"Untidy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a baby absolutely clean. Cleanliness in the house accounts for a baby's health. Untidy babies ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... opened by a young woman whom he chucked under the chin as he asked her if the Padrone was within, and he then passed, without further ceremony, through another door which stood ajar on his right-hand. It admitted him into a handsome but untidy room, where Dolfo Spini sat playing with a fine stag-hound which alternately snuffed at a basket of pups and licked his hands with that, affectionate disregard of her master's morals sometimes held to be one of the most agreeable attributes of her sex. He just looked up as Tito entered, but continued ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... OF USING CEPHALIC OIL.—It is quite useless to oil the hair; this is not only a vulgar and foolish prejudice, but an untidy habit, for the reason that all cosmetics leave their trace. It suffices to wet a little sponge in the oil, and after parting the hair with the comb, to apply it at the roots in such a manner that the whole skin of the head may be enabled to imbibe it, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... merely ploughed and harrowed, to the smooth evenness necessary for making shallow drills. Lois plied spade and rake with an earnest good-will, and thorough knowledge of her business. Do not imagine an untidy long skirt sweeping the soft soil and transferring large portions of it to the gardener's ankles; Lois was dressed for her work in a short stuff frock and leggins; and looked as nice when she came out as when she went in, albeit not in any costume ever seen in ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... thrifty little woman, with a mass of rather untidy fair hair. She was still in the tea-gown which, apparently, she had been wearing all the day, whilst her foot-gear consisted of a pair of Japanese slippers; and yet the whole effect was charming, possibly because she was entirely unaffected and obviously happy. The flat reflected the character ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... mountains, and where they now go to make proposals of peace. I believe she made some, but nobody listened much, so she came away disappointed and fiercely determined to do good somewhere or know the reason why! She's a stout, wildly untidy woman whose mouse-coloured hair is always coming down, though it's freely dotted with irrelevant tortoise-shell combs; and whose elaborate clothes look somehow insecure, the way scree does on the side of a mountain. Her ideas leap out of her ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... River, Sikhim, and contained four fresh eggs; it was placed on the ground amongst coarse grass. The other, which was similarly placed, was found on the 29th June below Lebong at an elevation of about 4000 feet, and contained three fresh eggs. Both nests are rather coarse untidy little cups, some 3 inches in diameter, and 1.75 in height exteriorly, lined and mainly composed of very fine grass, but coated exteriorly everywhere with dry flags, bits of bamboo spathes, and with one or two dead leaves incorporated at ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... On this (for it was rather hardish) I put a plaid, {150} and then a railway rug, which being coloured, had been substituted for a blanket, as the white wool of the latter insisted on coming off, and gave an untidy look to my ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... It had been the late Dunster's practice always to go over to school in shoes when, as he usually did, he felt shaky in the morning's lesson. Mr. Downing always detected him in the first five minutes, and that meant a lecture of anything from ten minutes to a quarter of an hour on Untidy Habits and Boys Who Looked like Loafers—which broke the back of the morning's work nicely. On one occasion, when a particularly tricky bit of Livy was on the bill of fare, Dunster had entered the form-room in heel-less Turkish bath-slippers, ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... to her now was to roll it comfortably up into a ball. Nurse on the contrary insisted that it didn't signify a bit what became of the worsted; she must dress and go down. The dispute ended by Hermione running off with the half finished ball and its untidy remains, and cramming the whole concern into the pocket of her best frock. "The people will soon be tired of talking to me," muttered she to herself, "and then I can finish my ball quietly in the corner ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... there came a knock at his door, and in walked, to his startled confusion, his master, Raff, of whom MacDowell stood in unmitigated awe. "The honor," he relates, "simply overwhelmed me. He looked rather quizzically around at my untidy room, and said something about the English translation of his Welt-Ende oratorio (I found out after, alas, that he had wanted me to copy it in his score for him; but with his inexplicable shyness he only hinted at it, and I on my side was too utterly and idiotically ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... way through the bank, and all those whom he most contemned had flaunted through the breach in front of him. He rode the pony now and then, but he more often lent her to little Mary O'Grady, "Owld Sta's" untidy, red-cheeked, blue-eyed, and quite uneducated little girl. It was probable that Mary could only just write her name, and it was obvious that she could not do her hair; but she was afraid of nothing that went on four ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... it had that air of neatness which indicates the presence of a lady. The tea cloth was white, the few ornaments and pictures—brought from The Cottage—the small bookcase and wicker-work basket gave a touch of refinement, which was wholly wanting in his own sparsely furnished and always untidy den. "Coming in here is like—like coming into another world. I feel sometimes as if I should like to suggest that you should charge sixpence for admission. It would be worth that sum to most of the people in the Buildings, ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... I am, mein lieber," said Helfen, composedly. "If any one had the enterprise to offer a prize to the most extravagant, untidy fellow in Europe, the palm would be yours—by a long ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... a child in making his story so complete, and we can hear the questions: "How did the big bear know that the little girl had tasted his porridge? Oh, because she had left the spoon. How did he know that she had sat in his chair? Because she left the cushion untidy, and as for the little bear's chair, why, she sat that ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... out as stars while yet it is twilight, secretly one by one. She went to gardens and awaked from dreaming the warm maternal earth. In little patches bare and desolate she called up like a flame the golden crocus, or its purple brother like an emperor's ghost. She gladdened the graceless backs of untidy houses, here with a weed, there with a little grass. She said to ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... tones penetrated to the small and untidy room behind the shop. The door opened, and Mr. Kybird in his shirt-sleeves appeared ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... and certainly were never built on any plan, or for any particular purpose, and have no window-sashes, and are a little like deserted breweries, and might be warehouses but for having nothing in them. Opposite to one of these, a white house, the scaffold was built. An untidy, unpainted, uncouth, crazy-looking thing of course: some seven feet high, perhaps: with a tall, gallows-shaped frame rising above it, in which was the knife, charged with a ponderous mass of iron, all ready to descend, and glittering brightly in the morning sun, whenever it looked ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... lasso-whirling "bull-drivers" as wild as they. In the middle of the river-front was a ferry, whence Louisiana Avenue, broad, treeless, grassy, and thinly lined with slaughter-houses, led across the plain. Down this untidy plaisance a grimy little street-car, every half-hour, jogged out to the Carrollton railway and returned. This street and the water-front were lighted—twilighted—with lard-oil lamps; the rest of the place was dark. At each of the two corners facing the ferry was ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... the world is. At the same time her chin advances confidently, and her dark eyebrows contract with a certain soft imperiousness—for she does not know how hard the world is nor how unyielding. Sometimes she withdraws her glance from the jostling throng to study the untidy and overlapping labels on the big portmanteau; she betrays a certain curiosity, but she shows at the same time a full determination not to seem over-impressed. No, the returned traveller is not Rosy Marshall; all that she knows of life she has ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... line of jaw and cheekbone and wondered how long ago the soft curves were there, and if those overworked hands had ever been pretty, and if that flat back had ever been rounded and dimpled. Her hair was untidy. Her apron was unspeakably dirty, and she used it as both a handkerchief and a hand-towel. Her voice was as hard as nails, and her cooking was wretched. Not a door or window was screened, and, as I said before, we ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... peculiar sing-song tones to the crowd, who listen with all-absorbing attention. He then orders the people to direct me to a certain inn. This inn blossoms forth upon my as yet unaccustomed vision as a peculiarly vile and dingy little hovel, smoke-blackened and untidy as a village smithy. Half a dozen rude benches covered with reed mats and provided with uncomfortable wooden pillows represent what sleeping accommodations the place affords. The place is so forbidding that I occupy a bench ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... dinner with his wife, little daughter, and sister-in-law. The first impression of an uninitiated traveller would be of poverty. The large bare kitchen was unswept and untidy; the family dishes—soup, vegetables, olives, good white bread, wine—were placed on the table without cloth or table-cover. As will be seen, these hard-working, frugal people were rich; in England they would have servants ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... great cloak of a gendarme in which he was wrapped, it was seen that his clothing did not improve his general appearance. The manner in which his garments were put on and buttoned, his untidy cravat, his rumpled shirt, were signs of the want of personal care with which men of science, all more or less absent-minded, are charged. As in the case of most thinkers, his countenance and his attitude, the development of his bust and the thinness of his legs, betrayed a ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself. The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man. But with me there is a limit, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... half-vedro bottle, already getting empty. Abyedok lay on his belly and coughed, shaking all over his small body. The rest of the dark, silent figures sat and lay around in all sorts of positions, and their tatters made them look like untidy animals, created by some strange, uncouth deity to make a ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... musical writing, that is rendered even more indistinct by my numerous erasures and corrections—and for this reason I recommended Herr Carl Gotze of Weimar by way of help; he is very quick at deciphering my untidy manuscripts. But of the best copyists it may be said "Better none," to use Beethoven's words in pronouncing his verdict ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... fiction rather than of truth. After his father's death the boy passed most of his time at the homes of his two elder brothers, and this was fortunate, for they were educated men, of some colonial consequence, while his mother lived in comparatively straitened circumstances, was illiterate and untidy, and, moreover, if tradition is to be believed, smoked a pipe. Her course with the lad was blamed by a contemporary as "fond and unthinking," and this is borne out by such facts as can be gleaned, for when his brothers wished to send him to sea she made "trifling objections," ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... dark and noisome hole, filled with demijohns and merchandise, with two or three untidy bunks in corners, the air soaked with the smells of thirty years of bilge-water, sealskins, copra, and the cargoes of island traffic. Capriata, Harry Lee, and I sat on boxes at a rough table, which we clutched as the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... which should have been covered were exposed to view. The majority of them had red hair and wide hanging-open mouths. Mrs M'Swat was a great, fat, ignorant, pleasant-looking woman, shockingly dirty and untidy. Her tremendous, flabby, stockingless ankles bulged over her unlaced hobnailed boots; her dress was torn and unbuttoned at the throat, displaying one of the dirtiest necks I have seen. It did not seem to worry ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... with a rapidity that gave the impression that they had been watched, but it was by a very untidy-looking small maid, and the parlour into which they were turned had most manifestly been lately used as the family dining-room, and was redolent of a mixture of onion, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one another, but it was here, at H——, that, for the first time, I positively began to like him. By the evening when we were assembled in the station again as I looked at him standing, waiting for directions, smiling, hot, untidy and awkward, I knew that I liked him ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... seemed to be. The bigger man was choked into submission already. No sound came from him and he hung limp and still in the little man's hold. Just in the centre of the strip of light the little man relaxed his grip, and let him fall. He dropped to the floor in a limp, untidy looking heap, and lay still there, with the light full on his face, closed eyes and grinning mouth. The man was Colonel Everard, the man who stood over ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... pathetic work of looking over the orderly closets and making solemn researches into the suspected shelters of moths. Much talk of the past was suggested by the folding of blankets; and as they set back the chairs, and brushed the floors that were made untidy by the funeral guests of the day before, they wondered afresh what would become of Israel Haydon, and what plan he would make for himself; for Mrs. Martin could only stay with him for a few days, and Mrs. Stevens was ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... prodigal flowering of bushes and shrubs. Follow the East Lyn up to Watersmeet, which is about two miles from Lynmouth through one of the most beautiful wooded gorges in England. Past the hotels you go, and a little straggle of small modern houses, past the untidy little patch which would be the suburb of a larger community, with upturned boats and washing drying in the sun, and within five minutes a turn of the road hides Lynmouth and the sea from your backward look, and you stand in the heart of a valley ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... replaced the rattling of the wheels in her ears. "The better life, then, is a life of utter solitude, Uncle Joachim thought? I wish I knew—I wish I knew——" But what it was she wished she knew was hardly clear in her mind; and her thoughts were interrupted by a very untidy, surprised-looking maid-servant, capless, and in felt slippers, who had darted down the steps and was unfastening the leather apron and pulling out the rugs with hasty, agitated hands, and trying to ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... dusty and untidy; but to Quinby Graham, standing on the hearth-rug and trying to handle his small coffee-cup as if he were used to it, the room was completely satisfying. There was a cozy warmth and mellowness about it, a kindly atmosphere of fellowship, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... whose classes she attended, was mostly concerned with doctrines, and Mrs. Marston with what one might call a list of ideal vices and temptations which pupils must guard themselves against. Miss Arundel talked to her about her untidy exercise books, her unpunctuality, her loud voice in the corridor, and her round shoulders, and explained very properly that inattention in these comparatively small matters showed a general want of self-control. She did not speak about bad temper, for Henrietta ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... one account He had imagined that a woman hated to feel draggled and untidy, and he was willing to own that in his case fatigue usually tended toward shortness of temper. Though the scramble had scarcely taxed his powers, he fancied that Evelyn had already done as much as ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... grandmother. She had never confessed such a horror to herself, but one does not love another human being whose main aim toward one is to compress, to stiffen, to make move in a step with itself. Annie folded up the untidy embroidery. As she did so, she dropped her needle and also her thimble. The needle lay glittering beside her chair, the thimble rolled noiselessly over the trailing fold of her muslin gown into ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Caddle, untidy condition. "In he comes when I'm all of a caddle." To stabble, to walk about aimlessly, or in the wet. "Now, Miss, don't you come stabbling in and out when I am scouring." Or, "I can't come stabbling down that there dirty lane, or I should be all of a muck." Want, mole. Chiselbob, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... that being an artist he did not manage his affairs with the wisdom of a man of the world; that he was hot-headed, and played a hot-headed man's part in the family quarrels; and that he was plucky and improvident, and probably untidy to the end, and that he did his best work when the buffets ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... are the initials for 'Clean and Sober,' the report the officer-of-the-deck makes when the enlisted men come aboard after being on liberty. If they are intoxicated and untidy they check them up D. and D.—which means Drunk and Dirty. You'll never hear the ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Guilder's, the art school of which Don had said, "They teach you everything except how to sell your pictures," and Flamby made the acquaintance of Hammett, famous as a painter of dogs, velvet and lace, under whom she was to work. The school surprised her. It was so extremely untidy, and the big windows were so very dirty. Busts and plaster casts, canvas-stretchers, easels, stools and stacks of sketches littered the first, or "antique" room, and they were all mantled in dust. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... junket, which is something like curds and whey. Lots of bread and butter and cheese, and half an apple pudding. Also a great jug of cider and another of milk, and several half-full glasses, and no end of dirty plates, knives, and forks. All were scattered about the table in the most untidy fashion, just as the servants had risen from their supper, without thinking to put ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... upon Robert. So far women to him had always been beings of a higher order, because he had always thought of them as being like his mother. But here they were rough and untidy, dressed like goblins in dirty torn clothes, with an old dirty sack hanging from the waist for an overall. Instinctively Robert felt that this was no place for women. One of them, who worked on the opposite side of the scree from Robert—a big, strong, heavily-built young woman of perhaps ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... through the open doors of a Catholic church, a great many lights in a side chapel, and found they were from a little illuminated model of the Nativity with the Virgin and Child in the stable among the straw. A group of untidy children were looking at it with bright beady eyes and chattering under their breath, while a black-robed janitor was rattling his keys to make ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... fire to her feathers and she would be burnt alive. "But what must I say of the Boggarts? Those idle urchins who eat the bread-and-milk, and don't do the work, who lie in bed without an ache or pain to excuse them, who untidy instead of tidying, cause work instead of doing it, and leave little cares to heap on big cares, till the old people who support them ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... as much in appearance as in mind. The outer seeming of each is almost as familiar as the forms and faces of contemporaries. Fox was massively {213} corpulent, furiously untidy, a heroic sloven, his bull throat and cheeks too often black with a three days' beard, infinitely lovable, exquisitely cultured, capable of the noblest tenderness, yet with a kind of grossness sometimes that was but a part, and perhaps ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... girl, dirty, ragged, and untidy, came into the room, and taking Duncan up in her arms, carried him upstairs, Elsie following with ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... one sheet of gold. Creeping in through the interstices of lowered "chicks," it emphasised the untidy, up-all-night aspect of the room; the sharp lines, pencilled by pain and struggle, on the sleeper's face, where he lay full length, in shirt-sleeves and scarlet waistcoat, unhooked and flung ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... school and came out again, still slovenly, unobservant, unscientific in temper, impatient, flippant, inaccurate, tending to guess and to jump at conclusions, to generalize hastily, etc. It was observed that many unskilful hands came out of the schools, clumsy ringers, wanting in neatness, untidy in work, inept in measuring and weighing, incapable of handling things intelligently. There had come an awakening from the dreams of 1870, when we felt so certain that all England was to be made good and happy through books. A remedy was sought in natural ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... and, it must be written, not seldom the comic despair of Madame Lavalle, who, as she writes five years after the marriage, to her venerable mother, found "in this unequalled intellect whose name I bear the abandon of a large and very untidy boy." Here is ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... plentiful; flaxen or "fleishen" sheets, "canvas" sheets, "noggan" sheets, "towsheets," and "nimming" sheets (mentioned by Lechford in his note-book in 1640) were all of linen. Flannel sheets also were made, and may appear in inventories under the name of rugs, and thus partially explain the untidy absence, even among the possessions of wealthy citizens, of sheets. "Straken" sheets were of kersey. After spinning became fashionable, and flax was raised in more abundance, homespun sheets were made in large quantities, and owned by all respectable ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... surprise; there was nobody to take. All was quiet; Denis wandered from room to empty room, looking with pleasure at the familiar pictures and furniture, at all the little untidy signs of life that lay scattered here and there. He was rather glad that they were all out; it was amusing to wander through the house as though one were exploring a dead, deserted Pompeii. What sort of life would the excavator reconstruct from these remains; how would he people these empty ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... I managed to get a show. "Three more whiskies, please landlord," and Tony in clear view cut up into nice squares by the little leaded panes. I got mine absorbed just in time, and was on the doorstep to meet her, draggle-skirted and untidy, but enthusiastic about her "burn." She broke her vows three times on the way up to number ten, and excused her lapses on the ground that the "burn" was the perfect image of one near a place she ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... us—that is, Kitty and me—with mirth for many a day; as to Miss Abigail, I think she never wholly pardoned him. After this, Captain Nutter gradually gave up smoking, which is an untidy, injurious, disgraceful, and ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... scene always makes one's hair untidy," said Sarah, suddenly bursting into a laugh; but the whiteness of Peter's face frightened her, and she had some ado to laugh naturally. "And I am lost without a looking-glass," she added, in a somewhat ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... my response, but I could not help feeling a little relief at her decision; the absence of any walk was an evil in my eyes. The Thornes' windows looked into ours; already I had had a sufficient glimpse of three rather untidy little heads over the wire blind, and the spectacle had not attracted me. I ventured to hint my fears to Carrie that they were not very interesting children; but, to my dismay, she answered that few children are interesting, and that one was ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... my place behind at least a dozen boys and young men, whose avocation was unmistakable. Most of them were smoking either cigarettes or a pipe, and most of them were untidy and unhealthy looking. They took no notice of me, but sat watching the door to the inner room, which opened and shut with wonderful rapidity. Every time one of their number came out, another took his place. It came to my turn sooner than I ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... women being employed in the daytime, the sitting-room had been more especially Bessie's domain. How strange and chilling was the thought it would be empty of Bessie for evermore. Her untidy work-basket peeped out from under the sofa where she always pushed it on the appearance of a visitor; the penny weekly paper in which she read of the fashions, and the romantic love-matches of which she had dreamed while making an absolutely sordid marriage herself, was tucked behind the cushion ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... untamed appearance was atoned for by a halo of good-fellowship which hovered about his head. I am sure he must have been an untidy person to have in your tent: I feel equally sure that his tent-mates would have been sorry to lose him. His gear took up more room than was strictly his share, and his mind also filled up a considerable amount ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... a beautiful lady before her, jumped from the ground, and, with shame, began to shake herself from the dirt that clung to her garments; but the stranger, taking no notice of her untidy condition, clasped the child's fingers in her white hand, and told her to lead ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous
... Jerry and Jerry's mother, John Westley was not at all surprised to find Dr. Travis a most unordinary man, also. He was small, his clothes, country-cut, hung loosely on his spare frame, his hair fringed over his collar in an untidy way, yet there was a kindliness, a gentleness in his face that was winning on the instant; one did not need to see his dusty, worn medicine case to know that his life was ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... An unwashed, untidy priest with timid, staring eyes thrust back his long, dishevelled hair, and fell to repeating, as his fat shoulder jostled all and sundry, and his feet tripped ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... the living-room one afternoon looking weary and untidy, and flung himself into an easy-chair, giving a curt nod of greeting to Gideon Birkenshaw, who had strolled down from the homestead to ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... a good inch. By the old bake oven stood a woman. A disreputable straw hat with a raveled brim was pulled down over her untidy honey-colored hair and she was rolling up the sleeves of a stained smock to bare round ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... slatternly, frankly dirty vrouws had not the remotest idea of sanitation; the Germans and Irish, blandly or doggedly impervious to savage smells, pursued their unsavoury way in defiance of the clamorous necessity for hygienic measures, until the majority of the pallid, untidy, scared Englishwomen, the energetic Americans, and the sturdier Africanders, after making what headway was possible against the ever-rising tide of filth, had yielded to the lethargy bred of despair and lack of exercise, and ceased to strive. A few, worthy of honour, still stoutly battled with the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... housekeeper gladly sent off her boy Philip for Susan, who was never so untidy that she could not come at once when sent for. She had been very busy, but orderly people can be busy and neat at the same time. Putting on her usual straw hat, she set out for the Abbey. On the way she overtook Rose's mother, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... good long look at the old man. There was no mistaking his grave, honest, sturdy, wrinkled, scholarly face. His voice was assured and sincere in its tones. His decent black coat was just what a scholar's should be,—old, not untidy, a little shiny at the elbows with much leaning on his study-table, but neatly bound at the cuffs, where worthy Mrs. Hopkins had detected signs of fatigue and come to the rescue. His very hat looked honest as it lay on the table. It had moulded itself to a broad, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Colonel Gray as untidy dress or shabby habiliments on a member of the guard detail. One morning in making his usual inspection, he came upon a soldier who was particularly slovenly. Ordering the man to step out of the ranks, the colonel surveyed him from head to foot, then, spurning him with his foot, remarked: "That ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... mathematics, and science of all sorts prospered finely; but the dust gathered on the work-baskets, frayed elbows went unheeded, and some of the blue stockings sadly needed mending. Anxious lest the usual sneer at learned women should apply to 'our girls', she gently lured two or three of the most untidy to her house, and made the hour so pleasant, the lesson so kindly, that they took the hint, were grateful for the favour, and asked to come again. Others soon begged to make the detested weekly duty lighter ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... was always so friendly that people thought that he must wish for things in return, but he never asked for anything, nor did he speak about himself at all. As for his portrait, he had a pale face, a big beak nose, very black hair that hung over his forehead and was always untidy, a blue velvet jacket, black trousers, green ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... blame Mrs. Worse for making an idol of her son; he was all she had to care for. Although Jacob was a good son, and grew up strong and healthy, he had cost his mother many tears when he came home from school bruised and untidy after a fight. The boy had almost too much spirit, as the principal said, and when he was roused he did not mind tackling the biggest and strongest boys in the school. But he got better as time went on, and when he came home from abroad to take his place in the business, ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... men were old-time soldiers, hardly to be distinguished from yamen runners in their untidy black and scarlet jackets decorated with bold lettering on the back; and their weapons consisted simply of something that might be described as a small sword or a huge carving-knife in a leather sheath. After entering Szechuan I was usually accompanied by quite real soldiers, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... was two or three minutes before he found the hat among the scattered peat. When he came back it was nearly dark, but Grace's hair was no longer untidy, and the snow that had smeared her clothes had gone. She walked with him to where the sledge rested on a pile of stones, and looking through the gap, they saw a woman with a lantern cross a narrow pasture between them and ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... I think that only dirty, untidy people let their nails grow long. Rich people in China never cut their nails. They let them grow so long that they have to wear shields to keep them ...
— Highroads of Geography • Anonymous
... to live in a hall bedroom of the untidy boarding-house Haldane for years had called home, it was not long before she, too, quite unaffectedly, took to the idea that the good-natured musician needed "looking after." And since, all her life, she had tremendously given herself to the care of people ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... his fine house in Carlton House Terrace, on the 23rd November. After waiting some while, following, as we did, about a dozen previous waiters on the Chancellor, we were shown into Mr. Gladstone's working room, or den. The room was very untidy. Placards, papers, letters, newspapers, magazines, and blue boots on the table, chairs, bookshelves, and the floor. It looked, altogether, as if the window had been left open, and the contents of a miscellaneous newspaper, book, and parliamentary paper ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... behind the course. Babbie, who had organized the Moonshiners and was their mistress of ceremonies, held many secret conferences with Madeline Ayres and the two spent a long afternoon sewing behind locked doors, on some dark brown stuff, which Babbie subsequently tied into a big, untidy parcel and carried up to Professor Henderson's. So the Moonshiners expected a "feature" in addition to the familiar delights of a bacon-roast, and they turned out in such numbers that Bob had to ride a fat little carriage horse and Babbie bravely ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... that the men will acquire habits of cleanliness and tidiness of their surroundings. Once this is acquired it is easily maintained. The reverse of this statement is equally true. Let a company get started in a slovenly, untidy manner and it is difficult to get it back on the right ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... figure. His face, too—she remembered that better than anything—with its pale hollow cheeks and delicate outline, deep-set dark blue eyes, black eyebrows, and long, unkempt hair, which would have looked very much the better for a little trimming. A man utterly regardless of his appearance, untidy, almost slovenly in his attire, yet with something about ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and I was in an untidy slum which might have been on another world from the neat bright Trade City which lay west of the spaceport. The Kharsa was alive and reeking with the sounds and smells of human and half-human life. A naked child, diminutive and golden-furred, darted ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... began to clear off the untidy desk and stooped to pick up a piece of paper that had fallen from Molly's letter without Professor Green's having read it or noticed its existence. She started to put it in the waste basket, but the ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... it suddenly struck him that the room looked disgustingly slovenly and unkempt. Phil was such an untidy beggar! He would fix things up a bit. If he did it carefully and methodically, no doubt he could consume a good hour and a half that way. It would then be half past nine. Possibly, if he tried hard, he could ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... who was the son of a postman in a small Scotch town, an exhibitioner so far as regards his education, and a mimic where social gifts were concerned, had all the aggressive bumptiousness of the successful man who has wit enough to perceive his shortcomings. In his ill-chosen tourist clothes, untidy collar and badly arranged tie, he presented a contrast to his companion of which he seemed, in ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... laurels; for they are always untidy, and scattering about their yellow leaves when all the trees about them ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... ones best: double-carnations are so untidy, all bursting out of the calyx as if the petals had quarrelled and could not ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... room in the house on Sunday evenings, always first scrupulously knocking at the door. An untidy room gave him positive pain, and the most slovenly boys would endeavour to get their filthy rooms into some sort of order, "just to please old John." John was passionately fond of flowers, and one would meet the most unlikely boys with bunches of roses in their hands. If one ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... age of ornamentation nothing can be more untidy or more unprepossessing than the appearance of the Oraon. The ornaments are nearly all discarded, hair utterly neglected, and for raiment any rags are used. This applies both to males and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... amusements of their cousins—although his wife was constantly urging him to do so. It was, to Madame Duburg, a terrible thing that her boys—instead of being always tidy and orderly, and ready, when at home, to accompany her for a walk—should come home flushed, hot, and untidy, with perhaps a swelled cheek or a black eye, from the effects of a blow from a cricket ball ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... about all these animals and said they made the house untidy. And one day when an old lady with rheumatism came to see the Doctor, she sat on the hedgehog who was sleeping on the sofa and never came to see him any more, but drove every Saturday all the way to Oxenthorpe, another town ten miles off, to ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... about his once superb frock coat clung the scent of forbidden beverages. On one such day he appeared with an untidy sprouting of beard, accompanied ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... muddle your Royal Highness is sitting in," said she sharply. "Such a heap of untidy books; and what's this rubbish?" knocking a little ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... her the next day, then saw her almost daily. Little by little I took to calling at all times, and sleeping with her. The more I had her, the more I liked her. She was a very nice woman in most ways, I scarcely ever found her untidy, dirty, or slammerkin. If not dressed, she had a clean wrapper on, had nearly always silk stockings on, and a clean chemise; and therefore call when I might she was ready to be fucked at a minute's notice. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... tied her bonnet, and slung a second pair of boots across her arm: for the roads were heavy and she would leave the muddy pair with a friend who lived at the entrance of the town, not choosing to appear untidy as she walked up the Fore Street. These arrangements made, she went to seek her husband, who was busy planing a coffin-lid in the workshop behind the cottage, and ruminating upon ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the family good witness. She confessed they never seemed to have much to eat, but said they paid their lodgings regularly, and she had nothing to complain of. The place had indeed been untidy, not to say dirty, at first, but as soon as the mother was about again, it began to amend, and now, really, for people in their position, it ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... some already biased minds, might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious stigma originate? I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the Greenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... boy had been sent on an errand with sixpence and had stolen the money; with many sobs and tears he confessed that he had spent it in cakes. Mr. Kent looked at the tear-stained face; the untidy brown head scarcely reached to the table, and the good magistrate thought, with something like pain at his heart, of a fair-haired boy at home. So he spoke kindly to the poor, trembling prisoner, and while he strongly reprimanded, still encouraged him to better ways. ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... story of the swallows; and it goes on to tell, as you would expect, how the Colonel died that year, before the swallows came flying north and home again. He was buried, while little Rupert and Rupert's mother looked on, in that untidy corner of the Boulogne Cemetery, where many another English half-pay officer had ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... discovered as well a certain look of earnestness and service that would at first have attracted her for its own sake, and then repelled her for James's; for she would assuredly have read in it what she would have counted dangerous for him; but seeing her poorly dressed, and looking untidy, which at the moment she could not help, the mother took her for an ordinary maid-of-all-work, and never for a moment doubted that her son must see her just as she did. He was her only son; her heart was ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... light, and the warmth, accounted for the popularity of the room, as borne witness to by many impressions of velveteen trousers on a form by the fire, and many rounded smears and smudges of stooping velveteen shoulders on the adjacent wall. Various untidy shelves accommodated a quantity of lamps and oil-cans, and also a fragrant collection of what looked like the pocket-handkerchiefs of the ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... suppose, however, that the disruption and land-slip of Thingvalla took place quite in the spick and span manner the section might lead you to imagine; in some places the rock has split asunder very unevenly, and the Hrafna Gja is altogether a very untidy rent, the sides having fallen in in many places, and almost filled up the ravine with ruins. On the other hand, in the Almanna Gja, you can easily distinguish on the one face marks and formations exactly corresponding, though at a different level, with those ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... to Phoebe's home before. At the Terrace she was smart, attractive, and as particular as her mistress about her clothes. Nobody ever saw Phoebe with untidy shoes or stockings, and even in the morning, before she was supposed to be dressed, her little feet were as neat as if she had nothing to do but to sit in a drawing-room. She was now lying on a stump bedstead with a patchwork coverlet over her, and to protect her ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... hand back of the untidy jumble of school books and pads and drew out an oft creased, finger marked sheet, the ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... before he could reply in words there came a clatter upon the rickety stairs at the far end of the entry. A thin, slipshod woman with untidy hair and a sharp face paused on the lower step and looked ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... supposed untidy habits, the phase of cleanliness which, like a purifying wind, descended suddenly upon the world in the second half of the nineteenth century, has penetrated even to libraries and museums, removing every speck of dust therefrom. The archaeologist, when ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... that schoolmaster Blom had to stand close to the engine; the heat at his back was intolerable; his morning coat was being covered with grease spots, while he stood, with his gaze rivetted on the untidy head of a servant girl and endured the rancid smell of the hair-oil. But he did not see a single face ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... For what else—when he's so clever and beautiful and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he ill-natured? He's exquisite—so it can be only THAT; and that would open up the whole thing. After all," I said, "it's their uncle's fault. If he left ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... with my untidy clothes, I was a thorn in the side of those ladies. Visibly turned up their noses when I came around. One day after a big row with my eldest brother I just walked off. I've been regularly up against it ever since. Just a year ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... attire, worn for the express purpose of giving stiffness and smartness to the figure. If we want a scarf, do not let us misconceive the nature of its form, the law of its curves, and huddle it up into an untidy, unmeaning mass, fit for nothing but to serve as a field of display for what is commonly cheap and bad jewellery. We may be wrong, but we strongly suspect that the tie-stock and the large silk scarf were brought into use by some dirty fellow, whose linens ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... classic laws of architecture; but her proximates, in her phenomena as we immediately experience them, Nature is everywhere gothic, not classic. She forms a real jungle, where all things are provisional, half-fitted to each other, and untidy. When we add such a complex kind of subliminal region as Myers believed in to the official region, we restore the analogy; and, though we may be mistaken in much detail, in a general way, at least, we become plausible. In comparison with Myers' way of attacking ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... and followed by my sensible parson with the bag, made for the untidy wharf through the silent village. The blue boat was not hard to discover in the pale, ghostly light; the bay was hardly rippled; it was to be another hot, sticky day. My companion begged ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... in the tumbled, untidy condition of a sleeping-place but just vacated. The sex and quality of its recent occupant were plainly apparent in the goods and chattels lying about, the property and possessions of a delicate, well-bred woman ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... when the highest credits are awarded. Such a child may be sometimes recognized by the neglected appearance of his teeth and finger-nails, the "high-water marks" about his neck and wrists, the dust on his clothing and shoes, his untidy hair, etc. In fact, he seems to have adopted as his life motto the paraphrase, "There is no excellence about ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... hopeless silence. One might search all day and all night, but it was impossible to find what was not there. Her eyes looked listlessly on the map book, the arithmetic book, the French exercise book; even the big untidy note book roused no flicker of animation, though if it chanced to fall open it would reveal caricature drawings of school authorities which must needs draw confusion upon her head. She would never have the heart to draw caricatures again! The thick ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... these "forgotten men" were the "forgotten women." "Thin and wrinkled in youth from ill-prepared food, clad without warmth or grace, living in untidy houses, working from daylight till bedtime at the dull round of weary duties, the slaves of men of equal slovenliness, the mothers of joyless children—all uneducated if not illiterate." "This sight," Page told his hearers, "every one of you has seen, not in the countries ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Elaine lying with bandaged eyes in the darkened room of the Dr Hegelmann's surgical home. The great specialist, pulling at his beard with his long, delicately-chiselled fingers, so out of keeping with the shapelessness of his bulky, untidy figure, had taken Riviere aside and had given him orders in that wonderfully musical ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... crisp, brown, untidy hair, cheeks brimful of color, thick lips, eyes that looked up and out as a Skye terrier's eyes look out of its shagginess—indeed, her whole figure struck Felix as almost frighteningly vital; and she walked as if she despised the ground she covered. The ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... tall men who look mean in spite of their height. His head was small and narrow, and his hair, which was sparse and lank, fell in untidy strands across his forehead. He stooped slightly from the neck, and his chest, though wide, was hollow between the shoulders. But his legs were big and bony, slightly bent at the knees, like ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... not know a word of English, wrote French with a purely fantastic orthography, but had excellent qualities as a Liberal, an army chief, and a popular leader. Still, he was not pleased that Regnault had painted him greeted by the enthusiastic cheers of an untidy, ragged mob of rebels; he would have preferred to be receiving the acclamations of regular troops, and of the highest men and women in the nation, as now, at the conclusion of his career, he really was. Only a ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... laboratory, she decided as she watched him strike a match against the side of the box and apply the flame to the charred bowl of his pipe. His long dark face became half obscured behind a cloud of bluish smoke as he puffed furiously. He looked like a lean untidy devil recently escaped from hell with his thick brows, green eyes and lank black hair highlighted intermittently by the leaping flame of the match. He certainly didn't look like a pathologist. She wondered if she was going to like working with him, and shook her head ...
— Pandemic • Jesse Franklin Bone
... An untidy-looking lawn with a few unkempt and overgrown rhododendron bushes dotted here and there ran its length in front of the house and terminated in an iron railing which separated the grounds from a little wood. A badly water-logged drive, green with grass in places, ran past the ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... from his pocket a small parcel wrapped in dirty tissue paper, and put it on the table. The untidy folds fell apart, exposing the missing necklace, but the diamond was missing ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... to me, the look of that untidy garden, of those gesticulating statues, and of that convent bell swinging against the sky; but the thoughts that I thought about those Nuns I have completely forgotten. They were probably ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... entry-room is empty. A crowd of dirty, dusty rioters rush in, their faces scarlet with brandy, and excitement; tattered, untidy-looking, as if they had been up all night. With the shout: "Weavers, come out!" they disperse themselves through the house. BECKER and several other young weavers, armed with cudgels and poles, come into OLD ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... being seen. Mrs. Lessways' thin, wrinkled face, bordered by her untidy but still black and glossy hair, was upturned from below in an expression of tragic fretfulness. It was the uncontrolled face, shamelessly expressive, of one who thinks himself unwatched. Hilda moved silently to descend, and then demanded in a low tone whose harsh self-possession was a reproof ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... upon the ground were a dozen untidy, unshaven men, whom I recognized by their uniforms to be Germans. One man cast an insolent glance toward me and turned his back. Two others smiled and pointed toward the bread they held in their hands. On some straw in a couple of drays lay five ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... Dedications, but they interest me, and I have studied them a good deal. They are generally arranged in columns like untidy addition sums, and no two lines are the same length. This is very important. At the end you arrive, as it were by a series of stepping-stones, at the climax. And there ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... The untidy bookshelf reminded me of the logbook, and when Davies had retired with the crockery to the forecastle, I pulled the ledger down and turned over the leaves. It was a mass of short entries, with cryptic abbreviations, winds, tides, weather, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... back-parlour was a paradise. She offered him the only chair in the room, and took her place on the edge of the bed, which showed a clean but much-worn patchwork quilt. Charley slept on the bed, and she on a shake-down in the corner. The room was not untidy, though the walls and floor were not clean; indeed there were not in it articles enough to make it ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... some years since she had had speech of him—some years, indeed, since she had seen him, save during that brief moment, twenty-four hours previously, as she descended the steps of Cedar Lodge. Even in his most prosperous days he had been unattractive in person, at once untidy and theatrical in dress. Now Poppy registered a distinct deterioration in his appearance. His puffy face, red-rimmed eyes, and shambling gait were odious to her. She noted, moreover, that he was poorly clad. His grey felt hat was stained and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... Mr. Mussey, stout, affable, and cynic, a heavy drinker, untidy about his person and exacting about his engine-room, a veteran of his trade and—it was said—an ancient croney of Monk's. There was, at all events, a complete understanding evident between these two, though now and again, especially at table, when Monk was putting on something more than ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance |
