"Seedy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gravely comic personage with a bandage over one eye, a battered hat considerably inclining to the back of his head, a coat with a high collar and long tails, and a tout ensemble indescribably seedy—something between a street preacher and a travelling showman. But here we are. Take care how you come down, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... unwholesome tint. The diamond ring upon his finger was altogether out of keeping with his threadbare coat, buttoned up to the chin, as if there were no waistcoat beneath it. From head to foot he looked a broken-down, seedy fellow, yet still preserving some lingering traces of the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... and doesn't want to own it!" interrupted Lorimer sententiously. "You will excuse him; he means well! He looks rather seedy. I think, Mr. Gueldmar, we'll be off to the yacht. By the way, you're coming with us to-morrow, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... man, with a face that looked pinched, and who was dressed in a seedy black coat, stopped at the same doorway, and, with one hand on the latch, he appeared to hesitate between hunger and a sense of ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... stopped in the court of the Louvre, they were besieged by several disreputable and seedy-looking men wanting to act as guides through the galleries. Partly to get rid of the rest, partly because they thought it might be easier, they engaged the tidiest-looking one who seemed to know most English, ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... sudden change of fortune. The anemone of the garden differs scarcely more from its unpretending prototype of the woods, than Robert M'Corkindale, Esq., Secretary and Projector of the Glenmutchkin Railway, differed from Bob M'Corkindale, the seedy frequenter of "The Crow." In the days of yore, men eyed the surtout—napless at the velvet collar, and preternaturally white at the seams—which Bob vouchsafed to wear, with looks of dim suspicion, as if some faint reminiscence, similar to that which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Mahnoomenekashee, n. a mud-hen Mezhesay, n. a turkey Mesahmaig, n. a whale Mahzhahmagoos, n. trout Mahnoomin, n. rice Mezheh, adv. everywhere Magwah, adv. while Manmooyahwahgaindahmoowin, n. thankfulness Meshejemin, n. a currant, (fruit) Mahzahn, n. a thistle Mahjegooday, n. a petticoat Menekahnekah, adv. seedy Mejenahwayahdahkahmig, n. pity Mahmahdahwechegawenebun, it was a strange custom Menesenoo, n. a hero Mesquahsin, n. brick, which signifies, red stone Mesahowh, that is Moosay, n. a worm Moong, n. a loon Meene, n. a kind of fruit Mahjekewis, ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... came on, and at the turning of the path, just where Middleton had met Eldredge, the new-comer appeared in sight. It was Hoper, in his usual dress of velveteen, looking now seedy, poverty-stricken, and altogether in ill-case, trudging moodily along, with his hat pulled over his brows, so that he did not see the ghastly object before him till his foot absolutely trod upon the dead man's hand. Being thus made aware of the ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... roused her from her revery. "I say, Amanda, are we going to stay here all night? Why in thunder can't those fools go home so you can lock the door and go! And I say, Amanda, don't you think Martin Landis is letting himself grow shabby and seedy? He's certainly settling into a regular clodhopper. He shuffled along like a hecker to-night. I don't believe he ever has his ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... made you send that telegram? It spoiled my breakfast, and sent me off in a tearing hurry, to find Margery perfectly well. If she'd been seedy or anything I should have been delighted, but there she was, busy about her dresses and what not, and I dare say she thought me a lunatic for coming at that time in the morning. You shouldn't get ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at the great northern door of the cathedral. In reply to the rap of our knuckles at the huge portals, it slowly swung back on its hinges, and a grim, surly-looking face appeared. The figure which belonged to the face was clad in a rusty and seedy black robe, from beneath which a hand was thrust forth, and the words, "two-pence each," sounded harshly on our ears. Two-pence each was accordingly paid, and then the surly janitor, or verger, as he is called, admitted us within the building. In a moment ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... perplex, Which came into my Edd. I dreamed I sor three Waits A playing of their tune, At Pimlico Palace gates, All underneath the moon. One puffed a hold French horn, And one a hold Banjo, And one chap seedy and torn A Hirish pipe did blow. They sadly piped and played, Dexcribing of their fates; And this was what they said, Those three pore ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and excellent vegetable; let them be peeled, split them, and remove the seedy part; boil them in hot water with salt, and when done, eat them with a bit ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... the town from this seedy chariot; but the driver, surly with sleep, opened one eye and one corner of his mouth just enough to inform him that the next "run" was not due ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... stray grain and peas that fall from the hands of farmers and dealers examining samples on market days. Presently, two constables come across carrying a heavy, clumsy box between them. They unlock a door, and take the box upstairs into the hall over the pillars. After them saunters a seedy man, evidently a clerk, with a rusty black bag; and after him again—for the magistrates' Clerk's clerk must have his clerk—a boy ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... a large, seedy-looking man, with the resigned, unexpectant manner of the deaf. Dysart went around the wagon, and the ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... seedy, empty of pocket but full of hope, and little suppers were given in dingy coffeehouses where success to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... I see, and what's not wanted I neither see nor perceive! There! Mother Matryna has also been young. I had to know a thing or two to live with my old fool. I know seventy-and-seven dodges. But I see your old man's quite seedy, quite seedy! How's one to live with such as him? Why, if you pricked him with a hayfork it wouldn't fetch blood. See if you don't bury him before the spring. Then you'll need some one in the house. Well, what's wrong with my son? He'll do as well as another. Then ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... in poetry, let's have it in prose. Boys, pay more attention to your manners than to your moustache; keep your conduct as neat as your neck-tie, polish your language as well as your boots; remember, moustache grows grey, clothes get seedy, and boots wear out, but honor, virtue and integrity will be as bright and fresh when you totter with old age as when your mother first ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... Genteel! Why at one time he is a hack author—writes reviewals for eighteenpence a page—edits a Newgate chronicle. At another he wanders the country with a face grimy from occasionally mending kettles; and there is no evidence that his clothes are not seedy and torn, and his shoes down at the heel; but by what process of reasoning will they prove that he is no gentleman? Is he not learned? Has he not generosity and courage? Whilst a hack author, does he pawn the books entrusted to him to review? Does he break his word to his publisher? Does he write ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... Neill that my mother could never die happy if she had not seen Lincoln. He took in our names to the President, who told him to bring us in. We entered the room in which the Cabinet usually met—and there, before the fire, stood the tall, gaunt form attired in a seedy frock-coat, with his long hair unkempt, and his thin face the very picture of distress. "How is Mrs. Lincoln?" inquired my mother. "Oh," said the President, "I have not seen her since seven o'clock this morning; Tad, how is your mother?" ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... swindlers coming up and swearing they knew you when you were abroad, affable and doubtful people of all sorts and conditions begging and truckling for your notice. But not you: you turn away, you walk your seedy mill round, you must go the dullest way. Now here, I beg of you, the next adventure that offers itself, embrace it in with both your arms; whatever it looks, grimy or romantic, grasp it. I will do the like; the devil is in it, but at least we shall have fun; and each in turn we shall ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... struck me before, that if I could obtain the services of a few men acquainted with the ways of white men, and who could induce other good men to join the expedition I was organizing, I might consider myself fortunate. More especially had I thought of Seedy Mbarak Mombay, commonly called "Bombay," who though his head was "woodeny," and his hands" clumsy," was considered to be the "faithfulest" ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... complaint that men ketches—that gambling," said Jerry; "and when they've got it, they gives it to others, who have it worse. I've no call to talk, for I've been bad enough. How precious white and seedy young Mark looks! Anyone would think he had been up to some game of his own. Every time I opened the door he give quite a jump in his chair, and, though he laughed it off, he's as nervous as nerves. Wants to win, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... I shall be a seedy old bachelor! That would never do! And Amy Ashe, whom I have had in my eye ever since she was in pinafores, will be married to ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... almost more uncomfortable to be asleep than to be awake. We persuaded the two German soldiers to sit together as that made a little more room, and they soon went to sleep on each other's shoulders, their rifles between their knees. I was still feverish and seedy and could not sleep, but watched the beautiful starry sky, and meditated upon many things. We passed through Tirlemont, and I thought of my poor nurse and wished I could get out and see what she was doing. Then I began ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... The prisoner reserved his defence. He has been seedy, however; principally sick of the family evil, despondency; the sun is gone out utterly; and the breath of the people of this city lies about as a sort of damp, unwholesome fog, in which we go walking with bowed hearts. If I understand what is a contrite spirit, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came back to his polo and shad. One day a well set up, affable, cool young man disturbed him at his club, and he and O'Roon were soon pounding each other and exchanging opprobrious epithets after the manner of long-lost friends. O'Roon looked seedy and out of luck and perfectly contented. But it seemed that ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... of lair or nest, very soft and comfortable, was thus made ready for our religious humbug, just as he wanted it worst; for in these days he was but seedy. He heard something of Pierson, I don't know how; and on the 5th of May, 1832, he called on him. Very quickly the poor fellow recognized the long-bearded prophetical humbug as all that he claimed to be—a possessor and teacher of all ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... turning into a confirmed roue! I guess I'll have to mind myself, though. Even Carruthers detached his mind far enough from his editorial desk and the hope of exclusively publishing the news of the Gray Seal's capture in the MORNING NEWS-ARGUS, to tell me I was looking seedy. It's wonderful the way a little paint will metamorphose a man! Well, anyway, here's for a good hot tub ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... senate, which paid him six dollars per day; then I hired a man for one hundred dollars per month to do the work!" His mischievously extravagant description of Mark Twain at this time is eminently worthy of record "He was arrayed in a seedy suit which hung upon his lean frame in bunches, with no style worth mentioning. A sheaf of scraggly, black hair leaked out of a battered, old, slouch hat, like stuffing from an ancient Colonial sofa, and an ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... in the pictures—but these illusions vanished when later years brought their disenchanting wisdom. They learned then that the stagecoach is but a poor, plodding, vulgar thing in the solitudes of the highway; and that the pirate is only a seedy, unfantastic "rough," when he is out of ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... his prosperity, as he rested on his oars off the town-landing and dreamed of a day when, by purchasing a horse-boat, he would deprive the official ferry of its only source of revenue, and close all competition, a seedy-looking man in a frayed overcoat stepped down the slipway and ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... worse injustice if he married her. Why should he marry her if he doesn't want to, and if she doesn't want it? There she is, perfectly content and happy with her baby. It's been a little seedy lately, but it's absolutely sound. A very fine baby indeed, and Essy knows it. There's ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... predecessors as a receptacle for cast-off clothing. Malone, Lockley, and Evans, had thus disposed of their discarded apparel, and Drury Bond and one or two other miners had also added to the treasures that caught the eye of the inquisitive Digger. It was a museum of sartorial curiosities—seedy and ripped broadcloth coats, vests, and pants, flannel mining-shirts of gay colors and of different degrees of wear and tear, linen shirts that looked like battle-flags that had been through the war, and old shoes and boots of all sorts, from the high ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... with actors of all ages, some smartly dressed, others seedy-looking and down at heel. They stood chatting idly in little groups, thronged the doors of managers' offices and dramatic agencies, promenaded up and down with self-conscious strut. If some were seedy, all looked sanguine and happy. Actors ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... news at last. Mr. Perkupp has got an appointment for Lupin, and he is to go and see about it on Monday. Oh, how my mind is relieved! I went to Lupin's room to take the good news to him, but he was in bed, very seedy, so I resolved to keep it ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... Another seedy one softly explained to him that he was a fellow countryman from Indiana. Gordon ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... of women, who know nothing about the business, and spend the whole day gossiping and flirting—"love-shops," I call 'em. There was a yellow-haired lady manageress who never heard you when you spoke to her, 'cause she was always trying to hear what some seedy old fool would be whispering to her across the counter. Then there were waitresses, and their notion of waiting was to spend an hour talking to a twopenny cup of coffee, and to look haughty and insulted whenever anybody as really wanted something ventured to ask for it. A frizzle-haired cashier ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... ten or more years ago, wasn't it, Latrobe? We happened to be on the committee for awarding a prize story, and Poe had sent in his 'Manuscript in a Bottle' among others. It would have broken your hearts, gentlemen, to have seen him. His black coat was buttoned up close to his chin—seedy, badly worn—he himself shabby and down at the heels, but erect and extremely courteous—a most pitiable object. My servant wasn't going to let him in at first, he looked so ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... I dutifully submitted, but even port was powerless to keep me well at Oxford. I always felt "seedy"; and the nervous worry inseparable from a time of spiritual storm and stress (for four of my most intimate friends seceded to Rome) told upon me more than I knew. An accidental chill brought things to a climax, and during the Christmas vacation of 1874 ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... woman, or vanithee, had got the pot of water warmed, in which Jemmy was made to put his feet. She then stripped up her arms to the elbows, and, with soap and seedy meal, affectionately bathed his legs and feet: then, taking the praskeen, or coarse towel, she wiped them with a kindness which thrilled to ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... the office last week, a little bent and seedy, but all in a glow and trembling with excitement in the old way. Told me he was President of the Klondike Exploring, Gold Prospecting and Immigration Company, with a capital of ten millions. I guessed that he was the ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... President of the United States some day, and you'll be in jail." But Model Harry sat around all his life being a model. I believe Mr. Webster defines a model as a small imitation of the real thing. Harry certainly was a successful model. He became a seedy, sleepy, helpless relic at forty. He was "perfectly lovely" because he hadn't the energy to be anything else. It was the boys who had the hustle and the energy, who occasionally needed bumping—and ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... lashes; his hair was thin and very fine in colour and texture, strangely like that of a yellow cat; and face, neck, and nose were mottled with patches of small purple veins. To-day he was dressed in a long seedy black coat, a short seedy black vest, and a pair of now moleskins, glaringly white, and much too ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... mean my clothes," said James. "Well, this suit and overcoat are pretty fair, but if I were a benefactor I should be wearing seedy clothes, and have my wallet stuffed ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... and in a few days told me that if I called upon Mr. Sands Cox, at his house in Temple Row, some morning early, that gentleman would give me a letter introducing me to the great Leamington physician. I accordingly presented myself as directed, and was shown, by a somewhat seedy-looking old woman—who evidently looked upon me with considerable suspicion—into a small room in the front of the house, where, seated at a writing-table, I found the ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... out of the little taverne at Beaumont, to start—as we fondly supposed—for Brussels, it was pitch dark in the square of the forlorn little town. With us the polite and pleasant fiction that we were guests of the German authorities had already worn seedy, not to say threadbare, but Lieutenant Mittendorfer persisted in keeping the little romance alive. For, as you remember, we had been requested—requested, mind you, and not ordered—to march to the ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... II.—Greengrocer's yard at side of a seedy house in a shabby street, slimy and straw-bestrewn. Yard is paved with lumpy, irregular cobbles, and some sooty and shaky-looking sheds stand at the bottom thereof. Enter together, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... demanded the handglass, gave one look at myself, and I was inclined to let it slide off the bed to the floor, a la Camille, only Amelie would not have seen the joke. I did look old and seedy. But what of that? Of course Amelie does not know yet that I am like the "Deacon's One Hoss Shay"—I may look dilapidated, but so long as I do not absolutely drop apart, I ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... expressive of affection, they are difficult to pack into a parcel of any regular shape, they are hard to crack, even in room doors, and they are oily when cracked; yet I feel that they are appropriate to Miss Shepherd. Soft, seedy biscuits, also, I bestow upon Miss Shepherd; and oranges innumerable. Once, I kiss Miss Shepherd in the cloak-room. Ecstasy! What are my agony and indignation next day, when I hear a flying rumour that the Misses Nettingall ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... a seedy-looking fellow over whose whole appearance was written the word "worthless," swung a lantern so that the light fell on a pad of paper before him. Pencil in hand, he took off the message as ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... a very seedy looking overcoat which I wrapped about me. Having deposited my hat inside the cab, I turned up the collar, drew in my chin and began surreptitiously to circle the devious paths leading to a side entrance of the grounds. My heart was palpitating, for the authorities had threatened ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... dreaming she would think any more about it. A fortnight afterwards, suddenly there's a tremendous hullabaloo. You began it. Oh, I know it was natural enough, but you did begin it. You see the child looking pale and seedy, and say at once, "something on her mind." Well, I don't know, and she might have been such a little idiot as to take a chance word au grand serieux; it might have been something else on her mind; or she mightn't have had anything on her mind at all. Anyway, she tells you a long ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... old piano. Victor began to pour the tea. He had a neat way of doing it, and today he was especially solicitous. "This Scotch mist gets into one's bones, doesn't it? I thought you were looking rather seedy when ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... treat respectfully. No one divines a man's or woman's social status quicker or more unerringly than a servant. The attendant saw at once that the man did not belong to the class which paid social visits to tenants in the Astruria. He was rather seedy-looking, his collar was not immaculate, his boots were thick and clumsy, ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... was very cold, although it had been very warm during the day. They had all been drilling hard, and were dog-tired. One of the men was evidently very seedy. He complained of a sick headache, and he ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... eagerness to buy. That was his stern duty in the second-hand department. But there had been so many occasions on which he had never done his duty; times when he was tempted to actual defiance of it, when a wistful calculating look in the eyes of some seedy scholar would knock all the moral fibre out of him, and a two and sixpenny book would go for ninepence or a shilling. And such was his conception of loyalty to Rickman's, that he generally paid for these excesses out of his own pocket, so that conscience ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... at Robin anxiously. "I say, old chap, this place is getting on your nerves; always being here is bad for you. Why don't you come up to town or go abroad? You're seedy." ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... and sinking his voice; "never talk of what you hear of gentlemen, except you wish to bring them to their last dying speech and confession. But come with me, my lad; there is a tavern hard by, and we may as well discuss matters over a pint of wine. You look cursed seedy, to be sure; but I can tell Bill the waiter—famous fellow, that Bill!—that you are one of my tenants, come to complain of my steward, who has just distrained you for rent, you dog! No wonder you look so worn in the rigging. Come, follow me. I can't walk with thee. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... door-post of a house in Farringdon Street, not far from the Circus, stood in those days a small brass plate, announcing that the "Ludgate News Rooms" occupied the third and fourth floors, and that the admission to the same was one penny. We were a seedy company that every morning crowded into these rooms: clerks, shopmen, superior artisans, travellers, warehousemen—all of us out of work. Most of us were young, but with us was mingled a sprinkling of elder men, and these ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... an English lawyer, the case is altogether different. We have specimens of the respectable devil in the "long-legged bondholder" who appears to his unfortunate Dutch debtor; the portly, well-dressed little man in the "Gentleman in black"; and the seedy looking old clothes dealer of "Peter Schlemihl." Quite a different devil to any of these is the devil that interviews St. Nicholas, the devil whom St. Medard circumvented, or the simple-minded and unfortunate devil that fell into the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... said earnestly, "I'm going off to St. Moritz next week to have a look at the Cresta; I wish you'd have a nurse. Drummond will run in and give an eye to you, of course; but you're pretty seedy, and that's a fact. I don't like leaving ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... Constantly employed in creeping into small holes, and daubing themselves with honey, they often lose all the bright feathers and silky plumes which once so beautifully adorned their bodies, and assume a smooth and almost black appearance; just as the hat of the thievish loafer, acquires a "seedy" aspect, and his garments, a shining and threadbare look. Dzierzon is of opinion that the black bees which Huber describes, as being so bitterly persecuted by the rest, are nothing more than these thieving bees. I call them old convicts, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... wad of cries that would float the Maine, and I was sore for fair. A fat fellow cut into the argument, and some one soaked him in the eye, and then, as they say in Texas, "there was three minutes rough house." In the general bustle a seedy looking man pinched the Fresh Air Fund, box and all. You know I'm not much for the bat cave, and to avoid such after-complications as patrol wagons and things, I blew the bunch and started up street. I guess the wind must have been against me, ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... poplars, allowed a near approach, as if curious to see me. Farther on, a broad-shouldered wildcat showed himself, coming out of a grove, and crossing the river on a flood-jamb of logs, halting for a moment to look back. The bird-like tamias frisked about my feet everywhere among the pine-needles and seedy grass-tufts; cranes waded the shallows of the river-bends, the kingfisher rattled from perch to perch, and the blessed ouzel sang amid the spray of every cascade. Where may lonely wanderer find a more interesting family of mountain-dwellers, earth-born companions ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... how it happened in that case that the professor should look so seedy. A genius appreciated so highly ought to have brought in more ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... gambling hall one night. The place was crowded, I remember, and we was all tryin' to make our fortunes on the high card. Some of us was dead broke, but them that hadn't the stuff borrowed from them that had, sure of better luck next time. They was all so deep in the game that none of 'em noticed a seedy-lookin' chap who come in, kinder quiet like, and set down to the faro table and began to play. I guess I was the only one who noticed him, and at first, I couldn't make him out, but after a bit, I remembered him as 'Unlucky Pete.' That man had a history. When I first saw him, some eight or ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... upon the table. Gilray trotted in upon the signal so rapidly and noiselessly, that he might have been one of those convenient genii in the Eastern fables, only that the little clerk's appearance, from the tips of his ink-stained fingers to the toes of his seedy boots, was so hopelessly prosaic that it was impossible to picture him as anything ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "You look seedy this morning, Mr. Weston," said Williams, as George entered the office on the following day. "The effect of last night's dissipation, I suppose. How did you ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... the great square chimney projected its nicked bulk from among loosened bricks scattered on the shingles; and from knife-gnawed "deacon-seat" on the porch to window-blind, dangling from one hinge on the broad gable, the old structure was seedy indeed. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... said, biting the words savagely. "I was sick at the time. I'd had a go of malaria and was as weak as a kitten. The place was empty, and only Leh Shin was in the house, and whether he gave me a stronger dose, or whether I was too seedy to stand my usual quantity, I can't tell you, but ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... rat-faced, dark-eyed fellow who was introduced to me as Mr. Lestrade, and who came three or four times in a single week. One morning a young girl called, fashionably dressed, and stayed for half an hour or more. The same afternoon brought a grey-headed, seedy visitor, looking like a Jew pedlar, who appeared to me to be much excited, and who was closely followed by a slip-shod elderly woman. On another occasion an old white-haired gentleman had an interview with my companion; and on another a railway porter in his ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... She's been seedy all day, and the sight of that cake finished her off. I don't wonder. It's enough to upset a strong man. Let's ring for Nanna to ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... fact that I felt highly flattered at the appointment as his private secretary, I was naturally prepared to accept him as a hero. With my strict English ideas as to the class of clothes to be worn by a prominent man, there was nothing in Edison's dress to impress me. He wore a rather seedy black diagonal Prince Albert coat and waistcoat, with trousers of a dark material, and a white silk handkerchief around his neck, tied in a careless knot falling over the stiff bosom of a white shirt somewhat the worse for wear. He had a large wide-awake hat of the sombrero pattern then generally ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... seedy lounger about our office had carefully taken down the cipher telegram addressed to Burkhill, I was indignant, for it was well known that one of the most important duties which the telegraph companies insist upon ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... perhaps for the extreme frenzy of the proceedings. They hurry in a frenzy up the back-stairs about 1.25, and they pace up and down in a frenzy till half-past one. There are all sorts of bears, most of them rather seedy old bears, with shaggy and unkempt coats. These are solicitors' clerks, and they all come straight out of DICKENS. They have shiny little private-school handbags, each inherited, no doubt, through a long line of ancestral solicitors' clerks; and they all have the draggled sort of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... went out at midday without a hat—just the sort of thing Armine would do—went out diggin' for antiquities, and got a touch of the sun. I don't think it's serious. But there's no doubt he's damned seedy." ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... off all our gold and silver, which eviscerates the banks; the banks squeeze the merchants, to the last drop of blood; and the merchants perish in the process, carrying with them hosts of mechanics, farmers, and professional men.—Not so, bellows a fourth philosopher, perhaps a little more seedy than the rest; it is all the work of "the infernal credit system,"—of the practice of making money out of that which is only a promise to pay money,—out of that which purports to have a real equivalent in some vault, when no such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... front of him, on the footpath, a man wrapped in a seedy overcoat was walking, with downcast eyes, and with such an air of dejection that Frederick, as he passed, turned aside to have a better look at him. The other raised his head. It was Deslauriers. He hesitated. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... critically; then he stepped back quickly to the door, and knelt by the threshold. The tiny, unobtrusive piece of thread, that must break if the door were opened by but that fraction of an inch, was still intact. No one, then, had been here since last, as Smarlinghue, the seedy, drug-wrecked artist, he had left the place the day before; for, on entering, he had already satisfied himself that the French window had not ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... ought, Jamie," said Mary, laughing; and then, looking at him, with sudden feeling: "But how seedy you look!" ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... temptation to uncover. Boots came second in rank, but twelfth or so in number,—weight probably on a par with the leaded brogans of the little wind-driven poetaster of old. Between these two extremes might be found about five feet ten of humanity, lank, sapless, and stooping. The seedy drapery of the figure hung in lean, reproachful wrinkles. The flabby trousers seemed to say: "Give! give!" The hollow waistcoat murmured: "Pad, oh! pad me with hot biscuits!" The loose coat swung and sighed for forbidden fruit: "Fill me with fat!" A dry, coppery face found ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... I don't believe he's fainted for the want of wittles!" cried the cabman. "They keeps up till they drop, sometimes, these seedy swells—walks about, lookin' like so many Dossays, on a hempty stomach. Here, some one bring a plate o' cold meat, and look sharp ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... lives of other writers, because this was his one way of accounting for his want of success. He did not write books, to be sure. He only wrote poetical advertisements. But they were printed and paid for, and this gave him a sort of prestige among his less lucky friends. He was seedy; only moderately clean, and wholly unshaven, thus avoiding, by one happy invention, both soap and the barber. Fierce he was to look at, with his rugged beard and eyebrows, and fierce in his resentment of the world's ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... often have—in his seedy coat, his old-fashioned spectacles on the tip of his nose, one would have taken him for a country advocate whose wildest dreams were of a practice of two thousand thalers a year, with an old gig and wheezy mare to haul him around the country side from client to ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... taboo is still effective. On the platform before he arrived there were three A.P.M.'s bustling about and chasing away the few spectators. As the train came into the station one of them ran up to me and said, 'Are you the interpreter on duty? Well, there's a seedy-looking chap over there, who seems up to no good. Go and tell him from me that if he doesn't clear out immediately I'll have him arrested.' I did so. 'Arrest me!' said the man. 'Why, I'm the special commissaire de police ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... seedy," he said, in a stronger voice with a new note in it, "but I'm not going to faint. I'm quite well able to go upstairs. I'd rather lie down on my own bed, if ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... bald block, the Washington Monument, and opposite what was of more importance to us, a drove of beeves putting beef on their bones in the seedy grounds of the Smithsonian Institution, we were halted while the New Jersey brigade—some three thousand of them—trudged by, receiving the complimentary fire of our line as they passed. New Jersey is not so far from New York but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... fide players; men of stamp and rank—none of your seedy legs who have only what they can cheat you out of.'—'Ah!'—'And besides,' he added, 'you may often form friendships here that lead to fortune hereafter. I do not mean in play, because there is no necessity for ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have sufficient acquaintance with the language to check and reject Halliwell's amazing classification. ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Mr. Morgan met me at Calais, and told me to wait at Dunkirk, as everyone was quitting Furnes. One of our poor nurses was killed, and the Joos' little house was much damaged. I stopped at Mrs. Clitheroe's flat, very glad to be ill in peace after my seedy condition in London and a bad crossing. Rested quietly all Sunday in the flat by myself. It is an empty, bare little place, with neither carpets nor curtains, but there is something home-like about it, the result, I think, of having an open fire in ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... him good. I thought he was a little seedy in the spring —didn't you? Wonderful man! And when I think how he's slandered and abused it makes me hot. And he never says anything, never complains, lives up there all alone, and takes his medicine. That's real patriotism, according to my view. He could retire to-morrow —but ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... asked the master to let me go with him to help to carry back his bedding and parcels. We went from shop to shop until he had got everything on his list; last of all he visited a draper and bought cloth. On getting back to the ship he was tapped on the shoulder by a seedy looking fellow who was waiting for him, and who said, 'You are my prisoner.' The man started and his face grew white. I thought it strange he did not ask what he was a prisoner for. 'Will you go quietly ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... man had a coat with frogged buttons that must have been intended to have a military air when it was new, but which was now much the worse for wear. The coat was so odd as to have caught young Talbot's attention at once. And the man's hat was old and seedy. But there was a look about him as though he were by no means ashamed either of himself or of his present purpose. "He came in a gig," said Talbot to his friend; "for I saw the horse standing at the gate, and the man sitting ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... Harvest-Sunday he could kiss and caress the bright faced little children he had helped bring into the world as fondly as a young mother. There, too, was the schoolmaster, with his ruddy face and his seedy clothes, ready to do his part in making Harvest-Sunday pass pleasantly, for indeed the crop was a matter of importance with him. And there was Titus Bright, for the merry little inn-keeper would have considered such ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... distant manner was that Mr. Temple, though a rich man according to his own account, had a somewhat seedy look. The squire was afraid he intended to ask for help on the score of old friendship. It was with a hesitating voice, ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... crape bonnet when Sing-Sing Tommy killed her husband at Baldy Johnson's wake last spring. The "Last Chance" had found a "clay casing" and knew they were "right on the ledge"—consequence, "feet" that went begging yesterday were worth a brick house apiece to-day, and seedy owners who could not get trusted for a drink at any bar in the country yesterday were roaring drunk on champagne to-day and had hosts of warm personal friends in a town where they had forgotten how to bow or shake hands from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... however much you may admire it. Have the courage to speak your mind when it is necessary that you should do so, and hold your tongue when it is better you should be silent. Have the courage to speak to a poor friend in a seedy coat, even in the street, and when a rich one is nigh. The effort is less than many people take it to be, and the act is worthy of a king. Have the courage to admit that you have been in the wrong, ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... the "hotel" office. There were rows of chairs in front of the windows and along the walls, and in the chairs were the queerest-looking lot of men he had ever seen. He didn't pay any attention to them, though, but went up to the seedy individual behind the desk, and asked him if he could get a bed for the night. "Sure, Mike," the man replied, and Archie signed his name in a dirty book with torn pages. He paid the man ten cents, and asked if he could leave his bundle while ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... in the United States, and he looked like nothing so much as a seedy Evangelical parson. Hair, face, beard, all bore the same distinguishing qualities, were long and thin and yellow. He sat coiled like a much-knotted piece of string, and he seemed to possess the power of moving any joint in his body independently of the rest. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... the Ramsbottoms," said Jimmy. "Old Lady Ramsbottom was taken ill. She sent for Sybil yesterday, as people do when they're seedy, you know. Won't you come in?" ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... off early the next morning, the 11th, our destination being Lubuagan, the capital of the Kalinga country. We had a long, hard day before us. As I was about to mount, I noticed that Doyle, Mr. Forbes's groom, looked seedy, and learned that Bubud had broken loose in the night and gone the rounds of the herd, kicking every animal in it before he could be caught, and so robbing poor Doyle of a good part of his sleep. After riding a bit through the pines, the ground apparently dropped off in front of us out ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... heedless, inexperienced youth, suddenly cast without guide or Mentor upon the ocean of life, and striking in turn against all the shoals that strew the perilous waters. He had been bubbled by gentlemanly swindlers—none of your low, seedy rapscallions, but men of style and fashion, even of family, but especially of honour, who would have paraded and shot him, had he presumed to doubt their word, but made no scruple of genteelly picking his pocket. He had been duped by designing women, spunged upon by false friends, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... they will all be very seedy to-morrow," she croaked to Mr. Smith, whose asceticism seemed to have been left at home on this occasion. "Surely they are bursting by ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... in a small way, there are at least new dresses and bonnets and every-day luxuries which we can dispense with. If the young Zouave of the family looks smart in his new uniform, its respectable head is content, though he himself grow seedy as a caraway-umbel late in the season. He will cheerfully calm the perturbed nap of his old beaver by patient brushing in place of buying a new one, if only the Lieutenant's jaunty cap is what it should be. We all take a pride in sharing the epidemic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... looking a little seedy before he went. Well, well, that's too bad. Right in the May trade, too. Is ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... must not be dried too hard; if too much moisture is removed they will not resume their original form when soaked in water. But the material must be dried sufficiently or it will mold. Haven't you often tasted extremely seedy dried berries? They were dried until they rattled. Stop the drying as soon as the berries fail to stain the ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... be the impersonation of Venice. There are the long, slender and rather delicately-cut features terminating in a long, narrow and somewhat protruding chin; the high cheek-bones, the lank and sombre cheeks, the high nose, the dark bright eye under its bushy brow. He is very thin, very seedy, and evidently very poor. But he salutes you, as you take your seat beside him, with the air of an ex-member of "The Ten;" his ancient hat and napless coat are carefully brushed; his outrageously high shirt-collar and voluminous unstarched neckcloth, after the fashion of a former generation, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... in the morning he walked into the lobby of his future workshop, and found no one yet there but two aged seedy messengers. He was shown into a waiting-room, and there he remained for a couple of hours, during which every clerk in the establishment came to have a look at him. At last he was ushered into the ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... necessary money to replace his very seedy clothes for something better, and the young man started away. It was a walk of more than two hundred miles, but youth and enthusiasm count such a tramp as an enjoyable trifle. Froebel wore his seedy clothes ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... everything for several minutes, and my friend tells me I rolled about as if very faint and weak. He also informs me that the first thing I did was to fall against him, asking if I looked seedy. He most wisely answered, "No, you look very well." I don't think he thought so, for his own face was as white as a ghost; I recollect this much. He tells me my face was of a greenish-yellow color. After walking ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... condemned Pyrot were not, properly speaking, judges but soldiers. The judges who had condemned Colomban were real judges, but of inferior rank, wearing seedy black clothes like church vergers, unlucky wretches of judges, miserable judgelings. Above them were the superior judges who wore ermine robes over their black gowns. These, renowned for their knowledge and doctrine, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... him! We can say we only saw a hat," and immediately scraping up with his foot a quantity of hay-seed, he liberally sprinkled the seedy hat. It ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... while longer, Bud decided to telephone Morris's home. But at that moment a thin, seedy-looking man came into the lounge. His close-set eyes and loudly striped suit combined to give him ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... the beginning. After that he held on for a while, breaking the bread of life to a skedaddling flock, and then he bolted. The next known of him, three years later, he enlisted in your regiment, a smart but seedy recruit, smelling strongly ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... coming out of children bearing school satchels. A gentleman with semi-military air, wearing his hat somewhat jauntily on top of a bloated face and figure, met them as he emerged from a side street, and, paternally patting their heads, called them 'little dears;' and, from his seedy dress and unoccupied manner, it was not hard to perceive that he must still be unsuccessful in his search after the employment ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... upon the head of a certain sad-faced, seedy-looking young fellow in the piazza, or square, beneath, descended a rattling shower of bonbons, thrown by the hand of the speaker, a brown-faced Venetian ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... some months afterwards, a seedy-looking individual called at Portland Place with a ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... perfectly as it should be played; but she tries to do her best, and is quite respectable. Nobody else plays any part with common decency. But then the scenery is good; the Scottish nobility look sufficiently hungry and seedy, and MOLLENHAUER is superb." ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various |
