"Gossip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expressed in a memorandum, "tres long, tres positif, assez dur meme, et assez tranchant dans son langage," was handed in to the Congress on December 16 or 19, along with a very unwelcome note to Metternich. There is some gossip of another of Canning's secretaries in Greville's Memoirs, i. 105, to the effect that Castlereagh's private despatches to Troppau differed in tone from his official ones, which were only written "to throw ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... to note how quickly a profession absorbs one. Carrie became wise in theatrical lore, hearing the gossip of little Lola. She learned what the theatrical papers were, which ones published items about actresses and the like. She began to read the newspaper notices, not only of the opera in which she had so small a part, but of others. Gradually the desire for notice took hold of her. She longed ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... once they sought to seduce him by offers of office; it was said that he could have been an under-secretary of state, had he been willing to qualify himself for the position by modifying his views on colonial questions. More than once, too, gossip circulated in America that some such bargain had been struck, a slander which was cruel and ignoble indeed, when the opportunity and temptation may be said to have been present any and every day during many years without ever receiving even a moment ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... spirit-stirring influences—those glances of sunshine that make amends for clouds and mist. The country is said to be quieter life; not to me, I am sure. In the town the business I have to do hardly costs me more thought than just occupies my mind, and I have as much of gossip and ladylike chat as consumes the time pleasantly enough. In the country I am thrown entirely on my own resources, and there is no medium ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... it was not the right kind of witness. If it had been an indulgent elder not given to gossip, or a chivalrous young man not averse himself from kisses, all might have been well. But William Roper, under-gamekeeper, was a young man without a spark of chivalry in him, and he had been soured in the matter ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... the Cathedral Close where they lived in England was not highly exhilarating, and when its duties were over it contained only mild gossip and endless tea-parties and garden-parties by ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... Bellevue began to gossip about the couple at Highcourt, and divided as always into two camps with shades of opinion within each camp. The women were generally for Archie, even if he had been foolish with his wife's money and was conducting his "affair" with Irene Pointer ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... of Gil Blas appeared in 1715; and nearly twenty years later gossip said that the fourth was not ready, though the author had been paid in advance for it six or ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... He paused, then looked straight at Joyce with a visible harshness. "I'll tell you what the common gossip is if you want to know, Miss Seldon. They say he ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... observance of the study hours; another, less gossip: perhaps she should be better understood if she said a higher tone of social intercourse. A thing never to be forgotten was, that the school-life was a preparation for the longer one beyond, and that, a preparation for the one that ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... the sidewalk excitement had subsided sufficiently to make room for an approach to the truth. The story of an armed band surrounding the bank had been a canard. There had been but one man concerned in the robbery, and the sidewalk gossip was beginning to describe him ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Viola, "I would make me a willow cabin at your gates, and call upon your name. I would write complaining sonnets on Olivia, and sing them in the dead of the night; your name should sound among the hills, and I would make Echo, the babbling gossip of the air, cry out Olivia. O you should not rest between the elements of earth and air, but you should pity me." "You might do much," said Olivia: "what is your parentage?" Viola replied, "Above my fortunes, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with him. You remember Miss Pyncheon? She and many other regular attendants at the Chapel have left this neighbourhood. The Chapel is to be a cinematograph theatre, I believe. There! I have given you all the gossip. I have not said more about your aunts because I want you to come up one day to London, when you have time, and see them. You will do that, won't you? I expect you are very busy—I hope you are. I would like to have a line from you, but please don't bother if you ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... know something of what passes in polite circles. Your antagonism to this man is to be found in every column of fashionable gossip. The town is divided between you. It is impossible that any public slight upon him should be ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... most pertinacious way of poking his nose into all sorts of affairs, not at all after the manner of the usual pig, but more like a village gossip who wants to know about everything that is going ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... yet to come, his name rose to the surface of the conversation, and, in spite of Rucellai's previous prohibition, the talk again became political. At first, while the servants remained present, it was mere gossip: what had been done in the Palazzo on the first day's voting for the Great Council; how hot-tempered and domineering Francesco Valori was, as if he were to have everything his own way by right of his austere virtue, and how it was clear ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... delight of his friends. His apartments were entirely separate from the family, but he spent most of his unengaged evenings in their quiet little circle. The children called him uncle, the mother called him Basil, and the people who knew them looked upon him as one related, and spoke no gossip concerning them. ...
— A Few Short Sketches • Douglass Sherley
... was a chatty soul and loved a bit of gossip dearly; besides, the pot of ale warmed his heart; so that, settling himself in an easy corner of the inn bench, while the host leaned upon the doorway and the hostess stood with her hands beneath ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Roquefinette. The chevalier, without being a regular customer, went occasionally to the tavern of La Fillon. It was quite fashionable at that time to go and drink at her house. D'Harmental was to her neither her son, a name which she gave to all her "habitues," nor her gossip, a word which she reserved for the Abbe Dubois, but simply Monsieur le Chevalier; a mark of respect which would have been considered rather a humiliation by most of the young men of fashion. La Fillon was much astonished when D'Harmental asked to see one of her ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... care," he says, "to loiter in the baths of Agrippa and to hear from the idlers there the gossip of the hour. The gladiatorial struggles in the Circus Maximus and the comedies in the theaters have lost for me their relish. For the civic rewards which Tiberius gives his favored ones I have no wish. Senatorships and proconsulships are like the dust ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... become quite an interesting piece of local gossip, and, one after another, all the ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... offered me so many taxable letters that I decided to accept only one, and let the others go back. That one contained a cheque for a hundred dollars for the Mission. I naturally took the rest, and found every one of them to be bills, gossip, or from autograph-hunters. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... "it is the old story: 'Servants' friends, the master's enemies.' An old servant came here to gossip with her friend the cook (she never could abide her while they were together, by all accounts), and told her the whole story of his being drowned ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Lieutenant Hal. "The cases in Guarez's barn, it may be, are only dummies, put there with a good deal of display, so that if troops came their commander would be sure to hear about them. The Mexicans probably imagined that, after an American military commander came here, heard the gossip about boxes in Guarez's barn, and then guarded that barn, that the commander would then feel that all needed precautions had been taken. That was Mexican craft, but Guarez failed to understand that he was ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... Local gossip regarding her estrangement from her husband had practically exhausted itself some time before, and in any case it would have been swamped by the fevered anxiety that possessed the whole country ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... but often with the most fantastic additions of events, details, names, dates, places, which each player will aver that he received from the player before him. I am afraid that too much of the average gossip of every city, town, and village is little more than a game of "Russian Scandal;" with this difference that while one is but a game, the other ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... "I'll go, Tom; but, to be plain with you, I do not think that I can be of much use there. I have been several times. She will gossip as long as you please; but if you would talk seriously, she turns a deaf ear. You see, Tom, there's little to be gained when you have to contend with such a besetting sin as avarice. It is so powerful, especially ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... courtyard full of sunshine, the iron railing separating it from the road, the river gleaming, the bridge and railway station beyond, and then again the background of hills. He passed through the house, and went out into the courtyard. Here were more people, more gay dresses, gossip, cigars, and coffee; more benches and tables set in the scanty shade of the formal round-topped trees that stood in square green boxes round the paved quadrangle. Outside in the road, a boy with a monkey stood grinding a melancholy organ; the sun seemed setting to the pretty pathetic tune, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... come, but through some mistake, had been sent to Mr. Notter, and was by him expended in payment of his own district, when it should have been paid on the Caharagh line. "But these stories," he added, "received in gossip, are turned against the Board of Works." It is not very clear what this official meant by stories, but there is one thing plain enough in the matter: Mr. Notter's men must have been in arrear of their pay as well as those on the Caharagh works, or there could be no ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... He abhorred gossip and spreading of tittle-tattle; avoided speaking before servants, or any one who would retail what was said. When there was any danger of this, he relapsed into total silence; and was, indeed, on some occasions over-cautious. He especially ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... Marianna had been by no means inattentive to the whispering and murmuring of the two girls, nor had she failed to notice the vent-hole, and so the way to a mutual exchange of communications was soon opened and made use of. Whenever old Capuzzi takes his afternoon nap the girls gossip away to their heart's content. You will have observed that little Margaret, Dame Caterina's and my favourite, is not so serious and reserved as her elder sister, Anna, but is an arch, frolicsome, droll little thing. Without expressly making mention of your love-affair I have instructed ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... variation of the preceding—were helped toward digestion by the finest vintages of Burgundy; and the luscious pates de foie gras—for which the plumpest geese in Bretagne had been invalids all their days, and, if gossip be true, submitted in the end to a slow roasting alive—introduced the fish, which, by the then reformed Parisian mode, must appear after, not before, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... whom he pronounces a "brave braggart." As no despatch of Washington contains any rodomontade of the kind; as it is quite at variance with the general tenor of his character; and as Horace Walpole is well known to have been a "great gossip dealer," apt to catch up any idle rumor that would give piquancy to a paragraph, the story has been held in great distrust. We met with the letter recently, however, in a column of the London Magazine for 1754, page 370, into which it must have found its way not long after ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... have been a more or less ragged regiment who met about that kindly Bow Street board; but that the fact reflects upon either the host or guests cannot be admitted for a moment. If the anecdote is discreditable to anyone it is to that facile retailer of ana, and incorrigible society-gossip, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... struck two, the household was at rest, the logs blazed and cracked merrily, the red light shining on those mail-clad effigies in the corners, lighting up helm and hauberk, glancing on greaves and gauntlets. It was an hour of repose and gossip which ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... charms of the landscape or the pleasures of locomotion that they chiefly discoursed. Their talk took a more closely personal turn. It was a year since they had met, and there were many questions to ask and answer, many arrears of gossip to make up. As they stretched themselves on the grass on a sun-warmed hill-side, beneath a great German oak whose arms were quiet in the blue summer air, there was a lively exchange of impressions, opinions, speculations, anecdotes. Gordon Wright was surely an excellent friend. He took ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... gig, almost every summer day. One evening, the horse took fright, and upset the gig on a heap of stones by the road-side. Mr Young was taken up dead, and Maria was lamed for life. She had always known the Enderbys very well; and there had been some gossip among their mutual acquaintance, about the probability that Philip would prove to be Maria's lover, when he should be old enough to think of marrying. It never went further than this,—except in Maria's own heart. She had, indeed, hoped—even supposed—that in Philip's mind the affair had at least ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... themselves, I don't think!" retorted Nan. Being a rabid girl-fan it was, of course, impossible for Nan to speak baseball convictions or gossip without characteristic baseball slang. "Stuck on themselves! I never saw the like in my life. That fellow Lane is so swelled that he can't get down off his toes. But he's a wonder, I must admit that. They're a bunch of stars. Easy, fast, trained—they're ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... a solicitor's office in the City. And yet it was true that people would talk of him as did Miss Thoroughbung! His cruelty would be in every lady's mouth. And then his stinginess about the ponies would be the gossip of the county for twelve months. And, as he found out what Miss Thoroughbung was, the disgrace of even having wished to marry her loomed terribly large ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... and the underbrush about it, Jane, with Fleck and Thomas Dean, peered eagerly out at a dingy, weather-beaten frame structure which neighborhood gossip had told them was the sheltering place of the "Friends of the Air." In its outward appearance at least, Jane decided, it was disappointingly unmysterious. It looked to her merely like a cheap summer boarding-house that had gone long untenanted. There was a ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... Shelley's Skylark, nor whisper to Wordsworth's Daffodils, the disconcerting secret)—I am incongruously beset by longings of which the Lake Poets never sang. Echoes and images of the abandoned City discompose my arcadisings: I hear, in the babbling of brooks, the delicious sound of London gossip, and newsboys' voices in the cries of birds. Sometimes the gold-splashed distance of a country lane seems to gleam at sunset with the posters of the evening papers; I dream at dawn of dinner-invitations, when, like a telephone-call, I hear ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... took hat and walking-stick for his customary morning stroll along the street to Butcher Trengrove's to choose the joint for his dinner and pick up the town's earliest gossip. It is Troy's briskest hour; when the dairy carts, rattling homeward, meet the country folk from up-the-river who have just landed at the quays and begun to sell from door to door their poultry and ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... correspondence with the Wittenbergers and Spalatin, expressed to the latter her surprise that Luther did not marry. Luther thereupon wrote to Spalatin on November 30, 1524, saying, 'I am not surprised that folks gossip thus about me, as they gossip about many other things. But please thank the lady in my name, and tell her that I am in the hands of the Lord, as a creature whose heart He can change and re-change, destroy or revive, at any hour or moment; but as my ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... and you can telegraph to me freely; whereas, if you telegraphed to Chippenham, whoever received the message there might mention its contents as curious to someone or other, and then, of course, it would become a matter of common gossip." ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... George," as Monk's own soldiers called him, though he was but in his fifty-second year, and speculating on his possible meaning, and on the chance that even Lambert might find him more than a match. And such mere gossip and curiosity everywhere, mingling with previous doubtings in some quarters, and with relics of positive partisanship with the Rump in others, had gradually induced a complete whirl of public feeling. By the middle of December, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... smile and a light heart that I descended the ladder, deeply conscious of a friend on board—one totally unable to serve me, perhaps, yet nevertheless a friend. Even in our isolation, guarded in those narrow quarters, much of the ship gossip managed in some way to reach our ears. How it drifted in was often a mystery, yet there was little going on aboard we failed to hear. Much of it came to us through those detailed to serve food, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... with an air of reflection, he observed that they did not cost him the self-contempt which was wont to be his penalty for concession to the terms of polite gossip; rather, his mind accepted with gratitude this rare repose. He tasted something of the tranquil self-content which makes life so enjoyable when one has never seen a necessity for shaping original ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... with his niece, an orphan. She was eighteen, and there might have been some gossip, but O'Hara forestalled it by ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... is a very real part of it, and will, if preserved, convey to succeeding generations a better idea of the spirit of the conflict than many dry reports or careful narratives of events; and this part may be called the Gossip, the Fun, the Pathos of the War. This illustrates the character of the leaders, the humor of the soldiers, the devotion of women, the bravery of men, the pluck of our heroes, the romance ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... king," a squarely-built man,—whose bare arms with the knotted muscles showing through the skin, and hands begrimed with charcoal, indicated that he was a smith,—remarked to a gossip as the little crowd broke up, "but it is a grievous pity that he was brought up a Norman, still more that he was not left in peace to pass his life as a monk as he desired. He fills the land with his Normans; soon as an English bishop dies, straightway a Norman is ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... growing up around them. She had tried for years to get a husband, but finally, at the age of thirty-eight, had given up the fight; and instead of sharing in the happiness of her lifelong neighbors, she had drifted into being the neighborhood gossip, picking flaws in everything and searching with microscopic eye to find the failures in the lives of those around her, trying to find satisfaction in her unmarried state by seeing only the darker side of the matrimonial adventures around her. If a man came ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... sold cloth near St. Innocent's Gate. They amassed wealth for their children, they're paying dearly perhaps for it now in the other world, and one can scarcely get that rich by being honest." I certainly don't want all that gossip, and I want, in a word, a man who will be obliged to me for my daughter and to whom I can say, "Sit down there, my son-in-law, and have ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere
... parties. I'd lay for the local religious world, after that;—religion comes right after politics in the popular mind, and it interests the women like murder: I'd give the minutest religious intelligence, and not only that, but the religious gossip, and the religious scandal. Then I'd go in for fashion and society,—that comes next. I'd have the most reliable and thorough-going financial reports that money could buy. When I'd got my local ground perfectly covered, I'd begin to ramify. Every fellow that could spell, in any ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... a young man without fortune, but Forsyte girls had become engaged to such before, and had actually married them. It was not altogether for this reason, therefore, that the minds of the Forsytes misgave them. They could not have explained the origin of a misgiving obscured by the mist of family gossip. A story was undoubtedly told that he had paid his duty call to Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester, in a soft grey hat—a soft grey hat, not even a new one—a dusty thing with a shapeless crown. "So, extraordinary, my dear—so ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his mind and was impatient to get into the air; for his purpose was a purpose to be uttered outside, and he had a fear that it might with delay still slip away from him. She however took her time; she drew out their quiet gossip as if she had wished to profit by their meeting, and this confirmed precisely an interpretation of her manner, of her mystery. While she rose, as he would have called it, to the question of Victor Hugo, her ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... related. The old minister was mistaken, as we have before seen. Mr. Fairweather had been settled in the place only about ten years, and, if he had heard a strange hint now and then about Elsie, had never considered it as anything more than idle and ignorant, if not malicious, village-gossip. All that he fully understood was that this had been a perverse and unmanageable child, and that the extraordinary care which had been bestowed on her had been so far thrown away that she was a dangerous, self-willed girl, whom ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sits by the mother's bedside and whispers to her. The two women have already had time to make friends, they have got to know each other, they gossip, they ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... first gentleman of the chamber, ending always in the admission of some new visitor. Each as he entered bowed profoundly three times, as a salute to majesty, and then attached himself to his own little clique or coterie, to gossip in a low voice over the news, the weather, and the plans of the day. Gradually the numbers increased, until by the time the king's frugal first breakfast of bread and twice watered wine had been carried in, the large square chamber was quite filled with a throng of ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... probable that the column in Defoe's Review, containing Advice from the Scandal Club, suggested his 'Lucubrations' to Steele. If so, it does not detract from his originality of treatment, for Defoe's town gossip is poor stuff. Addison, who knew nothing of the project beforehand, came, ere long, to his friend's assistance; but it was not until about eighty numbers had appeared, that he became a frequent contributor, and ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... talk of fever there was also a good deal of gossip about brigands going about, as is generally the case in Naples and its vicinity. Something was said to have happened to a party on one of the heights above Sorrento; and though nobody knew exactly what the something was, or was willing ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... which had a right to live, in virtue of their native force and freshness; hardly more than two; for we need not count in this category the records of events, such as Winthrop's Journal, or Prince's Annals, or even that quaint, garrulous, conceited farrago of pedantry and piety, of fact and gossip, Mather's "Magnalia." The two real American books were a "Treatise on the Will," and "Poor Richard's Almanack." Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin were the only considerable names in American literature in all that period ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... this case—all you can hand out big chunks of it. We want to know who that woman was. The way I figure it, this city is going to get a jolt at breakfast. Every one is going to be comparing notes. Out of that mass of gossip we may get ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... very reticent about the subject and continued to receive the attentions of the young artist, Will Beuland, and some six months after Mr. Royce returned to England she was married to the New York artist. No one seemed surprised, though it caused much gossip. ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... Come t' supper to-night?" said the Henry Clay; and so questions and answers flew back and forth. Men had met one another before, dory-fishing in the fog, and there is no place for gossip like the Bank fleet. They all seemed to know about Harvey's rescue, and asked if he were worth his salt yet. The young bloods jested with Dan, who had a lively tongue of his own, and inquired after their health by the town-nicknames ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... strike up to Mandalay. There might be a chance there to pick up a bit of river news which would help you. I wonder whether old Moung San is up in Mandalay yet. He started up river with his hnau weeks back, and you know how they dawdle along, picking up every scrap of river gossip." ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... my spirit yearns for thine Thine yearns for mine, why thus delay? And yet, what answer might be mine If, pausing on her way, Some gossip bade me tell Whence the deep sighs that from my ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... on a divan, and proceeded to plunge into all the flying gossip of the day. Incidentally she managed to hint that Servius Maccus, her devoted admirer, had told her that the night before Lucius Ahenobarbus and some of his friends had attacked and insulted a lady on her way back ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... exclaimed Eugenia, who formed one of the group of listeners to this precious bit of gossip; but whether she intended this cognomen for the cruel husband, or Mrs. Leah, we do not know, as she continued to question the old lady of Mrs. Hastings herself, asking if her health were delicate and if she ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... most part the people had too much to do, and were too intent upon their own business, to take much trouble to retail what they chanced to hear; but there are some things which, as the facetious man observed, the dead in their graves would gossip about if they could; and one of these themes, according to him, was that Principal Trenholme believed there had been something supernatural about the previous life of the old preacher. The story went about, impressing more particularly the female portion of the community, but certainly not without ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... dedicated to repose, I was never away from her. To this day I remember, with a tenderness which attaches to no other memories of mine, the books that I read to her, the sunny corner on the seashore where I sat with her, the games of cards that we played together, the little trivial gossip that amused her when she was strong enough for nothing else. These are my imperishable relics; these are the deeds of my life that I shall love best to look back on, when the all-infolding shadows of death ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... had no doubt the stranger was a foreign knight, who had once known the old Leicester family; but bade him mention the circumstance to no one. He feared, however, that the caution came too late, since Dame Idonea was not only an inveterate gossip, but was likely to hold in direful suspicion any one who had been inquired for by ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Heinrich to Germany, Teddy to London, and Hugh to Colchester, it had put a special brassard round Mr. Britling's arm and carried him out into the night, given Mrs. Britling several certificates, and interrupted the frequent visits and gossip of Mr. Lawrence Carmine; but so far it had not established a direct contact between the life of Matching's Easy and the grim business of shot, shell, and bayonet at the front. But now here was the Dower House accomplishing wonderful idioms in Anglo-French, and an animated ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... as though we had been on familiar terms with that wicked, corrupt, outwardly delightful society that gambled and drank, and scandalised the grave spirits of the nation, in the days when George III. was young. Horace Walpole was the letter-writer of letter-writers; his gossip carries the impress of truth with it; and, though he had no style, no brilliancy, no very superior ability, yet, by using his faculties in a natural way, he was able to supply material for two of the finest literary fragments of modern times. I take it ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Wednesday in Wheeson week, when the prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some; whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound? And didst thou not, when she was gone down stairs, ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... of voices downstairs, and she thought angrily of Rachela, and Molly, and Manuel, "making a little confidence together" over their trouble, and spicing their evening gossip with the strange thing that had happened to the Senor Doctor. She knew that Rachela and Manuel would call him heretic and Americano, and, by authority of these two words, accuse him ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... in the doorway, and one and another came to give Noko a bit of gossip. Rose crept off to bed presently. How fragrant the fresh balsam of fir was, and the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... up," said Uncle Marmaduke, "I can see that at a glance. So you've come in here, like me, eh? because the children bore you, and you want a quiet gossip over the world in general? Sit down then, take a cigar, if you don't think it will make you very unwell. I shouldn't recommend it myself, you know, before supper—but you're a man of the world and know what's good for ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... predilections. Neither George II. nor his queen had an iota of taste, either in language, conduct, literature, or art. To be vulgar, was haut-ton; to be refined, to have pursuits that took one from low party gossip, or heterodox disquisitions upon party, was esteemed odd: everything original was cramped; everything imaginative was sneered at; the enthusiasm that is elevated by religion was unphilosophic; the poetry that is breathed out from the works ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... fortune lay either way, for every rumour set the funds fluctuating; but without special information it was impossible to act, and no one dared to plunge heavily upon the strength of newspaper surmise and the gossip of the street. Warner knew that an hour's work might resuscitate the fallen fortunes of himself and his partner, and yet he could not afford to make a mistake. He returned to his office in the afternoon, half inclined to back the chances of peace, for of all war scares not one ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her bosom. Mr. Fabian, as we must continue from habit to call him, though his rightful style was now Mr. Rockharrt, went down to the reading room to send his own and his wife's cards to Chief Justice and Mrs. Pendletime, and to collect Washington gossip. ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... in my youth,' she said, 'and so thrown on my own thoughts and on those expressed in books, has been very helpful to me. Had I been given to gossip, and had there been people for me to gossip with, I should certainly never have accomplished ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... of the plain, Where Health and Slander welcome every train, Whence smiling innocence, its tribute paid, Retires in terror, wounded and dismayed— Dear lovely bowers of gossip and disease, Whose climate cures us that thy dames may tease, How often have I knelt upon thy green And prayed for death, to mitigate their spleen! How often have I paused on every charm With mingled admiration and alarm— The brook that runs by many a scandal-mill, The church whose ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... to warrant a little reserve of confidence, and of course putting an end to any thought of intimate alliance with "the Johns family." She even whispered in her most insidious manner into the ear of old Mistress Tew,—who, being somewhat deaf, is the most inveterate village gossip,—that "it was hard for the poor thing, when Reuben left ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... his Chronica, 1633, p. 381, for the quotation; also Bibliog. at end of Romany Rye.—13. Winchester: Rather Winchelsea, according to the Regimental Records.—14. A gallant frigate: A reminiscence of Norman Cross gossip in 1810-11. "Ninety-eight French prisoners, the crew of a large French privateer of eighteen guns called the Contre-Amiral Magon, and commanded by the notorious Blackman, were captured 16th October, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Here we are distinguished unfavourably from our neighbours—exceptions, of course, there must always be—but in general to betray an acquaintance with any literature beyond the last novel, or the current trash and gossip of the day, might provoke the charge of pedantry, but at any rate would fail in exciting the slightest sympathy. Hence men of letters, and women of letters, form a caste by themselves much to their own disadvantage, and still more to the injury of those to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... course, could have no love for this portly old gentleman of seventy. But it is pitiful to think he was madly infatuated. The poor old man, in spite of his unromantic appearance, had warm blood in his veins and plenty of romance in his heart. At last, in spite of gossip and opposition, they were married, and then, instead of settling down, as the happy groom had hoped, to a life of wedded bliss in one of his country houses at Dordrecht, Lady Van Tromp insisted on spending her honeymoon in Paris. There they went, and the very day of ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... she had always been, this cry, far more than the tears she was forcing back, revealed how much the future terrified her. She was there erect and brave in spite of everything; but what a downfall if she were no longer able to keep her room tidy, stew a piece of veal on Sundays, and gossip with the neighbours while awaiting her husband's return from work! Why, they might just as well be thrown into the gutter and carried ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... you, I mean," said Chet, earnestly. "No passing it around with the usual platter of gossip on ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... feeling something of vexation and annoyance. If I were to be carried off at all by a man of rank and station, it would have been almost better if he had succeeded in marrying me than that the affair should be a mere matter of gossip. Certainly, that my rescue should be owing to one of the factious lawyers, and to that mischievous party leader the Coadjutor, was an unmixed grievance. After all my follies at Nid de Merle, I was quite sufficiently ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recognise the voices, or any one among them? He did not say so even to himself, but turned round and hurried back, stumbling through the darkness which hid and blinded him. In the village he met a woman with a lantern, who he did not doubt was Lizzie's grandmother, the village authority; no doubt a gossip, quite disposed to search into other people's mysteries, quite unaware of the secret story which had connected itself with his own. She passed him in a little mist of light in the midst of the dark, raising her head instinctively as he passed with a sense of something unfamiliar, but of course ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... of the time, for she shrank from mingling with the guests of the hotel, since she knew there would be a great deal of gossip over her approaching nuptials, and she did not like to ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... which Mr. Bronte made his children sympathize with him in his great interest in politics must have done much to lift them above the chances of their minds being limited or tainted by petty local gossip. I take the only other remaining personal fragment out of "Tales of the Islanders"; it is a sort of apology, contained in the introduction to the second volume, for their not having been continued before; the writers ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... my superintending companions with whom I established anything like a familiar acquaintance was Mother Martha. She had no outward attractions to recommend her; but she was simple, good-humored, ready to gossip, and inquisitive to a perfectly incredible degree. Her whole life had been passed in the nunnery; she was thoroughly accustomed to her seclusion, thoroughly content with the monotonous round of her occupations; not at all anxious to see ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... the natives here laugh at him, although I remember they called him 'Old Swallowtail' when I was directed to him as the only resident real estate agent. I found the old man quite shrewd in driving a bargain and thoroughly posted on all the affairs of the community. However, he is not a gossip, but inclined to be taciturn. There is a fathomless look in his eyes and he is cold and unresponsive. Country life breeds strange characteristics in some people. The whimsical dress and mannerisms of old Mr. Cragg would ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... all this land. But who is he? Of what land is he a native? Who knows him?" "Not I!" "Nor I!" "But no snow has fallen on him! Rather is his armour blacker than monk's or priest's cape." Thus they engage in gossip; and the two champions let their horses go; for no longer do they delay because right eager and aflame are they for the encounter and the shock. Cliges strikes so that he presses Sagremors' shield to his ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... saw Thomas his eye brightened, and he joined him at once, for he dearly loved a gossip, and he had in his mind a long story that he was impatient to pour out to somebody. The story was so long and so interesting that the whistle of the fast-approaching train was heard long before it was ended, and of his own ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... leave it, howsoever, both it and I am at your service. I ask you not as the value of the thing, for then I should demand of you a thousand crowns, so the cardinals Montalto, Fernese, the great Duke of Tuscany, my gossip, with divers other princes, have given me; but I despise money. Only to shew my affection to you, honourable gentlemen, and your illustrious State here, I have neglected the messages of these princes, mine own offices, framed my journey hither, only to present you ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... better not," said Mrs. Rabbit. "It's all you can do to gossip about grown-up people's affairs." And then Mrs. Rabbit shook her dusting rag up and down, and maybe once sideways, and after that she shut the window. So Grandmother Magpie flew away ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... dear; his nature was the same, but he was strong enough to restrain his nature, and wise enough to know that his magnificence was incompatible with ordinary interests. As he got to be older he broke down, and took up with mere mortal gossip. But I think it must have ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... of telling his story in letters necessitates the acceptance of various improbabilities; reticence has sometimes to be violated, and confidences to be unduly made. Still, with all these allowances, the gossip of every one with regard to the likelihood of Sir Charles returning Harriet's very thinly veiled attachment is highly undignified, and often indecent. The Object himself, for whom no less than seven ladies were at that time openly sighing, alone ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... who from their position in society might be supposed to be better informed, considerable anxiety has been expressed to ascertain whether any portion of the skeleton of the murdered cook has been discovered beneath the flooring of the cellar, which tradition, fomented by illiterate gossip, pointed out as the place of his interment. Your correspondents would confer a heraldic benefit if they would point out other instances—which I believe to exist—where family reputation has been damaged by ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... perfectly free to follow the bent of his inclinations, except to penetrate behind the scenes of the aftmost deck, where, carefully hidden from the rude gaze of the male passengers by a canvas partition, the Moslem ladies have their little world of gossip and coffee, and fragrant cigarettes. Every public conveyance in the Orient has this walled-off retreat, in which Osmanli fair ones can remove their yashmaks, smoke cigarettes, and comport themselves with as much freedom as though in the seclusion of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... March, hares, rabbits, partridges, deer, in short, all the game that was not eaten at the chateau, was sold at Blangy and at Soulanges, where Tonsard's two daughters peddled milk in the early mornings,—coming back with the news of the day, in return for the gossip they carried about Les Aigues, and Cerneux, and Conches. In the months when the three Tonsards were unable to hunt with a gun, they set traps. If the traps caught more game than they could eat, La Tonsard made pies of it and sent them to Ville-aux-Fayes. In harvest-time seven Tonsards—the old mother, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... If some gossip to whom she sighed and shook her head, and wondered what could possibly ail Arthur—who still ate his dinner heartily, and had as many orders for portraits as he cared to fulfill—suggested that there was a woman in the case, good ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... Hospital,—he was not long in discovering that my abode was with my brother-in-law, in Little Warner Street, Clerkenwell; and just at that time I was installed housekeeper, and was solitary. He, therefore, would come and revive his loved gossip, till, as the author of the "Urn Burial" says, "we were acting our antipodes,—the huntsmen were up in America, and they already were past their first sleep in Persia." At this time he lived in his first lodging upon coming to London, near to St. Thomas's ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... doesn't. Well, I am putting up this pyramid to stay put, and I don't give a damn for its looks. I hear all sorts of funny cracks about it. My barber is a sharp nigger and keeps his ears open: he brings me all the gossip. But I let it go. This is my pyramid. I am putting up the money for it, and I have got to be mortared up in it when I die. So I am trying to make a good, substantial job of it, and letting the mere beauty ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... was sorry to hear that Lady Diana had met with a nasty motor accident; but had escaped with only slight injuries."—Mrs. Gossip in "The Daily Sketch." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... her head and looked at her. "No," she was about to say shortly, just as she had repulsed many little offers of Polly's for the past few days; but somehow this morning the crackling of the fresh sheet in the girl's hand, suggestive of crisp bits of gossip, was too much for her to hear indifferently, especially as she was in a worse state of mind than usual over ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... was all fresh that night I jotted down pages of such gossip in a little red note-book. I had names and dates. That bunch of piece-workers must have thought I was a bear for details, or else nutty in the head; but they was too polite to mention it so long as I insisted each time that it ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... cast his eyes over that unfortunate city, which contained so much deep misery and so many heroic virtues, and recalling the saying of Louis XI, his political predecessor, as he himself was the predecessor of Robespierre, he repeated this maxim of Tristan's gossip: ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Salem; bygone generations have left in the town a whole legacy of legend and shudder-rousing passages of family tradition, with many well-supported tales of supernatural hauntings; and it is worth while to notice how frequent and forcible a use Hawthorne makes of this enginery of local gossip and traditional horror, in preparing the way for some catastrophe that is to come, or in overshooting the mark with some exaggerated rumor which, by pretending to disbelieve it, he causes to have just the right effect upon the reader's mind. Some of the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... was followed. Coke, very reluctantly, knowing well who had given it, and why, "not only weeping himself but followed by the tears" of all the Court of Common Pleas, moved up to the higher post. The Attorney Hobart succeeded, and Bacon at last became Attorney (October 27, 1613). In Chamberlain's gossip we have an indication, such as occurs only accidentally, of the view of outsiders: "There is a strong apprehension that little good is to be expected by this change, and that Bacon may prove a ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... were busy, she could not help noticing Mrs. Devar's taciturn mood. That a born gossip, a retailer of personal reminiscences confined exclusively to "the best people," should eat stolidly for five consecutive minutes, seemed somewhat of a miracle, and Cynthia, as was her habit, came ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... poseurs Lady Durwent jingled her town house and her title—and the response was instantaneous. She became the hostess of a series of dinner-parties which gradually made her the subject of paragraphs in the chatty columns of the press, and of whole chapters in the gossip of London's refined circles. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... course, was to tell Diva about the revelation that had burst on her the night before. Diva was incomparably the best disseminator of news: she walked so fast, and her telegraphic style was so brisk and lucid. Her terse tongue, her revolving feet! Such a gossip! ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... said to be a corruption of Mandeville (Sir John), who published a book of travels, full of idle tales and maundering gossip. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... When it comes to gossip and idle tales and foolish conversation and things of that sort, we ought to let such go "in at one ear and out at the other"; we should be very careful that they find no lodging-place in our hearts. That is the only ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... of the religious gossip of the countryside—how it was said that another priest, a Mr. Nelson, had been taken, in London, as Mr. Maine had been in Cornwall; that, it was said again, priests would have to look to their lives in future, and not ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... husband, who does not appear to have much business of his own, gets his share in that he sits among the wealthy and honoured inhabitants of the town, 'in the gates,' the chief place of meeting for business and gossip. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to the church; for there is always something to see about a church, whether living worshipers or dead men's tombs; you find there the deadliest earnest, and the hollowest deceit; and even where it is not a piece of history, it will be certain to leak out some contemporary gossip. It was scarcely so cold in the church as it was without, but it looked colder. The white nave was positively arctic to the eye; and the tawdriness of a continental altar looked more forlorn than usual in the solitude and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... servants and dependents, wearing silk dresses on week days, and setting silver plate before the meanest guest. The women of Polotzk were breathless over her wardrobe, counting up how many pairs of embroidered boots she had, at fifteen rubles a pair. And Hode's manners were as much a subject of gossip as her clothes, for she had picked up strange ways in her travels Although she was so pious that she was never tempted to eat trefah, no matter if she had to go hungry, her conduct in other respects was not strictly orthodox. For one thing, she was in the habit of shaking hands with ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... from the one to the other with perfect ease; and honestly pleased at having escaped a long, dull, hot afternoon in the Casino, the older woman set herself to please and amuse Sylvia. She thoroughly succeeded. A clever gossip, she seemed to know a great deal about all sorts of interesting people, and she gave Sylvia an amusing account of Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, whose splendid chateau they saw ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... more than you have already been told about your father. I have promised that you shall go into your mother's room and take possession of it on your fifteenth birthday. That is enough. I am grieved that you should have listened to vulgar gossip about our affairs; but I may tell you that your mother left money to provide for you ten times over, if ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... and ashamed as though a door had been suddenly opened on a terrible secret thing that was customarily locked up in a closet. But the uncomfortable feeling soon passed, and they began to talk about the strange woman and to gossip and play and amuse themselves with her sorrow. A crowd collected about the aide, who grew more and more voluble and important each time he repeated ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... interposed. Ah! Santa Maria! What was all that! Was it not enough to talk old woman's gossip and tell vaqueros tales at home, without making uneasy the strangers? She would have none of ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sent one from his court to educate her in all that any queen should know. They called her the Lavarcam, which, in our tongue, really means the Gossip, and she was one of royal blood who belonged to a class that in those days had been trained to be chroniclers, or story-tellers. The Lavarcam was a clever woman, and she marvelled at the wondrous ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... contemporary, Francis Bacon. Aubrey in his laboriously compiled Short Lives, in which he shows a friendly and admiring attitude toward Bacon, definitely states that he was a pederast. Aubrey was only a careful gleaner of frequently authentic gossip, but a similar statement is made by Sir Simonds D'Ewes in his Autobiography. D'Ewes, whose family belonged to the same part of Suffolk as Bacon's sprang from, was not friendly to Bacon, but that fact ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Medenham, with eyes now more intent on the hotel than on the road. "Influences other than Aunt Susan's must be at work. My father would never have rushed off in a fever from town merely because of some ill-natured gossip in a letter from ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... now on his head, yet ever graceful and performing all his feats of strength and skill without apparent effort. One never tires of this bright spark of life, the brave little voice crying in the wilderness. His varied, piney gossip is as savory to the air as balsam to the palate. Some of his notes are almost flutelike in softness, while others prick and tingle like thistles. He is the mockingbird of squirrels, barking like a dog, screaming like a hawk, whistling like ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... that the personal or individual element is dying out. In the 'seventies the name of Drake, Bang, or Garnet were like household words. People talked of the great Pointers. They were spoken of in club chat or gossip; written about; and the prospects of the moors were much associated with the up-to-date characters of the Pointers and Setters. There is very little of this sort of talk now-a-days. Guns are more critically spoken ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... usually the case with matronly monkeys, chattered and gossiped about her private affairs. And, as she clasped her little son to her, with her mother's heart swelling with love and pride, she thought, with pleasurable anticipation, of the surprise and gossip there would be in the morning when the wonderful event ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... saloon for breakfast in the morning, I was subjected to solicitous inquiries from Mrs. Prior, the gossip of the ship. Her room adjoined Karamaneh's, and she had been one of the passengers aroused by the girl's cries in the night. Strictly adhering to my role, I explained that my patient was threatened with a second nervous breakdown, and was subject to vivid and ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... He did not understand why it was so intense, because he did not see what she saw—the gossip increasing in maliciousness; the constant watching and nods and winks, until in the end it became intolerable either to her or to Farnsworth. Nor was that the possible end. To leave an office under these conditions was a serious matter—a matter ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... amphitheatre, gallery. The moulds are filled nightly. There is no need to distinguish details. But the difficulty remains—one has to choose. For though I have no wish to be Queen of England or only for a moment—I would willingly sit beside her; I would hear the Prime Minister's gossip; the countess whisper, and share her memories of halls and gardens; the massive fronts of the respectable conceal after all their secret code; or why so impermeable? And then, doffing one's own headpiece, how strange to assume for a ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Aleck Babson. 'Babbling Babson,' he's called at the clubs. He's the most inveterate gossip in New York." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... touch upon two other persons whom I have mentioned, and then bring this long letter to a close. These are Mrs. Wilson and her daughter. The former was the widow of a substantial farmer, a narrow-minded, tattling old gossip, whose character is not worth describing. She had two sons, Robert, a rough countrified farmer, and Richard, a retiring, studious young man, who was studying the classics with the vicar's assistance, preparing for college, with a view to enter ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... herself were growing colder; but this is surmise, and no satisfactory explanation has been given to account for a form of marriage being gone through after so many years of the closest friendship. There is no reason to suppose that there was at the time any gossip in circulation about Stella, and if her reputation was in question, a marriage of which the secret was carefully kept would obviously be of no benefit to her. Moreover, we are told that there was no change in their mode ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... to himself: "She is spoiling my life; I am growing common, foolish; I have become dissolved in fool benevolence; it will end up in my marrying her, entering the excise or the assay office, or getting in among pedagogues; I'll be taking bribes, will gossip, and become an abominable provincial morel. And where are my dreams of the power of thought, the beauty of life, of love and deeds for all humanity?" he would say, at times even aloud, and pull his ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... you where you wish to go, are not necessarily enlivening as companions. The annals of "Boxiana" and "Pedestriana" and "The Cricket-Field" are as pathetic records of monomania as the bibliographical works of Mr. Thomas Dibdin. Margaret Fuller said truly, that we all delight in gossip, and differ only in the department of gossip we individually prefer; but a monotony of gossip soon grows tedious, be the theme horses ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... all the various belongings—gloves, handkerchiefs, handbag—which she perpetually let fall. He ran after the dog whenever it escaped from the lady's lap and threatened mischief in the studio; and by way of amusing her—the purpose for which he had been imported—he kept up a stream of small cryptic gossip about various common acquaintances, most of whom seemed to belong to the music-hall profession, and to be either "stars" or the satellites of "stars." Madame listened to him with avidity, and occasionally broke into a giggling laugh. She had, however, ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... "From the gossip of the town and barracks, I think we'll have our trouble soon enough," Hal replied. "You have fatigue duty this afternoon, ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... before the setting of two suns—every gossip along the Riva—and they about covered the population—had become convinced that Loretta was lost to the Quarter. Unless a wedding ring was to end it all Vittorio would never be so bold in his attentions ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Elsmere watched the baggage-man get a tin trunk and a canvas telescope ready for shipping. Presently the stub train arrived, stopped, and while the conductor and the agent were exchanging gossip, Elsmere got inconspicuously aboard, and stowed himself away in a corner, so successfully that it was not till the brakeman called "Hampton" that the conductor ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... in mind, sir," Arnold said, "that if it comes to light afterwards, as it very probably may, that the man was first discovered in Mrs. Weatherley's boudoir, the scandal and gossip will be a great deal worse than if you came forward and told ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... if she would die. She would tell them the whole trick. They all knew what a trouble to the convent was this Anna Apenborg from her curiosity—not once or twice, but ten times a day, running in and out with her chat and gossip. She had tried all means to prevent her, but in vain. Even in the middle of her prayers, the said Anna would come in to tell her what one sister was cooking, and another getting, or some follies even ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... mystic belief of the people in the Emperor; for only by diminishing the dignity of the monarch could the revolutionary cause make headway. And during and after the change all the official documents, school textbooks, press views and social gossip have always coupled the word monarch with reprobation. Thus for a long while this glorious image has been lying in the dirty pond! Leaving out the question that it is difficult to restore the monarchy ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... mite societies of the several churches in Sardis had been merged into one consolidated Lint-Scraping and Bandage-Making Union, in whose enlarged confines the waves of gossip flowed with as much more force and volume as other waves gain when the floods unite a number of small ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... to the gossip excited by Katherine's wedding, and what impression does Act III give you altogether of Bianca's character? Is the bad report of it in Act IV, made by Hortensio, as the Musician, Lisio, with Tranio, quite ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... his affright, and returned with the empty crate to the King, who said to him, "O my son-in-law, 'twould seem thou hast not foregathered with thy friend the Merman to-day." Replied Abdullah, "I went to him but that which he gave me I gave to my gossip the baker, to whom I owe kindness." "Who may be this baker?" asked the King; and the fisherman answered, "He is a benevolent man, who did with me thus and thus in the days of my poverty and never neglected me a single day nor ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the second sight; upon magic in all its branches; and upon the laws against false diviners and soothsayers. Beside showing the keenness of his interest in the supernatural, the author deliberately avoided any occasion for talking gossip or for indulging "persons of airy tempers" with sentimental love-tales. "Instead of making them a bill of fare out of patchwork romances and polluting scandal," reads the preface signed by Duncan Campbell, "the good old gentleman who wrote ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... him up bodily and dashed him to the ground so that blood gushed from his nose and he lay there bewildered, white, and still. Lum rarely went to church, and he never talked religion, politics, or neighborhood gossip. He was really thought to be quite stupid, in spite of the fact that he could make lightning calculations about crops, hogs, and cattle in his head. However, one man knew better, but he was a "furriner," a geologist, a "rock-pecker" from the Bluegrass. To him Lum betrayed an uncanny eye in discovering ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... quivering lips, "prate not to me of thy vain legends and gossip's tales! think not to snatch from me my possession in another, when thine own life is in my hands. Unhand the maiden! throw down thy sword! return home without further parley, or, by my faith, and the blades of my followers—(look at them ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... belong as such to literature come under this last head. The result of a perfect fusion of the two other styles, they exhibit a sparkle, a pungency, and lightness of touch, which take the curse from mere gossip, supple the joints of intellectual disquisition, and mark unmistakably the epistolary artist. The letter-writer, no less than the poet, is born, not made, and his art, though for the most part unconscious, is no less an art. The expression of every sentiment, ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... he found a bench in a quiet place under the shorings of the boardwalk close up alongside one of the lesser bathing pavilions, and they sat there, and he talked and she listened. The man had an endless fund of gossip about amusing and noted people; most of them, it would seem, were his intimates. Telling one or two incidents in which these distinguished friends had figured, he felt it expedient to sink his voice to a discreet undertone. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... For at this store the Malpais country bought its ammunition, its tobacco, and its canned goods; and on this porch its opinions had sifted down to convictions. From this common meeting ground the gossip of Cattleland ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... ill-humour you have attempted to poison them by gratuitous insinuations, which are far more crafty and false than anything with which you can justly charge me. That I happen to be pale, and sometimes to look diffident, is no business of yours; that I am fond of books, and indisposed for common gossip, is still less your business; that I am a 'romancing chit of a girl' is a mere conjecture on your part. I never romanced to you nor to anybody you know. That I am the parson's niece is not a crime, though you may be narrow-minded enough to think it so. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... came to see Yourii because, at home, by himself, he was sad and worried. Lida's refusal still distressed him, and he could not be sure if he felt grieved or humiliated. As a straightforward, indolent fellow, he had so far heard nothing of the local gossip concerning Lida and Sarudine. He was not jealous, but only sorrowful that the dream which brought happiness so ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... previously Edwin and Maggie had seen their father considerably agitated by an item of gossip, casually received, to which it seemed to them he attached an excessive importance. Namely, that old Shushions, having been found straying and destitute by the authorities appointed to deal with such matters, had been taken to the workhouse and was dying there. Darius had heard the news ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... rehearsal, sir," Packer answered in haste. "Entirely outside. She wanted to know if I'd heard any gossip about her husband lately. That's it, ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... when Ready asked him if we were out of our course? I must say I thought it was a silly question to put. It was the same the other evening about the cargo. If the skipper says we're in ballast why not believe him? Why repeat steerage gossip, about mysterious cargoes, at the cuddy table? Captains are always touchy about that sort of thing. I wasn't surprised at his ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... the river of death once crossed, to stretch onward and onward through realms, at present inconceivable, of beauty, of knowledge, and of love. And so, for the moment, solitude was sweet to him, leaving him free of petty cares and anxieties—he moving forward, ignorant of the gossip which in point of fact surrounded him, innocent of the feminine plots and counterplots of which his blameless bachelorhood was at once the provoking cause and the object; while in his eyes—though ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet |
