"Superfine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of acrobatic fame, at others indulging in leap-frog with the servants, permitting themselves practical jokes of all kinds, affecting to be drowned by an explosive haggis, and so forth. Every now and then he will come to a passage at which, without being superfine at all, he may find his gorge rise; though there is nothing quite so bad in the Noctes as the picture of the ravens eating a dead Quaker in the Recreations, a picture for which Wilson offers a very lame defence elsewhere. He must put all sorts of prejudice, literary, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... a gentleman of my acquaintance owns a fine estate which is adorned with a trout stream and a superfine trout pond. Once he invited a business man of Bridgeport to be his guest, and fish for trout in his pond. On that guest, during a visit of three days all the finest forms of ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Mudeer seemed happy enough, his secretary sitting below at his feet. He was very glad to see me, "For people," he observed, "don't see Christians every day in this horrid country." The Mudeer made me mount his throne by his side, giving me his superfine cushion to repose on, talking all the time; "Foolish men, you Christians, to come to these horrible countries." From this elevated position I was enabled to survey his Excellency's receiving apartment, with the adjoining one. It was a rich and varied scene; only Dickens ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... fame, uncaressed save by family affection, and, therefore, unspoilt, while writing was her delight, she kept it in complete subordination to the duties of life, which she performed with exemplary conscientiousness in the house of mourning as well as in the house of feasting. Even her needlework was superfine. We doubt not that, if the truth was known, she was a ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... milk (the fresher the better) and two pints of soft water, in a vessel perfectly free from all greasy matter, over a slow fire. Rub two even teaspoonfuls of superfine wheat flour and two teaspoonfuls of carbonate of magnesia, together with a little milk, into a soft batter, free from lumps; add this to the milk and water as soon as they begin to boil. Boil gently for five ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... coquettish shoe of soft kid, and, to the horror of the assembled maids at the door, deliberately cut off the silk stocking, over which their wonder had been aroused when the short skirts of Louise had made visible those superfine articles. The pieces of stocking, needless to say, were captured as souvenirs and for many a day shown to the scoffers of neighboring plantations, who doubted the wild tales of luxury ascribed to the foreign magnate whose servants were even ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... on it, is your great civilizer, and a well-made suit of clothes is in itself a liberal education. I'll take you to Michaud—my own especial purveyor. He is a great artist. With so many yards of superfine black cloth, he will give you the tone of good society and the exterior of a gentleman. In short, he will do for you in eight or ten hours more than I could do in ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Ivory Case-Knives, and several sorts of Pocket-Knives. Dowlasses several sorts. Huckabags, and Russia Linnen. Oznaburghs. Several sorts of Looking Glasses. Garlicks and brown Holland. Bag-Holland Ditto. Several sorts of Druggets. Fine Kerseys. Superfine double-mill'd Drab. Broad-Cloths. London Shalloons. Fine and coarse Hats. Men and Women's English Shoes. Stockings, several sorts, for Men, Women and Children. Several sorts of Caps. Women's Bonnets. Several sorts of Horn and Ivory Combs. Gun-powder, Shot, and Flints. Bibles of several ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... returned from chapel at the English ambassador's, where the service was read by a dandy clergyman to a crowd of fine and superfine ladies and gentlemen, crushed together into a hot room. I never saw extravagance in dress carried to such a pitch as it is by my countrywomen here,—whether they dress at the men or against each other, it is equally bad taste. The sermon to-day was very ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... of Bungfield. Even good women, real mothers in Israel, could not help thinking, as they sorrowed over the sand in the bottoms of their coffee-cups, and grew wrathful at "runney" flour bought for "A 1 Superfine" of Tackey & Gatter, that Joe would make a valuable husband. So thought some of the ladies of Bungfield, and as young ladies who can endure the idea of such a man for perpetual partner can also signify their opinions, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... general use in this country up to 1870, and which is still followed in the great majority of small custom or grist mills. It is very simple, consisting of grinding the wheat as fine as possible at the first grinding, and separating the meal into flour, superfine or extra, middlings, shorts, and bran. Given a pair of millstones and reel long enough, and the wheat could be made into flour by passing through the two. Because spring wheat was so poorly adapted to this crude process, it had to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... they are to be classed,—First, by their sorrows: for instance, whenever there are any, whether in fair mansion or hovel, who are mourning the loss of relations and friends, and who wear black, whether the cloth be coarse or superfine, they are to make one class. Secondly, all who have the same maladies, whether they lie under damask canopies or on straw pallets or in the wards of hospitals, they are to form one class. Thirdly, all who are guilty of the same sins, whether the world knows them or not; whether they languish ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... will see that the commission admits of no delay. Here is your car fare. Go first to No. 100 Lucre Avenue, talk fully with Mrs. Vanderdonk, and then ride down to Jardon & Jackson's and get all the material you think will be required. You will observe, she lays great stress on the superfine quality of the plush. Order the bill delivered with the goods; and if anything be required in your department, you had better leave the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... is that?" said Mactavish, pointing sarcastically to an entry in the previous account—"5 yards of superfine Annette. Really, Mr. Somerville, I wish you would pay more attention to your work ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... might safely depend upon, every ring of it having been wrought and joined by his own hands. Above this he wore, like others of his age and degree, the Flemish hose and doublet, which, in honour of the holy tide, were of the best superfine English broadcloth, light blue in colour, slashed out with black satin, and passamented (laced, that is) with embroidery of black silk. His walking boots were of cordovan leather; his cloak of good Scottish grey, which served to conceal a whinger, or couteau de chasse, that hung at ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... may be supplied with this superfine chocolate, that exceeds the finest sold by other makers, plain at 6s., with vanillos at 7s. To be sold for ready money only at Mr. Churchman's Chocolate Warehouse, at Mr. John Young's, in St. ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... her room a door opened at the farther end of the same wing, and a tall man came out. The middle-class element in her said, "Superfine." His fastidious taste said, "A ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... begun with them one could go on, I believe, until the hearts of all those fine, straight-dealing people were as plain to us as those of our superfine, sophisticated moderns. For Nature is still our mother and mistress, no less now than she ever was—and that's a good thing for the story-reader as well as ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... the Sermon was Superfine and Dandy. The only thing that worried the Congregation was the Fear that if it wished to retain such a Whale it might have to Boost ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... Obscuro, dark ripe or mellow; Pajizo Claro, bright straw-colored; Pajizo, straw-colored; Pajizo Obscuro, dark straw-colored; Fuerte, strong or heavy; Entre Fuerte, rather strong or heavy; Flajo, light. Then there are the indications of the qualities:—Superfine; Firo, not quite so fine; Flor, finest or firsts; Superior, next, or seconds; Buenos, next, or thirds. The cigar has a notable history. First has to be determined the part of the plant from which it is taken; then the part of the leaf from which it is taken, the tobacco ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... the anatomy of the human brain. My father, as an instrument-maker, designed and built encephalographs. Together, they discovered that if the great waves of the brain were filtered down and the extremely minute waves that ride on top of them were amplified, the pattern of these superfine waves went through convolutions peculiar to certain thoughts. Continued research refined ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... Washington stood when he came out of the house is preserved in the south wall of this building. He is described as wearing suit of homespun so finely woven that "it was universally mistaken for a foreign manufactured superfine cloth." This, of course, was a high ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... and me was not at all in my favour. Not in uniform, certainly, but scrupulously clean, with a superfine blue cloth jacket and trousers, white neckerchief; and clean linen shirt; he looked not only respectable, but even gentlemanly. I have before described my appearance. I may be ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... so altogether superfine, so utterly magnificent in my life," cried the king; "stewed peacocks' tongues from the Baltic, are not to be compared with it! Call out ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... bought "a Superfine blue broad cloth Coat, with Silver Trimmings," "a fine Scarlet Waistcoat full Lac'd," and a quantity of "silver lace for a Hatt," and from another source it is learned that at this time he was the possessor of ruffled shirts. A little later he ordered from London "As much of the best ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... the hopper, which did not deprive them of rest except when it was kept going all night; and over and above all this they had the pleasure of knowing that there crept in through every crevice, door, and window of their dwelling, however tightly closed, a subtle mist of superfine flour from the grinding room, quite invisible, but making its presence known in the course of time by giving a pallid and ghostly look to the best furniture. The miller frequently apologized to his tenants for the intrusion of this insidious dry fog; but the widow was of a friendly ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... But this is only Mr. Harrison's sweeping style of writing. He is always vivid, and nearly always superlative. We venture to think that his "all" merely includes his own circle. At the same time, however, we admit that militant Atheism is still, as of old, an offence to the superfine sceptics who desire to stand well with the great firm of Bumble and Grundy, as well as to the vast army of priests and preachers who have a professional interest in keeping heresy "dark," and to the ruling and privileged classes, who feel that militant Atheism is a great disturber of the peace which ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... shepherds I came across in New Zealand were all passionately fond of reading; and they were also well-informed men, who often expressed themselves in excellent, through superfine, language. Their libraries chiefly consisted of yellow-covered novels, and out of my visits in search of a congregation grew a scheme for a book-club to supply something better in the way of literature, which was afterwards most successfully carried out. But of this I need not speak here, for ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... you drink on. Never mind me. Now that it strikes me, let me say, that he who, out of superfine gentility or fanatic morality, denies himself tobacco, suffers a more serious abatement in the cheap pleasures of life than the dandy in his iron boot, or the celibate on his iron cot. While for him who would fain revel in tobacco, but cannot, it is a thing at which philanthropists must weep, to ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... and upper panels to have plated mouldings and head plates; on the door panels were to be painted Prince of Wales ruffs with arms and crests in large handsome mantlings; the body was to be highly varnished, the inside lined with superfine light colored cloth and trimmed with raised Casoy laces; the sides stuffed and quilted; the best polished plate glasses; mahogany shutters were to be used, with plated frames and plated handles to the door; there were to be double folding inside ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... some cigars; but when she got into her father's room, she seated herself blindly and looked aimlessly down at her hands. What a blessed reprieve this was! If she could but stay here! She could if it were not for the peace-pipe. Such a silly performance too! Father kept those superfine cigars over in the cabinet there. Should she bring only two as usual? Then she was going? Why not? It would look very rude not to do so. Besides, she wondered what they were talking about. She supposed she must have looked very foolish in that gown ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... of the language really used by men. The grandeur of Paradise Lost or Samson Agonistes could never, by any conceivable device of chemistry or magic, be compounded from delicate sensibilities and a superfine ear for music. For the material of those palaces whole provinces were pillaged, and the waste ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... near there, and it lay on the surface that Tom had gone to help the dockers, who were imitating their London brethren. Mrs. Drabdump did not need to be told things to be aware of them. She went back to prepare Mr. Constant's superfine tea, vaguely wondering why people were so discontented nowadays. But when she brought up the tea and the toast and the eggs to Mr. Constant's sitting-room (which adjoined his bedroom, though without communicating with it), Mr. Constant was not sitting in it. She lit the gas, and laid the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the portrait line by line As it lay on the coals in the silence of night's profound, And over the arm's incline, And along the marge of the silkwork superfine, And gnawed at the delicate ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... Mr. Pickwick placed four closely-written sides of extra superfine wire-wove penitence in the hands of the astounded Mr. Winkle, senior. Then reseating himself in his chair, he watched his looks and manner: anxiously, it is true, but with the open front of a gentleman who feels he has taken no part ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... about Tescheron—he talked business from the start. He jumped into it at once, so that I had no time to take notice of anything except that he talked without an accent, was probably French only in name and that he wore clothes which were superfine. I never saw such a dresser for a man with iron-gray hair and fifty-five years to contend against in the youth-preserving business, which I calculated was one of his pleasures in life, if not his vocation. ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... in earnest, and his resolve was none the less right because it was moved by a desire to turn away the fierce anger of the Lord. Dread of sin's consequences and a desire to escape these is no unworthy motive, however some superfine moralists nowadays may call it so. It is becoming unfashionable to preach 'the terror of the Lord.' The more is the pity, and the less is the likelihood of persuading men. But, however kindled, the firm determination (which does not wait for others to concur) that 'As for me, I will ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... he would be ordered by the southern route, or that he would somehow break his neck, had the superfine brass to say, "Don't fail ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... Room Floor. There is enough for one large or two small ones; it is to be sow'd together, the Edges being first fell'd down, and Care taken to make the Figures meet exactly: there is Bordering for the same. This was my Fancy. Also two large fine Flanders Bed Ticks, and two pair large superfine Blankets, 2 fine Damask Table Cloths and Napkins, and 43 Ells of Ghentish Sheeting Holland.... There is also 56 Yards of Cotton, printed curiously from Copper Plates, a new Invention, to make Bed and Window Curtains; and 7 ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... and making them scream, were it only to let the world know how unmelodious were their voices. It was generally in the presence of prudes that he referred to unnamable things; and he most affected low phrases when he talked to very superfine people. Still, the vein of coarseness was in him, like the baser stuffs in the ores of precious metals; but his literary taste kept his ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... more productive than the other parts. I shuddered at this lesson of humility—Alas! thought I, is it for such ends that we pamper ourselves—that some of us boast of being better than others—that we seek splendid houses and superfine clothing—and render our little lives wretched by hunting after rank, and titles, and riches! After all, we receive a sumptuous funeral, and are affectionately laid in what is called consecrated ground, which some ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... bread, are to be shut, under penalties? The Caricaturist promulgates his emblematic Tablature: Le Patrouillotisme chassant le Patriotisme, Patriotism driven out by Patrollotism. Ruthless Patrols; long superfine harangues; and scanty ill-baked loaves, more like baked Bath bricks,—which produce an effect on the intestines! Where will this ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... me with a tender love, I had only to wish and I obtained instantly all that could please me, in rare pearls, in superfine brilliants, sapphires, emeralds, and rubies. One day, his Majesty allowed me to carry home the famous crown of Agrippina, executed with admirable art, and formed of eight sprays of large brilliants handsomely mounted. This precious object ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... EDITION, handsomely printed on superfine paper, in Demy Octavo, to range with the Standard Editions of the English Historians, in 14 Vols. including a Copious INDEX, and embellished ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... own defenceless person all those untoward omens. It was impossible to think of returning to the Vicarage. Angel's wife felt almost as if she had been hounded up that hill like a scorned thing by those—to her—superfine clerics. Innocently as the slight had been inflicted, it was somewhat unfortunate that she had encountered the sons and not the father, who, despite his narrowness, was far less starched and ironed than they, and had to the full the gift of charity. As she again thought of her dusty boots she almost ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... at the precious kegs stowed half way up the walls. Ah—what was that! One of the barrels leaked! Brandy, velvety fragrant brandy was oozing out on the earthen floor! He knelt down and caught a few drops in his hand. It was superfine, the best stuff he had ever tasted. Greedily he drank again and again from his hand. But that process was too slow. Catching up a hatchet, he enlarged the leak, and throwing himself flat on the ground, he lapped the golden spirit that filled him with ecstasy. At last, he ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... the pages ring with a spirit and gusto recalling Lady Mary's phrase concerning her cousin "that no man enjoyed life more than he did." To quote again from Mr Gosse: "A good deal in this book may offend the fine, and not merely the superfine. But the vitality and elastic vigour of the whole carry us over every difficulty... and we pause at the close of the novel to reflect on the amazing freshness of the talent which could thus make a set of West country ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... tendons; fifty catties of bche-de-mer; fifty deer tongues; fifty ox tongues; twenty catties of dried clams; filberts, fir-cones, peaches, apricots and squash, two hundred bags of each; fifty pair of salt prawns; two hundred catties of dried shrimps; a thousand catties of superfine, picked charcoal; two thousand catties of medium charcoal; twenty thousand catties of common charcoal; two piculs of red rice, grown in the imperial grounds; fifty bushels of greenish, glutinous rice; fifty bushels of white glutinous rice; fifty bushels of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... of the dandy about Edison, He boasted no jewelled fingers or superfine raiment. An easy coat soiled with chemicals, a battered wide-awake, and boots guiltless of polish, were good enough for this inspired workman. An old silver watch, sophisticated with magnetism, and keeping an eccentric time peculiar to it, was his only ornament. ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... I was brought up, and that's the way I am. Don't get nerves now and play the exquisite, for now one of us is just as good as the other. Look here, my girl, let me treat you to a glass of something superfine. [He opens the table-drawer, takes out the wine bottle and fills up two glasses that have ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... President's guards were certainly fine men, and a squadron of dismounted cavalry, in splendid blue uniforms, with scarlet trowsers richly laced, might have vied with the elite of Nap's own, barring the black faces. But the materiel of the other regiments was not superfine, as M. Boyer, before whom they were defiling, might ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... trust more to the setting of their pictures than to the truth of the likeness. Mr. Campbell always seems to me to be thinking how his poetry will look when it comes to be hot-pressed on superfine wove paper, to have a disproportionate eye to points and commas, and dread of errors of the press. He is so afraid of doing wrong, of making the smallest mistake, that he does little or nothing. Lest he should wander irretrievably from the right ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... eyes, kneels before her, the remaining players standing all around. The first player then holds up a forfeit, remarking, "I have a thing, and a very pretty thing. Pray what shall be done to the owner of this pretty thing?" To which the blindfolded one replies by asking, "Is it fine or superfine?" meaning, Does it belong to a boy (fine) or a girl (superfine)? The answer is either "It is fine," or "It is superfine," and the blindfolded one then announces what its owner must do to get possession of it again. Of stock penances there are a great number, most ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... was before him, nay, he would go a long distance to insure a good dinner; but, nevertheless, he would leave himself without the means of getting a mutton chop, and then not be unhappy. Now Mr. Carter would have been very unhappy had he been left without his superfine long ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... is a marvellous fountain built of precious stones, where the periodical banquet of the Immortals is held. This feast is called P'an-t'ao Hui, 'the Feast of Peaches.' It takes place on the borders of the Yao Ch'ih, Lake of Gems, and is attended by both male and female Immortals. Besides several superfine meats, they are served with bears' paws, monkeys' lips, dragons' liver, phoenix marrow, and peaches gathered in the orchard, endowed with the mystic virtue of conferring longevity on all who have the good luck to taste them. It was by these peaches that the ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... replied, "sell them for less, if you have to, rather than keep them. Selling a superfine article for no profit is sometimes the best and ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... elsewhere, and is well calculated to move the beholder to desperation. [Footnote: These exaggerations of the fashions of 1862 have been succeeded by equal travesties of the present modes.] The Venetian fine lady, also, is prone to be superfine. Her dress is as full of color as a Paolo Veronese; in these narrow streets, where it is hard to expand an umbrella, she exaggerates hoops to the utmost; and she fatally hides her ankles ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... at Strabane was quite dizzy and sick and took refuge in the first 'bus, which 'bus belonged to that superfine establishment, the "Abercorn Arms." Was informed that the late Lord Leitrim had stopped there a day or two before his death on his way to Manorvaughan. "Stopped in this very room," said my informant. "He left here on the Sabbath day in his own carriage for ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... in it, one way or another, an aristocratic insolence! There must be: to move so delicately and immaculately through life, with such superfine perceptions, must mean that you were brought up to scorn the common way, and those who walk in it. 'The poor in a lump are bad'—coarse and ill-mannered at any rate—that must be the real meaning of her soft dignity, so friendly yet so remote, her impossibly ethereal standards, her light ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as my hand fell on a large square parcel—"here is some superfine tobacco that I got in Quebec for you and the other men on this trip. Not like the damp stuff you had last year—a little bad smoke and too many bad words. This is tobacco to burn—something quite particular, you understand. How does ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... said, by-and-by, "this surely must be a mistake. 'Shooting dress, superfine silk corduroy, trimmed and lined with cardinal poult de soie, oxydised silver buttons, engraved hunting subjects, twenty-seven guineas.' Thank Heaven you are not one of those masculine women who go out shooting, and ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... him a general advantage, yet whose taste was clearly held as inferior by the royal artistes themselves. A baronet, who went to Schweitzer's to get himself equipped in the first style, asked him what cloth he recommended. "Why, sir," was the answer, "the Prince wears superfine, and Mr Brummell the Bath coating. Suppose, sir, we say Bath coating; I think Mr Brummell has a trifle the preference." Brummell's connexion with the Prince, his former rank in the hussars, and his own agreeable manners, introduced him to the intercourse of the principal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... unthinkably simple and natural, or was she immeasurably deep? Was her apparent utter unconsciousness of the effect she produced a superfine art? He ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... unfortunate might have been bought for a shilling by such a boy as Bob Dimsted, but the superfine broadcloth of Dexter's jacket and trousers sent it up to five, and pocket-money had to be saved for weeks before it finally came into the boy's possession, to be watched with the greatest attention to see if its hair ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... as much as great a master as any I ever saw, as he was a greater judge of time and Measure. It was his method, when he fought in his Amphitheatre, to send round to a select number of his scholars to borrow a shirt for the ensuing combat, and seldom failed of half-a-dozen of superfine Holland from his prime Pupils. Most of the young Nobility and Gentry made it a part of their education to march under his warlike banner. Most of his Scholars were at every battle, and were sure to exult at their great master's victories; every ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... five feet three inches and a quarter high, and might have weighed, always provided a stone weight had been attached to him, about half as much as the fat girl. His countenance was cadaverous and was eternally agitated by something between a grin and a simper. He was dressed in a style of superfine gentility, and his skeleton fingers were bedizened with tawdry rings. His conversation was chiefly about his bile and his secretions, the efficacy of licorice in producing a certain effect, and the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... fit nor proper that I cross into Wales at this time, and in this manner. When I go into Wales, I should wish to go in a new suit of superfine black, with hat and beaver, mounted on a powerful steed, black and glossy, like that which bore Greduv to the fight of Catraeth. I should wish, moreover, to see the Welshmen assembled on the border ready to welcome me with pipe and fiddle, and much whooping and shouting, and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... smoke superfine cigarettes, Sophy, nor send black tray-bearers in terra-cotta robes out on rainy days for the entertainment of strange ladies. No: this is something, or somebody, young. But since when did ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... into barbarism again. Then, when we are forced back into natural conditions, the new race will be born. No more of your big-headed, spindle-shanked manikins: we shall have a chance then of seeing a man—that is, a perfect animal. You may turn up your nose, my superfine lady: let me tell you that this glorious animalism means sanity, and sanity means strength, and strength ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... not more irreproachably than did my amenities of manner. Divest him of his tray, and you would find his mode of entering a room hardly distinguishable from my own—the same urbanity, the same alertness of carriage, the same superfine deference towards the weaker sex. All—all my idiosyncrasies I saw reflected in him; and can you doubt that I was gratified? He was my alter ego—which, by the way, makes it harder for me to pardon his behaviour ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cupids riding the happy salmon up to the cannery door, with Mount Tacoma and Cape Disappointment in the background; and a legend underneath says that this is "Booth's," or "Badollet's Best," or "Hume's," or "Clark's," or "Kinney's Superfine Salt Water Salmon." Then the cans are placed in cases, forty-eight in a case, and five hundred thousand cases are put up every year. Great ships come to Astoria, and are loaded with them; and they carry them away to London and San Francisco and Liverpool and New York and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... The superfine "ultra-microscopic" dust, which was blown by the volcano in quantities so enormous to such unusual heights, was, after dropping its heavier particles back to earth, caught by the breezes which always blow in the higher regions from east to west, and carried ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... the best manner, on a superfine paper; and the volumes, in must instances, will be edited and enriched with Prefaces by many of the most talented clergymen ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... views Dr. Haig thinks that as the outer brown husk of all cereals contains some xanthin, it should on this account be removed. He therefore recommends white flour, (not superfine, but cheap-grade), in place of the entire-wheat. Others, however, are of the opinion that the amount of xanthin present in the bran is so small as not to be considered, especially when, by the removal of the xanthin, valuable mineral ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... clothing manufacture there has, during the same period, been no such sensible reduction of price. The price of superfine cloth, I have been assured, on the contrary, has, within these five-and-twenty or thirty years, risen somewhat in proportion to its quality, owing, it was said, to a considerable rise in the price of the material, which consists altogether of Spanish wool. That of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... such as fools covet;—gave him tolerable pensions too, poor devil, and even functions, if they were of the imaginary or big insignificant sort. Above all things, his Majesty dressed him, as the pink of fortunate ambitious courtiers. Superfine scarlet coat, gold buttonholes, black-velvet facings and embroideries without end: "straw-colored breeches; red silk stockings," with probably blue clocks to them, "and shoes with red heels:" on his learned head sat an immense cloud-periwig of white ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... showed, by its sleek and good condition, that the merciful man was merciful to his beast. His accoutrements were in the usual unostentatious but clean and servicable order which characterizes these sectaries. His long surtout of dark-grey superfine cloth descended down to the middle of his leg, and was buttoned up to his chin, to defend him against the morning air. As usual, his ample beaver hung down without button or loop, and shaded a comely and placid countenance, the gravity of which appeared to contain some seasoning of humour, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... conspicuous. Yet, somehow or other, so excellent was his taste, as soon as the thing was in place its conspicuousness (so to speak) vanished amidst the protective coloring, and it looked as if it had been there for ever. The colors were chosen with the same superfine skill: singly they were brilliant, or at least remarkable (the ceilings, for instance, were of a rich buttercup yellow); collectively they were subdued and unnoticeable. And I suppose this is exactly what rooms ought ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... a tone which slighted Thomas Williams. "Well! I will tell you facts. Napoleon Bonaparte is one of the worst and most dangerous men that ever lived. He sets the world by the ears, and carries war into every country of Europe. That is his youngest brother yonder—that superfine gallant, in the long-tailed white silk coat down to his heels, and white small-clothes, with diamond buckles in his shoes, and grand lace stock and ruffles. Jerome Bonaparte spent last winter in Baltimore; and they say he is traveling in ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... "Bah! what superfine nonsense I am writing!" exclaimed Buckingham, pushing his note-book aside, but continuing to sit before ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Astor were the superfine products of this system; they did in a greater way what others did in a lesser way. As a consequence, their careers were fairly well illumined. The envious attacks of their competitors ascribed their success ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... the superior qualities to be cultivated by the budding courtier and statesman. A few years of minor services to his country were rendered, though Chesterfield was breaking his substitute for a heart because his son could not or would not play the superfine gentleman—on the paternal model, and then came the news of his death, when only thirty-six. What was a still greater shock to the lordly father, now deaf, gouty, fretful, and at outs with the world, his informant ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... over the balcony rails, the shrill voice of the snake-charmer will assail him from below, promising him, in a torrent of sonorous Hindustanee, variegated with pigeon English and illuminated with wild gesticulations, such a superfine tamasha as it never was the fortune of the ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... said the great Cardinal Richelieu; and on the long run, I fear, his eminence was right. If you could drop Dick Avenel and Mr. Digby in the middle of Oxford-street—Dick in a fustian jacket, Digby in a suit of superfine—Dick with five shillings in his pocket, Digby with a thousand pounds—and if, at the end of ten years, you looked up your two men, Dick would be on his road to fortune, Digby—what we have seen him! Yet Digby had ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... a sensitive child and had a horror of dirty hands, "and," says he, "my first employments—picking stones and weeding corn—were rather a torture to this superfine taste." In his mother, however, he had a friend who understood and protected him. So his life on the farm was as happy as it well could be, in spite of its roughness. He himself has described it with a zest which no one else ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... talking in this strain, some one tried to cast ridicule upon the Prince on account of the style in which he wore his hair, and the four valets de chambre, who made the hair-powder fly in all directions, while Kaunitz ran about that he might only catch the superfine part of it. "Aye," said Madame, "just as Alcibiades cut off his dog's tail in order to give the Athenians something to talk about, and to turn their attention from those things he wished ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... the hand of her servant, and glanced at it at first with the idlest of curiosity—afterwards with a fixed and steadfast attention, as though she saw in those copperplate letters, elegantly traced upon a card of superfine quality, something symbolical, something of far greater significance than the unexpected ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... deep-set, black eyes, that never warmed to anything more human than a purely speculative scientific interest in his surroundings, here wandered round the skeptical yet expectant circle with bland amusement. He stretched out his bloodless fingers for another of his host's superfine cigars and proceeded, with only such interruptions as were occasioned by the lighting and ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Cards, Embossed Cards, Motto Cards, Gold and Silver Cards, Double Enameled Cards. Alphabet Cards, Ten Commandment Cards, Sabbath School Cards, Music Cards, Silver Border Cards, Superfine Enameled Cards. ...
— The Wonders of a Toy Shop • Anonymous
... be Printed on a Superfine Royal Paper, in Ten Volumes, Folio: Each Volume to contain an Hundred Sheets; besides Maps, ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... pretend to the contrary, is the frame of every one who aspires beyond the work of his hands. I do not know how it had become mine, except through my reading, and I think it was through the devotion I then had for a certain author that I came to a knowledge not of good and evil so much as of common and superfine. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... removed before the fruit is matured as to size, the ripening process proceeds, just as though there had been no untimely interference. The bananas may be small, but will, as a rule, be almost as sweetly flavoured as those allowed to develop on the plant. Yet the superfine aesthetic essence is not for the delight of those to whom the fruit is tendered after it has undergone a sea voyage. Let there be no misunderstanding with respect to the desirableness of the coastal tract of North Queensland as a territory capable of supporting a large, prosperous and healthful ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... on superfine toned paper, and richly bound in cloth and gold and gilt edges, price ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... wafers, and rosemary, still endures as a slight collation of wine and cake in Scotland. What a funeral could be, as late as 1731, Mr. Chester Waters proves by the bill for the burial of Andrew Card, senior bencher of Gray's Inn. The deceased was brave in a "superfine pinked shroud" (cheap at 1L. 5S. 6D.), and there were eight large plate candle-sticks on stands round the dais, and ninety-six buckram escutcheons. The pall-bearers wore Alamode hatbands covered ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... house, and does not appear to have retained the Presbyterianism into which he was born. Erskine, who was afterwards raised to the Bench as Lord Kinnedder—a distinction which he did not survive for many months—was a good classic, a man of fine, or, as some of his companions thought, of almost superfine taste. The style apparently for which he had credit must have been a somewhat mimini-pimini style, if we may judge by Scott's attempt in The Bridal of Triermain, to write in a manner which he intended to be attributed to his friend. Erskine was left a widower in middle life, and Scott used ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... did dine, he had plenty of wine, Rich canary with sherry and tent superfine. Like a right honest soul, faith, he took off his bowl, Till at last he began for to tumble and roul From his chair to the floor, where he sleeping did snore, Being seven times drunker ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... may notice, on a most ingenious plan. His skeleton, I beg to state, is made of hairpins three, Which are bent and curved and twisted to a marvellous degree. His coat-sleeves and his trouser-legs, his head and eke his waist Are made of superfine imported macaroni paste. And if you care to listen, you may hear the thrilling tale Of the merry Macaroni Man's extraordinary sail. One sunny day he started for a voyage in his yacht, His anxious mother called to him, and said, "You'd better ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... there was a great bottle of black, treacly looking varnish on the mantelpiece. Bunty conceived the brilliant idea of cleaning the whole lot and standing them in a neat row to meet his father's delighted eyes. He found a handkerchief on the floor, of superfine cambric, though dirty, poured upon it a liberal allowance of varnish, and ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... "I know not if you doubt that my love be sincere, Yet this I know, that my heart every moment Longs to leave its sorry apartment To visit yours, with fond respect and fear. After all this, having my love in hand, And my honour, of superfine brand, You ought, in turn, I say, Content to be a countess gay, To cast that tigress' skin away, Which hides your charms both night ...
— The Countess of Escarbagnas • Moliere
... those of his household merely, but of his heart. The more arduous achievement of such a man is to see his real self and believe in it. There are so many misleading purple-velvet waistcoats, gold chains, superfine sentiments, and blue-blooded affiliations in the way, that the true nucleus of so much decoration becomes less accessible than the needle in the hay-stack. It is greatly to Bulwer's credit that he stuck valiantly to his quest, and nearly, if not quite, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... &c 33; above par; nice, fine; genuine &c (true) 494. best, choice, select, picked, elect, recherche, rare, priceless; unparagoned^, unparalleled &c (supreme) 33; superlatively &c 33; good; bully [Slang], crackajack [Slang], giltedged; superfine, superexcellent^; of the first water; first-rate, first-class; high- wrought, exquisite, very best, crack, prime, tiptop, capital, cardinal; standard &c (perfect) 650; inimitable. admirable, estimable; praiseworthy &c (approve) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Cochons, les imbecilles, Pigs, idiots!" Oftentimes he croaks harsh sarcasm, having really a rough rasping tongue, and a very deep fund of contempt for fine outsides; and once or twice, he even laughs, nay 'explodes into laughter, rit aux eclats,' at the gentilities and superfine airs of these Girondin "men of statesmanship," with their pedantries, plausibilities, pusillanimities: "these two years," says he, "you have been whining about attacks, and plots, and danger from Paris; and you have not a scratch to shew for ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... thirty-five, I could Assume a flippant guise; Or, were I forty years, I should Undoubtedly look wise; For forty years are said to bring Sedateness superfine; But thirty-nine don't mean a ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... of art, matter for kisses, the realised stuff of dreams! When you look at them like that, solely in the decorative sense, you are ready to condemn those who work, who think and who concentrate upon an aim of some sort, for these superfine creatures carry the reason for their existence within themselves, so great is the perfection which they achieve with a gesture, an attitude, a glance. And then you reflect upon what they too often are ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... He was "betwixt-and-between," being a silk merchant, who met so many fine folk that he seemed to be "fine folk" himself; and by the time Anthony had grown up, he actually believed himself to be one of them. If manners stand for fineness Sir Anthony must have been superfine, because he was almost ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... effeminate, a superfine dandy, and precociously vicious, he suggested the idea of those pages at the Court of Florence, whom we frequently meet with in The Decameron, and who were the playthings for the idle hands and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... whether they had read the poet, so called, from a desire of being set to sleep. Within a few days, however, I learnt that it had of late become very fashionable and genteel to appear half asleep, and that one could exhibit no better mark of superfine breeding than by occasionally in company setting one's ronchal organ in action. I then ceased to wonder at the popularity, which I found nearly universal, of —-'s poetry; for, certainly in order to make one's self appear sleepy in company, or occasionally to induce sleep, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... I thought this would be of great service to me, although I had nearly money enough to purchase my freedom, if I should get safe this voyage to Montserrat. In this expectation I laid out above eight pounds of my money for a suit of superfine clothes to dance with at my freedom, which I hoped was then at hand. We still continued to attend this man, and were with him even on the last day he lived, till very late at night, when we went on board. ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... who had discarded jackets and sported tailed-coats, he looked at from a distance, and viewed with a certain amount of awe, thinking he should never attain to their size or standing in the school; and although these superfine gentlemen always gave him a friendly nod when they chanced to meet, or employed him in running an errand, he never presumed to be familiar with one of them. There were also several boys in the school about Leslie's own age, with whom he did not ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... Men of substance sported superfine Saxony with the broadest of silk-velvet collars; but the fit suggested second-hand finery. Other elongated cocoa-nuts bore jauntily a black felt of 'pork-pie' order, leek-green billycocks, and anything gaudy, but not neat, in the 'tile'-line. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... my disturbance, but complied very obligingly with my request. In this our second wandering forth we had no better success than in the first; we either met nobody, or only were crossed by such superfine men in laced liveries, that we attempted not to question them. My constant dread was Of meeting any of the royal party, while I knew not whither to run. Miss Planta, more inured to such situations, was not at all surprised by our difficulties ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... failure always lying in the hasty effort to abolish it altogether in favor of an immaterial principle outside of it, something behind the phenomena, like Kant's noumenon,—too fine to exist, yet unable to dispense with existence, and so, after all, not spirit, but only a superfine kind of matter; or as in a picture in the Campo Santo at Pisa, where the world is figured as a series of concentric circles, held up like a shield ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... talents; with language gentle, exact, well expressed, and naturally eloquent and brief. Her best time, for she was three or four years older than the King, had been the dainty phrase period;—the superfine gallantry days,—in a word, the time of the "ruelles," as it was called; and it had so influenced her that she always retained evidences of it. She put on afterwards an air of importance, but this gradually gave ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... contain one long Sermon, or two of moderate length, on superfine paper. The Volume to commence annually the last week ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2. No. 6., Nov. 1827 - Or Original Monthly Sermons from Living Ministers • William Patton
... most important possession she had to dispose of was her large cloak. She had acquired it at the prosperous time of her marriage, and it was a very superior specimen of its kind, its dark-blue cloth being superfine, and its ample capes and capacious hood being double-lined and quilted, and stitched in a way which I cannot pretend to describe, but which made it a most substantial and handsome garment. If Mrs. Joyce had been left entirely to her own choice in the matter, I ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... him. Queer fish!" again ruminated the young sailor. "He hates no one and yet dislikes almost everybody, except that funny little Frenchy and me. Whereas I like every man I meet—unless I detest him!... My beautiful plumage!" this whilst carefully folding the superfine coat and thereon the endless silken stock. "Now there's a fellow who does not care a hang for any woman under the sun, and yet enters into another chap's love affairs as if he understood it all. I believe ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... illustrations are superfine. Wesso is a marvel! If he could only write his own stories ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... Winnie, and she is now the wife of Capt. Harry Grosvenor. And is she happy in this her choice? Ask her if she would exchange her brave husband for one of those superfine niceties, who suing for favor at her feet, had at the same time lined their vows of love and constancy with the yellow dust, which had they known the strong chest to have been at their backs, while in this humble posture, it were uncertain to which ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale |
