised, for there were other members of the congregation who did not communicate more than once a year. The good man felt a sudden repulsion towards the stranger still without the ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... visible by the shaded candlelight in the death-chamber of the old clergyman. Natural connections he had none. But there was the decorously grave though unmoved physician, seeking only to mitigate the last pangs of the patient whom he could not save. There were the deacons and other eminently pious members of his church. There, also, was the Reverend Mr. Clark of Westbury, a ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... instant she was escaping out of his arms and fleeing back to the fire. Miss Prudence and Morris followed more decorously. ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... lead and filed decorously out the door with preternaturally solemn faces that broke into smiles the moment the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... it, with a tinge of self-contradiction—even if he actually refrained in fancy from endowing the deceased with aureate harps and crowns and footgear. In fine, death cowed the colonel's thoughts; beyond the grave they did not care to venture, and when confronted with that abyss they decorously balked. ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... cemented. Without great dishonour and without great imprudence, Athens could not forego the control with which she had been invested; if it were hers to provide the means, it was hers to punish the defaulters; and her duty to Greece thus decorously and justly sustained her ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... piazza, hailed by children and dogs, who all knew him and sprang up suddenly from nowhere, and walking quickly up the zigzag path, for he was an active young man not much more than thirty, he pulled the ancient chain that range the bell, and waited decorously on the proper side of the open door to ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Twins, who had been waiting on each other for a lead with the first spoonful of soup, set down their spoons and joined in, at first decorously, then with uproar. ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that she was not to move except to a measure and cadence. So Queen Medea slew her children to a slow music: and King Agamemnon perished in a dying fall (to use Mr. Dryden's words): the Chorus standing by in a set attitude, and rhythmically and decorously bewailing the fates of those great crowned persons. The Muse of History hath encumbered herself with ceremony as well as her Sister of the Theatre. She too wears the mask and the cothurnus, and speaks to measure. She too, in our ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... longer beneath our dignity to cast an inquiring eye on his appearance. His features are not distinguished, but he has a strong jaw and green eyes, in which a yellow light burns that we have not seen before. His dark hair, hitherto so decorously sleek, has been ruffled this way and that by wind and weather, as if they were part of the cataclysm and wanted to help his chance. His muscles must be soft and flabby still, but though they shriek aloud to him to desist, ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... once the march of the beasts began, they saw and heard no more of the globes. And as they reached a curve in the river, Hume stopped, swung around, stood studying the line of decorously pacing animals. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... of the chapel, there arose that shaking of the dry bones of religious England which we call the Tractarian movement. For many years the new force left R—— quite undisturbed. The parish church droned away, the Unitarian minister preached decorously to empty benches, knowing nothing of the agitations outside. At last, however, towards the end of the old minister's life, a powerful church of the new type, staffed by friends and pupils of Pusey, rose in the centre of R——, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fastening on Eva, had finally crushed Latimer. Moore knew, if the others did not, that Blair was doomed if he once again came within its radius. Then for the others! But he made no immediate move, and decorously gave regard to the proprieties, both for himself and as a substitute for Mr. Burroughs. His chief was almost as hysterical as Eva herself over the judge's untimely death, for he thought his prospects endangered thereby. His ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... Why had she chosen to-night, of all nights, to rend the veil which had always hung, so decently, between them. He had felt happy to-night—not madly, foolishly happy, as so many men feel at such moments, but reasonably, decorously pleased with his present and his future. He was making a mariage de convenance, but there had been another man on the lists, a younger man than himself, and that had added a most pleasing zest to the pursuit. He, aided of course by Winifred Fanshawe's prudent parents, had ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... holding by my forefinger, and walking decorously along the pavement. She stopped to contemplate the monkey, and after a while, shocked by his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... of an accident occurred. Nor was this oversight of much account, only that Tim Linkinwater, the horse, whose self-will had increased with his years, soon made the discovery that he for the nonce held the reins of power; and when they reached Roaring Brook, instead of proceeding decorously across the bridge, he persisted in descending a somewhat steep bank and fording the stream. Half-way across, he found the coolness of the water so agreeable that he decided to enjoy it ad libitum. No expostulations nor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... the only one," resumed Gringoire, "who has listened to the piece decorously. What do you think ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo |
