"Topper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... driving in the city is usually that of afternoon, and a high hat is indispensable. Sometimes the huge gray coats with large buttons and a gray topper are worn. Dogskin driving gloves and driving boots complete the costume. In the country one wears tweed or Scotch cheviot and a Derby hat. The man who drives mounts last, his horses' heads being held ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... will bring to light, likely enough, something that may once have been a court dress, a bridal costume, or a ball gown; a pair of small satin slippers, once white; a rusty crepe, a "topper of a manifestly early vintage, or what not, all may be found here. One might almost fancy that Pride, in some material personification, might indeed be found buried beneath the mass of dross, or having shuffled off its last vestiges ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... hideousness, Constricted brows, and strain, and stress! And still, despite humanity's groan, The torturing, "tall-hat" holds its own! What proof more sure and melancholy Of the dire depths of mortal folly? Mad was the hatter who invented The demon "topper," and demented The race that, spite of pain and jeers, Has borne ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... The old- fashioned ornaments of assonance, alliteration, and plays upon words are as frequent in Accius as in Livius, or rather more so; and the number of archaic forms is scarcely smaller. We see words like noxitudo, honestitudo, sanctescat, topper, domuitio, redhostire, and wonder that they could have only preceded by a few years the Latin of Cicero, and were contemporary with that of Gracchus. Accius, like so many Romans, was a grammarian; ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... he took with him more than a hundredweight of gold. He was worth looking at, so we put more wood on the fire, and made a good blaze. Yes, he was a lucky digger, and he was enjoying his luck. He was blazing drunk, was in evening dress, wore a black bell-topper, and kid gloves. The gloves had saved his hands from being burned when he thrust them into the fire. There could be no doubt that he was enjoying himself. He came suddenly out of the black night, and staggered away into it again ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... every Sunday) Ranny set himself to charm away that look from his mother's face. First of all he said she was a tip-topper, a howling swell, and asked her where she expected to go to in that hat, nippin' in and cuttin' all the girls out, and she a married woman and a mother; and whether it wouldn't be fairer all around, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... see him, you shall see him," said Eric. "He's a perfect tip-topper. He'd kill anything. I paid five bob for him, and six ginger-beers, and ten and ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... a-weeping and declared she wasn't going to be put on. Mr. Shaw said the same thing about his coat, and it led to unpleasantness. The next day he found her picking chips in his brown derby, and when he expressed his disapproval she told him it was no fit hat for a young man like him—he should have a topper. Mr. Shaw decided that he would try ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... What men do often, they will seek to do with the least possible trouble. There is nothing which they do oftener than repeat words; they will seek here then to save themselves pains; they will contract two or more syllables into one; ('toto opere' will become 'topper'; 'vuestra merced', 'usted'; and 'topside the other way', 'topsy-turvey'{230}); they will slur over, and thus after a while cease to pronounce, certain letters; for hard letters they will substitute soft; for those which require a certain effort to pronounce, they will substitute those which ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... sharp look-out on both Dick and the 'Gaiety,' but I never see any one at all like our man. On Tuesday I was on my cab as usual and Dick was in the same rank, when I see an elderly gent, clean-shaved, and with rather grey hair, wearing a bell-topper—a regular howling toff he looked—stroll along the rank, 'Cab, sir,' says I, but he shook his head and walked on. Seemed as if he was in thought, for when he came to the end of the street he came back again, ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... to give him a topper!" I thought, as I rose upon my elbow and listened, making out, in spite of the roar of the storm, every movement of ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Stanistreet, "you are a gentleman, you know. At any rate, you're about the only fellow in these parts who can stand a frock-coat and topper—that's the test. I saw Morley, your big man, going into church yesterday, and he looked as if he'd just sneaked out of the City on a 'bus. But you always knew how to dress yourself. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... not reply, for at that moment he lifted his left arm, leaving his heart exposed. Quick as lightning I got in a topper that completely winded him and sent him reeling against the wall. When he got his breath back he laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks, and whenever I met him in the street he flew up a side alley in mock terror. I was always designated after ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... luncheon, and he said in French that he had the hunger of seventy-seven wolves. He then approached the table to examine the food with interest, and put down his hat. It dawned upon me only at this instant that the hat was a shiny "topper"; and as he unbuttoned a smart black overcoat and threw back a white silk muffler, lo! he was revealed in full evening dress. This at two-thirty in the afternoon!... "Curiouser and curiouser," as Alice remarked when she fell down the ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... despise him! But he stuck at it indefatiguable, and blew enough wind through his flute to have sailed a ship. After breakfast in the morning, which he took in his panjammers like me, he would dress himself up nice in his Prince Albert, give his topper a wipe, and start away with the flute and a roll of music in a natty little case, like he was off to the Bank for the day. The only thing that ruffled him any was the children, about eighty of them, who ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew, "because I haven't any great faith in these young housekeepers. What do you say, Topper?" ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... it no good," gloomily replied Billy. "'Twould jest make it yeller 'n what 'tis now. Won't I be a pretty sight when I puts on long pants with these here yaller curls stuck on topper my head? I'd 'nuther ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... his stick and topper in the same way, when young, and so more easily passes through the formless stage ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... for instance, savages who always seemed on the point of speaking and never opened their mouths; with them, she thought, a wife would be bored to death. Besides, Jimmy, pooh, a common workman, a josser! While Trampy was an artiste, a bill-topper and rich, no doubt. You had only to listen to Trampy to see that he was very well off! Chocolates, sweets, jewelry, ostrich-feathers, patent-leather boots, everything! He would have loaded her with presents, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... Topper! so serenely sleek, So beautifully tall, Wherein I decked me once a week Whene'er I went to call,— No more shall now th' admiring maid, While handing me my tea, View her reflected charms displayed ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... "he is trying the artful dodge on; and he's going to jump up and give me one for myself—not for Isaac. By jingo! What a topper I could give him as ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... had a big garden and a great many greenhouses. We had had a lot of jolly Christmas presents, and one of them was Dicky's from father, and it was a printing-press. Not one of the eighteenpenny kind that never come off, but a real tip-topper, that you could have printed a whole newspaper out of if you could have been clever enough to make up all the stuff there is in newspapers. I don't know how people can do it. It's all about different things, but it is all just the same too. But the author is sorry to find he is not telling things ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... intervals, and men Cried; and the boys were restless as themselves, Till by degrees their stockings were devour'd; E'en pipes were dropp'd despairing—all, save one, One man was faithful to his pipe, and kept Despair and deeper misery at bay, By seeking ever for a "topper," dropped From some spurned pipe, but that he could not find; So, with a piteous and perpetual glare, And a quick dissolute word, sucking the pipe, Which answer'd never with a whiff, he slept; The crowd dispersed by slow degrees, but two Of all ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... of them this morning—a beauty, a tip-topper. And no nonsense about her. As she's 'black,' I suppose her name ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... Herbinger's ball. You know how vain I am! However, you may be quite certain that half the people who tell you they were there are telling stories.... But I am surprised that you weren't there, a regular 'tip-topper' like you." ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... chiefest glories of the hunt. Major Talbot-Lowry was accustomed to boast, in places where such as he congregate, that He, in His country, had the best priest in Ireland! A real good man. Kept the farmers civil and friendly. Managed a district for the Fowl Fund. And a topper to ride—always at the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... was made for the grand fleet to anchor, All in the Downs that night for to meet; So cast off your shank-painter, let go your cat's-topper, Hawl up your clew-garnets, let fly ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... of Sullivans—how good they are after shag! Meanwhile I pay my rent and am a good tenant in every way; and it's a very useful little pied-a-terre—there's no saying how useful it might be at a pinch. As it is, the billy-cock comes in and the topper goes out, and nobody takes the slightest notice of either; at this time of night the chances are that there's not a soul in the building ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... "I will tell you why not Uncle Tom. You remember me losing all that money at baccarat at Cannes? Well, very shortly I shall have to sidle up to Tom and break the news to him. If, right after that, I ask him to put on lavender gloves and a topper and distribute the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School, there will be a divorce in the family. He would pin a note to the pincushion and be off like a rabbit. No, my lad, you're for it, so you may as well make the ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... the multitude that the lives of those patriots and benefactors of their species should, through modesty, have been unrevealed to such as pant to copy them. Here and there the lineaments of a tip-topper were discernible beneath the disguise of custom; but what fair existences were screened! I may tell you at once, sir, that the State was so much struck at the time of the Great Skirmish by this doctrine ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... straight by the priggish or surly Thou didst not enthuse or beguile; But tilted a little and curly Of brim—how seductive thy style! And never was pride that is proper Sartorially better expressed Than when an immaculate topper Sat light on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various |
