"Bodice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... women in Goya's pictures, and somewhat of the fashion worn by Queen Maria Louisa: if not exactly so scant, yet so short that it showed her small feet, and the commencement of her superb limbs; her bodice was low, and round in the neck, according to the style in Madrid, where she spent two months with her Luke on their way from Navarre to Andalusia. She dressed her hair high on the top of her head, displaying thus both the graceful curve of her snowy neck and the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... almost girlish; in cut-away blue coat, flowered waistcoat, black silk cravat secured by two gold pins chained together, and tightly strapped grey trouserings, had, aided and abetted by a fragile little lady in crinoline and much-flounced skirt, and bodice somewhat low, with corkscrew curls each movement of her head set ringing, planned and furnished it in accordance with the sober canons then in vogue, spending thereupon more than they should, as is ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... caterpillar had come from the fern and chosen the front of her bodice as his resting place. She saw the point glisten towards her bosom, and seemingly enter it. Bathsheba closed her eyes in the full persuasion that she was killed at last. However, feeling just as usual, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... from the stable yard into the field. Not only had the competitors decorated their bicycles, but they themselves had donned fancy costumes, many of which were of quite an elaborate description. There was a Dutch maiden with white sleeves, velvet bodice, starched cap and wooden sabots, a sweet little Miss Jap-Jap-Jappy in gay kimono, a flower tucked into her dark hair, an Indian squaw with bead-embroidered garments and fringed leggings, several pierrettes, a Red Riding Hood, a Goody Two Shoes, and other characters ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... light-blue skirt, with a dark bodice, and a big, soft straw hat, tossed back on her head, did not hide the beauty of her abundant locks. Her crook had fallen from her hand, and rested at the bottom of the little mound of hay. It was a delightful representation, and Dorothy seemed actually painted upon ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... little girl in her sleep. The goddess said, "My child, a snake will come to bite your husband: give it milk to drink. Then put near it a new earthen jar. When the snake has finished drinking, it will enter the earthen jar. Then at once pull off your bodice and stuff it into the jar's mouth. Next morning give the jar to your mother." Next evening everything happened as Parwati had said. The snake came to bite her husband as he slept. But the little girl offered it milk, which it drank. After drinking, it curled itself ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... inwardly purposing to forget them as fast as she could. She ran into the garden when supper was over, to gather a nosegay, if possible, of the few flowers left at that time of year. She was just tucking a bit of southernwood into her bodice, when a voice on the other side ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... Otto ran his fingers through his fair hair; which was a favorite gesture of the lieutenant's, and Hedwig blushed. After that she refused to look across at him, but sat staring fixedly at the stage, where Frau Hugli, in a short skirt, a black velvet bodice, and a white apron, with two yellow braids over her shoulders, was listening with all the coyness of forty years and six children at home to the love-making of a man in a ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... choose—indeed, you can do that anywhere, if you only think so. The idea that you must lug all your best clothes through the wilderness is absurd. A good travelling-dress, admissible of bisection, a muslin spencer for warm evenings, and a velvet bodice when you design to be gorgeous, will take you through with all the honors of war. Besides, there are always sure to be plenty of people in every drawing-room who will be sumptuously attired, and you can feast your eyes luxuriously on them, and gratefully feel ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... her little heart beat under her bee's-wing bodice as if it would break. The prince had a melancholy air, and he sat apart from the banquet, gazing abstractedly on ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... across the table and picked up the folded bodice, murmuring that it was done. The dressmaker rose, and reaching for the hooped skirt, held it up between her two arms. It was a thrilling moment. Fanny, too, rose. "Put it on a dummy," she commanded. Candles were placed ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... May, as she leaned towards the glass, illuminated on either side with wax candles, and looked into the whiteness of her bosom. She wore a costume of Prussian-blue velvet and silk; the bodice (entirely of velvet) was pointed back and front, and a berthe of moresque lace softened the contrast between it and the cream tints of the skin. These and the flame-coloured hair were the spirits of the shadowy bedchamber; ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... The soft glow of youth and health mantled on her cheek; her fringed eyelashes scarcely covered their sleeping orbs; her moist and ruby lips were lightly parted, just revealing a gleam of her ivory teeth; while her innocent bosom rose and fell beneath her bodice, like the gentle swelling and sinking of a tranquil sea. There was a breathing tenderness and beauty in the sleeping virgin, that seemed to send forth sweetness like the flowers ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... only covering (for country women at work in those days dispensed with the ornament of a gown) is a green bodice and red petticoat, neither of them over ample—brings out his fishing-rod and basket, and the man, having tied up his hose with some ends of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... rockets fastened about her waist, and upon her crown were to be discharged. The manner in which these latter went off brought shrieks and groans from the crowd below. They fizzed up into Columbia's face, they burned against her bodice, they struck her arms. "Oh! oh! Poor soul! she'll have her eyes put out! She'll be killed!" cried a woman's ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... was going to her work, Lena rapped on the window, and called her attention by signs to the bodice she had on. It was a gay striped silk, little worn, but still showing, in spite of pressing, the marks of crumpling and tossing. The bright colors suited Lena's dark skin well, and as she stood there with flushed ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... Besides, if Aleck has been afield in this search he'll be behindhand in his work, and he's a hand to keep things up to the level line. Good-by, good-by. Oh! wait a bit, though. I'd clean forgot that I put a scrap of white Scotch linen and a yard or two of plaid bodice stuff in my pack for you. This business of my captain getting lost has shaken ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... in it, see! Who cares for these things? They are a memory. And this is her skirt, and this is her bodice. Eh, it was beautiful once. The shoes, Signora, I wore them, for we had the same feet. What would you? It seemed a sin to let them mould, because they were hers. The apron, too, I might have worn ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... seated upon the bench, with a lute. The girl is, to our modern taste, very quaintly dressed in gold-colored satin, with a short tight bodice, cut square and low at the neck, and with long full skirts. When she stands erect, her preposterous "flowing" sleeves, lined with sky blue, reach to the ground. Her blonde hair, of which she has a great ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... skin motor-coat, and a little, close-fitting, turban-like cap of the same. The coat removed, she stood revealed in a clinging gown of silk; and her feet were shod in little amber colored slippers with green buckles. The bodice of her dress opened in a surprising V, displaying the satin texture of her neck and shoulders, and enhancing the barbaric character of her appearance. Her jet black hair was confined by no band or comb, but protruded Bishareen-like around the shapely head. Without doubt, this was the Lady ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... as a study of bygone fashions, and is painted with exquisite care for detail. The pointed bodice is as stiff as a coat of mail, like that so long in vogue at the court of Spain. Perhaps the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands may have brought the corset with it. Certainly it is not conducive to an easy carriage; only a graceful figure like this could wear ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... of the wells sprang upon Halima, opened her scarlet bodice roughly, plunged his claw into her swelling bosom, and ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... disappointment, weariness, or tean Upon the childlike earnestness and grace Of the waiting face. Those close-wound ropes of pearl (Or common beads made precious by their use) Seem heavy for so slight a throat to wear; But the low bodice leaves the shoulders bare And half the glad swell of the breast, for news That now the woman stirs within the girl. And yet, Even so, the loops and globes Of beaten gold And jet Hung, in the stately way of old, ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... girls and women going in to dram shops and bringing out mugs of beer; men and women drunken. One sight specially horrified him: a woman, dirty, naked shoulders and arms; feet and legs bare; a filthy skirt and bodice open at the breast; hair matted and wild; reeling along the pavement, crying out in drunken exclamations and mutterings. It was the most sickening sight the young man had ever seen, and with perhaps the exception of a fight he witnessed some ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... must be dressed in colors. At a recent very fashionable wedding the bridesmaid wore bright buttercup yellow, a real Directoire dress, white lace skirt, yellow bodice, hat trimmed with yellow—a very picturesque, pretty costume. The silk stockings and slippers were of yellow, the hat of Leghorn, very large, turned up at one side, yellow plumes, and long streamers of yellow-velvet ribbon. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... shoes of Romany leather, Bodice blue and gypsy gown, And a cap of fur and feather, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... was taken to her by a discreet official, and this time she received the letter, pressed it to her heart, and then slipped it into the bodice of her gown. But this time, as before, she left without making ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... amongst the peasantry. But their eyes were colourless; and their blonde hair was like tow—it lacked the golden ray. The dresses were picturesque: a white triangular head-kerchief, with embroidered ends hanging down the back; a bodice either of white flannel picked out with splashes of colour, or of a black glazed and plaited stuff; a skirt of lively hue, edged with a broad belt of even livelier green, blue, pink, or yellow; white stockings; and short, stout shoes. The ornaments on ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... "Here," tapping her bodice and laughing, "tenderly shielded, mon ami, and why not? Who would not mother a thing that is to bring one four hundred ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... misericorde which is the ninth of the top row on the southern side. The gay young lady seated upon Aristotle's back wears the high two-horned headdress of the fifteenth century, and a long closely-fitting gown, with the open bodice that was the mark of the oldest profession in the world. She is controlling the philosopher with a bridle and a most murderous-looking bit between his teeth. I have already explained that Socrates and Xantippe are by no means intended here, and that the tale is ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... tug of the old personality. He stared at her, suddenly conscious that she was a woman and that she was smiling at him. Charming, in her way. Bare arms. A little black bodice laced over a white waist. Straight blonde hair, braided thickly and twisted around her head. A peasant, but pretty.... You see, his desire was to frighten her, as he most certainly would have frightened her had he been true ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... with a swift flight, directly to their goal. Then, below and beside her, from every place occupied by spectators, and from hundreds of windows, rose thunders of applause; but it seemed to her as if the roaring of the surging sea was in her ears. Her heart throbbed under her pink silk bodice like an iron hammer, and in the proud consciousness of having probably attained already what she desired, and, besides thousands of other eyes, fixed Lienhard's upon her as if with chains and bonds, she was seized with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... daring look on her face which lent additional grace to her slightly masculine dress. She was wearing a high collar of pique with a cravat of black ribbon, and the revers of her white front turned back over her jacket bodice of cloth. There were pockets on ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... girl is taken to the temple by her parents accompanied by the Gurao priest and other Murlis. At the temple she is bathed and her body rubbed with turmeric, with which the feet of the idol are also anointed. She is dressed in a new robe and bodice, and green glass bangles are put on her wrists. A turban and sash are presented to the god, and the guru taking a necklace of nine cowries (shells) fastens it round the girl's neck. She then stands before the god, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... of the party came up; and, as they crossed and entered the hall, they beheld, through the open door of the drawing-room, two figures in the window—one, a dark torso, perched outside on the sill; the other, in blue skirt and boy-like bodice, negligently reposing on one side of the window-seat, her dainty little boots on the other; her coarse straw bonnet, crossed with white, upon the floor; the wind playing tricks with the silky glory of her flaxen ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... son of Anak appeared in the little bodice of a coat, stuck upon the hips; and still worse, when some very clumsy forms assumed the dress, and one in particular, that I remember, who was equally huge in person and coarse in manners, whose taste, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... shone out above the doubtful green Of her bodice, in the green sky overhead; Pale in the green sky were the stars I ween, Because the moon shone like a star ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... and she blush'd, and she smil'd, And she looket sae bashfully down; The pride o' her heart was beguil'd, And she played wi' the sleeves o' her gown; She twirlet the tag o' her lace, And she nippet her bodice sae blue, Syne blinket sae sweet in his face, And aff like a maukin she flew. Woo'd and married and a'! Wi' Johnny to roose her and a'! She thinks hersel' very weel aff To be woo'd and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... down at the hollows of her young bosom, at the scantiness of her bodice suspended only by bands of sheerest gauze. She wondered what Mamma would say, if she could see her so, without that drape of ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... its pristine freshness vanished quite, yet as fragrant with romance as is the sere and withered blossom of a dead white rose pressed within the leaves of a book of love poems. Just next it, incongruously enough, flaunt the wicked froufrou skirts and the low-cut bodice and the wasp waist of the abbreviated costume in which Cora Kassell used so generously to display her charms. A rich and portly society matron of Pittsburgh now—she whose name had been a synonym for ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... about her FEELINGS. Princess Charlotte, I was told, was looking handsome, very pale, but her head more becomingly dressed,—that is to say, less dressed than usual. Her figure is of that full round shape which is now in its prime; but she disfigures herself by wearing her bodice so short, that she literally has no waist. Her feet are very pretty; and so are her hands and arms, and her ears, and the shape of her head. Her countenance is expressive, when she allows her passions to play upon it; and I never saw any face, ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... long, rambling tale of a hard-hearted dressmaker who, having had a new frock back for alteration, had taken upon herself to return the skirt, without the bodice, with an intimation that she was retaining the delayed portion until her long account was settled. Hence Mrs. Vivian found herself with what she called a most important engagement, without the equally important new ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... She wore a robe of dazzling splendor—a fabric of the looms of India, a sort of gauze of gold, that seemed to be composed of woven sunbeams, and floated gracefully around her elegant figure and accorded well with her dark beauty. The bodice of this gorgeous dress was literally starred with diamonds. A coronet of diamonds flashed above her black ringlets, a necklace of diamonds rested upon her full bosom, and bracelets of the same encircled her rounded arms. Such a glowing, splendid, refulgent figure ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... novelty that gradually appealed. Mrs. Denton's Fridays became a new sensation. It came to be the chic and proper thing to appear at them in shades of mauve or purple. A pushing little woman in Hanover Street designed the "Denton" bodice, with hanging sleeves and square-cut neck. The younger men inclined towards a coat shaped to the waist with a ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... the bridge, with scarlet lacquer glowing, That o'er the Katashiha's stream is laid, All trippingly a tender girl is going, In bodice blue and crimson skirt arrayed. None to escort her: would that I were knowing Whether alone she sleeps on virgin bed, Or if some spouse has won her by his wooing:— Tell me her house! I'll ask the ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... bosom. The extent to which this may be carried is always controlled by fashion and the mores. Puritans and Quakers attempted to restrict it entirely, and to so construct the dress, by a neckerchief or attachment to the bodice, that the shape of the bust should be entirely concealed. The mores rejected this rule as excessive. In spite of all the eloquence of the moral preachers, that form of dress which shows neck and bosom has become established, only that it is specialized ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... She had a slim perfect figure; quite simply she carried her head so high and her shoulders so square that her back seemed to be hollowed out, and no tightness on the part of a bodice could hide this charming concavity. Her face was handsome with its large regular features; one noticed the abundant black hair under the hat, the thick eyebrows, the brown and opaque skin, the teeth impeccably white, and the firm, unyielding mouth and chin. Underneath the chin, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... smock, shift, chemise; night gown, negligee, dressing gown, night shirt; bedgown^, sac de nuit [Fr.]. underclothes [underclothing], underpants, undershirt; slip [for women], brassiere, corset, stays, corsage, corset, corselet, bodice, girdle &c (circle) 247; stomacher; petticoat, panties; under waistcoat; jock [for men], athletic supporter, jockstrap. sweater, jersey; cardigan; turtleneck, pullover; sweater vest. neckerchief, neckcloth^; tie, ruff, collar, cravat, stock, handkerchief, scarf; bib, tucker; boa; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of most of them, stockings and shoes not being thought of. Some, however, we saw with trousers and long yellow boots, turned over at the tops. They were evidently the dandies of the population. The women appeared in coloured petticoats, with a well-fitting bodice and a red cape. Some wore handkerchiefs instead of the funnel cap, and others mantillas and black hoods, by which the whole face and figure can be concealed. In consequence of the steepness and hardness of the roads, wheeled vehicles cannot be used, and a sort of sledge, a cart on ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... at her, and began to fasten the flowers in her bodice. They gave the finishing touch to her dress, and suited her, as she had said, better ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... not only from being averse to parting with her adored husband, but also from desiring to visit Madame Annette's and order there a lovely cap, a hat trimmed with a magnificent blue ostrich feather, and a blue Venetian velvet bodice which was to expose to the public gaze the snowy, well shaped breast and arms which no one had yet gazed upon except her husband and maids. Of course Katenka sided with her mother and, in general, there became established between ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... conceivable colours, and a pair of shoes, patched and repaired till nothing of the original structure remained, and clasped on his feet with two massy silver buckles. If the dress of the old man was rude and sordid, that of his granddaughter was gay, and even rich. She wore a bodice of fine wool, wrought round the bosom with alternate leaf and lily, and a kirtle of the same fabric, which, almost touching her white and delicate ankle, showed her snowy feet, so fairy-light and round that they scarcely seemed to touch the grass where she stood. Her hair, a natural ornament ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... diamonds, contrasts with her white satin; an old man is talking to her, she dances with him, and she refused a young man a moment before. This is a bad sign; our Lovelace knows it; there is a stout woman of thirty-five, who is looking at him, red satin bodice, doubtful taste. He looks away; a little blonde woman fixes her eyes on him, she looks as innocent as a child; instinctively our Lovelace turns to his host. "Who is that little blonde woman over there, the right hand corner?" he asks. "Ah, that is Lady ——." "Will you introduce me?" "Certainly." ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the grisette, with a sidelong glance at one of the mirrors. "Beautiful, with such a coiffure and such a bodice! ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... tuition, was in the act of removing her dress. She was in too indulgent a mood to withhold her "Come in," and as Miss Macy crossed the threshold, Lizzie felt that Vincent Deering's first letter—the letter from the train—had slipped from her loosened bodice ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... his highborn mother's devoted care and foresight. In 1770, when her son was only thirteen years old, she died in Paris. In a painting on the walls of the chateau to-day the face of that aristocratic lady shines out in its delicate beauty. A pointed bodice of cardinal-colored velvet folds the slender form and loose sleeves cover the arms. In the romantic fashion of the pre-revolutionary period, the arm is held out in a dramatic gesture, and one tiny, jeweled hand clasps the shepherd's crook, the consecrated ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... copies," said the duchesse, as she drew from her bosom a small packet of papers flattened by her velvet bodice. "Read," she said. ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the rainbow had a place in her costume for the occasion: The bodice was of light blue silk; the skirt orange; encircling her small waist was a green sash; while her jet-black hair was fastened with a crimson ribbon. Diamonds flashed from the earrings in her ears as well as from ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... wore (according to universal custom) on their heads, to the cut of the French-kid shoe. The dress was far from resembling the European fashion of the time. No tight lacing; no casing in whalebone—nothing like a hoop. A chemisette of the finest cambric appeared within the bodice, and covered the bosom. The short full sleeves were also of white cambric. The bodice, and short full skirt, were of deep yellow India silk; and the waist was confined with a broad band of violet-coloured ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... of the Sixth concerned. Dick Four stood firm in the confidence born of well-fitting tights, but Beetle strove to efface himself behind the piano. A gray princess-skirt borrowed from a day-boy's mother and a spotted cotton bodice unsystematically padded with imposition-paper make one ridiculous. And in other regards Beetle had ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... cream lace. The material of a woman's dress had never interested him before. He knew calico from silk, but beyond that he never ventured an opinion. To colour alone he was responsive. This combination of red and creamy white, with the bodice cut low, showing the lines of her beautiful white shoulders, and the great mass of dark hair rising in graceful curves from her full round neck, heightened her ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... worthy of commendation—enjoyed an hour's rest, taken coffee, and were rising to depart, when the landlady appeared with a hop, skip and jump. She was a lively, voluble little woman, who, though she had attired herself for us in two enormous cloth petticoats, a stuff bodice and yards of Bohemian lace in frills and ruffles, by way of displaying the wealth of her wardrobe, bobbed and curtseyed as if set on wires. Great was the difficulty, between the amusing, friendly wife and the husband proud of her and his inn, either to pay our bill or get away. They ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... went back into the sitting-room, and taking a black-headed pin out of her bodice stuck it amid the leaves of the Bible. Then she opened the Book, and looked at the page ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... people, both male and female, had varied a good deal since we commenced our ramble. In the neighbourhood of Tetchen, the smock-frock made its appearance among wagoners and even labouring men, while the women wore, as in Saxony, short bodice jackets with long skirts, red or red and white striped petticoats, and round their heads either a flaring red handkerchief, or a cap adorned behind with two enormous flies. As we penetrated further into Bohemia, the smock-frock among the men gave ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... application of perfumed essence. Three pearl studs fastened his shirt front, and his necktie was tied in a butterfly bow. He displayed some of the nonchalant ease which wealth and position create, smiled a little on catching sight of the jersey worn by a lady who had neglected to fasten the back of her bodice, and strove to decipher the impression the faces conveyed to him. He grew aware of that flitting anxiety which is inseparable from the task of finding a daily living, and that pathos which tells of fidelity to idea and abstinence from gross pleasure. A young man, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... her lodgings door in Drury Lane in her smock-sleeves and bodice, looking upon one. She seemed a ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... features were very regular, and she had a pair of piercing black eyes of undimmed brightness. Her gray hair was tastefully arranged, and she wore a becoming black velvet gown with a black lace scarf thrown across the shoulders. A white silk rose was fastened to her bodice by a large black pin with a ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... cloth, and a little prim cap covered her pretty hair. Yet for all that several little rebellious curls peeped forth, surrounding her face with a tiny nimbus; and there was something dainty in the fashion of her white frilled kerchief, arranged across her dress bodice and tied behind. She would dearly have loved to adorn herself with some knots of rose-coloured ribbon, but the rose tints in her cheek gave the touch of colour which brightened her sombre raiment, ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... disguised as an aged clergyman, wildly gesticulating, and cramming my large beaver hat hard down on my head, I dived in to rescue him. A real scene ensued. We were dragged out with such energy that the lady lost her skirt, and on reaching the pier fled for the boat-house clad only in a bonnet and bodice over a bathing-suit. Although the local press wrote up the affair as genuine, the secret somehow leaked out, and we had to make our bow at the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... middle of life. He was then so weak as to stand in perpetual need of female attendance; extremely sensible of cold, so that he wore a kind of fur doublet, under a shirt of very coarse warm linen with fine sleeves. When he rose, he was invested in a bodice made of stiff canvass, being scarcely able to hold himself erect till they were laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. One side was contracted. His legs were so slender, that he enlarged their bulk with three pair of stockings, which were drawn on and off ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... girl of seventeen or eighteen, although already possessing the ripened charms of a woman. She was dressed in white, with a low bodice, her luxuriant golden hair, of a rare sheen and fineness, falling upon beautifully moulded shoulders. The complexion was of a purity that needed the faint tinge of pink in the cheeks to relieve it of a suspicion of pallor. The eyes were of the deepest, tenderest ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... guagings run into a deal of material. You wouldn't like them not to be full and 'andsome. Just another two yards!" There was nothing else for it, so I promised to go up to town next morning (I couldn't possibly go that day), and impressed upon the wretch to finish the bodice first,—as, if necessary, we could do with less trimming on the skirt. My dear, the worst is still to come! The shop was sold out of the shade of voile, and could not get it again, and when I went back to Miss Green, she had finished ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... sweet-faced wife. She was painted seated, a little son on either side of her; and now in the dimness she looked out from the heavy gold frame, a half smile playing about her lips, on her lap an open book, and about the low-cut crimson velvet bodice rare old lace pinned at the bosom with a large brooch of wrought gold, framing a ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... see so fair a skin? Her bodice Should still be loosened. Bring the Moorish water, Griselda, you. They are the longest lashes! They hang upon her cheek. Doctor, there's warmth; ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... heave of her bosom it was plain to see that either her fears still possessed her or that she had been running for dear life, and must catch breath. Her hand went up to her bodice. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... doll sent from America (the latest invention) for the Exposition. I was dressed as a Tyrolienne with a red skirt, a black bodice, and a hat with a ridiculous feather sticking out from the back of it, which Prince ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... week she wore always the same costume as does every other servant in the country: a skirt of black stuff, short enough to show a pair of very neat-set and well-turned ankles, clad in cloth shoes and knitted stockings that showed no wrinkles; over the skirt a bodice and a kirtle of lilac, made with a neatly gathered frilling about her round brown throat; above the frilling five or six rows of unpolished garnet beads fastened by a massive clasp of gold filigree, and on her head a spotless white cap tied with ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... from her slender shoulders. His mother, he remembered, not without a saving humour, had always insisted that a lady should appear before the opposite sex only in the entire armour of her "stays" and close-fitting bodice. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... or the dagger of the jealous brother. The knight had perhaps forgotten when he came courting his love to 'spier at her brither John'; and when she stoops from horseback to kiss this sinister kinsman at parting, he thrusts his sword into her heart. The rosy face of the bride is wan, and her white bodice is full of blood when the gay bridegroom greets her, and he is left 'tearing his yellow hair.' More often, death itself does not sunder ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... slipped her hand into the white bodice she wore. A letter lay there, and her fingers caressed it. "I don't know whether I love him or not—perhaps I do, and perhaps I don't. I don't know whether I believe Uncle Richard—or this letter. But—I'm going to find out! I'm not going to ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... frock was dainty and beautiful. The Dresden flowered overdress was of silk, looped above a quilted satin petticoat, and a black velvet bodice laced up over a fine white muslin chemisette. A broad brimmed hat with roses and a be-ribboned shepherdess' crook completed ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... shall have to look charming in any case, and I am already busy with my dress. It is a black silk gown with a tight-fitting bodice. The bodice has windbag sleeves, formed of shawl pieces of guipure lace, and some lilies of the valley on the breast, finished with a waistband of heliotrope velvet, and I am going to wear long black gloves all the way up my arms, which are growing round ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... she was giving up the quest in despair, her eyes or her fingers discovered a little opening inside the prisoner bodice, and there sure enough was a pocket, and in the pocket a slip of paper! She drew it ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... does—hand me another; no, not a little thing like that, a big one full of marrow, so—. You see, old boy, a band of beads round the head, a sky-blue cloth bodice, a skirt of green flannel reaching only to the knees, cloth leggings ornamented with porcupine quills and moccasined feet, do not naturally suggest my ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... one only from curiosity, the other from love. Both were gratified; for Costanza came out of her master's room looking so lovely, that they both felt that all the praises bestowed on her by the muleteer, fell immeasurably short of her deserts. She was dressed in a green bodice and petticoat, trimmed with the same colour. A collar embroidered with black silk set off the alabaster whiteness of her neck. The thick tresses of her bright chestnut hair were bound up with white ribbon; she had pendents in her ears which seemed to be pearls, but were ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... susceptible to the charms of female beauty, and the loveliness of this young girl made his blood tingle. In her hand she carried a bunch of cresses still dripping with the water of the brook. A black bodice was drawn close to a figure which was just unfolding into womanhood. The color of this garment formed a striking contrast to a scarlet skirt which fell only a little below her knees. On her feet were low-cut shoes, fastened with rude silver buckles. A red kerchief had become untied and ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... wooden-wheeled ox-carts. But for its magenta tiling, the pillared market stood, a huge monochrome, its deep yellows splashed here and there with the crimson of the female hucksters' dresses. This was their every-day wear—a sleeveless bodice, cut low over the matchless amplitudes and so short that the smooth waist showed at each uplift of the round, bronze arms; a skirt that was little more than a cloth wound about the limbs; a shawl, all of deep blood color. Small wonder that he had stayed on, and on, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... tried the out-door Cafe-Chantant, and we heard Paulus in the days when all Paris went to hear him, and Yvette Guilbert when she was still slim and wore the V-shaped bodice and the long black gloves, as you may ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... with ragged clothes and a half-empty pipe is squeezed into the stone nook beside the blazing turf. The kettle, hanging from its hook, swings steaming beside him. The woman of the house, barefooted, sluttish, in torn crimson petticoat and gray bodice pinned across her breast, moves the red cinders from the lid of the pot-oven and peers at the browning cake within. Babies toddle or crawl over the greasy floor. The car rattled into the village street. Men whom he knew stopped it to speak to him. Children ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... necklaces of gold, with the image of the pitriswar (manes) depending therefrom, gave the whole an air of opulence and dignity. The females were uniformly attired in a skirt of dark-brown camlet, having a bodice of light-coloured stuff, with gold ornaments worked into their fine black hair; and all had the favourite churis or rings of hathidant (elephant's tooth) covering the arm from the wrist to the elbow, and even above it." A little later, referring to the same Charan ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... eyebrows that gave such finish to their splendor. The black hair, like a frame of ebony, surrounded the face, and brought out the graceful oval of her cheeks. Strozzi then followed the luxurious outline of her well-developed bust, prisoned in a bodice of blue velvet, which rested on her white shoulders like an azure cloud upon the bosom of a snowy mountain-peak. The skirt, also of blue velvet, was short in front, that it might not conceal a fairy foot encased in blue satin slippers; ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... dressing for her first party. Twice did her hair fall about her shoulders and twice must she gather it up, fingering carefully the long curl, patting it into place; hooking the bodice so that all its modesty would be preserved and yet the line of the throat show clear, shaking out the full, pannier-like skirt until it stood out quite to her liking. Then with a mock curtsey to herself in the glass, she dashed out of the room, up the narrow stairs and ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the blue-black of her hair; the soft tones of the velvet lost in the shadows of the floor, and melting into the walls behind her; the high lights on the bare shoulder and arms divided by the severe band of black; the subdued grays in the fall of lace uniting the flesh tones and the bodice; and, more than all, the ringing note of red sung by the japonica tucked in her hair and which found its only echo in the red of her lips—red as a slashed pomegranate with the white seed-teeth showing through. The other side of her beautiful self—the side that ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... away from us, over the dark water, was Mildred. She stood on a slender azure cylinder that came just to the surface. Tall, slender, superbly graceful, with only the scant bodice of green silken stuff about her, she looked like the statue of a goddess in white marble. Her head was thrown up, golden-brown hair fell behind her shoulders, and the pure notes of her song rang over ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... have recognized it, mooch. It es ze same. Of no change—not even of a leetle. No, she ess always—esso." She stopped, looked unutterable things at Joan, pressed her fan below a spray of roses on her full bodice as if to indicate some thrilling memory beneath it, shook her head again, suddenly caught sight of Demorest's serious face, said: "Ah, that brigand of our husband laughs himself at me," and then herself broke into a ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... opened and there stepped into the sunshine the magnificent figure of a woman in Mexican dress—short skirt, low cut bodice, with a veil over her wonderfully dressed hair. She looked down upon the approaching ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... hung opposite the bed where Madam Leigh must see them as soon as she opened her eyes in the morning. One was of a pretty girl in a white frock, low-necked and short-sleeved, with a red rose in the bodice, making the fair skin it rested against all the fairer. Her eyes were dark and sweet; short brown curls, like Madam Leigh's white ones, clustered about her temples. The other picture was that of a handsome boy of twenty, or thereabouts, ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... in and the three dined together, a statuesque maid in a yellow bodice and a purple skirt waiting on them. Agata's "Si?" was like a flute-note, and the two women loved to see her moving about their rooms. It was like having Hebe ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... her cloak fallen upon the grass. Howat could see her face beneath hair faintly powdered with silver dust and the ruffled patch of white tied pertly under her chin. Her smoothly turning shoulders, filmed in lawn, and low bodice crowned an extravagant circumference of ruffled silk and rosettes. Against the night of the Province, the invisible but felt presence of immutable hills, she was like a puppet, a grotesque figure of ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... look you through and through; her frown sets you quaking, and makes you wish the earth would swallow you up. But for all that, when once you get to know her, you find that a warm heart beats beneath her stiff bodice, and that though she will speak sharply to you before your face, she will do you many a kind act of which you know little or nothing. Mistress Dowsabel is younger, smaller, less fearsome to the eye; indeed she is timorous and often full of fears herself. She too is kind, ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... ago Those close-shut lips had answered No, When forth the tremulous question came That cost the maiden her Norman name, And under the folds that look so still The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill? Should I be I, or would it be One tenth another, to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... him; stood—nay, danced in the wind. Over the sunny sward two little scarlet-clad feet chased each other in rhythmic maze; dainty little brown hands spread the folds of the deep blue skirt; a bodice, silver-laced, served as stalk, on which balanced, lightly swaying, the flower of flowers itself. Hilarius' eyes travelled upwards and rested there. Cheeks like a sunburnt peach, lips, a scarlet bow; shimmering, ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... this latter phase, and I was already somehow aware of a deeper note in the crumbled castle than any note of the solid one—little experience as I had had either of solidity. At a point in the interval, at any rate, below the slope on which this memento stood, was a woman in a black bodice, a white shirt and a red petticoat, engaged in some sort of field labour, the effect of whose intervention just then is almost beyond my notation. I knew her for a peasant in sabots—the first peasant I had ever beheld, or beheld at least to such advantage. She had in the whole aspect ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... of that. But 'tis very true. And, trembling and looking fearfully about her, she put her hand inside the whalebone of her bodice and drew out letters. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... notable occasion, when Hallie led me to the bedroom of her grown-up sister, and exhibited to me with awe-struck pride the dress her sister was to wear to the Sumner Light Guards' ball that night. It was a blue tulle with a fine frost of spangles over the bodice, and it seemed too dazzling to belong to a creature less wonderful than a fairy. But when Hallie went on, in a cautious whisper lest we be discovered, to confide to me that when she was grown up and out of school her mother had promised to give her a party, ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... his bier, passing the Baptistery, reanimates the dead tree. Giotto's tower and the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio are to be seen on the left. A very different picture is the Cosimo Rosselli, No. 1280 his, a comely "Madonna and Saints," with a motherly thought in the treatment of the bodice. ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... rather wide black velvet neck-ribbon, which showed off the whiteness of her skin. One patch took the place of the assassine of our grandmothers. And Valerie pinned the sweetest rosebud into her bodice, just in the middle above the stay-busk, and in the daintiest little hollow! It was enough to make every man under ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... in the way meeting many milk-maids with their garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them; and saw pretty Nelly [Nell Gwynne.] standing at her lodgings' door in Drury-lane in her smock sleeves and bodice, looking upon one: she seemed a mighty pretty creature. My Lord Crewe walked with me, giving me an account of the meeting of the Commissioners for Accounts, whereof he is one. How some of the gentlemen, Garraway, Littleton, and others, did scruple at their first coming there, being ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... to make their purchases, and it was some time before they issued out from the mantua makers, when the dame informed her husband that she had chosen white satin for Aline's bodice, which was to be tight fitting, in the fashion, and trimmed round the bottom and neck with white fur, while the skirt was of lilac and of the same material. For herself, she had chosen a purple robe reaching below the knees, with white skirt, both being of satin. The caps, which ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty |
