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More "Gossip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and place where Timaeus wrote was preparing between the Romans and the Carthaginians. In the main, however, the story cannot have been derived from Latium, but can only have been the good-for-nothing invention of the old "gossip-monger" himself. Timaeus had heard of the primitive temple of the household gods in Lavinium; but the statement, that these were regarded by the Lavinates as the Penates brought by the followers of Aeneas from Ilion, is as certainly an addition of his own, as the ingenious parallel between the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... for me. We want publicity on this case—all you can hand out big chunks of it. We want to know who that woman was. The way I figure it, this city is going to get a jolt at breakfast. Every one is going to be comparing notes. Out of that mass of gossip we may get ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... trail, only to turn in flight as if the devil was nipping after them once they glimpsed his bulky figure, heard his whimpering or his loud laughter. The men followed him to the Davis Cabin, each eager to contribute to the general gossip concerning the child-man's ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... Cabot tell me everything she knows," said Polly hoarsely, and not looking back; "she shall let me have every syllable. It can't be true!" She threw wide the door of Mrs. Higby's "keeping-room" where that lady was engaged in putting a patch on the chintz-covered sofa, and talking gossip with a ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... embellished gossip, he had found, was a popular form of entertainment in camp and court alike, and his store of gossip was large and carefully gathered. Here at Dweros, far from the center of the kingdom, his store of tales would last for a long time—probably ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... him, but she had written a pleasant, cheerful letter wherein she hoped that the end of the season would repay the losses she understood that he was enduring; but she admitted that she was very lonesome without him. She gave him quite a budget of gay gossip concerning all the young people of his set, and after he had read that letter he was quite prepared to swallow his grit and make the announcement that for a week had ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... it, sir. They must go a-field, or go hungered, most of them. And they get to like the gossip and scandal, and coarse fun of it, while their children are left at home to play in the roads, or fall into the fire, as ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... sceptical, Steenie—ever misdoubting your ain dear dad and gossip," rejoined James; "but ye shall find we haena earned the title o' the British ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... unconventional or leaves undone what custom and gossip make almost obligatory, a relation or a mere interfering neighbour is always at hand to wag her head and say there must be some reason for it. Which means, of course, one specific reason. And the worst of it is that she is ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... lads mustn't starve because a constable's shot. Coom along. Here, missus, let's hev bit o'—Nay, she's gone to see the neighbours, and hev a bit o' ruckatongue." [A gossip.] ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... reason, and for the fact that she was westbound, carrying no troops. The submarine was never seen and neither was the torpedo. There has been rumor that the explosion that sank her came from the inside, but so far as any one knows this is merely port gossip of such nature as arises when vessels are lost. Our second transport to be lost was the President Lincoln, taken over from the Germans when war was declared. She, too, was eastbound, well out to sea, and the loss of life was small. The third was ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... to tell this. I suppose it's a State's prison offence to deceive about murder. But you understand our position: we can't afford to let it become gossip. I'll pay this girl anything to go to Europe ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... of her allowed to escape no one, and therefore we say no more of it here. How easy it is to "hint and chuckle and grin" with the "chroniques scandaleuses!" easier still to be incontinent of one's moral indignation. The truth is that this back-stair gossip misses, on the whole, that just proportion necessary if you would not only see but also perceive. Catharine, whom her generation called "the Great," had one absorbing passion; it was the greatness of Russia, and of herself as ruler of Russia—"mon petit menage," ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... know that's new?" Mr. Crow asked him. The old gentleman was a very curious person. Being a great gossip, he was always on the lookout ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... tell of the great folk there; Inger, on the other hand, could always draw upon her famous journey to Trondhjem and her stay there. She had grown talkative in the years she had been away, and was always ready to gossip with any one. No, she was no longer the same straightforward, simple Inger of ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Thus is cuckoo gossip perpetuated in rhyme and song; but an old belief in the mysteriously disappearing bird gave an opportunity to children to await its return in the early summer, and then address to it all ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... refined society, and it would be discovered that a favourite Adonis was keeping company with two or three young girls at the same time, and vice versa with some young coquettes. But such unprincipled conduct would furnish gossip for a whole neighbourhood, and be discountenanced by all. Nor must you for a moment imagine that there was anything wrong in this system of wooing. It was the custom of the country in an early day, and I think it is still continued in settlements remote from towns. But the lives of hundreds ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... look over their clothes and jewels, spend a great deal of time every day in being bathed in their luxurious way, and being dressed. Then they lounge about, gossip, and quarrel a good deal, I suspect. They are very fond of hearing what is going on, and the servant who brings them the most ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... pot-plants—geraniums, fuchsias, lemon-verbenas—on ledges imminent over Hester's head. The most of the passers-by were women carrying pails of water, or country folks with baskets of market stuff. The whole street seemed to be cleaning up and taking in provisions for the day, and all amid a buzz of public gossip, one housewife pausing on her balcony as she shook a duster, and leaning over to discuss market prices with her neighbour chaffering below. The cross-fire of talk died down as the dealers dispersed, snatching up their wares from under the wheels of the spring-cart, ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Careless as she was with regard to public opinion, she saw not without pain the altered looks of her old associates, and before long she came to know the cause. A cruel suspicion had been whispered about, touching her in a most tender point. It was not without reason, so the gossip ran, that she had refused so eligible an offer of marriage Schoenfeld's. The story reached the ears of Rauchen, at last. With a fierce energy, such as he had never exhibited before, he tracked it from cottage to cottage, until he came to Schoenfeld's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... every one a little by surprise. A few were really gratified; the majority perceived that it silenced gossip of a very enthralling kind. No one could now deplore or insinuate, or express sorrow or astonishment. And, as rejoicing with one's friends and neighbours soon becomes a very monotonous thing, Katherine Van Heemskirk's fine marriage was tacitly dropped. Only for that one day on which it was publicly ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... weeks went on, and Mr. Fairchild without business, and Mrs. Fairchild without gossip, had a very quiet, dull time of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... Sarah Swetnam had exhausted the Brunt hat, and were spaciously at sea in an enchanted ocean of miscellaneous gossip such as is only possible between two highly-educated women who scorn tittle-tattle. Helen had the back bedroom; partly because the front bedroom was her uncle's, but partly also because the back bedroom was just as large as and much quieter than the other, and because she preferred it. There ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... know to divide with her, Hugh; and I shall be generous too. If thou hast any little fancies that way, thou must write and tell me. Oh, mon fils, thou wilt write often, and I must know all the news. I do hear that Darthea Peniston is in thy aunt's house a good deal, and Madam Ferguson, the gossip, would have me believe thou carest for her, and that Arthur Wynne is taken in the same net. I liked her. I did not tell thee that thy Aunt Gainor left her with me for an hour while she went into King street ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... dear," Mrs. Linden would say, and, thinking remorsefully of that little feminine gossip at the Crane mansion, would redouble her efforts in the young girl's behalf. Mrs. Linden had a fear which amounted to presentiment, that the aforementioned clique, of which Mrs. Crane was the acknowledged leader, would learn, by some means, of her new ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... It is because you have had no time to think this thing out. Remember that after all you are not sailing under any false colours. You are your father's daughter, and you are also his heiress. If the newspapers and gossip have exaggerated the amount of his fortune, that is not your affair. Be reasonable, little girl," she added, letting her hand fall upon Jeanne's. "Don't give us all away like this. Remember that I have made sacrifices ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were a source of much gossip and great speculation, of course, to the good people of Green Isle, as we shall style this gem of the Pacific, in order to thwart the myrmidons of the law! They found them so reserved and uncommunicative, however, on the subject of their personal ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... flat bowls. At I set me down. At the veer and turn. At earl beardy. At rogue and ruffian. At the old mode. At bumbatch touch. At draw the spit. At the mysterious trough. At put out. At the short bowls. At gossip lend me your sack. At the dapple-grey. At the ramcod ball. At cock and crank it. At thrust out the harlot. At break-pot. At Marseilles figs. At my desire. At nicknamry. At twirly whirlytrill. At stick and hole. At the rush bundles. At boke or him, or flaying the fox. At the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... instead of the more becoming sunbonnet. Judith had been used to lead her following here, and the number of her swains would have been a scandal in any one else: but there was a native dignity about Judith Barrier that kept even rural gossip at bay. This morning, however, when Elder Drane gave her the customary invitation to walk down there for a drink, she refused, and all during the first service the widower had sat tall and reproachful on the men's side and reminded ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... think, that nocturnal prowler of pre-War Paris had been so long dead and buried even the most ghoulish gossip should respect his poor remains and not disinter them merely to demonstrate that the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... nose of varnished pasteboard of the make already described; and Sancho, examining him more and more closely, exclaimed aloud in a voice of amazement, "Holy Mary be good to me! Isn't it Tom Cecial, my neighbour and gossip?" ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the Cathedral Close where they lived in England was not highly exhilarating, and when its duties were over it contained only mild gossip and endless tea-parties and ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... minute description of these dances. Suffice it to say, they would not be endured in England, even by women who had fallen from the paths of virtue, unless their minds and hearts were wholly debauched. You see, after so much light gossip, I end with a sermon—a sermon which the least strait-laced would preach ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... posedajxo. Goods (merchandise) komercajxo. Goods train, by malrapidire. Goose ansero. Goose anserino. Gooseberry groso. Gorge valego. Gorge supersatigi. Gorgeous belega. Goshawk akcipitro. Gosling anserido. Gospel Evangelio. Gossip babilajxo. Gourd kukurbo. Gourmand mangxegulo. Gout podagro. Govern regi. Government registaro. Governess guvernistino. Governor reganto. Gown robo. Grace gracio. Graceful gracia. Gracious gracia. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... consent; He cannot even deprive her of it by will. She may bring up his children carelessly and idiotically, cursing them with abominable manners and poisoning their nascent minds against him, and he has no redress. She may neglect her home, gossip and lounge about all day, put impossible food upon his table, steal his small change, pry into his private papers, hand over his home to the Periplaneta americana, accuse him falsely of preposterous adulteries, affront his friends, and lie about ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... expert in domestic science. But Powers, getting impatient for a meeting between his mother and wife, asked Mollie Bent to arrange it. So accordingly Miss Mollie visited at the home of her friends, the Fogels, and during the gossip Miss Bent casually remarked to Mrs. Fogel that she had a most charming friend, an Indian maid, over at the school whom she would like to introduce ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... student who seeks in the bulk of the histories written prior to, say, 1870, what he has a legitimate reason for seeking, namely, a picture of the actual life of the people at any period, will be sadly disappointed. He will find records of wars and treaties of peace, royal genealogies and gossip, wildernesses of names and dates. But he will not find such careful accounts of the jurisprudence of the period, nor any hint of the economical conditions of its development. He will find splendid accounts of court life, with its ceremonials, scandals, intrigues, and follies; but no such ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... gossip so lightly and rapidly that this last piece of information had not given him the start its significance deserved. But its ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... the specimens of stones, flowers, birds, or insects which they found during their walks. "If you will only learn to talk about things instead of people," she said, "you will avoid a great deal of disagreeable gossip and ill-natured conversation. The wide world is full of beautiful objects, and the more you know about them the less concern you will take over your neighbours' doings and failings. Real culture consists largely in being able to discuss ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... only can, but we shall make people buy," she replied. "We shall ask them very prettily, and they cannot refuse us. We've all been loaded to the brim with arguments, if arguments are necessary, but we haven't time to gossip with folks. A whole lot of money must be raised, and there's a short time ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... try parental conclusions with him,—kindly but firmly. As for "the tyrannical immuring of the Oriental female," the cruel caging of the pretty birds who are supposed to be forever longing and pining for the gossip of the ghaut and the bustle of the bazaar, the only fault she had to find with it was that she did not get enough of it. The well-trained Hindoo woman has been taught to regard such seclusion as her most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... Cristobal de la Camara, who forbade the pretty housekeeper, prohibited his priests from entering nunneries, and prescribed public confessionals—a measure still much to be desired. But he must have been a man of extreme views, for he actually proscribed gossip. This was some thirty years after Admiral van der Does and his Dutchmen fired upon the city and were beaten off with a loss ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... are a most discerning woman, gossip Gillian," answered the merchant; "and yonder youth that supported her ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... time-eaten brow Lean letters speak,—a worn and shattered row: I am a Shade; a Shadowe too art thou: I marke the Time: saye, Gossip, dost thou soe? ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... in solitude fight out my first grim battle with despair, saying to myself in all bitterness of soul that never again would I turn face to southward or enter the boundaries of Louisiana Province. During those years, beyond reach of news and the tongue of gossip, I wandered aimlessly from village to village, ever certain of welcome within the lodges of Creeks and Shawnees, or farther away amid those little French border towns dotting the Ohio and the Illinois, constantly feeling how little the world held of value since both my parents were gone, and ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... belonged to Dr Hewick, and was let in the shooting season to sportsmen. This house had been taken by "Mr Meaze" (who was Garnet) as a very quiet locality, where mass might be said without being overheard by Protestant ears, and no inconvenient neighbours were likely to gossip about the inmates. In London, Garnet was a horse-dealer; at White Webbs he was a gentleman farmer and a sportsman. Here he established himself and somebody eke, who has not yet appeared on the scene, and whom ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the world they lived in. Nobody questioned, nobody wondered any more-because nobody had time to remember. The old risk of prying curiosity, of malicious gossip, was virtually over: one was left with one's drama, one's disaster, on one's hands, because there was nobody to stop and notice the little shrouded object one was carrying. As Susy watched the two people before her, each so frankly unaffected ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... preponderance of centenarians of the supposed weaker sex has led to the revival of some amusing theories tending to explain this phenomenon. One cause of the longevity of women is stated to be, for instance, their propensity to talk much and to gossip, perpetual prattle being highly conducive, it is said, to the active circulation of the blood, while the body remains unfatigued and undamaged. More serious theorists or statisticians, while commenting on the subject of the relative longevity of the sexes, attribute the supremacy of woman in the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... better. Now I wouldn't gossip to you of my employer's affairs—I hope we're better than two common servants—but I want you to be as loyal to him as I am, and to understand a few of the reasons why he can't go ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... members of the house-party would misunderstand her motives; people were so much less censorious in the country; there was something in the pastoral purity of Nature, seen face to face, which brought out one's noblest instincts, and put an end to all horrid gossip and scandal-mongering. ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... and laboring under some sudden aberration of mind; yet, in spite of himself, he realized a terrible rationality in it. Little as he had been among the village people of late, and little as he had heard of the village gossip, he knew the story of Richard Alger's desertion of Sylvia Crane. Was he not like Richard Alger in his own desertion of Charlotte Barnard? and had not Sylvia been as little at fault in taking one for the other as if they had been twin brothers? Might there not be a closer likeness between ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Basilica of Julius, that is to say, of Julius Caesar. It is an edifice of a type familiar in cities of the Roman world. You mount the steps from the Sacred Way and find yourself under an outer two-storied arcade suitable for lounging or promenading while discussing business or gossip with your friends. Passing from this inwards you are in a building which consists of a covered colonnade, or nave, about 270 feet in length, with a row of pillars on either hand. On each side is a gallery, or upper floor, from which spectators may look down ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... promotion, or to curry favor with the General. Of course, it may be different in armies officered by gentlemen; but men are pretty much alike all the world over, and I know that those in our Legion were as given to gossip and slander as the inmates of any Old Woman's Home. I used to say to myself that so long as I had the approval of Laguerre and of my own men and of my conscience I could afford not to mind what the little souls said; but ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... "Yes. For the gossip is that she's an English Princess. Now, what's the good of being a powerful Emperor, if he can't even pick out a wife to please his ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... the houses beneath, for they were all formed by the earth brought to the surface in the process of excavating the rooms and passages. On the tops of these hillocks the owners sat up in the sun to bark and chatter and gossip with their nearest neighbors, always ready to dive headlong down their front doors, with a twinkling of their hind feet, at ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... visiting "Uncle Jim's" shop and playing with such tools as he considered safe for them to handle, while Mammy, seated upon a box by the small fire, would indulge in long talks about religion or plantation gossip. That shop was indeed a typical spot; its sides were lined to the eaves with choice lumber, arranged systematically so that the green was out of reach, while that which was seasoned was close at hand. Uncle Jim would have felt disgraced ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... of the two girls in animated conversation as they drew near, and distinguished the name of Glumm more than once, but, not being a gossip by nature, he thought nothing of this, and was intent only on pouncing out on them when they should reach a certain stone in the path. Truth constrains us to admit that our young friend, like many young folk of ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... the compadrazgo (gossipry) is the relation which exists between the father of a child and its godfather, who call each other compadre (gossip). It is often used also as a mere ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... not the right kind of witness. If it had been an indulgent elder not given to gossip, or a chivalrous young man not averse himself from kisses, all might have been well. But William Roper, under-gamekeeper, was a young man without a spark of chivalry in him, and he had been soured in the matter of kisses by the steadfast resolve of the ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... gossiped and jested with him quite as she would with a playfellow; it was playfellow, rather than spiritual adviser, he had always been to her, Kate's need seeming rather more for playfellows than for spiritual advisers. But the trouble that morning was that the things of which she was wont to gossip and jest ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... go about so little; and I am not fond of gossip; I really never hear any. You see so many people that I don't see. Your circle is ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... mistranslating Andre's words, makes Perkin the son of the Jew, instead of the servant; and Bacon amplifies the error, and transforms John Osbeck into the convert Jew, who, having a handsome wife, it might be surmised why the licentious King "should become gossip in so mean a house." Hume adds: "People thence accounted for that resemblance which was afterward remarked between young Perkin and that monarch." The surmise of Bacon, grounded upon the error of Speed, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... may know how great is the task, and the confidence required to pitch into it, we announce, with a flourish, that Miss L. E. is about to attack that well-known Saurian Monster, termed GOSSIP! Considered as a Disease, she proposes to find the Cause and the Cure. Considered as a living and gigantic Nuisance (by far surpassing any Dragon described by SPENSER,) she designs to hunt him out and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... a feather will flock together. The robin sings to his ruddy mate, And the chattering jays, in the winter weather, To prate and gossip will congregate; And the cawing crows on the autumn heather, Like evil omens, will flock together, In extra-session, for high debate; And the lass will slip from a doting mother To hang with her lad on the garden ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... Philip put the boy and girl to school, And bought them needful books, and everyway, Like one who does his duty by his own, Made himself theirs; and tho' for Annie's sake, Fearing the lazy gossip of the port, He oft denied his heart his dearest wish, And seldom crost her threshold, yet he sent Gifts by the children, garden-herbs and fruit, The late and early roses from his wall, Or conies from the down, and now and then, ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... chapel, where a layman ungrammatically held forth at 3 P.m. every Sunday; but the congregation was composed of all denominations, who attended more for the sitting about on logs outside, and yarning about the price of butter, the continuance of the drought, and the latest gossip, before and after the service, than ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... wondered what they would do during the coming day, as it was not advisable to go much about Quebec owing to the notoriety the duel had brought to them. Monsieur Berryer, suave, deferential and full of gossip, informed them that the fame of young Mr. Lennox as a master of the sword had spread through the city in a few hours. Brave and skillful young Frenchmen were anxious to meet him and prove that where Count Jean de Mezy had failed ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... with renewed ardor to his profession,—to bury his domestic troubles in work, and persistently avoid all quarrels. And this is all the world need know of this sad affair, which, though a matter of gossip, never was a scandal. It is unfortunate for the fame of many great men that we know too much of their private lives. Mr. Froude, in his desire for historical impartiality, did no good to the memory of his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... impossible. Indeed, it would perhaps not be extravagant to suppose that his care to identify himself with Aminta's confidant may have been an unusual but not untimely piece of caution on his part, to prevent poisoned gossip connecting him ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... to Terregova, we were glad to find quite a decent inn, the Wilder Mann, kept by civil people. After supper we had a chat with our hostess, who being a regular gossip, was very pleased to tell us a lot of stories about the wild character of the country-people. She was very sorry that the frontier was no longer under the Austrian military rule, for, she said, having been accustomed to the strict military system ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... through country gossip of the strange happening at Lynch which had caused so great a scandal, and led to the disappearance of the deaf old Vicar of that remote village, I collected all the reports I could about it, for I ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... fine stories. But the first folk he had offered his services to had bidden him begone because his ragged coat bespoke neither good guidance nor clerkly wit; so he had come back, downhearted and crestfallen, to the Bishop's wall, where he had his bit of sunshine and his kind gossip Marguerite. "They reckon," he said bitterly, "I am not learned enough to number them the relics and recount the miracles of Our Lady. Do they think my wits have escaped away through ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... for the morrow, and what it will bring with it. In that great city of nerves, through which electric vibrations pass, there are invisible currents of fame, a latent celebrity which precedes the actuality, the vague gossip of the drawing-rooms, the nescio quid majus nascitur Iliade, which, at a given moment, bursts out in a puffing article, the blare of the trumpet which drives the name of the new idol into the thickest heads. Sometimes ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... about Phebe, and much gossip went on behind fans that evening, for those who had known her years ago found it hard to recognize the little housemaid in the handsome young woman who bore herself with such quiet dignity and charmed them all with her fine voice. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... she told no body but folkes on't. Well Gossip Gretty, as thou art a Miller, and a close thiefe, now let us keepe it as close as we may till we take 'hem, and see them handsomly hanged o'the way: Ha my little Cuffe-divell, thou art a made ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... sat down to luncheon together. The Mole found himself placed next to Mr. Badger, and, as the other two were still deep in river-gossip from which nothing could divert them, he took the opportunity to tell Badger how comfortable and home-like it all felt to him. "Once well underground," he said, "you know exactly where you are. Nothing ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... notice was given that the party who had travelled all night wished to repose for a few hours; all others therefore withdrew, to secure quiet some within the pine-wood, others to the nearest breezy hill, to gossip and sport, while some few took the opportunity of going home, to see after their cattle, or other domestic affairs, intending to return ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... alarmed when Jesus insisted on teaching the next day in the market place, where people gathered to gossip and ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... dinners next week to the following persons, whom I enumerate, as I know Lady Georgiana loves a little gossip. First dinner—Lady Holland, Eastlake, Lord and Lady Monteagle, Luttrell, Lord Auckland, Lord Campbell, Lady Stratheden, Lady Dunstanville, Baring Wall, and Mr. Hope. Second dinner—Lady Charlemont, Lord Glenelg, Lord and Lady Denman, Lord and Lady Cottenham, Lord and Lady ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... beasts, the ring of strange voices, the crackling of whips; there are prancing steeds and figures in costumes curious,—then, flapping of canvas, creaking of poles, and all is silent. Of course it is not real, and every one may go. The circus has no annals, knows no gossip, presents no problems; it is without morals and therefore not immoral. It is the one joyous amusement that is not above, but quite outside the pale of criticism and discussion. Therefore, why should not the preacher go and take ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... better not," said Mrs. Rabbit. "It's all you can do to gossip about grown-up people's affairs." And then Mrs. Rabbit shook her dusting rag up and down, and maybe once sideways, and after that she shut the window. So Grandmother Magpie ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... timidity—but almost no attempt to cut beneath these manifestations of social life to the creative impulses which produce them. The Economic Man—that lazy abstraction—is still paraded in the lecture room; the study of human nature has not advanced beyond the gossip ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... message from the village above and linked his heart into a closer and fonder memory of sweeter hours. And these letters laden with love's tender offerings, with here and there some whisperings of loneliness, some unlooked-for digression embracing the gossip of the neighborhood, or some delicious speculation as ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... love, that, if we did not go, we should give some excuse for scandal-mongers to gossip. Yet, should you not like it, you know that there is no need for us to go. Do not think of me, for I prefer our pleasant chat in this room to the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... some old volumes of sermons and a few back numbers of the Congregational Magazine, no visitors, so far as she could make out, no newspaper but the Carlingford Weekly Gazette, nothing but her grandmother's gossip about the chapel and Mrs. Tom to pass the weary hours away. Even last night Mrs. Tozer had asked her whether she had not any work to beguile the long evening, which Phoebe occupied much more virtuously, from her own point of view, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He lives in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now about 4000l. a year, 1000l. of which he devotes to purposes of charity. Switzerland is little fitted for him; the gossip and the cabals of those Anglicised coteries would torment him, as they did before. Ravenna is a miserable place. He would in every respect be better among the Tuscans. He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan. It sets him not only above, but far above, ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... gargoyle, half a man. And his position in the city—in the whole country, I think—is so fortified that with the best will in the world the law cannot touch him. Duane Carter—well, he's been a gay boy with the ladies—a bad man if you like—but at least he is not accused by gossip of murder, arson, abduction, and crimes infinitely worse than these. He may have beguiled women, but at least his worst enemy would never suppose that he had trafficked in them. Barbara's model is all the things that you can imagine. And all of them are written ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... ample boards groaned under the weight of hospitality. Even the poorest cottage welcomed the festive season with green decorations of bay and holly—the cheerful fire glanced its rays through the lattice, inviting the passenger to raise the latch, and join the gossip knot huddled round the hearth, beguiling the long evening with legendary jokes and ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... the subject as the Quaymaster came sidling up to join them. Mild gossip was a passion with the ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... you would do well to reconsider your decision to leave tomorrow. Your sudden departure would give rise to ill-natured talk. It would be wiser to stay here, for a short time, till the gossip and ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... forbear to chide; Her aunt's my gossip by my father's side: But, if I ever touch her lips again, May I be doom'd for life to ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... neighbors felt worried and troubled but as no attention was paid to their remarks, they gradually ceased, and by the time Mary's preparations were completed, curiosity and gossip seemed to have subsided altogether. She was quite a favorite in the neighborhood, and on the morning when she left home, there was many a kind good-bye, and word of love spoken to her by those who came to see her off. Mr. Knight carried her to the depot, where ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... hat and blew a kiss to her. A thrill of exultation ran through him. He had not expected her to meet him at the landing. Her mere presence there was evidence of a determination to defy not only her mother but also to brave the storm of gossip that was bound to attend this public demonstration of loyalty on her part, for none knew so well as he how the townspeople looked upon their attachment. A most satisfying promise for the future, he gloated; ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... the tea-napkins are not in order. Now, what is anybody to do with a heroine like that? I have known old maids in abundance, with pathos and sunshine in their lives; but the old maid of novels I never have met, who abandoned her soul to gossip,—nor yet the other type, a life-long martyr of unselfishness. They are mixed generally, and not unlike their married sisters, so far as I can see. Then as to men, certainly I know heroes. One man, I knew, as high a chevalier in heart as any Bayard of them all; one of those ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... would suggest, however, that ancient savage sacred hymns, and practices in the mysteries, are really rather of the nature of 'documents;' more so, at least, than the casual observations of some travellers, or the gossip extracted from natives much in ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... but if she did not "steam" the letters and confide their titbits to favored friends of her own sex, it is difficult to see how all the gossip got out. The school-master once played an unmanly trick on her, with the view of catching her in the act. He was a bachelor who had long been given up by all the maids in the town. One day, however, he wrote a ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... The Hepworths lived chiefly in the room at the back. The light in the drawing-room may have been switched off for economy's sake. Jetson recounted the incident on reaching home, not as anything remarkable, but just as one mentions an item of gossip. The only one who appears to have attached any meaning to the affair was Jetson's youngest daughter, then a girl of eighteen. She asked one or two questions about the man, and, during the evening, slipped out by herself and ran round to the Hepworths. She found the house empty. At ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... him Allison contrived to pass on to his daughter all such bits of gossip which dribbled down to him; that is, all which appertained strictly to Stephen O'Mara's race against time, and not to the opposition which he was meeting. Her excitement was a bubbling thing, innocent of suspicion or premonition, but he was like ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... furnished a theme for endless gossip amongst the villagers. There was not much work done the next day. When the exercise of the faculties is limited to considerations associated with the rare occurrence of a wedding or a death, intellectual activity ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... swiftness, the almost unseemly haste of his trial and condemnation and the nearness of his execution were largely due to a determination on the part of the old noble to get him out of the way before any scandal should arise. Perhaps scandal was certain to come, and gossip to prevail, but it would be less harmful if ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... most remarkable Sabbath of her life up to that day. It was totally unlike the Sabbath of her home, which, after the formal "church parade," as Harry called it, in the morning, her father spent in lounging with his magazine and pipe, her aunt in sleeping or in social gossip with such friends as might drop in, and Harry and Maimie as ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... story had flown through the village; nothing else was talked of. The excitement was intense. Gossip ran high in hall and cottage. Professor Fortescue alone could not be drawn into the discussion. Lady Engleton took him aside and asked what he really thought about it. All he would say was that the whole affair was deeply tragic. He had no knowledge of the circumstances and feelings ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... puts the matter much more clearly in the statement that the "descendants of the wolf are in Ossory,"[391] while the evidence of Spenser and Camden explains the popular beliefs upon even more exact lines. Spenser says "that some of the Irish doe use to make the wolf their gossip;"[392] and Camden adds that they term them "Chari Christi, praying for them and wishing them well, and having contracted this intimacy, professed to have no fear from their four-footed allies." Fynes Moryson expressly mentions the ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... fellows and melts all humanity into one cordial heart of hearts. Domestic life, if it may still be termed domestic, will seek its separate corners, and never gather itself into groups. The easy gossip; the merry yet unambitious Jest; the life-like, practical discussion of real matters in a casual way; the soul of truth which is so often incarnated in a simple fireside word,—will disappear from earth. Conversation will contract the ...
— Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to tell you as she'd gone to see Mr. Julian Maldon, sir," said Mrs. Tams, in the way of general gossip. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... one dignitary of the order to another. Much stateliness of Latin greeting, commendation of the returning missionary, mention of a slight present of a golden dish wrought in alacrity and joy by Indian converts; lastly, and with some minuteness, the gossip, political and ecclesiastical, of the past twelfth month. The sinking of the Spanish ships and the sacking of the town of Nueva Cordoba by English pirates, together with their final defeat, were touched upon; but more was made of the yield to ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... houses such as we had encountered at various places on the road between Ollantaytambo and Torontoy, I finally left the cool shade of the pleasant little hut and climbed farther up the ridge and around a slight promontory. Arteaga had "been here once before," and decided to rest and gossip with Richarte and Alvarez in the hut. They sent a small boy with me ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... dialect spoken by peons and some a grade higher up the ladder. He was not more than seventeen, and while Johnny recalled his instructions to put any greaser on the run, he took the liberty of interpreting those instructions to please himself. This kid was harmless enough. He talked the range gossip that proved to Johnny's satisfaction that he was what he professed to be—a young rider for Tucker Bly, who owned the "Forty-Seven" brand that ranged just east of the Rolling R. Johnny had never seen this Tomaso—plain ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... child had been born; which was new to me. They weren't sure that it was alive, and were wholly vague about the father—called him Chandon, to be sure, but supposed the name to be spelt with an 'S' as pronounced; told me he was an officer in the Navy, reputed to be an earl's son. Gossip had arrived no nearer. She was respectable, all agreed; no doubt about her marriage lines; and the register confirmed it, with the right spelling—the marriage and, ten months later, the boy's christening. Arthur Miles was the name. That is all, or almost ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... longer to bear the suspense, Paul, in new disguise, again appeared in the vicinity of Northfield. Inquiring as to any incidents of note occurring in that neighborhood, he learns only of other petty gossip. He dares not visit the residence, but watches ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... that she had neither clothes nor money. He who had such large means had done nothing to sweeten her poverty. On this her wedding morning he had brought her no gift save the ring which the law prescribed. He had not brought her so much as a flower by way of greeting; yet she knew by the gossip of her schoolfellows that it was the custom for a lover to ratify his engagement by some splendid ring, which was ever afterwards his betrothed's choicest jewel. The girls had talked of their elder sisters' engagement-rings: how one had diamonds, another rubies, another ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... how Myia (the fly's ancient name) was once a maiden, exceeding fair, but over-given to talk and chatter and song, Selene's rival for the love of Endymion. When the young man slept, she was for ever waking him with her gossip and tunes and merriment, till he lost patience, and Selene in wrath turned her to what she now is. And therefore it is that she still, in memory of Endymion, grudges all sleepers their rest, and most of all the young and tender. Her very bite and blood-thirst tell not of ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... is devoured by time.' Sir Arthur Champernowne was 'a good soldier and an eminent commander in the Irish wars' of the sixteenth century, and was conspicuous for his zeal and valour. Prince gives an odd little bit of gossip about an heiress of this family. He says she was 'a frolic lady,' and no unusual epithet could be more descriptive; for the lady 'married William Polglas, within three days after her father's death; and within two days after ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... hour later, Armitage, squeezed into a beautifully made suit of tan whipcord, his calves swathed in putees, and a little cap with vizor pressing flat against his brows, was loitering about the garage with Ryan, a footman, and absorbing the gossip of the family. Prince Koltsoff was still there and intended, evidently, to remain for some time. This information, gained from what Anne Wellington had said to her mother, had relieved his mind of fears that his quarry had already gone, and he would have been quite at his ease had ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... in his silken stockings, proudly displaying the nodding feathers in his hat, his rich waist-coat and mantle, and boasting a little too loud before some other gallant of his love adventures, ran great danger—like all those whose demeanour in St. Paul's gave rise to backbiting gossip—of being pourtrayed in the 'Rose,' in the 'Curtain,' or in the theatres of the 'little eyases,' in such a manner that people were able, in the streets, to point ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... Nell and Harriet and Jessie and Mrs. Sproul all about it, as I see them coming, on gossip bent I feel sure," he said as he went halfway down the walk to meet the girls before I ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... took on that religious or academic character natural to the place. Of village parish life we knew nothing, for our chapel was, like others of its kind, rather an exclusive little place of worship. We were ignorant of pastoral visits, deacons, parochial gossip, church fairs, and what Professor Park used to call "the doughnut business;" and, though we cultivated a weekly prayer-meeting in the lecture-room, I think its chief influence was as a training-school for theological students whose early ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... upon two other persons whom I have mentioned, and then bring this long letter to a close. These are Mrs. Wilson and her daughter. The former was the widow of a substantial farmer, a narrow-minded, tattling old gossip, whose character is not worth describing. She had two sons, Robert, a rough countrified farmer, and Richard, a retiring, studious young man, who was studying the classics with the vicar's assistance, preparing for college, with a view to enter ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain 'Hurricane' Jones, of the Pacific Ocean—peace to his ashes! Two or three of us present had known him; I, particularly well, for I had made four sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... involuntarily I nod as if to agree there is something in what he says. There's a theatrical touch in most of us that makes us feel flattered at being taken for more than we are. Then up come his wife and daughter, good, ordinary souls, and carry all away with their kindly gossip; he's no beggar, they say; be paid for his supper and all. And at last I turn crafty and cowardly and say never a word, and let the man lay more to my charge and still never a word. And we three hearty souls outwin his reasoning sense, and he has to explain he was only ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... "we are all here above gossip about an affair of that sort. I am sure—" He broke off and looked uneasily at Cousin Egbert, who coughed into his hand and looked out over the lake ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... secret heliographs so busily sending messages to the enemy across the North Sea? Was it just a few hours since the two Scouts, hot on the trail, had cached papers and motorcycles and started the closer exploration of that mysterious estate outside the sleepy English village, leased, so the village gossip had it, by a rich American who eccentrically denied himself to all comers and zealously guarded the privacy of ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... entanglement. Indeed, there was an element of the Oriental in his tastes, which led him rather to find his entertainment in such light love as came and went by the back ways of palaces or could be sequestered in cheerful little country villas remote from curious eyes. This, however, was a matter of gossip, rumor, speculation. What was certainly known about Louis de Gonzague was that he delighted always to be surrounded by young gentlemen of blood and spirit, with whom his exquisite affability seemed at once to put him on a footing of equal age, and whose devotion to himself, his person, ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... phantoms, Chamilly! We are above the chatter of a wretched spot, a narrow life. Down there, nothing is not ridiculed that is not some phase of a provinciality. The dances in certain houses, the faces of some conceited club, long-spun names, business or gossip, or to drive a double carriage, are the gaslight boundaries of existence! Pah! it is a courtyard, bounded by four square walls, a path or two to walk in, and the eyes of busybodies to order our doings and sneer us out ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... ordinary rooms; towards 9 o'clock they retire, during the remainder of the day, into the underground rooms, called sardab, which, like cellars, are frequently situated fifteen or twenty feet below the surface; at sunset they go up on to the terraces, where they receive visits, gossip, drink tea, and remain until night. This is the most pleasant time, as the evenings are cool and enlivening. Many affirm the moonlight is clearer here than with us, but I did not find this to be the case. People sleep on the terraces under mosquito nets, which ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... thou Aron? Wherefore did'st thou this? Aron. O Lord sir, 'tis a deed of pollicie? Shall she liue to betray this guilt of our's: A long tongu'd babling Gossip? No Lords no: And now be it knowne to you my full intent. Not farre, one Muliteus my Country-man His wife but yesternight was brought to bed, His childe is like to her, faire as you are: Goe packe with them, and giue the ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... for a few days during the Easter, fortunately after the Pavilion party had broken up, or probably I should not have found a room at the hotel. I merely write to give you the gossip of the King; the papers would make you believe he is quite well, but tout au contraire, he has appeared not more than twice or three times, and for the last three days has been in his bed. He held his ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... And the infamous gossip commenced. For fifteen years Jansoulet had exploited the former Bey in a scandalous fashion. Names of purveyors were cited and tricks wonderful in their assurance, their effrontery; for instance, the story of a musical ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... he would have left Lucca altogether for a time. What had passed that evening would be the subject of general gossip. He remembered with shame—and as he did so the blood rushed over his face and brow—how openly he had displayed his admiration. He remembered the hot glances he had cast upon Nera. He remembered how he had leaned entranced over her chair; ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... held, faster or looser, by her bed of sickness, as a main refuge in these emergencies: the last shift of oppressed womankind;—sanctioned by Female Parliament, in this instance. "Has had a miscarriage!" writes Dubourgay, from Berlin gossip, at the beginning of the business. Nay at one time she became really ill, to a dangerous length; and his Majesty did not at first believe it; and then was like to break his heart, poor Bear; aud pardoned Wilhelmina and even Fritz, at the Mother's request,—till ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... heard the news, old Medon?' said a young woman, with a pitcher in her hand, as she paused by Diomed's door to gossip a moment with the slave, ere she repaired to the neighboring inn to fill the vessel, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Place; on the Overboro' road, which passed it, was a pleasant roadside inn, where, under the sign of The Sun, very good ale was sold. Most of the farmers dropped in there now and then, not so much for a glass as a gossip, and no one from the neighbouring villages or from Overboro' town ever drove past without stopping. In the 'tap' of an evening you might see the labourers playing at 'chuck-board,' which consists in casting a small square piece of lead ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... seats; and when not thus occupied, the top of the rock may well have been a convenient place of retirement for people who did not want to be disturbed by new acquaintances, and the constant eddies of new gossip in the market-place. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... he had time to spare, and Dick learned to hang upon his speech, which dealt with badly fitted gas-plugs, waste-pipes out of repair, little tricks for driving picture-nails into walls, and the sins of the charwoman or the housemaids. In the lack of better things the small gossip of a servants' hall becomes immensely interesting, and the screwing of a washer on a tap an event to ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... a hymn with hammers, thus anticipating the wonders of St. Dunstan's. These London conduits were great resorts for the apprentices, whom their masters sent with big leather and metal jugs to bring home the daily supply of water. Here these noisy, quarrelsome young rascals stayed to gossip, idle, and fight. At the coronation of Anne Boleyn this conduit was newly painted, all the arms and angels refreshed, and "the music melodiously sounding." Upon the conduit was raised a tower with four turrets, and in every turret stood one of the cardinal ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... does,' said Viola, 'I would make me a willow cabin at your gates, and call upon your name, I would write complaining sonnets on Olivia, and sing them in the dead of the night; your name should sound among the hills, and I would make Echo, the babbling gossip of the air, cry out Olivia. O you should not rest between the elements of earth and air, but you should pity me.' 'You might do much,' said Olivia: 'what is your parentage?' Viola replied: 'Above my fortunes, yet my state is well. I am a gentleman.' Olivia now reluctantly dismissed ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... were the particulars, and how Robert and Arthur did devour the ill-printed provincial news-sheet issuing from the obscure Irish country town, and burning all through with political partisanship! Luckily Argent had the last received copy in his pocket, which detailed all the gossip of the election, with the familiar names, and localities of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... red raiders had unwittingly followed his trail, only to turn in flight as if the devil was nipping after them once they glimpsed his bulky figure, heard his whimpering or his loud laughter. The men followed him to the Davis Cabin, each eager to contribute to the general gossip concerning the ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... not tell him about my meeting with Lady Mary, because I knew, if occasion arose, he would spread the news over half London. No consideration would have been great enough to bridle the tongue of the little gossip from use of the first bit of news which he had ever received warm from the fire. Besides, after his behaviour in front of the enemy, I was quite certain that an imparting of my news could do nothing in the way of impairing his inefficiency. Consequently it was not necessary to trouble him with ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... granite, and the inscription is—Girls!" cried Aunt Pen, rising and clasping her knees with unexpected energy, "I expressly forbid my age being printed in the paper, or on the lid, or on the stone! I won't gratify every gossip in town, that I won't! I shall take real pleasure in baffling their curiosity. And another thing, while I am about it, don't you ask Tom Maltby to my funeral, or let him come in, if he comes himself, on any account whatever. I should rise in my shroud if he approached me. Yes, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... friends, but I cannot tell you of them all. I will only mention the plump widow who keeps the lunch-room and bakery on the Houston Street corner, where the boys go for their luncheon. It is through her that many interesting details of personal gossip find their way into ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... these is entitled "On some Books for Children of the last century, with a few words on the philanthropic publisher of St. Paul's Churchyard. A paper read at a meeting of the Sette of Odde Volumes, Friday, January 8, 1886." Herein we find a very sympathetic account of John Newbery and gossip of the clever and distinguished men who assisted him in the production of children's books, of which Charles Knight said, "There is nothing more remarkable in them than their originality. There have been attempts to imitate its simplicity, its homeliness; great authors have tried ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... known from their earliest appearance in Upton, and she had the pedigree of all the families, high and low, at her finger-ends. New-comers she could only tolerate until they had lived respectably and paid their debts punctually for a good number of years. She had a kindly love of gossip, a simple real interest in the fortunes of all about her. There was little else for her to think of, for books and newspapers came seldom in her way, and were often far above her comprehension when they did, Upton news that would bring tears to her eyes ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... historical, and has coloured the whole modern judgment of Godwin. It would be no exaggeration to say that Godwin formed Shelley's mind, and that Prometheus Unbound and Hellas were the greatest of Godwin's works. That debt is too often forgotten, while literary gossip loves to remind us that it was repaid in cheques and post-obits. The intellectual relationship will be discussed in a later chapter; the bare facts of the personal connection must be told here. Political Justice took Shelley's mind captive while ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... in regard to which we must act together for our own sakes—on account of the servants in the house—on account of our friends, so that there may be no gossip, no scandal." ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... that he never approached Betty after service, or on any occasion, and while it caused some wonder and gossip among them, for Betty enjoyed the distinction of being the belle of the border, they were secretly pleased. Little hints and knowing smiles, with which girls are so skillful, made known to Betty all of this, and, although she was apparently ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... balcony above it, which was full of people, fell; some were killed, others crippled or maimed, and others bruised. Among them were friars and lay-brothers, negroes and whites. With these events, the common people began to indulge in much gossip. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... pug makes a bad pet; he is useless in the field, is somewhat snappish, has little sagacity, and is very cowardly: but there is an air of bon ton about him which renders him a fashionable appendage to a fine lady."—Parisian Gossip. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... Coeur de Lion in popular fable and gossip is far more like his place in true history than the place of the mere denationalized ne'er-do-weel given him in our utilitarian school books. Indeed the vulgar rumour is nearly always much nearer the historical ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... which, my dear sir, I allude of course to the stronger portion of humanity—has been generally relieved from the imputation of curiosity, or a fondness for gossip. Yet I am constrained to say that hardly had the door closed on Miggles than we crowded together, whispering, snickering, smiling, and exchanging suspicions, surmises, and a thousand speculations in regard to our pretty ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... to gossip and idle tales and foolish conversation and things of that sort, we ought to let such go "in at one ear and out at the other"; we should be very careful that they find no lodging-place in our hearts. ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... set a candle on a shelf behind him. Then he proceeded to catechise me in excellent English, with now and then a phrase of French, as to the doings in my own land. Admirably informed this Italian gentleman proved himself. I defy you to find in Almack's more intelligent gossip. He inquired as to the chances of my Lord North and the mind of my Lord Rockingham. He had my Lord Shelburne's foibles at his fingers' ends. The habits of the Prince, the aims of the their ladyships ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Turk or a Spaniard? Are you satisfied, gentlemen? Truly, it would seem so; you laugh, and at what do you laugh? I, who have presented this idea to you—I have not laughed; see, my countenance is sad. Ah! perhaps it is because the gloomy prisoner has suddenly become a gossip, and talks rapidly. That is nothing! I might tell you other things, and render you some service, my ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the evenings Alan Merrick dropped in for sweet converse and companionship. Too free from any taint of sin or shame herself ever to suspect that others could misinterpret her actions, Herminia was hardly aware how the gossip of Bower Lane made free in time with the name of the young lady who had taken a cottage in the row, and whose relations with the tall gentleman that called so much in the evenings were beginning to attract the attention of the neighborhood. The poor slaves of washer-women and working men's ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... to 'im there can't be much more zed. Anyhow, everybody believed it but Miss Ruth. She stuck out that 'twadn' Maaster Roger, and wudd'n go to the funeral. Of course, there were a lot of talk, but we people only heerd jist bits of gossip like. For my oan paart, I 'greed with her. I knawed that Maaster Roger knawed too much 'bout the cliffs not to vall over um, while as fur killin' hisself, he wadn't the sort of chap ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... flock together. The robin sings to his ruddy mate, And the chattering jays, in the winter weather, To prate and gossip will congregate; And the cawing crows on the autumn heather, Like evil omens, will flock together, In extra-session, for high debate; And the lass will slip from a doting mother To hang with her lad on the garden gate. Birds of a feather will flock ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... think that there is not enough in all this to authorise the grave step Normanby has taken, but the whole tone of his letters shows such a want of confidence, is so impertinent—talk of "we hear this," and "we are told that,"—bringing a sort of anonymous gossip against a man of Normanby's character and standing, that respect for himself obliges Normanby to take it up seriously.... In the meantime our Press in England is, as usual, too violent against Louis Napoleon. We have no friends or true allies left, thanks to the policy ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... had been busy with the wife of the Richest Trustee—as the widow she did not relax her hold. What the trustees said that day they only repeated from gossip: the little gray wisp of a woman was a nonentity—nothing more—with the spirit of a mouse. She held no position in society, and what she did with her time or her money no one knew. The trustees smiled inwardly and reckoned ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... Max, obviously desiring the question that would unloose her tongue. But Max was not alert for gossip, he was listening instead to a faint sound, long drawn out and fine as a silver thread, that was slipping through the crevices of ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... amusing. She had that sort of regard for her old governess which prompted her to write from time to time, and to feel glad when the half-voluntary task was accomplished. So there was no real outpouring of confidence, but enough news of the family and gossip of the place she was in, as she thought would make Clare feel that she was not forgotten by her former pupils, intermixed with moderate but sincere expressions of regard. How those letters were quoted and referred to by Mrs. Gibson ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... power as a form of superiority. Since all superiority is comparative, there are various indirect ways of seeking superiority and avoiding inferiority. One of these is by adverse criticism of our fellows. The widespread love of gossip, the quick and ever-present tendency to disparage others, especially the fortunate and the successful, are manifestations of this type of superiority seeking. Half the humor of the world is the pleasure, produced by a technique, of feeling superior to ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... a chatty soul and loved a bit of gossip dearly; besides, the pot of ale warmed his heart; so that, settling himself in an easy corner of the inn bench, while the host leaned upon the doorway and the hostess stood with her hands beneath her apron, he unfolded his budget ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... there may be; Twenty-nine are sure to buzz, And the single silent she Racks her brains about her coz:— Mrs. Buzz and Mrs. Huzz, Mind your work, my ditty saith; Do not gossip till your breath Fails and leaves you ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... at the Chateau des Noires-Fontaines and keep on the watch, but could he trust the servants? Michel and Jacques would hold their tongues, Roland was sure of them; but Charlotte, the jailer's daughter, she might gossip. However, it was three o'clock in the morning, every one was asleep, and the safest plan was certainly to put himself in communication with Michel. Michel would find some way of concealing ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... the window. I had soon read all the tracts that were left there, and examined where former prisoners had broken out, and where a grate had been sawed off, and heard the history of the various occupants of that room; for I found that even there there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of young men who had been detected ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... knowledge, elsewhere obtained, he avails himself of the slightest trait against the author; his censure instantly becomes personal injury, his sarcasms personal insults. He ceases to be a critic, and takes on him the most contemptible character to which a rational creature can be degraded, that of a gossip, backbiter, and pasquillant: but with this heavy aggravation, that he steals the unquiet, the deforming passions of the world into the museum; into the very place which, next to the chapel and oratory, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... various rooms of the flat. To Barbara and myself, comfortable Philistines, all this appeared exceeding lunatic. But every married couple has a right to lay out its plan of happiness in its own way. If we had made taboo of irrelevant gossip between the acts of a serious play our evening would have been a failure. Theirs would have been, and, in fact, was a success. Connubial felicity they certainly achieved: and what else but an impertinence is ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... would," said she; "and I am sure a hour or two in your society will give me pleasure. It's so long since we've 'ad a gossip. Besides which, I want ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... politics and revolutions have thus come to be regarded as going hand in hand. In a town of the Cibao an expression of the garrulous landlady of the inn attracted my attention. The old lady, after regaling me with the local gossip, started with her own troubles. "Two revolutions ago," she said—and her mode of measuring time struck me as peculiar—"my eldest son took a gun and went into politics." "Cojio un fusil y se metio en la politica"—"took a gun and ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... woman being naturally a gossip, Mary was hardly seated before she began to pour out the talk of the town, in which came presently certain rumors concerning Mr. Turnbull—mainly hints at ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Hardwicke's Science Gossip for March gives an extract from a letter of M. O. de Thoron, communicated by him to the Academie des Sciences, December 1861, which confirms Mr. Joseph's story. He asserts that in the Bay of Pailon, in Esmeraldos, Ecuador, i.e. on the Pacific Coast, and also up more than one ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... last quilting-bee that a certain Coulson—and no distant relative of the young schoolmaster either—had kept a tavern in the early days down by the lake shore. Miss Gordon had made no remark. She never took part in gossip. But she had mentally resolved that she would inquire carefully just how distant this relative was, and then she would take means to place their Annie at a distance from the young man in an inverse ratio to the space between him and ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... semi-genteel haven; and from morning till night, till sun should cease for them to shine and water to flow they had nothing to do but to listen to the whispering tide that told of the great ocean of life beyond, or to gossip among themselves of their own voyages dead ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... already," replied Sainsbury, resuming his seat, "I have told you all, or very nearly all, that I, or I believe any body else, knows of them. My little information is chiefly acquired from hearing the servants gossip about them; but I very well remember that, on the first appearance of the Pair in this vicinity, they excited a good deal of speculation and enquiry amongst every class in Walworth. It is now more than eight years ago since this man's predecessor—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... the forest and across the swamp to the sawmill beyond. Our carriage jolted over the half-rotted corduroy road which traversed the swamp, and then climbed the long hill leading to the saw-mill. When we reached the mill, the foreman had gone over to a neighboring farm-house, probably to smoke or gossip, and we were compelled to await his return before we could transact our business. We remained seated in the carriage, a few rods from the mill, and watched the leisurely movements of the mill-hands. We had not ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... solidarity? What but the countless hands that reach across its shores and its Seven Seas, hands that devastate and hands that heal! There are the long fingers of the cable and telegraph that pry through earth's hidden places, gathering choice bits of international gossip and handing them out to all the breakfast tables of the Great Neighborhood. There are the swift fingers of transcontinental train and ocean liner, pushing the dweller from the West into the Far East, the man from the prairie into the desert. There ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... unwilling to play with a man, who asked me impertinent questions. I think I had in my mouth the words of the Wise man, "Answer a fool according to his folly," especially if he was prying or spiteful. I was reckless of the gossip which was circulated about me; and, when I might easily have set it right, did not deign to do so. Also I used irony in conversation, when matter-of-fact-men would not see ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... hotel at Welmingham so jaded in body and mind, so weakened and depressed by all that I had gone through, as to be quite unfit to endure the local gossip about the inquest, and to answer the trivial questions that the talkers addressed to me in the coffee-room. I withdrew from my scanty dinner to my cheap garret-chamber to secure myself a little quiet, and to think undisturbed of ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... whether victor or not, he always showed unquestionable pluck. If he came off second-best a dozen times, he went confidently into the thirteenth trial, brave as Bruce, and equally successful. At length the voice of gossip was hushed. Joel became the most popular lad in the village. Every body liked him, and what is better, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... book that lay on a table in the drawing-room; and when this actual author was discovered on near view to be a rather stout man with a shockingly bad hat and creases all over his linen coats; and when the maid who dwelt in the same house with this actual author testified, during the course of a gossip, that he was in no wise different from other men—which is to say, he made no end of a fuss if the toast was not to his liking and threw his burnt matches down anywhere, and shouted angrily if there was no soap in the bathroom—why then, when all these things were discovered, Anna simply walked ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... mother's widowed sister, mother's married sister; father's sister's son's wife, mother's sister's son's daughter. All these female relatives cawing day and night like a set of crows in a banian tree; at every moment screams, laughter, quarrelling, bad reasoning, gossip, reproach, the scuffling of boys, the crying of girls. "Bring water!" "Give the clothes!" "Cook the rice!" "The child does not eat!" "Where is the milk?" etc., is heard as an ocean of confused sounds. Next to it, behind the Thakur bari, was the cook-house. Here a woman, ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... grotesque one in Doddington Park, which is a mask, having eyeholes, and a long funnel-shaped peak projecting from the mouth; and there are some very terribly cruel ones, with fearful gags; but these can scarcely come under scold's or gossip's bridles. There was one at Forfar, with a spiked gag, which pierced the tongue, and an even more severe one is at Stockport; whilst those at Ludlow and Worcester are, also, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... and, if it could be done in a diplomatic manner, ingratiate themselves in his favor by making him some sort of a present—Owen had hinted that the factor's one weakness was a love for tea, which he used at every meal with quite as much pleasure as the veriest old maid gossip at a sewing circle; and as luck would have it this happened to coincide with a leaning of his own, for he had made sure to fetch considerable of the very finest that money could purchase in New York—Ceylon, Young ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... such as it is, checks the exuberance of each individual's fancy. But against rumor there is little or no checks and the original story, true or invented, grows wings and horns, hoofs and beaks, as the artist in each gossip works upon it. The first narrator's account does not keep its shape and proportions. It is edited and revised by all who played with it as they heard it, used it for day dreams, and passed it on. [Footnote: For an interesting example, see the case described by C. J. Jung, Zentralblatt ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... nice, distinctly nice. Pretty woman, very. Somehow I didn't think quite the sort of woman for old Puzzlehead. Didn't appear to have the remotest interest in any of the things he was keen about; and he seemed a bit fed with her sort of talk. Hers was all gossip—all about the people there and what a rum crowd they were. Devilish funny, I thought, some of her stories. But old Sabre—well, I suppose he'd heard 'em before. Still, there was something—something about the two of them. You know ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... and I blessed the chance which enabled me to understand it, and the woman's wit that had prompted Lucy to choose this disguise. She said she had learned of what had happened through the gossip of the servants; the man who had heard my name in the rest house had mentioned it. She told me that she was virtually a prisoner. She knew not what Vetch intended (she did not name him, but wrote of him as cet homme mechant), but she was ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... lordly occupants of castles, who in time of peace had little to do. They were isolated from their neighbors by acres, forests, and a stately etiquette, if not actual hostility. There was no open-air theatre in the vicinity, no forum alive with gossip and harangues, no public games, not even a loquacious barber's shop. During the intervals between public or private wars,—when the Turks were unmolested, the crescent and the dragon left in harmless composure, and no Christians were in mortal ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... the world through the bottom of a tumbler Deely continued the gossip. "Watch me now, been a friend of dukes in England— and Ireland, that Mr. James Gathorne Kerry, as any one can see; and there he is feelin' the hocks of a filly or openin' the jaws of a stud horse, age-hunting! Why, you needn't ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the spot where they were sitting, and many were the curious glances cast in their direction. Several women stopped to speak to them, among whom was Mrs. Wadell, noted all over the parish for her fondness for gossip, as well as for meddling in the ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... as who should say, "Well, I'm sure! and who's to do it all? You'll have to wait a bit." And I know we should have to wait, and therefore resigned myself to do so patiently, keeping up the ball of gossip, and wondering if a little music later on would perhaps while away ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... smartaleck gossip column: Saucers are passe at the Pentagon. There's another mystery that's got the high ...
— Project Mastodon • Clifford Donald Simak
... maids, who earned their salt, however: from morning to night their backs were bent over their work. She liked driving out in her carriage with grooms in livery on the footboard. She liked listening to gossip and scandal and was a clever scandal-monger herself; she liked to lavish favours upon someone, then suddenly crush him with her displeasure, in fact, Lizaveta Prohorovna behaved exactly like a lady. Akim was in her good graces; he paid her punctually ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... acting as legal major domo to E.M. Pierce, Douglas's most important function in life was apparently to fetch and carry for the reigning belle of Worthington. His devotion to Esme Elliot had become stock gossip of the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie—no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat and slip ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... same day, while the Sheriff's daughter was racking her brains for a scheme, there came to the Mansion House a strolling tinker named Middle, a great gossip and braggart. And as he pounded away upon some pots and pans in the scullery, he talked loudly about what he would do, if he once came within reach of that ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... taken the gossip about Rupert and Miss Chivvey very bravely, but very seriously. It pained her terribly, but she was grateful to Bertha for ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... upon the lock of the door, and the old lady had made herself sure of his exit, and was comfortably settling herself for a fresh spell of gossip at his expense, when he suddenly returned to the sofa on which Flora was seated; and putting his mouth quite close to her ear, while his little inquisitive grey eyes sparkled with intense curiosity, said, in a mysterious whisper, "How ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... for three years at least. It was market day, and he met with many people he knew, and it was getting quite late when he turned into the inn yard, and bade an ostler saddle his horse, and bring it round directly. While he was waiting in the hall, the landlady came up for a gossip, and after a few remarks about the weather and the vineyards she asked him how he liked his new daughter-in-law, and whether he had been surprised at ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... extreme politeness toward each other, Peter's mother and father really didn't get on. Club-stories came to him that he had tried to get away from—the kind of stories that were told about any prominent man, he supposed—a little leering paragraph in "Town Gossip"—a dozen words dropped with the easy assuredness of tone that meant the speakers were alluding to something that everyone knew by people who hadn't realized that he was Peter's friend. A caustically frank discussion of Mrs. Severance with Ted in one of Ted's bitter moods—a discussion ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... Smitty, Mike, Elmer, and Nick snatched stolen siestas there in the rare absences of the manager. Sometimes Nick spent the night there when forced to work overtime. His home life, at best, was a sketchy affair. Here chauffeurs, mechanics, washers lolled at ease exchanging soft-spoken gossip, motor chat, speculation, comment, and occasional verbal obscenity. Each possessed a formidable knowledge of that neighbourhood section of Chicago known as Hyde Park. This knowledge was not confined to car costs and such impersonal items, but included ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... floor, next to the corner room occupied by the Secretary of War, with a door of communication. While we were at work it was common for General Grant and, afterward, for Mr. Stanton to drop in and chat with us on the social gossip of the time. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... arrangement, Greenfield contented itself with using its eyes, its ears, and its tongues, with one exception to the latter organ's clatter, in favor of Hitty Hyde; to her no one dared as yet approach with gossip ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... back with the station-master, and between the two, Hilda's trunk was hoisted into the cart. Then the good woman climbed in over the wheel, settled her ample person on the seat and gathered up the reins, while the station-master stood smoothing the mare's mane, ready for a parting word of friendly gossip. ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... to give any account of him. Should the reader find anything in what is written to interest or attract, it is possible that in a future number a chapter may be devoted to the great artist of Munich. Now, however, I remark simply, that the gossip and strange stories and incidents and other et ceteras told of him proved to be ridiculous creations, with scarcely a shadow to rest on, having their inception in M—-y's peculiarities,—peculiarities which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... picture—straight, prim, opinionated, with a sharp tongue that wrought discord wherever it went. She dealt in other people's shortcomings, and if Burleigh had not known her too well to give her false tales credence, she might have worked some serious mischief. As it was, everyone took her gossip with a grain of salt, remarking, with a smile and a shrug after she had gone away, "Of course, that may be true, but remember, Angela Peabody ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... post on the European continent, and was gazetted to Brazil. But people knew better; he never returned from that Brazil expedition—never died there—never lived there—never was there at all. He was nowhere; he was gone out altogether. "Brazil," said one gossip to another, with a grin—"Brazil is St. John's Wood. Rio de Janeiro is a cottage surrounded by four walls, and George Gaunt is accredited to a keeper, who has invested him with the order of the Strait-Waistcoat." These are ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... steady-going, business-like, his father's secretary and right hand in affairs, both in the bank and in matters affecting the estate. Robert, almost unmanageable as a youth, had grown into an exceedingly rapid young man about town. But Roxton folk feared Hilton and liked Robert; and local gossip had deplored Robert's wildness, which might erect an insurmountable barrier against an obviously suitable match between him and Mr. Mortimer Fenley's ward, the rich ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... naturally heard a good deal of Philosophical gossip during my convalescence. On my last evening in hospital especially, there ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... and destruction to you hell-dogs!" said one of the devils who had been bit, "you shall pay for this;" and forthwith commenced beating the bog, till the wretches were drowned in the stinking abysses. "Who," he then added, "have deserved hell better than you, who have been hunting up and devising gossip, and buzzing lies about from house to house, in order that you might laugh, after having set a whole country at loggerheads. What more could one of ourselves have done?" "That," said the angel, "is the bed of the ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... set a hundred brains to the work of surmise. There will always be many who are just as anxious to discover the general's intentions as he is to conceal them; and if, by any possibility whatever, the gossip and guesses of the camp may come to the enemy's ears, it is well that curiosity should be baulked. Nor is it undesirable that the privacy of headquarters should be respected. The vanity of a little brief authority has before now tempted subordinate officers to hint at weaknesses on the part of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... element of the community. The travelling weaver was, like all other itinerant tradesmen of the day, a welcome newsmonger; and the weaver who took in weaving was often a stationary gossip, and gathered inquiring groups in his loom-room; even children loved to go to his door to beg for bits of colored yarn—thrums—which they used in their play, and also tightly braided to wear as shoestrings, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... hand a stout cudgel, shuffling along on snow-shoes and dragging his scanty possessions on a sled, or, if it was summer, paddling his canoe from one lonely cabin to another, celebrating mass wherever he could get together a half-dozen people, telling them the gossip of the river, eating a robust meal, then pushing on to repeat the {290} experience elsewhere, and you will have a good picture of Father Louis Hennepin, a man whose books describing his travels, real or imaginary, had, in their day, the widest popularity ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... as at Munich, was more diffused. Here she was assured that she could gratify her insatiable appetite at any moment. She saw that the manners excused her; the laws guaranteed the unfaithful wife, and religion screened her; that the social atmosphere, despite slander and gossip, enveloped and preserved her; in short, it was clear that to a creature in whom wickedness developed like a plant in a hot-house, the freedom society accorded her was as delicious as that given by her husband in his trust and his devotion ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... and eternal world, on whose confines they every moment live. They think, fear, hope, rejoice, plan, and purpose; but always about this world,—never about the other! To rise in the morning; to be occupied during the day; to buy and sell, and get gain; to talk on politics or trade; to gossip about people, and all they speak or do; to marry or give in marriage; to have this meeting or that parting; to give a feast or partake of one; to fear sickness, and to keep it off; or to be sick, and to ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... decided. "They are quite clean, civil people. They have a naughty, queer, little crippled boy, but I suppose they can't keep him in order because he is an invalid. He's rather rude, I'm sorry to say, but he's rather sharp and clever, too. He seems to lie on his sofa and collect all the gossip of ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of ladies, and seeing but dimly, he mistook my mother for the Queen, plumped down on his knees and took her hand to kiss. She drew back startled, and deeply colouring, exclaimed, 'I am not the Queen, sir.' The incident created a laugh and a little gossip; and when George Selwyn heard of it he observed, 'Oh! you know he ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... of a vagabond who flattered your hatred in hope of a reward, the gossip of a distant village, the recollections of ten years back, and finally, your own word, the word of a man who seeks only revenge, the word of a man who swore to make Martin pay dearly for the results of his own avarice, a man of furious passions such as yours! No, Pierre, no, I do not believe ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Blue-eyed Gretchen, Giuseppina, with her bare locks and rainbow-barred apron, slant-eyed O Mimosa San, all in good time would dream over the fair face on the heralding page; women shut in the zenanas of the unchanging East would gossip from housetop to housetop of the wonderful Feringhe beauty; whipped slaves in midmost Africa would carry my picture in their packs into regions where white men have never trod, and dying whalers in the far North would look at my face ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... breach with the Duke of Burgundy. The merchant-king listened with great attention and affability to this petition; and replied shortly, that he thanked the deputation for their zeal for the public weal,—that a king would have enough to do if he contravened every gossip's tale; but that it was his firm purpose to protect, in all ways, the London traders, and to maintain the most amicable understanding ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... omit the Sempachs from her list of acquaintances. Fortunately the Princess had been dissuaded from forcing on an open scandal; my sister had to be content with matching her mother's coldness by her rudeness when the Countess came to Court. Need I say that my attentions grew the more marked, and gossip even more rife? ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... these corps from their supports. They ought to have been crushed, but Johnston fell, severely wounded; upon which confusion ensued, and no results of importance were attained. Official reports fail, most unwisely, to fix the responsibility of the failure, and I do not desire to add to the gossip prevailing then and since. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... holland coats and straw-hats, talking over every passing occurrence. The banker's office, too, is situated here, and that is a lounge in itself—a sort of private committee-room for the discussing of any fresh piece of gossip, ere it is submitted for dissection to the public at large. The English banker has now become an important feature in all continental circles. The unsophisticated beings who, perchance, imagine his duties simply limited to cashing travellers' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... nearest public-house. That is the centre of country gossip. They would have told you every name, from the master to the scullery-maid. Williamson? It conveys nothing to my mind. If he is an elderly man he is not this active cyclist who sprints away from that young lady's ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... more pleasantly, whether we read them in the quaint French of the fourteenth century, or in the more modern French in which they have just been clothed by M. Natalis de Wailly. So vividly does the easy gossip of the old soldier bring before our eyes the days of St. Louis and Henry III., that we forget that we are reading an old chronicle, and holding converse with the heroes of the thirteenth century. The fates both of Joinville's "Memoires" and of Joinville himself suggest in fact many reflections ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Samaritan, and these Orientals do their kindnesses with such an air of enjoyment to themselves that it seems quite a favour to let them wait upon one. Hekekian comes in every day with his handsome old face and a budget of news, all the gossip of the Sultan and his doings. I shall always fancy the Good Samaritan in a tarboosh with a white beard and very long eyes. I am out of bed to-day for the second time, and waiting for a warm day to go out. Sally saw the illuminations last night; the Turkish bazaar she says was gorgeous. The Sultan ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... the door, thoughtfully reflecting on the temper of the departing Duchess. She was a maid of honour and, more than that, an emissary from his brother Louis of France. Gossip said he loved her, but it was not true, though he liked her company exceeding well when the mood suited. He regretted only the evening's incident, with the harsher feeling it ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... in the gossip-corner of the Bois, in the spring sunshine, the prince, surrounded by a little group of respectful disciples, was solemnly delivering from the back of his roan ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... when we came at last to the belvedered plantation houses amongst the orange groves; and as we sat on the wide galleries in the summer nights, we heard all the latest gossip of the capital of Louisiana. The river was low; there was an ominous quality in the heat which had its effect, indeed, upon me, and made the old Creoles shake their heads and mutter a word with a terrible ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... after having done away from his affright, and returned with the empty crate to the King, who said to him, "O my son-in-law, 'twould seem thou hast not foregathered with thy friend the Merman to-day." Replied Abdullah, "I went to him but that which he gave me I gave to my gossip the baker, to whom I owe kindness." "Who may be this baker?" asked the King; and the fisherman answered, "He is a benevolent man, who did with me thus and thus in the days of my poverty and never neglected me a single day nor hurt my feelings." Quoth the King, "What is his name?"; and quoth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... had rendered them the acutest of observers, and they were presented to critics who were filled with the keenest curiosity, and were accustomed to demand full and precise information. Not a detail is omitted as unimportant; the diurnal gossip of the Court, the daily movements of the sovereign and his favourites; are all recorded with impartial and unerring observation. The relation of the Dispacci to the Relazioni is the relation of the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... to hint to the cardinal that she was fast getting into the Queen's good graces, by virtue of being a capital gossip and story-teller; and that she had frequent private audiences. Soon she added intimations that the Queen was far from being really so displeased with the cardinal, as he supposed. At this the old fool bit instantly, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... my back, yet it was with a smile and a light heart that I descended the ladder, deeply conscious of a friend on board—one totally unable to serve me, perhaps, yet nevertheless a friend. Even in our isolation, guarded in those narrow quarters, much of the ship gossip managed in some way to reach our ears. How it drifted in was often a mystery, yet there was little going on aboard we failed to hear. Much of it came to us through those detailed to serve food, while guards and sailors were not always averse to being talked with. We always knew the ship's ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... 1688; Unpublished Order for supply of Night Gowns for Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester; Pio Nono and Canon Townsend; the History of the Roman Wall (with many engravings); the Mediaeval Exhibition of 1850 (with engravings); Court Gossip of the Twelfth Century, from a new work by Walter Map; the Sicilian Vespers and Amari; Junius and Lord Chesterfield, &c. &c. With the customary Review of New Books, Historical Chronicle, and Obituary: including Memoirs of Sir Lumley Skeffington, the Rev. Richard Garnett, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various
... towns, he tells us, was that large numbers of their inhabitants were either half or wholly idle; either men living on competences, with nothing to do, or shopkeepers with their time but half employed; their only amusement to meet in taverns, soak, gossip, and make stupid personal jokes. "The weary waste of spirits and energy at those soaking evening meetings was deplorable. Insipid toasts, petty raillery, empty gabble about trivial occurrences, endless disputes on small questions of fact, these relieved now and then by a song,"—such ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... of the bravest known in all this land. But who is he? Of what land is he a native? Who knows him?" "Not I!" "Nor I!" "But no snow has fallen on him! Rather is his armour blacker than monk's or priest's cape." Thus they engage in gossip; and the two champions let their horses go; for no longer do they delay because right eager and aflame are they for the encounter and the shock. Cliges strikes so that he presses Sagremors' shield to his arm, and ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... presented a rather more than half-filled appearance, a result which had been mainly achieved by paper. At the box office the takings were only about seven pounds. It was quite clear that Cleo, whatever gossip she might have caused in professional circles, had created no profound sensation in the town, so that not even a succes de scandale was decreed to her. The play itself went very fairly indeed this second time, though it ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... told you, my lord," replied Sir Daniel, "the reason thereof concerneth me only. Neither do I purpose to explain it further. Suffice it, that if ye be weary of your old gossip, Daniel Brackley, publish it abroad that y' are to wed Joanna Sedley, and I give you my word ye will be quit of him right soon. Ye will find him with an arrow ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... afternoon of the next day, who should come to the house in the Red Tower but our Helene's gossip, for this week at least her bosom friend, Katrin Texel. She was even more impressive in manner than ever, and also a little pleasanter to behold. For her angles were clothing themselves into curves, and she ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... feel as if I couldn't be I—as if I must have changed into somebody else and couldn't get used to it. It gives me a horrible lonely, dazed, helpless feeling. It's good to see you again—it seems as if you were a sort of anchor for my drifting soul. Oh, Anne, I dread it all—the gossip and wonderment and questioning. When I think of that, I wish that I need not have come home at all. Dr. Dave was at the station when I came off the train—he brought me home. Poor old man, he feels ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... enthusiasm; but a very tolerable dinner had an inspiriting effect, and I was pleased to learn that there was a bin of old Madeira in the cellar. Naturally I soon grew cheerful, and consequently talkative; and summoned Mrs. Balk for a little gossip. The substance of what I gathered from her rather diffusive ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 1703, and the story of her triumph, brief as it is, sounds quaint and pretty, as it comes down to us laden with a thousand suggestions of fashionable life in the reign of Queen Anne—a life made up of gossip and cards, drinking, gaming, patches and powder, fine clothes, full perriwigs and empty heads. What a picturesque lot of people there must have been at the great English spa that season, all anxious to get a glimpse of her plump majesty, who was staying ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... British vessel; for it was rumoured that French officers had said that King Island would afford a good station for the command of Bass Strait and the seizure of British ships. This was probably mere gossip. Baudin in his interviews with Governor King at Sydney disclaimed any intention of seizing Van Diemen's Land; but he afterwards stated that he did not know what were the plans of the French Government with regard ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... ten o'clock breakfast, and discussed the foreign news with him in a manner Julia thought extraordinarily clever; and at eleven came with the baby into her mother's sunny morning-room for a little feminine gossip over Malcolm's second breakfast. Barbara never left a note unanswered, no old friend was neglected; tea hour always found the shady side porch full of callers, children strayed from the candy on the centre table to the cakes near the ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... also a reverse side. Perhaps the general absence of higher education among German women leaves them an especial prey to idle curiosity and gossip. Not only is one questioned freely as to the cost of any article of dress by comparative strangers, but questions as to one's family and private affairs are common, almost customary. Conversation which does not turn upon ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... desired that his friend van der Myle, whom he was now deriding for his efforts in Paris to save his father-inlaw from his fate, might assist the Advocate in unravelling its contents. He had now discovered that it had been idle gossip not worthy of a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... such respect that many congregate there because of them, and to enrich their minds with inventions and foolishness which they immediately run through the city to bring to the ears of the said personalities. It is impossible to believe what freedom is permitted, in furnishing this gossip. They speak without reverence not only of the doings of generals and ministers of state, but also mix themselves in the life of the Kaiser ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... will stand for a long time looking at you from a distance, if anything unusual attracts their attention. They are very critical and there is much gossip going on among them. They also laugh at the Mexicans, and say that the hair on their faces is like the fur on a bear. Squint-eyes also afford them much amusement. They are smart, attentive and patient. They have no qualms of conscience about telling an ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... elaborate hair-dressings, in rings and bracelets, in a retinue of servants, in gilded apartments, in luxurious couches, in voluptuous dances, in exciting banquets, in demoralizing spectacles, in frivolous gossip, in inglorious idleness. If virtuous, it was not so much from principle as from fear. Hence she resorted to all sorts of arts to deceive her husband. Her genius was sharpened by perpetual devices, and cunning was ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... gregarious, pleasure-loving State has not? There were many simple gaieties, dances, picnics, and the like, which took no account of distance or other obstacles to the natural coming together of young men and girls, and of older folk who have exchanged gallantry for gossip. In this life, the mistress of Storm held a certain place. No farmers' dinner, no fair, or barbecue, was complete without the presence of the county's ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Gossip, however, was not silent; it was remarked that Sir Robert never appeared at the race-ground, which was the only place of public resort which he frequented, except in company with a certain strange-looking person, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... had hardly been aware of the severity with which I had been taken to task the day after my first lecture. People are too strong and busy in New York City to notice if you are ill or not; they have paid their dollars and are not likely to listen to what bores them; they wanted a little local gossip about my husband, Mr. Lloyd George, or Princess Mary's trousseau. I did not mind the abuse as I am press-proof, but I did not want to disappoint my manager, Mr. Lee Keedick, a competent, kind man, quite unmercenary, ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... DEPARTMENT will embrace, in addition to vigorous and fearless comments on the events of the times, genial gossip with the reader on all current topics, and also devote abundant space to those racy specimens of American wit and humor, without which there can be no perfect exposition of our national character. Among those who will contribute regularly to this department may be mentioned the name ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... making rude ornaments from beads, and cloves, and nuts, the Mullah drones the evening prayer. Few white men have seen, and returned to tell the tale. But we may imagine the conversation passing from the prices of arms and cattle, the prospects of the harvest, or the village gossip, to the great Power, that lies to the southward, and comes nearer year by year. Perhaps some former Sepoy, of Beluchis or Pathans, will recount his adventures in the bazaars of Peshawar, or tell of the white officers he has followed and fought for in the past. He will speak ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... therefore not as idle gossip, but only as a characteristic touch, that I mention that Frau Sophie even as "gracious lady" could not get rid of her early habit. Her clothes always fitted her as if they had been given to her by her mistress. ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... absurd, to say the least. The Queen must say that there never was even the shadow of a doubt on Prince Frederick William's part as to where the marriage should take place, and she suspects this to be the mere gossip of the Berliners. Whatever may be the usual practice of Prussian Princes, it is not every day that one marries the eldest daughter of the Queen of England. The question therefore must be considered as settled ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... and movement. But Lily found herself with little to say. Her year away had separated her from the small community of interest that bound the others together, and she wondered, listening to them in her sitting room later, what they would all talk about when they had exchanged their bits of gossip, their news of this man and that. It would all be said so soon. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... breath of life; he worshipped her. Then one day she died—suddenly—sank down and died as a butterfly might die, chilled by a blast. With her Henry Floyd buried his youth. For a time people were sympathetic; but they began immediately to speculate about him, then to gossip about him. It made no difference to him or in him. He was like a man that is dead, who felt no more. One thing about a great sorrow is that it destroys all lesser ones. A man with a crushed body does not feel pinpricks. Henry Floyd went on his way calmly, doggedly, ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... the roar of strange beasts, the ring of strange voices, the crackling of whips; there are prancing steeds and figures in costumes curious,—then, flapping of canvas, creaking of poles, and all is silent. Of course it is not real, and every one may go. The circus has no annals, knows no gossip, presents no problems; it is without morals and therefore not immoral. It is the one joyous amusement that is not above, but quite outside the pale of criticism and discussion. Therefore, why should not the preacher go and take ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... she always looked fearfully sad. Daddy is fond of sketching, and he painted a picture of her standing with her donkey under the vines. We guessed somehow that she had a history, and we asked Sareda, our cook, about her. Sareda knew everybody in the place. She was a dear old gossip. She got quite excited over Luigia's story. She said it had been the talk of Tarana at the time. Luigia used to be a lovely girl when she was young, and she was quite wealthy for a peasant, because she owned a little lemon grove on the hillside. She inherited it from her father, who ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... that night I jotted down pages of such gossip in a little red note-book. I had names and dates. That bunch of piece-workers must have thought I was a bear for details, or else nutty in the head; but they was too polite to mention it so long as I insisted each time that it was ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... conversation has filled me with thoughts too solemn for careless utterance. In this man's death I hear a cry for merciful consideration—a solemn warning—a protest against the headlong speed with which this generation is trampling respectability under foot. This man's death is a subject of gossip now, when it should be a ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... insult round, and then pretends to feel: Prepare to cast all dignity aside, For know, your talents will be quickly tried; Nor think, from favours past a friend to gain, - 'Tis but by duties we our posts maintain: I read her novels, gossip through the town, And daily go, for idle stories down; I cheapen all she buys, and bear the curse Of honest tradesmen for my niggard purse; And, when for her this meanness I display, She cries, 'I heed not what I throw away;' Of secret bargains I endure the shame, And stake my credit ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... attainments, was often a retailer of stale gossip, and in like case was Aurelius Victor, another writer who heaped much odium on her name. Again, there is a great hiatus in the Annals of Tacitus, a true historian, at the period covering the earlier days of the Empress; while Suetonius, bitter as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said, we do need more healthy independence. Looking out upon society, we see how slavish men and women are to fashion and frivolity. Society life is largely a surface life, spoiled by fear of gossip. Young people need to take clearer views of this matter, and to stand by their own convictions at any cost. The question to be settled by most of us is, Shall I steer or drift? Our advice is, by all means have a lofty purpose before you, and ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... complacency towards waste and mischief for the sake of moral advantages may be studied in the case also of our womankind. The absorption in their toilettes guards them from many dangers to family sanctity. And from how much cruel gossip is not society saved by the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... hardly have done less, after repeating this somewhat spiteful gossip, than mention the hostile quarter from which it arose. We have considered it right to quote part of it, as the writer is an author of some note: but we venture to think that those readers who have accompanied us so far will believe that Jane was guilty of nothing ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... foolish juror, listening only to one side of the case. Justice often comes too late to secure a verdict. 238:27 People with mental work before them have no time for gossip about false law or testimony. To reconstruct timid justice and place the fact above the 238:30 falsehood, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... marriage to a gentleman in power, Delilah was acquainted with the gossip of the hour; And many little secrets, of the half-official kind, Were whispered to Delilah, and she bore them all ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... day, as the mere Gabet brought the last barrow of linen, which she spread out on the grass with Angelique, she interrupted her interminable chattering upon the gossip of the neighbourhood to ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... paper, of the trifling affairs of every-day life, adding here and there a sparkling anecdote, a bit of gossip, a delicate characterization, a trenchant criticism, a dash of wit, a touch of feeling, or a profound thought. All this is lighted up by her passionate love of her daughter, and in this light we read the many-sided life of her time for twenty-five ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Tilly had rather wearied of the visit of the two ladies of the city, Madame de Grandmaison and Madame Couillard, who had bored her with all the current gossip of the day. They were rich and fashionable, perfect in etiquette, costume, and most particular in their society; but the rank and position of the noble Lady de Tilly made her friendship most desirable, as it conferred in the eyes of the world a patent of gentility which ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... constitutes beauty complains that the majority of women acquire a dull, vacant expression towards middle life, which makes them positively plain. He attributes it to their neglect of all mental culture, their lives having settled down to a monotonous routine of house-keeping, visiting, gossip, and shopping. Their thoughts become monotonous, too, for, though these things are all good enough in their way, they are powerless to keep up any mental life ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... to the pleasant evening sun, and saw beds scrupulously plain, a quaint old chair or two, and little pictures of favorite saints decorating the spotless white walls. The old ladies kept up a quick, cheerful clatter, as they paused to gossip at the gates of their little domiciles; and with a great deal of artifice, and lurking behind walls, and looking at the church as if I intended to design that, I managed to get a sketch ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Hilmer's covert disdain was more impersonal, yet it remained every whit as irritating, for all that. Perhaps a bit more so, since Fred Starratt found it hard to put a finger on its precise quality. He had another taste of it later when the inevitable strike gossip intruded itself. It was Helen who opened up, repeating her ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Some enterprising spirits had started a new weekly local paper, and—mirabile dictu—they actually contemplated a literary page! With a faith in suburban culture, so unprecedented as to be almost sublime, these daring adventurers proposed giving their readers reviews of books, literary gossip, and general information about the doings of eminent writers. They offered the work to me at the modest honorarium of two pounds a week, and were willing to give me a three years' agreement. They were frank enough to acknowledge that their journal was likely to die ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... you'll find a perfect drawing-room, carpeted, canopied, and dark as twilight; its verdant seats broidered with violets and forget-me-nots; and all untenanted it seems, nay, deserted rather, for the music wastes on the lonely air, as if the fairy that kept state there, in gossip mood had stolen down some neighboring aisle, and would be home anon. I would have bartered all the glory of this campaign for leave to stretch myself on its mossy bank, for ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... conceded, in communities differing in all else, in Canada and in Kentucky. We have only to press on. Strange to say, the reform is reversing the ordinary weapons of the sexes, for the women have all the logic, and the men only gossip and slander. But it finds its answering echo in the very hostility it creates. It has a million hearts. Silence every woman on this platform, and the movement still goes on. Elevate woman at any point, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and eloquence—for science is out of the question—were to invoke nothing but a fluid tendency to grow, we should be left with a flat history of phenomena and no means of prediction or even classification. All knowledge would be reduced to gossip, infinitely diffuse, perhaps enlisting our dramatic feelings, but yielding no intellectual mastery of experience, no practical competence, and no moral lesson. The world would be a serial novel, to be continued for ever, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... thought of Colonel DeLisle) when as her one-time guardian he might have taken her to Sidi-bel-Abbes himself, and persuaded his old friend, DeLisle, to be lenient. All that Max had heard against the explorer came back to him, and he was ready to believe Stanton the cruel and selfish egoist that gossip sketched ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... were "bought" by the Bank. The histories of the revolution tell us that Benedict Arnold was "bought" by British gold. Did that make him an article of property? When a northern clergyman marries a rich southern widow, country gossip hits off the indecency with this current phrase, "The cotton bags bought him." When Robert Walpole said, "Every man has his price, and whoever will pay it can buy him," and when John Randolph said, while the Missouri question was pending, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of pathological gossip with Dr. Davis's patient, during which Daisy chattered unremittingly to her own companion. The young man asked Mrs. Miller how she was pleased with Rome. "Well, I must say I am disappointed," she answered. ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... from whose urn welled up the ocean and the rivers of the earth. Odin had his outlook in its top, where kept watch and ward the All-seeing Eye. In its boughs frisked and gambolled a squirrel called Busybody, which carried gossip from bough to root and back. The warm Urdar Fountain of the South, in which swam the sun and moon in the shape of two swans, flowed by its celestial stem in Asgard. A tree so much extended as this ash of course had its parasites and rodentia ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... pale again suddenly, as she realized that this was the Mrs. Lennox whom, by current gossip, Frank was to marry, and she lived over again in an instant, it seemed, the morning when she had met them riding together ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... of himself, just as soldiers in the long run acquire courage from routine. The old gentleman, who had come to Paris from Touraine to satisfy his curiosity about Madame Firmiani, and found it not at all assuaged by the Parisian gossip which he heard, was a man of honor and breeding. His sole heir was a nephew, whom he greatly loved, in whose interests he planted his poplars. When a man thinks without annoyance about his heir, and watches the trees grow daily finer for his future benefit, ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... Tibboo is going the round of the town, and becoming the daily gossip. This story has now assumed a substantial historical shape. The facts are, as I have already intimated, that the Tibboo persecuted me to give him a medicine to enable him to trade with profit. I scribbled over a bit of paper, cut in ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... the oily smell of the lanterns, the odour of jasmine, frangipanni, vanilla, and human beings sickeningly mingled in the heat, the jangling, out-of-tune music, the wearisome island gossip and chatter, drove him at length out into the night, down a black-shadowed pathway to the sea. The beach lay before him presently, gleaming like silver in the soft blue radiance of the jewelled night. As he stood there, lost in far memories, the mellow, lemon-coloured lights from the commissioner's ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... thing to another in importance, and introduce all manner of very subtle detail, to a degree that was before impossible. He can render just as easily the flourish of trumpets before a victorious emperor and the gossip of country market women, the gradual decay of forty years of a man's life and the gesture of a passionate moment. He finds himself equally unable, if he looks at it from one point of view—equally able, if he looks at it from another ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... arrival, then, Gray began to become very impatient, as that which alone could put an end to a disagreeable species of mystery, which the good company of the borough began now to make the principal subject of their gossip; some blaming Gray for taking foreign landloupers [Footnote: Strollers.] into his house, on the subject of whose morals the most serious doubts might be entertained; others envying the "bonny hand" the doctor was like to make of it, by having disposal of the wealthy ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... supposed, although it did seem strange to me. I made little mention of Jim in my letters to the old home folks. The bad news, I knew, would leak out in time and my chuckle-headedness would be as much a part of the village gossip as the story of ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... honest. Perhaps, in their capacity in the home, they are exposed to unusual temptations, but that is just the reason why they should refrain from dishonesty of any kind, even the slightest lie. Gossip about the family life of the people they are serving should also be avoided ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... Vansen. Gossip! Let the duke alone. The old cat looks as though he had swallowed devils, instead of mice, and could not now digest them. Let him alone, I say; he must eat, drink, and sleep, like other men. I am not afraid if we only watch our opportunity, At first he makes ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... due to Ali's chief engineer, Caretto, who next day sent a whole shower of balls and shells into the midst of a group of Frenchmen, whose curiosity had brought them to Tika, where Kursheed was forming a battery. "It is time," said Ali, "that these contemptible gossip-mongers should find listening at doors may become uncomfortable. I have furnished matter enough for them to talk about. Frangistan (Christendom) shall henceforth hear only of my triumph or my fall, which will leave it considerable trouble to pacify." Then, after a moment's silence, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... light than Agatha had ever before received on the manners, characters, and history of the Harper family, the Dugdales, and Anne Valery. But there was in her speech a certain reticence, as though all the common gossip of life was in her clear spirit received, sifted, purified, and then distributed abroad in chosen portions as goodly and pleasant food. She seemed to receive the secrets of every one's life and ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Studio gossip and society chatter seemed to pall on young Rembrandt. It is said that when a 'bus-driver has a holiday he always goes and rides with the man who is taking his place; but when Rembrandt had a holiday he went away from the studio, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... thousands; they were to arrest the curiosity—to amuse the impatience—to stir the wonder of a lively and motley crowd. Thus the historian imbibed naturally the spirit of the taleteller. And he was driven to embellish his history with the romantic legend—the awful superstition—the gossip anecdote—which yet characterize the stories of the popular and oral fictionist, in the bazars of the Mussulman, or on the seasands of Sicily. Still it has been rightly said that a judicious reader is not easily led astray by Herodotus in important particulars. His ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Say interest, rather, general. His constant melancholy, the loneliness of his habits,—his daring valor, his brilliant rise in the profession,—your friendship, and the favors of the commander-in-chief,—all tend to make him as much the matter of gossip as of admiration. But where is he, general? I have missed him all ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The Senores de Quinones brought her up with every indulgence like an adopted child. This had been for some time the favourite topic of gossip in Lancia. The cost of her little hats was guessed at with the greatest interest; the number of her toys was commented upon, and calculations were made as to what her marriage dot would be. But such remarks ended by getting stale. It was only ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... stolen a march on the vicar's fair daughter, while she had been discussing this interesting subject with her youthful friend and gossip, the sister of her sailor lover; for the full-orbed moon had already reared her bright face over the swelling waves, and was pouring a flood of radiance through the bay, and illuminating the high-arched windows of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... characteristic of his age and class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers—strangers for the most part, in all probability, to one another—and in ten minutes' time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls on the pier, the elderly women ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... was the best authority for the village politics that she could have fallen in with. She knew everything that went on in the parish—not quite accurately perhaps, but accurately enough for purposes of popular information and gossip. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... hears plans for the evening campaign openly discussed. He is quite behind the scenes. He hears the earliest whispers of engagements and flirtations. He can give a stone to the Press Commissioner in the gossip handicap, and win in a canter. You cannot tell him anything ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... over, the guests made their way out onto the piazza, seating themselves in little groups for an afternoon of chat and gossip. ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... myself, and now I'm an old fellow, and growing duller. Turn out your basket of eggs, Aunt Randolph, and let us know what is going on. Where did you come from last—the Mulberrys? Come; there must have been some pretty pickings of gossip there." ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... you should remember your place. It is certainly not becoming for you, a mere boy, and filling a subordinate position, to come to me with gossip concerning ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... blistered herself and others if the Fleet marriage of her eccentric son— whose wife she never saw—had actually come between the wind and her nobility? Was there no finer, more ethereal touch in Elizabeth Gunning's stolen marriage with her Duke than is recorded in Horace Walpole's malicious gossip? Could such beauty have been utterly sordid? What were the fears and hopes of the lovely Maria Walpole as, after long concealment of her marriage, she trembled on the steps of a throne? How did those about her judge of Fanny Burney in the Digby affair? Did she ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Flemish wool trade was at this time a main source of English wealth, so Edward III of England, than whom ordinarily no haughtier aristocrat existed, made friends with the brewer Van Artevelde, and called him "gossip" and visited him at Ghent, and presently Flemings and English were allied in a defiance of France. By asserting a vague ancestral claim to the French throne, Edward eased the consciences of his allies, who had sworn loyalty to France; and King Philip had on his hands a far more serious quarrel ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... supervision, its injustices, its mechanical ideals, its one preeminent ambition to teach as many years as it was necessary to obtain a pension. There were the superintendents, the supervisors, the special teachers, the principals—petty officers of a petty tyranny in which too often seethed gossip, scandal, intrigue. There were the "soft places"; the deceitful, the easy, the harsh principals; the teachers' institutes to which the poor teacher was forced to pay her scanty dollars. There were bulletins, rules, counter-rules. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... simplifying the rules under which they acted. Still, taken individually, they were average Englishmen, with rather less than the average opportunities for general intellectual culture; and, like every other small society, given to personal gossip, which was not very interesting to a grave and preoccupied outsider. I find him on one occasion reduced to making remarks upon a certain flirtation, which appears to have occupied the minds of the whole society at Simla; but as the prophecy upon which he ventures ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... clear purposes: Their first purpose is to make certain that this Nation's security is not jeopardized by false servants. Their second purpose is to clear the atmosphere of that unreasoned suspicion that accepts rumor and gossip as ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the way; the ragamuffins were driven into the street. Then the fat undertaker appeared with Val and stood on the curb as the coffin, an oak affair with silver handles and plate, was carried to the hearse. Val and the undertaker got into a solitary carriage, and amidst much gabbling and wondering gossip were driven off. It was a plain, very plain, funeral, every one said, and without a note of music. As the crowd dribbled away, Selene recognized two of the prima donnas and the first contralto of the opera, and she nudged Belle in ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... deeply into the Greek moralists, can read the accounts of the ancient egoists, Aristippus and Epicurus, in the Lives of the Philosophers by that entertaining old gossip, Diogenes Laertius. The translation in Bohn's ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... years of the Franco-Russian alliance the French archives contain a wealth of documentary material: regular despatches, verbatim reports of conversations between the French ambassadors and the Czar, the news of the day in St. Petersburg and the gossip of society. Savary and Caulaincourt may be said to have kept their master in personal touch with their friend and ally. There is likewise the ordinary regular diplomatic correspondence with Austria, Prussia, Turkey, and the other European states. An interesting and invaluable peculiarity ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... must have been some gossip or canard cited by the writer; for Iyemidzu (grandson of Iyeyasu), who was then shogun, reigned from 1623 to 1651. The death of the "King" (i.e., tono or daimio) of Arima is also related, in more detail, by La Concepcion (Hist. de Philipinas, v, pp. 160, 161); he says ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... know The boon of leaving far behind The world's dull tales of crime and woe, The gossip ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... strumming on the banjo,—the only vestige of tropical life that haunts our busy Northern zone. But he liked just as well to note the ways of well-dressed girls and boys at croquet parties, or to sit at the club window and hear the gossip. He was a jewel of a listener, and was not easily bored even when Philadelphians talked about families, or New Yorkers about bargains, or Bostonians about books. A man who has not one absorbing aim can get a great many miscellaneous ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... any advice, possibly because he feared it might not be safe to have too many guests at his house for the villagers to gossip about. ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... no, it cannot be," she cried; "she cannot feel. Her kindness is not sympathy; her good-nature is not tenderness. All that she wants is gossip, and she only likes me ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... gold medal he wore, which was picked up by a poor woman passing with a load over the same road, and she went to Cattaro and spent a large portion of the day hunting for the officer who had lost the medal. Sexual immorality was so rare that a single case in Cettinje was the excited gossip of the place for weeks; but to this virtue the influence of the Russian officers during the year of the great war was disastrous. The Russians introduced beggary and prostitution, and the crowd of adventurers from everywhere during the two later years made theft common; but stealing was ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... you are dead? You have to go into a world where there are no gossip and no housekeeping; no mills and no offices; no shops, no books; no colleges and no sciences to learn. What will you do there? 'He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.' If you have done your housekeeping, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... of about as much authority as the precious story that he left Stratford for deer-stealing, and that he lived by holding gentlemen's horses at the doors of the theatre, and other trash of that arch-gossip, old Aubrey. The metre is an argument against Titus Andronicus being Shakespeare's, worth a score such chronological surmises. Yet I incline to think that both in this play and in Jeronymo, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... into a truculent mood, and would like to destroy somebody. Have you noticed anything in the shape of a lover hanging around the colonel Lares and Penates? Does that lieutenant of the horse-marines or that young Stillwater parson visit the house much? Not that I am pining for news of them, but any gossip of the kind would be in order. I wonder, Ned, you don't fall in love with Miss Daw. I am ripe to do it myself. Speaking of photographs, couldn't you manage to slip one of her cartes-de-visite from her album—she must have an album, you know—and ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Probably there was more gossip at the supper-tables of Witton that night than in any other town of ten times the size in the United Kingdom; and it was formally agreed that Poindexter had escaped to the Continent, and would either remain in hiding there, or take passage by the first opportunity to the ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... villages or large settlements. They are a wild, frolicksome set of fellows when undisturbed, restless, and ever on the move. They seem to take especial delight in chattering away the time, and visiting about, from hole to hole, to gossip and talk over one another's affairs; at least, so their actions would indicate. Old hunters say that when they find a good location for a village, and no water is handy, they dig a well to supply the wants ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... creak again under her weight—but how she poured out the finale of the opera! and with what a burst of feeling she rushed into Elvino's arms—almost fit to smother him! Whereas the little Lederlung—but a truce to this gossip—the fact is that these two women were the two flags of the French and the English party at Pumpernickel, and the society was divided in its allegiance to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... somewhere down the Gut, in Under Town, a place they call the Seacombe slum. You can see a horde of children pouring in and out of the Gut all day long, and in the evening the wives stand at the seaward end of it, to gossip and await their husbands. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... to seek. The priest, discrowned o' the glory of his age, The widow-bride, mourned as though smitten of God, Gave forth they would with solemn obsequies Bury their dead, and crave no help from man. Now of what chanced betwixt the night of murder And the appointed burial I can give Only the sum of gossip—servants' tales, Neighbors' reports, close confidences leaked From friends and kindred. Night and day, folk said, Rebekah wept, prayed, fasted by the corpse, Three mortal days. Upon the third, her eyes, Sunk in their pits, glimmered with wild, strange fire. She started from her place beside ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... May of 1239, to the great satisfaction of his sisters. The Countess of Kent thought that such news as this really ought to make Margaret cheer up: and she was rather perplexed (which Doucebelle was not by any means) at the discovery that all the gossip on that subject seemed only to increase her sadness. An eclipse of the sun, which occurred on the third of June, alarmed the Countess considerably. Some dreadful news might reasonably be expected after ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... was social intercourse on the steps of the church and at the horse sheds back of it. Particularly did the women gather about Aunt Prudence and Sheila. As for the men, both young and old, the newcomer's city ways and unmistakable beauty gave them much to gossip about. Several of the younger masculine members of Elder Minnett's congregation came almost to blows over the settlement of who should take the fly cloth off Queenie, back her around, and lead her out to ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... what is the matter with my poultry," Squire Bartley remarked, after the weather, politics, and harmless phases of local gossip had been discussed; "they are getting as poor as crows. My boys say that they are fed as well as usual. What's more, I've had them throw down for 'em a warm mixture of meal and potatoes before they go to roost, but we don't get an egg. What luck are ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... ... like that," she cried sharply. "Just as though I were your ... property." He saw the roundness of her eyes. She shuddered. "You knew that I was driven to it, to save my name, to stop hideous gossip...." ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... with a daughter of his friend's, about three years old, on his knee, whom he was teaching the alphabet from a horn book: at a little distance stood a sister of hers, some years older. "Get you away, miss," said he to this last; "you are a pert gossip, and I will have nothing to do with you."—"Nay," answered she, "Nancy is your favourite; you are quite in love with Nancy."—"Take away that girl," said he to her father, whom he now observed to have entered the room; "she has ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... occasion, of the charms of the landscape or the pleasures of locomotion that they chiefly discoursed. Their talk took a more closely personal turn. It was a year since they had met, and there were many questions to ask and answer, many arrears of gossip to make up. As they stretched themselves on the grass on a sun-warmed hill-side, beneath a great German oak whose arms were quiet in the blue summer air, there was a lively exchange of impressions, opinions, speculations, anecdotes. Gordon Wright was surely an excellent friend. He took an ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... Their aim was to kill the mystic belief of the people in the Emperor; for only by diminishing the dignity of the monarch could the revolutionary cause make headway. And during and after the change all the official documents, school textbooks, press views and social gossip have always coupled the word monarch with reprobation. Thus for a long while this glorious image has been lying in the dirty pond! Leaving out the question that it is difficult to restore the monarchy at the present day, let us suppose that by arbitrary method we do ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... went about more or less with the sculptor Drene was a nine days' gossip among circles familiar to them both, and was forgotten—as are all wonders—in ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... neither trickery nor persuasion would avail now and every precious minute counted. He looked again at the beautiful woman who stood beside O-lo-a. He had never before seen her but he well knew from palace gossip that she could be no other than the godlike stranger whom Ko-tan had planned to make ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... minute of that day, and should have liked to sit up all night if I might have kept a candle burning; the night, however, proved a bad time, and left bad effects, preparing me ill for the next day's ordeal of insufferable gossip. Of course this news fell under general discussion. Some little reserve had accompanied the first surprise: that soon wore off; every mouth opened; every tongue wagged; teachers, pupils, the very servants, mouthed the name of "Emanuel." He, whose connection with the school was contemporary ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... housekeeper led her lady through the house, and mightily did she chatter and gossip by the way. The lady listened nearly in silence; for Mrs. Arnold was generous in conversation, and spared her companion all expense of words. At length, however, something she said seemed to rouse her mistress, and she exclaimed with a somewhat bitter laugh, "And so the good people declared ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... herself thus share in the advantages of her industry; and the husband, who does not appear to have much business of his own, gets his share in that he sits among the wealthy and honoured inhabitants of the town, 'in the gates,' the chief place of meeting for business and gossip. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... give them the latest bit of gossip—how many men were off on the herring catch; if any strangers had come through the town in their carrioles on their way to the noted and beautiful Voring Foss and Skjaeggedal Foss (two water-falls of great renown); or who had the ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... but momentary. Recovering himself, he laid a large hand on the priest's shoulder, and, his face assuming its wonted smile, said in his usual low tone, "Amigo, it seems that you have a penchant for spreading gossip. Think you I am ignorant of the fact that because of it Rome spewed you out for a meddlesome pest? Do you deceive yourself that Cartagena will open her ears to your garbled reports? The hag, Marcelena, lies! She has long hoped to gain some advantage from me, I have told you— But go ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... it listed me, and be secure from all kinds of incursions and interruptions. Antoinette's one-eyed cat could not scratch for admittance; Antoinette herself could not enter under pretext of domestic economics and lure me into profitless gossip; and I could defy Carlotta, who is growing to be as pervasive as the smell of pickles over Crosse & Blackwell's factory. She comes in without knocking, looks at picture-books, sprawls about doing nothing, smokes my best cigarettes, hums tunes which ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... evident, and he knew that he could not keep her presence a secret from Eben for any length of time. And then there was Martha. What would she and Flo say when they heard of it? This thought brought the perspiration to his forehead, causing him to shift uneasily. And the neighbours! What a rare bit of gossip it would be when they heard of it. And hear of it they certainly would, and he would be disgraced. It was somewhat late when he at length rolled himself up in his blanket by his son's side. Silence reigned near the cabin, and he fell asleep feeling that he had ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... few serve wine. And round the table will always be found men in foreign uniforms, or some missionary from some great power who comes begging for boats or food. These dinners used to be places of great gossip, and chiefly anti-administration gossip, but the spirit of the people is one of unequaled loyalty. The Republicans are as glad to have Wilson as their President as are the Democrats, I think sometimes a little more glad, because many of the Democrats ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... sweethearts to be associated with an ill-kept vessel. If they read anything at all it was what the newspapers said about shipping, or as a matter of religious devotion they might perchance read an occasional chapter in the Bible, so that their mental energy found a ready outlet in the gossip of things appertaining to their daily life and immediate surroundings, which for the most part were nautical, although I must not overlook the fact that many of the more intelligent of them were connected with religious institutions. These were mostly Dissenters, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... awaiting a dilatory mail; a few visages of retired sea captains at the window of an insurance office, looking out vacantly at the vacant street, blaspheming at the weather, and fretting at the dearth as well of public news as local gossip. What a treasure trove to these venerable quidnuncs, could they have guessed the secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were carrying along ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... with which, according to use and custom, the Friday evening course at the Royal Institution was opened, has been the most noteworthy topic of scientific gossip since my last. The subject, 'Lines of Magnetic Force,' is one not easily popularised, otherwise, I should like to give you an abstract of it. One requires to know so much beforehand, to comprehend the value and significance of such a lecture. The learned professor's ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... full of roe. Then we set to work at gathering the grapes, with plenty of sweat and shouting, and, as the quotation runs, "A few high-hanging clusters did we leave survivors of the vintage." After the sixth hour we returned home. I did a little work, and poor work at that. Then I had a long gossip with my dear mother sitting on the bed. My conversation was: What do you think my friend Fronto is doing just now? She said: And what do you think of my friend Gratia?'(1) My turn now: And what of our little Gratia,(2) the sparrowkin? After this kind of talk, ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... no resemblance to Nottingham's, with which Dalrymple was familiar. The letter is evidently a common newsletter, written by a scribbler, who had never seen the King and Queen except at some public place, and whose anecdotes of their private life rested on no better authority than coffeehouse gossip.] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... told it to my parents; and I wrote a letter of kind words to the maid, praying pardon for the pain I had unknowingly caused her; and I feigned long illness, that the marriage might be broken off without gossip; and we made a gift to that family; and the maid was glad. For she was enabled at a later time to marry the young man she loved. My parents never pressed me again to take a wife; and since their death I have ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... be good-looking"—she herself is not sure on the point; she feels that possibly she may be prejudiced; she puts before you merely the current gossip of the neighbourhood; people say she is beautiful; they may be right, they may be wrong: it is not for her to decide—"well-educated, of affectionate disposition, possessed of means, desires to meet gentleman ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... for other reasons. Rather than sit home alone, she may continue to go out in society, which is quite all right, but she must avoid being with any one man more than another and she should remain visibly within the general circle of her group. It always gives gossip a chance to see an engaged girl sitting out dances with any particular man, and slander is never far away if any evidence of ardor creeps into their regard, even if it be merely "manner," and ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... expressed in a memorandum, "tres long, tres positif, assez dur meme, et assez tranchant dans son langage," was handed in to the Congress on December 16 or 19, along with a very unwelcome note to Metternich. There is some gossip of another of Canning's secretaries in Greville's Memoirs, i. 105, to the effect that Castlereagh's private despatches to Troppau differed in tone from his official ones, which were only written "to throw ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... to note how quickly a profession absorbs one. Carrie became wise in theatrical lore, hearing the gossip of little Lola. She learned what the theatrical papers were, which ones published items about actresses and the like. She began to read the newspaper notices, not only of the opera in which she had so small a part, but of others. Gradually the desire for notice took hold of her. She longed ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... once they sought to seduce him by offers of office; it was said that he could have been an under-secretary of state, had he been willing to qualify himself for the position by modifying his views on colonial questions. More than once, too, gossip circulated in America that some such bargain had been struck, a slander which was cruel and ignoble indeed, when the opportunity and temptation may be said to have been present any and every day during many years without ever receiving even a moment ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... spirit-stirring influences—those glances of sunshine that make amends for clouds and mist. The country is said to be quieter life; not to me, I am sure. In the town the business I have to do hardly costs me more thought than just occupies my mind, and I have as much of gossip and ladylike chat as consumes the time pleasantly enough. In the country I am thrown entirely on my own resources, and there is no medium ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... it was not the right kind of witness. If it had been an indulgent elder not given to gossip, or a chivalrous young man not averse himself from kisses, all might have been well. But William Roper, under-gamekeeper, was a young man without a spark of chivalry in him, and he had been soured in the matter ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... Bellevue began to gossip about the couple at Highcourt, and divided as always into two camps with shades of opinion within each camp. The women were generally for Archie, even if he had been foolish with his wife's money and was conducting his "affair" with Irene Pointer ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... of Gil Blas appeared in 1715; and nearly twenty years later gossip said that the fourth was not ready, though the author had been paid in advance for it six or ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... He paused, then looked straight at Joyce with a visible harshness. "I'll tell you what the common gossip is if you want to know, Miss Seldon. They say he ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... observance of the study hours; another, less gossip: perhaps she should be better understood if she said a higher tone of social intercourse. A thing never to be forgotten was, that the school-life was a preparation for the longer one beyond, and that, a preparation for the one that ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... the sidewalk excitement had subsided sufficiently to make room for an approach to the truth. The story of an armed band surrounding the bank had been a canard. There had been but one man concerned in the robbery, and the sidewalk gossip was beginning to describe him ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Viola, "I would make me a willow cabin at your gates, and call upon your name. I would write complaining sonnets on Olivia, and sing them in the dead of the night; your name should sound among the hills, and I would make Echo, the babbling gossip of the air, cry out Olivia. O you should not rest between the elements of earth and air, but you should pity me." "You might do much," said Olivia: "what is your parentage?" Viola replied, "Above my fortunes, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with him. You remember Miss Pyncheon? She and many other regular attendants at the Chapel have left this neighbourhood. The Chapel is to be a cinematograph theatre, I believe. There! I have given you all the gossip. I have not said more about your aunts because I want you to come up one day to London, when you have time, and see them. You will do that, won't you? I expect you are very busy—I hope you are. I would like to have a line from you, but please don't bother if you ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... know something of what passes in polite circles. Your antagonism to this man is to be found in every column of fashionable gossip. The town is divided between you. It is impossible that any public slight upon him should be ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... most pertinacious way of poking his nose into all sorts of affairs, not at all after the manner of the usual pig, but more like a village gossip who wants to know about everything that is going ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... yet to come, his name rose to the surface of the conversation, and, in spite of Rucellai's previous prohibition, the talk again became political. At first, while the servants remained present, it was mere gossip: what had been done in the Palazzo on the first day's voting for the Great Council; how hot-tempered and domineering Francesco Valori was, as if he were to have everything his own way by right of his austere virtue, and how it was clear ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... delight of his friends. His apartments were entirely separate from the family, but he spent most of his unengaged evenings in their quiet little circle. The children called him uncle, the mother called him Basil, and the people who knew them looked upon him as one related, and spoke no gossip concerning them. ...
— A Few Short Sketches • Douglass Sherley
... was a chatty soul and loved a bit of gossip dearly; besides, the pot of ale warmed his heart; so that, settling himself in an easy corner of the inn bench, while the host leaned upon the doorway and the hostess stood with her hands beneath ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Roquefinette. The chevalier, without being a regular customer, went occasionally to the tavern of La Fillon. It was quite fashionable at that time to go and drink at her house. D'Harmental was to her neither her son, a name which she gave to all her "habitues," nor her gossip, a word which she reserved for the Abbe Dubois, but simply Monsieur le Chevalier; a mark of respect which would have been considered rather a humiliation by most of the young men of fashion. La Fillon was much astonished when D'Harmental asked to see one of her ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... care," he says, "to loiter in the baths of Agrippa and to hear from the idlers there the gossip of the hour. The gladiatorial struggles in the Circus Maximus and the comedies in the theaters have lost for me their relish. For the civic rewards which Tiberius gives his favored ones I have no wish. Senatorships and proconsulships are like the dust ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... become quite an interesting piece of local gossip, and, one after another, all the ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... offered me so many taxable letters that I decided to accept only one, and let the others go back. That one contained a cheque for a hundred dollars for the Mission. I naturally took the rest, and found every one of them to be bills, gossip, or from autograph-hunters. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... "it is the old story: 'Servants' friends, the master's enemies.' An old servant came here to gossip with her friend the cook (she never could abide her while they were together, by all accounts), and told her the whole story of his being drowned ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Lieutenant Hal. "The cases in Guarez's barn, it may be, are only dummies, put there with a good deal of display, so that if troops came their commander would be sure to hear about them. The Mexicans probably imagined that, after an American military commander came here, heard the gossip about boxes in Guarez's barn, and then guarded that barn, that the commander would then feel that all needed precautions had been taken. That was Mexican craft, but Guarez failed to understand that he was ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... Local gossip regarding her estrangement from her husband had practically exhausted itself some time before, and in any case it would have been swamped by the fevered anxiety that possessed the whole country ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... but often with the most fantastic additions of events, details, names, dates, places, which each player will aver that he received from the player before him. I am afraid that too much of the average gossip of every city, town, and village is little more than a game of "Russian Scandal;" with this difference that while one is but a game, the other ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... "I'll go, Tom; but, to be plain with you, I do not think that I can be of much use there. I have been several times. She will gossip as long as you please; but if you would talk seriously, she turns a deaf ear. You see, Tom, there's little to be gained when you have to contend with such a besetting sin as avarice. It is so powerful, especially ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... courtyard full of sunshine, the iron railing separating it from the road, the river gleaming, the bridge and railway station beyond, and then again the background of hills. He passed through the house, and went out into the courtyard. Here were more people, more gay dresses, gossip, cigars, and coffee; more benches and tables set in the scanty shade of the formal round-topped trees that stood in square green boxes round the paved quadrangle. Outside in the road, a boy with a monkey stood grinding a melancholy organ; the sun seemed setting to the pretty pathetic tune, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... come, but through some mistake, had been sent to Mr. Notter, and was by him expended in payment of his own district, when it should have been paid on the Caharagh line. "But these stories," he added, "received in gossip, are turned against the Board of Works." It is not very clear what this official meant by stories, but there is one thing plain enough in the matter: Mr. Notter's men must have been in arrear of their pay as well as those on the Caharagh works, or there could be no ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... He abhorred gossip and spreading of tittle-tattle; avoided speaking before servants, or any one who would retail what was said. When there was any danger of this, he relapsed into total silence; and was, indeed, on some occasions over-cautious. He especially ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... Marianna had been by no means inattentive to the whispering and murmuring of the two girls, nor had she failed to notice the vent-hole, and so the way to a mutual exchange of communications was soon opened and made use of. Whenever old Capuzzi takes his afternoon nap the girls gossip away to their heart's content. You will have observed that little Margaret, Dame Caterina's and my favourite, is not so serious and reserved as her elder sister, Anna, but is an arch, frolicsome, droll little thing. Without expressly making mention of your love-affair I have instructed ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... variation of the preceding—were helped toward digestion by the finest vintages of Burgundy; and the luscious pates de foie gras—for which the plumpest geese in Bretagne had been invalids all their days, and, if gossip be true, submitted in the end to a slow roasting alive—introduced the fish, which, by the then reformed Parisian mode, must appear after, not before, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... whom he pronounces a "brave braggart." As no despatch of Washington contains any rodomontade of the kind; as it is quite at variance with the general tenor of his character; and as Horace Walpole is well known to have been a "great gossip dealer," apt to catch up any idle rumor that would give piquancy to a paragraph, the story has been held in great distrust. We met with the letter recently, however, in a column of the London Magazine for 1754, page 370, into which it must have found its way not long after ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... have been a more or less ragged regiment who met about that kindly Bow Street board; but that the fact reflects upon either the host or guests cannot be admitted for a moment. If the anecdote is discreditable to anyone it is to that facile retailer of ana, and incorrigible society-gossip, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... struck two, the household was at rest, the logs blazed and cracked merrily, the red light shining on those mail-clad effigies in the corners, lighting up helm and hauberk, glancing on greaves and gauntlets. It was an hour of repose and gossip which ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... charms of the landscape or the pleasures of locomotion that they chiefly discoursed. Their talk took a more closely personal turn. It was a year since they had met, and there were many questions to ask and answer, many arrears of gossip to make up. As they stretched themselves on the grass on a sun-warmed hill-side, beneath a great German oak whose arms were quiet in the blue summer air, there was a lively exchange of impressions, opinions, speculations, anecdotes. Gordon Wright was surely an excellent friend. He took ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... gig, almost every summer day. One evening, the horse took fright, and upset the gig on a heap of stones by the road-side. Mr Young was taken up dead, and Maria was lamed for life. She had always known the Enderbys very well; and there had been some gossip among their mutual acquaintance, about the probability that Philip would prove to be Maria's lover, when he should be old enough to think of marrying. It never went further than this,—except in Maria's own heart. She had, indeed, hoped—even supposed—that in Philip's mind the affair had at least ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... themselves, I don't think!" retorted Nan. Being a rabid girl-fan it was, of course, impossible for Nan to speak baseball convictions or gossip without characteristic baseball slang. "Stuck on themselves! I never saw the like in my life. That fellow Lane is so swelled that he can't get down off his toes. But he's a wonder, I must admit that. They're a bunch of stars. Easy, fast, trained—they're ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... a solicitor's office in the City. And yet it was true that people would talk of him as did Miss Thoroughbung! His cruelty would be in every lady's mouth. And then his stinginess about the ponies would be the gossip of the county for twelve months. And, as he found out what Miss Thoroughbung was, the disgrace of even having wished to marry her loomed terribly large ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... and the underbrush about it, Jane, with Fleck and Thomas Dean, peered eagerly out at a dingy, weather-beaten frame structure which neighborhood gossip had told them was the sheltering place of the "Friends of the Air." In its outward appearance at least, Jane decided, it was disappointingly unmysterious. It looked to her merely like a cheap summer boarding-house that had gone long untenanted. There was a ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... Shelley's Skylark, nor whisper to Wordsworth's Daffodils, the disconcerting secret)—I am incongruously beset by longings of which the Lake Poets never sang. Echoes and images of the abandoned City discompose my arcadisings: I hear, in the babbling of brooks, the delicious sound of London gossip, and newsboys' voices in the cries of birds. Sometimes the gold-splashed distance of a country lane seems to gleam at sunset with the posters of the evening papers; I dream at dawn of dinner-invitations, when, like a telephone-call, I hear ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... took hat and walking-stick for his customary morning stroll along the street to Butcher Trengrove's to choose the joint for his dinner and pick up the town's earliest gossip. It is Troy's briskest hour; when the dairy carts, rattling homeward, meet the country folk from up-the-river who have just landed at the quays and begun to sell from door to door their poultry and ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... correspondence with the Wittenbergers and Spalatin, expressed to the latter her surprise that Luther did not marry. Luther thereupon wrote to Spalatin on November 30, 1524, saying, 'I am not surprised that folks gossip thus about me, as they gossip about many other things. But please thank the lady in my name, and tell her that I am in the hands of the Lord, as a creature whose heart He can change and re-change, destroy or revive, at any hour or moment; but as my ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... and you can telegraph to me freely; whereas, if you telegraphed to Chippenham, whoever received the message there might mention its contents as curious to someone or other, and then, of course, it would become a matter of common gossip." ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... George," as Monk's own soldiers called him, though he was but in his fifty-second year, and speculating on his possible meaning, and on the chance that even Lambert might find him more than a match. And such mere gossip and curiosity everywhere, mingling with previous doubtings in some quarters, and with relics of positive partisanship with the Rump in others, had gradually induced a complete whirl of public feeling. By the middle of December, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... smile and a light heart that I descended the ladder, deeply conscious of a friend on board—one totally unable to serve me, perhaps, yet nevertheless a friend. Even in our isolation, guarded in those narrow quarters, much of the ship gossip managed in some way to reach our ears. How it drifted in was often a mystery, yet there was little going on aboard we failed to hear. Much of it came to us through those detailed to serve food, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... with an air of reflection, he observed that they did not cost him the self-contempt which was wont to be his penalty for concession to the terms of polite gossip; rather, his mind accepted with gratitude this rare repose. He tasted something of the tranquil self-content which makes life so enjoyable when one has never seen a necessity for shaping original ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... with his niece, an orphan. She was eighteen, and there might have been some gossip, but O'Hara forestalled it by ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... is a very real part of it, and will, if preserved, convey to succeeding generations a better idea of the spirit of the conflict than many dry reports or careful narratives of events; and this part may be called the Gossip, the Fun, the Pathos of the War. This illustrates the character of the leaders, the humor of the soldiers, the devotion of women, the bravery of men, the pluck of our heroes, the romance ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... king," a squarely-built man,—whose bare arms with the knotted muscles showing through the skin, and hands begrimed with charcoal, indicated that he was a smith,—remarked to a gossip as the little crowd broke up, "but it is a grievous pity that he was brought up a Norman, still more that he was not left in peace to pass his life as a monk as he desired. He fills the land with his Normans; soon as an English bishop dies, straightway a Norman is ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... growing up around them. She had tried for years to get a husband, but finally, at the age of thirty-eight, had given up the fight; and instead of sharing in the happiness of her lifelong neighbors, she had drifted into being the neighborhood gossip, picking flaws in everything and searching with microscopic eye to find the failures in the lives of those around her, trying to find satisfaction in her unmarried state by seeing only the darker side of the matrimonial adventures around her. If a man came ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... sold cloth near St. Innocent's Gate. They amassed wealth for their children, they're paying dearly perhaps for it now in the other world, and one can scarcely get that rich by being honest." I certainly don't want all that gossip, and I want, in a word, a man who will be obliged to me for my daughter and to whom I can say, "Sit down there, my son-in-law, and have ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere
... parties. I'd lay for the local religious world, after that;—religion comes right after politics in the popular mind, and it interests the women like murder: I'd give the minutest religious intelligence, and not only that, but the religious gossip, and the religious scandal. Then I'd go in for fashion and society,—that comes next. I'd have the most reliable and thorough-going financial reports that money could buy. When I'd got my local ground perfectly covered, I'd begin to ramify. Every fellow that could spell, in any ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... a young man without fortune, but Forsyte girls had become engaged to such before, and had actually married them. It was not altogether for this reason, therefore, that the minds of the Forsytes misgave them. They could not have explained the origin of a misgiving obscured by the mist of family gossip. A story was undoubtedly told that he had paid his duty call to Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester, in a soft grey hat—a soft grey hat, not even a new one—a dusty thing with a shapeless crown. "So, extraordinary, my dear—so ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his mind and was impatient to get into the air; for his purpose was a purpose to be uttered outside, and he had a fear that it might with delay still slip away from him. She however took her time; she drew out their quiet gossip as if she had wished to profit by their meeting, and this confirmed precisely an interpretation of her manner, of her mystery. While she rose, as he would have called it, to the question of Victor Hugo, her ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... related. The old minister was mistaken, as we have before seen. Mr. Fairweather had been settled in the place only about ten years, and, if he had heard a strange hint now and then about Elsie, had never considered it as anything more than idle and ignorant, if not malicious, village-gossip. All that he fully understood was that this had been a perverse and unmanageable child, and that the extraordinary care which had been bestowed on her had been so far thrown away that she was a dangerous, self-willed girl, whom ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sits by the mother's bedside and whispers to her. The two women have already had time to make friends, they have got to know each other, they gossip, they ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... first gentleman of the chamber, ending always in the admission of some new visitor. Each as he entered bowed profoundly three times, as a salute to majesty, and then attached himself to his own little clique or coterie, to gossip in a low voice over the news, the weather, and the plans of the day. Gradually the numbers increased, until by the time the king's frugal first breakfast of bread and twice watered wine had been carried in, the large square chamber was quite filled with a throng of ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... probable that the column in Defoe's Review, containing Advice from the Scandal Club, suggested his 'Lucubrations' to Steele. If so, it does not detract from his originality of treatment, for Defoe's town gossip is poor stuff. Addison, who knew nothing of the project beforehand, came, ere long, to his friend's assistance; but it was not until about eighty numbers had appeared, that he became a frequent contributor, and ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... talk of fever there was also a good deal of gossip about brigands going about, as is generally the case in Naples and its vicinity. Something was said to have happened to a party on one of the heights above Sorrento; and though nobody knew exactly what the something was, or was willing ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... which had a right to live, in virtue of their native force and freshness; hardly more than two; for we need not count in this category the records of events, such as Winthrop's Journal, or Prince's Annals, or even that quaint, garrulous, conceited farrago of pedantry and piety, of fact and gossip, Mather's "Magnalia." The two real American books were a "Treatise on the Will," and "Poor Richard's Almanack." Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin were the only considerable names in American literature in all that period ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... this case—all you can hand out big chunks of it. We want to know who that woman was. The way I figure it, this city is going to get a jolt at breakfast. Every one is going to be comparing notes. Out of that mass of gossip we may get ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... very reticent about the subject and continued to receive the attentions of the young artist, Will Beuland, and some six months after Mr. Royce returned to England she was married to the New York artist. No one seemed surprised, though it caused much gossip. ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... Come t' supper to-night?" said the Henry Clay; and so questions and answers flew back and forth. Men had met one another before, dory-fishing in the fog, and there is no place for gossip like the Bank fleet. They all seemed to know about Harvey's rescue, and asked if he were worth his salt yet. The young bloods jested with Dan, who had a lively tongue of his own, and inquired after their health by the town-nicknames ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... strike up to Mandalay. There might be a chance there to pick up a bit of river news which would help you. I wonder whether old Moung San is up in Mandalay yet. He started up river with his hnau weeks back, and you know how they dawdle along, picking up every scrap of river gossip." ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... my spirit yearns for thine Thine yearns for mine, why thus delay? And yet, what answer might be mine If, pausing on her way, Some gossip bade me tell Whence the deep sighs that from my ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... on a divan, and proceeded to plunge into all the flying gossip of the day. Incidentally she managed to hint that Servius Maccus, her devoted admirer, had told her that the night before Lucius Ahenobarbus and some of his friends had attacked and insulted a lady on her way back ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... exclaimed Eugenia, who formed one of the group of listeners to this precious bit of gossip; but whether she intended this cognomen for the cruel husband, or Mrs. Leah, we do not know, as she continued to question the old lady of Mrs. Hastings herself, asking if her health were delicate and if she ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... most part the people had too much to do, and were too intent upon their own business, to take much trouble to retail what they chanced to hear; but there are some things which, as the facetious man observed, the dead in their graves would gossip about if they could; and one of these themes, according to him, was that Principal Trenholme believed there had been something supernatural about the previous life of the old preacher. The story went about, impressing more particularly the female portion of the community, but certainly not without ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... dedicated to repose, I was never away from her. To this day I remember, with a tenderness which attaches to no other memories of mine, the books that I read to her, the sunny corner on the seashore where I sat with her, the games of cards that we played together, the little trivial gossip that amused her when she was strong enough for nothing else. These are my imperishable relics; these are the deeds of my life that I shall love best to look back on, when the all-infolding shadows of death ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... had no doubt the stranger was a foreign knight, who had once known the old Leicester family; but bade him mention the circumstance to no one. He feared, however, that the caution came too late, since Dame Idonea was not only an inveterate gossip, but was likely to hold in direful suspicion any one who had been inquired for by ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Heinrich to Germany, Teddy to London, and Hugh to Colchester, it had put a special brassard round Mr. Britling's arm and carried him out into the night, given Mrs. Britling several certificates, and interrupted the frequent visits and gossip of Mr. Lawrence Carmine; but so far it had not established a direct contact between the life of Matching's Easy and the grim business of shot, shell, and bayonet at the front. But now here was the Dower House accomplishing wonderful idioms in Anglo-French, and an animated ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... as though we had been on familiar terms with that wicked, corrupt, outwardly delightful society that gambled and drank, and scandalised the grave spirits of the nation, in the days when George III. was young. Horace Walpole was the letter-writer of letter-writers; his gossip carries the impress of truth with it; and, though he had no style, no brilliancy, no very superior ability, yet, by using his faculties in a natural way, he was able to supply material for two of the finest literary fragments of modern times. I take it ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Wednesday in Wheeson week, when the prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some; whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound? And didst thou not, when she was gone down stairs, ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... of voices downstairs, and she thought angrily of Rachela, and Molly, and Manuel, "making a little confidence together" over their trouble, and spicing their evening gossip with the strange thing that had happened to the Senor Doctor. She knew that Rachela and Manuel would call him heretic and Americano, and, by authority of these two words, accuse him ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... in the doorway, and one and another came to give Noko a bit of gossip. Rose crept off to bed presently. How fragrant the fresh balsam of fir was, and the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... up," said Uncle Marmaduke, "I can see that at a glance. So you've come in here, like me, eh? because the children bore you, and you want a quiet gossip over the world in general? Sit down then, take a cigar, if you don't think it will make you very unwell. I shouldn't recommend it myself, you know, before supper—but you're a man of the world and know what's good for ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... predilections. Neither George II. nor his queen had an iota of taste, either in language, conduct, literature, or art. To be vulgar, was haut-ton; to be refined, to have pursuits that took one from low party gossip, or heterodox disquisitions upon party, was esteemed odd: everything original was cramped; everything imaginative was sneered at; the enthusiasm that is elevated by religion was unphilosophic; the poetry that is breathed out from the works ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... fortune lay either way, for every rumour set the funds fluctuating; but without special information it was impossible to act, and no one dared to plunge heavily upon the strength of newspaper surmise and the gossip of the street. Warner knew that an hour's work might resuscitate the fallen fortunes of himself and his partner, and yet he could not afford to make a mistake. He returned to his office in the afternoon, half inclined to back the chances of peace, for of all war scares not one ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her bosom. Mr. Fabian, as we must continue from habit to call him, though his rightful style was now Mr. Rockharrt, went down to the reading room to send his own and his wife's cards to Chief Justice and Mrs. Pendletime, and to collect Washington gossip. ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... in my youth,' she said, 'and so thrown on my own thoughts and on those expressed in books, has been very helpful to me. Had I been given to gossip, and had there been people for me to gossip with, I should certainly never have accomplished ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... of the plain, Where Health and Slander welcome every train, Whence smiling innocence, its tribute paid, Retires in terror, wounded and dismayed— Dear lovely bowers of gossip and disease, Whose climate cures us that thy dames may tease, How often have I knelt upon thy green And prayed for death, to mitigate their spleen! How often have I paused on every charm With mingled admiration and alarm— The brook that runs by many a scandal-mill, The church whose ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... to warrant a little reserve of confidence, and of course putting an end to any thought of intimate alliance with "the Johns family." She even whispered in her most insidious manner into the ear of old Mistress Tew,—who, being somewhat deaf, is the most inveterate village gossip,—that "it was hard for the poor thing, when Reuben left ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... his Chronica, 1633, p. 381, for the quotation; also Bibliog. at end of Romany Rye.—13. Winchester: Rather Winchelsea, according to the Regimental Records.—14. A gallant frigate: A reminiscence of Norman Cross gossip in 1810-11. "Ninety-eight French prisoners, the crew of a large French privateer of eighteen guns called the Contre-Amiral Magon, and commanded by the notorious Blackman, were captured 16th October, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Here we are distinguished unfavourably from our neighbours—exceptions, of course, there must always be—but in general to betray an acquaintance with any literature beyond the last novel, or the current trash and gossip of the day, might provoke the charge of pedantry, but at any rate would fail in exciting the slightest sympathy. Hence men of letters, and women of letters, form a caste by themselves much to their own disadvantage, and still more to the injury of those to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... course, could have no love for this portly old gentleman of seventy. But it is pitiful to think he was madly infatuated. The poor old man, in spite of his unromantic appearance, had warm blood in his veins and plenty of romance in his heart. At last, in spite of gossip and opposition, they were married, and then, instead of settling down, as the happy groom had hoped, to a life of wedded bliss in one of his country houses at Dordrecht, Lady Van Tromp insisted on spending her honeymoon in Paris. There they went, and the very day of ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... she had always been, this cry, far more than the tears she was forcing back, revealed how much the future terrified her. She was there erect and brave in spite of everything; but what a downfall if she were no longer able to keep her room tidy, stew a piece of veal on Sundays, and gossip with the neighbours while awaiting her husband's return from work! Why, they might just as well be thrown into the gutter and carried ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... you, I mean," said Chet, earnestly. "No passing it around with the usual platter of gossip on ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... feeling something of vexation and annoyance. If I were to be carried off at all by a man of rank and station, it would have been almost better if he had succeeded in marrying me than that the affair should be a mere matter of gossip. Certainly, that my rescue should be owing to one of the factious lawyers, and to that mischievous party leader the Coadjutor, was an unmixed grievance. After all my follies at Nid de Merle, I was quite sufficiently ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recognise the voices, or any one among them? He did not say so even to himself, but turned round and hurried back, stumbling through the darkness which hid and blinded him. In the village he met a woman with a lantern, who he did not doubt was Lizzie's grandmother, the village authority; no doubt a gossip, quite disposed to search into other people's mysteries, quite unaware of the secret story which had connected itself with his own. She passed him in a little mist of light in the midst of the dark, raising her head instinctively as he passed with a sense of something unfamiliar, but of course ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... of the time, for she shrank from mingling with the guests of the hotel, since she knew there would be a great deal of gossip over her approaching nuptials, and she did not like to ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... which Mr. Bronte made his children sympathize with him in his great interest in politics must have done much to lift them above the chances of their minds being limited or tainted by petty local gossip. I take the only other remaining personal fragment out of "Tales of the Islanders"; it is a sort of apology, contained in the introduction to the second volume, for their not having been continued before; the writers ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... my superintending companions with whom I established anything like a familiar acquaintance was Mother Martha. She had no outward attractions to recommend her; but she was simple, good-humored, ready to gossip, and inquisitive to a perfectly incredible degree. Her whole life had been passed in the nunnery; she was thoroughly accustomed to her seclusion, thoroughly content with the monotonous round of her occupations; not at all anxious to see ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... the natives here laugh at him, although I remember they called him 'Old Swallowtail' when I was directed to him as the only resident real estate agent. I found the old man quite shrewd in driving a bargain and thoroughly posted on all the affairs of the community. However, he is not a gossip, but inclined to be taciturn. There is a fathomless look in his eyes and he is cold and unresponsive. Country life breeds strange characteristics in some people. The whimsical dress and mannerisms of old Mr. Cragg would ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... all this land. But who is he? Of what land is he a native? Who knows him?" "Not I!" "Nor I!" "But no snow has fallen on him! Rather is his armour blacker than monk's or priest's cape." Thus they engage in gossip; and the two champions let their horses go; for no longer do they delay because right eager and aflame are they for the encounter and the shock. Cliges strikes so that he presses Sagremors' shield to his ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... saw Thomas his eye brightened, and he joined him at once, for he dearly loved a gossip, and he had in his mind a long story that he was impatient to pour out to somebody. The story was so long and so interesting that the whistle of the fast-approaching train was heard long before it was ended, and of his own ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... leave it, howsoever, both it and I am at your service. I ask you not as the value of the thing, for then I should demand of you a thousand crowns, so the cardinals Montalto, Fernese, the great Duke of Tuscany, my gossip, with divers other princes, have given me; but I despise money. Only to shew my affection to you, honourable gentlemen, and your illustrious State here, I have neglected the messages of these princes, mine own offices, framed my journey hither, only to present you ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... dear; his nature was the same, but he was strong enough to restrain his nature, and wise enough to know that his magnificence was incompatible with ordinary interests. As he got to be older he broke down, and took up with mere mortal gossip. But I think it must have ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... of telling his story in letters necessitates the acceptance of various improbabilities; reticence has sometimes to be violated, and confidences to be unduly made. Still, with all these allowances, the gossip of every one with regard to the likelihood of Sir Charles returning Harriet's very thinly veiled attachment is highly undignified, and often indecent. The Object himself, for whom no less than seven ladies were at that time openly sighing, alone ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... who from their position in society might be supposed to be better informed, considerable anxiety has been expressed to ascertain whether any portion of the skeleton of the murdered cook has been discovered beneath the flooring of the cellar, which tradition, fomented by illiterate gossip, pointed out as the place of his interment. Your correspondents would confer a heraldic benefit if they would point out other instances—which I believe to exist—where family reputation has been damaged by ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... perfectly free to follow the bent of his inclinations, except to penetrate behind the scenes of the aftmost deck, where, carefully hidden from the rude gaze of the male passengers by a canvas partition, the Moslem ladies have their little world of gossip and coffee, and fragrant cigarettes. Every public conveyance in the Orient has this walled-off retreat, in which Osmanli fair ones can remove their yashmaks, smoke cigarettes, and comport themselves with as much freedom as though in the seclusion of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... March, hares, rabbits, partridges, deer, in short, all the game that was not eaten at the chateau, was sold at Blangy and at Soulanges, where Tonsard's two daughters peddled milk in the early mornings,—coming back with the news of the day, in return for the gossip they carried about Les Aigues, and Cerneux, and Conches. In the months when the three Tonsards were unable to hunt with a gun, they set traps. If the traps caught more game than they could eat, La Tonsard made pies of it and sent them to Ville-aux-Fayes. In harvest-time seven Tonsards—the old mother, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... If some gossip to whom she sighed and shook her head, and wondered what could possibly ail Arthur—who still ate his dinner heartily, and had as many orders for portraits as he cared to fulfill—suggested that there was a woman in the case, good ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... Hospital,—he was not long in discovering that my abode was with my brother-in-law, in Little Warner Street, Clerkenwell; and just at that time I was installed housekeeper, and was solitary. He, therefore, would come and revive his loved gossip, till, as the author of the "Urn Burial" says, "we were acting our antipodes,—the huntsmen were up in America, and they already were past their first sleep in Persia." At this time he lived in his first lodging upon coming to London, near to St. Thomas's ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... doesn't. Well, I am putting up this pyramid to stay put, and I don't give a damn for its looks. I hear all sorts of funny cracks about it. My barber is a sharp nigger and keeps his ears open: he brings me all the gossip. But I let it go. This is my pyramid. I am putting up the money for it, and I have got to be mortared up in it when I die. So I am trying to make a good, substantial job of it, and letting the mere beauty ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... was sorry to hear that Lady Diana had met with a nasty motor accident; but had escaped with only slight injuries."—Mrs. Gossip in "The Daily Sketch." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... her head and looked at her. "No," she was about to say shortly, just as she had repulsed many little offers of Polly's for the past few days; but somehow this morning the crackling of the fresh sheet in the girl's hand, suggestive of crisp bits of gossip, was too much for her to hear indifferently, especially as she was in a worse state of mind than usual over ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... was all fresh that night I jotted down pages of such gossip in a little red note-book. I had names and dates. That bunch of piece-workers must have thought I was a bear for details, or else nutty in the head; but they was too polite to mention it so long as I insisted each time that it ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... cast his eyes over that unfortunate city, which contained so much deep misery and so many heroic virtues, and recalling the saying of Louis XI, his political predecessor, as he himself was the predecessor of Robespierre, he repeated this maxim of Tristan's gossip: ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Salem; bygone generations have left in the town a whole legacy of legend and shudder-rousing passages of family tradition, with many well-supported tales of supernatural hauntings; and it is worth while to notice how frequent and forcible a use Hawthorne makes of this enginery of local gossip and traditional horror, in preparing the way for some catastrophe that is to come, or in overshooting the mark with some exaggerated rumor which, by pretending to disbelieve it, he causes to have just the right effect upon the reader's mind. Some of the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... was followed. Coke, very reluctantly, knowing well who had given it, and why, "not only weeping himself but followed by the tears" of all the Court of Common Pleas, moved up to the higher post. The Attorney Hobart succeeded, and Bacon at last became Attorney (October 27, 1613). In Chamberlain's gossip we have an indication, such as occurs only accidentally, of the view of outsiders: "There is a strong apprehension that little good is to be expected by this change, and that Bacon may prove a ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... were busy, she could not help noticing Mrs. Devar's taciturn mood. That a born gossip, a retailer of personal reminiscences confined exclusively to "the best people," should eat stolidly for five consecutive minutes, seemed somewhat of a miracle, and Cynthia, as was her habit, came ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... poseurs Lady Durwent jingled her town house and her title—and the response was instantaneous. She became the hostess of a series of dinner-parties which gradually made her the subject of paragraphs in the chatty columns of the press, and of whole chapters in the gossip of London's refined circles. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... course, was to tell Diva about the revelation that had burst on her the night before. Diva was incomparably the best disseminator of news: she walked so fast, and her telegraphic style was so brisk and lucid. Her terse tongue, her revolving feet! Such a gossip! ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... said to be a corruption of Mandeville (Sir John), who published a book of travels, full of idle tales and maundering gossip. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... When it comes to gossip and idle tales and foolish conversation and things of that sort, we ought to let such go "in at one ear and out at the other"; we should be very careful that they find no lodging-place in our hearts. That is the only ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... of the religious gossip of the countryside—how it was said that another priest, a Mr. Nelson, had been taken, in London, as Mr. Maine had been in Cornwall; that, it was said again, priests would have to look to their lives in future, and not ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... husband, who does not appear to have much business of his own, gets his share in that he sits among the wealthy and honoured inhabitants of the town, 'in the gates,' the chief place of meeting for business and gossip. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to the church; for there is always something to see about a church, whether living worshipers or dead men's tombs; you find there the deadliest earnest, and the hollowest deceit; and even where it is not a piece of history, it will be certain to leak out some contemporary gossip. It was scarcely so cold in the church as it was without, but it looked colder. The white nave was positively arctic to the eye; and the tawdriness of a continental altar looked more forlorn than usual in the solitude and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... servants and dependents, wearing silk dresses on week days, and setting silver plate before the meanest guest. The women of Polotzk were breathless over her wardrobe, counting up how many pairs of embroidered boots she had, at fifteen rubles a pair. And Hode's manners were as much a subject of gossip as her clothes, for she had picked up strange ways in her travels Although she was so pious that she was never tempted to eat trefah, no matter if she had to go hungry, her conduct in other respects was not strictly orthodox. For one thing, she was in the habit of shaking hands with ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... from the one to the other with perfect ease; and honestly pleased at having escaped a long, dull, hot afternoon in the Casino, the older woman set herself to please and amuse Sylvia. She thoroughly succeeded. A clever gossip, she seemed to know a great deal about all sorts of interesting people, and she gave Sylvia an amusing account of Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, whose splendid chateau they saw ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... more than you have already been told about your father. I have promised that you shall go into your mother's room and take possession of it on your fifteenth birthday. That is enough. I am grieved that you should have listened to vulgar gossip about our affairs; but I may tell you that your mother left money to provide for you ten times over, if ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... and ashamed as though a door had been suddenly opened on a terrible secret thing that was customarily locked up in a closet. But the uncomfortable feeling soon passed, and they began to talk about the strange woman and to gossip and play and amuse themselves with her sorrow. A crowd collected about the aide, who grew more and more voluble and important each time he repeated ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... interposed. Ah! Santa Maria! What was all that! Was it not enough to talk old woman's gossip and tell vaqueros tales at home, without making uneasy the strangers? She would have none of ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sent one from his court to educate her in all that any queen should know. They called her the Lavarcam, which, in our tongue, really means the Gossip, and she was one of royal blood who belonged to a class that in those days had been trained to be chroniclers, or story-tellers. The Lavarcam was a clever woman, and she marvelled at the wondrous ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... contemporary, Francis Bacon. Aubrey in his laboriously compiled Short Lives, in which he shows a friendly and admiring attitude toward Bacon, definitely states that he was a pederast. Aubrey was only a careful gleaner of frequently authentic gossip, but a similar statement is made by Sir Simonds D'Ewes in his Autobiography. D'Ewes, whose family belonged to the same part of Suffolk as Bacon's sprang from, was not friendly to Bacon, but that fact ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Medenham, with eyes now more intent on the hotel than on the road. "Influences other than Aunt Susan's must be at work. My father would never have rushed off in a fever from town merely because of some ill-natured gossip in a letter from ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... now on his head, yet ever graceful and performing all his feats of strength and skill without apparent effort. One never tires of this bright spark of life, the brave little voice crying in the wilderness. His varied, piney gossip is as savory to the air as balsam to the palate. Some of his notes are almost flutelike in softness, while others prick and tingle like thistles. He is the mockingbird of squirrels, barking like a dog, screaming like a hawk, whistling like ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... that the personal or individual element is dying out. In the 'seventies the name of Drake, Bang, or Garnet were like household words. People talked of the great Pointers. They were spoken of in club chat or gossip; written about; and the prospects of the moors were much associated with the up-to-date characters of the Pointers and Setters. There is very little of this sort of talk now-a-days. Guns are more critically spoken ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... usually the case with matronly monkeys, chattered and gossiped about her private affairs. And, as she clasped her little son to her, with her mother's heart swelling with love and pride, she thought, with pleasurable anticipation, of the surprise and gossip there would be in the morning when the wonderful event ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... saloon for breakfast in the morning, I was subjected to solicitous inquiries from Mrs. Prior, the gossip of the ship. Her room adjoined Karamaneh's, and she had been one of the passengers aroused by the girl's cries in the night. Strictly adhering to my role, I explained that my patient was threatened with a second nervous breakdown, and was subject to vivid and ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... He did not understand why it was so intense, because he did not see what she saw—the gossip increasing in maliciousness; the constant watching and nods and winks, until in the end it became intolerable either to her or to Farnsworth. Nor was that the possible end. To leave an office under these conditions was a serious matter—a matter ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... amphitheatre, gallery. The moulds are filled nightly. There is no need to distinguish details. But the difficulty remains—one has to choose. For though I have no wish to be Queen of England or only for a moment—I would willingly sit beside her; I would hear the Prime Minister's gossip; the countess whisper, and share her memories of halls and gardens; the massive fronts of the respectable conceal after all their secret code; or why so impermeable? And then, doffing one's own headpiece, how strange to assume for a ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Aleck Babson. 'Babbling Babson,' he's called at the clubs. He's the most inveterate gossip in New York." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... touch upon two other persons whom I have mentioned, and then bring this long letter to a close. These are Mrs. Wilson and her daughter. The former was the widow of a substantial farmer, a narrow-minded, tattling old gossip, whose character is not worth describing. She had two sons, Robert, a rough countrified farmer, and Richard, a retiring, studious young man, who was studying the classics with the vicar's assistance, preparing for college, with a view to enter ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... herself were growing colder; but this is surmise, and no satisfactory explanation has been given to account for a form of marriage being gone through after so many years of the closest friendship. There is no reason to suppose that there was at the time any gossip in circulation about Stella, and if her reputation was in question, a marriage of which the secret was carefully kept would obviously be of no benefit to her. Moreover, we are told that there was no change in their mode ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... to himself: "She is spoiling my life; I am growing common, foolish; I have become dissolved in fool benevolence; it will end up in my marrying her, entering the excise or the assay office, or getting in among pedagogues; I'll be taking bribes, will gossip, and become an abominable provincial morel. And where are my dreams of the power of thought, the beauty of life, of love and deeds for all humanity?" he would say, at times even aloud, and pull his ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... you where you wish to go, are not necessarily enlivening as companions. The annals of "Boxiana" and "Pedestriana" and "The Cricket-Field" are as pathetic records of monomania as the bibliographical works of Mr. Thomas Dibdin. Margaret Fuller said truly, that we all delight in gossip, and differ only in the department of gossip we individually prefer; but a monotony of gossip soon grows tedious, be the theme horses ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... all the various belongings—gloves, handkerchiefs, handbag—which she perpetually let fall. He ran after the dog whenever it escaped from the lady's lap and threatened mischief in the studio; and by way of amusing her—the purpose for which he had been imported—he kept up a stream of small cryptic gossip about various common acquaintances, most of whom seemed to belong to the music-hall profession, and to be either "stars" or the satellites of "stars." Madame listened to him with avidity, and occasionally broke into a giggling laugh. She had, however, ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... "From the gossip of the town and barracks, I think we'll have our trouble soon enough," Hal replied. "You have fatigue duty this afternoon, ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... before the setting of two suns—every gossip along the Riva—and they about covered the population—had become convinced that Loretta was lost to the Quarter. Unless a wedding ring was to end it all Vittorio would never be so bold in his attentions ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Elsmere watched the baggage-man get a tin trunk and a canvas telescope ready for shipping. Presently the stub train arrived, stopped, and while the conductor and the agent were exchanging gossip, Elsmere got inconspicuously aboard, and stowed himself away in a corner, so successfully that it was not till the brakeman called "Hampton" that the conductor ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... in mind, sir," Arnold said, "that if it comes to light afterwards, as it very probably may, that the man was first discovered in Mrs. Weatherley's boudoir, the scandal and gossip will be a great deal worse than if you came forward and told ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... if she would die. She would tell them the whole trick. They all knew what a trouble to the convent was this Anna Apenborg from her curiosity—not once or twice, but ten times a day, running in and out with her chat and gossip. She had tried all means to prevent her, but in vain. Even in the middle of her prayers, the said Anna would come in to tell her what one sister was cooking, and another getting, or some follies even ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... mystic belief of the people in the Emperor; for only by diminishing the dignity of the monarch could the revolutionary cause make headway. And during and after the change all the official documents, school textbooks, press views and social gossip have always coupled the word monarch with reprobation. Thus for a long while this glorious image has been lying in the dirty pond! Leaving out the question that it is difficult to restore the monarchy ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... mite societies of the several churches in Sardis had been merged into one consolidated Lint-Scraping and Bandage-Making Union, in whose enlarged confines the waves of gossip flowed with as much more force and volume as other waves gain when the floods unite a number of small ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... to the gossip excited by Katherine's wedding, and what impression does Act III give you altogether of Bianca's character? Is the bad report of it in Act IV, made by Hortensio, as the Musician, Lisio, with Tranio, quite ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... his affright, and returned with the empty crate to the King, who said to him, "O my son-in-law, 'twould seem thou hast not foregathered with thy friend the Merman to-day." Replied Abdullah, "I went to him but that which he gave me I gave to my gossip the baker, to whom I owe kindness." "Who may be this baker?" asked the King; and the fisherman answered, "He is a benevolent man, who did with me thus and thus in the days of my poverty and never neglected me a single day nor ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the second sight; upon magic in all its branches; and upon the laws against false diviners and soothsayers. Beside showing the keenness of his interest in the supernatural, the author deliberately avoided any occasion for talking gossip or for indulging "persons of airy tempers" with sentimental love-tales. "Instead of making them a bill of fare out of patchwork romances and polluting scandal," reads the preface signed by Duncan Campbell, "the good old gentleman who wrote ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... him up bodily and dashed him to the ground so that blood gushed from his nose and he lay there bewildered, white, and still. Lum rarely went to church, and he never talked religion, politics, or neighborhood gossip. He was really thought to be quite stupid, in spite of the fact that he could make lightning calculations about crops, hogs, and cattle in his head. However, one man knew better, but he was a "furriner," a geologist, a "rock-pecker" from the Bluegrass. To him Lum betrayed an uncanny eye in discovering ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... quivering lips, "prate not to me of thy vain legends and gossip's tales! think not to snatch from me my possession in another, when thine own life is in my hands. Unhand the maiden! throw down thy sword! return home without further parley, or, by my faith, and the blades of my followers—(look at them ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... belong as such to literature come under this last head. The result of a perfect fusion of the two other styles, they exhibit a sparkle, a pungency, and lightness of touch, which take the curse from mere gossip, supple the joints of intellectual disquisition, and mark unmistakably the epistolary artist. The letter-writer, no less than the poet, is born, not made, and his art, though for the most part unconscious, is no less an art. The expression of every sentiment, ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... he found a bench in a quiet place under the shorings of the boardwalk close up alongside one of the lesser bathing pavilions, and they sat there, and he talked and she listened. The man had an endless fund of gossip about amusing and noted people; most of them, it would seem, were his intimates. Telling one or two incidents in which these distinguished friends had figured, he felt it expedient to sink his voice to a discreet undertone. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... For at this store the Malpais country bought its ammunition, its tobacco, and its canned goods; and on this porch its opinions had sifted down to convictions. From this common meeting ground the gossip of Cattleland ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... ill-humour you have attempted to poison them by gratuitous insinuations, which are far more crafty and false than anything with which you can justly charge me. That I happen to be pale, and sometimes to look diffident, is no business of yours; that I am fond of books, and indisposed for common gossip, is still less your business; that I am a 'romancing chit of a girl' is a mere conjecture on your part. I never romanced to you nor to anybody you know. That I am the parson's niece is not a crime, though you may be narrow-minded enough to think it so. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... came to see Yourii because, at home, by himself, he was sad and worried. Lida's refusal still distressed him, and he could not be sure if he felt grieved or humiliated. As a straightforward, indolent fellow, he had so far heard nothing of the local gossip concerning Lida and Sarudine. He was not jealous, but only sorrowful that the dream which brought happiness so ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... previously Edwin and Maggie had seen their father considerably agitated by an item of gossip, casually received, to which it seemed to them he attached an excessive importance. Namely, that old Shushions, having been found straying and destitute by the authorities appointed to deal with such matters, had been taken to the workhouse and was dying there. Darius had heard the news ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... rehearsal, sir," Packer answered in haste. "Entirely outside. She wanted to know if I'd heard any gossip about her husband lately. That's it, ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... when Ready asked him if we were out of our course? I must say I thought it was a silly question to put. It was the same the other evening about the cargo. If the skipper says we're in ballast why not believe him? Why repeat steerage gossip, about mysterious cargoes, at the cuddy table? Captains are always touchy about that sort of thing. I wasn't surprised at his ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... the river of death once crossed, to stretch onward and onward through realms, at present inconceivable, of beauty, of knowledge, and of love. And so, for the moment, solitude was sweet to him, leaving him free of petty cares and anxieties—he moving forward, ignorant of the gossip which in point of fact surrounded him, innocent of the feminine plots and counterplots of which his blameless bachelorhood was at once the provoking cause and the object; while in his eyes—though ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... found herself so much at home already, that without delay she instituted a preliminary examination of the children all round—which Mr Toodle much admired—and booked their ages, names, and acquirements, on a piece of paper. This ceremony, and a little attendant gossip, prolonged the time until after their usual hour of going to bed, and detained Miss Tox at the Toodle fireside until it was too late for her to walk home alone. The gallant Grinder, however, being still there, politely offered to attend ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... telling how Cardan was about to publish certain new mathematical rules in a book on Algebra, and hinting that in all probability these rules would prove to be Tartaglia's, whereupon he at once jumped to the conclusion that Maphio's gossip was the truth, and that this book would make public the secret which Cardan had sworn to keep. He left many of Cardan's letters unanswered; but at last he seems to have found too strong the temptation to say something disagreeable; so, in answer to a letter from ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... cast-iron tables and uncomfortable chairs that repose on a flooring of chill cement tiles—where, in sheer desperation, two or three of us, muffled up to our ears, congregate before dinner to exchange gossip ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... battle songs in which Lawrence Minot sang the early victories of Edward from Halidon Hill to the taking of Guines, and inspired Geoffrey le Baker to repeat with absolute confidence every malicious story which gossip told to the discredit of the French king and his people. It was under the influence of this spirit that the steps were taken, which we have already recorded, to extend the use of English, notably in ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... they are in bed," he said. "They always have a good long gossip; and, as long as they are down in good time I don't like to be too strict. But, my dear Lee. You don't think there is ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... in those tent-roofed cottages which were so common in the old mining camps, and now three of them appeared in their proper garb, well-gowned young housewives and discreet to a degree which must have exasperated those of their neighbors inclined to gossip. For these ladies had nothing to say concerning whence they had come or the business of their husbands. Two of those husbands were now spending much of their time in other camps and came home but seldom to pay brief visits to their wives. The third ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... this same connection, tells several other stories, vague in origin, and sounding like mere gossip, but still worthy of consideration. According to one of them, Washington maintained a public ferry, which was customary among the planters, and the public paid regular tolls for its use. On one occasion General Stone, the authority for the previous ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... 7,500,000 bales of cotton, worth $450,000,000, and its cash equivalent in grain, grasses and fruit. This enormous crop could not have come from the hands of sullen and discontented labor. It comes from peaceful fields, in which laughter and gossip rise above the hum of industry, and contentment runs with the singing plough. It is claimed that this ignorant labor is defrauded of its just hire, I present the tax books of Georgia, which show that the negro twenty-five years ago a slave, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... ladies have chatted for a time about the latest official appointments, some court gossip, the latest fashion in robe ornamentation, and the newspaper news at home and abroad—for the Chinese have ten or a dozen newspapers in Peking, among which is the first woman's daily in the world—the hostess invites her guest to see her garden. They pass ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... so apparent in his social intercourse; and before he has been three months in Ashfield, he has given tongue to gossip, and all the old ladies comment upon his enslavement to the pretty Rose Elderkin. And they talk by the book; he is desperately enamored. Young clergymen have this way of falling, at sight, into the toils, which is vastly refreshing to middle-aged observers. But we have no occasion to detail ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... would have dared to exhibit. This album contained portraits, about thirty in number, of her intimate friends, whom the world, first and last, had given her as lovers. The number was a calumny; but had rumor said ten, it might have been, as her friend Madame d'Espard remarked, good, sound gossip. The portraits of Maxime de Trailles, de Marsay, Rastignac, the Marquis d'Esgrignon, General Montriveau, the Marquis de Ronquerolles and d'Ajuda-Pinto, Prince Galathionne, the young Ducs de Grandlieu and de Rhetore, the Vicomte ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... picking up the widely-scattered grains of corn by millions till the bushel measure is piled high; and lo!—the five grains that are the grains always escape its sight and roll away and hide themselves. The poor devil, being a primitive creature, shrieked and flew away in despair at his failure. Gossip hugs its false measure and says loftily that the five real grains are ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... that even in her absorption Minty noticed the change. "But ye're not goin' to tarry over there, ner gossip—you hear? Yer to take this yer message. Yer to say 'that it will be onpossible for me to come back there, ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... to tragedy. Seizing the first available weapon, a flail, which he wielded with uncommon skill, in one mad moment the indignant youth smote the other hip and thigh,—the first, and for years the only, time he was ever known to lose control of himself. In ten seconds the battered gossip was sprawled full length, and they who would have rushed to tear his assailant away stood amazed to see him tearfully imploring ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... of the concierge at the sub-prefecture at Sedan. She was a worker in Delaherche's factory, and he applied to her for information regarding the course of the battle, as she was in a position to hear the gossip of the officers and officials. When Napoleon III decided to request an armistice from the Prussians, it was Rose who furnished a tablecloth to be used as a white ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... dressed up every day, and with a joyful look went down to the harbor to gossip with the other wives. She said that this delay was but natural: was it not the same event every year? These were such safe boats, and had such ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... outdone. He very quietly explained the reasons which had influenced him in choosing these rooms, the principal one being that there was no concierge, and he was therefore assured absolute liberty in his movements, as well as entire immunity from indiscreet gossip. "Certainly, my dear mother," he added, "it is a lonely and unattractive neighborhood; but you will find all the necessaries of life near at hand. The owner of the house lives on the floor above. I ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... have added a peculiar zest. Now, let us go and appear before the world, and smile, and laugh, and eat, and gossip. Let the heart throb with a dull pain, if it will; the mask is ours to ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... play cards as they travel homeward. Others talk gossip, and tens of thousands waste too much time on ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... quite vex myself about my stupid joke," said Wilhelm. "I ought to have known him better; he is of a strange, unhappy character. Give me your hands! We will mention to no one what has occurred; it would only give occasion to a deal of gossip, and wound him deeply, and he is an ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... sounded, that the writing should, in every case, be subordinated to the speaking. [Footnote: I do not know whether the advocates of phonetic spelling have urged the authority and practice of Augustus as being in their favour. Suetonius, among other amusing gossip about this Emperor, records of him: Videtur eorum sequi opinionem, qui perinde scribendum ac loquamur, existiment (Octavius. c. 88).] This, namely that writing should in every case and at all costs be subordinated ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... a hint not at all likely to be thrown away upon Mr. Leek, who was the grand gossip-monger of the place, and he treasured it up in order to see if he could not make something of it which would ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... field of Austerlitz. My father took a different view. He declined to take advantage of this opening into the upper world, because, as he said, I don't know from what experience, the conversation turned chiefly upon petty personal gossip. The feasts of the great were not to his taste. He was ascetic by temperament. He was, he said, one of the few people to whom it was the same thing to eat a dinner and to perform an act of self-denial. In fact, for ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... or try to eat, even though the realities of life have been blown away, and one is moving in a sort of dream, with the fear of awakening always present—Captain Dan, coming into the house for dinner, expressed his opinion of Trumet gossip mongers. ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... modest. Comfortably I'd sit with them and sew, With one or two mayhap at the spinning wheel. On moonlight nights Gathered for cozy confidences, About the hearthfire, or in the dark, We'd tell each other what the people say, The gossip of the town, the scandals, Discuss the fashions and the last election. I surely would rise above the average— I would be an artist needlewoman, Broidering on silk and velvet The flowers of the field, And other patterns, copied from models, So rich in color as to make them ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... in the novel-reading world some doubts as to who really wrote this book; and various rumours, more or less romantic, have been current in Mayfair, the metropolis of gossip, as to the authorship. For example, Jane Eyre is sentimentally assumed to have proceeded from the pen of Mr. Thackeray's governess, whom he had himself chosen as his model of Becky, and who, in mingled love and revenge, personified him in return as Mr. Rochester. In this case, it is evident that ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... so artfully adorned with scandalous details, and persons of so great eminence and importance were apparently mixed up in it, while, at the same time, the evidence was so circumstantial, that it was no wonder the matter gave food for plenty of curiosity and gossip. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... returned Edna, "I am old enough to have the right to choose my own friends, and I shall certainly decline to drop them just because the Court chooses to make my friendships a subject for foolish gossip." ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... of aesthetic and refined tastes, a comfortable and congenial home with a Duchess. The Advertiser, who is a person of much intelligence, and a most agreeable gossip, regards her pleasant companionship as an equivalent for the social advantages (including carriage-drives, and an introduction to the very best society), for which she is prepared to offer the very handsome remuneration of ten ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... on, and, his former train of thought being entirely disturbed, he went to the 'Mother Huff,' where he was a frequent visitor, his elaborate courtesies to Mrs. Buggins enabling him to hear from that lady's pious lips all the latest news, scandal and gossip, true or untrue, concerning the ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... I hope Trebell will believe I have no personal feelings in this matter, but we may as well face the fact even now that O'Connell holding his tongue to-morrow won't stop gossip in the House, club gossip, gossip in drawing rooms. What do the Radicals really care so long as a scandal doesn't get into the papers! There's an inner circle with its eye ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... one of its stems murmured the Fountain of Mimir, in Niflheim or Mistland, from whose urn welled up the ocean and the rivers of the earth. Odin had his outlook in its top, where kept watch and ward the All-seeing Eye. In its boughs frisked and gambolled a squirrel called Busybody, which carried gossip from bough to root and back. The warm Urdar Fountain of the South, in which swam the sun and moon in the shape of two swans, flowed by its celestial stem in Asgard. A tree so much extended as this ash of course had its parasites and rodentia ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... think it's altogether the correct thing to make remarks about a gentleman in his presence. I'm aware that ladies are given to gossip, but they generally do it behind a fellow's back. I've done nothing to deserve this ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... with us, reminiscences and gossip about her long went on in the house. Such gossip referred mostly to her will, which she had made shortly before her death, and of which, as yet, no one knew the contents except her bosom friend, Prince Ivan Ivanovitch. I ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... significant request that he might "pull down one partition, and so make two rooms—one." Neville, in a friendly letter beginning with "hearty commendations unto you and to Mrs. More," and ending with light gossip, urged Sir William to let the rooms to Farrant, and recommended Farrant as a desirable tenant ("I dare answer for him"). Neither letter mentioned the purpose for which the rooms, especially the large room referred to by Farrant, ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... was at first of cows; thence it passed to village gossip, pigs, hedgehogs, and so back to cows once more. Knowing the imaginative bent of her mind, I put the question to her: "Wouldn't you like to know just what becomes of the milk you send off to Leeds ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... word of editorial, and containing a small number of well-selected paragraphs of news. It had also occasionally a short notice of the plays of the night before, and a few items of what we now call society gossip. The advertisements, after the paper had been in existence three years, averaged about fifty a day, most of them very short. Its price was threepence, English, equal to about twelve cents of our present currency. The paper upon which it was ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... leave their own abode early in the morning, and to reach that of Mr Prentiss before sunset. There was the house of a new settler about half-way, and several huts where refreshment could be obtained, so that their visits became still more frequent and expected. Even in the bush gossip is not impossible, and it became pretty generally reported that the two Mr Gilpins were about to marry the two daughters of ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... personally from Mr. Wright; but it was common gossip about town that he had visited the newly-discovered vein several times, and spent one entire ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... the Post it was a busy week for Mr. MacDonald and his people, for all the Bay hunters and Indians had trading to do, and most of them remained at least one night to gossip and discuss their various prospects and enjoy the hospitality of the kitchen; and then there was a dance nearly every night, for this was their season of amusement and relaxation in the midst of the months of bitter hardships ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... the flesh-pot chattered high, The knives were whetted and — then came I To Mahbub Ali the muleteer, Patching his bridles and counting his gear, Crammed with the gossip of half a year. But Mahbub Ali the kindly said, "Better is speech when the belly is fed." So we plunged the hand to the mid-wrist deep In a cinnamon stew of the fat-tailed sheep, And he who never hath tasted the food, By Allah! he ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... into Sasa's pretty head—one of those brilliant, clever, feminine ideas—that seemed to us, in that triumphant moment, to be the means of untangling all our difficulties. Though it was eight o'clock, and there was the risk of gossip in my driving Sasa French alone about the Municipality at such an hour, I put her into my buggy, whipped up my horse, and set a straight course for Seumanutafa, the high chief of Apia. He laughed a good deal, demurred somewhat, and was finally persuaded to squeeze his Herculean dimensions ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... knows Boccaccio need hardly trouble himself to know Margaret of Navarre. The second is that it is a loose if not obscene book, disgraceful for a lady to have written (or at least mothered), and not very creditable for any one to read. The third is that it is interesting as the gossip of a certain class of modern newspapers is interesting, because it tells scandal about distinguished personages, and has for its interlocutors other distinguished personages, who can be identified ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... had struck up a secret friendship with a young shopman, who did not care for the old woman, but persuaded her he did to make her give him money. And one day, when Abrosim was gone out to buy some new wares, the shopman called to gossip with Fetinia, when by chance he espied the duck; and, taking her up, he saw written under her wing in golden letters: "Whoso eats this duck will become a Tsar." The man said nothing of this to Fetinia, but begged and entreated her for love's sake to roast the duck. Fetinia told ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... these hills. Still following the slipper, we shall choose one somewhere east of the inn and present ourselves confidently at the front door. Failing there, we shall assault the postern and, perhaps, enrich our knowledge of life with the servants' gossip." ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... have two clear purposes: Their first purpose is to make certain that this Nation's security is not jeopardized by false servants. Their second purpose is to clear the atmosphere of that unreasoned suspicion that accepts rumor and gossip as substitutes ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... unlighted by gas, it is difficult at night, should it prove rainy and dark, to keep out of the gutters. At the point where four streets meet, you may generally observe a well, and around this well a knot of idlers, men and women, congregate and gossip, leaning against its palings; but the respectable portion of the inhabitants are never to be found in the streets, although they may be seen, on summer evenings, walking on the terrace of ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... custom of setting two chairs at the table to which they may return at any minute? Miss Hunter, what I do in the loneliness of that great house is not worth the gossip of ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... Isel. "She's a tongue as long as a yard measure, and there isn't a scrap of gossip for ten miles on every side of her that she doesn't hand on to the first comer. She'd know all I had on afore I'd been there one Paternoster, and every body else 'd know it too, afore the day ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... time when people tell you the stale gossip of Paris," added Galli, "you can tell them from me that they are mistaken about the Duprez expedition. I know Duprez's adjutant, Martel, personally, and have heard the whole story from him. It's true ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... French and was impudent to Madame," whispered Bobby, who knew all the school gossip. "Mrs. Eustice canceled ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... the principal apartment in the palace. Flambeaux and torches glowed from the roof and from the sides of this hall, and here the Court had assembled, half amused, half serious, as to the arrival of the peasant girl, about whom there had been so much strange gossip stirring. Now the grass grows in wild luxuriance over the pavement, and the ivy clings to the old walls of that noble room, in which, perhaps, the most noteworthy of all recorded meetings between king and subject then ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... and melancholy kindness with which the French lady received her, soothed and pleased Miss Ethel. She came and reposed in Madame de Florac's quiet chamber, or sate in the shade in the sober old garden of her hotel; away from all the trouble and chatter of the salons, the gossip of the embassies, the fluttering ceremonial of the Parisian ladies' visits in their fine toilettes, the fadaises of the dancing dandies, and the pompous mysteries of the old statesmen who frequented her grandmother's apartment. The world began for her at night; when she ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... selfishness. What can I do in the world? I have no interest in the game outside of her. No, Mart, the consumptive is right, 'tis up to you to slip away, genteel and quiet, so that your widow will not be troubled by anny gossip." ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... no one had recognised him. He had arrived the night before, and taken a room at the Pack-horse, nobody asking his name; had sat after supper in a corner of the smoking-room and listened to the gossip there, saying nothing. ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... usual acquaintances, and that she was capable of spending some time in theaters, concerts, and society without looking for him. Full too of talk of her frocks and neighbors, without wishing to interrupt the empty gossip with a look or a kiss to let him know that she was conscious of his presence, and in the middle of her idle talk to say nevertheless that her heart was with him. On the other hand, she showed the tenderest ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... excitement in Sturatzberg. Rumor flies fast, and the moment it was whispered that the city gates were watched, that Captain Ellerey, of his Majesty's Horse, was to be arrested, men began to stop and gossip at street corners, and women to stand upon their thresholds ready to give, or to receive, information. Strange stories grew current in this manner, which served to keep the excitement alive until more definite news were forthcoming. There was unwonted stir in the secret societies ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... words, if they are acid enough, are quoted and re-quoted. They pass from mouth to mouth, gaining in authority. By the time they reach the friendly country at which they are directed, they have taken on the appearance of an opinion representative of a nation. The Hun is well aware of the value of gossip for the encouraging of divided counsels among his enemies. He invents a slander, pins it to some racial grievance, confides it to the fools among the Allies and leaves them to do the rest. Some of them wander about in a merely private capacity, nagging without knowledge, ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... thin-skinned? What good does it do you? You are pining away in this hole of a lodging. You squirm when Mrs. Myers tries to be friendly with you; and I sometimes laugh at your expression when Eliza treats you to a little blarney about your looks. Now I would just as soon gossip and swear at her as go to tea ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... mother, the widow of the famous diplomat of imperishable memory," and Dona Emilia, forgetting her situation, fancying she was in the good old times, went to everything, in the same black gown, annoying with her "my dears" and her gossip the great ladies whose maids were richer and ate better than she and her daughter. If some old gentleman took refuge beside her, the diplomat's wife tried to overwhelm him with the majesty of ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... said Mr. Merriman, "you may have heard, since gossip occasionally concerns herself with me, that in my ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of course, a business man and has no time to overthrow Caesar. Recently, however, the imperialistic stew became hot and too much for him. The marriage of Miss Alice Roosevelt produced such a bad odor of court gossip, as to make the poor American Brutus ill with nausea. He grew indignant, draped his sleeve in mourning, and with gloomy mien and clenched fists, went about prophesying the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... headquarters of the picturesque corps of horse-tamers, the 'Remonta,' who are responsible for the mounting of the cavalry and the artillery of Spain. Conyngham had, at the suggestion of General Vincente, made such small changes in his costume as would serve to allay curiosity and prevent that gossip of the stable and kitchen which may follow a traveller to his hurt from one side of ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... more ill-natured passages, tells us that Temple was an Epicurean, thinking religion to be fit only for the mob, and a corrupter of all that came near him. Unkind words these, with just, perhaps, those dregs of truth in them which make gossip so hard to bear patiently. Was it true, as Courtenay thinks, that jealousy of King William's attachment to Temple disturbed the episcopal equipoise of soul, rendering his Lordship slanderous, ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... a most remarkable personality. From the first I had been compelled to admit that whatever the Russian public had said, there was a certain amount of basis for the gossip. His was the most weird and compelling personality that I had ever met. Even Stolypin had been impressed by him, though the Holy Synod had declared him to ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... which you subbed on the gossip club," finished Jane, jumping up. "I've got to go back to my room. Don't let me hurry anyone," she said indifferently. Then, just as a strange figure turned from the big boxwood bumper into ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... was dining here with a set of pretty well-known New York men and I had my back to his table. Suddenly I heard Roger's name and a great deal of laughing and in a moment I found myself overhearing (unavoidably) a disgusting and scandalous piece of gossip. In some strange way a garbled account of his marriage has come in from Boston, and Dodge, with that infernally suggestive way of his, was cackling about Roger's "jumping over the broomstick" with a "handsome gypsy" and letting ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... brought the fruit to the table, Mistress Stagg made room for her kindly enough; and she sat and drank her wine and went to her world of dreams, while her companions bartered town and country gossip. It has been said that the small white house adjoined a larger building. A window in this structure, which had much the appearance of a barn, was now opened, with the result that a confused sound, as of several people speaking at once, made itself heard. Suddenly the noise ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... them? He did not say so even to himself, but turned round and hurried back, stumbling through the darkness which hid and blinded him. In the village he met a woman with a lantern, who he did not doubt was Lizzie's grandmother, the village authority; no doubt a gossip, quite disposed to search into other people's mysteries, quite unaware of the secret story which had connected itself with his own. She passed him in a little mist of light in the midst of the dark, raising her head instinctively as he passed with ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... a bad pet; he is useless in the field, is somewhat snappish, has little sagacity, and is very cowardly: but there is an air of bon ton about him which renders him a fashionable appendage to a fine lady."—Parisian Gossip. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... mansion—a superb villa—at Auteuil, and the handsomest turnout on the road, which he presented to a banker's wife, without letting any one know his reason for doing so; all this was sufficient to make him the central point around which revolved the social gossip of the day. But, besides this, the handsome stranger makes his appearance at the theatres in the company of a lady in Grecian dress, whose transcendent beauty and countless diamonds awake alike admiration and cupidity. Like moths around the flame, society flutters ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... and hospitable, and told him his own version of all that had passed between him and Philip Feltram, and presented himself in an amiable point of view, and pleased the Doctor with his port and flatteries—for he could not afford to lose anyone's good word just now; and the Doctor was a bit of a gossip, and in most houses in that region, in one character or another, every ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... broken-hearted and in poverty. Drummond of Hawthornden states that Ben Jonson told him that Spenser "died for lack of bread in King Street, and refused 20 pieces sent to him by my Lord of Essex, and said He was sorrie he had no time to spend them." The story is probably a bit of exaggerated gossip. He was buried close to the tomb of Chaucer in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, his fellow-poets bearing the pall, and the Earl of Essex defraying the expenses of the funeral. Referring to the death of Spenser's great ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... for the Hearticulturist in August. If the Gossip Weed and Scandalwood have been kept in check, the young Heart Gardener will have ample time to enjoy the feast of color and sweetness that his labor and devotion ...
— Cupid's Almanac and Guide to Hearticulture for This Year and Next • John Cecil Clay
... not be supposed to know the secret source of the chaplain's eloquence, and his withering denunciations were supposed to arise from a consciousness of his own pure and open heart. The female admirers of Cargrim particularly dwelt in after-church gossip on this presumed cause of the excellent sermon they had heard, and when the preacher appeared he was congratulated on all sides. Miss Tancred for once forgot her purse story, and absolutely squeaked, in the highest of keys, in her efforts to make the young man understand the amount ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... but they try to think of something which limits the praise bestowed upon him, or altogether counteracts it. It seems to be an instinctive hostility to superiority as involving an implied criticism of one's own inferiority. It is that curious love of the worst that lies at the root of gossip. ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... he had nothing but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and triviality—these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I am now going to the war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... peculiarities of Africa yet to be explained is the almost supernatural rapidity with which rumour travels. Across the whole breadth of this darkest continent a mere bit of gossip has made its way in a month. A man may divulge a secret, say, at St. Paul de Loanda, take ship to Zanzibar, and there his own secret ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... "Too low for a hawk, too high for a buzzard." That homely old saying seemed to sum me up. And suppose I COULD still take pleasure in the company of my own old upper-middle class, how would that class regard me now? Gossip percolates. Little by little, I was sure, the story of my Keeb fiasco would leak down into the drawing-room of Mrs. Foster-Dugdale. I felt I could never hold up my head in any company where anything of that ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... rich, he bought him fine clothing, and hired him servants, and lived in grand style, performing all the duties of his office as though he had been used to it all his life. People noticed, however, that the new deputy-ranger never went out without his ax, which occasioned some gossip at first; but some one having suggested that he did so to show that he was not ashamed of his former condition, folk were satisfied,—though the truth was that he carried the ax ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... Catie, by dint of many questions, had discovered why the Methodist minister's wife was buried in the churchyard with a slice of marble set up on top of her, and why the blacksmith's bob-tailed cat lacked the major portion of her left ear. If ever there was a gossip in the making, it was Catie Harrison. More than that, her accumulated gossip was sorted out and held in reserve, ready to be applied to any end that suited her small convenience. Scott Brenton found that fact out to his cost, when the story ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the truth, if you will believe me, I say unto you, that from this town of Zamora there is gone forth a traitor to kill you; his name is Vellido Dolfos; he is the son of Adolfo, who slew Don Nuo like a traitor, and the grandson of Laino, another traitor, who killed his gossip and threw him into the river; and this is as great a traitor as the rest of his race; look to yourself therefore and take heed of him. I say this to you, that if peradventure evil should befall you by this ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... more this part of my subject. I called your attention in my last lecture to the true character of several words and forms in use among our country people, and claimed for them to be in many instances genuine English, though English now more or less antiquated and overlived. 'Gossip' is a word in point. I have myself heard this name given by our Hampshire peasantry to the sponsors in baptism, the godfathers and godmothers. I do not say that it is a usual word; but it is occasionally employed, and well understood. ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... head and looked at her. "No," she was about to say shortly, just as she had repulsed many little offers of Polly's for the past few days; but somehow this morning the crackling of the fresh sheet in the girl's hand, suggestive of crisp bits of gossip, was too much for her to hear indifferently, especially as she was in a worse state of mind than usual over ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... remembered "it's fur her." The factory-girls with boisterous good-nature had tried to make her sociable when she first came; they invited her to stroll with them by the river in the summer evenings, to stand and gossip with them at the street corners, to join in their parties of pleasure on Sundays. But they soon found it was of no use; Maggie's one idea, when work was over, was to throw her little checked shawl over her head, and turn her steps quickly towards a certain house in ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... for much of his information. In compiling from the first of these sources, he is very liable to mis-statement, by investing everything in a new dress to conceal his piracies; and the latter source leaves him open to imposition—for much of his matter will be sheer gossip, partial statements, or unfounded tradition, which a long experience only could detect, and place in ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... Mr. Rainer was for going on and taking vengeance on the kidnappers. But Sir Tancred dissuaded him, pointing out that there was no need to have every gossip in Europe talking about Dorothy. If the police, who were in a bustle from Mentone to Genoa, caught them, it must be endured. But Dorothy had escaped unharmed, and the less fuss made ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... away. That was natural enough; no man likes to be disturbed in a conversation with a lady famed for her elegance and sensibility. But in truth the subject bored Madame de Lionne, since her personality could by no stretch of reckless gossip be connected with this affair. And it irritated her to hear it advanced that there might have been some woman in the case. This irritation arose, not from her elegance or sensibility, but from a more instinctive side of her nature. It became so great at last that she peremptorily forbade the ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... making his own plans as he went along. "If I tell these villagers outright that Mother Huldah is in need, each person will think, 'O well, Neighbor Jude, or Gossip Dorcas has more to spare than I. Someone else will take care of the poor old lady, I am sure.' And it will end in her getting nothing at all. I will not talk about her, but to each person I will talk about himself, for that is the ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... moreover, by the attitude of his friends. To be sure, they laughed, but in their laughter there was no trace of the ridicule he had feared. They took the situation as a very good joke on Henry, but at the same time, because gossip had already begun to build up a theory to explain that situation, there were several of them who wished that a similar joke, with a similar nubbin, might be played on themselves. They told this to Henry, they urged him to go ahead and become a strictly moral ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... billiard-table was under repair; and there were but two really skilled whist-players among the guests. In the atmosphere of dullness thus engendered, the men not only caught the infection of the women's curiosity, but were even ready to listen to the gossip of the servants' hall, repeated to their mistresses by the ladies' maids. The result of such an essentially debased state of feeling as this was not slow in declaring itself. But for a lucky accident, ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... and mischief for the sake of moral advantages may be studied in the case also of our womankind. The absorption in their toilettes guards them from many dangers to family sanctity. And from how much cruel gossip is not society saved by the prevalent passion ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... friend was quite unjustly suspected of having had a hand. Mr. Hall was also reported, whether truly or falsely, to have been a member of Wilkes's famous confraternity of Medmenham Abbey; and from this it was an easy step for gossip to advance to the assertion that the Rev. Mr. Sterne had himself been admitted to that ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... to them without exposing herself to much that was unpleasant, for the governor's free retainers and their friends, not to mention the guard of soldiers who, now that the gates were closed, were still sitting in parties to gossip; they would certainly not break up for some time yet, since the slaves were only now bringing out ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Selma's attention was constantly attracted to the Williamses by prominent newspaper allusions to their prosperity and growing fashionable prestige. What they did and where they went were chronicled in the then new style journalistic social gossip, and the every-day world was made familiar with his financial opinions and his equipages and her toilettes. The meeting in the street was an ordeal for Selma. Flossy had been shopping and was about to step into her carriage, the door of which was held open by an imposing liveried ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... discreet, and related at the time nothing of what had passed at that interview. But that the interview itself had taken place under such conditions was enough to set the tongue of gossip wagging. An echo of it reached the King, together with the story of that other business in the garden, and he was glad to know that the Duke of Buckingham was back in London. Richelieu, to vent his own malice against the Queen, sought to feed the ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... cannot dispose of his real estate without her consent; He cannot even deprive her of it by will. She may bring up his children carelessly and idiotically, cursing them with abominable manners and poisoning their nascent minds against him, and he has no redress. She may neglect her home, gossip and lounge about all day, put impossible food upon his table, steal his small change, pry into his private papers, hand over his home to the Periplaneta americana, accuse him falsely of preposterous adulteries, affront his friends, and lie about him to the neighbours—and he ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... the three days' old infant had, for a time, quieted its incessant cries. This sudden mention brought every dark face to bend low over the cradle, which Bessie, the nurse, had brought hither from the house, that she might share the gossip ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... the nearest public-house. That is the centre of country gossip. They would have told you every name, from the master to the scullery-maid. Williamson? It conveys nothing to my mind. If he is an elderly man he is not this active cyclist who sprints away from that young ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that first one and then another began to hunt the captain to question him, but only to obtain short polite answers, that officer being too busy to gossip after the fashion wished. They fared worse with the chief and second officers, who were quite short; and then one of the most enterprising news-seekers on board captured old Bostock, literally button-holing him with ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... literary gentleman, "I recognized YOUR HOOF" in any periodical whatever? Suppose the 40,000 subscribers, which the writer to New York "considered to be about the mark," should be between 90,000 and 100,000 (and as he will have figures, there they are)? Suppose this back-door gossip should be utterly blundering and untrue, would any one wonder? Ah! if we had only enjoyed the happiness to number this writer among the contributors to our Magazine, what a cheerfulness and easy confidence his presence ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stories of court gossip respecting the Queen and the Duchess of Marlborough, whose affection for one another was a byword throughout the realm. The Duke and Duchess were also most tenderly attached; and the private lives of Anne and her Prince George, and of the Duke and Duchess ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the next Parliament, took place the celebrated negotiation respecting the Infanta. The would-be despot was unmercifully browbeaten. The would-be Solomon was ridiculously over-reached. Steenie, in spite of the begging and sobbing of his dear dad and gossip, carried off baby Charles in triumph to Madrid. The sweet lads, as James called them, came back safe, but without their errand. The great master of king-craft, in looking for a Spanish match, had found a Spanish war. In February ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... too much muss!" tugging savagely at the clenched and unconscious hand. "Sacreminton! What for a death-grip is this Kerls? If I cut his hand off so iss there blood and gossip right away already. No—too much muss. Wait! I try ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... To be gossip, a thing must go through two mouths at least, and I had it first-mouth. I tell it you because I think it ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... came into Madge's room for a bit of the gossip that she dearly loved, but, as usual, obtained little information or surmise from the young girl. "I'm glad you came down," she said, "if only to prove to Graydon that you were ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... have heard her mutter to herself; could they have seen, it would have been to observe how frequently she looked up over the Mount, reproving the dawn for its promptness; if it had been possible for them to gossip, not improbably they would have said to each other, "Our friend is in a hurry this morning; the mouths she goes to feed ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... precision, the happy, distinguished melancholy sometimes united in a good-looking judge.... You watched the weighing of each word at its exit from the shaved, working lips, and the closure of their inexorable adamant behind its heels. As the last commonplace of club gossip, smoke-room heroics, and music-hall sentiment issued from these portals, transfigured by the moderate discount that made it twice itself, you not only saw it was final truth, or virility's quintessential emotion; you felt he had done something decisive, even gallant, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... sight; and he also knew there's a sort very frank and honest to their fellow men, but very much the reverse to their fellow women. So he just took stock and had speech with Richard off and on and heard the gossip and figured up Dick ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... through the car with his towering load of varicolored periodicals, and rather than be forced to the final resort of the unaccompanied traveler, she welcomed the advent of an acquaintance possessed of volubility of an ejaculatory, eruptive variety. After many gentle jets and spurts of gossip much remained to be told, as the lady hastily gathered up her impedimenta preparatory to alighting at ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... and so it had been kept dark. Quite intelligible, but so sad! Enough misgiving however remained in their minds, to prevent their going to condole with the dear Vicar; but not enough to prevent their roundly contradicting the rumours and gossip already coming to their ears. And then one day, when their friend Mrs. Curtis had said too positively: "Well, she doesn't wear a wedding-ring, that I'll swear, because I took very good care to look!" they determined to ask Mr. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... but there may be a straggler or two to come in later. Does the Shining One no longer know where his own thunderbolts have struck, that he sends his hired servants to gather up the gossip of the market-place?" ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Kilauea. The baggage animals ought already to have started, but we found they had been kept back, in case we should happen to forget anything. Quite a crowd assembled to see us off, and a good deal of gossip had to be got through, so that it was half-past nine before we were all mounted and ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... been busy with the wife of the Richest Trustee—as the widow she did not relax her hold. What the trustees said that day they only repeated from gossip: the little gray wisp of a woman was a nonentity—nothing more—with the spirit of a mouse. She held no position in society, and what she did with her time or her money no one knew. The trustees smiled inwardly and reckoned silently with themselves; at least they would ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... and ate it. He sat down with his back to an adobe wall and rolled a cigarette. The peons, loafing in the cool of the evening, naturally fell into gossip. Steve, intent on his own thoughts, did not hear what was said until a word snatched him out of his indifference. The word was ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... income as a workman but, under the influence of Gordon Hart, demanded also a swinging profit on the building materials. Ben now drove about town in a vehicle called a buckboard and spent the entire day hurrying from job to job. He had no time now to stop for a half hour's gossip with a prospective builder of a barn, and did not come to loaf in Birdie Spinks' drug-store at the end of the day. In the evening he went to the lumber office and Gordon Hart came over from the bank. The two men figured on jobs to be built, ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... demanded admiration, courtship, love. They always had; they always would. The literature of the ages attested it. He had been too precipitate—too hasty. He must give her time to recover from the shock she must have experienced from hearing the spiteful gossip about himself and Fanny Dodge. On the whole, he admired her courage. What she had said could not be attributed to the mere promptings of vulgar sex-jealousy. Very likely Fanny had been disagreeable and haughty in her manner. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... not permanently, I think, in the case of the artistic novel. As yet the women, who form the largest, if not the only cultivated class among us, have not taken very cordially to the Sunday edition, except for its social gossip; they certainly do not go to it for their fiction, and its fiction is mainly of the inferior sort with which boys and men beguile ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... my gayer moods, distraction for my cares, solace for my griefs, gossip for my idler moments, tears for my sorrows, counsel for my doubts, and assurance against my fears—these things my books give me with a promptness and a certainty and a cheerfulness which are more than human; so that I ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... as a private rather than risk not getting to Cuba at all. But, of course, he'll get his commission back again." The Sergeant's manner fooled neither Grafton nor Crittenden; both respected the old Sergeant's unwillingness to gossip about a man who had been his superior, and Grafton asked ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... very little of the truth ever did leak out. When it was known, as Herrick took good care it should be known, that Mr. Rose had gone to Italy to join his wife, who was wintering there, and would return with her after a few weeks spent together by the shores of the Mediterranean, gossip was ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... thin hand and laid it appealingly on Jane's. "I don't like to tell you. But—it's this: I told all my friends what you wanted. They know you, care for you, and they said for me to trust Fay to you. Women will talk, you know. It got to the ears of Mormons—gossip of your love for Fay and your wanting her. And it came straight back to me, in jealousy, perhaps, that you wouldn't take Fay as much for love of her as because of your religious duty to bring up another girl for ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... better man than Frank Ayres. Frank Ayres was only a popinjay. Beneath the tails of his coat he snapped his fingers at Frank Ayres, while he listened, with his own agreeable smile, to Mademoiselle de Cressy's devilled gossip. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... alone with his housekeeper, man-servant, and cook. He got up between ten and eleven in the morning, and after making his toilette he repaired to the confectioner's shop of Dona Romana, where he found congenial spirits, who told him all the current gossip of the place, and when this was exhausted, he withdrew to the dark, greasy-looking little room, pervaded by an overpowering smell of pastry, at the back of the shop, and there seating himself at a table, which matched its surroundings in dinginess, he indulged ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... with Mr. Spanker, followed by a long, desultory gossip, brought me another couple of hours nearer the final reward of my orthodox upbringing. In another hour, my horses were saddled, and I was having a drink of tea and a bit of brownie in ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... hospitality. Even the poorest cottage welcomed the festive season with green decorations of bay and holly—the cheerful fire glanced its rays through the lattice, inviting the passenger to raise the latch, and join the gossip knot huddled round the hearth, beguiling the long evening with legendary jokes and ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... day, one of the kloofs on the farm gave up a wig of golden hair, all muddy and weed-entangled. The natives hung it on a bush to dry, and there was much gossip among them that day, hastily hushed when any European ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... nothing that your friends need not hear, not even our great cavalry leader, General Wood. I was passing after a late errand, and seeing your light it occurred to me that I might come up to you and speak of some strange gossip that I have ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... just one poor one, whom they called the little peasant. He had not even so much as a cow, and still less money to buy one, and yet he and his wife did so wish to have one. One day he said to her: 'Listen, I have a good idea, there is our gossip the carpenter, he shall make us a wooden calf, and paint it brown, so that it looks like any other, and in time it will certainly get big and be a cow.' the woman also liked the idea, and their gossip the carpenter cut and planed the calf, and painted it as it ought ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... the affair as it stands at present, how is it that a nation plunged in materialism of the grossest kind has accepted idle rumours and gossip of the supernatural as certain truth? The answer is contained in the question: it is precisely because our whole atmosphere is materialist that we are ready to credit anything—save the truth. Separate a man from good drink, ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... later when Young Thomas heard that he was to be married to Adelia Williams in June. Eben Clark, the blacksmith, told him when he went to the forge to get his horse shod. Young Thomas laughed his big jolly laugh. Valley View gossip had been marrying him off for the last thirty years, although ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... works of fiction—the only ones admitted to the convent library—in which the hero was always a Legitimist vicomte who fought duels by the dozen but went twice a month to confession; and in part of the strong social scent of the gossip of her companions, many of them filles de haut lieu who, in the convent-garden, after Sundays at home, depicted their brothers and cousins as Prince Charmings and young Paladins. Euphemia listened and said nothing; ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... The reason and fancy, before they can be competent to appreciate such truths, must be trained in the study and worshipful meditation of subjects of commensurate mystery and sublimity. It is no wonder that when minds and hearts familiar only with houses and clothes and food, the trivial gossip and vanity of the hour, are summoned to grasp the idea of spiritual survival and an everlasting destiny of conscious adventures, they are overwhelmed and helplessly fail to represent to themselves the possibility of any such truth. This cause of doubt is very prevalent and effective; for ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... half. Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor then followed, and the others were left by themselves, to talk of the travellers, and feel their own dullness, till Mrs. Jennings was summoned to her chaise to take comfort in the gossip of her maid for the loss of her two young companions; and Colonel Brandon immediately afterwards took his ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... till after Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste had sailed away (November 18) that a piece of gossip came to King's ears that caused him uneasiness. According to the rumour, Lieutenant-Colonel Paterson, of the New South Wales corps, had stated that one of the French officers had told him that one of the purposes of the expedition was ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... An Arab told me that a pillar had fallen; it was all the same to me, to him, to the others, too. The sun came out hot. I like heat. My men sprawled in the tents; some watered, some went up to the town to gossip in the bazaar. I mounted and cast bridle on neck—you see how much I cared where I went! In two hours we had completed a circle—like a ruddy hawk above El Teb. And my horse halted beside the ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... of the ladies, however, I am informed, who interests herself in the construction of these most ingenious toys. Possessed of ample means, and more than ample leisure, she amuses herself in hours which might otherwise be devoted to gossip and tea, in putting together these various models of buildings, all differing in style, and of most singular materials. The church, for instance, is built of fragments of clinker, gathered from stove and grate, and held firmly together ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
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