"Showy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... retiring into corners to listen to its ticking: so the young man exulted over his new delight; felt in his waistcoat pocket to see that it was safe; wound it up at nights, and at the very first moment of waking hugged it and looked at it.—By the way, that first watch of Pen's was a showy ill-manufactured piece: it never went well from the beginning, and was always getting out of order. And after putting it aside into a drawer and forgetting it for some time, he swapped it finally away for a more ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... reflected with my self on this unaccountable Humour in Woman-kind, of being smitten with every thing that is showy and superficial; and on the numberless Evils that befall the Sex, from this light, fantastical Disposition. I my self remember a young Lady that was very warmly sollicited by a Couple of importunate Rivals, who, for several Months together, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... research. It is that corruption, introduced by certain immethodical aphorisming eclectics, who, dismissing not only all system, but all logical connection, pick and choose whatever is most plausible and showy; who select, whatever words can have some semblance of sense attached to them without the least expenditure of thought; in short whatever may enable men to talk of what they do not understand, with a careful avoidance of every thing that might ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... trimmed. Then he plants a few easily grown and tended vegetables, such as lettuce, parsley, string beans, carrots, spinach, crookneck squash, tomatoes, and corn. Around these, like a border, he plants showy annuals like zinnias, cosmos, calendula, marigolds and so forth. His garden is a colorful, attractive spot. He has vegetables for the table and plenty of flowers for cutting. The latter preclude any argument over whether his garden pays ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... and frost-blackened landscape, and the wayfarers, as if keenly alive to the discomforts of all without, were seen everywhere hurrying forward to reach those comforts within which were heralded in the cheerful gleams that shot from many a window, when a showy and conspicuous mansion, in the environs of Boston, was observed to be lighted up to an extent, and with a brilliancy, that betokened the advent of some ambitious display on the part of the bustling inmates. Carriages from different parts of the city were successively arriving, discharging ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... morning wore on, the tents assumed a more brilliant appearance. Men, who had lounged about in smock frocks and leather leggings, came out in silken vests and hats and plumes, as jugglers or mountebanks. Black-eyed gypsy girls, hooded in showy handkerchiefs, sallied forth to tell fortunes. The dancing dogs, the stilts, the little lady and the tall man and all the other attractions, with organs out of number, and bands innumerable, emerged from the corners in which they ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... dropped back with relief into the old routine of the office, and the renewal of this daily activity had served as a link with his former self. Then there had been the pleasurable excitement of choosing a showy grey stepper for May's brougham (the Wellands had given the carriage), and the abiding occupation and interest of arranging his new library, which, in spite of family doubts and disapprovals, had been carried out as he had dreamed, with a dark embossed paper, Eastlake book-cases ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... conflagration of the dry moss and twigs, there remains behind a deep-rooted and consuming fire in the very entrails of the tree. The resin of the pitch-pine is principally condensed at the base of the bole and in the spreading roots. Thus, after the light, showy, skirmishing flames, which are only as the match to the explosion, have already scampered down the wind into the distance, the true harm is but beginning for this giant of the woods. You may approach the tree from one side, and see it, scorched ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was, had not merely slipped into parliament, but was now, it seemed, on the point of securing office! A little, swarthy, dry man he was, with big, round eyes, projecting cheekbones, and prominent chin. Ever dancing and chattering, he was gifted with a showy eloquence, all the force of which lay in his voice—a voice which at will became admirably powerful or gentle! And withal an insinuating man, profiting by every opportunity, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... He made the admiral sit down, with much courtesy and respect, and taking the crown from his own head, put it on that of the admiral; who, in return, took a string of curious glass beads of many colours, and very showy, from his own neck, and put it round the neck of Guacanagari, and also put on him a loose coat of fine cloth which he then happened to wear. He also sent for a pair of coloured buskins, which he caused him to draw on; and put on his finger a large silver ring, such as was worn by some of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... wait at the outposts until he was at leisure: then, having put his troops into the best possible order, with a phalanx[10] compact on every side to the eye, and the unarmed persons out of sight, he desired the heralds to be admitted. He marched out to meet them with the most showy and best-armed soldiers immediately around him, and when they informed him that they had come from the King with instructions to propose a truce, and to report on what conditions the Greeks would agree to it, Klearchus replied abruptly—"Well then—go ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... the baron's small lamp rather dim, Matamore bad gone out to the chariot and brought back two showy candelabra, which ordinarily did duty on the stage. They each held several candles, which, in addition to the warm radiance from the blazing fire, made quite a brilliant illumination in this room, so lately dark, cheerless, and deserted. It had ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... purchased, moreover, a handsome blue satin waistcoat, fancifully enough embroidered: —this was indeed something the worse for the service it had done, but 'twas clean scour'd;—the gold had been touch'd up, and upon the whole was rather showy than otherwise;—and as the blue was not violent, it suited with the coat and breeches very well: he had squeez'd out of the money, moreover, a new bag and a solitaire; and had insisted with the fripier upon ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... it injured their horses' feet, but by alighting, and leading our horses over the worse parts, I did not perceive any bad effects from it. This tract of country produces some interesting plants; a splendid Calathamnus, with leaves nine inches long, and showy scarlet flowers, was found by my youngest son, and I ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... a king," fell upon willing ears, and appears to have been enforced by his tutors. A more powerful influence on the mind of the young prince than that of any of his tutors was exercised by John Stuart, Earl of Bute, his mother's chief friend and adviser. He was a fine showy man, vain of his handsome person, theatrical in his manners, pompous, slow and sententious in his speech. His private life was respectable; he had literary and scientific tastes, and a good deal of superficial knowledge. His abilities were small; he would, George's ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... judged by their conversation or by their writings, would be pronounced simpletons. Indeed, when a man possesses this tact, it is in some sense an advantage to him that he is destitute of those more showy talents which would make him an object of admiration, of envy, and of fear. Sidney was a remarkable instance of this truth. Incapable, ignorant, and dissipated as he seemed to be, he understood, or rather felt, with whom it was necessary to be reserved, and with whom he might safely venture to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... photoplay physician such a one? The boy and his half-sister are in their wedding-clothes in the big church. Pastor Manders is saying the ceremony. The audience and building are indeed showy. The doctor charges up the aisle at the moment people are told to speak or forever hold their peace. He has tact. He simply breaks up the marriage right there. He does not tell the guests why. But he takes the wedding party into ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... showy, but I hear that Benson thinks a lot of it," Walters went on. "It's a pity Monty takes it so badly, for the crew has come along immensely and with ordinary luck ought to make a ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... door was of new red tiles, and two large red pots held standard rose trees on either side of the stained-glass entrance. Anne rang the new bell which clanged loudly and followed the servant (a girl from a distance), to the showy drawing-room, chilly and unused in its atmosphere. It was the kind of house which impressed the country people by its "improvements," and at which Anne went to the side door to leave her butter. But she was so absorbed in her duty to the girl that she gave no ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... and new than this piece of architecture. The old, either delightful in its comfortable simplicity, or decorated with the noblest and most meaning art in the place; the modern, mean, miserable, uncomfortable, and showy, plastered about with wretched sham ornament, trumpery of cast-iron, and brass and polished steel, and what not—offensive to look at, and a nuisance to clean—and the whole thing huddled up with rubbish of ash-pan, and fender, and rug, till surely the hearths which we have been bidden so often ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... he had a decided objection to serve in any capacity but that of command. He did not appreciate the fun of losing the number of his mess as an obscure hero of the rank and file, though he would not mind sacrificing an arm, I do think, at the head of a charging column, provided that he had a showy uniform on, and that the fact of his valour was properly advertised in the despatches. He had an idea that would commend itself to Belcha's bushwhackers, but it was not entertained. It was to take passage with a few trusty men on the tug for San Sebastian when she was reported to be conveying specie ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Gaertner are large and handsomely colored, making a very showy grape. The plant is vigorous, productive and as hardy as any of the hybrids between Labrusca and Vinifera. In view of these qualities, Gaertner has not received the attention it deserves, probably because it is more capricious as to soils than some others of its related hybrids. As a market grape, ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... enveloped in Dutch gilding that I did not at first recognize an old acquaintance, but wondered what those golden crowns and images could be. There were likewise drums and other toys for small children, and a variety of showy and worthless articles for children of a larger growth; though it perplexed me to imagine who, in such a mob, could have the innocent taste to desire playthings, or the money to pay for them. Not that I have a right to license the mob, on my own knowledge, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... agreeable Friend; Love and Constancy, a good Wife or Husband. Where we meet one Person with all these Accomplishments, we find an hundred without any one of them. The World, notwithstanding, is more intent on Trains and Equipages, and all the showy Parts of Life; we love rather to dazzle the Multitude, than consult our proper Interest[s]; and, as I have elsewhere observed, it is one of the most unaccountable Passions of human Nature, that we are at greater Pains ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... indeed, endeavoured to comfort me in my vexation, by telling me, that perhaps these showy talkers were hardly able to pay every one his own; that he who has money in his pocket need not care what any man says of him; that, if I minded my trade, the time will come when lawyers and soldiers would be glad to borrow out of my purse; and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... elevate the moral nature of man. The horror which the sectaries felt for cards, Christmas ale, plum-porridge, mince-pies, and dancing bears excited his contempt. To the arguments urged by some very worthy people against showy dress he replied with admirable sense and spirit, "Let us not be found, when our Master calls us, stripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls and tongues. Alas! sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Heaven. China, 1751. A handsome, fast-growing tree, with large pinnate leaves that are often fully three feet long, and terminal erect clusters of not very showy greenish-white flowers that exhale a rather disagreeable odour. It is one of the most distinct and imposing of pinnate-leaved trees, and forms a neat specimen for the lawn or park. Light loam or a gravelly ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... distribution by the wind. Many of the species are favourite garden plants; among the best known is Anemone coronaria, often called the poppy anemone, a tuberous-rooted plant, with parsley-like divided leaves, and large showy poppy-like blossoms on stalks of from 6 to 9-in. high; the flowers are of various colours, but the principal are scarlet, crimson, blue, purple and white. There are also double-flowered varieties, in which the stamens in the centre are replaced ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... and gardens as gay and sunny beyond the Alps, and yet they would affect you far differently. You could not, as here, divest yourself of every particle of sad or serious thought and be content to gaze for hours on the showy scene, without an idea beyond the present moment. It must be that the spirit of ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... called the upper ranks of society. I wish them to rise, but I have no desire to transform them into gentlemen or ladies, according to the common acceptation of these terms. I desire for them not an outward and showy, but an inward and real change; not to give them new titles and an artificial rank, but substantial improvements and real claims to respect. I have no wish to dress them from a Parisian tailor's shop, or to teach them manners from a dancing-school. I have no desire to see them, at the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... encampment General Scott visited West Point, and reviewed the cadets. With his commanding figure, his quite colossal size and showy uniform, I thought him the finest specimen of manhood my eyes had ever beheld, and the most to be envied. I could never resemble him in appearance, but I believe I did have a presentiment for a moment that some day I should occupy his place on review—although I had no intention then ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... can't live without me, is trying to make love to me as he did in the old days before he got salt-and-peppery above the ears. And I'm blockhead enough to believe him. I'm like an old shoe, I suppose, comfortable but not showy. Yet it's the children we really have to think of. Our crazy old patch-work of the Past may be our own, but the Future belongs to them. There's a heap of good, though, in my humble-eyed old Dinky-Dunk, too much good ever to lose him, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... particular attraction for the large and ungrudging public which lives in villas. We have already several novelists who tell them very ably, and I feel that some one among them has served as Miss ELLA MACMAHON'S model. The tale deals with the affairs of a showy fickle cousin and a silent constant cousin who compete for the love of the same delightful if rather nebulous young woman, and moves to its denouement, against a background of the great War, which Miss MACMAHON has very sensibly decided to view entirely from the home front. It contains some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... American Cyclopaedia as a fair standard of stupidity—although the prejudice, perhaps, may arise rather from the irascibility of the few using it as a reference, than from the calm judgment of the many employing it to fill-out a showy book-case—then the newest and most American Cyclopaedist ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... and showy monument, standing, as we have said, in the most conspicuous spot of the cemetery, Sand's grave must be looked far in the corner to the extreme left of the entrance gate; and a wild plum tree, some leaves of which every passing traveller carries away, rises alone upon the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sort of a son to a mother whose life had held much bitterness grew and flourished. He had called her cold and selfish; but after all, her life was spent mostly in doing things for the betterment of others—as she interpreted the word. Showy, yes; but Jack told himself now that she certainly got away with it better than any woman he knew. And when it came to being cold and selfish, it struck Jack forcibly that he had been pretty much that way himself; that he had been just as fully occupied in playing with life as his ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... meet their shadows in the dark water, he swims ceaselessly about, sitting low, with black, glossy neck gracefully curved and displaying its delicate white markings. Sometimes he stretches himself wearily, flapping his wings, and displaying his white breast and the handsome, showy markings of his sides. Though wary and aloof, and without a trace of animation in his loud, penetrating cries, he shows his kinship by the scrupulous care with which he preens his handsome feathers—even lying ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... was a broad expanse of velvety turf, relieved occasionally, here and there, by such showy shrubs as the hydrangea, rhododendron, or lilac; but more frequently, and at closer intervals, by clumps of geraniums, or roses—roses of every variety. There was nothing pretentious in the garden, any more than there was in the adjoining edifice. Its unusually pleasing effect lay altogether ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... of achievement recognised and reputation established?" I asked. "To 'show' if you will, there isn't much, since his writing, mostly, isn't as fine, isn't certainly as showy, as his talk. Moreover two-thirds of his work are merely colossal projects and announcements. 'Showing' Frank Saltram is often a poor business," I went on: "we endeavoured, you'll have observed, to show him to-night! However, if he HAD lectured ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... a considerable distance, and that the crowd was everywhere large. They stopped for a minute or two in front of a booth of more pretensions than the generality. In front of it a man was beating a drum, and a negro walking up and down attired in showy garments. The drum ceased ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... herself as this honest woman bestowed upon her person. No dressmaker was ever so tormented as hers. Madame Rabourdin forgot nothing. She went herself to the stable where she hired carriages, and chose a coupe that was neither old, nor bourgeois, nor showy. Her footman, like the footmen of great houses, had the dress and appearance of a master. About ten on the evening of the eventful Tuesday, she left home in a charming full mourning attire. Her hair was dressed ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... however, be confessed, that if the chimnies smoke, they are usually surrounded by marble—that the unstable chair is often covered with silk—and that if a room be cold, it is plentifully decked with gilding, pictures, and glasses.—In short, a French house is generally more showy than convenient, and seldom conveys that idea of domestic comfort which constitutes the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... bold relief against the shabby wallpaper. This, however, he had tried to hide as much as possible by hanging the family portraits all round the room, some of them in solid ebony, others in gilt frames rather characteristic of this cheap, showy age. Even the space between the larger pictures he had tried to cover with small miniatures on ivory, and photographs. The young man had evidently done his best to surround himself by the portraits ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... stage well filled with tables covered with gorgeous dragon-be-decked draperies that reach the ground, and behind which useful assistants could be easily concealed. His own garments are roomy and his sleeves could contain a multitude of billiard balls and rabbits. But he gives a showy performance with clean bright articles, ending up occasionally, as I have seen, with the production of twelve large ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... a good husbandman, and a great friend of Thorbiorn, and Gudrid lived with him for a long time as a foster-daughter. There was a man named Thorgeir, who lived at Thorgeirsfell; he was very wealthy and had been manumitted; he had a son named Einar, who was a handsome, well-bred man, and very showy in his dress. Einar was engaged in trading-voyages from one country to the other, and had prospered in this. He always spent his winters alternately either ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... then consisted chiefly of one long street, parallel with the shore of the lake, and the houses, with very few exceptions, were built of wood; but they were all finished, and painted with such a degree of neatness, that their appearance was showy, and in some instances elegant, from the symmetry of their proportions. Immediately beyond the bounds of the village, we, for the first time, witnessed the operation of clearing up a thick cedar-swamp. The soil looked black and rich, but the water stood in pools, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... came in sight of Lucy's home, a straggling cottage which would have been improved by paint and the services of a carpenter. Both lacks were partially concealed by vines which climbed over its sagging porch, and tall rows of hollyhocks, generously screening with their showy beauty its weather-beaten sides. A girl was in the back yard chopping wood, a rather slatternly girl with disordered hair. Peggy descended on her briskly to ask if Lucy ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... cabinet, of ill news from abroad, and of violent discontents among the people. A deficient harvest had come, to increase the national murmurs; a season of peculiar inclemency had added its share to the public vexations; and I fully experienced the insufficiency of office, and of the showy honours of courts, to constitute happiness. But a new scene was reserved for me. Casual as my conversation with the secretary of state had been, it was not forgotten: it had been related to the minister; and it had so far coincided with the conceptions of a mind, which seemed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... the members of the family of Augustus, structures whose names, by a caprice of fate, now serve, though strangely altered, to designate miserable hamlets of Bedouins. He also probably saw Sebaste, a work of Herod the Great, a showy city, whose ruins would lead to the belief that it had been carried there ready made, like a machine which had only to be put up in its place. This ostentatious piece of architecture arrived in Judea by cargoes; these hundreds of columns, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... Then the high-street gay signs of triumph wore, Covered with showy cloths of different dye, Which deck the walls, while sylvan leaves in store, And scented herbs upon the pavement lie. Adorned is every window, every door, With carpeting and finest drapery; But more with ladies fair, and richly drest, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... inspirations of his moral life, made force of arms the merit most worthy of their rewards. The growth of the people in the mechanical arts took the direction of improving the instruments of warfare; the increase of refinement and humanity tended less to diminish war than to make it more civilized, showy, and glorious. The armies of the Romans seem prosaic when we turn to the brilliant array of chivalry, to the ranks of steel-clad knights couching the lance to win fame, the smile of woman, or the reward of religious devotion;—men to whom war seemed a grand tournament, in which each ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... attended by a lot of sons of pretty well-to-do men," Dave put in. "Our boys don't come from as wealthy families, so we have to be content with less of the showy things in life." ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... was right opposite the great, fanciful iron gates of the cemented residence. He could see the well-kept garden and the showy house from where he worked, and he frequently ceased his half hearted rapping at the tough stone to watch children playing on the lawn. He was particularly interested in a tall, 'severe-looking, fair-haired woman, who appeared on ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... Dot's enthusiasm for the beauties of the gully. She said it was pretty, certainly, but a bad place for Kangaroos, because there was no grass. For her part, she didn't think any sight in nature so lovely as a big plain, green with the little blades of new spring grass. The gully was very showy, but not to her mind so beautiful as ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... verse he would have every line sparkle; like a lady who puts on all her jewellery at once, immediately after breakfast. As his own brain never rests, he does not realise that there are other brains which feel fatigue; and as his own taste is for what is hard, ringing, showy, drenched with light, he does not leave any cool shadows to be a home for gentle sounds, in the whole of his work. His books are like picture galleries, in which every inch of wall is covered, and picture screams at picture across its narrow division of frame. Almost every ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... qualifications indispensable for the difficult situation of lady- superintendent over two children so singularly separated from all relatives whatever, were, in the first place, knowledge of the world, and integrity for keeping at a distance all showy adventurers that might else offer themselves, with unusual advantages, as suitors for the favor of two great heiresses; and, secondly, manners exquisitely polished. Looking to that last requisition, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to the doors; there was no longer any standing room and many were even sitting on the steps of the aisles. In the boxes the gentlemen were standing up behind the chairs of large plain ladies in showy toilets and diamonds. The atmosphere was heavy with the smell of gas, of plush upholstery, of wilting bouquets and of sachet. A fine vapour as of the visible exhalation of many breaths pervaded the house, blurring the lowered lights and dimming ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... conclusion that perhaps Thalassa had been impelled to his choice by the realization that she was as good-looking a wife as he could afford. Barrant reflected that women resembled horses in value. The mettlesome showy ones were bred to display their paces for rich men only. Serviceable hacks, warranted to work a lifetime, could not be expected to be ornamental as well as useful. So long as they pulled their burdens without jibbing overmuch, one ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... her hideous hat, looked pretty and refined in her white dress. She made a contrast to the showy Nancy and the Perkins girls. The boys, Jack and Tom Watson, looked at her with admiration, and Jack put a seat for Pauline between himself and ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... of the genus Geranium, with pink or purplish flowers. Various plants of the genus Pelargonium, native chiefly to southern Africa and widely cultivated for their rounded and showy clusters of red, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... two opposite sides of the musical world. Mickiewicz says, "Chopin talks with spirit, and gives us the Ariel view of the universe. Liszt is the eloquent tribune to the world of men, a little vulgar and showy certainly, but I like the tribune best." It is said here, that Madame S. has long had only a friendship for Chopin, who, perhaps, on his side prefers to be a lover, and a jealous lover; but she does not leave him, because he needs her care ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... older and more experienced she would have known that it was too gorgeous, the coloring too bright and garish, and the ornamentation over-showy. But to her childish eyes it all seemed ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... the male as a rule is dominant. Behold the showy catkins of the chestnuts, the butternuts, the hazelnuts, the willows, and other trees. The stamens of most flowers are numerous and conspicuous. Our Indian corn carries its panicle of pollen high above the silken tresses ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... flood. The old deities of fashion have been swept away in the flood of revolution. The millionaire of two years ago, intent at that time on the means by which the revenues from his brown-stone houses and pet railroad stocks could be spent to the most showy advantage, has become the struggling man of to-day, intent upon keeping up appearances, and happy if diminished and doubtful rents can even be made to meet increasing taxes. The struggling man of that time has meanwhile sprung into fortune and position, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... reviewer, 'whose style is for the most part easy and dignified, with a praiseworthy absence of all inflation or bombast, seems at times to have been smitten by a fatal desire to "split the ears of the groundlings" and produce an impression by showy parades of a not overwhelmingly profound scholarship; and the effect of these contrasts would be grotesque in the extreme, were it not absolutely painful in a work of such high average merit. What, for instance, will be thought of the taste of a writer who could close a really pathetic ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Lange Voorhout, which is almost like a park, with four rows of trees down the middle. Our house had once been the palace of the Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, a princess of the Orange-Nassau family. But it was not at all showy, only comfortable and large. This was fortunate for our country when the rush of fugitive American tourists came at the beginning of the war, for every room on the first floor, and the biggest room on the second ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... actual state of things, but I should admit it more fully if you were fewer. The greater part of the grant is spent, but all the same you live in poverty, decent and hidden, but poverty all the same. A lieutenant earns less than many operatives, but he must buy himself showy uniforms, be smart, and frequent when he wants amusement the same places as the rich. He can only see before him long years of waiting and of hidden poverty, borne with dignity, until some promotion provides him with a few ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was a showy, smart, good-humoured woman, but not over-scrupulous. She was very ready at adapting herself to circumstances, even when the circumstances were against her. For that reason she was considered very clever as well as very affable, among the matrons of Priorton. Mr. Spottiswoode was "slow ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Seminary." It was a fashionable, intellectual hot-house, where premature, fleeting blooms were cultivated regardless of any future consequence. But I was a barren bush! I never fashion-flowered into a profusion of showy blossoms. Aunt Patsey said that I did not reap the harvest of my golden opportunities; but pa, he growled and grumbled a good deal when the bills came pouring in, but paid them, and roundly swore that he was glad he had ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... prejudices and opinions of the people both on this and on the other side of the Atlantic." He held, moreover, very strongly that a union of this kind was the only means of making the Colonies a useful factor instead of a showy and expensive appendage of the empire, and the only alternative that could really prevent their total separation from Great Britain. He pleaded for union, too, not merely for the salvation of the Colonies to the mother country, but even more for the salvation of the Colonies to themselves. ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... the Head of the House; to procure a wife for the youth is the duty of "the female Big One" (Bolshukha). And the chief consideration in determining the choice is in both cases the same. Prudent domestic administrators are not to be tempted by showy horses or beautiful brides; what they seek is not beauty, but physical strength and capacity for work. When the youth reaches the age of eighteen he is informed that he ought to marry at once, and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... wearing a poncho, something like a large square cloth, with a hole in the middle for the head to go through. This is often as coarse as a blanket, but being beautifully woven with various colors, is quite showy at a distance. Among the Mexicans there is no working class (the Indians being practically serfs, and doing all the hard work); and every rich man looks like a grandee, and every poor scamp like a broken-down gentleman. I have often seen a man with a fine figure and courteous ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... of the present day, with its showy furnishings and glitter, its gongs and bell-calls, its multitude of obsequious waiters, gauging their attention by your clothes, will bear comparison with the old-time tavern for homelike comfort and hearty good service. The guest, on ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... now is: 'Wife, I'm going to bring Ella down for Sunday. You've never seen her, and you sure will hate her. She's big, and showy, and just a little bit rough sometimes, and she rouges her cheeks too much, and she's likelier than not to chuck me under the chin. But it would help your old man a lot in a business way if you'd be pretty nice to her. And I'm going to send her down here Friday, a day ahead of ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the house reflected the different tastes of the two generations. The girls had a parlor with a few handsome pieces of furniture placed against the cracked walls, and some showy lamps that were never lighted. The father, with his boorishness, often invaded this room so cherished and admired by the two sisters, making the carpets look shabby and faded under his muddy boot-tracks. Upon the gilt centre-table, he loved to lay his lash. Samples of maize scattered its grains ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... coming; the horse, a showy animal, executed side-steps; blue ribbons fluttered from the glittering head-stall; a young girl ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... of Anne made some progress in the national restoration. But it was less by the influence of the Queen than by the work of time. The "gallants" of the reign of Charles were now a past generation. Their frolics were a gossip's tale; their showy vices were now as tarnished as their wardrobe, and both were hung out of sight. The man who, in the days of Anne, would have ventured on the freaks of Rochester, would have finished his nights in the watch-house, and his years in the plantations. The wit of the past age was also rude, vulgar, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... foot and horseback in gaudy dresses and shining armor, mingled with the busy crowd, like peacocks and gaudy cocks among the fussy swarm of hens in a farm yard; lordly courtiers, in holiday dresses of showy red, blue and yellow stuffs, were borne by slaves in litters or standing on handsome gilt chariots; garlanded priests walked about in long white robes, and smartly dressed girls were hurrying down to the taverns near the harbor to play ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... musk-coloured damask, which she had coveted, was the first article provided, and a cherry-coloured velvet mantle, lined with squirrel-skins, was to be worn with it. A blue satin hood completed this rather showy costume. A wadded calico wrapper, for morning wear; a hoop petticoat wider than Rhoda had ever worn before; the white dress stipulated by Molly; small lace head-dresses, instead of the old-fashioned commode; aprons of various ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... The wheels of his imagination did not catch fire from the rottenness of the materials, but from the rapidity of their motion. One would suppose, to hear people talk of Burke, that his style was such as would have suited the "Lady's Magazine"; soft, smooth, showy, tender, insipid, full of fine words, without any meaning. The essence of the gaudy or glittering style consists in producing a momentary effect by fine words and images brought together, without order or connexion. Burke most ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... pavements, crooked telegraph-poles, hoardings tapestried with patent-medicine posters, and all the mean desolation of an American industrial suburb. Farther on there came a weed-grown field or two, then a row of operatives' houses, the showy gables of the "Eldorado" road-house—the only building in Westmore on which fresh paint was freely lavished—then the company "store," the machine shops and other out-buildings, the vast forbidding bulk of the factories looming above the river-bend, ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... anything, everything remotely suitable, was claimed and cut up to serve as quilts and counterpanes, with the result that the beds looked picturesquely, if not grotesquely, gay. One ward, into which I walked, was playfully called "The Menagerie" by the men that occupied it, for on every bed was a showy rug, and on the face of every rug was woven the figure of some fearsome beast, Bengal tigers and British lions being predominant. It was in appearance a veritable lion's den, where our men dwelt in peace like so many ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... furnished this innocent-looking member of the carp family with two rows of very decent lacerators. The best result nevertheless of that day's fishing was the receipt in a letter two days later of a specimen of the showy yellow leopard's bane from my friend. We had pointed out to each other solitary wildflowers left alone to tell of a summer that was past, and he had found this somewhat sparingly-located bloom two ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... they prove their divinity-ship by eating live coals and by various tricks of a similar nature. A medicine bag is an indispensable part of a hunter's equipment. It is generally furnished with a little bit of indigo, blue vitriol, vermilion, or some other showy article, and is, when in the hands of a noted conjurer, such an object of terror to the rest of the tribe that its possessor is enabled to fatten at his ease upon the labours ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... deep-colored; doubly- dyed; polychromatic; chromatogenous[obs3]; tingible[obs3]. bright, vivid, intense, deep; fresh, unfaded[obs3]; rich, gorgeous; gay. gaudy, florid; gay, garish; rainbow-colored, multihued; showy, flaunting, flashy; raw, crude; glaring, flaring; discordant, inharmonious. mellow, pastel, harmonious, pearly, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and their father, there were Miss Laura Dixon and Miss Pearl Pennington, former vaudeville stars, between whom and the DeVere girls there was not the best of feeling. Ruth and Alice thought that the two actresses were of a rather too "showy" type, and Miss Pennington and Miss Dixon rather looked down on Alice and Ruth as being ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... the effects of the superficial cultivation that our women are getting in this century. A mind polished so that the "rough" cannot manifest itself, a little veneering of knowledge and showy accomplishments, but a heart, alas!—ignored and neglected; the source of all womanly perfection blocked up and destroyed—that is the sacrifice that will alone appease the world in its most sensual phase of to-day, the sacrifice complete and universal of women's hearts. ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... exchanged for furs at first showy and worthless, but later more useful and valuable, for example, guns, ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... which they maintained for their pleasure. True, these houses were not in the Concession—for some reason the foreigners had set their face against gambling in the Concession—yet they maintained their establishments, their showy and luxurious establishments, outside the Concession and upon Chinese soil. They must pay a handsome squeeze for the privilege. Yet it was difficult to reconcile. What was right and wrong, anyway? What was moral or immoral, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... afterwards Louise stepped into the hired carriage sent by Chatelet for the removal to the new rooms. The apartments were of the class that upholsterers furnish and let to wealthy deputies and persons of consideration on a short visit to Paris—showy and uncomfortable. It was eleven o'clock when Lucien returned to his inn, having seen nothing as yet of Paris except the part of the Rue Saint-Honore which lies between the Rue Neuve-de-Luxembourg and the Rue de l'Echelle. He lay down in his miserable little room, and ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... he ranked his genre pictures as high art; and when he was placed in the ordinary list of genre painters on his election as a member of the French Academy of Painting, Greuze resented the imputation, and withdrew from the Academy. He died in 1805, aged seventy-nine years. Greuze was a showy, clever, but neither earnest nor truthful painter of domestic subjects and family pictures. His pictures of women and heads of girls, the expression in some of which has been severely condemned, are among his best known works, and by these he is represented ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... deal of management on the part of Mrs. Jarvis to get showy personages to attend her entertainment, the simple elegance of the two carriages that bore the Effingham party, threw all the other equipages into the shade. The arrival, indeed, was deemed a matter of so much moment, that intelligence ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... always on his guard against showy virtues, which of their very nature encourage vainglory, the ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... rest—acres of pasture, cleared and grassed, stretches of fertile ground, blocks of noble timber still uncut—had passed through the hands of mortgage holders, through bank transfers, by devious and tortuous ways, until the title rested in Horace Gower,—who had promptly built the showy summer house on Cradle Bay to flaunt in his face, so old Donald believed ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and the spires of many churches. It was an old-fashioned Georgian structure with white columns clear-cut against its weathered brick; at either side of the low steps a great hydrangea, its glory waning with the summer, lifted its showy clusters from an urn; while walk and carriage drive alike sauntered to the street through hedgerows of box. The mouth of the driveway at this moment gleamed white from the kerchiefs of a knot of Polish children estray from the quarry district, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... to command. He had the thick hand, stubbed fingers, with bristled pads between their joints, square, broad thumb-nails, and sturdy limbs, which mark a constitution made to use in rough out-door work. He had the never-failing predilection for showy switch-tailed horses that step high, and sidle about, and act as if they were going to do something fearful the next minute, in the face of awed and admiring multitudes gathered at mighty musters or imposing cattle-shows. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... to the anemones; but he found them a little too sentimental; the tulips, too showy; the broom, not of a good family; the linden blossoms, too small—then they had so many relations; as to the apple blossoms, why to look at them you would think them as healthy as roses, but to-day they blossom and to-morrow, if the wind blows, ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... circle of his being, even if he may have been capable of the act, and that all was in vain, an incomprehensible intoxication and madness, an impenetrable horror, an exhibition of hypocrisy and disease, A dizziness seized her as if she were falling from a high tower. She was ashamed of her showy dress, its conspicuous finery, and in passionate excitement she tore the costly lace from her arms and, with an expression of the utmost loathing, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... of his hand on entering, and begged him to be seated, Walpole did not take a chair himself, but stood with his back to the fire—the showy skirts of a very gorgeous dressing-gown displayed over his arms—where he looked like some enormous bird exulting in the full effulgence ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... were, they suffered not a little in their exposition. Talleyrand, the brain of the policy, was not its mouthpiece. In the French embassy at Portman Square he figured merely as adviser to the French ambassador, the ci-devant Marquis de Chauvelin, a vain and showy young man, devoid of the qualities of insight, tact, and patience in which the ex-bishop of Autun excelled his contemporaries. Had this sage counsellor remained in London to the end of the year, things might have gone very differently. The instructions ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... which was about a mile from the hamlet, was not a showy edifice; but it was reverenced as much by the young race of village scholars as if it had been the most stately mansion in the land; it was a low roofed, long, thatched tenement, sheltered by a few reverend oaks, under which ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... distinct individual figure. The senator was supposed to be no worse and no better than other senators, nor at all to differ from them. It was not necessary and not desirable that any burgess should surpass the rest, whether by showy silver plate and Hellenic culture, or by uncommon wisdom and excellence. Excesses of the former kind were punished by the censor, and for the latter the constitution gave no scope. The Rome of this period belonged to no individual; it was necessary ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... nature disposed to reflection and even like often to be alone, consequently are undoubtedly a more thinking nation, although not so brilliant, but experience has proved that patient and undeviating perseverance, ultimately, outsteps the more showy and sparkling quality of genius. For the sympathies of the heart I have found the French females most keenly alive, no mothers can be more devotedly attached to their children than they are, and it is repaid to them with interest by their offspring, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... the rest of the chapel. For two days, he and Jean, his brother-in-law, had worked in the forests, cutting down young trees of fir, balsam, and dogwood. The balsams were full of small cones of a brilliant purple color; and the dogwoods were waving with showy white flowers. Pierre set each tree in a box of moist earth, so that it looked as thriving and fresh as it had done in the forest; first, a fir, and then a dogwood, all the way from the door to the altar, reached the gay and fragrant wall. Great ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... unexpected source. This Southern white man's idea of Negro education had been that it merely meant a parrot-like absorption of Anglo-Saxon civilisation, with a special tendency to imitate the weaker elements of the white man's character; that it meant merely the high hat, kid gloves, a showy walking cane, patent leather shoes, and all the rest of it. To this ex-master it seemed impossible that the education of the Negro could produce any other results. And so, last of all, did he expect help or encouragement from an educated ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... accessions to their ranks, and their follies and extravagances multiply in proportion. They occupy the majority of the mansions in the fashionable streets, crowd the public thoroughfares and the Park with their costly and showy equipages, and flaunt their wealth so coarsely and offensively in the faces of their neighbors, that many good people have come to believe that riches and vulgarity are inseparable. They make themselves the most ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... and all its appurtenances spoke of an old regime that was here continued rather than suggested to the memory. The plate was rich to the extent that its age and quaintness alone saved it from being showy; there were interesting names signed in the corners of the pictures on the walls; the viands were of the kind that bring a shine into the eyes of gourmets. The service was swift, silent, lavish, as in the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... a famous "fairing" was "St. Audrey's laces." St. Audrey, or Etheldreda, in the days of her youthful vanity was very fond of wearing necklaces and jewels. "St. Audrey's laces" became corrupted into "Tawdry laces"; hence the adjective has come to be applied to all cheap and showy pieces of female ornament. ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... swing of the long line, the crack of the driver's mighty whip and his warning shouts to "Jack" or "Pete" to pull and keep step, the steady chop-chop thud of the sand-shaker, will be seen and heard no more. In the place of the horse-plough has come the electric sweeper, a less showy but a good deal ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... composed for educational purposes. But there remain others in which his heart and soul were engaged, and in these he reaches a very high level. Our classification is a rough one, for often in those which we consider his best, there is plenty of showy technique. With the exception of Mozart's sonata in C minor, and Haydn's "Genziger" and "London" sonatas, both in E flat, also some of Rust's, of which we shall soon have something to say, there are, to our thinking, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... Maurice, 'I know it is Macheath, for Mr. Tritton showed him to Gilbert and me, when he had just got him, and said he was a showy beast, but incurably lame, so he should get what he could for him from Laing. Now, James, isn't it?' he called to the servant who was sedulously turning away a grinning face, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sail, a valedictory party came on board: nine of our particular friends equipped with gifts and dressed as for a festival. Hoka, the chief dancer and singer, the greatest dandy of Anaho, and one of the handsomest young fellows in the world—sullen, showy, dramatic, light as a feather and strong as an ox—it would have been hard, on that occasion, to recognise, as he sat there stooped and silent, his face heavy and grey. It was strange to see the lad so much affected; stranger still to recognise in his last gift one of the curios ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... see the busy young man sit down so confidently in our best chair. He said his name was Dixon, and he took out from his satchel a book with a fine showy cover. He said it was called "Living Selections from Poet, Sage ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... the furrowed bark of many kinds of trees. But the most wonderful and undoubted case of protective resemblance in a butterfly which I have ever seen, is that of the common Indian Kallima inachis, and its Malayan ally, Kallima paralekta. The upper surface of these insects is very striking and showy, as they are of a large size, and are adorned with a broad band of rich orange on a deep bluish ground. The under side is very variable in colour, so that out of fifty specimens no two can be found exactly alike, but every one of them will be of some shade of ash or brown or ochre, such ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... number of cultivated trees, shrubs, and plants which surrounded the native villages. There were large groves of broad-leaved plantains and graceful cocoa-nut trees, the slender tapering betel-nut palm and elegant palmyras; while the showy-looking papaw, and here and there a rhambutan tree, or a dark-leaved guava, contrasted with the golden fruit of the shaddock, and the delicious mangustan and the curious-tasted durian were to be found ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... the following extract from an article describing the Edison plant, published in The Iron Age of October 28, 1897; in which, after mentioning his struggle with adverse conditions, it says: "There is very little that is showy, from the popular point of view, in the gigantic work which Mr. Edison has done during these years, but to those who are capable of grasping the difficulties encountered, Mr. Edison appears in the new light of a brilliant constructing engineer grappling with technical and commercial ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... was painted a picture of two or three cupids hovering in the air, some of them touching the shoulders of a pretty girl who was supposed to be opening a box of chocolates. There was a good deal of color and embossed writing also on the cover, and altogether it was as showy and, in Stephanotie's opinion, as handsome a thing as anybody ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... monotonous fine ladies flashes the vision of "Anonyma," with her meretricious beauty, and her daring toilettes. Amenable to no social Mrs. Grundy, her love of dress develops itself in bold contrasts of color, in bizarre and showy ornaments, in picturesque, and often in grotesque and tawdry effects. But whatever the details, the whole is always striking. Our women longing for the new, accept the absurd; desiring the picturesque, take the bizarre, and eager for ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... perceive. He saw precisely where the strength of the Royalists lay, and by what means alone that strength could be overpowered. He saw that it was necessary to reconstruct the army of the Parliament. He saw also that there were abundant and excellent materials for the purpose, materials less showy, indeed, but more solid, than those of which the gallant squadrons of the King were composed. It was necessary to look for recruits who were not mere mercenaries, for recruits of decent station and grave character, fearing God and zealous for public liberty. With such men ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... their way along, they turned a corner into a better part of the town. Here the houses were better; but on the whole very shabby. The influence of the oil boom was being felt, however, and here and there immense and showy residences were ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... de Lamotte, one of the king's equerries, seigneur of Grange-Flandre, Valperfond, etc., had married Marie-Francoise Perier in 1760. Their fortune resembled many others of that period: it was more nominal than actual, more showy than solid. Not that the husband and wife had any cause for self-reproach, or that their estates had suffered from dissipation; unstained by the corrupt manners of the period, their union had been a model of sincere affection, of domestic ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... higher classes of Japanese society to-day, the honorific O is not, as a rule, used before the names of girls, and showy appellations are not given to daughters. Even among the poor respectable classes, names resembling those of geisha, etc., are in disfavour. But those above cited are good, honest, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... themselves like other creatures or objects which it was to their advantage or pleasure to resemble, will be believed by any one who turns to Mr. Mivart's "Genesis of Species," where he will find (chapter ii.) an account of some very showy South American butterflies, which give out such a strong odour that nothing will eat them, and which are hence mimicked both in appearance and flight by a very different kind of butterfly; and, again, we see that certain birds, without any particular desire of gain, no sooner ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... adjutant "recovered" sword, strode briskly up, passed beyond the plumed commander, and took his station to his left and rear. With much deliberation of manner, Mr. Williams drew sabre and easily gave the various orders for the showy manual of arms, the white-gloved hands moving like clockwork in response to his command until, with simultaneous thud, the battalion resumed the "order," certain spectators with difficulty repressing the ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... prepare for the reception of my illustrious guests, when the concourse of people hastening to the shore announced their approach. A man soon appeared as avant courier, in the short, red uniform-jacket of an English drummer, an uncommonly showy, many-coloured girdle, and the rest of his body, according to custom, quite naked. His legs were adorned by a tattooed representation of pantaloons; and when he turned his back and stooped very little, he showed also a drawing ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... showy bird with a little shrug of disdain at its vanity or of disgust at its odious cry, she finds herself face to face with a young man who has followed ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... essay in portraiture by taking her likeness. The boy produced a drawing that was much extolled; further evidences of his enthusiasm for art were forthcoming; and eventually John Romney was induced to take his son to Kendal, and apprentice him to an itinerant painter named Christopher Steele, a showy gentleman, who had been in Paris, aped French manners, wore fantastic clothes, and was popularly known as Count Steele—a sort of art-Dulcamara, in fact. Articles of apprenticeship were duly signed, sealed, and delivered between John Romney, cabinet-maker, and George his son, of the ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... turn out to church, wake, or fair—there's a beau for you! If he has not his best slop on, which has never yet been defiled by touch of labor, he is conspicuous in his blue, brown, or olive-green coat, and waistcoat of glaring color—scarlet, or blue, or green striped—but it must be showy; and a pair of trowsers, generally blue, with a width nearly as ample as a sailor's, and not only guiltless of the foppery of being strapped down, but if he find the road rather dirty, or the grass dewy, they are turned up three or four inches at the bottom, so as to show ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various |
