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More "Sociable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... antechamber, and the newcomer found herself received with a torrent of affectionate and delighted exclamations, pressed to the ample bosom of Madame Odinska, covered with kisses by Colette, and fawned upon by the three toy terriers, the most sociable of their kind in all Paris, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sufficiently enlightened; it all went fast, for the little boy had been almost as great a help as the piano. Sidney haunted the doorstep of No. 3 he was eminently sociable, and had established independent relations with Peter, a frequent feature of which was an adventurous visit, upstairs, to picture books criticised for not being ALL geegees and walking sticks happily more conformable. The young man's window, too, looked ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... than they had at first thought was he willing and competent and agreeable in the matter of their common household labor; he was not intrusive; he was rich with clever and well-informed talk when they all laid aside work to be sociable. In fact, as she had said ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... three or four Siberian merchants and their families, and a few Tartars of the better class. The officers were capital fellows, full of life and gaiety (Russian officers generally are), the merchants and their women-folk sociable and musically inclined. Nearly every one spoke French, and the time passed pleasantly enough, for although the days were terribly monotonous, evenings enlivened by music and cards, followed by cheery little suppers towards the small hours, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... known of his wife, beyond the facts that she was petite, over-fond, hot-tempered, obstinate, and a poor speller. In 1778 she was described as "a sociable, pretty kind of woman," and she seems to have been but little more. One who knew her well described her as "not possessing much sense, though a perfect lady and remarkably well calculated for her ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... from the courts and the jails, and seeing that they did not get away. He was not unfriendly to a particular type of prisoner—the well-to-do or moderately prosperous—for he had long since learned that it paid to be so. To-night he offered a few sociable suggestions—viz., that it was rather rough, that the jail was not so far but that they could walk, and that Sheriff Jaspers would, in all likelihood, be around or could be aroused. Cowperwood scarcely heard. He was thinking of his mother and his wife and ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... into the world by an old lady named Mrs. O'Reilly. She was a very pleasant old lady, the wife of a General, and one of those sociable, friendly, talkative people who do much to cheer their neighbours, particularly in a deadly-lively provincial place like Muddleton, where the standard of social intercourse is not very high. Mrs. O'Reilly had been in her day a celebrated beauty; ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... Merton made a point of having an "at home" every fourth Saturday, and these soon became known as among the most pleasant and sociable gatherings in the literary and scientific world ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... say now," he replied, with an insinuating smile. "Next time I come we will be more sociable. But we've have had ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... day after my arrival, by way of Lichfield and Uttoxeter, at Liverpool, the door of the Consulate opened, and in came the very sociable personage who accosted me at the railway station at Leamington. He was on his way towards Edinburgh, to deliver a course of lectures or a lecture, and had called, he said, to talk with me about spiritualism, being desirous of having the judgment of a sincere mind ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of his new surroundings he threw himself with all the zest that might have been expected from his essentially sociable nature: making many friendships—that of Brandl was the one he most valued—and joining—in some respects, leading—his fellow-students in their sports and other amusements. His first published work, in fact, was a translation of the Rules of Association ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... onset of an illness by a complete change in character. I remember one sociable, amiable lad of two, rich in the curiosity and expanding friendliness of that time of life, who became sick with diphtheria. All his basic moods became altered, and all his wholesome reactions to ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... she'd have a drink to be sociable, but it was usually a sherry and half the time she wouldn't finish that. I don't suppose you were envisaging the possibility that she highjacked the plane from four officers and two stewardesses and then wrecked it?" This time he smiled the broad toothy smile that made him a favorite with Washington ...
— The Last Straw • William J. Smith
... Sensitive, sociable, a good talker, high-spirited and somewhat irascible, a man who admitted no one to his friendship whom he could not thoroughly respect, the friend of the poor, prescribing gratuitously to all who ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... black patch on the other. His tail was yellow with a gray tip. One ear was black and one yellow. A black patch over one eye gave him a fearfully rakish look. In reality he was meek and inoffensive, of a sociable disposition. In one respect, if in no other, Joseph was like a lily of the field. He toiled not neither did he spin or catch mice. Yet Solomon in all his glory slept not on softer cushions, or feasted more fully on ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... national inheritance seems natural to her. . . . But her wit deals only with pleasant frivolities; her ideas are the children of her memory rather than of her imagination. French in everything else, she is original in her vanity. Ours is more sociable, inspires the desire to please, and suggests the means. Hers is truly Sarmatian, artless and indolent; she cannot bring herself to flatter those whose admiration she covets. . . . She thinks herself perfect, says so, and expects to be believed. At this price alone does she yield ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... 'I never go anywhere. I'm not very sociable, no longer a gregarious creature. Ask my ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... entirely by surprise, for they had supposed the party to be only one of many sociable evenings which the crowd were in the habit ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... more fingers than her own; and Matilda's were very busy till breakfast time, setting the table, hulling strawberries, sweeping the hall, making coffee, baking the biscuit. Both the girls busy, and Maria cross. Breakfast was not sociable; and Matilda was summoned to go to her aunt's room as soon as the ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... throat, had then been persuaded to empty all the loose cash in the bank, amounting in gold and notes to nearly five hundred pounds, into a bag which the thief had thoughtfully brought with him. After which, both of them—for the thief seems to have been of a sociable disposition—got into a cab which was waiting outside, and drove away. They drove straight to the City: the clerk, with a knife pricking the back of his neck all the time, finding it, no doubt, a ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... this employment is complex and interesting. It is an attractive occupation, in which the girl is brought into relationship with people with whom she can help to develop a sociable, co-operative life, tending to improve her own character and usefulness ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... to be touched by Sam Gayley, our local auto doc., and somehow the chauffeur never seemed to be able to keep it in running order long enough to get up to the Payley residence and take the family out. He ran around the country a good deal, however, tuning it up and trying it out, and as he was a sociable cuss, some of us always went with him. In fact, about every one rode in the Payley car that summer except the Payleys. Wert Payley used to stop me and ask if I could fix it up to take him along sometime when I went riding with his chauffeur, but ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... old friend, who was a boy at school with me, who was of this type. He was essentially solitary in spirit, though he was amiable and sociable enough. There can be no harm in my telling the story of his life, as the actors in it are ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the Far West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. Rank was unknown in Lakeside—unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and his dog, and a sociable ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... temperament is the only solid foundation of all moral virtues and sociable endowments. His friendship, where he professed it, went much beyond his professions; and I have been told of strong and generous instances of it by the persons themselves who received them, though his hereditary income was little more than a ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... way suitable to the Dignity of his Nature, and to that Character of a sociable Spirit, with which the Author has so judiciously introduced him. He had received Instructions to converse with Adam, as one Friend converses with another, and to warn him of the Enemy, who was contriving his Destruction: Accordingly he is represented ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... glassy smoothness; he lurched, caught himself up in time to save a fall, lost his hat, recovered it, and was discovered. A voice, maudlin with drink, hailed and called upon him to stand and give an account of himself, "like a goo' feller." Another tempted him with offers of drink and sociable confabulation. He yielded not; adamantine to the seductive lure, he picked up his heels and ran. Those behind him, remarking with resentment the amazing fact that an intimate of the mews should run away from liquor, cursed and made after him, veering, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... stood away again and continued to sail triangles around boat and dory. Being now clear of the greater part of the mental strain his spirits began to lighten. Merely by way of being sociable with himself he hummed some old ditties. There was that about the old coaster, the Eliza Jane. I liked to hear him sing that, as, dancing a one-footed jig-step by the ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... down, teachers and pupils, there was hardly one whose eye did not soften and whose lips did not smile at Dolly's approach. With Christina, on the other hand, it was not just so. She was not particularly clever, not particularly emotional, not specially sociable; calm and somewhat impassive, with all her fair beauty she was overlooked in the practical "selection" which takes place in school life; so that little Dolly after all came to be Christina's best friend. Dolly never ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... jest run over to Mrs. McFadden's for a sociable call," he explained, with jaunty indifference, as he took a seat ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... it. The apprehension of being obliged to work at it was afterwards found to have been a principal reason for their not complying so readily as was expected. By kind treatment, however, and indulgence in their own inclinations, they soon began to be more sociable. They were then given to understand the situation and short distance of New Zealand from Norfolk Island, and were assured that as soon as they had taught our women 'emou-ka ea-ra-ka-ke,' (i.e. to work the flax), they should be sent home again. On this promise they readily ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... do not think much time has been lost, for they have learnt a good deal there; but I am particularly glad that Petros should go to a superior school just now that he has been left alone, for he is more lively and sociable than Theodore, and it might be less easy for him to keep from ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were soon sociable, each taking an instinctive liking to the other. We talked of the business situation, of the news in the papers, and then of political affairs. Each of us saw that there he was at the other's keenest interest in life. He knew the game,—practical politics ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... To appreciate the joke thoroughly you must understand that there is no society here at all—absolutely none. We are not proud, we Maritzburgians, nor are we inhospitable, nor exclusive, nor unsociable. Not a bit. We are as anxious as any community can be to have society or sociable gatherings, or whatever you like to call the way people manage to meet together; but circumstances are altogether too strong for us, and we all in turn are forced to abandon the attempt in despair. First of all, the weather is against us. It is maddeningly uncertain, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... St. Louis more resemble Europeans in their manners and habits than any other people I met with in the west. The more wealthy people generally spend some time in New Orleans every year, which makes them much more sociable, and much less brusque than ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... and Hope once felt, in a quiet sociable hour, a plastic impulse in their nature; they worked together and created a lovely image, a Pandora in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... before sailing for home, to meet such friends, old and recent, as cared to make or renew acquaintance with me. In the afternoon of the 20th we held a reception, at which a hundred visitors, more or less, presented themselves, and we had a very sociable hour or two together. The Vice-Consul, Mr. Sewall, in the enforced absence of his principal, Mr. Russell, paid us every attention, and was very agreeable. In the evening I was entertained at a great banquet given by ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... sociable intellect, and still inclining instinctively, as became his fresh and agreeable person, from the midway of life, towards its youthful side, he was ever on the alert for a likely interlocutor to take part in the conversation, which (pleasantest, truly! of ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... with Aurora Griffiths ripened, Done shook off thoughts of Lucy Woodrow, since they never came without an underlying sense of accusation. He was enjoying his present life to the full. In his heart was a great kindness towards the people with whom he mingled. He was naturally sociable, a lover of his kind, and recognised now that half the torment of his life since coming to manhood had arisen from his isolation, from the lack of opportunities of gratifying this affection. He admired Aurora, comparing her with his youthful ideal, the strong animal, ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... to Antonina, in Brazil, for a cargo of mate, a sort of tea, which, prepared as a drink, is wholesome and refreshing. It is partaken of by the natives in a highly sociable manner, through a tube which is thrust into the steaming beverage in a silver urn or a calabash, whichever may happen to be at hand when "drouthy neebors neebors meet"; then all sip and sip in bliss from the same tube, which is passed from mouth to mouth. ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... relatives, occasionally coming to stay with him, found the place prey on their spirits, and rejoiced when the time came for going home again. They were never pressed to stay against their will. Reuben Limbrick was not a hospitable or a sociable man. He set very little value on human sympathy, in his attacks of illness; and he bore congratulations impatiently, in his intervals of health. "I care about nothing but fishing," he used to say. "I find my dog very good company. And I am quite ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... people live very economically, and extravagance in dress is rather the exception. On gala days the young wear many ribbons and colours, though arranged with little of the taste characteristic of the French people. Both old and young are very sociable in their habits, and love music and dancing. The violin is constantly played in the smallest village, and the young people dance old-fashioned cotillons or danses rondos. The priests, however, do not encourage reckless gaieties or extravagance in dress. Now ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... necessary, generally excel most in eloquence. And hence, perhaps, the French, who are the least poetical of all great and intellectual nations, are among the most eloquent: the French, also, being the most sociable, the vainest, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... would they be visited? Would Mrs Jamieson let us? Or must we choose between the Honourable Mrs Jamieson and the degraded Lady Glenmire? We all liked Lady Glenmire the best. She was bright, and kind, and sociable, and agreeable; and Mrs Jamieson was dull, and inert, and pompous, and tiresome. But we had acknowledged the sway of the latter so long, that it seemed like a kind of disloyalty now even to meditate disobedience to the ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a brandy- and-soda. And then he could not refrain from displaying to her his familiarity with Parisian life, and he related how he had met Hortense Schneider behind a pair of white horses. The vermilion cloak grew even more sociable at the mention of this resounding name, and chattered with the most agreeable vivacity. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... us to usurpation, and makes us robbers and murderers. Animals do not calculate the duty of instinct any more than the disadvantages resulting to those who exercise it; it would be strange if the intellect of man—the most sociable of animals—should lead him ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... after she learned about ants and their ways, Mary Jane was very quiet. Mrs. Merrill thought perhaps she was disappointed because Doris had had to go home right after lunch so she tried to be very sociable and kind to make up ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... But she smiled, by no means ill pleased at his solicitude for her comfort. She halted the broncos, and said cordially: "Tie the saddle hawsses to the back rail, and pile in. We may as well be sociable." ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... time of his life in the two hours before the arrival of the noon express. The station agent was a sociable soul. He had a guinea-pig in a box, so delightful to observe that Elsmere forgot his desire for zwieback and became conversational. He told the agent the history of the polly-wogs he had raised "till they was all froggies, only one ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... didn't know what to make of that man. He was nice and sociable, and he seemed to be always trying not to laugh, and everybody knows that fat people are good-natured. And he seemed kind of to like us, too. Then why didn't he let us go through his house? That was what I wanted to know. If he ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... dare not say yes unconditionally, because I'm rather sociable and communicative, and apt ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... of that," Fergus said. "I think it is very cheery and sociable when everyone smokes, but certainly when only two out of three do, it looks somehow as if the one who does not is left out in the cold. I never smoked until I came out here, two years and a half ago; but there is no ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... detachment, somebody was sharp enough sometimes to cry "Out!" The high daylight was still in the sky, but with just the foreknowledge already of the long golden glow in which the many-voiced caw of the rooks would sound at once sociable and sad. There was a great deal all about to be aware of and to look at, but little Aggie had her eyes on a book over which her pretty head was bent with a docility visible even from afar. "I've a friend—down there by the lake—to go back to," the Duchess went on, "and ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... days and nights were over, and that at last we had reached the haven where we would be, my first thought was one of deep gratitude. It was easy to see that it was a good moment with everyone; squabbles were made up with surprising quickness; shy people grew suddenly sociable; some who had comfortable homes to go to on landing gave kind and welcome invitations to others, who felt themselves sadly strange in a new country; and it was with really a lingering feeling of regret that we all separated ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... which as far back as 1860 passed every week on its northward way up along the coast of Norway, was of a very sociable turn of mind. It ran with much shrieking and needless bluster in and out the calm, winding fjords, paid unceremonious little visits in every out-of-the-way nook and bay, dropped now and then a black heap of coal into the shining ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... with a smiling aspect, the sociable group which surrounded him, little did he suspect that the man who on the morrow was to become his son-in-law—who was to lead to the altar his only child, that pure and gentle girl—little, we say, ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... this black regiment were as pleasant and sociable a's could be, and the colonel as fine a specimen of an English country gentleman as could be found. There was quite an emulation as to which corps should be the most soldierly and perfect in ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... dislikes the thought of his name not being mentioned after his death.' CHAP. XX. The Master said, 'What the superior man seeks, is in himself. What the mean man seeks, is in others.' CHAP. XXI. The Master said, 'The superior man is dignified, but does not wrangle. He is sociable, but not a partizan.' CHAP. XXII. The Master said, 'The superior man does not promote a man simply on account of his words, nor does he put aside good words ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... willing to do that. It was beautiful out there. They sat down at one of the little iron tables—the little tables were so warm and sociable now—and beneath the whispering trees sipped their cafe au lait. But the fact that he was able to get out of his room seemed to make a difference in their thoughts. It was as if his status had changed. It was as if those who passed him, with a ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... living is never to find life dull, never to feel the ugly weariness which comes of overstrain; to be fresh, cheerful, leisurely, sociable, unhurried, well-balanced. It seems to me impossible to be these things unless we have time to consider life a little, to ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... back parlor. All the Browns are away for a week, and we'll help you trim it—won't we, my dear?" cried Mrs. Smith, warmly; for she saw that he was in a sociable mood, and thought it a pity that the Blakes ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... undersigned, take advantage of this occasion, the eve of your departure from among us, to place on record our very high esteem of the many sociable qualities displayed by you since your battalion arrived in this station from South ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... manage them with difficulty, become docile and amiable under the influence of the sweetheart or lover. Boys who, at other times, are cowards will fight with vigor and courage when their love is concerned. Children that have a sociable disposition sometimes become exclusive and abandon all other playmates for the chosen one, and cannot be induced to play with any one else. Ideas of marriage are often present, but they are vague and are present through social suggestion. The general attitude is represented by the testimony ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... true,' he went on earnestly; 'ever since I met Captain Luscombe at Plymouth I have been in the Army, and I am afraid I have not been a very sociable kind of character. I have lived with men all that time, and have been somewhat of a hermit. Of course I have seen women, in England and in France,' and he laughed nervously. 'But—but—no, I have never spoken ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... extreme. If, however, the journey is long, and especially if it be on a steamboat, a certain sociability may be allowed, and a married lady or a lady of middle age may use her privileges to make the journey an enjoyable one, for fellow-passengers should always be sociable to ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... it,' said Claude, 'but not now—it is too dark. Come and sit in the great chair on the other side of the fire, and be sociable. And what do you think of ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wonder that England can accommodate a population of some twenty odd millions on an area but little more than that of Pennsylvania, when poor humanity is thus crowded together. In the cars, I had formed the acquaintance of a sociable party of ladies and gentlemen, who pointed out places to me, and instructed me concerning the manners and social habits of the people. From Liverpool hither, I found very small brick houses the rule and spacious buildings like our Pennsylvania farm houses, the exception. ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... health of her mistress. But, being an astute creature, she only wondered this for an instant, the next she realised that, for one reason or another, it was clear that he was not of the tribe of second-rate persons who pursue an accidental acquaintance with their superiors in fortune, through sociable interchange with their footmen ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Aldersgate-street in those days; and you see, sir, the times were stirring times, and folks liked to get together and talk over the day's news, with a pipe of tobacco and a glass of their favourite liquor, all in a sociable way. Poor Sam Meynell took a little too much of his favourite liquor; and when the young woman that he had been keeping company with—Miss Dobberly of Jewin-street—jilted him and married a wholesale butcher in Newgate Market, who was old enough to be ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... duller and duller. Valentine was evidently out of spirits, and the Hercules of the evening had stolidly abandoned himself to the most inveterate silence. At length Zack gave up all further effort to be sociable, and left the painting-room to go up stairs and visit the ladies. Mat looked after him as he quitted the studio, and seemed about to speak—then glancing aside at the bureau, checked himself suddenly, and ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... unexplored as yet by Europeans. They had suffered badly from lack of water on the way, and confirmed the news that the Bedouins had brought, of a drought unparalleled in the memory of living man. Sociable fellows all, full of contentment, pluck, and endurance, they lightened the last ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... a somewhat grim though sociable personage, was quite of the speaker's opinion, and felt quite sure that the memory of the reverend gentleman must abound with such curious tales of fair dames, of their loves and hates, their joys and their misfortunes, ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... some time and I talked with her son, who was sociable but desultory and kept moving over the place, always with his fan, as if he were properly impatient. Sometimes he seated himself an instant on the window-sill, and then I made him out in fact thoroughly good-looking—a fine brown clean young athlete. He failed to tell me on what special ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... her health, a cold restraint overspread Miss Woodley's face, and she left him instantly. To Sandford it was still more difficult for him to apply; for though frequently together, they were never sociable; and as Sandford seldom disguised his feelings, to Rushbrook he was always extremely ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... buncoed us out of a party. Well, so far we've given 'em Mendelssohn and confetti. Any lady or gent who now desires to kiss the bride, please rise and come forward.... Hey, there! This isn't any Sinn Fein sociable! Ceremony's postponed!... And finally, dearly beloved brethren and sistren, we come to the subject of wedding gifts." He turned to look down at the Devereuxs, and some of the levity went out of his ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... out in the woods and holler," she declared; "seems's if then I'd feel better. To look up, expecting to see the cars coming along real lively and pleasant, just as they always do so sociable-like when I'm sewing, and then—oh, dear me!" she wrung her fat hands together, "there, all of a sudden, were two of 'em bumping together, one end smashed into kindling wood, and t'other end sticking up straight in the air. Oh! my senses, I don't wonder I thought I was going crazy, and that I ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... and delivered to the publisher, Diabelli, without the usual amount of time bestowed on giving them the finishing touches; and now he set to work at once at the ninth Symphony, some jottings of which were already written down. Forthwith all the gay humor that had made him more sociable, and in every respect more accessible, at once disappeared. All ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... in their own language. The young priest knew something about medicine, and could often give them simple remedies, so that they learned to look up to him, and were willing to listen to his teaching of Christianity. He was sociable and pleasant, and always ready to help in any way he could, and he was welcomed by many whose religious views differed from his own. Of course he had not been long there without finding out that the disease of leprosy was terribly common, and that the ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... on till afternoon; one incessant storm raged on deck; but after dinner the few passengers, waked up with their roast-beef and mutton, became a little more sociable. Not with me, for the scent and savor of poverty was upon me, and they all cast toward me their evil eyes and cold suspicious glances, as I sat apart, though among them. I felt that desperation and recklessness of poverty which only a pauper knows. There was a mighty ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... the old days they used to bring letters of introduction. But the English are so inhospitable that these letters are hardly worth the paper they are written on. 'Thus,' said Le Ros, 'the A.A.S.B. supplies a long-felt want. Americans are a sociable people, and most of them have plenty of money to spend. The A.A.S.B. supplies them with English friends. Fifty per cent. of the fees is paid over to the friends. The other fifty is retained by the A.A.S.B. I am not, alas, a director. If I were, I should ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... A quick eye, a sociable look, seeming to say, "Ay, look at me, I am a man worth noticing, and not unworthy your attention," carried with it, nevertheless, an interpretation which might be thought favourable or otherwise, according to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... have a half-holiday every Saturday. We worked hard all the week, and we tried to crowd as much fun into a half-holiday as possible. Well, one Saturday afternoon Mr. Billy-Goat and Mr. Dog were walking arm in arm along the road, talking and laughing in a sociable way, when all of a sudden a big rain came up. Mr. Billy-Goat said he was mighty sorry he left his parasol at home, because the rain was apt to make his horns rust. Mr. Dog shook himself and ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... people abroad who—who seem at all inclined to be sociable," she continued, "one is so apt to think them pleasanter than they really are. Then one meets them again, and—and wonders what one ever saw to like in them. And it's no use pretending one feels the same, because they generally ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... a subordinate position in the social scale or defect in education, it is the passion to call men "out of their names," and never feel really acquainted with any one until he is termed Tom or Jack. It is doubtless all very genial and jocose and sociable, but the man who shows a tendency to it should not complain when his betters put him in a lower class or among ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... minutes several kinds of fruit and nuts were gathered and spread at the foot of the tree under which they had reposed. Then Barney proceeded to kindle a fire,—not that he had anything to cook, but he said it looked sociable-like, and the smoke would keep off the flies. The operation, however, was by no means easy. Everything had been soaked by the rain of the previous night, and a bit of dry grass could scarcely be found. At length he procured a little; and by rubbing it in the damp gunpowder which he ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... solitude and quiet. And we'd want to foller Quiet and Happiness back into them beautiful hants. And then agin, we'd float by an island where there would be lots of white tents, with wimmen and children and men and boys standin' out wavin' their handkerchiefs and shoutin' to us, good natered and sociable. ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... that morning, on one of these benches placed where rock is steepest and forest trees stand close together and vines are rank with shade, a sociable-looking little fellow of some ten hardy well-buffeted years had sat down for the moment without a companion. He had thrown upon the bench beside him his sun-faded, rain-faded, shapeless cap, uncovering much bronzed hair; and as though by this ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... fully onderstand Enright in all he means, I oughter lay bar' that Dave's been conductin' himse'f in a manner not to be explained for mighty likely she's eight weeks. Yeretofore, thar's no more sociable sport an' none whose system is easier to follow in all Wolfville than Dave. While holdin' himse'f at what you might call 'par' on all o'casions, Dave is still plenty minglesome an' fraternal with the balance ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... the best comforter To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains, Now useless, boil'd within thy skull! There stand, For you are spell-stopp'd. Holy Gonzalo, honourable man, Mine eyes, even sociable to the show of thine, Fall fellowly drops. The charm dissolves apace; And as the morning steals upon the night, Melting the darkness, so their rising senses Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle Their clearer reason.—O good Gonzalo! My true ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... the Fleet in swarms. Look! a score of 'em are making off yonder—swimming to their holes. But they will come back again with some of their comrades, when you are left alone, and without a light. Unlike other vermin, the rats of the Fleet are extraordinarily sociable—ho! ho!" ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... semi-Occidental plan, overlooked the main prison buildings, contained foreign glass windows draped with white curtains, was scrupulously clean for China, and had magnificent hanging scrolls on the whitewashed walls. Tea was soon brewed, and the governor, wishing to be polite and sociable, told me that he had been in Yuen-nan-fu for a few months only, and that he considered himself an extremely fortunate fellow to be in charge of such an excellent prison—one of the finest in the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... letters? or he who first observed the courses of the planets, their progressive motions, their laws? These were all great men; but they were greater still, who invented food, and raiment, and houses; who introduced civilization amongst us, and armed us against the wild beasts; by whom we were made sociable and polished, and so proceeded from the necessaries of life to its embellishments. For we have provided great entertainments for the ears, by inventing and modulating the variety and nature of sounds; we have learnt to survey the stars, not only ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... best comforter, To an vnsetled fancie, Cure thy braines (Now vselesse) boile within thy skull: there stand For you are Spell-stopt. Holy Gonzallo, Honourable man, Mine eyes ev'n sociable to the shew of thine Fall fellowly drops: The charme dissolues apace, And as the morning steales vpon the night (Melting the darkenesse) so their rising sences Begin to chace the ignorant fumes that mantle Their cleerer reason. O good Gonzallo My true preseruer, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... have the next day to put his affairs in order, previous to the meeting. I should here observe that the captain had not been on anything like intimate terms with his lieutenants. The surgeon and master were old shipmates, and with them he was sociable: whether it was that he did not choose to ask the favour of the commissioned officers, certain it is, that he sent for the master to be his second on the occasion, and on the master returning on board, he ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... visits to the houses of favored subjects, shooting pheasants or grouse or deer; or he is going from one horse-race to another or to some yacht-race or garden-party or whatever corresponds in England to a church sociable. It is impossible to enumerate the pleasures which must poison his life, as if the cares were not enough. In the case of the present king, who is so much liked and is so amiable and active, the perpetual movement affects ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... hands with buckskin gloves, the boy applied mutton suet to our wounded owl's wing. It was eventually healed, and the bird was given its liberty. It gradually became sprightly and tame, and sociable in the evening, affording the children ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... and on the war-ships of the future,—handling each as though he had made a special study of it. His bright humor marked the reaction from his black depression of the preceding days. Athelney Jones proved to be a sociable soul in his hours of relaxation, and faced his dinner with the air of a bon vivant. For myself, I felt elated at the thought that we were nearing the end of our task, and I caught something of Holmes's gaiety. None of us alluded during dinner to the ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that the broad highway was too much exposed for my traveling, and so I proceeded into a back yard, jumped a fence, and found myself on a back road, where market men deliver their goods. It was really quite attractive and sociable, for I came upon a group who seemed to be serenading some mutual acquaintance. I had listened to the children singing at school, and had looked over the song books, and had even practised a few scales. In this way I discovered that I had a very clear tenor ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... say is very true; but your elequent remarks, your very sociable talk, has caused me to tarry a longer period than is really consistent with the claims of business. As I told you when I first come in, I merely called to see if I ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... the fields consists merely of digging out the yam and picking other fruit, and it is a sociable affair, with much talking and laughter. There is always something to eat, such as an unripe cocoa-nut or a banana. Serious work is not necessary except at the planting season, when the bush has to be cleared. Then a whole clan usually works together, the men helping quite energetically, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... call this wastin' time. We didn't start till late this mornin', and here we've got sight of two of her a'ready. Here's this one, as red-cheeked and sociable as anybody could expect, and then there's that ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... Shadrack had stolen a ferryboat and crossed the Tennessee River at night, Brown and Dorsey had shared their food with two Confederate sentries who had stopped them as they crossed the railroad bridge at Stevenson. "Most sociable sentries I ever found," said Dorsey. "They believed our story, and told us all about Bull Run. It was mighty interesting to hear their side of it, because we were both in the fight." But it was Tom who had been most royally entertained. ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... very far at least. I just kept myself from swearing while I sat and saw those three so sociable up there, and I not in it. Before I got to the landing I had seen the woman ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... picture Lance a prey to the ignominious sensation that half of him wanted to go one way and half of him another way. At this juncture, half of himself felt a confounded fool for not going back to the Punjab and enjoying a friendly sociable cold weather among his father's people. The other half felt impelled to probe deeper into the complexities of changing India, to confirm and impart his belief that the destinies of England and India were one and indivisible. After all, India stood where she did to-day by virtue ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... by what name you please) was boundless; but his views were checked in his younger years, and the anxiety of that disappointment had a sensible effect upon all his actions. He was sour and severe, but not absolutely ill-natur'd. He was sociable only to particular friends, and to them only at particular hours. He knew politeness more than he practiced it. He was a mixture of avarice and generosity; the former was frequently prevalent, the latter seldom appeared unless excited by compassion. He was open to adulation, and would not, or could ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... Mirvan had borne so large a share in the disagreeable altercation, Lord Orville forbore to make any comments upon it; so that the subject was immediately dropt, and the conversation became calmly sociable, and politely cheerful, and, to every body but me, must have been highly agreeable:-but, as to myself, I was so eagerly desirous of making some apology to Lord Orville, for the impertinence of which he must have ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... said Parker. "A man who doesn't dance is an enemy of mankind. The dancer, like the bridge-player, cannot exist without a partner, so he can't help being sociable. But you—why, a book is all the company you ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... that could be desired; they were congenial spirits, and the day passed most delightfully. But though the young people were very sociable, no one seeming to be under any restraint, neither Chester nor Percy found an opportunity for any private chat with Lucilla. The fact was that the captain had had a bit of private talk with his wife and her mother, in which he gave them an ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... man, that he never undertakes any thing, in which he does not succeed. If there were no hopes of success at present, ought we not to sow the seed, which may he useful to posterity?[063] Even if we should only diminish the mutual hatred among Christians, and render them more sociable, would not this be worth purchasing at the price of ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... that suspicion. However, I proceeded the next day, and got in the evening to an inn, within eight or ten miles of Burlington, kept by one Dr. Brown. He entered into conversation with me while I took some refreshment, and, finding I had read a little, became very sociable and friendly. Our acquaintance continued as long as he lived. He had been, I imagine, an itinerant doctor, for there was no town in England, or country in Europe, of which he could not give a very particular account. He had some letters, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... hiking, during the week following the dinner-party that they saw very little of Mr. Gilroy, although they knew whenever he called at the camp, because he generally brought feed for the calf and pig. These two unusual pets were becoming quite sociable, and would follow the girls around the clearing when meals were being prepared. Jake always went wherever the scouts went, and he particularly enjoyed the long walks. But he ignored the calf and pig completely when ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... you've turned up. It'll make all the difference to me. I was getting as big a cad as any of those fellows there, for you're bound to be sociable. But you're a nicer sort, and it's a good job for me, I can ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... not. What capital essays W would write; but I suppose he has written a good deal in the 'Phytologist.' You ought to encourage him to publish on variation; it is a shame that such facts as those in his letter should remain unpublished. I must get you to introduce me to him; would he be a good and sociable man for Dropmore? (A much enjoyed expedition made from Oxford—when the British Association met there in 1847.) though if he comes, Forbes must not (and I think you talked of inviting Forbes), or we shall have a glorious battle. I should ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... You voted for it, Mr. Trollop, though you always opposed the measure until after you had an interview one evening with a certain Mrs. McCarter at her house. She was my agent. She was acting for me. Ah, that is right—sit down again. You can be sociable, easily enough if you have a mind to. Well? I am waiting. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... community where people went to church and prayer-meeting and Sunday-school. Your neighbours loved each other, and played Pollyanna when things went wrong. And you wore white frocks and blue sashes whenever there was a lawn party or a sociable." He paused, perhaps for breath, and then—"I'm different," he said; "I struggled for my education; it was always the survival of the fittest with me. I worked my way through medical school. I ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... a lot of attention of late. It's real strange what a difference a man makes in a marriage, even if he isn't noticed much in person at the time. If he's rich and prominent, everybody is so pleasant and sociable you'd think they were real intimate. If he's just good and poor, ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... process of time, they will entirely lay aside this custom; and the introduction of new domestic animals into their country might hasten that period, since greater affluence would tend to make them more sociable. Their religion does not seem likely to be an obstacle, because from what we could judge, they are not remarkably superstitious, and it is only among very bigotted nations that the custom of offering human flesh ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... am a sociable animal. After being cramped in that miserable coach for hours, it is a relief to loosen one's tongue as well as one's legs. Even this smoky hovel suggests good-fellowship and jollity beyond a dish of tea. Will you not join me ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... no boys in sight; so C. Crab grew sociable, and offered to show them a place where bugs were plenty. "Just get on my back," said he, "and I'll have you there ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... him and he does it quick—see? Well, he knows what I want him to do to-night. So does Charley Gruder, the guard over there. Charley's fixed; I seen to that; and he knows he ain't goin' to lose no job fer the nigger's gittin' out of the back winder to go make a little sociable call this evening." ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... had asked us to be there, so we kept on the course and didn't signal for help. Travelling through the rooms down stairs where the folks was, was a good deal like dodging icebergs up on the Banks, but one or two noticed us enough to dip the colors, and one was real sociable. He was a kind of slow-spoken city-feller, dressed as if his clothes was poured over him hot and then left to cool. His last name had a splice in the middle of it—'twas Catesby-Stuart. Everybody—that is, ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... laurels, and generally turned the world upside down, sha'n't you allow some humble and devoted beggarman to share your kingdom with you? You might find it a little dull alone in your glory, as you are such a sociable person." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... a certain amount of society, and where he would be able to obtain the books he expected to need. He was afraid that if he transferred himself at once to the country, he might sink into a morbid seclusion, as he had no strong sociable impulses. His thoughts naturally turned to his own university. He thought that if he could find a small house at Cambridge, suitable to his means, he would be able to have as much or as little society as he desired, while at the same time he would be on the edge of the ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... whom shyness of intercourse is necessary as a security against imposture—it is not to be wondered that most of the showy mansions in these villages are points of repulsion rather than of attraction. It must, however, be conceded, that many of these families are hospitable, charitable, sociable, and anxious to be agreeable—qualities which would serve as the basis of systems of more liberal intercourse, if properly directed, and if cherished in such establishments as book-clubs, periodical assemblies, and evening ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... was enjoying his cup of unexpected tea at Mrs. Derrick's, Squire Deacon and Miss Cilly had a sociable tete-a-tete over theirs; for Joe Deacon, who was in the full enjoyment of some fourteen years of boyhood, scarcely made a third in the conversation until his appetite ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... of quilt making are companionship and concentrated interest. Both of these qualities, or—better yet—virtues, must be in evidence in order to bring a quilt to successful completion. The sociable, gossipy "quilting bee," where the quilt is put together and quilted, has planted in every community in which it is an institution the seeds of numberless lifelong friendships. These friendships are being made over the ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... taken by the Jayhawkers. All the provisions they could carry besides their blankets could not last them to exceed 10 days, and I well knew they could hardly get off the desert in that time. Mr. Abbott was a man I loved fondly. He was good company in camp, and happy and sociable. He had shown no despondency at any time until the night of the last meeting and the morning of the parting. His chances seemed to me to be much poorer than my own, but I hardly think he realized it. When in bed I could not keep my thoughts back from the old ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... to the post office, where he registered and posted to Scotland Yard a packet he had brought with him. Then, after asking his way of the sociable landlord of the hotel, he proceeded to the police station, a single-storied stone building standing at the end of a ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... office he proved himself a trustworthy machine, with no opportunity of becoming anything else. His parents were dead, his kindred scattered, he lived, as for several years past, in lodgings. But it never occurred to him to think of his lot as mournful. A man of sociable instincts, he had many acquaintances, some of whom he cherished. An extreme simplicity marked his tastes, and the same characteristic appeared in his conversation; an easy man to deceive, easy to make fun of, yet impossible to dislike, or despise—unless by the ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... and hung my mantilly up on it, there wuz some nails that somebody had left in it, and the tabs hung down noble. And as I told Josiah, "Trees are kinder sociable ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... Bremner watched the rising tide, and as he sat up there in the dark he felt himself dreadfully forsaken and desolate, and began to comment on things in general to his dog, by way of inducing a more sociable ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... respond; simply continued eating without looking up. This was a habit of his that nearly drove Rose desperate. In her father's household meals had always been friendly, sociable affairs. Patrick Conroy had been loquacious and by way of a wit; sharpened on his, Rose's own had developed. They had dealt in delicious nonsense, these two, and had her husband been of a different temperament she might have found it ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... the parlor! This prohibition extends even to the dining room. The cadet may not, under any circumstances, accept an invitation from a friend or relative to take a sociable meal ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... simplicity of personal tastes, which led him in his intercourse with his friends or with the representatives of friendly powers to dispense with ceremonial and etiquette. His personal friendship, too, once bestowed, was never lightly withdrawn. By nature he was sociable and pleasure-loving, he proved himself a notable patron of the arts and he took a conspicuous part in all the gaieties of the congress of Vienna. In his later years, however, he fell into a mood of settled melancholy; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... went down to breakfast, which was a very sociable meal that morning, the English tongue being allowed to be spoken, and the usual restrictions all being ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... huge "tun of man," by the name of Gordon, use to delight Goldsmith by singing the jovial song of Nottingham Ale, and looking like a butt of it. Here, too, a wealthy pig butcher, charmed, no doubt, by the mild philanthropy of The Traveler, aspired to be on the most sociable footing with the author, and here was Tom King, the comedian, recently risen to consequence by his performance of Lord Ogleby in the new comedy of the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... Vaniman hesitated, the master of the household had a word to say, putting on his best business air. "Ordinarily, young man, the latchstring of my home is out and the boys and the girls are welcome here to make merry in a sociable way." Mr. Harnden was distinctly patronizing, with an air that put Frank into the intruding-urchin class. "But it so happens that this evening Banker Britt has seized the opportunity of my being in town ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... from the universally admitted nuisance of morning calls. The hours are simple—eight o'clock breakfasts, one o'clock dinners, six o'clock suppers. If people want anything with you, they come at any hour of the day, but if they only wish to be sociable, the early evening is the recognized time for "calling." After supper, when the day's work is done, people take their lanterns and visit each other, either in the verandahs or in the cheerful parlours which open upon them. There are no door-bells, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... he said, "and I don't wonder after the dreadful weather we've had. Few passes my door without a bite or a sup, specially at tea-time, Mr. Nor'cote, which is sociable time, as I always says. Come in and warm yourself and have a cup of tea. There is nothing as pleases my old woman so much as to get out her best tea-things for a minister; she 'as a great respect for ministers, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... frequent visitor at the department, and is very sociable: some intimations have been thrown out that he aspires to become, some day, Secretary of War. Mr. Benjamin, unquestionably, will have great influence with the President, for he has studied his character most carefully. He will be familiar not only with his "likes," but especially with ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... syl.), called by Milton, "The Sociable Spirit," and "The Affable Archangel." In the book of Tobit it was Raphael who travelled with Tobias into Media and back again; and it is the same angel that holds discourse with Adam through two books of Paradise Lost, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Likewise, a grain of wheat will produce 10,000 ears, each ear 10,000 grains, each grain ten pounds of fine white flour. Other fruits, and seeds, and herbs in proportion. The whole brute creation, feeding on such things as the earth brings forth, will become sociable and peaceable together, and subject to man with all humility" ("Iren. Haer.," v., 33, 3-4, as quoted in Keim's "Jesus of Nazara," p. 45). What trust can be placed in the truth of facts to which these men pretend to bear witness when we ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... and the mare Stops when she likes: I tell her when to go. I've spoiled Jemima in more ways than one. She's got so she turns in at every house As if she had some sort of curvature, No matter if I have no errand there. She thinks I'm sociable. I maybe am. It's seldom I get down except for meals, though. Folks entertain me from the kitchen doorstep, All in a family row down to the youngest." "One would suppose they might not be as glad To see you as you are to see them." "Oh, Because ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... convince them, that it never was, is, or ever will be, either of them; nor ever did, does, or to all futurity ever can, look like either of them; but that it is the most cursed disturbance in nature, which is possible to be inflicted on mankind, under the noble definition of a sociable creature. In doing this, sir, you will oblige more humble servants than can find ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... brightly. In the wall opposite is an open door, through which one catches a glimpse of the bedroom beyond, decked out in all its pink-and-white glory. There is a very sociable little clock, a table strewn with wools and colored ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... in! come in!" cried the Herr Hartman. "Some of our friends are with us; let us spend a sociable evening together." ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... invitation to dine; where my wife was, and my Lord Brouncker and his mistress, and Sir J. Minnes and his niece; and here a bad dinner, and little mirth, I being little pleased with my host. However, I made myself sociable; and so, after dinner, my wife and I, with my Lord Brouncker and his mistress, they set us down at my cozen Turner's, and there we staid awhile and talked; and particularly here we met with Dr. Ball, the Parson of the Temple, who ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... people in the hotel, but he was not feeling sociable. The night before he had dropped a considerable sum at the Casino, but it had not greatly interested him. Regretfully he had come to the conclusion that gambling in that form did not attract him. The greedy crowd that pushed and ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... as no person in the company laid claim to him—saw fit to render himself the object of public notice. Hitherto, he had shown himself a very quiet, well-disposed old dog, going round from one to another, and, by way of being sociable, offering his rough head to be patted by any kindly hand that would take so much trouble. But now, all of a sudden, this grave and venerable quadruped, of his own mere motion, and without the slightest suggestion from anybody else, began ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... Morrison with ill-concealed dismay. And then, after a silence: "But where do you sit when you're sociable?" ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... fellow that's one of our kind, and he ain't trying to court my girl," he had confided to Mr. Speed. "He is spoke for and she knows it. And under them circumstances I believe in encouraging young folks to be sociable." ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... carried this character, with his discharge-sheet, back to Polpier, where his old friends and neighbours—who had known him as a brisk upstanding lad, sociable enough, though maybe a trifle shy— edged away from the taciturn man who returned to them. Nor did it help his popularity that he attended neither Church nor Chapel: for Polpier is a deeply religious place, ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... up moral science and criticism the year we graduate," Mr. Hammond allowed his pupil to finish and lay aside none of her studies; but sought to impress upon her the great value of Blackstone's aphorism: "For sciences are of a sociable disposition, and flourish best in the neighborhood of each other; nor is there any branch of learning but may be helped and improved by assistance ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... without much telling him even what it meant. It seemed indeed to mean nothing in particular; it wandered, with casual pointless pauses and short terrestrial flights, amid names of persons and places—names which, for our friend, had no great power of evocation. It was all sociable and slow, as was right and natural ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... No. 1: "Sociable, scheming, secretive; poor judge of men; lacking seriously in executive ability; decidedly a 'one-man-job' man; does not plan ahead; clannish, narrow-minded; very low intelligence for a foreman. Any organization he builds will be close-mouthed, unreliable, and selfish in structure. Because ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... to any of these people, but Ella, the janitress, who cleaned up her place every morning, had told her their history. Ella was a sociable soul, her face an eternal study and an inscrutable mystery. She spoke both German and English and yet never a word of her own life's history passed her lips. She had loved Mary from the moment she cocked her queer drawn face to one side and looked at her with the one good eye ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... her friends," quoth the damsel, an indignant inflection in her voice. "Kindly let us in. We've come to the Thursday sociable." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... still up here—and kind of dead," Jane Foster replied with her habitual sociable half-laugh. "But seems to me it always feels that way in a house people's left. It's cheerful enough down in that big basement with all the windows open. We can sit in that room they've had fixed to play billiards in. We shan't hurt nothing. We can keep the ...
— In the Closed Room • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... there are poets and poets, poets sociable and poets very unsociable. Wordsworth made the country, but Lamb made the town; and there is quite a band of poets nowadays who share his distaste for mountains, and take London for their muse. If you'll promise not to cry ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... the marble arch and entered the square, glancing behind him he saw the inevitable cat trotting, and, at his left, a very dirty little girl pretending to trundle a hoop, but plainly enough keeping sociable pace ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... irritated; "well, people must all have their share of sadness here; I am not more exempt than another: but kiss me, dearest, and go now; I will, if possible, be more sociable when ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... drew a small table before the hearth, and set out thereon cold meat, bread, and milk, also the inevitable pie of the Americanized workman. The boys helped them, or pretended to, and even Dan grew sociable under the sense of close ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... about it. Bananas, unlike most of the natives, was a taciturn fellow and Captain Butler would have disliked him if it had been possible for a man of his good nature to dislike anyone. He liked to be at sea with someone he could talk to, he was a chatty, sociable creature, and it was enough to drive a missionary to drink to live there day after day with a chap who never opened his mouth. He did his best to wake the mate up, that is to say, he chaffed him without mercy, but it was poor fun to ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... looked up from her task; the tenants of Beaumont Buildings are sociable, and their visits to one another were not limited to the fashionable hours. For instance, the borrowing and returning of a saucepan or a sewing machine, or some lump sugar, went on all day, and sometimes late into the night; and the borrower or lender ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... long, and put it in his mouth. When he had carried it thus about an hour, I thought it would be only Christian charity to give him a light. I handed him my cigar, which I had just lit, and he put it in his mouth and returned his stump to his pocket! I never saw a more sociable man. At least I never saw a man who was more sociable on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... frosted cake, icing that thick, upon my word and honor! And once she gets hold of me, I have to stay and tell her all the news I get from the grocer and the butcher's boy, and who goes by and what they has on. Not that I don't admire bein' sociable, and I can't help havin' a motherly feelin' for one old enough to be my mother; but I don't get no chance to redd up nowhere except the dinin'-room and his study. And then you know, I ain't no general housework girl, anyways, ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... his silence as a cruel personal insult. Brotteaux, who was of a sociable turn, endeavoured to satisfy their curiosity; but when they discovered he was only what they called "a political," one of the mild sort whose crime was only a matter of words and opinions, they lost all respect and ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... together with fanciful set designs of stitching. When about a foot on either side was wholly quilted, it was rolled upon its bar, and the work went on; thus the visible quilt diminished, like Balzac's Peau de Chagrin, in a united and truly sociable work that required no special attention, in which all were facing together and all drawing closer together as the afternoon passed in intimate gossip. Sometimes several quilts were set up. I know of a ten days' ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Oxford with, I really think I may say, almost everything before me—everything, that is, which is open to an instinctively cheerful, temperate, capable, active man—I was not rich, but I could afford to wait to earn money. I was sociable and popular; I was endowed with an immense appetite for variety of experience; I don't think that there was anything which appeared to me to be uninteresting. But I could persevere too, I could stick to work, I had taken ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... cheerful and sociable little meal, during which no reference was made to Sophie's ailments, but when the cups had been replaced on the central table, Claire seated herself and said with an ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... easily. But in future you'll be wiser to confine your work to the preparation hours. The bow must be unstrung sometimes, or your health will suffer. If you join with the other girls at their games you'll soon get to know them, and feel more at home here. Try to be sociable and make yourself liked. Part of the training of school life is to learn to accommodate yourself ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... by his ministrie. He did more in this behalfe in a year, then many that have their hundreds a year doe in all their lives. For his personall abilities, he was qualified above many; he was wise and discreete and well spoken, having a grave & deliberate utterance, of a very cherfull spirite, very sociable & pleasante amongst his freinds, of an humble and modest mind, of a peaceable disposition, under vallewing him self & his owne abilities, and some time over valewing others; inoffencive and i[n]ocente in his life & conversation, w^ch gained him y^e love of those without, as well as those within; ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... elected to seek the consummation of their happiness elsewhere. And as a consequence of this enthusiasm, there was a surplus of help in getting the meeting-room suitably clad for the occasion, and the preparations for the "sociable" and dance which ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... would come along, while carriage after carriage drove past, bearing Forsytes of all descriptions from the Zoo. The harness, the liveries, the gloss on the horses' coats, shone and glittered in the May sunlight, and each equipage, landau, sociable, barouche, Victoria, or brougham, seemed to roll out proudly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... but they were a bit skeery, and evidently almost as wild as wild dogs. Our two semi-civilised barbarians induced them to come nearer, however, and apparently spoke very favourably about us, so that they soon became sociable and talkative. They were not very much dressed, their garments being composed of a very supple, dark kind of skin and hair, which was so thickly smeared over with fat and red ochre, that if any one attempted to hold them, it ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... suddenly called upon to govern by the death of Monseigneur, and by the unexpected confidence testified in him before long by the king. "The prince should try more than ever to appear open, winning, accessible, and sociable," wrote Fenelon; "he must undeceive the public about the scruples imputed to him; keep his strictness to himself, and not set the court apprehending a severe reform of which society is not capable, and which would have to be introduced ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... While Vaniman hesitated, the master of the household had a word to say, putting on his best business air. "Ordinarily, young man, the latchstring of my home is out and the boys and the girls are welcome here to make merry in a sociable way." Mr. Harnden was distinctly patronizing, with an air that put Frank into the intruding-urchin class. "But it so happens that this evening Banker Britt has seized the opportunity of my being in town and he and I are in close ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... practice on a disreputable patient, Doctor Sanderson. I haven't had time to comb my hair since that little seance with your friends. We sure did have a sociable time. They're all good mixers." He looked into the long glass opposite, laughed at sight of his swollen face, then rattled into a misquotation of some verses ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... slight and naive. It is interesting, however, to find that his earliest impressions of life at home were of an optimistic character. "Skien," he says, "in my young days, was an exceedingly lively and sociable place, quite unlike what it afterwards became. Several highly cultivated and wealthy families lived in the town itself or close by on their estates. Most of these families were more or less closely related, and dances, dinners and music parties followed each other, winter and summer, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... assemblage of beauties was never before seen together. The expression of this head was one of unparalleled sweetness and of a majesty which she softened rather by disposition than by study; her figure was opulent, her speech agreeable, her step noble, her demeanour easy, her temper sociable, her wit devoid of malice, and founded upon ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... natives of this province closely resemble the Pintados—although the former are more slothful; for they spend nearly all their time in drinking, while their wives cultivate the land. Like the Pintados, they are a sociable people, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... affable, complaisant, hearty, sociable, affectionate, cordial, kind, social, amicable, favorable, kindly, tender, brotherly, fond, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Miller's hand was hanging over the arm of his seat, and the dog, an intelligent shepherd, licked it as he passed. Miller was not entirely sure that he would not have liked the porter to leave the dog there; he was a friendly dog, and seemed inclined to be sociable. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... of romantic imagination who did not, at some juvenile period of existence, revel in descriptions of American forest-life? Agatha had scarcely passed this, the latest of her various manias; and on the strength of it, she and Mr. Harper became more sociable. She even condescended to declare "that it was a pleasure to meet with one who had absolutely seen, nay, lived among ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... chunky, square-jawed gents, Captain Lennon is, and about as sociable as a traffic cop on duty. His job is runnin' the yacht, and ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... only to be silenced by absent-minded cuffs. A few disconsolate fathers strayed behind these family groups, the rest being distributed between the barber shops and the corner lamp-posts. I understood these people, being one of them, and I liked them, and I found it all delightfully sociable. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Philosophical Notions and Discourses, and the third of Dramatick and other kinds of Poetry, of which five Comedies, viz. The Bridalls; Blazing World; Covent of Pleasure; the Presence; and The Sociable Companions, or Female Wits. ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... better, besides, he was afraid of dem ar buggers. He was very careful about letting his bedding come in contact with our blankets. We were kind to Uncle Tom, and he soon became reconciled and quite sociable. While here one day our Georgia cracker shouldered his gun and made a foray several miles up the south side of railroad in quest of pork or anything else to eat. He returned that evening with about a bushel of corn. He said he found some cars loaded ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... reached the place, Mr. Keyser asked us into the parlor, and while we were sitting there we heard Mrs. Keyser in the dining-room, adjoining, busy preparing supper. Keyser would not sell his horse, but he was quite sociable, and after ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... rather mixed motives. First, 'all for our delight'—a rule that editors sometimes observe, and occasionally acknowledge; then, with the desire to interest as large a section of the public as may be. Here is a medley of gay, grave, frivolous, homely, religious, sociable, refined, philosophic, and feminine,—something for every mood, and for the proper study of mankind. We do not hope to satisfy all critics, but we do not anticipate that we shall please none. Our difficulty has been that of choice. Many pleasant companions we have had to ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... too. He tried to be sociable for a bit, and could find nothing else but to make big eyes at me, and ask me if I believed 'in communication beyond the grave.' Communication beyond—I didn't know what he meant at first. I didn't know what to say. 'A very solemn subject, Mr. ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... sociably dropped in to chat around the national tea-table, play a rubber at whist, or make up, by the help of two or three children and two or three grandpapas, a merry country-dance; for in that happy day people were much more sociable than they are now in the houses of our rural Thanes. Our country seats became bustling and animated after the Birthday; many even of the more important families resided, indeed, all the year round on their estates. The Continent ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the time for me and the conditions of our life were soothing—the feeling of summer and shade and music and leisure in the German gardens and woods, where we strolled and sat and gossiped; to which may be added a vague sociable sense that among people whose challenge to the curiosity was mainly not irresistible we kept quite to ourselves. We were on the footing of old friends who still had in regard to each other discoveries to make. We knew each other's ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... strawberry-bed and Patience dropped down in the grass beside it, her hands clasped around her knees. "Good times in Winton will be a lot better than good times anywhere else. Winton's such a nice sociable place." ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Broad Way; Governor Tryon and others of the officers were present, and a great concourse of people. Joy and gladness seemed to appear in all countenances, and persons who had been strangers one to the other formerly, were now very sociable together, and friendly. Bro. Shewkirk, who accidentally, came to it, met with several instances of that kind.—The first that was done was, that all the houses of those who have had a part and a share in the Rebellion were marked as forfeited. Many indeed were marked by ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... taken Lord Rochester's resolution of avoiding all sorts of self-denial. She had a greater vivacity in conversation than ever I knew in a German of either sex. She loved reading, and had a taste of all polite learning. Her humour was easy and sociable. Her constitution inclined her to gallantry. She was well-bred and amusing in company. She knew both how to please and be pleased, and had experience enough to know it was hard to do either without money. Her unlimited expenses had left ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... for my part for a summer eve I prefer Mowbray Moor to all the Temples in the world, particularly if it's a sociable party and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... opening appeared in the door. "You did that very well, Peppers. I was wishing I could leave the helm long enough to do it myself, for I wanted to see who the other fellow was that had taken passage with me. Besides, I think it is a good deal more sociable to see a man's face when you are talking ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... him at first. His mere presence was satisfaction enough. After a while we grew more sociable. He spoke a French patois. So did I. His was peculiar to the province,—mine wholly original,—but both answered the purpose of communication, and so were satisfactory. He had the essential characteristic of his profession,—he was one of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... causes of this. It is almost only in the evening you can visit them, and in the evening they are overwhelmed with fatigue. Besides this, all the usages of the English show that they are not naturally sociable. The cellular system of taverns, in which every person is confined in a sort of box without a lid; the silent clubs, in which some write while others read the papers, and only interrupt themselves to make ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... is found for AGATHA'S maid, and the scene is now an animated one; but still our host thinks his girls are not sufficiently sociable. He frowns on ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... herself received with a torrent of affectionate and delighted exclamations, pressed to the ample bosom of Madame Odinska, covered with kisses by Colette, and fawned upon by the three toy terriers, the most sociable of their kind in all Paris, ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... which haunt the forests of the Upper Amazon—graceful sahuis, horned sapajous, gray-coated monos, sagouins which seem to wear a mask on their grimacing faces—the guariba is without doubt the most eccentric. Of sociable disposition, and not very savage, differing therein very greatly from the mucura, who is as ferocious as he is foul, he delights in company, and generally travels in troops. It was he whose presence had been signaled from afar by the monotonous ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... he had, of all, Were the sociable hours he used to pass, With his chair tipped back to a neighbor's wall, Making an unceremonious call, Over a pipe and a friendly glass: This was the finest picture, he said, Of the many he tasted, here below; "Who has no cronies, had ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... drinking our healths in tea poured from a bottle, and to which he helped himself as if it had been Madeira. Being head of the church as well as of the state, he strictly obeys the precepts of the Koran, never drinking wine, and spending a great part of his time at the mosque; but he is not the less sociable, and his talk bears no trace of the austerity to be expected in that of one who leads so regular a life. This life is not, however, all spent in prayer, and the scenes witnessed by us would give a very false impression if we did not know that ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... a sociable young beggar, and keeps my den uncommon tidy. Why, only the other day, when I was in no end of a vicious temper about being rowed about my Greek accents, you know, and when I should have been really grateful to the young scamp if he'd given me an excuse for kicking him, what should he ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... older people of the town, disapproving, but overridden by the impatient enthusiasm of Dona Eustaquia. Through the pine woods with their softly moving shadows and splendid aisles, out between the cypresses and rocky beach, wound the stately cavalcade, their voices rising above the sociable converse of the seals and the screeching of the seagulls spiking the rocks where the waves fought and foamed. The gold on the shoulders of the men flashed in the moonlight; the jewels of the women sparkled and winked. Two by two ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... Burney's some weeks earlier:—'He was in high spirits and good humour, talked all the talk, affronted nobody, and delighted everybody. I never saw him more sweet, nor better attended to by his audience.' In December she wrote:—'Dr. Johnson is very gay, and sociable, and comfortable, and quite as kind to me as ever.' A little later she wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'Does Dr. Johnson continue gay and good-humoured, and "valuing nobody" in a morning?' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 412, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... a soul who'd ever heard of a girl named Etta Blake. Poor people are generally sociable and know everybody in the neighborhood, but didn't anybody know her. Mr. Parke, the agent, said the man paid his rent regular and he was sorry to lose him as a tenant, but he didn't know where he'd gone. If his ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... all my life till fifteen years ago I started trucking here in Helena. I gets six dollars assistance from the Sociable Welfare and some little helpouts as I calls it—rice and potatoes and apples. I got one boy fifty-five years old if he be living. I haven't seen him since 1916. He left and went to Chicago. I got a girl in St. Louis. I got a girl here in Helena. I jus' been up to see her. I had nine children. I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... we made some stay in Australia by the way," said Eleanor turning from the window to take a more sociable position nearer her hostess. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... of a mild, sociable, and obliging disposition. The men are commonly above the middle size, well shaped, strong, and capable of enduring great labour; the women are good-natured, sprightly, and agreeable. The dress of both sexes is composed of cotton cloth, of ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... me, to be sure! Being sociable myself, and loving to have my friends about me, we often used to assemble a company of as hearty fellows as you would wish to sit down with, and keep the nights up royally. "Never mind, my boys," I used to say. "Send the bottle round: mammy pays for all." As ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with the soap, and go sheepishly down to Jenny Ball's, and the old man would bring his pipe and chair out on the pavement, and his wife would sit on the steps. Most likely they would call Lois down, or come over themselves, for they were the most sociable, coziest old couple you ever knew. There was a great stopping at Lois's door, as the girls walked past, for a bunch of the flowers she brought from the country, or posies, as they called them, (Sam never would take any to Jenny but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... personal charm, to his cheerfulness, his urbanity, his tolerance and charity, is remarkably uniform. He is described by one who knew him as "the most sociable, the most lovable, the most companionable of men"; by another as "preeminently a good man, gentle, generous, enduring, laborious." His letters are among the precious writings of our time, not because of the beauty or inimitableness of detail, but because ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... their coffee over the common fire. It was a good-natured camp, but the boys made life a burden to the Indians for two days by their incessant attempts at conversation in the Indian tongue. Some of the old Indians were sociable, and the boys got along very well with them, but the younger ones were shy and refused to talk until, having put on the white man's clothes that Ned had given him, Tommy took several of the young squaws and pickaninnies out in an Indian canoe. ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... with the frank and cheerful politeness of a naturally sociable man. "Good-morning, Mr. Vanstone; I am sorry to see you suffering to-day. Mrs. Lecount, permit me to introduce my niece—my niece, Miss Bygrave. My dear girl, this is Mr. Noel Vanstone, our neighbor at Sea-view ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... are the most sociable of the Visaya population, whilst the women are the best-looking of all the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... evening, Mr. Thornton. Why, James," he added, "this is something quite new. So you are going to Botany without waiting to be sent there. Ha! ha! Well, I wish you every sort of good luck. My dear friend, Hamlyn, too. What a loss he'll be to our little society, so sociable and affable as he always is to us poor farmers' sons. You'll find it lonely there though. You should get a wife to take with you. Oh, yes, I should certainly get married before I went. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... time we were all as sociable together as mice in malt, except that these Corsicans never laughed at all, but stared at us awsome-like even when the creature Fett put one foot on a chair and another on the table and made 'em a long tom-fool speech ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... to Venice, Byron was a private individual. He was sociable in a quiet way, attending one or two salons, but he was not splendid. And he seems really to have thrown himself with his customary vigour into his Armenian studies; but of those I speak elsewhere. They were for the day: in the evening, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... incessant nervous headache had produced a sombre sadness, which threw a gloom around, and affected the whole family, and prevented that sort of hilarity and cheerfulness, which was the usual companion of our abode. My father was of a generous, hospitable, sociable disposition, and was never so happy and blessed as when he had his friends surrounding him, and partaking of those comforts which he had acquired by his industry, skill, and persevering attention to his business; but even these sociable enjoyments with his friends had been very much curtailed, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... of the planets, their progressive motions, their laws? These were all great men. But they were greater still who invented food, and raiment, and houses; who introduced civilization among us, and armed us against the wild beasts; by whom we were made sociable and polished, and so proceeded from the necessaries of life to its embellishments. For we have provided great entertainments for the ears by inventing and modulating the variety and nature of sounds; we have learned to survey ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of the day is not easier to be discovered from the reflection of the sun in Titian's paintings, than in Chaucer's morning landscapes. . . . His reading was deep and extensive, his judgement sound and discerning. . . In one word, he was a great scholar, a pleasant wit, a candid critic, a sociable companion, a steadfast friend, a grave philosopher, a temperate ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of all these novels are: first, the members of five or six families, with their relatives, who try to escape individual boredom by gregariousness; and second, more of the same kind assembled at a local fair or sociable. Here you meet a dull country squire or two, a feeble-minded baronet, a curate laboriously upholding the burden of his dignity, a doctor trying to hide his emptiness of mind by looking occupied, an uncomfortable male ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... whether being at the same hotel does or does not constitute an introduction. Sometimes it does; sometimes it does not. When the hotel is a small and inexpensive arrangement in Switzerland, where the advertised view of the Alpengluehen is obtained by placing the chairs in a sociable circle on the sidewalk, then usually it does. When the hotel is a large and expensive affair in gayest Cairo, where the sunny and shady side rub elbows, and gamesters and debutantes and touts and school teachers and vivid ladies of conspicuous pasts and stout gentlemen of exhilarated ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... a minute or two Joel was perched on the old gentleman's knee, and they were having the most sociable time possible. And before long Joel forgot he hadn't laughed for oh, such a long while, and lo and behold! Grandpapa said something so very funny that they both burst out into a merry peal, that rang out into the ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... the time of his life in the two hours before the arrival of the noon express. The station agent was a sociable soul. He had a guinea-pig in a box, so delightful to observe that Elsmere forgot his desire for zwieback and became conversational. He told the agent the history of the polly-wogs he had raised ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... and the wild, tumultuous joy of the skating-rink, the toboggan slide, the mush-and-milk sociable and ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... article of faith in God and man which had been offered for her guidance through life with unquestioning confidence; at least she had never been heard to object to any time-honoured axiom. And she did, in fact, accept them all, but only provisionally. She wanted to know. Silent, sociable, sober, and sincere, she had walked over the course of her early education and gone on far beyond it with such ease that those in authority over her never suspected the extent to which ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... pocketed his book and turned homeward. His day, he thought, had not amounted to much after all, and he would spend the evening in sober study, and not dream any more until bedtime. But he would be sociable this evening and eat his supper—now he thought about it, it would be dinner and supper combined—in the company of his colleagues at their favourite haunt. And he would go to-morrow, he would certainly ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... small limits at Quebec. Its lite are grouped round the ramparts and in the suburb of St. Louis. The city until recently has occupied a very isolated position, and has depended upon itself for society. It is therefore sociable, friendly, and hospitable; and though there is gossip—for where is it not to be found?—I never knew any in which there was so little of ill-nature. The little world in the upper part of the city ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... his genial, sociable instincts, was found in Shives's shop more often than in the tiny room which, with the bed, table, and books, was all he had in the way of home. Dr. Jebb was afraid to take any large part in these deliberations. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Mr. Soper not only sociable but jocose. "Reasons? That's a new name for 'em. If he don't want more than one at a time, I wish he'd introduce the rest of 'em ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... in the world which denotes a subordinate position in the social scale or defect in education, it is the passion to call men "out of their names," and never feel really acquainted with any one until he is termed Tom or Jack. It is doubtless all very genial and jocose and sociable, but the man who shows a tendency to it should not complain when his betters put him in a lower class or among the ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... true, and it explains why the comparatively unsociable Germans, English, and Americans, are spreading over the earth, while the intensely sociable Frenchmen, unable to enjoy life without each other's society, prefer to stay at home, and France fails to extend itself ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... here, and sometimes roast or bake and bruise the stalks, without chewing it previously to its infusion. They also use the leaves of the plant here, which are bruised, and water poured upon them, as upon the root. Large companies do not assemble to drink it in that sociable way which is practised at Tongataboo. But its pernicious effects are more obvious here; perhaps owing to the manner of preparing it, as we often saw instances of its intoxicating, or rather stupifying powers. Some of us, who had been at these islands before, were surprised to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... us?" inquired the cattle-buyer of Baugh. "This is no time to throw off, or refuse to be sociable." ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... to-morrow, Henry," Jennie heard Mrs. Bracebridge tell her husband. "I had a wire from him this noon. He's such a scamp. I'm going to give him the big east front room up-stairs. Be sociable and pay him some attention. His father ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... looks, which are said to be so conspicuous at the splendid hells, might be seen stealing even across this low swindling table. But, upon the whole, the party was very sociable, winning and losing their money with the ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... peculiarly difficult by a variety of coincidences and contingencies. A clever man, some twenty years ago, made the not inapplicable remark to me: "You have in reality three individuals to deal with in yourself, and they all run one against the other; the sociable salon-individual, the virtuoso and the thoughtfully-creative composer. If you manage one of them properly, you may congratulate ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... could consult in his perplexity. Besides Mollie herself, there was no one in sight, so she quickened her pace and approached the stranger with the bright, frank smile which came so readily to her lips. Mollie was nothing if not sociable; she never lost a chance of talking if it came in her way; even to direct wandering old gentlemen was more amusing than nothing, and this one had such ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the produce of her farm. I believe we met fifty or sixty sleighs; they fly with great swiftness, and some are so furious that they will turn out of the path for none except a loaded cart. Nor do they spare for any diversion the place affords, and sociable to a degree, their tables being as free to ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... deserted quarries; but the great majority appear to be indifferent in the matter, and to resort to any shelter that seems convenient to them. Some, such as the Barbastelle of the southern parts of England, are solitary in their habits, generally retiring alone for their day's rest; others are more sociable, reposing in larger or smaller parties in their dormitories, whether natural or artificial, and sometimes, like the Fruit ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... remained to the end of the chapter. He soon learned his name, and would come flying at the first sound of it. He proved to be a pet that required considerable attention. He was of an especially sociable nature, and, if left alone in any room, he would howl in mournful and prolonged meows, that speedily brought some one to the rescue. He tagged the girls like a little dog, and would stand on the shore crying like a child if they ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... in sudden warning.] Hold on, boys—[Pause and recovery of calm.] I claim everything this side of the fence. Now I know it ain't sociable, but I don't want you to come in. Whenever the District Attorney gits his witnesses together, I'll be there, but I won't go this mornin'—[Pause.] and anyhow I won't go with such a mangy lot of heelers as you've ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... staying for my Answer told me, That he was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at his own Table; for which Reason he desired a particular Friend of his at the University to find him out a Clergyman rather of plain Sense than much Learning, of a good Aspect, a clear Voice, a sociable Temper, and, if possible, a Man that ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the fish was cooked, and I took it off the fire and put it into the kid, and we sat down to breakfast; in an hour or so we had become very sociable. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... dinner-time arrived, but Jim ate alone, and was rather blue. He loved a sociable chat, and of late Tarpaulin had been ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... Congress who seeks to win votes by a show of eloquence is turned down. Votes are facts, and if the votes are to be won, facts must be arranged to do it. The doctor who stands best with the typical modern patient is not the most agreeable, sociable, jogging-about man a town contains, like the doctor of the days gone by. He talks less. He even prescribes less, and the reason that it is hard to be a modern minister (already cut down from two hours and a half to twenty or thirty minutes) is that ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... "and I don't wonder after the dreadful weather we've had. Few passes my door without a bite or a sup, specially at tea-time, Mr. Nor'cote, which is sociable time, as I always says. Come in and warm yourself and have a cup of tea. There is nothing as pleases my old woman so much as to get out her best tea-things for a minister; she 'as a great respect for ministers, has Mrs. Tozer, sir; and now she's ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... was pert and sociable, and would talk as long as people would converse with her. She was quite garrulous about her protege, 'dear little George,' at whose birth she declared she was present, having been at the time a slave of Elizabeth Atwood, a half-sister of Augustine ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... you are not in a very sociable humor," continued Grayson; "and, to tell you the truth, I am not much that way inclined myself: but I am determined to get to the bottom of this affair before you shall leave the house. I am sure you know all about it; and if you don't, why the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Watson was busy fixing the dilapidated stables, he was joined by his nearest neighbour, Thomas Perkins, who was of a very sociable nature, and loved the sound of ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... avoided naming Lady Matilda; and when he diffidently inquired of her health, a cold restraint overspread Miss Woodley's face, and she left him instantly. To Sandford it was still more difficult for him to apply; for though frequently together, they were never sociable; and as Sandford seldom disguised his feelings, to Rushbrook he was always extremely severe, and ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... there, in view of all the ship's company for three hours and to pay a fine of two bottles of brandy. He refused to pay his fine and we excommunicated the culprit refusing either to eat, drink or speak with him until he should submit. Today he gave up and paid his fine. Man is a sociable being and the bitterest of all punishments is exclusion. He couldn't ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... something with which to compare the dictates of his own conscience, some chronometer to set his watch by. In the decay of religious ideas, the Frenchmen of the eighteenth century had set up a standard of comparison independent of revelation. They had found it in public opinion. The sociable population of Paris was ready to accept the common voice as arbiter. It had always been powerful in France, where the desire for sympathy is strong. A pamphlet published in 1730 says that if the episcopate falls into error it should ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... mare Stops when she likes: I tell her when to go. I've spoiled Jemima in more ways than one. She's got so she turns in at every house As if she had some sort of curvature, No matter if I have no errand there. She thinks I'm sociable. I maybe am. It's seldom I get down except for meals, though. Folks entertain me from the kitchen doorstep, All in a family row down to the youngest." "One would suppose they might not be as glad To see ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... member of the feathered tribe, the "laughing jackass;" more scientifically denominated the "giant kingfisher." When I saw the bird, I was very sorry that it had been killed; for, notwithstanding its discordant voice, it is a remarkably sociable and useful creature, as we afterwards discovered. It destroys snakes, which it catches by the tail, and then crushes their head with its powerful beak; it also renders an essential service to the settlers who want to get up early, by shouting out its strange notes to welcome ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... trouble to count 'em, —nothing else to do. I ain't got a word out of 'im yet, an' I've been sittin' 'ere ever since eight o'clock s'mornin'. I'm a conwivial cock, I am,—a sociable cove, yes, sir, a s-o-s-h-able cove as ever wore a pair o' boots. Wot I sez is,—though a bum, why not a sociable bum, and try to make things nice and pleasant, and I does my best, give you my word! But Lord! all my efforts is wasted on that ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... was a very small attendance at the "cave" that night, and we were all more sociable and friendly because the company was select. The songs were chiefly of the sentimental class; such ditties were much in vogue at the time of which ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... sparse scholar, student science, art scrupulous, conscientious serf, slave shift, expedient sick, ill silent, taciturn sit, set skilled, skilful slender, slim smart, clever sociable, social solicitude, anxiety stay, stop stimulus, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... young man of prepossessing appearance and amiable manners. They could not call to mind his name, but remembered having met him, somewhere, and on more than one occasion. The American girl is always sociable: they bowed and smiled, and said it was a fine day. He replied with volubility, and helped them down on to the ice. He was really most attentive. They saw their friend, the officer of noble family, and, with the assistance of the German gentleman, skated ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... spots in the world, perhaps, that unite so many inducements to the formation of those sociable little reunions which come under the denomination of pic-nics, as the small islands adorning most of the American rivers. Owing to the difficulty of procuring summer carriages, and in some decree to the rudeness of the soil, in the Upper Province especially, boats are in much more general use; and ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... but particularly the more respectable, have many vacant hours. And here it may not be improper to remark, that the discipline of the society, organized as it is, is productive of a cheerful and friendly intercourse of the members, or of a sociable manner of spending their time, one with another. The monthly meetings usually bring two or three particular meetings together. The members of these, when they have dispatched their business, retire to the houses of ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... and again without the resolution to touch his hat and ask for a job. Once or twice he saw others quite as brutally rebuffed as he had been, and it was only by turning away that he kept himself from taking a hand in an encounter. Once or twice, when the overseer happened to be a decent and sociable fellow, Harold, edging near, caught his eye and was able to address him on terms of equality; but in each case the talk which followed brought out the fact that men were swarming for every place; ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... made us as sociable as though I were Noah, and Ar-hap's palace mound another Ararat. Hour after hour I sat amongst all these lesser beasts in the hot darkness, waiting for the end. Every now and then the heavy clouds parted, changing the gloom to sudden fiery daylight as the great red eye in the west ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... their time, too; for they were the nurses of all the sick, the comforters of all the sorrowful, the advisers of all in difficulty—without parade. They were applied to as of course—it seemed natural. And they were sociable: they had their little tea-parties with their acquaintance; they made their little presents at Christmas-time; they sweetened life throughout their limited sphere; and all so quietly, that no one guessed the amount of their influence till it ceased. They preached 'the word' practically, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... will choose to be alone. He cannot think himself sufficiently rid of vice, if he must yet contend with it in other men. Charondas punished those as evil men who were convicted of keeping ill company. There is nothing so unsociable and sociable as man, the one by his vice, the other by his nature. And Antisthenes, in my opinion, did not give him a satisfactory answer, who reproached him with frequenting ill company, by saying that the physicians lived well enough amongst the sick, for if they ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... lunatic asylum at Parramatta next year, and the squatter was sent there the following summer, having been ruined by the drought, the rabbits, the banks, and a wool-ring. The two became very friendly, and had many a sociable argument about the feasibility—or otherwise—of blowing open the flood-gates of Heaven in a dry ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... that his friend is not to be wheedled into a more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... are by nature too sociable. Frenchman cannot meet without being polite to each other, so the independence of a club is lost. Englishmen can share a cabin, ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... water was set upon the hot coals on the hearth, the lemons cut and squeezed into two elegant goblets, upon square lumps of sugar that eagerly took up the keen acid, and grew yellow and spongy in consequence. A sociable little round table was rolled out of its seclusion in a corner, and made to support a tray between us, whereon were such dainty cakes and confections as my ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... not respond; simply continued eating without looking up. This was a habit of his that nearly drove Rose desperate. In her father's household meals had always been friendly, sociable affairs. Patrick Conroy had been loquacious and by way of a wit; sharpened on his, Rose's own had developed. They had dealt in delicious nonsense, these two, and had her husband been of a different temperament she might have found it a refuge in her life with him. But, somehow, ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... future to accumulate libraries. Moreover, the ordeal that all have gone through has depressed intellectual as well as social life. Mulhouse has been too much saddened to recover herself as yet, although eminently a literary place, and a sociable one in the old happy French days. The balls, soires and reunions, that formerly made Mulhouse one of the friendliest as well as the busiest towns in the world, have almost ceased. People ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... languished after awhile. It was such hard work riding in a lumbering coach, over the most detestable roads, that the passengers found it hard to be sociable. But a surprise was in store. The coach made a sudden stop. Two horsemen appeared at the window, and a stern voice said: "We'll trouble you to get out, gentlemen. We'll take charge of what money and valuables ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... himself. By "poet" I mean, of course, any imaginative creator—novelist, mathematician, editor, or a man like Herbert Hoover. And by "rude" I mean the strict and definite limitation which, sooner or later, he must impose upon his sociable instincts. He must refuse to fritter away priceless time and energy in the random genialities of the world. Friendly, well-meaning, and fumbling hands will stretch out to bind the poet's heart in the maddening pack-thread ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... him ugly, because he has us'd me ill. I differ from My Lord Shaftesbury entirely, as to the Certainty of the Pulchrum & Honestum, abstract from Mode and Custom: I do the same about the Origin of Society, and in many other Things, especially the Reasons why Man is a Sociable Creature, beyond other Animals. I am fully persuaded, His Lordship was in the Wrong in these Things; but this does not blind my Understanding so far, as not to see, that he is a very fine Author, and ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... years old when I was brought over hither, where, as I have said, my father lived in very good circumstances, and died in about eleven years more; in which time, as I had accomplished myself for the sociable part of the world, so I had acquainted myself with some of our English neighbours, as is the custom in London; and as, while I was young, I had picked up three or four playfellows and companions suitable to my years, so, as we grew bigger, we learned to call one another intimates and friends; ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... the cold marble which his hand had shaped, and thus did Van Dyck love his pictures into being. All portrait-painters are sociable—they have to be in order to get acquainted with the subject. The best portrait-painter in America talks like a windmill as he works, and tries a whole set round of little jokes, and dry asides and trite aphorisms on the sitter, meanwhile cautiously noting the effect. For of course ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... pleasure; and it is not difficult to understand the sources of this amiable cynicism. He must have a vague conviction that he can only lose by almost any change. Fortune has been kind to him: he lives in a temperate, reasonable, sociable climate, on the banks of a river which, it is true, sometimes floods the country around it, but of which the ravages appear to be so easily repaired that its aggressions may perhaps be regarded (in a region where so many good things are certain) merely as an occasion for healthy suspense. He ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... related to them, that their language contains a proverb: “Ca-si-ri pi-rus, he wi-ti ti-ruk-ta-pi-di-hu-ru—Why, even the worms, they love each other—much more should men.” They were also very hospitable, very sociable, and fond of telling stories. They really had a literature of stories and songs, which, if they could be gathered in their entirety, would make a ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... foot messenger I had some time ducking those German bullets. Those bullets seemed very sociable but I didn't care to meet up with any of them, so I kept on traveling on high gear. None touched my skin, though some skinned ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... grizzling there. What with this lady's husband, dead and buried in that there newspaper, and you, that sets brooding like a hen over one egg, it's a Quaker's meeting, or nearly. If you've been and murdered anybody, tell us all about it. Once off your mind, you'll be more sociable." ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... addressed to them, ought to find in it, all their lives through, a retirement from mean occupations, a well of refreshment, sustainment in the daily drudgery of life, solace in calamity, an inmate by the hearth, ever sociable, never intrusive—to be sought and found, to be found and ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... at all sociable, tho' they frequently visit each other, which is with much Ceremony amongst the better Sort; for he who makes the Visit, sends before him a Servant to give Notice, that he intends to do himself the Honour ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... the young invalid was soon seated on donkey-back, and gently trotting down the heath, with Robert running at his side. He liked his attendant so well, that he soon got into conversation with him, asked his name, and told him his own. Robert was a little startled, when he found that his sociable new customer was a real young ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... came, his stern, dictatorial manner, together with the persistent coldness which resisted all attempts to be friendly and sociable, hurt and offended me; but he was so different when among the sick, so gentle, so benignant beside the bedsides of suffering men, that I soon learned to know and appreciate the royal heart which at other times he managed to conceal under a rough and ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... of all scoundrels]. I shall fine him L10,000, which is more than he is worth, yet less than he deserveth; I will not set him at liberty, no more than a plagued man or a mad dog, who though he cannot bite, yet will he foam; he is so far from being a sociable soul that he is not a rational soul; he is fit to live in dens with such beasts of prey as wolves and tygers like himself; therefore I do condemn him to perpetual Imprisonment, as those monsters that are no longer fit to live among men nor to see light." ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... hand to paper without having some information or theory to deliver, which he fancied was not generally known, and that this was worth looking after through all the encumbering rubbish. For the same reason, besides being naturally sociable, he liked to draw others into conversation, and to start subjects for discussion, from which, when fairly under way, he would withdraw himself into silence and allow the company to do the talking, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... things." She shrugged her massive shoulders in high bad humor. Arthmann gloomily reflected that Dennett's phrases at the Sammett Garden were being echoed. Mrs. Fridolin continually urged her driver to keep his carriage abreast of the other. It made the party more sociable, she declared, although to the sculptor it seemed as if she wished to watch Margaret closely. She had never seemed so ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... out in front of his house and rang a hand bell, and then woe betide any one who didn't go to bed instanter and shut up, no matter if it were in the full of the moon and they in the middle of a game of cards or yarning sociable on an upturned boat. ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... lest my condition should be noticed—for so it was during these past six months which I spent in the country. Ordered by my intelligent physician to spare my hearing as much as possible, he almost fell in with my present frame of mind, although many a time I was carried away by my sociable inclinations. But how humiliating was it, when some one standing close to me heard a distant flute, and I heard nothing, or a shepherd singing, and again I heard nothing. Such incidents almost drove me to despair; at times I was on the point ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... may seem, Hearne was off again in less than a fortnight on his third quest of the Coppermine. The time that he had spent in Matonabbee's company had given him a great opinion of the character of the chief; 'the most sociable, kind, and sensible Indian I have ever met'—so Hearne described him. The chief himself had offered to lead Hearne to the great river of the north. Governor Norton willingly furnished ammunition, supplies, and a few trading goods. The expedition ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... she was of me, to be sure! Being sociable myself, and loving to have my friends about me, we often used to assemble a company of as hearty fellows as you would wish to sit down with, and keep the nights up royally. "Never mind, my boys," I used to say. "Send the bottle round: mammy ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sometimes thought for himself, aspirations after excellence much higher than those of many others,—all these traits came out in his familiar talks, in which he rather unbent than exerted himself; at the same time he was as gentle and attentive a listener as a man could wish, a truly sociable being, with whom you could talk all day, and then all night, and never ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... it 's deuced perfect, it 's deuced simple; I do believe in him!" he said. "But I 'm glad I 'm not a genius. It makes," he added with a laugh, as he looked for Roderick to wave him good-by, and saw his back still turned, "it makes a more sociable studio." ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... reason of her husband's wealth. It is Father's constant ambition and determination to spend as much of his time as possible amongst his old "roughneck" working-man pals, instead of in attending his wife's receptions and other society functions. A sociable companion of his own class is what he constantly seeks. In this picture there are, as is usual in the Sunday supplements, twelve scenes. The action of the picture may be roughly synopsized ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... he distinguished himself on military service; he has many sociable qualities, and he is well connected. It is ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... These were all great men; but they were greater still, who invented food, and raiment, and houses; who introduced civilization amongst us, and armed us against the wild beasts; by whom we were made sociable and polished, and so proceeded from the necessaries of life to its embellishments. For we have provided great entertainments for the ears, by inventing and modulating the variety and nature of sounds; we have learnt to survey the stars, not only those that are fixed, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... trust herself to speak she did not. Mr. Carlyle scanned her face attentively, as she sat, her spectacles bent downward. She did not appear inclined to be sociable, and he turned to the baby, who ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... on rather a small allowance of that element. He was stout, thick-set, and perhaps fifty or sixty years old—a man whose hair was cut exceedingly close, who wore a large bushy beard, and whose eye had a sociable twinkle in it which was prepossessing. He was dressed, whenever I saw him, in a greenish-brown frock-coat made of some material which was not cloth, wore a waistcoat and trousers of light colour, and had a frill to his shirt—an ornament, by the way, which ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... a sort of sociable sorrowfulness, slowly sliding along the rail, "Pray, now, my young friend, what volume have you there? Give me leave," gently drawing it from him. "Tacitus!" Then opening it at random, read: "In general a black and shameful period lies before me." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... with an eye of humorous intelligence. "I guess Frank don't want to keep the young ladies waitin' a great while. There's a church sociable over 't the Huddle," he explained ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... as well as small tea tables, to seat two, three or four, while there is always one oblong table at which a sociable crowd of young people may gather ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... Happiness back into them beautiful hants. And then agin, we'd float by an island where there would be lots of white tents, with wimmen and children and men and boys standin' out wavin' their handkerchiefs and shoutin' to us, good natered and sociable. ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... Sociable has been tried by many, and is practically a failure in so far as traveling quickly and easily is concerned. The Tandem, though it presents so objectionable an appearance, seems likely to become a favorite, for it surpasses any single tricycle, and rivals the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... in Heyst's character to turn morose; but his mental state was not compatible with a sociable mood. He spent his evenings sitting apart on the veranda of Schomberg's hotel. The lamentations of string instruments issued from the building in the hotel compound, the approaches to which were decorated with Japanese paper lanterns strung ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Melcombe accepted the invitation, and he was very sociable and pleasant; but she thought the governess (a very grand lady indeed) took upon herself more than beseemed her, and smiled at her very scornfully when she ventured to say sweet things to John Mortimer on her own great love for children, and ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... afterward, gave me so the suspicion of being watched from under cover. It was in any case over MY life, MY past, and MY friends alone that we could take anything like our ease—a state of affairs that led them sometimes without the least pertinence to break out into sociable reminders. I was invited—with no visible connection—to repeat afresh Goody Gosling's celebrated mot or to confirm the details already supplied as to the cleverness of ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... feelings were sufficiently disconsolate. But accustomed from his infancy to conceal his internal thoughts, he appeared in the course of a week the gayest and best bred passenger who ever dared the long and weary space betwixt Old England and her Indian possessions. At Madras, where the sociable feelings of the resident inhabitants give ready way to enthusiasm in behalf of any stranger of agreeable qualities, he experienced that warm hospitality which distinguishes the British character in ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... ends of the earth—off lone Fanning's Island, or the far away King's Mills; how much more natural, I say, that under such circumstances these ships should not only interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly and sociable contact. And especially would this seem to be a matter of course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose captains, officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to each other; and consequently, have ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... in 1754, describes the negroes as sociable, obliging, humane, and hospitable. "Their amiable simplicity," says he, "in this enchanting country, recalled to me the idea of the primitive race of man; I thought I saw the world in its infancy. They are distinguished by tenderness ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... finished there were rows of hooks to spare. Tiers of shelves yawned for hat-boxes which I possessed not. Bluebeard's wives could have held a family reunion in that closet and invited all of Solomon's spouses. Finally, in desperation, I gathered all my poor garments together and hung them in a sociable bunch on the hooks nearest the door. How I should have loved to have shown that closet to a select circle of New York ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... end of my scarf and hurry in. May a kind thought prompt us how to elude the wary Fairlie. Take care you don't seem sociable when she taps. It would be fatal if she should enter for a 'cozy little chat.' She has done it, ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... overlooked the main prison buildings, contained foreign glass windows draped with white curtains, was scrupulously clean for China, and had magnificent hanging scrolls on the whitewashed walls. Tea was soon brewed, and the governor, wishing to be polite and sociable, told me that he had been in Yuen-nan-fu for a few months only, and that he considered himself an extremely fortunate fellow to be in charge of such an excellent prison—one of the finest in ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... palace of the Countess Da Forli. She was a widow with no children, except Claudia, the young daughter who had accompanied her to the fete the evening before. Caretto, and four or five relations of the family, were the only guests beside himself. It was a quiet and sociable meal, and served with less ceremony than usual, as the countess wished to place Gervaise as much as possible at his ease. During the meal but little was said about the affair with the pirates, Caretto telling them some of his ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... Ours is Jim Steedman's old regiment—you've all heard of old Chickamauga Jim, who slashed his division of 7,000 fresh men into the Rebel flank on the second day at Chickamauga, in a way that made Longstreet wish he'd staid on the Rappahannock, and never tried to get up any little sociable with the Westerners. If I do say it myself, I believe we've got as good a crowd of square, stand-up, trust 'em-every-minute-in-your-life boys, as ever thawed hard-tack and sowbelly. We got all the grunters and weak sisters fanned out the first ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... want anything to do me good," Merefleet returned. He had become almost genial under these unusual circumstances. It was certainly no easy matter to keep this exceedingly sociable young lady at ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... have sociables? Indians like to visit, and they do enjoy a good supper. With these two qualifications, what else is necessary for a sociable? Some women to do the work. The women of the Women's Native Missionary Society, of Yankton Agency, are not lazy, nor are they slow in devising ways and means of making money; therefore, on the evening of Feb. 22, ...
— American Missionary, August, 1888, (Vol. XLII, No. 8) • Various
... few spots in the world, perhaps, that unite so many inducements to the formation of those sociable little reunions which come under the denomination of pic-nics, as the small islands adorning most of the American rivers. Owing to the difficulty of procuring summer carriages, and in some decree to the rudeness of the ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... very heartily partaken of, Mr Towlinson's suggestion is, in effect, that Cook is going, and that if we are not true to ourselves, nobody will be true to us. That they have lived in that house a long time, and exerted themselves very much to be sociable together. (At this, Cook says, with emotion, 'Hear, hear!' and Mrs Perch, who is there again, and full to the throat, sheds tears.) And that he thinks, at the present time, the feeling ought to be 'Go one, go all!' The housemaid is ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... grapes?" Hansie asked, handing the basket to one of them, who helped himself gratefully and then passed it on to his comrade. The latter, evidently not of a very sociable disposition, took a bunch and walked off in pursuit ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... fellow-creatures: it was simply because what I have called his own society was more of a stimulus than that of most other people. And yet he was not for this reason fond of solitude; he was, on the contrary, a very sociable animal. It must be admitted at the outset that he had a nature which seemed at several points to contradict itself, as will probably be perceived in the course ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... young man, not far, one would guess, from his thirtieth year. He has large, shrewd, humorous gray eyes which twinkle inquiringly from time to time as he looks round through his spectacles at the people about him. It is easy to see that he is of a sociable and possibly simple disposition, anxious to be friendly to all men. Anyone could pick him at once as gregarious in his habits and communicative in his nature, with a quick wit and a ready smile. And yet the man who studied him more closely might discern a certain firmness ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... doctor in divinity; she was plain, old, and cross; and of his father, a shoemaker by trade, working all day long and never addressing a word to anyone, not even during the meals. He only became a sociable being on holidays, on which occasions he would spend his time with his friends in some tavern, coming home at midnight as drunk as a lord and singing verses from Tasso. When in this blissful state the good man could not make up his mind to go to bed, and became violent if anyone ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... himself even, to go in search of a pleasure; and it is not difficult to understand the sources of this amiable cynicism. He must have a vague conviction that he can only lose by almost any change. Fortune has been kind to him: he lives in a temperate, reasonable, sociable climate, on the banks of a river which, it is true, sometimes floods the country around it, but of which the ravages appear to be so easily repaired that its aggressions may perhaps be regarded (in a region where so many good things are certain) merely as an occasion ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... and has disappeared behind the ground-glass door when I discovers this slick-haired young gent sittin' at a desk over by the window,—a buddin' law clerk, most likely. And by way of bein' sociable I remarks casual that I hear how McGraw is puttin' Tesreau on the mound again to-day against ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... worked hard all the week, and we tried to crowd as much fun into a half-holiday as possible. Well, one Saturday afternoon Mr. Billy-Goat and Mr. Dog were walking arm in arm along the road, talking and laughing in a sociable way, when all of a sudden a big rain came up. Mr. Billy-Goat said he was mighty sorry he left his parasol at home, because the rain was apt to make his horns rust. Mr. Dog shook himself and said he didn't mind water, because when he got ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... watch just how they managed. I note that this fellow has a couple of old tomato cans he's picked up on some dump, and they're set over the fire to warm up some coffee, or something he's evidently gotten at a back door. Perhaps he'll be sociable, and invite us to join him in his afternoon meal. I guess they eat at any old time, just as the notion seizes ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... your high principles, you will agree with me, that unless that custom, called "politeness," is not pushed so far as irony or treason, it is a sociable virtue to follow, and of all the relations among men, the true meaning of gallantry has more need of being concealed than that of any other social affair. How many occasions do you not find where a lover gains more by dissimulating the excess of his ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... doing the honours at my end, while the surgeon of the vessel was seated at the other. I was glad to notice that Flannigan was placed almost opposite to me. As long as I had him before my eyes I knew that, for the time at least, we were safe. He was sitting with what was meant to be a sociable smile on his grim face. It did not escape me that he drank largely of wine—so largely that even before the dessert appeared his voice had become decidedly husky. His friend Muller was seated a few places lower down. He ate little, and appeared ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for it, proves to me, that if I have a dislike for society, it is more their fault than mine. It is a pity the Savoyards are not rich: though, perhaps, it would be a still greater pity if they were so, for altogether they are the best, the most sociable people that I know, and if there is a little city in the world where the pleasures of life are experienced in an agreeable and friendly commerce, it is at Chambery. The gentry of the province who assemble there have only sufficient wealth to live and not enough ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... road. At the other side of this road were three large detached deep-bodied villas with peaky eaves and small wooden balconies, each standing in its own little square of grass and of flowers. All three were equally new, but numbers one and two were curtained and sedate, with a human, sociable look to them; while number three, with yawning door and unkempt garden, had apparently only just received its furniture and made itself ready for its occupants. A four-wheeler had driven up to the gate, and it was at this that the old ladies, peeping out bird-like from behind their curtains, ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the beauty of the spot to the more sociable but draughty ranches in the valley of Bear Forks River; so they settled in the crater, and named the farm Rainbow Cliffs, but the original nick-name clung, and gradually the owners, from habit, also came to call their place ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... necessity for mimicry and romance remained; and she satisfied it by writing stories—marvellous ones—which she read to Boots. Otherwise she was the same active, sociable, wholesome, intelligent child, charmingly casual and inconsistent; and the list of her youthful admirers at dancing-school and parties required the alphabetical classification of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... that he was extremely sociable in his tastes. He was fond of being among men. Wherever men were gathered, there Lincoln went, and wherever Lincoln was, men gathered about him. In the intervals of work, at nooning or in the evening, he was always the center of an interested group, and his unparalleled flow of humor, wit, and ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... character, with his discharge-sheet, back to Polpier, where his old friends and neighbours—who had known him as a brisk upstanding lad, sociable enough, though maybe a trifle shy— edged away from the taciturn man who returned to them. Nor did it help his popularity that he attended neither Church nor Chapel: for Polpier is a deeply religious ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... his mother told him that she thought he was making a mistake in keeping his canaries so much to themselves. They had become so timid, that when she went into the room they were uneasy till she left it. She told him that petted birds or animals are sociable and like company, unless they are kept by themselves, when they become shy. She advised him to let the other boys go into the room, and occasionally to bring some of his pretty singers downstairs, where all the family could enjoy seeing and hearing them, and where ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... and gently trotting down the heath, with Robert running at his side. He liked his attendant so well, that he soon got into conversation with him, asked his name, and told him his own. Robert was a little startled, when he found that his sociable new customer was a real young ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... as they are called "new chums," may be hired by the squatter's agents in town and sent up to the station, whence they are frequently removed to these outposts; but when such is the case, they are generally of a more sociable disposition, and take an early opportunity of being removed to the comfort and social intercourse of the head station. Though in this removal they entail more constant and arduous occupation, they willingly embrace the labour, and leave the indolence of their vacated posts, to ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... early in the morning, or in the grey twilight after his dinner-hour. He was a proud man, and he was not a sociable man. When the county gentry came to welcome him to England, he received them, and thanked them for their courtesy. But there was something in his manner that repelled rather than invited friendship. He gave one great dinner-party soon after his ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... by Poppar at home; it's more sociable than right across the room. Poppar and I are just the greatest chums, and I hate it when he's away. There was a real nice woman wanted to come and keep house, and take me around—Mrs Van Dusen, widow of Henry P Van Dusen, who made a boom in cheese. Maybe you've heard of ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... But she was that sociable disposition, that she could not half enjoy anything unless she could get some one to sympathise with her. She did so long to tell her news. Late as was the hour when the party broke up, she wanted to tell Isabel; but Isabel ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... Branwell was away and doing well as station-master at Luddendenfoot, "set off to seek his fortune in the wild, wandering, adventurous, romantic, knight-errant-like capacity of clerk on the Leeds and Manchester Railway." Ellen came to stay at Haworth in the summer; it was quite sociable and lively now in the grey house on the moors; for, compelled by failing health, Mr. Bronte had engaged the help of a curate, and the Haworth curate brought his clerical friends about the house, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... greatly in their character. Some are composed of sociable, kind-hearted fellows, while others may contain a large percentage of professional "bad men" and rowdies. Each company will have its own traditions and a reputation which is guarded jealously. There was the "fighting ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... the question, ain't it? Hum... hum... let's see. Sorry I can't take you back to the Centre myself. Any other night I'd be glad to, but there's a beans and brown-bread supper and sociable up to the meetin' house this evenin' and I promised the old woman—Mrs. Pulcifer, I mean—that I'd be on hand. I'm a little late as 'tis. Hum... let's see... Why, I tell you. See that store over on the corner there? That's Erastus Beebe's store and Ras ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he, irritated; "well, people must all have their share of sadness here; I am not more exempt than another: but kiss me, dearest, and go now; I will, if possible, be more sociable when you return." ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... very sociable man; and, when on a sketching tour, liked to have a young artist or two with him. Jack Nisbett played the violin, and Sam the 'cello, etc. Jack was fond of telling that Sam used to let them all choose the best views, and then he would take what was left; and Jack, with mild astonishment, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... this here as sociable a neighborhood as I ever struck. It pleases me well. Folks are ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... In the wall opposite is an open door, through which one catches a glimpse of the bedroom beyond, decked out in all its pink-and-white glory. There is a very sociable little clock, a table strewn with wools and colored ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... so frivolous and locoed by the electric lights and the noises of the phonographs and the second-story railroads that I forgot one of the crying needs of my Western system of natural requirements. I never was no hand to deny myself the pleasures of sociable vocal intercourse with friends and strangers. Out in the Territories when I meet a man I never saw before, inside of nine minutes I know his income, religion, size of collar, and his wife's temper, and how much he pays for clothes, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... "Pray, Mr Cringle, be sociable, man," said the Captain; "what the deuce do you see, that you stare over my shoulder in that way? Were a woman now, I should tremble to look behind me, while you were glaring aft in that wild, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... cheery speech. Mary, he tells us; was always neatly dressed, but with nothing prim or sectarian in her style. 'Her expression was frank and free, yet very modest, and she was blessed with an affectionate, sociable spirit.' ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the omnipresent bush-magpie. Here he may warble all the day long on the liquid, mellifluous notes of his Doric flute, fit pipe indeed for academic groves . . . sweetest and brightest, most cheery and sociable of all ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... 34) called 'uncomeatable' a low corrupt word: rather, as you well say, 'a permissible colloquialism.' Yes; like old Johnson's own 'Clubable' by which he designated some Good sociable Fellow. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... yet learned to be sociable in that way. A friend is more company for me than a score of acquaintances. Dear me! I'm afraid New ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... "for the Cafe Delphine, and my throat thirsts for sociable alcohol. If you can cease the prostitution of your art to a salacious public for an hour or two, I shall be very glad of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... left hardly a single story or recorded incident of any kind; and that though three generations of undergraduates passed through Oxford in his time, no one of them seems in later years to have had anything to say of not the least famous and one of the most sociable of Englishmen. At that time, it is true, and for long afterwards, the men of New College kept more to themselves than the men of any other college in Oxford; but still it is odd. Another little mystery is, Why did Sydney take orders? Although there is not ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... from his plate and put them on his own. Also, in order to put matters on a more equal footing, he drank three cups of coffee in rapid succession, leaving the skipper to his own reflections and an empty coffee-pot. In this sociable fashion they got through most of the day, the skipper refraining from speech until late in the afternoon, when, both being at work in the hold, the mate let a heavy case fall on ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... resided in London, they lived in the usual fashionable style, and seldom saw each other; nor were they much more sociable when they wooed rural felicity for more than half the year, in a delightful country, where Nature, with lavish hand, had scattered beauties around; for the master, with brute, unconscious gaze, passed them by unobserved, and sought amusement in country sports. He hunted in the morning, and after ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... more sociable than a fishing-fleet. The boats overtake each other, like horses in a race. They gallop in rivalry. But for the most part they keep together, and move like a travelling town over the sea. As likely as not they will have to come back out of the storm into the shelter ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... steerage passenger like young Chuzzlewit. There was every reason why they should throng the portals of the author of Pickwick and Oliver Twist. And no doubt they did. If I may be permitted the aleatory image, you bet they did. Similar troops of sociable human beings have visited much more insignificant English travellers in America, with some of whom I am myself acquainted. I myself have the luck to be a little more stodgy and less sensitive than many of my countrymen; and certainly less sensitive than Dickens. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... movements are also interesting. By day they associate with other birds, mainly with rooks. Gilbert White thought they did this because the rooks had extra nerves in their beaks, and were able to act as guides to the smaller birds searching for invisible food. Probably it is only due to the sociable instinct. Towards night they nearly always repair in innumerable flocks to some favourite roosting-place, either a reed-bed or a wood of evergreens, where they assemble in thousands. One of these communal sleeping-places ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... time slip by; there are a many things I turn my hand to. I digs my taters up, and gardens a bit first thing in the morning, and I cleans up in my churchyard, and then I cooks a bit o' dinner, and has a bit o' gossip with my neighbours. I'm a sociable sort o' chap, though I'm so lonesome. And I has a bit o' reading on occasions. Are you a-thinkin' any more o' that 'ere tex' that we was ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... Rosiclear, We are thy Mirmidons, thy Guard, thy Rorers, And when thy noble body is in durance, Thus do we clap our musty Murrions on, And trace the streets in terrour: Is it peace Thou Mars of men? Is the King sociable, And bids thee live? Art thou above thy foemen, And free as Phoebus? Speak, if not, this stand Of Royal blood shall be abroach, atilt, and run Even ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... reached Yonkers. And there, and from there up to Fishkill, they passed from one country-house to another, bright particular stars at this dinner and at that supper, staying a day here and a night there, and having just the sort of sociable, public, restless, rattling good time that neither ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... perhaps be traced in part to these early habits. Though probably unacquainted with Burton, he held that "there is in melancholy sentiments something extremely attractive and even invigorating to the imagination." Attempts were frequently made by his friends to teach him more sociable habits. Thus, at Leipsic, "Dr. Carus's family are anxious to introduce me to innumerable families—'it would be good for my prospects,' they think, and so do I, and yet I don't get there, and in fact seldom go out at all. Indeed, I am often very leathery, dry, disagreeable, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... not be by mere chance that they are all pretty, she has, after the fashion of old maids, various animals to keep her company—a parrot, a little dog whose coat is of the whitest, and two or three cats, so tame and sociable that they jump up on one in the ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... liberal, affectionate to their parents, and with a liking for all social gatherings, skilled in completing verses begun by others and in various other sports, free from all disease, possessed of a perfect body, strong, and not addicted to drinking, powerful in sexual enjoyment, sociable, showing love towards women and attracting their hearts to himself, but not entirely devoted to them, possessed of independent means of livelihood, free from envy, and last ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... of Hamlet: 'What a piece of work is man!' sounds from Mendozo's [57] lips thus:—'In body how delicate; in soule how wittie; in discourse how pregnant; in life how warie; in favours how juditious; in day how sociable; in night how!—O ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... they are more sociable than their owner. And now, master, might I ask for the loan of one of your dogs? It might be ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the feathered tribe, the "laughing jackass;" more scientifically denominated the "giant kingfisher." When I saw the bird, I was very sorry that it had been killed; for, notwithstanding its discordant voice, it is a remarkably sociable and useful creature, as we afterwards discovered. It destroys snakes, which it catches by the tail, and then crushes their head with its powerful beak; it also renders an essential service to the settlers who want to get up early, by shouting out its ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... jolly, sociable set though, and gave our party a hut to themselves, after supplying them with a bountiful supper of "mealies," bull beef, and a kind of bread made from ground maize and the grated buds ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... courtship, and masculine blustering was going on, and there was little police duty for Bobby. After a time he sat up on the table-tomb, pensively. With Mr. Brown confined, to the lodge, and Mistress Jeanie in close attendance upon him there, the kirkyard was a lonely place for a sociable little dog; and a soft, spring day given over to brooding beside a beloved grave, was quite too heart-breaking a thing to contemplate. Just for cheerful occupation Bobby had another tussle with the collar. He pulled it so far under his thatch that no one could have guessed ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... they would so spin it out, that the telling would occupy almost as many hours as you were days on the voyage. Nothing like condensing the agony and expanding the joy in a yarn, it makes the listeners in a better mode, and more sociable with each other." ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... treacherous friend. Indeed, on his return to the deck, a few minutes afterwards, I had olfactory demonstration that he and the brandy bottle had been in close communion! Captain Thompson had hardly spoken to me since we left the wharf in New York. He had now got his "talking tacks" on board, and was sociable enough. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Repentigny sat by Cecile, talking in a very sociable manner, which was also commented on. His conversation seemed to be very attractive to the young lady, who was visibly delighted with the attentions of her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... is. And he liked my supper, and said so. Ate some of everything and praised it, and was just as—as common and everyday and sociable, not ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... offered for her guidance through life with unquestioning confidence; at least she had never been heard to object to any time-honoured axiom. And she did, in fact, accept them all, but only provisionally. She wanted to know. Silent, sociable, sober, and sincere, she had walked over the course of her early education and gone on far beyond it with such ease that those in authority over her never suspected the extent to ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... easiest undress. The style, although really carefully studied and superintended, has an air of light facility, hardly interposing between the author and his reader; the book is of all books the most sociable, a living companion rather than a book, playful and humorous, amiable and well bred, learned without ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Being of sociable disposition he joined a little herd of deer which was the pride and joy of our woods, and one afternoon I came upon this motley company down by a little lick we had arranged on the brink of a tiny river ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... other men, while he appeared to have positively a kindly feeling towards Potto Jumbo, and to be especially patronising to Macco. Indeed, after this everything went on smoothly and pleasantly among the men, while perhaps the dangers they had gone through made the passengers even more sociable and ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... And by and by the sun went westering down the hill, and he shook himself out of his dreams, and pocketed his book and turned homeward. His day, he thought, had not amounted to much after all, and he would spend the evening in sober study, and not dream any more until bedtime. But he would be sociable this evening and eat his supper—now he thought about it, it would be dinner and supper combined—in the company of his colleagues at their favourite haunt. And he would go to-morrow, he would certainly go to ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... was bridge in the smoking-room, but he did not feel inclined for bridge. From the drawing-room came sounds of music. He turned in that direction, then stopped again. He came to the conclusion that he did not feel sociable. He wanted to think. A cigar on the terrace would meet ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... Julia dined alone; dispensing with the attendance of a servant, they never were more sociable or ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... extraordinary capacity for leadership. Sociable, open-handed, full of energy, direct, aggressive, shrewd, daring, a hard fighter, a loyal friend, an organizer and a man of his word, he was essentially a man of action. In politics he was practical and straight-forward. He wanted results, not reforms, and results meant accepting ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... widower begged that Mrs Lamertine and her niece would do him the pleasure to dine in his house and spend the evening there, that they might sing songs and play forfeits together and keep up the ancient institutions of the time, as well as so tiny and staid a party could manage to do; to which sociable invitation, the old dame, nothing averse to pleasant fellowship at any season, readily consented. But when Adelais Cameron entered Mr Gray's drawing-room that Christmas evening with her soft white dress floating about her like a hazy cloud, and a single bunch of snowdrops ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... in the world," replied Lavender, "and the most sociable. I sometimes think," he went on in a changed voice, "that we have all gone mad, and that animals alone retain the sweet reasonableness which used to be esteemed a virtue in human society. Don't take that down," he added quickly, "we are all subject ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... (1787) a new period opens in the story of the poet's random affections. He met at a tea party one Mrs. Agnes M'Lehose, a married woman of about his own age, who, with her two children, had been deserted by an unworthy husband. She had wit, could use her pen, and had read "Werther" with attention. Sociable, and even somewhat frisky, there was a good, sound, human kernel in the woman; a warmth of love, strong dogmatic religious feeling, and a considerable, but not authoritative, sense of the proprieties. Of what biographers refer to daintily ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thereby. In 1659 Sam Clarke, for "Hankering about on men's gates on Sabbath evening to draw company out to him," was reproved and warned not to "harden his neck" and be "wholly destrojed." Poor stiff-necked, lonely, "hankering" Sam! to be so harshly reproved for his harmlessly sociable intents. Perhaps he "hankered" after the Puritan maids, and if so, deserved his reproof and the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Fuego, above the region of wood-land, the former of these eminently sociable plants is the chief agent in the production of peat. Fresh leaves are always succeeding one to the other round the central tap-root; the lower ones soon decay, and in tracing a root downwards in the peat, the leaves, yet ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... do, old fellow?' he said to the spectre. 'Will you have a mouthful of grog to warm your inside? Sit down, and be sociable.' ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... not make the church any more sociable," said Marion boldly, who, having struck for freedom of thought, was following up her advantage. "The same people take part every time and the others are ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... unaffected drollery and sweet good humour. At tea we all met again, and Dr. Johnson was gaily sociable. He gave a very droll account of the children of Mr. Langton.(46) "Who," he said, "might be very good children if they were let alone; but the father is never easy when he is not making them do something which they cannot do; they must repeat a fable, or ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... known to exhibit sociable and friendly traits. There is a story told of a drake who once came into a room where a young lady was sitting, and approaching her, caught hold of her dress with his bill and commenced to pull vigorously at it. The lady was very much surprised at this performance, and tried ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... also, where Westover Church stood in colonial days. Near the river a little way above the house, stood not only the church but a court-house and a brewing-house, all in sociable and suggestive proximity. We walked up the river bank ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... any fine airs or pretensions; indeed, they were often proud of their success and prosperity, and would sometimes delight in openly boasting of their humble beginnings, not always to the joy and delight of their children who might hear them. They were sociable, hospitable, generous-hearted, open-handed men. They gave bountiful entertainments, not of a mere formal give-and-take character in which the feast largely consists of plate, fine linen, and flowers, the eatables on the side table, and too much remaining there. They delighted in welcoming ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... most rural communities have an unsatisfied desire for more play, recreation, and sociable life. Opportunities for enjoyment seem more available in the towns and cities and are therefore a leading cause of the great exodus. Economic prosperity and good wages are not alone sufficient to keep people on farms and in villages if ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... also at home. At night sent for by Sir W. Pen, with whom I sat late drinking a glass of wine and discoursing, and I find him to be a very sociable man, and an able ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... not look for help to college dons. Adams knew, in that capacity, both Congressmen and professors, and he preferred Congressmen. The same failure marked the society of a college. Several score of the best- educated, most agreeable, and personally the most sociable people in America united in Cambridge to make a social desert that would have starved a polar bear. The liveliest and most agreeable of men — James Russell Lowell, Francis J. Child, Louis Agassiz, his son Alexander, Gurney, John Fiske, William ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... down among 'em, and tried to make things agreeable; but they were very shy - wouldn't talk at all - looked at me, and at one another, in a way quite the reverse of sociable. I reckoned 'em up, and finding that they were all three bigger men than me, and considering that their looks were ugly - that it was a lonely place - railroad station two miles off - and night coming on - thought I couldn't ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... o'clock the next morning Mary Rose was waiting for Mother Johnson who grumbled and fussed before she could be persuaded to take the walk the doctor had recommended. But, once outside, the sky was so blue, the air so pleasant, and Mary Rose so sociable that her face ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... contained in very small limits at Quebec. Its lite are grouped round the ramparts and in the suburb of St. Louis. The city until recently has occupied a very isolated position, and has depended upon itself for society. It is therefore sociable, friendly, and hospitable; and though there is gossip—for where is it not to be found?—I never knew any in which there was so little of ill-nature. The little world in the upper part of the city is probably the most brilliant to be found anywhere in so small a compass. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... his stern, dictatorial manner, together with the persistent coldness which resisted all attempts to be friendly and sociable, hurt and offended me; but he was so different when among the sick, so gentle, so benignant beside the bedsides of suffering men, that I soon learned to know and appreciate the royal heart which at other times he managed to conceal under a rough ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... colony was decidedly sociable, and a dinner party at one of the many cottages was almost a daily occurrence. Captain and Mrs. Robert P. Parrott entertained most gracefully, and their residence was one of the show-places of that locality. I have heard Captain Parrott facetiously remark that he had "made ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... proceeded the next day, and got in the evening to an inn, within eight or ten miles of Burlington, kept by one Dr. Brown. He entered into conversation with me while I took some refreshment, and finding I had read a little, became very sociable and friendly. Our acquaintance continued as long as he lived. He had been, I imagine, an itinerant doctor, for there was no town in England, or country in Europe, of which he could not give a very particular ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... on his journey with his wife and children in the sociable, and he passes an ordinary brick house on the road with an ordinary little garden in the front, we will say, and quite an ordinary knocker to the door, and as many sashed windows as you please, quite common and square, and tiles, windows, chimney-pots, quite like others; ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... doubt, meant to deter me; but the reality is that the hotels at Banff and Glacier are remarkably comfortable, and I haven't the least fault to find with this camp. We ought to be grateful to Millicent for letting us come, and though Arthur hinted that it would be a rather sociable honeymoon, I said that was a safeguard. One's illusions might get sooner shattered in a more conventional one." She stooped and ruffled her husband's hair. "Still, he hasn't deteriorated very much on closer acquaintance, and perhaps I'm fortunate ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... mind; they require a character of the human nature of which you can see the rude lineaments in the Ethiopian, to be implanted in and grow naturally and beautifully withal." Adamson, the traveler who visited Senegal in 1754, said: "The Negroes are sociable, humane, obliging and hospitable, and they have generally preserved an estimable simplicity of domestic manners. They are distinguished by their tenderness for their parents, and great respect for the aged—a patriarchal virtue which, in our day, is too little known." Dr. Raleigh, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... in time to save a fall, lost his hat, recovered it, and was discovered. A voice, maudlin with drink, hailed and called upon him to stand and give an account of himself, "like a goo' feller." Another tempted him with offers of drink and sociable confabulation. He yielded not; adamantine to the seductive lure, he picked up his heels and ran. Those behind him, remarking with resentment the amazing fact that an intimate of the mews should run away from liquor, cursed and made after ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... all up at once, so she took the tray first, then came back for the teapot and kettle. A second chair was got from Mrs. Lang's bedroom, and then the sociable ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... of champagne. "You'll 'ear my idea soon enough. Wyte till I pour some cham on my 'ot coppers." He drank a glass off, and affected to listen. "'Ark!" said he, "'ear it fizz. Like 'am frying, I declyre. 'Ave a glass, do, and look sociable." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of that cave is a ramshackle porch-roof or shed. This latter makes the cave into a dwelling-house. It is inhabited by an old "alkali" and half a dozen bear dogs. I sat with the old fellow one day for nearly an hour. It was a sociable visit, but economical of the English language. He made one remark, outside our initial greeting. It was enough, for in terseness, accuracy, and compression, I have never heard a better or more comprehensive description ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... entered the inn-parlour to find the Herr Baron engaged in a game of quartette with Trudel and Lottchen and Fritz. Indeed he was so sociable and kind and fond of children that she thought it was a pity that he had none of ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... the breast of a duck. What the mustang is to the Mexican vaquero, the canoe is to these coast Indians. They skim along the shores to fish and hunt and trade, or merely to visit their neighbors, for they are sociable, and have family pride remarkably well developed, meeting often to inquire after each other's health, attend potlatches and dances, and gossip concerning coming marriages, births, deaths, etc. Others seem to sail for the pure pleasure ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... opposition, Mrs. Gorham," he said, seriously. "I'm going to have a hard enough time with the pater as it is. Now, if you're ready, shall we start? It isn't going to be the most sociable arrangement in the world, with me driving the car, but we'll go slowly, which will give us a chance ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... no hand to set 'round an' visit free an' easy that a-way with the posterity of a gent which I has had cause to plant. This yere ain't roodness; it's scrooples,' says Billy, 'an' so it's plumb useless for me to go gettin' sociable with 'Doby's wife.' ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... burns brightly. In the wall opposite is an open door, through which one catches a glimpse of the bedroom beyond, decked out in all its pink-and-white glory. There is a very sociable little clock, a table strewn with wools and colored ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... first, at all events, he must if possible find a place where he could see a certain amount of society, and where he would be able to obtain the books he expected to need. He was afraid that if he transferred himself at once to the country, he might sink into a morbid seclusion, as he had no strong sociable impulses. His thoughts naturally turned to his own university. He thought that if he could find a small house at Cambridge, suitable to his means, he would be able to have as much or as little society as he desired, while at the same time he would ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... covered over with the best black velvid; an' then sich a nice sarmint—none o' your retail sarmints, but a hulsale sarmint—they reads over the lot, an' into one hole they packs us one atop o' the other, jest like a pile o' the werry best Yarmith bloaters, an' that's a good deal more sociable an' comfable, the parish toffs thinks, than puttin' us in single; so it is, for the matter ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... duty it would be, to play at leap-frog if there was any necessity for putting the matter in that light; and for us, we have the privilege, or if we will not accept the privilege, then I say we have the duty, of enjoying their leap-frog. But if we must withdraw in a measure from sociable relations with our fellows, let it be as the wise creatures that creep aside and wrap themselves up and lay themselves by that their wings may grow and put on the lovely hues of their coming resurrection. Such a withdrawing is in the name of youth. And while it is pleasant—no ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... spoken to any of these people, but Ella, the janitress, who cleaned up her place every morning, had told her their history. Ella was a sociable soul, her face an eternal study and an inscrutable mystery. She spoke both German and English and yet never a word of her own life's history passed her lips. She had loved Mary from the moment she cocked her queer drawn face to one side and looked at her with the one good eye she possessed. ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... so lonely after a dressmaker came to do some fitting for Mrs. Montague, for the woman was kind and sociable, and, becoming interested in the beautiful sewing-girl, seemed to try to make the time pass pleasantly to her, and was a great help to her ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... and it would be unkind to revive their names. The "Smart Men," old and young, the "cheery boys," the "dancing dogs,"—the Hugo Bohuns and the Freddy Du Canes—can be imagined as easily as described. They were, in the main, very good fellows; friendly, sociable, and obliging; but their most ardent admirers would scarcely call them interesting; and the companionship of a club or a ballroom seemed rather vapid when compared ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... experience of curates had been far from happy, but Romley promised to be the bright exception in a long list of failures. (It was he who discovered and introduced Johnny Whitelamb to the household.) He was sociable; had pleasant manners, a rotund figure not yet inclining to coarseness, a pink and white complexion, and a mellifluous tenor voice. To his voice, alas! he owed most of his ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the usual amount of time bestowed on giving them the finishing touches; and now he set to work at once at the ninth Symphony, some jottings of which were already written down. Forthwith all the gay humor that had made him more sociable, and in every respect more accessible, at once disappeared. All visits were ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... upon which she has gazed for many a year. Little Lydia stands by her side, her round eyes peering into Miss Janet's face, wondering what would happen, that she should be unemployed. They are awaiting Mr. Weston's return from an afternoon ride, to meet at the last and most sociable meal ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... "our good Loredano is envious of my diamond. Gentlemen, you sup with me to-night. I assure you I never met a more delightful, sociable, entertaining person, than my dear ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the Canadian robin is by no means despicable; its notes are clear, sweet, and various; it possesses the same cheerful lively character that distinguishes the carol of its namesake; but the general habits of the bird are very dissimilar. The Canadian robin is less sociable with man, but more so with his own species: they assemble in flocks soon after the breeding season is over, and appear very amicable one to another; but seldom, if ever, approach very near to our ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... surrounding country, but grey and velvety. The holes were several yards apart, and were disposed with a good deal of regularity, almost as if the town had been laid out in streets and avenues. One always felt that an orderly and very sociable kind of life was going on there. I picketed Dude down in a draw, and we went wandering about, looking for a hole that would be easy to dig. The dogs were out, as usual, dozens of them, sitting up on their hind legs ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... the other side of the table and glanced at the array of papers spread upon it. They gave him a further sense of being beyond his depth. It was like seeing suddenly the whole bulk of some ocean craft, of which before one had noticed only the sociable and very insignificant decks and riggings, lifted, for one's scientific edification, in its docks. All the laborious, underlying meaning of Franklin's life was symbolised in these neat papers and heavy books. Gerald ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... this the way you treat a watchmate" demanded Israel reproachfully, "trying to cheer up his friends? Shame on ye, boys. Come, let's be sociable. Spin us a yarn, one of ye. Meantime, rub my back for me, another," and very confidently he ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... "Mos' de sociable folks will mos' likely be hangin' roun' de parsonage to-night, 'stead ob stayin' in de Sunday-school-room, whar dey belongs. Las' time dat ere Widow Willoughby done set aroun' all ebenin' a-tellin' de parson as how folks could jes' eat off'n her kitchen floor, an' I ups an' tells her ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... social desolation, viewed from a Parisian standpoint, and there at any rate one could get cafe chantant, tennis, picnic parties, an occasional theatre performance by a foreign troupe, now and then a travelling circus, not to speak of Court and diplomatic functions of a more or less sociable character. Here, it seemed, one went a day's journey to reach an evening's entertainment, and the chance arrival of a tired official took on the nature of a festivity. He looked round again at the rolling stretches of brown hills; before he had regarded them merely as the background ...
— When William Came • Saki
... a jolly, sociable set though, and gave our party a hut to themselves, after supplying them with a bountiful supper of "mealies," bull beef, and a kind of bread made from ground maize and the grated buds of ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... will STOP," she said determinedly. "This will not do! If Alan even suspected! But, you see, I'm naturally a sociable person, and I had—well, I don't suppose any girl ever had such a good time in New York! My aunt did for me just what she did for her own daughters—a dance at Sherry's, and dinners—! Paul, I'd give a year of my life ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... wanted to watch just how they managed. I note that this fellow has a couple of old tomato cans he's picked up on some dump, and they're set over the fire to warm up some coffee, or something he's evidently gotten at a back door. Perhaps he'll be sociable, and invite us to join him in his afternoon meal. I guess they eat at any old time, just as the notion seizes ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... usual. Went to watch logs being sawn to be burned, chiefly hemlock, a species of pine; other sorts brought home for fires; went out to gather blackberries; all the neighbours very sociable and kind, particularly attentive to Alice when poorly. Nothing like stealing is known; most of the houses without a lock or bolt. Alice was first ill at the end of January, has had difficulty of breathing, but was better; at the end of April had a sort of fit that caused her to be insensible for ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... country-gentleman combine in favor of the money manager and director. In towns combination is natural. The habits of burghers, their occupations, their diversion, their business, their idleness, continually bring them into mutual contact. Their virtues and their vices are sociable; they are always in garrison; and they come embodied and half-disciplined into the hands of those who mean to form them ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... afternoon after she learned about ants and their ways, Mary Jane was very quiet. Mrs. Merrill thought perhaps she was disappointed because Doris had had to go home right after lunch so she tried to be very sociable and kind to make up ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... are of a mild, sociable, and obliging disposition. The men are commonly above the middle size, well shaped, strong, and capable of enduring great labour; the women are good-natured, sprightly, and agreeable. The dress of both sexes is composed of cotton cloth, of their own manufacture; ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... Nevertheless, he finds time in his crowded life to read a great deal, to see his friends occasionally, and to keep up an incessant courtship of his handsome wife, who in return asseverates that he is the most sociable husband in the world. ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... pleasure, an invitation he reinforced by sitting upon a stump, whittling vigorously meanwhile, and glibly gossiping with the Doctor and me for a half-hour, on crop conditions and the state of the country—"bein' sociable like," he said, "an' hav'n' nuth'n 'gin you folks, as knows what's what, I kin see with half ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... our materialistic system of morals allows her the casting vote in the last and essential stage. Egotism has founded its system in the very bosom of a refined society, and without developing even a sociable character, we feel all the contagions and miseries of society. We subject our free judgment to its despotic opinions, our feelings to its bizarre customs, and our will to its seductions. We only maintain our caprice against her holy rights. The man of the world has ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... me, on the other side, that do desire as much as lieth in my pen to ground a sociable intercourse between antiquity and proficience, it seemeth best to keep way with antiquity usque ad aras; and, therefore, to retain the ancient terms, though I sometimes alter the uses and definitions, according to the moderate proceeding in civil government; where, ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... stay with him very pleasant. Narainpore was one of the oldest gardens, on teelah (hilly) land and quite healthy. There I gave what little help I could, picked up some of the lingo, and learned a good deal about the planting, growth and manufacture of tea. Neighbours were plentiful and life quite sociable. Twice a week in the cold weather we played polo, sometimes with Munipoories, a hill tribe whose national game it is, and who were then the undoubted champions. The Regent Senaputti was a keen player, and very picturesque in his costume of green velvet zouave jacket, salmon-pink ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... feel that no words can convey an idea of the beauty and magnificence of an equatorial jungle; but the very permanence of the beauty is almost a fault. I should soon come to long for the burst of spring with its general tenderness of green, and its great broad splashes of sociable flowers, its masses of buttercups, or ox-eye daisies, or dandelions, and for the glories of autumn with its red and gold, and leagues of purple heather. These splendid orchids and other epiphytes grow singly. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... to him and sat facing her. "Now we can be sociable," he said. "Really, you know, you ought to hunt more often. I have never seen you in the field once. What on earth do you ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... dry stub they built their fire,—a wee, sociable little fire such as an Indian always builds, which is far better than a big one, for it draws you near and welcomes you cheerily, instead of driving you away by its smoke and great heat. Soon the ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... the city three days Edith decided that she liked it better than she did Rome. "The people there looked so serious," she said, "while here they are very merry and sociable." ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... old resident of Springfield, says: "Lincoln always did his own marketing, even after he was elected President and before he went to Washington. I used to see him at the butcher's or baker's every morning, with his basket on his arm. He was kind and sociable, and would always speak to everyone. He was so kind, so childlike, that I don't believe there was one in the city who didn't love him as a father or brother." "On a winter's morning," says Mr. Lamon, "he could be seen wending his way to the market, with a basket ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... Kalliope; 'I do not think much time has been lost, for they have learnt a good deal there; but I am particularly glad that Petros should go to a superior school just now that he has been left alone, for he is more lively and sociable than Theodore, and it might be less easy for him to keep ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the old man's heart. They were never seen apart. In storm or shine, Nep accompanied his master in the boat; or, if fishing on the beach, he sat up on his haunches, with a calm, sagacious air, watching the accumulating pile of fish entrusted to his care. Sociable, affable, and gentle, he submitted good-humouredly to the caresses of all the youngsters who passed that way; but if any one dared to lay a finger upon the fish, the lion-like nature of the animal ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... I visited Mr. Roland, an old settler who lived south of San Gabriel river, and staid all night with him, finding him very sociable and hospitable. All his work was done by Indians who lived near by, and had been there as long as he. He had a small vineyard, and raised corn, squashes, melons and all that are necessary for his table, having also ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... kitchen porch. The sun's off it now, and there ain't a prettier spot on earth where to prepare Christmas fixin's. I'll fetch the raisins and stone 'em myself. That Pasky boy'd eat more'n half of 'em, if I left 'em to him. Then we can visit right sociable; and I can free my mind. The truth is, Gabriella Trent, that I ought to be harnessin' Rosetty an' Balaam this minute, and be ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... was no other than that well-known member of the feathered tribe, the "laughing jackass;" more scientifically denominated the "giant kingfisher." When I saw the bird, I was very sorry that it had been killed; for, notwithstanding its discordant voice, it is a remarkably sociable and useful creature, as we afterwards discovered. It destroys snakes, which it catches by the tail, and then crushes their head with its powerful beak; it also renders an essential service to the settlers who want to get up early, by shouting out its strange notes to welcome the approach ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... can never be effectually prevented, but by making academical education a previous step to the profession of the common law, and at the same time making the rudiments of the law a part of academical education. For sciences are of a sociable disposition, and flourish best in the neighbourhood of each other: nor is there any branch of learning, but may be helped and improved by assistances drawn from other arts. If therefore the student in our laws hath formed both his sentiments and style, by perusal and imitation of the purest ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... seems still up here—and kind of dead," Jane Foster replied with her habitual sociable half-laugh. "But seems to me it always feels that way in a house people's left. It's cheerful enough down in that big basement with all the windows open. We can sit in that room they've had fixed to play billiards in. We shan't hurt ...
— In the Closed Room • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "and for my part for a summer eve I prefer Mowbray Moor to all the Temples in the world, particularly if it's a sociable party and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... have made up my mind to one thing," said the Comte, filling his glass with such energy that a red circle appeared on the cloth. "This life I lead is all wrong. A man is a sociable being. He needs society. Isolation sends ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... to your camp," shouted Tom. "To-morrow I'll try to find time for a good and sociable talk with all of you. Try to enjoy your few leisure hours all you can, but remember that the men who can't get along without liquor and gambling are the kind of men we don't want here. Any man who is dissatisfied can get his pay from Mr. Renshaw tonight or to-morrow morning. For those who ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... made a point of having an "at home" every fourth Saturday, and these soon became known as among the most pleasant and sociable gatherings in the literary and scientific world ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... and sociable people, these mountaineers, all the more so because the opportunities for meeting sociably were limited. The men had their work and the women their always large families to attend to, and with a mile or so of rough road between themselves and their neighbours, there was not much ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... no help for it—Mrs. James must go down to receive her callers. She had to smile when she felt little like it—to be sociable when her thoughts were busy with her task. Her friends made a long call—they had nothing else to do with their time, and when they went, others came. In very unsatisfactory chit-chat, her morning ...
— The Angel Over the Right Shoulder - The Beginning of a New Year • Elizabeth Wooster Stuart Phelps
... "And they'll be glad to see you, Ros. Get out and shake hands and be sociable, after you've done your duty by the fruit. ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... conceptions, and for his resolute and persistent determination to apply himself only to great subjects, than for his skill in designing or for beauty in his colouring. His drawing is rarely good, his colouring frequently wretched. He was extremely impulsive and unequal; sometimes morose, sometimes sociable and urbane; jealous of his contemporaries, and yet capable of pronouncing a splendid eulogy ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... MacTavish only last night that I felt sure Dr. Callandar was not being called in professionally. That is the worst of being a doctor. One can hardly attend to one's social duties without arousing fear for the health of one's friends. Not that Dr. Callandar is overly sociable, usually." ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Guerbois in the Batignolles—hence the derisive nickname, "The Batignolles School"; later to the Nouvelle Athenes, finally to the Cafe de la Rochefoucauld. A hermit he was during the dozen hours a day he toiled, but he was a sociable man, nevertheless, a cultured man fond of music, possessing a tongue that was feared as much as is the Russian knout. Mr. Moore has printed many specimens of his caustic wit. Whistler actually ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... could see also the same anxiety which was making those around him so fraternal and sociable. The venders of newspapers were passing through the boulevard crying the evening editions, their furious speed repeatedly slackened by the eager hands of the passers-by contending for the papers. Every reader was instantly surrounded by a group begging for news or ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the parish for several years. He was middle-aged and extremely good-looking, and possessed the education and manners of a nobleman. He read more than any of his neighbours, hunted, was sociable, and kept bees. Everybody spoke well of him, the nobility because he was clever and fond of society, the Jews because he would not allow them to be oppressed, the settlers because he entertained their Pastors, the peasants because he renovated the church, conducted the services with ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... on, for the bustle and confusion, the eager, hurrying, restless life of the City began to have a strange charm for him, and that brisk drive to and from Mincing Lane was a real pleasure. Then he was progressing famously with his French and German. The old professor who gave him his lessons was a sociable, voluble, eloquent gentleman, who waved his hands, rolled his eyes, chattered nonsense that made Bertie laugh, but at the same time interested him so much that he took great pains to listen and remember; and having learned his grammar fairly well at school ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... she makes coffee and hands it around in little brass cups. Also there's cakes, and the old man comes in, smilin' and rubbin' his hands, and we has a real sociable time. ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... know, at Christmas they give us two weeks," she goes on in the sociable tone of a woman whose hands are occupied. "I just didn't know what to do ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... the Marquis de Soyecourt; with whom were the Duchess, a gentle and beautiful lady, her two children, and the Demoiselle Claire. The Duke himself was still at Marly, with most of his people, but at Bellegarde momentarily they looked for his return. Meanwhile de Soyecourt, an exquisite and sociable and immoral young gentleman of forty-one, was lonely, and protested that any civilized company was, in the oafish provinces, a charity of celestial pre-arrangement. He would not hear of Mr. Bulmer's leaving Bellegarde; and after ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... became Fellow, and was ordained, in 1794; took the living of North Cadbury in 1812, and lived until 1842. His college record (which we owe to the courtesy of the Fellows) corresponds very well with our notices of him. He was evidently a sociable and lively member of the combination-room. The 'parlour-book' contains frequent mention of bets made by him on politics and other subjects, and his own particular pair of bowls still survive. He was tutor in 1811, when a great fire occurred ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... orange, emerald, and purple. There was such a brightness, such a glory in these variegated dyes, that they took away all impression of loneliness, and the crumpling of the dry, yellow leaves in the path had a sociable, pleasant sound. She hoped Arthur Hazleton would return before this jewelry of the woods had faded away, that she might walk with him through their gorgeous foliage, and hear from his lips the deep moral of the waning season. She reached the gray rock where Arthur had seated ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... of Robin makes us think at once of the jolliest and most sociable of all our little brother birds. In every land the name is a favorite, and wherever he goes he brings happiness ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... a millinery store up the street, and thither with uncertain step he wended his way, feeling a little more elate, and altogether sociable. A pretty, black-eyed girl, struggling to keep down her mirth, came forward and faced him behind the counter. Elder Brown lifted his faded hat with the politeness, if not the grace, of a Castilian, and made a sweeping bow. Again he was in his element. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... seeks to win votes by a show of eloquence is turned down. Votes are facts, and if the votes are to be won, facts must be arranged to do it. The doctor who stands best with the typical modern patient is not the most agreeable, sociable, jogging-about man a town contains, like the doctor of the days gone by. He talks less. He even prescribes less, and the reason that it is hard to be a modern minister (already cut down from two hours and a half to twenty or thirty minutes) is that one has ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... a social being, the sage was endowed not only with the graver political virtues, but also with the graces of life. He was sociable, tactful and stimulating, using conversation as a means for promoting good will and friendship; so far as might be, he was all things to all men, which made him fascinating and charming, insinuating and even wily; ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... widders. It happens frequent that widders are sociable inclined—especially if they are hard ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... there isn't anything particular to bring them except the neighborhood, and then it has to be Christian charity in the neighborhood that didn't ask them to pick them up. Mamma called, after a while; and Mrs. Hobart said she hoped she would come often, and let the girls run in and be sociable! And Grace Hobart says 'she hasn't got tired of croquet,—she likes it real well!' They're that sort of ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and mournful sithe, and sot silent agin for quite a spell. But thinkin' I must be sociable, I says,— ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... Samarkand, before Ayub Khan, the rival British protege, could be brought from India. The young officers at once began to discuss their chances for promotion, and the number of decorations to be forthcoming from St. Petersburg. The social gatherings at Tashkend were more convivial than sociable. Acquaintances can eat and drink together with the greatest of good cheer, but there is very little sympathy in conversation. It was difficult for them to understand why we had come so far to see a country which to many of them was a place ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... shouting and drinking.—One who appeared to have the arrangement of the meeting, found seats for us together, and having made a slight acquaintance with those sitting next us, we felt more at liberty to witness their proceedings. They were all talking in a sociable, friendly way, and I saw no one who appeared to be intoxicated. The beer was a weak mixture, which I should think would make one fall over from its weight before it would intoxicate him. Those sitting near me drank but little, and that principally ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... and over the desk, was a pipe-rack with pipes to fit every mood and fancy of a lonely man. There were the short stumpy ones, with the small bowls for the brief whiff when one did not choose to keep company with himself for long, but was willing to be sociable for a moment. There were the comfortable, self-caring pipes that obligingly kept lighted between long puffs while the master was looking over old papers, or considering future plans. Then there were the long-stemmed, deep-bellied friends ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... convoy arrive, it is certain that we must sleep perpendicularly, for even now, when the beds are all arranged and occupied for the night, no one can make a diagonal movement without disturbing his neighbour.—This very sociable manner of sleeping is very far, I assure you, from promoting the harmony of the day; and I am frequently witness to the reproaches and recriminations occasioned by nocturnal misdemeanours. Sometimes the lap-dog of one dowager is accused of hostilities against that ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Griffith as being cold and distant, but personally, I have much to thank him for. I found him kind and sociable when approached, and at no time did he assume a patronising manner when doing a favour. Those who knew him intimately told me they found him to be the same. Looking at him from the opposite side, he seemed to be always on the alert to ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... accompanied by the children, but quite as often alone—and that during her visit his spare time was so much occupied in looking after the Tancred household that his friends saw comparatively little of him, and Peter was, as a rule, a very sociable person. ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... must retire to answer his letters, but that the sociable and the ponies would be at the door by one o'clock, when he proposed to show Melrose and Dryburgh to Lady Melville and any of the rest of the party that chose to accompany them; adding that his son Walter would lead anybody who preferred a gun to the likeliest place ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... the portals of a perfectly obscure steerage passenger like young Chuzzlewit. There was every reason why they should throng the portals of the author of Pickwick and Oliver Twist. And no doubt they did. If I may be permitted the aleatory image, you bet they did. Similar troops of sociable human beings have visited much more insignificant English travellers in America, with some of whom I am myself acquainted. I myself have the luck to be a little more stodgy and less sensitive than many of my countrymen; ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
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