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More "Smartness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... direction might be seen the servant out of place, known by the natty knot of his white cravat, as well as by the smartness with which he wears his dress, buttoned up as it is, and coaxed about him with all the ingenuity which experience and necessity bring to the aid of vanity. His napeless hat is severely brushed in order to give the subsoil an appearance of the nap which is gone, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... the British is the main authority. G.H.Q. Constantinople occupies a large barracks which faces a parade-ground. Indian sentries march to and fro outside and enjoy thus serving their King, a picture of polish and smartness. Facing the barracks is a smaller building called "The Jockey Club" where the Commander-in-Chief himself and many of his staff meet to lunch or dine, play billiards, or chat pleasantly over ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... choked upon tears, to behold them thus parodied. The more part, as I have said, were peasants; somewhat bettered perhaps by the drill-sergeant, but for all that ungainly, loutish fellows, with no more than a mere barrack-room smartness of address: indeed, you could have seen our army nowhere more discreditably represented than in this Castle of Edinburgh. And I used to see myself in fancy, and blush. It seemed that my more elegant carriage would but point the insult of the travesty. And I remembered the days when I wore the coarse ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the High-way are grinning in applause of the ingenious Rogue that gave him the Tip, and the Folly of him who had not Eyes all round his Head to prevent receiving it. These things arise from a general Affectation of Smartness, Wit, and Courage. Wycherly somewhere [2] rallies the Pretensions this Way, by making a Fellow say, Red Breeches are a certain Sign of Valour; and Otway makes a Man, to boast his Agility, trip up a Beggar on Crutches [3]. From such Hints I beg a Speculation ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... about her, and they became considerably more indolent than when they had to deal with lady Feng. But after the expiry of three or four days several concerns passed through her hands, which gave them an opportunity to gradually find out that T'an Ch'un did not, in smartness and thoroughness, yield to lady Feng, and that the only difference between them was that she was soft in speech and gentle in disposition. By a remarkable coincidence, princes, dukes, marquises, earls, and hereditary officials arrived for consecutive days from various parts; all of whom were, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... attention and the ceremonies are disciplinary exercises designed to teach precise and soldierly movement, and to inculcate that prompt and subconscious obedience which is essential to proper military control. To this end, smartness and precision should be exacted in the execution of every detail. Such drills should be ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... the cruiser was soon caught in a maze of cross currents. Hither and thither she was borne, a creature bereft of volition. Order followed order like the rattle of quick-fire, and was obeyed with something more than the Wolverine's customary smartness. From the bridge Captain Parkinson himself directed his ship. His face was placid: his bearing steady and confident. This in itself was sufficient earnest that the cruiser was in ticklish case. For it was an axiom of the men who sailed ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... "swaggerist" of the gun tribe, has his own private car built especially for him. Such of the cavalry's former part as the planes do not play he plays. He keeps off the enemy's scouts. Do you seek team-work, spirit of corps, and smartness in this theatre of France, where all the old glamour of war is supposed to be lacking? You will find it in the attendants of Archibald. They have pride, elan, alertness, pepper, and all the other appetizers and condiments. They are as neat as a private yacht's crew, and as lively as an ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... anticipation of a cup of tea and brandy with Dame Tremblay, had dressed herself with some appearance of smartness in a clean striped gown of linsey. A peaked Artois hat surmounted a broad-frilled cap, which left visible some tresses of coarse gray hair and a pair of silver ear-rings, which dangled with every motion of her head. Her shoes displayed broad buckles of brass, and her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... place. The officers had already heard about the affair in the public gardens, and they hurried back to the brilliantly lighted mess-rooms to give vent in heated language to their indignation. They were really rather pleased at Sarudine's discomfiture, since often enough his smartness and elegance in dress and demeanour had served to put them in ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... least, rusty appearance. His felt hat was not so black as it had been; his coat was creased and soiled; his boots needed a blacking. He swung a cane as he stumped along, and there was a sort of faded smartness in his bearing and a knowingness in his grim old visage, indicating some incongruous familiarity with the manners of the great world. He came to a halt in front of the house, and, after quizzing it for a moment, went up the steps and beat a ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... some travelers tell when they get home. By this means the story illustrates one of the great sources of humor—monstrous exaggeration. It also shows what a foolish thing it is to be a boaster. Most people, at one time or another, are tempted to brag about their deeds, their possessions, or their smartness. If they would only think of Baron Munchausen, they ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... for his force, ability, constancy, and dignity, is no sentiment evoked by his floating thoughts but an assurance founded on our own observation that his conduct and character are to be counted upon. Smartness and vivacity, much emotion and many conceits, are obstacles both to fidelity and to merit. There is a high worth in rightly constituted natures independent of incidental consciousness. It consists in that ingrained ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... man was a good-looking youth, scarcely twenty, dressed in the habit of a gentleman's groom, and evidently, by the smartness of his accoutrement, in the employ of some one of importance. As to how he had come by his death I could only guess. But I suspected the horseman I had seen galloping back towards Brest in the morning twilight had ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... you may rightly observe this conjunction, that this is inseparably knit with it, love to God and men, delight to do his will, to love him, and live unto him. Do not deceive yourselves with vain words. If you find not the smartness of the gospel, and the doctrine of grace laying this restraint upon the heart, ye are yet in your sins. This is the reasoning of a believing soul. Shall I, who am dead unto sin, live any longer therein? ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... reproduced and defaced, the clear stream of his sentences was diverted into muddy channels, the airy creatures of his imagination were weighted with lead and made to perform hideous antics. Never had there been so riotous a jargon of distorted affectation and ponderous balderdash. Smartness—of a sort—these gentlemen, no doubt, possessed. It is easy to be accounted smart in a certain circle, if only you succeed in being insolent. Merit of this order the band ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... in the crowd, she discouraged impertinence by dint of an invincible deafness. If you wanted to get a rise out of Ernestine you had to talk about her 'bloomin' policy.' No hint in her of the cheap smartness that had wrecked the other speaker. In that highly original place for such manifestation, Ernestine offered all unconsciously a new lesson of the moral value that may lie in good-breeding. She won the loutish crowd to listen to ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... I will do my best to obliterate the bad impression I have apparently made. They are good people, these Creoles—not particularly bashful or discreet; but yet I like their forwardness and volatility better than the sly smartness of the Yankees, in spite of their ridiculous love of dancing, which even the first emigrants could not lay aside, amidst all the difficulties of their settlement in America. It must have been absurd enough to see them capering about, and dancing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... which is so largely the attraction of Italy and Spain. Instead of adapting and modifying the houses and homes that the climate suggests, the new American comers have brought here from the East the smartness and prettiness of our modern nondescript architecture. The low house, with recesses and galleries, built round an inner court, or patio, which, however small, would fill the whole interior with sunshine and the scent of flowers, is the sort of dwelling that ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... serve him. "Mornin', Mr. Babbitt!" said Moon, and Babbitt felt himself a person of importance, one whose name even busy garagemen remembered—not one of these cheap-sports flying around in flivvers. He admired the ingenuity of the automatic dial, clicking off gallon by gallon; admired the smartness of the sign: "A fill in time saves getting stuck—gas to-day 31 cents"; admired the rhythmic gurgle of the gasoline as it flowed into the tank, and the mechanical regularity with which Moon ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... least; a change of dress would not alter your flippant mind," replied her mother, with unusual smartness. "Dear Mr. Curzon has really convinced me that it is a most important subject, so I don't mind making a sacrifice for once ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... that," said Vilda argumentatively, "I don't call writin' poetry any great test of smartness. There ain't been a big fool in this village for years but could do somethin' in the writin' line. I guess it ain't any great trick, if you have a mind to put yourself down to it. For my part, I've always despised to see a great, hulkin' man, that could handle a hoe or a pitchfork, sit ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... disappointed. 'It took us half an hour to stalk you, but if you had only been Dutchmen we'd have had you fixed up properly.' Indeed, the whole manoeuvre had been neatly and cleverly executed, and showed the smartness and efficiency of these irregular forces in all matters of scouting and reconnaissance. The patrol was then appeased by being photographed 'for the London papers,' and we hastened to accept the farmer's invitation to lunch. 'Only plain fare,' said he, 'but perhaps you are ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... and it was inconceivable that Lois had not flung herself upon Amzi for shelter and support. And as they had long assumed that she was a pensioner upon her brother's bounty, they were now convinced by the smartness of her gown and her general "air" as of one given to self-indulgence in the world's bazaars, that she had become a serious drain ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... rather restless, then agog to see her and her clothes, and then somehow allayed by her appearance and quite amiably attentive to what she had to say. A majority were young girls dressed with the cheap smartness of the suburbs, the rest were for the most part older and dingier, and here and there were dotted young ladies of a remarkable and questionable smartness. In the front row, full of shy recognitions and a little disguised by an unfamiliar hat was ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... advantage of his neighbors and cheat them, but he would do it so smoothly that they never once suspected that they were being cheated. Mr. Snake would go about all day cheating everybody he met. At night he would go home and chuckle over his smartness. It wasn't long before he began to look down on his neighbors for being so honest that they didn't suspect other people of being dishonest, and for being so ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... I note may appear a difference in favor of the great cuteness, wideawakeness, and enterprise of the American, but it is simply a difference expressive of our greater forwardness. We are a forward people, and the god we worship is Smartness. In one of the worst tendencies of the age, namely, an impudent, superficial, journalistic intellectuality and glibness, America, in her polite and literary circles, no doubt leads all other nations. English books and newspapers show more homely veracity, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... and gone about as he pleased. Of course he had had to watch out for Granny and Reddy Fox, but he had had to watch out for them ever since he was a baby, so he didn't fear them very much in spite of their smartness. He felt quite as smart as they and perhaps a little bit smarter. Anyway, they never had caught him, and he didn't believe they ever would. So he had come and gone as he pleased, and poked his nose into everybody's business, and ...
— Mrs. Peter Rabbit • Thornton W. Burgess
... clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smartness and repartees, was asked by some of the company how his nails came to be so dirty. He was at a loss; but she solved the difficulty, by saying, 'the doctor's nails ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... command, imagine that they can command obeisance and popularity. Woe betide other women who arouse their jealousy, for they will scandalise and blight the reputation of the purest of their sex in the suburban belief that the invention of scandal is the hallmark of smartness. ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... looking at the people and the houses, the shops and the vehicles, the blazing blue sky and the muddy crossings, the hurrying men and the slow-strolling maidens, the fresh red bricks and the bright green trees, the extraordinary mixture of smartness and shabbiness. From one hour to another the day had grown vernal; even in the bustling streets there was an odor of earth and blossom. Felix was immensely entertained. He had called it a comical country, and he went about laughing at everything ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... door opened wider, and I found myself confronted by a woman with a candle. She had not the most prepossessing of expressions, though her hair, eyes and features were decidedly good. She was dressed with tawdry smartness—earrings, necklace, and rings, and very high-heeled buckle shoes. Indeed, her costume was so out of keeping with the rusticity of her surroundings as to be quite extraordinary. This fact struck me at once, as did her fingers, which, ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... sweet, pretty mamma" is of the very spirit of the redundancy by which children hope in heaping words together to express accumulation of emotion. Du Maurier's children never make the nasty pert answers upon which, for their nearly impossible but always vulgar smartness, the providers of jokes about children for the comic papers generally depend. He is simply going on with his "novel"—The Tale of the House it might be called—when he affords us realistic glimpses of ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... not before anticipated had an inspiring effect. In short, female Nyack began to carry a high head, and to make male Nyack feel that he was no longer master in its own house. Dolly Chapman presided at these tea-parties with that smartness peculiar to women of her class, taking particular pains to explain how much could be done for Nyack and the world—if only the women could get the direction of things into their own hands. A church as the means ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... night was fearfully dark, and the roads were altogether unworthy of the name. Yet there is an immense traffic on this route, which is the highway from East to West. The Americans, with all their "smartness," have not the knack of making either good roads or good streets. About 11 P.M. we arrived at Uniontown, 12 miles from Brownsville. There the horses were to be changed, an operation which took about an hour to accomplish. ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... of the house. The day after he joined the family they embarked on board the Barbadoes, for Rio and Buenos Ayres. Greatly were the girls amused at the tiny little cabin allotted to them and their mother—a similar little den being taken possession of by Mr. Hardy and the boys. The smartness of the vessel, and the style of her fittings, alike impressed and delighted them. It has not been mentioned that Sarah, their housemaid, accompanied the party. She had been left early an orphan, and had been taken as a nursemaid by Mrs. Hardy. As time went on, and the little girls no longer required ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... doubt, she felt that if charm were once admitted as the criterion, smartness and capability must go to the wall; and she hated—with a hatred the deeper that at times this so-called charm seemed to disturb all calculations—the subtle seductiveness which she could not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... street,—"gutter-slang," the other parcel-girls called it,—the lawlessness seemed to gather a sort of proof. And so it was that, in spite of the entertainment she afforded, and a certain kind of respect in which her "smartness" was held, Becky was considered as rather an outsider, and an object of more ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... management with the Simpsons at Bundaboo, had the fresh and cleanly appearance of all Rose's children; in physical matters they were as clean as they looked. Bob did not look unclean, but with all his excessive smartness, he looked unfresh. That look, and the thing it meant, were his father's legacy ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... taunted and treated with contempt at home and abroad. His father, when he found that his son's smartness was no longer useful in making bargains, shoved him out of his way whenever he met him. All the food or clothes that he had at home seemed to be given to him grudgingly, and with such expressions as these: "Take that; but it is ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... young feller, much as I believe in you and Gus, seein' your smartness, I got to doubt all that there bunk you give them young people 'bout that there what you call radier. I been borned a long time—goin' on to seventy year now,—an' I seen all sorts of contraptions like reapers an' binders, ridin' plows, typewritin'-machines, telephones, phonygraphs, flyin'-machines, ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... well for them to spend some of their time in inventing ingenious traps calculated to ensnare the trick monkey. This would be pitting their smartness against that of a suspicious and clever animal; and if they won out why it would be reckoned not only a glorious triumph but at the same time put a nice little sum of ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... easy figure to fit, Jenny," Miss Peace replied, modestly. "I guess that's half the smartness of it. It doos set good, though, I'm free to think. The styles is real pretty this summer, anyhow. Don't that ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... entire people, men, women, and children, are fighting for their national existence, and their individual home and life, to have such evidences of Yankee smartness foisted upon them does not make for friendship. It inspired contempt. This unpleasant sentiment was strengthened by our failure to demand satisfaction for the lives lost on the Lusitania, while at the same time our losses in dollars seemed to distress us so deeply. But more harmful and more ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... not destined, neither wisdom nor strength nor smartness are of any avail. Listen to what ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... whole French gallery, there is much of a certain quality which I find it very difficult to describe in any one word—a dramatic smartness, a searching for striking and peculiar effects, which render the pictures very likely to please on first sight, and to weary on longer acquaintance. It seems to me to be the work of a race whose senses and ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the armistice and terms, signed by all parties, for surrendering and accepting the surrender of the town. Having therefore seen the deputation of the town off for Turin, my next most anxious endeavour was to cause the battle to cease, which had been carried on at the advanced posts with great smartness. I therefore once more took to my boat to begin the arduous duty of separating the combatants. General La Marmora sent aide-de- camps, but it took time before they could reach all points from which cannon were firing, not on the town ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... I say, Jake there ain't a wonder of smartness, but he's the only one belonging to the old days left to me, an' you couldn't understand what that means till you get to be my age. If I went to any one of your age, or old enough to be your mother, an' said, 'Do you ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... is now thirty-three years since I was first associated with the Royal Fusiliers, the regiment I have looked up to during all my service as a pattern of smartness and efficiency. I have served with you in Gibraltar, Egypt, and many stations in India; also at Aldershot, and on the Gallipoli Peninsula during the past year. There is no regiment in the service in which I have had a higher confidence, and I hope next week to ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... the big guns would go swinging down the road and into Claverings park, and perform various exercises with commendable smartness and a profound disregard for Lady Homartyn's known objection to any ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... "The Man Who Was"—the mere chance that these Americans should tumble upon the very ground and estate that had belonged to the English ancestors of one of them. It is written in a curiously tortured idiom, largely borrowed from the Bible, and all the characters are continually given to verbal smartness or peculiarity of one kind or another. The characters are not individualized. Each is a type, smoothed out by sentimental handling into something meant to be sympathetic. Moreover, the real difficulties of the narrative are consistently, though I believe unconsciously, shirked. ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... watch used to say they liked him well enough because he had "such a gentlemanly way of damning us up and down the deck." Others unable to discern such fine shades of refinement, respected him for his smartness. For the first time since the ship had gone on her beam ends Captain Allistoun gave a short glance down at his men. He was almost upright—one foot against the side of the skylight, one knee on the deck; and with the end of the vang round his waist swung back and forth with his ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... day he did; at least he tried. He put on his hat and he took his cane in his hand and as he started down the street he sought to put smartness and springiness into his gait. If the attempt was a sorry failure, he, for one, did not appreciate the completeness of the failure. He meant, anyhow, that his step no longer should be purposeless ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... who have just crossed the road, and are following this happy couple down the street, are a fair specimen of another class of Sunday—pleasurers. There is a dapper smartness, struggling through very limited means, about the young man, which induces one to set him down at once as a junior clerk to a tradesman or attorney. The girl no one could possibly mistake. You may tell a young woman in the employment of a large dress- maker, at any time, by a certain ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... by his writings is due to their flashes of reality. Of course the man was a poseur, a most horrid mountebank and ego-maniac. His tawdry scraps of misused idea, of literary smartness, of dog-eared and greasy reminiscence, repel us. The world of men remained for him as his audience, and he did to civilized society the continuous compliment of an insane self-consciousness ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... cabin. With the appetite of a schoolboy, and after two months of sea-fare, he appreciated the generous spread. But I did not. It smacked of extravagance. All the same, it was a remarkable feat to have produced it so quickly, and I congratulated the steward on his smartness in a somewhat ominous tone. He gave me a deprecatory smile and, in a way I didn't know what to make of, blinked his fine dark eyes in ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... him the speech for forty dollars. He walked into the House swelling in anticipation of his coming effort, but his chagrin was great when he discovered precisely the same speech in the "Record." How is this for an instance of American journalistic smartness? ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... been fixed as the hour at which Mr. Blyth was to present himself at the lodgings in Kirk Street. He arrived punctual to the appointed time, dressed jauntily for the occasion in a short blue frock coat, famous among all his acquaintances for its smartness of cut and its fabulous old age. From what Zack had told him of Mat's lighter peculiarities of character, he anticipated a somewhat uncivilized reception from the elder of his two hosts; and when he got to Kirk Street, he certainly found that his expectations ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... honourable and right honourable gentlemen on his side of the house, and was taken up out of doors, the party throughout the country using it as if it were expressive of something which ought to be considered very fatal to the measure. Mr. Hobhouse replied with smartness to Sir Charles, aptly quoting Hume's History of England for illustrations of his arguments. This speech was effective on the ministerial side. Mr. Baring made a heavy speech, which fell flatly on the house, and was replied to by Lord Palmerston, who, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the lodge, looking over his shoulder as he went through the door. Then he ran away as fast as he could go. Over hills and valleys, across rivers and creeks, toward the east. He wasted much breath laughing at his smartness as he ran, and ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... some of Pa's darn smartness. I asked him if he knew anything that would make a boy's moustache grow, and he told me the best thing he ever tried was tar, and for me to rub it on thick when I went to bed, and wash it off in the morning. I put it on last night, and by ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... and the ceremonies are DISCIPLINARY EXERCISES designed to teach precise and soldierly movement, and to inculcate that prompt and subconscious obedience which is essential to proper military control. To this end smartness and precision should be exacted in the execution of every detail. Such drills should be frequent, ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... regulation khaki uniform and helmet, a higher responsibility towards the army than did his brother who helped to run the transport. They have been well officered, they have been a lesson to all of us in the essential matters of discipline and smartness, they have done much of the dirty work entailed by guarding lines of communication, and now, when given their longed-for chance of actual fighting on the Rufigi, they have covered themselves with distinction. For my part, as a doctor, I found they had too much ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... port of London had their abode. Snug cottages with trim gardens lay thickly along the banks of the river, where their owners could sit and watch the vessels passing up and down or moored in the stream, and discourse with each other over the hedges as to the way in which they were handled, the smartness of their equipage, whence they had come, or where they were going. For the trade of London was comparatively small in those days, and the skippers as they chatted together could form a shrewd guess from the size and appearance of each ship as to the country with which she traded, or whether she was ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... out his wallet, and handed Bobby the dollar, probably quite as much because he had a high appreciation of his smartness, as from any desire ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... that matter, we are not as a nation particularly fond of any foreigner, largely because we do not understand him, while the foreigner for his part is quite willing to return the compliment. He gives the Yankee credit for commercial smartness, which has built up America's great material prosperity; but he has the utmost contempt for our acquaintance with art, and no profound respect ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... well-known public man we are told that, "As far as he has a philosophy at all, it is this, that merit rides in a motor-car." It is a definition which fosters the impression that success can be secured the more quickly and surely by methods that are bound up with smartness, ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... comical thoughts in others. I'm a buffoon. But excuse an old man's cackle. You, Rodion Romanovitch, you are in your prime, and, like all young people, you appreciate, above all things, human intelligence. Intellectual smartness and abstract rational deductions entice you. But, to return to the special case we were talking about just now. I must tell you that we have to deal with reality, with nature. This is a very important thing, and how admirably does ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... I began to tremble lest every one should refuse my company, and I be left rejected. But the next in turn was a tall, strapping, long-limbed, small-headed, curly-haired Pennsylvania Dutchman, with a soldierly smartness in his manner. To be exact, he had acquired it in the navy. But that was all one; he had at least been trained to desperate resolves, so he accepted the match, and the white-haired swindler pronounced the connubial ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forgiven, in consideration of the exalted rank of their producer. Her success seemed now to be assured, and even the muttered discontent of a neglected husband, who was foolish enough to prefer comfort to smartness, began to subside. In the following year her entertainments became even more splendid, and less comfortable. She took a house at Ascot, and, triumph of triumphs! a scion of Royalty ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... in a room that was coloured a bright green. He was himself stout and red-faced and of a surpassing smartness, his light blue suit was very tight at the waist and very broad over the hips, his white spats gleamed, his pearl pin stared like an eye across the room, his neck bulged in red folds over his collar. Mr. Boset was eating chocolates out of a little cardboard ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... of the officers as a fine determined set of men, and especially of Wickham, the first lieutenant, as a "glorious fellow." The latter being responsible for the smartness and appearance of the ship strongly objected to his littering the decks, and spoke of specimens as "d—d beastly devilment," and used to add, "If I were skipper, I would soon have you and all your d—d mess ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the West Orham woods came a long-drawn dismal "toot"; then two shorter ones. The committee sprang to its feet and looked interested. Sam Hardy came out of the ticket office. The stage-driver, a sharp-looking boy of about fourteen, with a disagreeable air of cheap smartness sticking out all over him, left his seat in the shadow of Mr. Batcheldor's manly form, tossed a cigarette stump away and loafed over to the vicinity of the "depot wagon," which was backed up against the platform. Captain Eri knocked the ashes from his pipe and put ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... With equal candour she wore a magnificent set of teeth, and a touch of rouge on each cheek-bone. To Aunt William's extreme annoyance Lady Virginia was dressed to-day in a strange medley of the artistic style combined oddly with a rather wild attempt at Parisian smartness. That is to say, in her cloak and furs she looked almost like an outside coloured plate on the cover of Paris Fashions; while when she threw it open one could see that she wore a limp crepe de chine Empire gown of an undecided mauve, with ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... collar is clean and sightly, And, then, your hose that sit so tightly! Your linen so fine, with the hat and feather, Make a show of smartness altogether! (To Sergeant.) That fortune should upon younkers shine— While nothing in your ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... when they are caught once, like burned children ever after dread the fire. Others there are who have such overweening confidence in their own smartness that their lives are nothing but a series of losses. Canada Bill and myself were nearing Magnolia, about a hundred miles above New Orleans, when Bill opened up his three cards. It was not long before a crowd gathered about to witness the sport. One large man in particular ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... Fitzjames's college friends. Naturally he was anxious to try his hand. He wrote several articles in the winter of 1851-2. 'The pay,' says Fitzjames, 'was very high—3l. 10s. an article, and I thought that I was going to make a fortune. I was particularly pleased, I remember, with my smartness and wit, but, alas and alas! Cook found me out and gradually ceased to put in my articles. I have seldom felt much keener disappointment, for I was ardently desirous of standing on my own legs and having in my pocket a little money of my own earning. I took heart, however, and decided to try ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... are destroyed by too much smartness. It gives the appearance of perpetual effort, stabs to the heart the nature that is in them, and wearies by the manner and not by the matter. It is the commonest fault in the world (as I have constant ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... kind," said the other. "Will you come into my room?" Betty followed her into a small room, simpler than any in her own servants' quarter. But it was neat, and there was an attempt at smartness in the bright calico curtains and bedspread. The furniture looked home-made, and there was no carpet ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... mistresses of carriages who were shopping inside. The whole street bore the flavour of riches and show, and Carrie felt that she was not of it. She could not, for the life of her, assume the attitude and smartness of Mrs. Vance, who, in her beauty, was all assurance. She could only imagine that it must be evident to many that she was the less handsomely dressed of the two. It cut her to the quick, and she resolved that she would not come here ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... quite a different hotel from the one they had stopped at in New York, there being none of that smartness of service one looks for ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... sweeping the decks and carrying the brig with a rush, as I had fully expected we should, it was with the utmost difficulty that we were able to hold our ground at all. The pirate captain, easily distinguishable among the rest by his good looks and the smartness of his dress, was here, there, and everywhere apparently at the same moment, urging on and encouraging his men in fluent Spanish, while he defended himself from the simultaneous attack of three of our people with consummate ease. He fought cheerfully, ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... standing up, saw a rifle-muzzle pointing straight at his breast, from a corner of the crib. As quick as thought he sprang backward—but the ball was on its way. It tore across his breast, and took a piece of his breast bone. However, he had done well; the rifle had been aimed to kill, and only the smartness of his frontier training had saved his life. The children of the border days were brought up to act ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... in the Rue de la Paix, I met a well-known English producer of plays, and he piloted me to the Cafe de Paris, which seemed to have lost nothing of its special atmosphere of smartness and costliness. Louis the Rotund, who in the early days of the war went off to guard bridges and gasometers, was playing his more accustomed role of maitre d'hotel, explaining with suave gravity ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... and ruin the lives of scores whose greatest fault is an inability to oppose them successfully. Tricks so mean and contemptible that their perpetrator would not be tolerated in social life, are resorted to, and if successful are applauded as evidences of smartness. Every man's hand is against his neighbor. Clerks are bribed to betray the secrets of their employers. The baser their treachery, the larger their reward. We do not propose, however, to discuss the morality of Wall street transactions, and so ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... a rehearsal of that famous game, "Here comes the General." The rules of this game are simple. The moment anyone utters the magic phrase there is an immediate rush for the steps, the winner of the game being he who manages to arrive at the top first and thus impress the imaginary general with his smartness. ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... he was a general favourite for his pleasantry, the gentleness of his manner, and the smartness of his repartee. He had attained tolerable scholarship, was in the fifth form in 1793, the year in which he left Eton, and wrote good Latin verses, an accomplishment which he partially retained to his last days. From Eton he went to Oriel, and there commenced that cutting system ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... the Nursery gate, he had nursed a dull jealousy and set himself to watch, and had dogged his man down at length with the slow cunning of a yokel bred of a line of poachers. Raoul's tribute to his smartness perplexed him and ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... makes her stilted passage across the arena upon which the new womanhood of Western Europe shows its worth. It is an exit. There is likely to be something like a truce in the fashions throughout Europe for some years. It is in America if anywhere that the holy fires of smartness and the fashion will be ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... off your smartness, bub," sharply spoke the man at last, as he fully comprehended that Ree had purposely given him an evasive answer, "I asked a ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... he supposed to consist in gay remarks and unexpected answers; but that which he endeavoured, he seldom failed of performing. His scenes exhibit not much of humour, imagery, or passion: his personages are a kind of intellectual gladiators; every sentence is to ward or strike; the contest of smartness is never intermitted; his wit is a meteor playing to and fro with alternate coruscations. His comedies have, therefore, in some degree, the operation of tragedies, they surprise rather than divert, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... wished. But he had a Queen of absolute sway over his weak mind and timid virtue, and of a character the reverse of his in all points. This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of Burke, with some smartness of fancy, but no sound sense, was proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will, eager in the pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to hold to her desires, or perish in their wreck. Her inordinate gambling and dissipations, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... alarm and caution even the political and business reader, and to the utmost extent, against the prevailing delusion that the establishment of free political institutions, and plentiful intellectual smartness, with general good order, physical plenty, industry, &c., (desirable and precious advantages as they all are,) do, of themselves, determine and yield to our experiment of democracy the fruitage of success. With such ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... hospital in Denver. He was sort of crazy and they didn't dare oppose him. That's why they are so slow. But they'll be here soon and he'll be put to bed. Lemuel says the man'll take a blazed trail the rest of his life, and will have time to get over his smartness while his bones heal. But I think it's too bad. I'm sorry for him, and so is Dad. Now, come. They're going to table and I'm hungry as a bear. Isn't it fine of Mrs. Roderick to get a meal this time of night, or day, or whatever hour ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... people very differently. But he's a fixed and certain quantity, and a good point to measure from. I like him because he is so sincere. He sits down to a book as a true scientist does to a phase of nature, to really learn what there is in it, and not merely to display a little learning, sarcasm, or smartness. I always feel sure that I know something about a book after reading one of his reviews, and also whether I could afford to spend a part of my limited ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... and fumbled at his collar to give himself an air of smartness, and gazed gaily at his partner, both of them over sixty and dusty specimens, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... went back to the dawn of their acquaintance, and to a certain Florio Montaigne. Rickman had got the better of him over that Florio Montaigne. Hitherto, whenever Jewdwine had thought of that little transaction he had smiled in spite of himself; he really could not help admiring the smartness of a young man who had worsted him in a bargain. Jewdwine was a terror to all the second-hand booksellers in London and Oxford; he would waste so much of their good time in cheapening a book that ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... she called herself, was a rosy-cheeked, black-haired, pert girl of about eighteen, who under ordinary circumstances would have found herself able to answer, with a due degree of smartness, any question which might have been addressed to her. But fright will sometimes cower the stoutest heart, and Molly, standing before the coroner at this juncture, presented anything but a reckless appearance, her naturally rosy cheeks blanching at the first word addressed to her, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... over which he wore a blue plush coat with metal buttons, a smart sleeve, and a cape reaching half way down his back. His wig was of a brown colour, covering almost half his pate, on which was hung on one side a little laced hat, but cocked with great smartness. Such was the accomplished Smirk, who, at his issuing forth from the closet, was received with open arms by the amiable Laetitia. She addressed him by the tender name of dear Tommy, and told him she had dismissed ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... the snow will be gone, and the ground will be all brown. Then I will be able to find you anywhere!" Little White Fox gave a hop, skip and jump that ended in a somersault, so tickled was he with his own smartness. ...
— Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends • Roy J. Snell
... of a very flimsy kind but "bolstered-up" and carried through by the bluster of the serjeant and the smartness of his junior. It rested first on a dialogue between Mr. Pickwick and his landlady which was overheard, in fact by several persons; second, on a striking situation witnessed by his three friends who entered unexpectedly and surprised him with Mrs. ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... "Too much smartness is Marian's trouble," replied Miss Waring. "There's nothing in the gymnasium she can't do; she's become the best French scholar we ever had, but that's about all. She's worked hard at French because she thinks it gives her a grand air. I can't imagine ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... fifteen he was practically possessed of all the knowledge of an able seaman, and was sent on board the ship Sea Horse to the East Indies. His position at first was little better than that of a foremast hand, but it was not long before the captain noticed the lad's smartness and keen attention to his duties, and very soon he called him to the quarterdeck and made ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... nearly lost his balance that it took him all his time to parry the next stroke, which was put in with equal smartness and vigour. One blow, that might have brought down an elephant, sent Tomaso on ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial good-humor? or her vulgar music with the soul of the ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... have bought some islands from a party who did not own them; with real smartness and a good counterfeit of disinterested friendliness we coaxed a confiding weak nation into a trap and closed it upon them; we went back on an honored guest of the Stars and Stripes when we had no further use for him and chased him to the mountains; ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... steered ably through the difficulties of the situation towards a point where they could have met upon a normal plane. A very pretty woman with whose affairs one has nothing whatever to do, and whose pretty home has been the perfection of modern smartness of custom, suddenly opening her front door in the unexplained absence of a footman and confronting a visitor, plainly upon the verge of hysteria, suggests the ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... little song and skipped about in the moonlight, and dodged in and out of his little round doorways, and all the time kept his sharp little eyes open for any sign of Granny Fox or Reddy Fox. But with all his smartness, Danny forgot. Yes, Sir, Danny forgot one thing. He forgot to watch up in the sky. He knew that of course old Roughleg the Hawk was asleep, so he had nothing to fear from him. But he never once thought of ...
— The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... his novels alone it would be difficult to determine his rank; but judging him by his high aim and distinguished style (a style remarkable for its charm and purity in an age too much influenced by newspaper slang and smartness) he is certainly one of the best of our recent prose writers. Since his first modest volume appeared in 1860 he has published many poems, sketches of travel, appreciations of literature, parlor comedies, novels,—an ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Tom; all you have to think about is to do your duty with smartness, keep sober, and to avoid doing anything wrong, and with your education, which I wish I had, you are sure ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... "up to date" in dress and appearance. The black-eyed and black-haired Russian girl was just as well developed for her age and as rugged as she could be; but in her cheap way her frock was the "very latest thing," her hair was dressed wonderfully, and the air of "city smartness" about her made the difference between her and Helen ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... fool if I was so well satisfied with my own smartness. My success in settling Mr. Chester Downes had of course given me an inflated opinion of myself; but I knew better than to overlook the possibility of my cousin being able to do me some mean trick, especially with the help of the two fellows he ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... nobody here who could have stood as decent second to him, or even third, if I hadn't been a soldier in the Bang-up Locals (as we was called for our smartness)," said Grandfer Cantle. "And even as 'tis we all look a little scammish beside him. But in the year four 'twas said there wasn't a finer figure in the whole South Wessex than I, as I looked when dashing past the shop-winders with the rest of our company on the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... where he is depicted as attired in "a coarse blue coat, which, without being either a great-coat or a surtout, partook of the nature and qualities of both," having about him that sort of slovenly smartness and swaggering gait peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in the streets by day, and shout and scream in the same by night, calling waiters by their Christian names, and altogether bearing a resemblance upon the whole to something like a dissipated Robinson Crusoe. Habited, Bob still ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... but she liked it, and sincerely wished she could imitate the hero of it in his piety, not his powder. She was about to say so when the sound of approaching steps announced the advent of her host. She had been rather impressed with the "smartness" of Lisha by his wife's praises, but when a small, sallow, sickly looking man came in she changed her mind; for not even an immensely stiff collar, nor a pair of boots that seemed composed entirely of what the boys call "creak leather," ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... to show your smartness on me, young man. You are a new-comer, and I let you off this time. Answer me that way again, and you will remember it as long as you live." And the master glared at him like a savage bull about to ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... true, describes men just as exactly—and no more so—as it describes women. In truth, Vauvenargues felt too seriously about conduct and character to go far in this direction. Now and again he is content with a mere smartness, as when he says: 'There are some thoroughly excellent people who cannot get rid of their ennui except at the expense of society.' But such a mood is not common. He is usually grave, and not seldom profoundly weighty, delicate without being weak, and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... justice be said that to write a biography of Mr. Choate in such a lingo as this is an insult to the subject. We believe we are fair with Mr. Parker's style. Indeed, where it is not relieved by such barbarisms as we have quoted, it purls along with a certain weak smartness which is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Ground Squirrel," interrupted Peter, looking as if he felt very much pleased with his own smartness. ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... which Rachel had drawn from concealment under the Chesterfield, and which was now loaded. Mrs. Maldon employed an old and valued charwoman in the mornings. Rachel accomplished all the rest of the housework herself, including cookery, and she accomplished it with the stylistic smartness of ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... workmanship, but through influence. It might be that they had had their "chance" through a relative or successful business man, or it might be that they "got next" to a politician, who required no other qualification than "smartness." A boy in a telegraph or a lawyer's office has a better opportunity to reach influence than a boy in a workshop. The scholastic requirement for such advancement as these vocations contemplate, is provided ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... smartness characteristic of our navy the men were formed up in a line with their backs to the mission wall. The officer in command gave one look at them, and then almost ran up the ladder which Barton ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... brighten the worn stones. Even the scrapers are sleek with blacklead, and it is not easy to find a window without spotlessly clean curtains. The little coastguard station by the opening on to the shore has difficulty in showing itself superior to the rest in these essential matters of smartness. However, the coastguards glory in a little stone pathway protected by a low wall in front of their building. On this narrow quarter-deck the men love to walk to and fro, just as though they were afloat and were limited to this space for exercise. ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... great, very great talent! The best of his works is "The Carpenters' Guild." His novels are exhausting in their minute detail. Everything in him that has a temporary character, all his digs at the critics and liberals of the period, all his critical observations with their assumption of smartness and modernity, and all the so-called profound reflections scattered here and there—how petty and naive it all is to our modern ideas! The fact of the matter is this: a novelist, an artist, ought ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... pretty girls in jaunty riding habits, young men with polo mallets, old men and children, and grinning negroes lashing their sorry hacks with twigs. Of the carriages, it would be hard to tell which was the more noticeable, the smartness of the vehicles or the jaded depression of the thin beasts that pulled them. Where Park and Ashland avenues meet at right angles the crowd was most dense. There, on one side, one sees the neat little post-office ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... Eye-waters, I conceived them more strongly tersive, and clearing the Eyes; and they had a rough smartness, as if they carryed Sand or Gravel ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... discussed their ailments, would have the courage to tell a stranger that he regarded him as an epileptic. The matter was not put to the test—perhaps fortunately—for at that moment there was a sharp tap at the door, which opened to admit a chambermaid who seemed the last word in frills and smartness. ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... had to handle a bayoneted musket; but it was a fatal invasion of the principle of beauty to adopt a permanent cock. There is no doubt that the flat cocked hat, the small three-cornered pinched hat of the days of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., gave much smartness to the soldier, and much neatness to the civilian; the change, too, corresponded with other alterations of dress, from the loose and flowing, to the tight and succinct principle; but picturesque effect was entirely lost; all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... I conceived them more strongly tersive, and clearing the Eyes; and they had a rough smartness, as if they carryed Sand or ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... house has its wooden verandah, which shields the living rooms against the glare of the sun in summer, and shelters them from snow and rain in winter. These wooden verandahs are in a greater or lesser state of repair and smartness, and under the roof of every verandah hang rows of the same quaintly-decorated and ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... very day he did; at least he tried. He put on his hat and he took his cane in his hand and as he started down the street he sought to put smartness and springiness into his gait. If the attempt was a sorry failure, he, for one, did not appreciate the completeness of the failure. He meant, anyhow, that his step no longer should be purposeless and mechanical; ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... vain, flighty woman," Marlow said, in reply to his wife's remark. "She likes to have young men like Jimmy trailing after her; and Grimmer only laughs. I suppose it's what they call being 'smart.' Pity he doesn't put a little more smartness into his business affairs." He chuckled slightly at the recollection of the dredging shares, which had been some of those he, himself, had received as vendor. "Still, Jimmy is old enough to take care of himself now," he went on, "and, after all, he ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... voice quite twenty years too old for him. His humour was thrown away upon the rising generation of Waddy, and might have been supposed to be the cat-like pawing of a vicious mind; but Joel Ham was not cruel, and although when occasion demanded he could use the cane with exceeding smartness, he frequently overlooked misdemeanours that might have justified an attack, and was never betrayed into administering unmerited cuts even when his black bottle was empty and his thirst ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... believe, he ever wished. But he had a Queen of absolute sway over his weak mind and timid virtue, and of a character the reverse of his in all points. This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of Burke, with some smartness of fancy, but no sound sense, was proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will, eager in the pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to hold to her desires, or perish in their wreck. Her inordinate ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... I know not, and am in no condition to guess. A certain snappish vivacity (very unlike the style of Frederick whom it personates); a wearisome grimacing, gesticulating malice and smartness, approaching or reaching the sad dignity of what is called 'wit' in modern times; in general the rottenness of matter, and the epigrammatic unquiet graciosity of manner in this thing, and its elaborately INhuman turn both of expression and of thought, are visible characteristics ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... morning; pastel Chiffons or buoyant | | Taffetas for the evening party. And in Coats—there's | | the slim "wrappy", the Cape-back. | | | | When Youth Steps Out—if it's young youth, it chooses | | for smartness and comfort, a "Felice" Pump—in patent or | | tan calf, with matching buckles. If it's more | | sophisticated youth—there's the sophisticated Shoe; the | | Shoe of high, "Spiked" heel and daringly contrasted | | leathers—dainty, frivolous, charming! | | | | The Hat Shop Says—pretty ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... country generally lacks, and which is so largely the attraction of Italy and Spain. Instead of adapting and modifying the houses and homes that the climate suggests, the new American comers have brought here from the East the smartness and prettiness of our modern nondescript architecture. The low house, with recesses and galleries, built round an inner court, or patio, which, however small, would fill the whole interior with sunshine and the scent of flowers, is the sort of dwelling that would suit the climate ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... and more than this I do not believe he ever wished. But he had a Queen of absolute sway over his weak mind and timid virtue, and of a character the reverse of his in all points. This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of Burke,[33] with some smartness of fancy, but no sound sense, was proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will, eager in the pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to hold to her desires, or perish in their wreck. Her inordinate gambling and dissipations, with those of the Count d'Artois, and others ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... speak about him to Mr. Evans. Mr. Low did not find the worthy man at home; he had walked out with his nephew and three boys who boarded in the house; but Mr. Low found Miss Evans in a small parlour, dressed, as she always was in an evening, with some pretensions to fashion and smartness: she was very busy with a huge basket of ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... Frau Willmers take their departure. In a humorous monologue Gertrude decides to accept the Burgomaster. She is interrupted in her soliloquy by Lampe, the Beadle, who is a regular old Paul Pry, and boasts to the widow of his smartness and sagacity. According to himself he can ferret out anything, or any one, from a defrauder of the revenue to a thief, an anarchist or a murderer. Then he goes on to say that he intended to serve notice of distraint on Frau Willmers, but had found ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... as she called herself, was a rosy-cheeked, black-haired, pert girl of about eighteen, who under ordinary circumstances would have found herself able to answer, with a due degree of smartness, any question which might have been addressed to her. But fright will sometimes cower the stoutest heart, and Molly, standing before the coroner at this juncture, presented anything but a reckless appearance, her naturally rosy ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... how smart you are, ma'am! I wish I had some smartness in me. But my husband had all that. He was ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... waving black hair, the dark skin, and the carefully trimmed mustache and chin-tuft which gave the lawyer's face a combined effect of romance and smartness. No; it was the eyes, cool, shrewd, dark-gray eyes, which suggested this latter quality. The recollection of having seen one of them wink, in deliberate hostility of sarcasm, when those other trustees had their backs turned, came mercifully at ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... at the story, but she liked it, and sincerely wished she could imitate the hero of it in his piety, not his powder. She was about to say so when the sound of approaching steps announced the advent of her host. She had been rather impressed with the "smartness" of Lisha by his wife's praises, but when a small, sallow, sickly looking man came in she changed her mind; for not even an immensely stiff collar, nor a pair of boots that seemed composed entirely of what the boys call "creak leather," could ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... station management with the Simpsons at Bundaboo, had the fresh and cleanly appearance of all Rose's children; in physical matters they were as clean as they looked. Bob did not look unclean, but with all his excessive smartness, he looked unfresh. That look, and the thing it meant, were his father's ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... very dirty clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smartness and repartees, was asked by some of the company how his nails came to be so dirty. He was at a loss; but she solved the difficulty, by saying, 'the doctor's nails grew ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the nation in which he was residing, and recommended that he should not exist another day without that now very fashionable appendage of a Gentleman's dress called stays—An excellent Caleb Quotem, by his smartness of repartee and unceasing volubility of speech in recounting his labours of a day—"a summer's day," as the poet says, afforded much amusement by his powers of out-talking the fribble of a Staymaker, who, finding himself ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... hole through your ear. And Melanthius, when he was ridiculed by a comedian, said, You pay me now something that you do not owe me. And upon this account jeers vex more; for like bearded arrows they stick a long while, and gall the wounded sufferer. Their smartness is pleasant, and delights the company; and those that are pleased with the saving seem to believe the detracting speaker. For according to Theophrastus, a jeer is a figurative reproach for some fault or misdemeanor; and therefore he that hears it supplies the concealed part, as if he ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... field gun from each ship. Headed by the flag-ship's band, we would be marched to a plain, and there engage in infantry drill as a battalion. Meantime the guns' crews were competing with each other as to their qualifications for smartness. The guns would be taken to pieces, unlimbered, and scattered on the ground, and the wheels of the gun-carriage wheeled away a considerable distance. On the order being given to "Limber up, and fire!" the crew which mounted its gun and fired the first shot earned the laurels. ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... gave him an approving glance; the others interchanged looks. The Etna had a reputation familiar to seamen and a nickname too; they called her the "Hell-packet." Of all the tall and beautiful ships which maintained their smartness and their beauty upon the agony of wronged and driven seamen, the Etna was the most terrible, a blue-water penitentiary, a floating place of torment. To enhance the strange terror of her, the bitter devil who was her captain carried his wife on board; the daily brutalities that made her ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... authority have ever forbidden the practice. In consequence of these people stealing by day only, and that they do not take life or distress any person by personal ill-usage, and that they do not break into houses by digging walls or breaking door-locks, but simply by their smartness manage to abstract property; owing to such trifling thefts I looked upon their proceedings as a petty matter and have not interfered with them." [605] This recalls ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... 'Well, it's got to be done, and I'll do it.' At a hazard, he was two- or three-and-thirty, but below his neck he looked older. He was dressed like everybody, but his costume had, somehow, an effect of soberness beyond his years. It was decidedly not smart, and smartness was the dominant note at the ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... and of this school William Dean Howells is a conspicuous example. Judging him by his novels alone it would be difficult to determine his rank; but judging him by his high aim and distinguished style (a style remarkable for its charm and purity in an age too much influenced by newspaper slang and smartness) he is certainly one of the best of our recent prose writers. Since his first modest volume appeared in 1860 he has published many poems, sketches of travel, appreciations of literature, parlor comedies, novels,—an immense ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... skipper, therefore, having given the unsuccessful experiment a fair trial, suddenly took in all his studding-sails again, reduced his canvas once more to a couple of reefs, and braced sharp up to the wind, as before. But here again we had the advantage of him through the superior smartness of our own crew, for he no sooner began to shorten sail than we did the same, handling our canvas so quickly that we were ready nearly five minutes before him, the result being that we had gained another half-mile upon him and had placed ourselves a good quarter of ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... of the streets, the tram-roads, the lights of the town, the smartness of his flock, the ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... imposed on and exercised by the ruling classes, and symbolically imaged in their code of honour, took an effective shape in the banning of cowardice and of cowardly crime. So far as positive values go, the ethics of nobility degenerated into smartness, the claim for "satisfaction" and the exclusiveness of rank; a Prussian and Kantian abstraction, the conception of duty, a conception at bottom unproved and incapable of generating conviction, became a rule of life, made effective by training and control. The ruling powers and their controls ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... people, men, women, and children, are fighting for their national existence, and their individual home and life, to have such evidences of Yankee smartness foisted upon them does not make for friendship. It inspired contempt. This unpleasant sentiment was strengthened by our failure to demand satisfaction for the lives lost on the Lusitania, while at the same time our losses in dollars ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... that I had shown him on the preceding day. Well, I will do my best to obliterate the bad impression I have apparently made. They are good people, these Creoles—not particularly bashful or discreet; but yet I like their forwardness and volatility better than the sly smartness of the Yankees, in spite of their ridiculous love of dancing, which even the first emigrants could not lay aside, amidst all the difficulties of their settlement in America. It must have been absurd enough to see them capering ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... not, "come off," and in conduct of an order which might, or again might not be spotted. The line he knew, was always drawn at those in any category who were actually found out, for the value of these ladies and these gentlemen was not their claim to pity—nothing so sentimental—but their "smartness," clothes, jokes, racing tips, their ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... by, whistling carelessly, a boy about Tim's own age; he was quite respectably, though poorly dressed, and wore his cap very much on one side with an air of smartness which Tim thought becoming. He stopped and looked at the boy and the dog, and they looked at him, Moses ready to be suspicious, and Tim to be conversational ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... whether it were such or such a one, and dismissing the whole list of improbabilities, before he laid down the book he was reading and answered the bell. When at last he did this, he was rewarded by the apparition of an utter stranger on his threshold,—a gaunt figure of forlorn and curious smartness towering far above him, that jerked him a nod of the head, and asked if Mr. Hapford lived there. The face which the lamplight revealed was remarkable for a harsh two days' growth of beard, and a single bloodshot eye; yet it was not otherwise a sinister countenance, and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... was much agitated by this speech, and feared lest the Enchanter should have overheard it; but he had been loudly calling her attention to the flowers, and chuckling over his own smartness in getting them for her; and it was rather a blow to him when she said very coldly that they were not the sort she preferred, and she would be glad if he would send them all away. This he did, but afterwards wished to kiss the Princess's hand as a reward for having been so obliging; ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... country shops are flooded with what he calls 'shoddy.' An army of eager commercial travellers pushes showy goods on the shopkeepers and the public at half his price. Even the farmers in remote districts are beginning to acquire a taste for smartness. Some things in which he used to do a useful trade are now scarcely worth making. There is hardly any demand for the checked head-kerchiefs. The women prefer hats and bonnets, decked with cheap ribbons or artificial flowers; and these bring no trade to Mr. Quinn's mill. Still, he manages ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... conqueror who can recount a triumph with pride, but without conceit. She looked at him with naive admiration. To admire him was agreeable to her; and she liked also to feel unimportant in his presence. But she fought, unsuccessfully, against the humiliating idea that his personal smartness convicted her of being shabby—of being even inefficient in one department of her existence; and she could have wished to be ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... have a poet who devoted himself to the one class of poetry which, apart from satire, the conditions of the Silver Age were qualified to produce in any real excellence—the epigram. In a period when rhetorical smartness and point were the predominant features of literature, the epigram was almost certain to flourish. But Roman poets in general, and Martial in particular, gave a character to the epigram which has clung to it ever since, and has actually ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Brer Rabbit got some cunjerment w'at he trick um wid. Brer B'ar, he up'n 'low, he did, dat he boun' Brer Rabbit is a nat'al bawn witch; Brer Wolf say, sezee, dat he 'speck Brer Rabbit des in cahoots wid a witch; en Brer Fox, he vow dat Brer Rabbit got mo' luck dan smartness. Den Jedge B'ar, he drap he head one side, he did, en he ax how come Brer Rabbit got all de luck on he own side. De mo' dey ax, de mo' dey git pestered, en de mo' dey git pestered, de wuss dey worry. Day in en day out dey wuk wid dis puzzlement; let 'lone dat, ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... a boarding-house? I know of a good many. Some 's right smart,—'ristocratic, and 'ristocratic prices. Then there's some good enough in every way, only not quite so smart,—and with this advantage, you don't have the smartness to pay for." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... enjoyed so long, and prized. This now unemployed time would give them ample opportunity for studying means of revenge, and some would no doubt turn their acumen in that direction. If a prisoner had any smartness, he would feel, from the circumstances, almost impelled to give vent to mischief, and thereby make as ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... this has changed. The stores in New York are now the most beautiful in the world, and the women are dressed to perfection. They are as clever at the demi-toilette as the Parisian, and the extreme neatness and smartness of their walking-gowns are very refreshing after the floppy, blowsy, trailing dresses, accompanied by the inevitable feather boa of which English girls, who used to be so tidy and "tailor-made," now seem so fond. The universal white "waist" is very pretty and trim on the American girl. It is one ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... took out his wallet, and handed Bobby the dollar, probably quite as much because he had a high appreciation of his smartness, as from any desire ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... and discipline; and barring, too, the buttoning up to the chin, which, on the mountain's side, you had perhaps rather dispense with; but which the soldier must adhere to, if he would keep up the essential degree of stiffness and smartness of dress. Coats of this kind, and equipments of this nature, are worn by the Prussian and French infantry—two good authorities in military matters; they have been tried on our police force; something of the sort ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... stereo-typed hero of the novel,—hero only by virtue of his finally marrying the heroine. The one merit of the delineation—that it is a portrait of a delicate Christian gentleman—is sadly marred by the vulgar smartness of Arthur's repartees with the scampish New-Yorker. A victory in such a contest was by no means necessary to vindicate the hero's superiority; and if he so far forgot himself as to engage at all in the degrading warfare, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... race of writers who affiliate with their subjects, and enter into them through their blood, their sexuality and manliness, instead of standing apart and criticising them and writing about them through mere intellectual cleverness and "smartness." ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... relicks." ... He wondered if Milton, De Quincey, Walter Pater or even Jeremy Taylor had made such sustained music. He marvelled at the lofty structures of old seventeenth century prose-men, and compared them with the chippy staccato of the modern perky style, its smug smartness, its eternal chattering gallop. He absorbed the quiet prose of Addison and Steele and swore it tasted like dry sherry. Swift, he found brilliantly hard, often mannered; and he loved Dr. Goldsmith, so bland, loquacious, welcoming. In Fielding's ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... with the precision of a fashion-plate. Mr. Marcus Stepney was a man, a considerable portion of whose time was taken up every morning by the choice of cravats and socks and shirts. Though Lydia did not know this, his smartness, plus a certain dexterity with cards, was his stock in trade. No breath of scandal had touched him, he moved in a good set and was always at the right place ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... hat was wreathed with primroses and green leaves. It was indeed a charming frock, and so modern that Mollie thought she might have worn it at home without anyone being surprised at anything except her unusual smartness. Prudence and Grizzel wore dresses fashioned in precisely the same way, but Prue's muslin was sprigged with pink rosebuds, while Grizzel's dots ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... forthcoming, presents of clothes, finery, books, or flowers, appear to have been substituted. Advantage was taken of these presents to bedeck the child in every variety of smartness. At one time she had a victorine about her neck and a wreath about her hair, then again, ornaments and a jacket on, and her hair neatly dressed with ribbons. At another time she had a silk shawl, a victorine ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... signals were accompanied, required a great quantity of persuasion to induce him to advance. At length there sauntered up, on the opposite side of the way—with a bad pretense of passing by accident—a figure conspicuous for its dirty smartness, which after a great many frowns and jerks of the head, in resistance of the invitation, ultimately crossed the road and was ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... wider, and I found myself confronted by a woman with a candle. She had not the most prepossessing of expressions, though her hair, eyes and features were decidedly good. She was dressed with tawdry smartness—earrings, necklace, and rings, and very high-heeled buckle shoes. Indeed, her costume was so out of keeping with the rusticity of her surroundings as to be quite extraordinary. This fact struck me at once, as did her fingers, which, though spatulate ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... bayoneted musket; but it was a fatal invasion of the principle of beauty to adopt a permanent cock. There is no doubt that the flat cocked hat, the small three-cornered pinched hat of the days of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., gave much smartness to the soldier, and much neatness to the civilian; the change, too, corresponded with other alterations of dress, from the loose and flowing, to the tight and succinct principle; but picturesque effect was entirely lost; all the sentimentality, all the romance of the hat, evaporated in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... executed AT ATTENTION and the ceremonies are DISCIPLINARY EXERCISES designed to teach precise and soldierly movement, and to inculcate that prompt and subconscious obedience which is essential to proper military control. To this end smartness and precision should be exacted in the execution of every detail. Such drills should ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... are not as a nation particularly fond of any foreigner, largely because we do not understand him, while the foreigner for his part is quite willing to return the compliment. He gives the Yankee credit for commercial smartness, which has built up America's great material prosperity; but he has the utmost contempt for our acquaintance with art, and no profound ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... make—but men never do want to be told anything, especially by a woman. Mary V was glad she had not been permitted to say that the sheriff would of course receive an especially attractive reward. He could go without, now, just for his smartness. ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... without reference to a model or study of nature. The use of the word in French dates from the reign of Louis XIV. and then denoted a lawyer who was master of "chicane." "Chic," in general use, now connotes "smartness," in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... could be smart, devote oneself to study—be a "greasy grind"—and yet fail of prominence; and one could fail to pass—"flunk"—and yet climb to the pinnacle of prominence. Evidently smartness and studiousness had nothing to do with it, and Missy felt a pleasurable thrill. Formerly she had envied Beulah Crosswhite, who wore glasses and was preternaturally wise. But maybe Beulah Crosswhite was not so much. ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of debate will say that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honorable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animadversion, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... it was best that Miss Charlecote should so imagine, and reserved for his wife's private ear his conviction that the young fellow had had this hope in his eye when refusing the partnership. Such smartness and foresight commanded his respect as a man of the world, though maybe the women would not understand it. For Phoebe's interest, he must encourage the lady ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... boast of a 'Varsity education, and he prided himself on his smartness, but he was far from being "gleg at the uptak'," as the Scots say, and his powers of observation and deduction assuredly would not have qualified him for a position as a Scotland Yard "sleuth." Seemingly he was quite unconscious ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... answers; but that which he endeavoured, he seldom failed of performing. His scenes exhibit not much of humour, imagery, or passion: his personages are a kind of intellectual gladiators; every sentence is to ward or strike; the contest of smartness is never intermitted; his wit is a meteor playing to and fro with alternate coruscations. His comedies have, therefore, in some degree, the operation of tragedies, they surprise rather than divert, and raise admiration oftener than merriment. But they are the works of a mind replete with ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... the row of cottages stood the house in which Brother Basil was staying. At one time the place had made some pretensions to smartness. It was stone-built throughout and tiled. In the rear was an orchard of apple-trees; and a herb garden, now choked with weeds, separated the front of the house from the roadway. The place was in the occupation of a widow woman, whose late husband had once been a ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... Holton had come back to wrest money from William, and it was inconceivable that Lois had not flung herself upon Amzi for shelter and support. And as they had long assumed that she was a pensioner upon her brother's bounty, they were now convinced by the smartness of her gown and her general "air" as of one given to self-indulgence in the world's bazaars, that she had become a serious drain ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... more spectacular. Accordingly she goes to Europe, only to find that she is literally surrounded by budding virtuosos,—an army of Nathans, any one of whom might easily eclipse her. Against her personal charm, her new-world vigor, her Yankee smartness, Nathan places his years of systematic training, his soul saturated in the music and art of past centuries of European endeavor and perhaps his youth of poverty which makes success imperative. The young lady's European teacher frankly tells her ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... cultivated enunciation; one from Wellesley—this, a lady—with that keen and paradoxically impractical expression which marks pure intellectuality; an alert matron, plainly, almost shabbily, dressed (aristocratic Boston still scorns sartorial smartness); a very well-bred young girl with bone spectacles; a student, shabby, like the Back Bay matron, but for another reason; a writer; a business man whose hobby is Washingtonia. These, all of them, you may enjoy along with your cup of tea for three cents, if—and here is ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... of sentiment into satire as the following is rather jarring, and is a good specimen of that "laborious smartness," as Mr. R.H. Hutton justly calls it, which is found in ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... singularly concerned. Apparently one of these, one sultry afternoon, stopped before the shadowed window of a photographer's; she was a handsome, well-dressed woman, yet bearing a certain countrylike simplicity that was unlike the restless smartness of the more urban promenaders who passed her. Nevertheless she had halted before Mr. Hamlin's picture, which Sophy had not yet dared to bring home and present to him, and was gazing at it with rapt and breathless attention. ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... border raids—as such under close surveillance. One, a youthful and handsome officer of Virginia riflemen, aged 27 years, a friend of Governor Dinwiddie, had been allowed the range of the fortress, on parole. His good looks, education, smartness (we use the word advisedly) and misfortunes seem to have created much sympathy for the captive, but canny Scot. He has a warm welcome in many houses—the French ladies even plead his cause; le beau capitaine is asked out; no entertainment at last ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of Nantes (1685). He soon mixed with the gayest society, and became well known as a prolific writer of songs, prologues, epilogues, masques, and the lighter dramatic fare. Much of this work is not lacking in wit and volatile smartness, but it is all far too ephemeral to have any permanent value as literature. He edited The Gentleman's Journal, but is perhaps best remembered for his translation of Don Quixote, and his concluding Urquhart's version ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... too much smartness. It gives the appearance of perpetual effort, stabs to the heart the nature that is in them, and wearies by the manner and not by the matter. It is the commonest fault in the world (as I have constant occasion to observe here) but it is a very great one. Just as you couldn't bear to have an ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... of Delilah, really, with her flushed face, her too elaborately coiffured hair with its ugly ornament, her ready-made evening dress with its cheap attempts at smartness, her cleaned gloves, indifferent shoes. But ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Cincinnatus due credit for his undoubted smartness, it must be borne in mind that the movements of the Free State forces were generally determined by the Oorlogscommissie, a body made up of President Steyn, Judge Hertzog, Advocate De Villiers, and two or three other prominent ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... think so, I won't persuade ye, though I don't think so much of your smartness as I did, after that. Still, we won't quarrel; you've done me a mighty good turn, that I must say, and I only feel I aren't level without doing something to pay the debt. Come, now, you've got your trade as I've got mine. Let me have the bill, and I'll pay it like a lord, and feel a deal more ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... the "swaggerist" of the gun tribe, has his own private car built especially for him. Such of the cavalry's former part as the planes do not play he plays. He keeps off the enemy's scouts. Do you seek team-work, spirit of corps, and smartness in this theatre of France, where all the old glamour of war is supposed to be lacking? You will find it in the attendants of Archibald. They have pride, elan, alertness, pepper, and all the other appetizers and condiments. They are as neat as a ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... since him;—the moral philosopher, though of a different genre, was also a most agreeable companion, an Irishman transplanted in his youth to St. Omers, and who had grafted upon his native humour a considerable share of French smartness and repartee—such were the two, who ruled supreme in all the festive arrangements of this jovial regiment, and were at last as regular at table, as the adjutant and the paymaster, and so might they have continued, had not prosperity, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... during this declaration; and all but the two youngsters appeared more than usually intent upon whatever they were employed about before the Rabbi's entrance. Youth is a bad courtier, ever preferring frolic and amusement to sobriety and attention. They had been at once piqued and pleased by Robin's smartness, and resolved to whet their own wit upon so well-tempered ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... characteristic air of intelligence and wisdom to the parrot's face. We naturally expect so clever a bird to speak. And when it turns upon us suddenly with a copy-book maxim, we are in no way astonished at its surpassing smartness. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... paraded Paris with his mane, his beard and moustaches, his waistcoats and his eyeglass, maintained in its place, without the help of his hands, by the contraction of his cheek, and eye-socket, the chief towns of some departments had their sub-lions, who protested by the smartness of their trouser-straps against ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... side, and off he ran before me toward the school-house. When he had conducted me to school, he usually took leave of me, and returned home. But he came back again, before school was out, so as to be my companion homeward. I might tell a great many stories about the smartness of Rover; but on the whole I think I will forbear. I am afraid if I should talk half an hour about him, some of you would accuse me of too much partiality for my favorite, and would think I had fallen into the same foolish ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... places. How he envied them! Then the whole superficies of his mind became filled with a desire to conceal this difference. He recalled the various characteristics of those who worked along with him. One knew all topical songs, slang and phrases; another affected a smartness in dress; a third discussed theatres with semi-professional knowledge. Harvey, however, could never have entered the world, or lived in it, if he had first to pass through the portals of such ideas! ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... people who have just crossed the road, and are following this happy couple down the street, are a fair specimen of another class of Sunday—pleasurers. There is a dapper smartness, struggling through very limited means, about the young man, which induces one to set him down at once as a junior clerk to a tradesman or attorney. The girl no one could possibly mistake. You may tell a young woman in the employment of a large dress- maker, at any ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... meant to deceive the public. With equal candour she wore a magnificent set of teeth, and a touch of rouge on each cheek-bone. To Aunt William's extreme annoyance Lady Virginia was dressed to-day in a strange medley of the artistic style combined oddly with a rather wild attempt at Parisian smartness. That is to say, in her cloak and furs she looked almost like an outside coloured plate on the cover of Paris Fashions; while when she threw it open one could see that she wore a limp crepe de chine Empire gown of an undecided mauve, with a waist under the arms and puffed sleeves. ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... much fear, on the decline; we no longer see the vigour of handling and smartness of conception formerly apparent in his works: or, "A little stricter attention to drawing, as well as composition, would render this artist's works ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... surrendered by the old Buddhist proprietors, however cleverly or craftily the bonzes may yield outward conformity to governmental edicts. On the other hand, the efforts, both archaeological and practical, which have been made in recent years by fiercely zealous Shint[o]ists, savor of the smartness of New Japan more than they suggest either sincerity or edification. It often requires the finest tact on the part of both the strenuous Buddhists and the stalwart purists of Shint[o], to extricate the various gods out of the mixture and mess ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... has accumulated for years, and slow neglect has wrought a picturesque sort of dilapidation, the mouldiness of time, which has something to recommend it. But there is nothing attractive in new nastiness, in the vulgar union of smartness and filth. A dirty modern house, just built, a house smelling of poor whiskey and vile tobacco, its white paint grimy, its floors unclean, is ever so much worse than an old inn that never pretended to be anything ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... acted as counsel. The case for the United States was not presented in a manner worthy of the occasion. According to Adams the American contentions "were advanced with an aggressiveness of tone and attorney-like smartness, more appropriate to the wranglings of a quarter-sessions court than to pleadings before a grave international tribunal." The American counsel were instructed to insist not, indeed, on indemnity for the cost of two years of war, but on compensation because ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... eligible for capture. The sergeant looked disappointed. 'It took us half an hour to stalk you, but if you had only been Dutchmen we'd have had you fixed up properly.' Indeed, the whole manoeuvre had been neatly and cleverly executed, and showed the smartness and efficiency of these irregular forces in all matters of scouting and reconnaissance. The patrol was then appeased by being photographed 'for the London papers,' and we hastened to accept the farmer's invitation to lunch. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... can rule others, and be ruled by others, but he cannot rule himself. The cure would appear to be to train every German for an officer, and then put him under himself. It is certain he would order himself about with discretion and judgment, and see to it that he himself obeyed himself with smartness and precision. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... this game are simple. The moment anyone utters the magic phrase there is an immediate rush for the steps, the winner of the game being he who manages to arrive at the top first and thus impress the imaginary general with his smartness. ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... country and friends I had left for ever, a slight tap at the door roused me from my painful reveries, and Mrs. C—- entered the room. Like most of the Canadian women, my friend was small of stature, slight and delicately formed, and dressed with the smartness and neatness so characteristic of the females of this continent, who, if they lack some of the accomplishments of English women, far surpass them in their taste in dress, their choice of colours, and the graceful and becoming manner ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... warrior, and could raise a party agin the Ottaways any time he chose. Most of the fighting that's been going on since you came here has been stirred up by Mahng, and ef the whites gets drawed into it, it'll be his doings. With all his smartness he never met up with Songa, or leastways never got the best of him, till this last time, when, fur as I kin make out, they caught him and his squaw and their young one travelling from one Ottaway village to another. They say Songa made the prettiest fight ever was ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... hope to realise in his own. He was acquainted in a business way with the tradition of old Phillips Corey, and he had heard a great many things about the Corey who had spent his youth abroad and his father's money everywhere, and done nothing but say smart things. Lapham could not see the smartness of some of them which had been repeated to him. Once he had encountered the fellow, and it seemed to Lapham that the tall, slim, white-moustached man, with the slight stoop, was everything that was offensively aristocratic. He had bristled up aggressively ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... just the same it's the girls with sense get tired having the men rave about their smartness and pass on, to go rushing after a empty head completely smothered under yellow curls. That's how much real brains counts for ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... resenting the woman's way of treating him. It offended her oddly and jarred upon her good taste, as something to which she was not at all accustomed in her surroundings. Lady Fan was very exquisite in her outward ways, and her speech was of the proper smartness. Yet everything she did and said ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... my cuteness in foreseeing this very thing and swapping trees to beat it. But, don't you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that spot of the kitchen floor to which Hollingsworth's kindly hand had impelled her. The cloak falling partly off, she was seen to be a very young woman dressed in a poor but decent gown, made high in the neck, and without any regard to fashion or smartness. Her brown hair fell down from beneath a hood, not in curls but with only a slight wave; her face was of a wan, almost sickly hue, betokening habitual seclusion from the sun and free atmosphere, like a flower-shrub that ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not a question of smartness," replied the Doctor. "He is too smart; but Henry has steadiness, and bottom, and purpose, and power, and will, and industry. But Bart, if you start him on a thing, runs away out of sight of you in an hour. The next you see of him he is off loafing about, quizzing somebody; and ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... With the appetite of a schoolboy, and after two months of sea-fare, he appreciated the generous spread. But I did not. It smacked of extravagance. All the same, it was a remarkable feat to have produced it so quickly, and I congratulated the steward on his smartness in a somewhat ominous tone. He gave me a deprecatory smile and, in a way I didn't know what to make of, blinked his fine dark eyes in the ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... been inanimate or absent. I began to tremble lest every one should refuse my company, and I be left rejected. But the next in turn was a tall, strapping, long-limbed, small-headed, curly-haired Pennsylvania Dutchman, with a soldierly smartness in his manner. To be exact, he had acquired it in the navy. But that was all one; he had at least been trained to desperate resolves, so he accepted the match, and the white-haired swindler pronounced the connubial benediction, and pocketed ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a cup of tea and brandy with Dame Tremblay, had dressed herself with some appearance of smartness in a clean striped gown of linsey. A peaked Artois hat surmounted a broad-frilled cap, which left visible some tresses of coarse gray hair and a pair of silver ear-rings, which dangled with every motion of her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Mrs. Hayes's friendship and table: all returned, smiling and rosy, at about half-past ten o'clock, from a walk which they had taken to Bayswater. Many thousands of people were likewise seen flocking down the Oxford Road; and you would rather have thought, from the smartness of their appearance and the pleasure depicted in their countenances, that they were just issuing from a sermon, than quitting the ceremony which they had been ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not easy to find a window without spotlessly clean curtains. The little coastguard station by the opening on to the shore has difficulty in showing itself superior to the rest in these essential matters of smartness. However, the coastguards glory in a little stone pathway protected by a low wall in front of their building. On this narrow quarter-deck the men love to walk to and fro, just as though they were afloat and were limited to this space for exercise. ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... bravura, were forgiven, in consideration of the exalted rank of their producer. Her success seemed now to be assured, and even the muttered discontent of a neglected husband, who was foolish enough to prefer comfort to smartness, began to subside. In the following year her entertainments became even more splendid, and less comfortable. She took a house at Ascot, and, triumph of triumphs! a scion of Royalty deigned ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... shuddered when they saw that so far as appearances went, the soft muck bed really had no bottom. Any one so unfortunate as to fall in would surely gradually sink far over his head, unless he were rescued in time, or else had the smartness to effect his own release by seizing hold of a low-hanging branch and gradually drawing his limbs out ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... nor ever raised any pecuniary advantage from the calamities of others. I led weakness and negligence into difficulties, only that I might divert myself with their perplexities and distresses; and violated every law of friendship, with no other hope than that of gaining the reputation of smartness and waggery. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... thirty-three years since I was first associated with the Royal Fusiliers, the regiment I have looked up to during all my service as a pattern of smartness and efficiency. I have served with you in Gibraltar, Egypt, and many stations in India; also at Aldershot, and on the Gallipoli Peninsula during the past year. There is no regiment in the service in which I have had a higher confidence, and I hope next week to be able to assemble you again ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... presiding spirit of the scene, if a smart officer, has never a better opportunity for showing his smartness than when a ship is fitting for sea; all the burthen of the work then falls upon his shoulders, for he has to be here and there and everywhere, directing a hundred different jobs at one and ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... humour were reproduced and defaced, the clear stream of his sentences was diverted into muddy channels, the airy creatures of his imagination were weighted with lead and made to perform hideous antics. Never had there been so riotous a jargon of distorted affectation and ponderous balderdash. Smartness—of a sort—these gentlemen, no doubt, possessed. It is easy to be accounted smart in a certain circle, if only you succeed in being insolent. Merit of this order the band could boast ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... than that. It was to be of man's estate, broad-shouldered and heavy-bearded; to wear huge black boots up to his thighs, and a blue flannel jersey; to have a peaked cap (not forgetting a brass button on each side by way of smartness); and then to come along, in the afternoon, with a yellow oilskin tied up in a bundle, to the wharf where the herring fleet lay, the admiration and the envy of all the miserable creatures condemned to ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... promotion merely on account of good workmanship, but through influence. It might be that they had had their "chance" through a relative or successful business man, or it might be that they "got next" to a politician, who required no other qualification than "smartness." A boy in a telegraph or a lawyer's office has a better opportunity to reach influence than a boy in a workshop. The scholastic requirement for such advancement as these vocations contemplate, is provided ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... there," said Mr. Frayling; "but all the same, you'll be able to make a good deal of that boy, or I'm much mistaken. And as for Angelica, why, when she is at the head of an establishment of her own she will require all her smartness. But teach her housekeeping, Lady Adeline; that is ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... to the wheel comforted one. The blue dungaree trousers turned up the calf, one leg a little higher than the other, the clean check shirt, the white canvas cap, evidently made by himself, made up a whole of peculiar smartness, and the persistent jauntiness of his gait, even, poor fellow, when he couldn't help tottering, told of his invincible spirit. There was also a man called Gambril. He was the only grizzled person in the ship. His face was of an austere type. But if I remember all their faces, ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... lines, physiognomical quips and cranks, that gave it great character. There was much earnestness about the brows, and a deal of speculation in the eyes, which were brown and bright, and "quick in turning"; the nose, a decided one, though of no established order; and there was a handsome smartness about the mouth. Altogether it was no common face—none of those willow-pattern ones, which Nature turns out by thousands at her potteries;—but more like a chance specimen of the Chinese ware, one to the set—unique, ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... the like age composing his Arthurs, declared the same to be the very acme and pitch of life for epic poesy—though since he hath altered it to sixty, the year in which he published his Alfred.[201] True it is, that the talents for criticism—namely, smartness, quick censure, vivacity of remark, certainty of asseveration, indeed all but acerbity—seem rather the gifts of youth than of riper age. But it is far otherwise in poetry; witness the works of Mr Rymer ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... soon caught in a maze of cross currents. Hither and thither she was borne, a creature bereft of volition. Order followed order like the rattle of quick-fire, and was obeyed with something more than the Wolverine's customary smartness. From the bridge Captain Parkinson himself directed his ship. His face was placid: his bearing steady and confident. This in itself was sufficient earnest that the cruiser was in ticklish case. For it was an axiom of the men who sailed under Parkinson that the calmer ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... says Mrs. Chichester, shrugging up her thin shoulders and casting a queer glance round her from under her brows; "let us take him away quickly, before he cuts himself with his own smartness." ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... affair in the public gardens, and they hurried back to the brilliantly lighted mess-rooms to give vent in heated language to their indignation. They were really rather pleased at Sarudine's discomfiture, since often enough his smartness and elegance in dress and demeanour had served to put ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... one, I suppose, for noon, and the other for midnight. The town has, so far as its principal street is concerned, a city-like aspect, with large, fair edifices, and shops as good as most of those at Rome, the smartness of which contrasts strikingly with the rude and lonely scenery of mountain and stream, through which we had come to reach it. We drove through Narni without stopping, and came out from it on the other side, where a broad, level valley ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Dic is no great thing," said Tom. "The firm owes Williams nearly four times that amount, and he isn't a man who will stand much foolishness. Father is not making so much money, either, as you think for, and the first thing you know, with your smartness, you will ruin him and me both, if you keep on making a fool of yourself. But that wouldn't hurt you. You don't ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... center of the first cross-roads I saw a splendid and erect individual, flashing forth authority, gaiety, and utter smartness in the gloom. Impossible not to believe that he was the owner of all the adjacent ground, disguised as a cavalry ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... ready on the bed. Desire had chosen it with care. She had no wedding-dress. Bridal white would have seemed—well, dangerously near the humorous. She would have feared that half-smile with which Spence was wont to appreciate life's pleasantries. But the gown upon the bed was the last word in smartness and charm. In color it was like pale sunlight through green water. It was both cool and bright. Against it, her warm, white skin glowed warmer and whiter; her leaf-brown hair showed more softly brown. Its skirt was daintily short and beneath it would show green stockings ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... air of modest swagger about Miles as he spoke, for he rather prided himself on his business acumen and general smartness, so Katherine's next words were a terrible ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... sawdust streets and high board sidewalks of the lumber town were filled to the brim with people. The permanent population, dressed in the stiffness of its Sunday best, escorted gingham wives or sweethearts; a dozen outsiders like myself tried not to be too conspicuous in a city smartness; but the great multitude was composed of the men of the woods. I sat, chair-tilted by the hotel, watching them pass. Their heavy woollen shirts crossed by the broad suspenders, the red of their sashes or leather shine of their belts, their short kersey trousers "stagged" off ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... span, self-confident, clever, shining, with his indubitable virtues mainly on the outside. If ever any man of thirty-two in all this world was eligible, Adam Tellwright was. Decidedly he had a reputation for preternaturally keen smartness in trade, but in trade that cannot be called a defect; on the contrary, if a man has virtues, you cannot precisely quarrel with him because they happen to be on the outside; the principal thing is to have virtues. And then Mr Bostock looked uneasily ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... in tan boots, white tights, and blue jackets waited obsequiously for the mistresses of carriages who were shopping inside. The whole street bore the flavour of riches and show, and Carrie felt that she was not of it. She could not, for the life of her, assume the attitude and smartness of Mrs. Vance, who, in her beauty, was all assurance. She could only imagine that it must be evident to many that she was the less handsomely dressed of the two. It cut her to the quick, and she resolved that she would not come here again until she ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... 'Browning,'" she told Mavis, "he's so old-fashioned to up-to-date people. Now I'm going to be Mrs Napper, when the Littlehampton season comes round, I'm going in exclusively for smartness and fashion." ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... my state-room on it." Perhaps I was ever so slightly disappointed with the dimensions and appointments of the state-room—I may have been expecting a whole car to myself—but the general self-conscious smartness of the train reassured me. I wandered into the observation-car, and saw my particular friend proudly employ the train-telephone to inform his office that he had caught the train. I saw also the free supply of newspapers, ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... was perfectly au fait to all the tricks of Arkansas' smartness, I returned to the hall, took my pistols from the holsters, placed them in my belt, and, seizing my rifle, followed his trail upon the soft ground of the fields. It led me to a corn-house, and there, after ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... lost his balance that it took him all his time to parry the next stroke, which was put in with equal smartness and vigour. One blow, that might have brought down an elephant, sent Tomaso on to ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... Rue Daunou—wasn't it?—or to order their new gowns at the new dressmakers in the Rue de la Paix, or to do any of the hundred and one other things that proved them up to the times, at home in Paris, initiated into le dernier cri or whatever new phrase they thought set the seal upon Parisian smartness. Frederic's face was as well known as Ibsen's which it so resembled, his sanded floor was the talk of the tourists, the distinguished foreigner struggled to have his name on Frederic's menu, and as for Frederic's pressed duck it had degenerated ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... feel that people might be watching him and trying to detect something. This conscious expression, since it was as far as possible from boyish mirthfulness, was usually attributed to insolence or "smartness." ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... practically possessed of all the knowledge of an able seaman, and was sent on board the ship Sea Horse to the East Indies. His position at first was little better than that of a foremast hand, but it was not long before the captain noticed the lad's smartness and keen attention to his duties, and very soon he called him to the quarterdeck and ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... Alexander's ear, as the curtain fell on the first act, "one almost never sees a part like that done without smartness or mawkishness. Of course, Hilda is Irish,—the Burgoynes have been stage people for generations,—and she has the Irish voice. It's delightful to hear it in a London theatre. That laugh, now, when she doubles over at the ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... &c 599 [Obs.]; broad farce, broad humor; fun, espieglerie [Fr.]; vis comica [Lat.]. jocularity; jocosity, jocoseness^; facetiousness; waggery, waggishness; whimsicality; comicality &c 853. banter, badinage, retort, repartee, smartness, ready wit, quid- pro-quo; ridicule &c 856. jest, joke, jape, jibe; facetiae [Lat.], levity, quips and cranks; capital joke; canorae nugae [Lat.]; standing jest, standing joke, private joke, conceit, quip, quirk, crank, quiddity, concetto^, plaisanterie [Fr.], brilliant idea; merry ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... yaks, which I noticed had been marching with more than usual smartness, bolted while I was ordering Chanden Sing and Mansing to take down the loads, and went ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... good," and by whom we were surrounded in our first settlement, detested us, and with them we could have no feeling in common. We could neither lie nor cheat in our dealings with them; and they despised us for our ignorance in trading and our want of smartness. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Naturally he was anxious to try his hand. He wrote several articles in the winter of 1851-2. 'The pay,' says Fitzjames, 'was very high—3l. 10s. an article, and I thought that I was going to make a fortune. I was particularly pleased, I remember, with my smartness and wit, but, alas and alas! Cook found me out and gradually ceased to put in my articles. I have seldom felt much keener disappointment, for I was ardently desirous of standing on my own legs and having in my pocket a little money of my own earning. I ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... fearing from its smartness, that it was from a lady. 'What's here?' repeated he, as he inspected the direction. 'Oh, it's for you!' exclaimed he, chucking it over to Jack, considerably ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
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