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More "Mincing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Thus spoke Worldly-Wisdom, not mincing words, and back came Youth and Romance, passionately. "Aunt Frances, a woman hasn't any right to marry just because she thinks it is her best chance. She hasn't any right to make a man feel that he's won her when she's just ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... Pilgrims were true "daughters of Zion, walking with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, and mincing as they go." Save for the "nose jewels," the complaining and exhaustive list of the prophet Isaiah might serve as well for New England as for Judah and Jerusalem: "their cauls and their round tires like moons; the chains and the bracelets and the mufflers; ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... The skunk is the most 'disagreeable' of animals to man; but it is not, therefore, destroyed. I have a catalogue (Row, Row, Goad & Reece, brokers) of a fur sale (by the candle) at the London Commercial Sale Room, Mincing Lane, on the 21st and 22nd March, 1821, which I compare below with catalogues of fur sales in London on 27th and 28th January, and 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th, and 11th March, 1863. I include January, because musquash and beaver are sold in that month. This statement ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... amusement; but, again, a look toward the husband checked any inclination toward lightness of mood. Finally, he regarded Ferguson, and there, too, he beheld a passionate reproach. He did not trouble to stare at the girl. He remembered perfectly her cheap prettiness, her mincing manner, her flamboyant smartness of apparel from Grand Street emporiums of fashion. The strain of a false situation gripped him evilly, so that for the moment he faltered before it, uncertain as to his course. ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... tell me more about Mrs. Schuyler. Does she think Vicky Van killed Mr. Schuyler? Since you're in this thing so deep Win, there's no use mincing matters." ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... and satirical temperance in dealing with what he discredits is a pose by the side of this man's mental grace and courage. And you know how we usually denominate style: it is the little lace-frilled petticoat of the lady novelist's mincing passions, or the breeches that belong to a male author's mental respirations. But with this man, style is a spirit sword which cleaves between delusions and facts, which separates religion from reality and establishes it in our upper consciousness ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Gladys Bailey asked, suddenly awakening, as it were, from a reverie. The twins, a little heated from their exertions, were quite ready, and, holding their card-cases—envelopes filled with cards of home manufacture—in young-ladyish fashion, they started off, copying, as best they could, the mincing steps of Gladys. ...
— The Hickory Limb • Parker Fillmore
... never have allowed you to come here, Miss Sloane.—Excuse my frankness," she interjected, with a smile she meant to be friendly; "but you're frank with me; we're not mincing matters; and I have to be careful.—He'd have warned you that your errand's practical confession of your knowledge of something incriminating Berne Webster. If you didn't suspect the man even more strongly than I do, you'd never ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... who credit reincarnation, that if we married, those things you would have to do to keep your heart up would cause your next showing to degenerate into a slight motion of slime at the base of mountains. Think of the distance lost, Charles, for such a little mincing forward step. Come, the morning wanes. Fortunately there are things to do, no matter what cannot be done. I shall return you half of your fortune, which, you will remember, is wholly confiscate to the Crown, but upon the condition that ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... hundred eyes. Never sprouts in less than ninety-eight places. Should be put through the mincing-machine before planting. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... convenience of work and life, settle a number of industries related to the carrying trade. Every trade, market, or exchange is a centre of attraction. So the broking, banking, and the general financing businesses are grouped closely round the Royal Exchange. Mark Lane and Mincing Lane are centres of the corn and tea trades. In all town industries not directly engaged in retail distribution there are certain obvious economies and conveniences in this gregariousness. Agents, travellers, collectors, and others who have relations of sale or purchase with a number of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... nothing more; and when the julep appeared on a silver tray, he left the room and went upstairs to where Betty was waiting. "He's awful, there's no use mincing words, he's simply awful," he remarked in an ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... had to support me. A second later, over Halsey's shoulder, I saw something that turned my emotion into other channels, for, behind him, in the shadowy card-room, were Gertrude and Alex, the gardener, and—there is no use mincing matters—he was ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... table I had an opportunity of observing at my leisure the king and queen. The king was of medium height, and though not strictly handsome had a pleasant face. His nose was very long, his voice high-pitched and disagreeable; and he walked with a mincing air in which there was no majesty, but this, however, I attributed to the gout. He ate heartily of everything offered him, except vegetables, which he never ate, saying that grass was good only for cattle; and drank only water, having it served in two ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of a darker hue than the lord of the wallow, and of much slimmer build,—altogether less formidable in appearance. But he looked very fit and fearless as, after a moment's supercilious survey of his rival's ooze-dripping form, he came mincing forward to the attack. The two, probably, had never seen each other before; but in rutting season all caribou ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the prevailing infatuation. "My people," said he, "do not consider." He denounces all classes alike, and spares not even women. In sarcastic language he rebukes their love of dress, their abandonment to vanities, their finery, their very gait and mincing attitude. Still more contemptuously does the preacher speak of the men, over whom the women rule and children oppress. He is severe on corrupt judges, on usurers; on all who are conceited in their own eyes; on those who are mighty to drink wine; on those ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... husband become a slob. That is just what I mean. It is no use mincing words. Some husbands have never acquired the habit—or if they have acquired it they quickly lost it—of regarding their wives as ladies. "She is not a lady, she is only my wife," is a well-known joke, but some men take it not as a jest. Some men think that before their wives ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... who, ashamed of their country, betray themselves by mincing out their abjuration, by calling tables teebles, and chairs cheers! To such renegadoes we prefer the honest quixotism of a modern champion[55] for the Scottish accent, who boldly asserted that "the broad dialect rises above reproach, scorn, and laughter," ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... mincing steps of Mr. Thoroughgood and so mimicked his thin, piping voice that all laughed, then she nodded at Mrs. Moon—"I ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... profit, but rather of a very great expense. Besides, it would be very difficult to send them aid; while our troops could easily oust them, as the island is ours. The commandant of the town of Arevalo, also its alcalde-mayor and overseer-general, without mincing words, was no more a man than is a hen. Even in bravery, a hen is more than he; since the hen, upon seeing the approach of the kite, is aroused, and becomes a lioness in order to guard her chicks. But this person, by name Antonio ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... the little knobs of cherries nod at me, as if saying, "You would not like us now, but you will by and by." The oriole gurgled and giggled from among them, "Wait! Come again! Come again! Ha, ha!" The noise of the greedy canker-worms, mincing the poor young green leaves over my head, seemed a soothing sound; and even the sharp headache I had brought with me from the school-room, only a sort of sauce piquante to my delicious rest. I did not ask myself what Jim would say. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... go into the world and seek my fortune. If that drab of a girl with her mincing ways got so much, what may I ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... wanted," he said, "for I've no notion that jolly-boat will do to go out as far as we shall find it necessary to sound. So I am about to ballast the launch, and get her sails ready; there's no use in mincing matters in such a berth ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... did not speak another word till they reached the top of Mincing Lane; there the carriage stopped and Bertie got out, but in spite of all the kind things the old gentleman had said, in spite of the consciousness of having done quite right from one point of view, in spite ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... expressions were too subtle, too insufficiently open, the difficulty in no way diminished his high spirits. Easily and gracefully did he exchange agreeable bandinage with one lady, and then approach another one with the short, mincing steps usually affected by young-old dandies who are fluttering around the fair. As he turned, not without dexterity, to right and left, he kept one leg slightly dragging behind the other, like a short tail or comma. This trick the ladies particularly admired. In short, they not only discovered ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and danced very gracefully in her slow, Southern way, but she was utterly unfamiliar with the mincing steps and elaborate contortions attempted by the Elmbridge young people. However, she enjoyed it all from its very novelty, and she was pleasantly impressed with some of the boys and girls to ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... the young gentleman, with a bow, the pink of courtesy, offered a hand to lead her out, nor could she refuse, though, to use her own expression, she hated the absurdity of mincing down the aisle with a fine young spark looking like her grandson; while her poor father had to put up with Harriet's arm. Outside came the greetings, the flourish of the hat, the "I may venture to introduce myself, and to beg ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... any wager, When we are both accouter'd like young men. I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two, And wear my dagger with the braver grace And speak, between the change of man and boy With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps Into a manly stride; and speak of frays, Like a fine bragging youth; and tell quaint lies— How honorable ladies sought my love, Which I denying, they fell sick and died; I could not do withal: then I'll repent, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... said the servant—"to Montreal, you know, sir," she repeated, in a mincing tone, bridling and blushing at the ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... at all for mincing words with his important confreres, when it came to vital issues. He preferred, in his grandiloquent way, to ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... following Saturday—she must! If she didn't then she too would have to go and leave the ruined old gentleman, who looked so feeble leaning over the white rail which enclosed the mile track. After much coaxing the black colt came mincing up to ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... another!" shouted the freshmen when she had finished; but their quiet little classmate only shook her head, and assuming once more the mincing, confidential tone she had been using in the monologue, remarked: "Do you know, there are some girls in our class that will forget their heads before long. Why, when they're being hazed, they forget it and think they're at ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... flooring of the meadow, stepping daintily in and out among the big golden buttercups, came one who might well have been that lady of his dreams. A milk-white hand held up a pale-pink skirt, disclosing the lacy flounce of a fine underskirt, pale-pink stockings and mincing little slippers; a pink parasol cast the most delicate of tints upon a pretty face from which big blue eyes looked out a little timorously upon ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... she said. "But, Duane, there's a sort of exquisite impudence about what you've done! Did you mean to gently and disrespectfully jeer at our mincing ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... it is, you mincing Nanny-hen!—every blessed child that walks. And I just 'ope," said Mrs. Beamish, as she marched off herself with brush and scrubber: "I 'ope, now you know it, you'll 'ave a little more love and gratitoode for your own mother than ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... were bound about by a fillet of black silk; her face, dark as burnt umber, was seamed and lined like a withered prune; even her long broad nose was wrinkled; her dull eyes looked like mud-puddles; her big underlip was pursed up as if she had been speaking mincing words, and her chin was covered with a short white stubble. Over her coarse smock and gown she wore a black cotton reboso. In her arms she held an infant, muffled in ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... is angry when reminded of the privileges of the fair sex, because he will not be classed amongst 'the ladies,' and who, in my opinion, ought not to be surprised when, after his own fashion, one tells him the truth roundly, and without mincing matters." ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... them horses,' says he, in his mincing way (for Londoners are mostly all tongue-tied, and can't say their a's and i's properly, 'and it's our business to keep you from molesting the ladies and gentlemen going to her ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... audience urged the chairman by acclamation to extend Martin's time. They appreciated him as a foeman worthy of their intellect, and they listened intently, following every word. He spoke with fire and conviction, mincing no words in his attack upon the slaves and their morality and tactics and frankly alluding to his hearers as the slaves in question. He quoted Spencer and Malthus, and enunciated ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... sent it crashing into the hallway to attract attention. To this noise I added my voice, and yelled for help with lungs that had aroused the echoes on many a hunting-field. There were whisperings below, and apparently a hurried consultation, and then a young woman came mincing up the stairs. I must have presented a strange and terrifying spectacle with my head bandaged and my wild manner, for the woman, with a shriek, turned and ran down the stairs again. I cried again for someone to come to the aid of the lady, and presently someone called up the stairs to know ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... take his seat, With mincing step and languid smile, And scatter from his 'kerchief sweet, Sabaean odours o'er the aisle; And spread his little jewelled hand, And smile round all the parish beauties, And pat his curls, and smooth his band, Meet prelude to his ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the house she used the word VERY correctly. One stone was "small," another was "very small." When she touched her little sister, she said: "Baby—small. Puppy- very small." Soon after, she began to vary her steps from large to small, and little mincing steps were "very small." She is going through the house now, applying the new words ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... He had never heard Elsie complain of the hill before. Usually they scampered up it, and rolled down the steepest side—not, truly, when there was milk to carry, but at other times. And now Elsie was walking along in a languid, mincing fashion, as if she had no more fun in her than Robbie himself, and had never scampered bare-foot over the moor six days out of every week, no matter what ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... and other carriages fast arriving. Poor Miss Martha Rose had been out calling when she heard the news, and she was walking to the scene of action. The victoria in which her cousin was seated left her in a cloud of dust. Cyril Rose had not noticed the mincing figure with ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... throwing on her royal mantle, popped her second-best diamond crown over her night-cap, put a liberal dab of rouge upon each cheek, and holding up her largest fan before her nose—for she was not used to appearing in broad daylight—she went mincing into the great hall. The Enchanter waited until the King and Queen had seated themselves upon their throne, and then, taking his place ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... was a pirate—there is no need of mincing matters between friends. Read that, Deerslayer, and you will see that he told you no more than the truth. This Thomas Hovey was the Thomas Hutter you knew, as is seen ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... small white house, and Audrey came to them in the garden. When she had kissed them, the three sat down in the arbor; for it was a fine, sunny morning, and not cold. But the talk was not easy; Barbara's eyes were so round, and the widow kept mincing her words. Only when they were joined by Mistress Stagg, to whom the widow became voluble, the two ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... victim's blood, is fated to share the punishment for the crime. But the prime instigator is the German Emperor, whose Chancellor, with bitter irony, claims for his master the title of protector of the small nationalities of Europe. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg can on occasion affect the mincing accents of the wolf when that beast seeks to lull the cries of the lamb in its clutches. The German method of waging war has rendered "dreadful objects so familiar" that the essential brutality of the enemy's activities runs a risk of escaping at times the strenuous denunciation which ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... &c adj.; languor &c (inactivity) 683; drawl; creeping &c v., lentor^. retardation; slackening &c v.; delay &c (lateness) 133; claudication^. jog trot, dog trot; mincing steps; slow march, slow time. slow goer^, slow coach, slow back; lingerer, loiterer, sluggard, tortoise, snail; poke [U.S.]; dawdle &c (inactive) 683. V. move slowly &c adv.; creep, crawl, lag, slug, drawl, linger, loiter, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... blood and made it gritty and dirty. Then Winifred so ready to serve the soldier, when she repudiated the man. And this made the grit worse between his teeth. And the children running around playing and calling in the rather mincing fashion of children who have nurses and governesses and literature in the family. And Joyce so lame! It had all become unreal to him, after the camp. It only set his soul on edge. He left at dawn ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... to," continued Kate. "Now, such a girl oughtn't to be on the foundation at all. If you only knew the snubbing she gave me yesterday. I quite hate her, with all her pretty face and her mincing ways." ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... tell me, Mr. Lorry," said Stryver, squaring his elbows, "that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady at present in question is a mincing Fool?" ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Some quarrel with Peggy. What it was all about he had entirely forgotten; but he remembered her little flushed face and her angry words: "Well, I'm a sport and you ain't!" He remembered also rebuking her priggishly for unintelligible language and mincing away. He read the letter again in the light of this flash of memory. The only difference between it and the childish speech lay in the fact that instead of a declaration of contrasts, she now uttered a declaration of similitudes. They were both "sports." There she was wrong. Doggie shook his head. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... girlhood, she had been to Albany, Its splendour and the reckless conduct of one Alma Haskins, companion of her travels, had been ever since a day-long perennial topic of her conversation. Miss Letitia was more amiable. She had a playful, cheery heart in her, a mincing and precise manner, and a sweet voice. What with the cleaning, dusting, and preserving, they were ever busy. A fly, driven hither and thither, fell of exhaustion if not disabled with a broom. They ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... of it; there were miles of it. The nearer the open sea the more widespread was the floe. Beyond—hauling down the Spotted Horses, which lay in the open—the proportion of new ice would be vastly greater. At a trot for the time over the pans, which were flat, and in delicate, mincing little spurts across the bending ice, Doctor Rolfe proceeded. In a confidence that was somewhat flushed—he had ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... and here, in these wonderful God-led meetings they found the secret of it all. Many of them came and told the girls they did not believe in the so-called "trench religion" and wanted to know the truth from them. And those girls told them the way of eternal life in a simple, beautiful way, not mincing matters, nor ignoring their sins and unworthiness, but pointing the way to the Christ who died to save them from sin, and who even now was waiting in silent Presence to offer them Himself. Great numbers of the men accepted Christ, and pledged themselves ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... harshly. "Pretty, silly fool!" He mimicked what he thought to be her mincing accents. "Wants to see something of war, does he? I can tell him he will be satisfied before he has done!" There was a scowl on his face. "And you"—he turned on his wife furiously—"what business had you to say that about those ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... anough your play, Till next Sun-shine holiday, Here be without duck or nod 960 Other trippings to be trod Of lighter toes, and such Court guise As Mercury did first devise With the mincing Dryades On the Lawns, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... no need for her to undertake any of those kinds of tasks which, by removing young girls from home shelter, do sometimes help to make them rude and indecorous; but she was fine, when she gave herself a little mincing air of contempt, as if she despised the work and those who did it. Lydia Grant, who worked so steadily and kept to herself so modestly, that no one ventured a bold word to her as she tossed her hay, was just as refined as Ellen King ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the floor we sat. Wilfrid put his treasures between his knees before him, I sat opposite, and the barter began. "What for this fellow, huh?" and he held up a piece of carved ivory, a little triangular mincing-knife, a fur mat that his wife had made, or the skin of a baby-seal. The first thing he asked for was scented soap, the ring that I was wearing, and my porcupine-quill hat-band which looked good to him; every exchange was accompanied with smiles, each bargain ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... to run up a tree and chatter and swing from a limb by a tail; besides he was well known to be "stingy." But his soul must be all right, since he was a deacon; and he was a leading citizen, and generally introduced speakers at the Lyceum Course. He began his familiar little mincing preamble: "It gives me great pleasure to have the privilege of introducing to you a ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... cook required a holiday, and, with a kitchen-maid only, she could indulge in her greatest pleasure—a useless economy. The cook refused to starve her fellow-servants, while the kitchen-maid, mindful of a written character in the future, did as her ladyship bade her—hashing and mincing in a manner quite irreconcilable with forty pounds a ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... to utter a cry of despair: "And these are the kind of people an artist must work with!" He lifted his arms to heaven, calling upon the high gods for pity; then, with a sudden turn of fury, ran to the back of the stage and came mincing forward evidently intending saturnine mimicry, repeating the ingenue's speech in a mocking falsetto: "Now what are you two good people conspiring about?" After that he whirled upon her, demanding with ferocity: "You've got something you can think with in your head, haven't you, ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... would give a cruel imitation of the wretched Smith's mincing English. The punishment was the more bitter, because all the world knew that Spot could speak the King's English as well as anybody if only he chose. To the poshy alone was Spot unkind. He was a generous, warm-hearted little man, with real wisdom and a fine appreciation ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... he would take little mincing steps, and toss his head from side to side, and pretend to be ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... it over one hundred miles. All the fight, naturally, was gone out of the little creature. It was whimpering like a woman when Francois came up with it—poor little tortured broken-hearted thing! And some empty-headed heiress goes mincing into the Metropolitan, on a Caruso night, very proud and peacocky over her new ermine coat, without ever dreaming it's a patchwork of animal sufferings that is keeping her fat body warm, and that she's trying to make herself beautiful ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... mother's. I did not repent in it as one must do in a Methodist or Baptist church, but I grew up in it like a daughter in the house of the Lord. As a girl on Sabbath mornings I entered it with all the mincing worldliness of my young mind unabashed. Later I was "confirmed" in it and experienced some of the vanity of that high spiritual calm which attends quick conversions in other churches. And to this day ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... skinned. When Isoult did finally lift her head and begin to look timidly about her, she found herself in a country unfamiliar, which, for all she knew, might be an hour's or a week's journey from High March, where Prosper was. Prosper! She knew that every mincing step of the donkey took her further from him, but she was powerless to protest or to pray; life scarce whispered in her yet. And what span of miles or hours, after all, could set her wider from him than discovery, the shame, the yelling of ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... contrary," said he, "I am only too familiar with them. In childhood I learned the words of the prophet: 'Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet; therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts. In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... well that they were only waiting for him to depart to break forth into excited comments; and presently he heard the phrase, "What assurance!" followed by a lull, as if some one had made a cautioning gesture. Then the somewhat dilapidated piano began to tinkle, as it could tinkle only under the mincing fingers of Mrs. Parr. Had her random notes been given a name, they might have been called Mrs. Parr's Tale ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... entered first, with a pompous, mincing gait, leading the Princess Martha by the tips of her fingers. He wore a caftan of green velvet laced with gold, a huge vest of crimson brocade, and breeches of yellow satin. A wig, resembling clouds boiling in the confluence of ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... warm enough, she was always out on the front piazza when Van and I came home from our daily gallop, and then she would trot out to meet us and be lifted to her perch on the pommel; and then, with mincing gait, like lady's palfrey, stepping as though he might tread on eggs and yet not crush them, Van would take the little one on her own share of the ride. And so it was that the loyal friendship grew and strengthened. The one trick he had was never ventured upon when she was on his back, even ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... sentences as these:—'It's not our fault; we didn't want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was boy's business; he might have known me before this; I told him not to prick the buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw; ain't those mincing knives down in the forecastle there, men? look to those handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the word; don't be a fool; forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treat us decently, and we're your men; ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... treated in infancy, and who hobbled about with much difficulty, but no young girls were to be seen thus hampered. When this hideous deformity has been adopted, the knee and ankle joints do not bend at all in walking; all movement is from the thigh joints, a mincing gait is imparted, and the arms swing from side to side, the whole body being at all times liable to topple over. A traveler is not competent, however, to speak of the higher classes of women, as no access is afforded ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... Now, without mincing the matter, we must admit that Mr. Cave was a liar. He knew perfectly well where the crystal was. It was in the rooms of Mr. Jacoby Wace, Assistant Demonstrator at St. Catherine's Hospital, Westbourne Street. It stood on the sideboard partially covered ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... excuse," continued the unaffected youth, "but you bet your life you'll never beat our Cora-lee when there's a person in pants on the premises! It's sickening." He rose, and performed something like a toe-dance, a supposed imitation of his sister's mincing approach to the visitor. "Oh, dear, I am such a little sweety! Here I am all alone just reeking with Browning-and-Tennyson and thinking to myself about such lovely things, and walking around looking for my nice, pretty ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... please is "plaise," sea is "say," and ease is "aise." The softer sound of e is broadened out by the natural Irishman,—not, to my ear, without a certain euphony;—but no one in Ireland says or hears the reverse. The Irishman who in London might talk of his "neetive" race, would be mincing his words to please ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... declaration contained the essence of the information which Lord Etherington had designed to extract by his momentary flirtation with Mrs. Pott; for when, retreating as it were from this sore subject, she asked him, in a pretty mincing tone, to try his skill in pointing out another love-letter, he only answered carelessly, "that in order to do that he must write her one;" and leaving his confidential station by her little throne, he lounged through the narrow shop, bowed slightly to Lady Penelope as he passed, and ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... a mincing emphasis on the first word, that betrayed there was a little waggery about ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... unlearn'd, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learn'd. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing Lady Prioress and the broad-speaking gap-tooth'd Wife of Bath. But enough of this: there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. 'Tis sufficient ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the other half of this place—the old infirmary, Mr. Harewood calls it. Such a contrast! He is a tremendous old Turk in his house, and she is a little mincing woman; and they've made Gus—he's one of us, you know—a horrid sneak, and think it's all my bad company and Bill's. By-the-by, Cherry, Gus Shapcote asked me if ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... awful, as Pope says—approach "with mincing steps and bow profound;" we are about to introduce you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... cried Miss Deborah; taking little mincing steps as she tried to run after him. "You won't mention it? You won't speak of it to any ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... back; enough your play Till next sun-shine holiday: Here be, without duck or nod, Other trippings to be trod Of lighter toes, and such court guise As Mercury did first devise With the mincing Dryades, On the lawns, and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... me the whole evening, but Elihu kept close to me, and we had a great deal of talk that I am glad to have forgotten. But I remember that he laughed at Semantha Lee, and made fun of her hair that he said was like tow, and her eyes that squinted, and her mincing gait; and I listened, and felt a malicious pleasure in this dispraise of Semantha. Through it all my head ached terribly, and I stupidly wondered how I dared be such a wicked girl, and what my mother would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... joyous vulgar fought with muddied footmen and tipsy link-boys for places of vantage whence to catch a glimpse of quality and of raiment at its utmost. Dawn was in the east, and the guests were departing. Singly or in pairs, glittering in finery, they came mincing down the steps, the ghost of the night's smirk fading to jadedness as they sought the dark recesses of their chairs. From within sounded the twang of fiddles still swinging manfully at it, and the windows were bright with the light ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... people, who, when buying their shoes at fairs—which were the usual mart—might have been seen thrusting in their hand to try the breadth, when they had ascertained that the length was suitable. A short foot gives a mincing walk, while a long one requires the person to bring his body aplomb with the foot before taking the step, which thus resembles a stride. Good dancers have the limbs short as compared with the body, which has thus ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... Dagonet mincing with his feet, 'Knight, an ye fling those rubies round my neck In lieu of hers, I'll hold thou hast some touch Of music, since I care not for thy pearls. Swine? I have wallowed, I have washed—the world Is flesh and shadow—I have had my day. The dirty nurse, Experience, in her kind Hath fouled ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... and he got up, raising his shoulders and squaring his elbows, and took a few mincing steps across the room. Katy couldn't help laughing, it was so funny, and so like Imogen. Then Papa sat down again and drew ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... should leave so capital an one subsisting as that of want of ease, and freedom, in the gesture and gait. On the contrary, it is as great an enemy to stiffness, as it is to looseness of carriage, and air. It equally reprobates an ungainly rusticity, and a mincing, tripping, over-soft manner. Its chief aim is to bring forth the natural graces, and not to smother them with ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... are not all the Mischiefs it occasions. Did it cause none of them, but were it entirely wholesome, as Balm or Mint, it were yet Mischief enough to have our whole Populace used to sip warm Water in a mincing, effeminate Manner, once or twice every Day; which hot Water must be supped out of a nice Tea-Cup, sweatened with Sugar, biting a Bit of nice thin Bread and Butter between Whiles. This mocks the strong ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... sentimental virtue, pretended never to have known love, talked platonics to all the men about her, and kept the prosecuting-attorney at her beck and call. She was given to caps with large bows, but preferred to wear only her hair. She danced, and at forty-five years of age had the mincing manner of a girl; her feet, however, were large and her hands frightful. She wished to be called Isaure, because among her other oddities and absurdities she had the taste to repudiate the name of Gaubertin ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... tell you, without mincing the matter brother Algernon, that I never grant favors in any shape. That I never ask favors of any one. That I never lend money, or borrow money. That I never require security for myself of others, or give my name as security ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... on the fly-leaf of the volume of Tennyson, and, when she had gone, rose to his feet and stood looking after her curiously. As she walked down the street with mincing step, he saw several persons whom she passed turn and look back at her with a smile of kindly amusement. When she had turned the corner, he went upstairs to his bedroom, and stood for a long time before the mirror of his dressing-case, gazing thoughtfully at the reflection ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... is no mincing and begging institution. It has, at its disposal, the entire military battery. No mayor holds a whip handle over it. I must confess I was happy as I witnessed the blessed effect of this Moral Department. All evil is not extirpated, neither is all lawlessness overcome, but there is ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... the little maid, "then you have never met my father, the Prince. He is terribly particular. You must go so" (she imitated the mincing walk of a court chamberlain), "you must hold your tails thus" (wagging her white nightrail and twisting about her head to watch the effect), "and you must retire—so!" With that she came bowing ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... and in a minute repaired the article, and the girl spread it, and went off wriggling and mincing with it, so that there was a pronounced horse-laugh at ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... queerest little mannikin—like the tiny waiter's assistants you see in hotels on the Continent. He wore his Eton suit, you understand—grown-up evening clothes minus the coat-tails, and a top hat. He sat at tea and chatted with the mincing graces of a cotillion-leader; you expected to find some of his hair gone when he took off his hat! He spoke of his brother, the duke, who had gone off shooting seals somewhere. 'The jolly rotter ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... Helen Grey, Is that a reason to be proud? 10 Your eyes are bold, your laugh is loud, Your steps go mincing on their way; But so you miss that modest charm Which is the surest charm of all: Take heed, you yet may trip and fall, And no man care to stretch ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... cultivate the Henglish hawkcent and the London lope. In the olden days the glory of the young man was his strength; now it is his chrysanthemum and his collar. And it is going from bad to worse in a ratio of geometrical progression; for how can effeminate men—a canesucking, primping, mincing, affected conglomeration of masculine inanity and asininity beget world-compellers. How can women who care much what is on the outside and little what is on the inside of their heads, and whom a box of lily-white, a French novel, a poodle-dog and another dude will ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a mischievous delight in giving Mr. Manners every annoyance my boyish fancy could conceive. The evening of his arrival he and Mr. Carvel set out for a stroll about the house, Mr. Marmaduke mincing his steps, for it had rained that morning. And presently they came upon the windmill with its long arms moving lazily in the light breeze, near touching the ground as they passed, for the mill was built in the Dutch fashion. I know not what moved me, but hearing Mr. Manners ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to stand in instead of millin' around a corral all night." The rope slackened, and securing a firm grip on the halter, the Texan edged slowly toward the door, the horse following with nervous, mincing steps, and nostrils aquiver. From her place beside the corral, the girl watched in astonishment as man and horse passed from sight. From the black interior of the stable the voice of the Texan sounded its monotonous ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... and flared, but caught herself, musingly crossed the room, returned half-way, and with frank design resumed the stool warily vacated by the unslippered foot; whose owner was mincing on, just enough fluttered to play defiance while ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... one immediately gives you especial attention and the benefit of his judgment. If you should happen to serve in the right wing of Orthodoxy, you will have the inestimable boon of the freest criticism from the left wing. And it is the religious newspapers for not mincing matters. Between Jew and Gentile hostility is the normal condition of things; and is carried on peaceably enough; but when Jew meets Jew, then comes the tug of war! These people obey to the letter the Apostolic injunction, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... second place. So curious did this blindness seem in a man of jealous temper, that his greatest friends used to draw him out on the topic for the amusement of others who did not know of the mystery. M. du Hautoy was a finical dandy whose minute care of himself had degenerated into mincing affectation and childishness. He took an interest in his cough, his appetite, his digestion, his night's rest. Zephirine had succeeded in making a valetudinarian of her factotum; she coddled him and doctored him; she ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... suggestion whatever of things behind, no reference to herself or to the past between them. His passion, it seemed, was for his comrades; his indifference for her. What had he to do with her any more? He had been among the realities of battle and death, while she had been mincing and ambling along the usual feminine path. That was the utterance, it seemed, of the man's whole manner and personality, and nothing could have more effectually recalled Kitty's wild ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she answered, 'I will take the most paticularest care of it;' and she smoothed it softly down, and walked out with such a funny, mincing step that I had ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... Kate!" said the detective gently. "I've seen lots worse than you—you notice I'm not mincing words—I've seen lots worse than you start over again. All I'll say is that I'll give you the chance if you want it. There's nothing in this life you're leading. You know the end and the answer as well as I do. You've seen ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... Miss Deborah; taking little mincing steps as she tried to run after him. "You won't mention it? You won't speak of it to any one, ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... which added greatly to the force of the story, he gave a most terse and vivid account of Mr. John's arrival at the embankment by the grove—of his charging a whole regiment of Union volunteers. Here was honesty again. Mr. Sherman did not believe in mincing matters even to a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were preparing splendid feasts and banquets, and the cooks were busy plucking geese, killing little pigs, flaying kids, basting the roast meat, skimming pots, mincing meat for dumplings, larding capons, and preparing a thousand other delicacies, a beautiful dove came flying to the kitchen ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... to say, Tom, and there is no need of my mincing words, if you'll raise that boy of mine—" he was silent awhile, then smiling: "He is mine and more of a Travis to-day than his father ever was. If you can help him ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... of water, with a sliced onion, and a bouquet of herbs, until reduced to one pint. Remove fish-heads and herbs, then strain the stock, and set aside until needed. Meantime rub the fish over very well with salt and pepper, then with a mixture made by mincing very fine three bay leaves, three sprigs each of thyme and parsley, three cloves of garlic, and six allspice pounded to powder. Rub the mixture in well and thoroughly—here is the key to success. The seasoning must go through and through the fish. Put into a very wide pan, two tablespoonfuls ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... Shelley is not at all what will look nicest in his song; that is the preoccupation of mincing rhymesters, whose well is soon dry. Shelley's abundance has a more generous source; it springs from his passion for picturing what would be best, not in the picture, but in the world. Hence, when he feels he has pictured or divined it, he ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... it's been gev hout as a young woman's a-going to preach on the Green," answered Mr. Casson, in a treble and wheezy voice, with a slightly mincing accent. "Will you please to step ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the train we might meet—just accidentally run into one another. And you'll say, 'Why, there's Mr. Mayer! How odd. How d'ye do, Mr. Mayer.'" He bowed with a mincing imitation of Chrystie's best society manner. "'I didn't expect ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... ear wabbling, the good ear cocked forward with devilish comprehension. He thrust his head on one side quizzically, and advanced with mincing, playful steps. He rubbed his body gently against the box till it shook and shook again. Leclere teetered ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... born yesterday, and I thought the worst of that trouble was over. However, there she lay—her back turned, her face to the wall—and shook with sobbing like a little child, so that her feet jumped with it. It’s strange how it hits a man when he’s in love; for there’s no use mincing things—Kanaka and all, I was in love with her, or just as good. I tried to take her hand, but she would none of that. “Uma,” I said, “there’s no sense in carrying on like this. I want you stop here, I want my little ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whether he is using it for the daintiest flower of sentiment—fair passions and bountiful pities and loves without stain—or for the expression of his fiery passions and hatreds in some flagrant obscenity or venomous insult, it is alike straight and reckless, with no scruple and no mincing of words; in Mr. Swinburne's curiously true and vivid phrase, he "makes mouths at our speech" when ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... had changed since their marriage. He was harsh at times, and though he had, even in their more humble quarters, surrounded her with a certain amount of luxury, there was a laxity in his manners and conversation that jarred upon her. Geoffrey, she remembered, had not been addicted to mincing words, but, at least, he had lived in accordance with a Spartan moral code. Millicent was not a scrupulous woman, and her ideas of ethical justice were rudimentary, but she possessed in place of a conscience a delicate sense of refinement ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... Mr. Gay," said Arbuthnot with a chuckle. "A trim built wench, upon my word. And she knows how to walk. She hasn't the mincing gait of the city madams of the Exchange nor the flaunting strut of the dames of ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... see such a stationary camp at Richborough, near Sandwich; and at Pevensey, in Sussex; and at Silchester, near Reading, but the two latter are not rectangular. One end of this fort was on the top of the Walbrook bank and the other, if you look in your map, on the site of Mincing Lane. This gives a length of about 700 yards by a breadth of 350, which means an enclosure of about 50 acres. This is a large area: it was at once the barrack, the arsenal, and the treasury of the station; it contained the residences of ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... o'ermastering talent of his—Wylo also displayed those gifts which proclaim the gifted, though he was true to his race in many of its phases of simplicity. His skill, or rather his supreme striving to appease aesthetic thrills, made Wylo superb in the fight. He developed a meek, affected voice, somewhat mincing ways, and a faraway look in his eyes. These distinctive traits, worn with careless hair, were so original, so intensely entertaining and notoriety-provoking in a camp which had never possessed the copyright of more than one shabby corroboree, that Wylo made many conquests. For each conquest ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... his scholarship there was something boyish about Joseph. He painted his eyes, dressed his hair carefully, and walked with a mincing step. These foibles of youth were not so deplorable as his habit of bringing evil reports of his brethren to his father. He accused them of treating the beasts under their care with cruelty—he said that they ate flesh torn from a living animal—and he charged them with casting their eyes upon ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... print it and every one immediately gives you especial attention and the benefit of his judgment. If you should happen to serve in the right wing of Orthodoxy, you will have the inestimable boon of the freest criticism from the left wing. And it is the religious newspapers for not mincing matters. Between Jew and Gentile hostility is the normal condition of things; and is carried on peaceably enough; but when Jew meets Jew, then comes the tug of war! These people obey to the letter the Apostolic injunction, and confess ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... first set eyes on him at the station at Villahorrenda, and he spoke to me with his honeyed voice and his mincing manners," declared Licurgo, "I thought him a great—I will not say what, through respect for the mistress. But I knew him—I put my mark upon him from that moment, and I make no mistakes. A thread shows what the ball is, as the saying goes; a sample tells what the cloth is, and ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... I have lived in the Herr Professor's house for five-and-thirty years. I have pickled his cabbage and preserved his fruit. I have minced with my own hand the pork for his sausages before they had mincing-machines in Schleswig-Holstein. I have seen personally to the smoking of his hams and fish. I make his Apfelkuchen and Nusskuchen myself, and do not buy them in the shop, like that lazy Hausfrau opposite us at No 2, who comes from that God-forgotten country England, where ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... towards the end of his life he sketched what he thought would be the ideal political status for the German people. As in everything that he wrote, he went straight to the heart of the matter and, without mincing words, stated just exactly what he thought ought to be done. Considering that this scheme of Cusanus for the prosperity and right government of the German people was not accomplished until more than four centuries after his death, it is interesting, indeed, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... may be," said Parlamente, "I could not love a man who had sown such division between my husband and myself as would lead even to blows; for beating banishes love. Yet, by what I have heard, they [the friars] can be so mincing when they seek some advantage over a woman, and so attractive in their discourse, that I feel sure there would be more danger in hearkening to them in secret than in publicly receiving blows from a husband in ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... doctrines but half completed. He had caught their interest, and the audience urged the chairman by acclamation to extend Martin's time. They appreciated him as a foeman worthy of their intellect, and they listened intently, following every word. He spoke with fire and conviction, mincing no words in his attack upon the slaves and their morality and tactics and frankly alluding to his hearers as the slaves in question. He quoted Spencer and Malthus, and enunciated the ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... did this blindness seem in a man of jealous temper, that his greatest friends used to draw him out on the topic for the amusement of others who did not know of the mystery. M. du Hautoy was a finical dandy whose minute care of himself had degenerated into mincing affectation and childishness. He took an interest in his cough, his appetite, his digestion, his night's rest. Zephirine had succeeded in making a valetudinarian of her factotum; she coddled him and doctored him; she crammed him with delicate ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... to Raymonde two days later, when the latter was helping the monitress to put away the wood-carving tools; "what's the matter with Cynthia Greene? She's behaving in the most idiotic fashion—goes mincing about the school, and sighing, and even mopping her eyes when she thinks anybody's looking at her. What's she posing ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the curb off his prejudices, give the rein to his whimsical fancy, and better his expression as he talked. But where men must talk, as well as write, upon oath, paralysis is not easily avoided. In the little mincing societies addicted to intellectual and moral culture the creative zest is lost. The painful inhibition of a continual rigorous choice, if it is never relaxed, cripples the activity of the mind. Those who can talk the best and most compact sense have often found ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... peep from the thicket, coppice, the impenetrable mantle of shrubbery that decks tiny water-courses, playing at hide-and-seek with all comers; others more humble still, descend to the ground, where they glide with pretty mincing steps and affected turning of the head this way and that, their delicate flesh-tinted feet just stirring the layer of withered leaves with which a past season carpeted the ground. We may seek warblers everywhere in the season; we shall find them a continued ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... service by mincing matters. My previous telegrams and letters have been purposely restrained as this one is. We have now come to the parting of the ways. If English respect be worth preserving at all, it can be preserved only by immediate action. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... the fairly numerous quadroons and mulattoes along with certain exceptional blacks. The men among these had a pride of place as butlers and coachmen, painters and carpenters; the women fitted themselves trimly with the cast-off silks and muslins of their mistresses, walked with mincing tread, and spoke in quiet tones with impressive nicety of grammar. This element was a conscious aristocracy of its kind, but its members were more or less irked by the knowledge that no matter how great their merits they could not cross the boundary into white society. The bulk of the real negroes ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... wooden-soled slippers along the pavement with a noise that sets your teeth on edge. "Girls are like flowers," say the Chinese, "like the willow. It is very important that their feet should be bound short so that they can walk beautifully with mincing steps, swaying gracefully, and thus showing to all that they are persons of respectability." Apart from the Manchus, the dominant race, whose women do not bind their feet, all chaste Chinese girls have small ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... exploits of the morning, the Prince turned towards the Princess's ante-room, bent on a more difficult enterprise. The curtains rose before him, the usher called his name, and he entered the room with an exaggeration of his usual mincing and airy dignity. There were about a score of persons waiting, principally ladies; it was one of the few societies in Gruenewald where Otto knew himself to be popular; and while a maid of honour made her exit by a side door to announce his arrival to the Princess, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... leave man out," he said. All art must suggest something. Mere verbal description is not literature: it is only words, words, words; a picture must be charged with soul, otherwise a photograph would outrank "The Angelus." Music must be more than jingling tunes and mincing sounds. And thus we find Wagner at thirty years of age boldly putting forth "The Flying Dutchman," with music not written for the text, nor text written for the music, but words and music created at the same time—the melody mirroring forth ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... perversion of vanity almost inconceivable in a sane person, Pierre had twisted these hairs together, as a man twists a mustache, and had trained them to grow obliquely across his cheek bone. He was a big fellow, for a Frenchman, and, as he walked towards Cleggett with a mincing elasticity of gait, he smirked and caressed this whimsical adornment. Cleggett, fascinated, stared at it as the fellow paused before him. Pierre, evidently gratified at the sensation he was creating, continued to smirk and twist, and then, seeing that he held his audience, he took ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... gentlemen.") "Honestly," said Sylvia, "he was the queerest little mannikin—like the tiny waiter's assistants you see in hotels on the Continent. He wore his Eton suit, you understand—grown-up evening clothes minus the coat-tails, and a top hat. He sat at tea and chatted with the mincing graces of a cotillion-leader; you expected to find some of his hair gone when he took off his hat! He spoke of his brother, the duke, who had gone off shooting seals somewhere. 'The jolly rotter has nothing to do but spend his money; but we younger sons have to work like dogs ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... creatures ferreted about for monstrous crimes with which to horrify their stay-at-home countrymen; how the rich young lords, returning home with mincing steps and high-pitched lisp, surrounded by a train of parti-coloured, dialect-jabbering Venetian clowns, deft and sinister Neapolitan fencing masters, silver-voiced singing boys decoyed from some church, and cynical humanists escaped from ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... prison. If your foolish principles were made the test, there would hardly be a free man in Mincing Lane. We should have to lock up the whole City. Come, let me have your signature, and I will do the rest. To refuse is madness. You are offered the chance of ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... up;— Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd, 'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounc'd: But if the gods themselves did see her then, When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs, The instant burst of clamour that she made,— Unless things mortal move them not at all,— Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the faint mist which hung over the farther end of the square advanced a procession of tall, dust-coloured animals, with long, delicately poised necks and a mincing gait. Even Mrs. Rapkin could not succeed in making anything of ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... hideous cloth went into his blood and made it gritty and dirty. Then Winifred so ready to serve the soldier, when she repudiated the man. And this made the grit worse between his teeth. And the children running around playing and calling in the rather mincing fashion of children who have nurses and governesses and literature in the family. And Joyce so lame! It had all become unreal to him, after the camp. It only set his soul on edge. He left at dawn on the Monday morning, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... their hand luggage, trooped down the long dock to the Lanawaxa's boarding-plank. Heavy Stone turned suddenly in the hot sunshine (for it was a glowing noon) to find two of the smaller girls mincing along in her ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... hobbled about with much difficulty, but no young girls were to be seen thus hampered. When this hideous deformity has been adopted, the knee and ankle joints do not bend at all in walking; all movement is from the thigh joints, a mincing gait is imparted, and the arms swing from side to side, the whole body being at all times liable to topple over. A traveler is not competent, however, to speak of the higher classes of women, as no access is afforded to domestic life in wealthy families. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... was simplicity. Unaided he rose to be pre-eminent as a bricklayer, but in private life he never became accustomed to the exclusive society to which by his genius he had won admittance. He never quite lost the mincing speech of the class from which he sprang, nor could he acquire facility in the vigorous mode of expression proper to his new and exalted station. "Not 'arf" and "'Strewf" ever came haltingly to his tongue, and to the last he struggled painfully ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... display them. For a long while it was not usual for men to carry them without incurring the brand of effeminacy, and they were vulgarly considered as the characteristics of a person whom the mob hugely disliked, namely, a mincing Frenchman! At first, a single umbrella seems to have been kept at a coffee-house for some extraordinary occasion—lent as a coach or chair in a heavy shower—but not commonly carried by the walkers. The Female Tatler advertises, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... looking-glasses, needles, files, knives, I climbed over the cliffs with him to his hut. Down on the floor we sat. Wilfrid put his treasures between his knees before him, I sat opposite, and the barter began. "What for this fellow, huh?" and he held up a piece of carved ivory, a little triangular mincing-knife, a fur mat that his wife had made, or the skin of a baby-seal. The first thing he asked for was scented soap, the ring that I was wearing, and my porcupine-quill hat-band which looked good to him; every exchange was accompanied ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... and clarity to commend it. When Irving began to express himself, there was very little straightforward simple writing being done, either in America or in England. The stuffed buckram of Johnsonese had been succeeded by the mincing hifalutin of Mrs. Anne Radcliffe and her like. It is at least to Irving's credit that his taste led him back half a century to the comparative simplicity and purity of the prim Augustan style. But it is odd that it should ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... make him dishonest. Ask a child now what he thinks, and, ten to one, he mentally refers to some eminent exemplar of all the virtues for instructions, and, instead of telling you what he does think, quotes listlessly what he ought to think. So that his mincing affectation is not merely ungraceful, but is a sign of an inward taint, which may prove fatal to the whole character. It is very easy to make a child disingenuous; if he be at all timid, the work is already half ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... the address on the flyleaf of the volume of Tennyson, and, when she had gone, rose to his feet and stood looking after her curiously. As she walked down the street with mincing step, he saw several persons whom she passed turn and look back at her with a smile of kindly amusement. When she had turned the corner, he went upstairs to his bedroom, and stood for a long time before the mirror of his dressing-case, gazing ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... chambermaid was a pattern of town prettiness and smartness. So trim her waist, her cap, her dress—I wondered how they had all been manufactured. Her speech had an accent which in its mincing glibness seemed to rebuke mine as by authority; her spruce attire flaunted an easy scorn ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... English, you know, for anything," though he was born and has lived most of his life in America; and he pronounces his words in the most affected way. Altogether, he is awfully affected; you should see the air with which he flirts his handkerchief out of his pocket, his mincing steps, and the bored, ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... "There's no use of mincing matters, my lads," he cried, standing up in the stem; "we have knocked the first officer on the head, and served some of those who didn't approve of the proceeding in the same way; and now we are ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... image among pious and holy women living a veiled and secluded life, like that our Lady lived before the blessed Annunciation. 'Think you,' he said, 'that the blessed Angelico obtained the grace to set forth our Lady in such heavenly wise by gazing about the streets on mincing women tricked out in all the world's bravery?—or did he not find her image in holy solitudes, among ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... have straightway been the love scene all over again, for Alice had never seemed so adorable, but for the sudden and ominous entrance of Mother Bonneton. She eyed the visitor with frank unfriendliness and, without mincing her words, proceeded to tell him certain things, notably that his attentions to Alice must cease and that his visits here would ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... variety of laughable, grotesque, and most frequently tatterdemalion costume, beating drums, and so on—making a horrible din. Sometimes, in the midst of all this wild confusion, a kind of French courtier would come mincing along, in old-fashioned costume, leading a lady, also in antique attire, and, gazing on the right hand and the left through an immense opera-glass, making, in the meantime, the most polite bows. However much he might be pushed about, or powdered, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... house I found my deare and sweet love Fotis mincing of meat and making pottage for her master and mistresse, the Cupboord was all set with wines, and I thought I smelled the savor of some dainty meats: she had about her middle a white and clean apron, and shee was girded about her body under the paps with a swathell of red silke, and she ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... exceedingly sparkling blue eyes, under a smart bob coming down on the forehead, are set too near the humped, nervous, very handsome nose. When, at last, after long efforts the musicians agree, the somewhat small Verka walks up to the large Zoe, in that mincing, tethered walk, the hind part sticking out, and elbows spread as though for flight, with which only women in male costume can walk, and makes a comical masculine bow to her, spreading her arms wide and lowering them. And, with great enjoyment, they ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... carefully closed and did his work with great secrecy. He was cooking the whole night, and the next morning at breakfast he ordered the children not to say a word of what he had been doing. During the morning he disappeared and returned with a mincing-machine, he took the block too into the outhouse. He came to his meals covered with blood, fat and scraps of meat. He looked dreadful and smelled even worse. But he certainly worked hard; he did not even allow himself time ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... effective blow, the ram stepped back a pace or two, mincing on his slender feet, and prepared to repeat it. The lynx was struggling frantically among the branches, which stuck into him and tore his fine fur. Just in time to escape the second assault he got free,—but free not for fight but for flight. One ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... doubt with which we approach the nude, it becomes expressive of evil, and for that daring frankness of the old men, which seldom missed of human grandeur, even when it failed of holy feeling, we have substituted a mean, carpeted, gauze-veiled, mincing sensuality of curls and crisping pins, out of which I believe nothing can come but moral ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... a keener appreciator of the tendencies to a rise or fall in colonial produce—sugars more especially—than John Linden, of Mincing Lane, it would have been difficult to point out in the wide city of London. He was not so immensely rich as many others engaged in the same merchant-traffic as himself; nothing at all like it, indeed, for I doubt that he could at any time have been esteemed worth more than ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... impatience, stood watching Count Cobenzl, as with his mincing gait he tripped out of the room, and turned again at the door to make his last bow. Scarcely had the portiere fallen when he sprang across the room, and darted toward his sleeping-chamber. Near his bed stood an escritoire. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the result. After some time our artist approached us with mincing steps and a hand thrust in his breast-pocket as if for possible ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... saluta" (Greet from afar the red-haired man and the bearded woman); "Vardete da chi te parla e guarda in la, e vardete da chi tiene i oci bassi e da chi camina a corti passi" (Beware of him who looks away when he speaks to you, and of him who keeps his eyes cast down and takes mincing steps); "El guerzo xe maledetto per ogni verso" (The squint-eyed are on all sides accursed); "Megio vendere un campo e una ca che tor una dona dal naso leva" (Better sell a field and a house than take a wife with a turned-up nose); "Naso che guarda ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... atom of English in the service—so that he, the expert, had held his breath while they groped and stumbled along the precipitous pass. Now the whilom Gabbai and Town Councillor found himself almost patronized—as a poor provincial—by this mincing, genteel clerical couple. He retorted by animadverting upon the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... fashion—one who had been left an orphan by manliness and taste, and no longer remembered his lost parents. Never can I forget the stare of Baron Pougens, (a Swiss by birth, but a Russian noble) as this specimen of elegance, with mincing step and gait, moved onward, something like a new member tripping it to the table to take his oaths. How he had got so far from Grange's, I really cannot say; but he had the policy of assurance in his favour; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... was a dry whiff of wheat; and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock in one of them. From Rood Lane to Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was sometimes a subtle flavour of wine; sometimes of tea. One church, near Mincing Lane, smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument, the service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little further down the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one church, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... himself sufficiently to utter a cry of despair: "And these are the kind of people an artist must work with!" He lifted his arms to heaven, calling upon the high gods for pity; then, with a sudden turn of fury, ran to the back of the stage and came mincing forward evidently intending saturnine mimicry, repeating the ingenue's speech in a mocking falsetto: "Now what are you two good people conspiring about?" After that he whirled upon her, demanding with ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... adolescentia; so also we constantly find u for o; showing, together with much other incontestable evidence of the same kind, how full and deep the old pronunciation of Latin always remained, and how ridiculous our English mincing of the vowels would have sounded to a ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... constraint, and fell into the same happy mood. Soon we were smiling at each other in the frankest comradeship, we two who but the other day had carried ourselves like game-cocks. He had forgotten his fine manners and his mincing London voice, and we spoke of the outland country of which he knew nothing, and of the hunting of game of which he knew much, exchanging our different knowledges, and willing to learn from each other. Long ere we had reached York Ferry I had found ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... are fit for promotion in the Art of Nature. But if the Landlady hath never a daughter of her own, there's a Neece or Neighbors daughter, which knows how to shew her self there so neatly, that with her tripping and mincing she makes signals enough, that at their house Cubicula locanda is to be had. And these are the true Divers, that know infinitely well how ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... with the Fair Maid in ballast to look for a freight in the Sofala's port of registry, and her letter met him there. Its tenor was that it was no use mincing matters. Her only resource was in opening a boarding-house, for which the prospects, she judged, were good. Good enough, at any rate, to make her tell him frankly that with two hundred pounds she could make a start. ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... to see Mr. Meredith," said the visitor, in the mincing affected tones of one who excused the vulgar source of her prosperity by frequently reiterated claims ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... False and Fair! Beware, beware! There is a Tale that stabs at thee! The Arab Seer! he stripped thee bare Long since! He knew thee, Vanity! By day a mincing foot is thine: Thou runnest along the spider's line:— Ay, but heavy sounds thy tread By night, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... dare not blur or miss a single note! To play this music with just the right spirit, you must put yourself en rapport with the epoch in which it was written—the era of crinoline, powdered wigs, snuffboxes and mincing minuets. I don't mean to say Mozart's music is not emotional; it is filled with it, but it is not the emotion of to-day, but of yesterday, of more ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... in that loss of zest and interest, which the deadening of the moral sense, as we have seen, must bring to life, we shall get no help there. The massy fabric of which saints and heroes were the builders, will never be re-elected by this mincing moral dandyism. ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... take that part back—they do pay something in return; a full measure. They pay by the beauty of their presence, and they are surely very beautiful, with their dainty mincing pink feet and the sheen on the proudly arched breast coverts of the cock birds; and they pay by giving you their trust and their friendship. To gobble the gifts of dried peas, which you buy in little cornucopias from convenient venders for ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... set eyes on them again—not on her, anyway!" thought Judith as she toiled. "What did she want to speak to me for, in her nice little mincing voice! She belongs to hotels and I belong to the—sea. Blossom and I—what has she got ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... remembrance of blessed Saint Stephen, Let's joy at morning, at noon, and at even; Then leave off your mincing, and fall to mince-pies, I pray take my counsel, be ruled ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... he filled in with tales of cattle-musters tales of stampedes and of cattle rushing over camps and "mincing chaps into saw-dust" until I was secretly pleased that the coming ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... did duty as mate of the lower deck. "Look out, youngster, that you don't get treated with greater indignity before long. I took the skipper's measure the day I first set eyes on him. With all his mincing manners and fine talk, depend upon it he'll prove a Tartar ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... her mincing, piping little voice, "Orlando, dear, the train is coming. Let me out. I'm not afraid of that bad man. I want ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hang Tom Smith. But when Divine law does not protect you, you are powerless. At the most you can send him off to take his ten-to-one chance in a battalion, and when you read his name in the returns, come mincing up to God and say: 'So poor old Tom's gone! How the deuce was I ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... kids and a gold-headed cane; and his stock of enamelled chains, opal studs, diamond pins, and the like vanities, would nearly have fitted up a bride's corbeille. To see him fully got up—polished boots, palm-leaf waistcoat, gorgeous cravat, and all—mincing over the gutter, you would take him for a regular man-milliner, and say that the greatest exertion he was capable of, would be holding a trotter, and that only with the aid of a pair of pulleys. But scrutinize him more closely, and you would see that, for all his slim waist and delicate extremities, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... my impressions are often wrong and my memory always weak, that yonder cavalier who sits haughtily in the boat as if he were sole proprietor of the Mississippi, is your good friend, Don Francisco Alvarez," said Lieutenant Bernal in his mincing way. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the first quarter of an hour she had no opportunity of satisfying her curiosity, for Sheila was quite hungry enough not to waste too much time in conversation. At last, however, a chance came, when Mr. Assheton said in his mincing voice— ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... she was carrying a great fan for her young mistress, who was walking with a Cavalier, as gay as Cavaliers ever ventured to be, and another young lady, whose waiting woman had paired with Emlyn. They were mincing along, gazing about them, and uttering little contemptuous titters, and Stead could only too well guess what kind of remarks Emlyn's companion ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Tinette, but in such an ill- tempered voice that the maid came tripping forward with even more mincing steps than usual, but she looked so pert that even Fraulein Rottenmeier did not venture to scold her, which only made her suppressed anger ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... she was lively even to giddiness, heedless, bold, even coquettish, and appeared to be incapable of a reasonable attachment? However, to-day, you tell me, she has become a serious melancholic; pre-occupied, timid, affected; sentiment has taken the place of mincing airs; at least she appears to so fit in with the character she assumes to-day, that you imagine it to be her true one, and her former one, borrowed. All my philosophy would be at fault in such a case, if I did not recognize in this ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... to understand from that, Miss Child, that you don't think I've any right to force myself on you after you showed me so plainly you thought me a bounder," said Peter, not mincing his words or stumbling over them. "But I'm not a bounder. There must be some way of proving to you that I'm not. That's why I'm here for one thing, ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... as the ship was hove to, a young man (one of the sailors) dressed in a smart suit of black, knee-breeches, and buckles, with his hair powdered, and with all the extra finery and mincing gait of an exquisite, came aft on the quarter-deck, and, with a most polished bow, took the liberty of introducing himself as gentleman's gentleman to Mr Neptune, who had been desired to precede his master and acquaint the commander of the ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to consider. I have nothing to say against Anastasia, who, I believe, is a good girl enough"—and his patronising manner grated terribly on Miss Joliffe—"though I wish I could see her take more interest in the Sunday-school, but I won't hide from you that she has a way of carrying herself and mincing her words which does not befit her station. It makes people take notice, and 'twould be more becoming she should drop it, seeing she will have to earn her own living in service. I don't want to ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... particularly that portion of it known as the Bowery. All transgressions and corruptions of language are supposed to originate in that unclassic section, while the truth is that the laws of polite English are as much violated on Fifth Avenue. Of course, the foreign element mincing their "pidgin" English have given the Bowery an unenviable reputation, but there are just as good speakers of the vernacular on the Bowery as elsewhere in the greater city. Yet every inexperienced newspaper reporter ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... cried Curio, contemptuously, mincing no words at that dread moment. "How long will it be before there will be ten boatloads of soldiers alongside? Can we beat off all ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... No? Fancy, Princess—that great booby, Izzet Bey, must stop me at the club, and I exceedingly pressed to dress and entirely out of humour with all Turks. 'Eh bien, mon vieux!' said he in his mincing manner of a nervous pelican, 'they're warming up the Balkan boilers with Austrian pine. But I hear they're full of snow.' And I said to him: 'Snow boils very nicely if the fire is sufficiently persistent!' And I think ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... the party on the dice-box, and events were to decide the issue. When the blow came Mr. Disraeli's reputation for sagacity fell to zero. At last the hollowness of his pretensions was detected, and there was no mincing of epithets for the man who had befooled and destroyed a great party. The Dukes left him to himself, and, according to our present informant, their flight was the harbinger of reviving fortunes. The heart of provincial conservatism warmed to its ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... open sea the more widespread was the floe. Beyond—hauling down the Spotted Horses, which lay in the open—the proportion of new ice would be vastly greater. At a trot for the time over the pans, which were flat, and in delicate, mincing little spurts across the bending ice, Doctor Rolfe proceeded. In a confidence that was somewhat flushed—he had ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... spotlessly white, the most ladylike of her species I remember to have seen. Her jet-black beady eyes and jet-black glittering nose set oflf the snowy whiteness of her coat, and were in turn set off by it. She had a refined, coquettish, mincing walk, which alone was enough to bespeak the agreeable sense she had of her own charms. Perhaps a satiric observer of manners might have thought her more like a lady's-maid than a lady. A suggestion of pertness in her beady eyes, and a certain superciliousness ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... It was Aunt Betsey, you fool! Aunt Nancy used to—she has been dead these eighty years, so there is no use in mincing matters—she used to keep a bottle and a stick, and when she had been tasting a drop out of the bottle the stick used to come off the shelf and I had to taste that. And here she is made a saint of, and poor Aunt Betsey, that did everything for me, is slandered ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... forget the spirited little jade, the off-leader in the third stage, the petted belle of the route, the nervous, coquettish, mincing mare of Marshy Hope. A spoiled beauty she was; you could see that as she took the road with dancing step, tossing her pretty head about, and conscious of her shining black coat and her tail done up "in any simple knot,"—like ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and Rigaud? And withal, notwithstanding lace and brocade—the fripperies of artificial costume—still those who give interest or charm to that day look from their portraits like men,—raking or debonair, if you will, never mincing nor feminine. Can we say as much of the portraits of Lawrence? Gaze there on fair Marlborough; what delicate perfection of features, yet how easy in boldness, how serene in the conviction of power! So fair and so tranquil he might have looked ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was also present, was equally anxious for butter. She had a profusion of iron rings on her ankles, to which were attached little pieces of sheet iron, to enable her to make a tinkling as she walked in her mincing African style; the same thing is thought pretty by our own dragoons in ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... a small Greek merchant, who had an office in Mincing Court—a tiny room at the top of four flights of stairs. On the glass panel of its door was ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... flared, but caught herself, musingly crossed the room, returned half-way, and with frank design resumed the stool warily vacated by the unslippered foot; whose owner was mincing on, just enough fluttered to play defiance while ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... little Dagonet mincing with his feet, "Knight, an ye fling those rubies round my neck In lieu of hers, I'll hold thou hast some touch Of music, since I care not for thy pearls. Swine? I have wallow'd, I have wash'd—the world Is flesh and shadow—I have had my day. The dirty nurse, Experience, in her kind Hath foul'd ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... unlatched and opened the window and stood aside. An instant later "Karl" joined him, swung on a heel, facing back, clicked heels again and bowed mockingly. Apparently he got no response, for he laughed quietly, then turned and went out through the window, Blensop mincing after. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... delight in giving Mr. Manners every annoyance my boyish fancy could conceive. The evening of his arrival he and Mr. Carvel set out for a stroll about the house, Mr. Marmaduke mincing his steps, for it had rained that morning. And presently they came upon the windmill with its long arms moving lazily in the light breeze, near touching the ground as they passed, for the mill was built in the Dutch fashion. I know not what moved me, but hearing Mr. Manners ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... kind a' financerin aside, Colonel. What's the use of living in a free country, where every man has a right to make a penny when he can, and talk so? Now, 'pears to me t'aint no use a' mincing the matter; we might a' leaked ye in for as many thousands as hundreds. Seein' how ye was a good customer, we saved ye on a small shot. Better put the niggers out: ownin' such a lot, ye won't feel it! Give us three prime chaps; none a' yer old sawbones what ye puts up at auction ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... pages are devoted to this interesting subject, with illustrations of various contrivances by which the working of a large library is to be facilitated and brought up to date. In fact, from this point of view a library may be described as a gigantic mincing-machine, into which the labours of the past are flung, to be turned out again in a slightly altered form as ...
— Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods - The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894 • J. W. Clark
... hearth, warming his hands, and diffusing an odor of tobacco and stale alcohol. "Faith, that damned rascal—I beg your pardon, Anastasia; our life upon Usk is not conducive to a mincing nicety of speech. That rascal Punshon made some difficulty over admitting me; you might have taken him for a sentinel, with Stornoway in a state of siege. He ruffled me,—and I don't like it," Simon Orts said, reflectively, looking down upon her. "No, I don't like it. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... certain Monday evening late in January, 1881, Paul Bultitude, Esq. (of Mincing Lane, Colonial Produce Merchant), was sitting alone in his dining-room at Westbourne ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... and trust by the discretion of his movements when she was near. As soon as the days grew warm enough, she was always out on the front piazza when Van and I came home from our daily gallop, and then she would trot out to meet us and be lifted to her perch on the pommel; and then, with mincing gait, like lady's palfrey, stepping as though he might tread on eggs and yet not crush them, Van would take the little one on her own share of the ride. And so it was that the loyal friendship grew and strengthened. The one trick he had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... cream are prepared by mincing cold boiled potatoes fine, putting them in a spider with a little melted butter in it, and letting them fry slightly, keeping them well covered. Add a very small piece of fresh butter, season with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... continued the unaffected youth, "but you bet your life you'll never beat our Cora-lee when there's a person in pants on the premises! It's sickening." He rose, and performed something like a toe-dance, a supposed imitation of his sister's mincing approach to the visitor. "Oh, dear, I am such a little sweety! Here I am all alone just reeking with Browning-and-Tennyson and thinking to myself about such lovely things, and walking around looking for ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... safe to," continued Kate. "Now, such a girl oughtn't to be on the foundation at all. If you only knew the snubbing she gave me yesterday. I quite hate her, with all her pretty face and her mincing ways." ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... me if he were not mine? See!" He drew from his coat a little whip and struck the organ with a snap, at which Topaz jumped. Then he dropped the dog and began to grind, and the crowd saw the trembling animal raise itself to its hind legs and begin to dance. Oh, the mincing little uncertain steps! No tossing of the yellow curls ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... and better known works. More of a concio ad vulgus than the former, it shows a pretty obvious endeavour to soften and popularise, without unduly vulgarising, the academic tone of the earlier work. And it does not yet display those "mincing graces" which were sometimes attributed (according to a very friendly and most competent critic, "harshly, but justly") to the later. The mannerisms, indeed, like the dogmatisms, are pretty clearly imminent. Slightly ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... sobbed as if her heart would break, when there was nothing more for her to bear or do, and Mary took charge of her, to see her to bed, Mrs. Grant and the doctors taking Oscar into their keeping. Well, there was no use in mincing matters—the boy's face was much beaten and battered by the fall; it would show the scars for some time to come—perhaps for ever: concussion of the brain, a fractured leg; even Mrs. Grant's heart grew sick, hearing the doctors enumerate the ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... bungalow, Chellalu would wander off, apparently because she was tired of us, but really because she was full of a new and original idea, and wanted an audience. Once she puzzled the nursery community who had not been visiting the bungalow, by mincing about on pointed toes, with shoulders shrugged like a dancing master in caricature. The babies thought this a very nice game, and for ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... as heedless of love's mysteries as not to have admired, over and over again, the light, mincing, even bewitching gait of a woman who flies on her way to keep an assignation? She glides through the crowd, like a snake through the grass. The costumes and stuffs of the latest fashion spread out their ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... midshipmen who were not enthusiastic advocates and admirers of scourging. It would almost seem that they themselves, having so recently escaped the posterior discipline of the nursery and the infant school, are impatient to recover from those smarting reminiscences by mincing the backs of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Effects of Tea are not all the Mischiefs it occasions. Did it cause none of them, but were it entirely wholesome, as Balm or Mint, it were yet Mischief enough to have our whole Populace used to sip warm Water in a mincing, effeminate Manner, once or twice every Day; which hot Water must be supped out of a nice Tea-Cup, sweatened with Sugar, biting a Bit of nice thin Bread and Butter between Whiles. This mocks the strong Appetite, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... blubber-room cutting the "blanket-pieces," as the largest masses are called, others were pitching the smaller pieces on deck, where they were seized by two men who stood near a block of wood, called a "horse," with a mincing knife, to slash the junks so as to make them melt easily. These were then thrown into the melting-pots by one of the mates, who kept feeding the fires with such "scraps" of blubber as remain after the oil is taken out. Once the fires were fairly set agoing no other kind of fuel was required ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... get the supper'm? You said as 'ow I could get it done this afternoon so as to go to church this evening. I can't do nuffink with the mincing machine gone." ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... had an opportunity of observing at my leisure the king and queen. The king was of medium height, and though not strictly handsome had a pleasant face. His nose was very long, his voice high-pitched and disagreeable; and he walked with a mincing air in which there was no majesty, but this, however, I attributed to the gout. He ate heartily of everything offered him, except vegetables, which he never ate, saying that grass was good only for cattle; and drank only water, having it served in two carafes, one ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... black-puddings. Auguste assisted him. At one corner of the square table Lisa and Augustine sat mending linen, whilst opposite to them, on the other side, with his face turned towards the fireplace, was Florent. Leon was mincing some sausage-meat on the oak block in ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... After another while she slapped shut the book and took to roaming up and down the large room as if she there found respite from the spirit of her which nagged and carped. Peering out between the heavy curtains, she could see the tide of the Avenue mincing, prancing, chugging past. Resuming her beat up and down the vistas of the room, she could still hear its voice muffled and not unlike the tune of quinine singing ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... to; we understand that. But tell me! Bluntly, without mincing matters, if necessary. You know that I have no objection to that sort of thing, so go on. Do not keep me in suspense like this. I am burning with curiosity. What ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... defect,—a cure, too, which he could under present circumstances so easily accomplish,—it only moved his anger to think that the little scrap of paper which he held in his paw, and which he could without the slightest effort crush into nothingness, withheld its secrets from him, whilst every mincing puppy in the streets could command its every word. Ah, Master Bruin! Master Bruin! you are not the first to make the discovery that knowledge is superior to brute force. Angry or not, he wished to know the meaning of the note; and ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... Outside, his rough hair wet with snow, stood Reddin, watching her from the vantage-ground of the darkness! He saw her stand with head erect and bare white shoulders, smiling at herself in the glass. He saw her slip into the rich gown and pose delightedly, mincing to and fro like a wagtail. He noted her lissom figure and shining coils ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
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