"Airs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... three or four nights, Gascoigne singing the same airs the ensuing night that he had heard the preceding, until at last it appeared that the female had no longer any fear, but changed the airs so as to be amused with the repetition of them next evening. On the fifth ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... brief, he accosted one of the many surly overseers, or taskmasters of the yard, who, with no few pompous airs, finally engaged him at six shillings a week, almost equivalent to a dollar and a half. He was appointed to one of the mills for grinding up the ingredients. This mill stood in the open air. It was of a rude, primitive, Eastern aspect, consisting of a sort of hopper, emptying into ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... were danced, and between them was given Lady Breadalbane's strathspey. There was such crowding to see these dances that the Lord Chamberlain had difficulty in making room for them. While Musard furnished special music for the minuets and quadrilles, adapting it in one case from airs of the '45, the Queen's piper, Mackay, gave forth, for the benefit of the strathspey and reel- dancers, the stirring strains of "Miss Drummond of Perth," "Tullochgorum," and "The Marquis of Huntly's Highland Fling," which ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... in a writer to make a woman's manner of speech portray her. You feel sensible of her presence in every line of her speaking. The stipulations with her lover in view of marriage, her fine lady's delicacy, and fine lady's easy evasions of indelicacy, coquettish airs, and playing with irresolution, which in a common maid would be bashfulness, until she submits to 'dwindle into a wife,' as she says, form a picture that lives in the frame, and is in harmony with Mirabel's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... together like a man's—not out of sight of each other like a hen's. His plumage was fine—none of the half-mourning style of your ostrich—more like a cassowary as far as colour and texture go. And then it was he began to cock his comb at me and give himself airs, and show signs of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... drollery as he then had wi' him! Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring and singing. Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsel' the great man, or took ony airs in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk—(this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare)—but, drunk or sober, he was aye the gentleman. He looked ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... something common to all men. While, then, the words "Premier of Russia" still echoed through his head, there rose upon his inner ear a sudden note of melody, vagrant, sweet and melancholy as the songs of the Steppes. Known song it was not, however; but something unique, as were all the airs that came to him unbidden. Under its influence it was natural that his face should change, and soften. But Michael, imagining that rapt expression to be the result of his own words, was well satisfied; and he sent the boy from ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... lived here the year I mean come so quiet nobody knew it until they was here—an' that ain't easy to do in Friendship. First we knew they was in an' housekeepin'. Their accounts was in the name of a Mis' Morgan. We see her now an' then on the street—trim an' elderly an' no airs excep' she wouldn't open up a conversation an' she wouldn't return her calls. 'Most everybody called on her inside the two weeks, but the woman was never home an' she never paid any attention. She didn't seem to have no men ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... probably, later; but," and she tossed her head like the spoiled beauty she was, "it will serve him right, for being so slow, to find that I have accepted another. Besides which," and she shrugged her shoulders with all the airs of a Parisian dame, "you know your bourgeois etiquette. I cannot accept another: it would be a just cause for a ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... unknown sources of the Nile to the place where it casts itself into the sea there is no lovelier maid than her mistress. Yet no,—I am beautiful; the blazing eyes of men have told me so a thousand times, and especially have the annoyed airs and the disdainful pouts of the women who passed by me confirmed it. Will Poeri, who has inspired me with such mad passion, never love me? He would have received just as kindly an old, wrinkled woman with withered breasts, clothed in hideous rags, and with feet ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... or pathetic eloquence which were continually breaking from her tribune. Every shout of victory from her shores was echoed back from ours. Every house and every cottage, our mountains and valleys, rung with her national airs, and often did we see groups of the old and the young, the rich and the poor, fathers and sons, virgins and matrons, swelling the heroic chorus of the Marseilles hymn, with the tears and the fire of enthusiasm in their eyes. Those days ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt
... Captain Purcell, easy going and good hearted. "Barring a few snobbish airs, I always used to like Rip well enough. He was always pretty proud, but pride, in itself, is no bar to being a decent fellow. The only fellow who comes to harm with pride is the fellow who gets proud before ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... bestow it on anyone else; so that her fate will be a hard one if she is not allowed to marry." Sidney had returned home very much improved by his Crimean campaign, having dropped all his Guardsman's airs, and become, Mary ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... and, on exceptional occasions, the exhilarating "cheat," formed the staple for saltatorial performance, until the hour of eleven brought the concluding country dance, when a final squad of roysterers bobbed "up the middle and down again" to the airs of "Sir Roger ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... at first conceived any suspicion of her on that account: for, as she herself said, "She had always esteemed Jenny as a very sober girl (though indeed she knew very little of her), and had rather suspected some of those wanton trollops, who gave themselves airs, because, forsooth, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... done no wrong we shall see that no wrong comes to him. If we are pretty quick in catching our men, we are not so quick in condemning them." It was amusing to notice how the consequential Jones was already beginning to give himself airs on the strength of the capture. From the slight smile which played over Sherlock Holmes's face, I could see that the speech had not been lost ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... experience, caused quite a sensation; and Tilly's audible raptures at beholding her Purdy again were of short duration; for Purdy had never met the equal of Miss Sarah, and could not take his eyes off her. He and she were the life of the party. The Beamishes were overawed by the visitor's town-bred airs and the genteel elegance of her dress; Polly was a mere crumpled rose-leaf of pink confusion; Mahony too preoccupied with ring and licence to take any but his formal ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... airs they faint On the dark, the silent stream— The champak odors fail Like sweet-thoughts in a dream; The nightingale's complaint It dies upon her heart, As I must die on thine O beloved as ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... of wooden pipe-lights, which having arranged to his satisfaction, he sends scudding at the chairman's head. The harmony proceeds, and with it the desire to assist in it, until they all sing different airs at once; and the lodger above, who has vainly endeavoured to get to sleep for the last three hours, gives up the attempt as hopeless, when he hears Mr. Manhug called upon for the sixth time to do the cat and dog, saw the bit of wood, imitate Macready, sing his own version ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... their old, second-hand pianos, some with rattling keys and tinny sound, on which we were supposed to play our scales and exercises for an hour, though we often slyly indulged in the 'Russian March,' 'Napoleon Crossing the Rhine,' or our national airs, when, as slyly, Mr. Powell, our music teacher, a bumptious Englishman, would softly open the door and say in a stern voice, 'Please practice the lesson I ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... and tall like the women of her father's house but very strong and alive. In secret she wanted to be a lady but when she tried her brothers, led by her father and mother, made fun of her. "Don't put on airs," they said. When she got into the country with no one but her brothers and two or three neighboring farm boys she herself became a boy. With the boys she went tearing through the fields, following the dogs in pursuit of rabbits. ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... Sunday, September 15, at daylight, the Victory weighed, with light airs, and immediately sailed. Though five ships of the line, and a frigate, were then at Portsmouth, almost ready for sea, and under orders to join his lordship, he was resolved not to lose a moment ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... lute that was wrought of a shell Luminous as the shine Of a new-born star in a dewy dell,— And its strings were strands of wine That sprayed at the Fancy's touch and fused, As your listening spirit leant Drunken through with the airs that oozed From ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... flourish! So may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your church and chambers! So may the sparrows, in default of more melodious quiristers, imprisoned hop about your walks! So may the fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery-maid, who by leave airs her playful charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsey as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion! So may the younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... hauteur. He had rubbed-skirts with Royalty, and to his fetter-shadowed soul some of the divinity which hedges kings and their relatives had adhered to him. I never met a darkey who could put on such fearful and wonderful airs. Where he did not order he condescended. He showed me an Irish constabulary revolver which he had received from "his old friend, Lord Francis Conyngham—'pon honour, he was delighted to meet him. It was good for ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... wife, a well-bred woman, neither pretty nor plain, timid, very gentle, and deeply conscious of her false position. Madame Vinet was fair-complexioned, faded by the cares of her poor household, and very simply dressed. No woman could have pleased Sylvie more. Madame Vinet endured her airs, and bent before them like one accustomed to subjection. On the poor woman's rounded brow and delicately timid cheek and in her slow and gentle glance, were the traces of deep reflection, of those perceptive thoughts ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... sons—Tom, Dick, and Harry—were big fellows of seventeen, nineteen, and twenty-one; the first two on the farm, and the elder in a store just setting up for himself. Kind-hearted but rough-mannered youths, who loved Merry very much, but teased her sadly about her "fine lady airs," as they called her dainty ways and ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... and in a sense pathetic, in this sudden steady diligence from the man of desultory habits, who had never written but by whim, whose finger had always been lifted to catch the lightest literary airs. Here, at last, was the firm trade wind, and the satisfaction of steady and methodical progress. The qualified success of the "Tales of a Traveler" had led him to feel that his vein was running out. The prospect of producing a solid work gave him keen pleasure. One cannot be always building ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... copied that plain, informal thing, an English breakfast, such as Sydney Smith was wont to give. Mr. Webster writes home in 1839: "In England the rule of politeness is to be quiet, act naturally, take no airs, and make no bustle. This perfect politeness has cost a great deal of drill." He delighted in the English breakfasts, where he met "Boz," Tom Moore, Wordsworth, Rogers (who never gave any entertainment but breakfasts). We are all workers in America, yet we ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... example of the dominators in surrounding themselves with servants and despising manual or corporal labor as a thing unbecoming the nobility and chivalrous pride of the heroes of so many centuries; those lordly airs, which the natives have translated into tila ka castila, and the desire of the dominated to be the equal of the dominators, if not essentially, at least in their manners: all this had naturally to produce aversion to activity and fear or hatred ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... to the brink of the river; and there (for their ears were by this time dead to the noise of the torrent) they could hear plainly the same voice which had so surprised them in the hut, repeating, clear and true, snatches of the airs which they had sung. Strange and solemn enough was the effect of the men's deep voices on the island, answered out of the dark forest by those sweet treble notes; and the two young men stood a long while listening and looking out across the eddies, which swirled down golden in the moonlight: ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... upon the most advantageous hour to visit the great lady. In the afternoon she held her famous salon of canons and austere gentlemen whom she received with the airs of a sovereign. These were to be the inheritors of her money, as agents and representatives of various corporations of a religious character. He must visit her immediately; surprise her in her solitude after mass ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to the guests, both taken from what are called in our country "Parliamentary airs;" they used to break forth in "juratus" coffee-houses, during the sitting of Parliament, when there was more spirit in the youths of the ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... have thought of Uncle Tom and the bells of Nottingham on this clear night of lovely airs and out-of-door merriments. Over the great city towered St. Paul's under the rising moon. Afar was the Abbey, with the ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... seven and a half minutes, or eight times in the hour; but long since he must have torn up that warranty, for he is now his own master, breaking out into little sighs of melancholy or wistful music whenever the mood takes him. I have never heard such profoundly plaintive airs as his—very beautiful, very grave, very deliberate. One cannot say more for persistent chimes than this—that at the Abbey hotel it is no misfortune to wake in ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... said St. Clare, carelessly. "Well, here, I'm going to show this Tom to his mistress, and then you take him to the kitchen; and mind you don't put on any of your airs to him. He's worth two ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and the earliest writers of Greek chronicles may have held a position among the other senators similar to that of the farmer in the fens of Holstein who has been a student and in the evening, when he comes home from the plough, takes down his Virgil from the shelf. A man who assumed airs of greater importance by reason of his Greek, was reckoned a bad patriot and a fool; and certainly even in Cato's time one who spoke Greek ill or not at all might still be a man of rank and become senator and consul. But a change was already taking ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... her best to please, with blue skies and soft fragrant airs, when Garth gave a final push-off to the Betsy Anne, and bent to his oars as she skimmed out over the top of the waves with her nose towards ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... She had a beautiful voice, of a power surprising in one so small, and could touch A in alt without effort. Accompanied by her husband on his fine Cremona fiddle, which he played, as we have noted before, as one plays a bass viol, she would sing all the liveliest and tenderest airs from the operas and cantatas of her native country. Seated together at the harpsichord, they found that they could with their four hands play all the music written for two hands of ordinary size, a circumstance which gave Sir Hercules ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... gaucherie which she strives to cover by an appearance of naivete.... All her charm lies in her complexion, and even that I find wan rather than white; a very beautiful neck. It was this mixture of unique licence, they say, which she combined with the airs of innocent ignorance and vestal severity, that captivated ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... to rattle the paper and whistle in a low tone rudely while the reading went on, then he threw down his paper and lighted a cigarette. But that did not seem to soothe his nerves sufficiently, so he strolled over to the piano and began to drum bits of popular airs and sing in a high nasal tone that he was pleased to call "whiskey tenor." Julia Cloud, with a despairing glance at him, finally closed her book and suggested that they had read enough for that day, and the little audience drifted away unhappily to their rooms. Leslie did not come down ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... buoyant note of the first night. One after another he called out the popular airs of the old light operas. She had them all on her ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... it. And the woman may be living, too, for all I know. I think of her pretty often. She was game; wouldn't tell anything. If a man had deceived her she stood by him. Whatever she was—I know she was not bad, not a bit of it—the spirit of the hills had entered into her—and those are cleansing airs up there. I suppose it all made the deeper impression on me because I was born up there myself. When I strike Adirondacks in print I put down my book and think a while. It's a picture word. It brings back my earliest childhood as far as I can remember. I call ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... oppose the passage of a regiment and battery armed and equipped as was the 1st Rhode Island. The regiment marched across the city from the depot where we landed, without a halt, with its band playing national airs. We were well supplied with ammunition, and the battery could have swept the streets of any mob essaying to obstruct its progress. We soon reached and boarded the cars, arriving at Chambersburg at noon, 11th, and starting again by rail for Greencastle, Pennsylvania, which place we reached ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke
... man with your own eyes what do you try to find in him? The invisible man. These words which your ears catch, those gestures, those airs of the head, his attire and sensible operations of all kinds, are, for you, merely so many expressions; these express something, a soul. An inward man is hidden beneath the outward man, and the latter simply ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... a different sort of negro from any which the mountain folk had ever seen, and wore more airs than his "white folks." Dressed in a black frock-coat as ornate as the Colonel's, although its bagging shoulders showed that it had been a gift and not made for him, his hat was a silk tile, a bit too large, and in one hand was a gold-headed ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... were, on an almost placid sea, with tepid airs blowing gently in their faces, and a scorching sun overhead, whose rays had to be shielded off, floating over the highest pinnacles of the roof of the world, the traditional ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... all," she thought as she laid her bonnet on the sitting-room sofa, where she had felt of the pillows, and the lambrequin which hung from the long shelf where the clock and vasts stood, on the opposite side of the room. "Bet she don't put on no airs about me just the same." She looked at the small bookcase below the mantel in a perfect rage of envy. Elizabeth was surrounded by the things which befitted Elizabeth, and Sadie realized as she had never done ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... that had come to her lately had made her heart almost too big and tender. Since she had learned to love Channing, that always sensitive heart of hers ached and swelled with every grief or joy that passed, as a wind-harp thrills to the touch of passing airs. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... string of beads, her finest kerchief, and her stiffest damask petticoat in preparation for the interview. Hurrying from her chamber to the parlor, she had ever since been viewing herself in the large looking-glass and practising pretty airs-now a smile, now a ceremonious dignity of aspect, and now a softer smile than the former, kissing her hand likewise, tossing her head, and managing her fan; while within the mirror an unsubstantial little maid repeated every gesture and did all the foolish things that Polly did, but without ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... accordingly. And should it be said, that prudence may suffice to regulate our actions in this particular, without any real pride, I would observe, that here the object of prudence is to conform our actions to the general usage and custom; and, that it is impossible those tacit airs of superiority should ever have been established and authorized by custom, unless men were generally proud, and unless that passion were generally ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the remainder of the original party had returned to North Carolina. But they were neither desponding nor indolent. They held pleasant communion together—hunted by day, cooked their game, sat by their bright fires, and sung the airs of their country by night, as though in the midst of the gayest society. They devoted, beside, much of their time and labor to preparing a comfortable cabin to shelter them during the ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... two maids are kept they are waitress— "second girl" or "housemaid," sometimes so-called—and cook. The housemaid—we will so style her—opens and airs the house and dusts and arranges the rooms before breakfast. She serves the breakfast, clears the table and washes the dishes taken from it. She then proceeds to the bedrooms, putting them in order, dusting, making beds, etc. She will probably have fine lingerie waists, etc., to wash and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Jen, putting on a smile. "Why, at first, you used to coax me with a lot of endearing terms to comb your hair and to wash your face, to do this and that for you. But now that you've become a big girl, you assume the manner of a young mistress towards me, and as you put on these airs of a young mistress, how can I ever presume to be on a familiar footing ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... doings? We are not fighting the German people. The German people are under the heel of this military caste, and it will be a day of rejoicing for the German peasant, artisan and trader when the military caste is broken. You know its pretensions. They give themselves the airs of demi-gods. They walk the pavements, and civilians and their wives are swept into the gutter; they have no right to stand in the way of a great Prussian soldier. Men, women, nations—they all have to go. He thinks all he has to say is "We are in a hurry." That is the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... been carried by Austrian and Hungarian troops is received today with great jubilation in Berlin. Throngs of people crowd the public squares and the parks, flags are displayed from windows, and bands are playing patriotic airs. Extra editions of the newspapers are being shouted on the streets, and the church bells are ringing. Everybody seems to feel that another great step in the direction of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... everybody on board spoke of the lady, almost after a day's acquaintance with her peculiarities and haughty airs—was just then endeavouring to rise from the captain's chair, when the vessel, after a deeper pitch forward than usual, settled down suddenly by the stern, accompanying the movement by a lurch to starboard that carried away the lashings of the chair; ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... his way back to Paris, and there his reunited family gave little operas, sung by his wife and daughters. Here "one heard with pleasure always new airs taken from his Italian operas, sung by Mme. Piccinni, with a voice that age had rendered more grave and less light, without making it less beautiful or touching, and with a method as wise as it was learned, and well opposed to these pretentious displays, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... so easy to define. That of the lady towards him should manifest delicacy, tenderness, and confidence; while looking for his thorough devotion to herself, she should not captiously take offence and show airs at his showing the same kind of attention to other ladies as she, in her turn, would not hesitate to receive from the ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... think that in planning such a position for the boy he was carrying out the wishes of the mother whom outwardly he so much resembled. For housekeeper Samuel Dale had an unmarried sister whom her neighbours accused of putting on too much gentility before her nephew's advancement warranted such airs. Mark liked Aunt Keran and accepted her hospitality as a tribute to himself rather than to his position as the grandson of the Vicar. Miss Dale had been a schoolmistress before she came to keep house for her brother, and she worked hard to supplement what learning Cass ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... cry pain or death had wrung from him, the only boon he had asked, and none of us could grant it, for all the airs that blow were useless now. Dan flung up the window; the first red streak of dawn was warming the gray east, a herald of the coming sun. John saw it, and, with the love of light which lingers in us to the end, seemed to read in it a sign of hope, of help, for over his whole ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... was such a thing as a hen, long before they ever was laid away. I wasn't born yesterday, myself, an' I know how they treat the teachers in some o' them schools. The young-lady scholars, so stylish an' rich, as full of airs as a music-box, snubbin' the teacher because they're too ignorant to know how smart she has to be, to get any knowledge into their stupid heads, an' the Principal always eyein' you like a minx, 'less you might be wastin' her precious time an' not earnin' the elegant sal'ry she gives ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... their kindred dust. Though it is not distant from the ordinary landing and the few buildings which line the shore, it is a place that, in itself, is no bad emblem of a hopeless lot. Solitary, exposed equally to the hot airs of the south and the bleak blasts of the Alps, frequently covered with the spray of the Adriatic, and based on barren sands, the utmost that human art, aided by a soil which has been fattened by human remains, can do, has been to create around the modest graves a meagre vegetation, that ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... French, I think—a girl with airs and graces," said Ethel, who had herself more airs and graces than Lesley had ever donned in all her life; "nothing so ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... musk and rose-water, and refreshments of every kind were set before him; musicians played their sweetest airs, and dark-eyed damsels waited upon him. The walls of the tent were gorgeously adorned with amber, and gold, and rubies; and the sparkling old wine was drunk out of crystal goblets. The feast of joy lasted three nights and three days, Byzun and Manijeh enjoying the ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... porch, with the foliage of the willow tree powdered against the stars; the white-panelled hearth of the yellow room in smouldering winter dusks; dinner with the candles wavering in tepid April airs; and the blue envelopment of late September noons. A quiet reach like the old grey house and green fields, the little valleys filled with trees and placid town beyond the hill, where the calendar of our ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... claims to indulgence from his humane and generous superiors. The climate proved too powerfully relaxing for his delicate frame; and, braced as it had recently been, by the frozen atmosphere of the north, the sultry airs of these torrid regions were now rapidly undermining his constitution. Alarmed for the danger of a youth thus distant from his friends, whose life was ever precious, even from his tenderest infancy, to all who had opportunities of once knowing ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... and reward. The exercises, as in the other instance, took place immediately, and in the arena. Another door opened beneath the king, and a priest, followed by a band of choristers, and dancing maidens blowing joyous airs on golden horns and treading an epithalamic measure, advanced to where the pair stood side by side, and the wedding was promptly and cheerily solemnized. Then the gay brass bells rang forth their merry peals, the people shouted glad hurrahs, and the innocent man, preceded by children ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... of some people is really quite extraordinary! the airs they give themselves, the way in which they answer one, the books they read! Montesquieu: "Esprit des Lois!" [takes book up which J. has left on sofa.] I believe the man has actually taken this from the shelf. ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thirty-seventh month he sang, quite correctly, airs he had heard, and he could sing some songs to the piano, if they were frequently repeated with him. His fancy for this soon passed away, and these exercises ceased. On the other hand, he tells stories ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... February a very singular spectacle was got up on the Serpentine. Late in the evening a fine "brass band," attended by near a thousand torchbearers, suddenly marched on to the ice on the ornamental water in Kensington Gardens, and struck up popular airs; as by a signal, large fires were lighted on the ice, tents were erected, and barrels of beer were broached. Suddenly, several hundred skaters, each bearing a lighted lamp at his waist-belt, emerged from the crowd, and shot under the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... me, what did you guess after all?" said Porthos, settling himself into an armchair and assuming the airs of ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... received Sentence of Death for their Adherence to King Charles, were accordingly ordered to the Place of Execution. It is the Custom there, on all such Occasions, for all the Musick of the City to meet near the Gallows, and play the most affecting and melancholy Airs, to the very approach of the Condemn'd; and really the Musick was so moving, it heightened the Scene of Sorrow, and brought Compassion into the ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... sat down upon the floor, and, taking the tambourine, sang and played the softest and sweetest airs she could remember; and, as she played, it seemed as though new tones, and words even, were given to ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... make yourself nice and common," Amanda instructed him. "You haven't dare to put on no city airs. To be sure, I guess they come a good bit natural to you, and, as mom says still, a body can't help fur their dispositions; but our directors is all plain that way and they don't like tony people that wants to come out ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... celebrated pun of Rosseau: "Pour l'Academie de musique, certainement il fait le plus du bruit du monde." On the other hand, it is amongst the peasantry alone that you now find the ancient music of France. Those airs which are so deeply associated with all the glory and gallantry of the old monarchy; those songs of olden times, which were chanted by the wandering Troubadours, as they returned from foreign wars to their native vallies, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... riots on at its common pace, and is now come to the pass that vice is scarce worth the pain of concealing. Yet when it becomes the general rule, sure there is nothing so stale! Its facility damns it, and it then must simulate some of the airs of virtue to be alluring. Indeed, I conclude it not wholly imaginary that, if it was made easier to be virtuous than vicious, the whole moral balance of the universe would shift and our present monarch and Madame Walmoden be the saints of ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... deathspot—in lives so brief that they ought to be all summer-time." "Of a summer night, when the moon was full," says Mr. Lathrop, "they lit no lamps, but sat grouped in the light and shadow, while sundry of the younger men sang old ballads, or joined Tom Moore's songs to operatic airs. On other nights there would be an original essay or poem read aloud, or else a play of Shakspeare, with the parts distributed to different members; and these amusements failing, some interesting discussion was likely to take their place. Occasionally, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... nature stood firm against the blandishments of her revolting tongue, drove her more and more toward a decision the seeds of which had, perhaps, been planted during her former stay among the breezy airs of Hampstead. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... village. That objectionable yet funny cult of "superiority," upon which the "resident" ladies of the valley spend so much emotion, if not much thought, has its disciples in the cottages; and now and then the prosperous wife or daughter of some artisan or other gives herself airs, and does not "know," or will not "mix with," the wives and daughters of mere labourers in the neighbouring cottages. Whether women of this aspiring type find their reward, or mere bitterness, in the ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... wilt thou, dear reader, whom we make the umpire between ourself and those who never read,—the critics; thou who hast, in the true spirit of gentle breeding, gone with us among places where the novelty of the scene has, we fear, scarcely atoned for the coarseness, not giving thyself the airs of a dainty abigail,—not prating, lacquey-like, on the low company thou has met,—nor wilt thou, dear and friendly reader, have cause to dread that we shall weary thy patience by a "damnable iteration" of the same localities. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... calm to light airs, sea smooth, hazy with visibility about 3 miles; speed of the ship fifteen knots, course North 74 degrees East true, to pass close to the Royal ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... state that at the close of the Lecture it was the intention of the author to exhibit and explain to the audience an orrery, accompanying and interspersing his remarks by a choice selection of popular airs on the hand-organ. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... Mrs. B., how can solid masses of iron and nickel be formed from the atmosphere, which consists of the two airs, ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... talked together a great deal; and the evening had been spent in singing hymns; but Mrs. Montgomery's strength failed here, and Ellen sang alone. She was not soon weary. Hymn succeeded hymn, with fresh and varied pleasure; and her mother could not tire of listening. The sweet words, and the sweet airs which were all old friends, and brought of themselves many a lesson of wisdom and consolation, by the mere force of association needed not the recommendation of the clear childish voice in which they were sung, which was, of all things, the sweetest to Mrs. Montgomery's ear. She listened ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... raggedness and poverty at home, no sooner does man look out of his dusky dwelling, than, like Goldsmith's little Beau, who, in his garret up five pair of stairs, boasts of his friendship with lords, he is apt to assume airs of magnificence, and, glancing at the infinite through his little eye-glass, to affect an intimate acquaintance with the most respectable secrets of ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... Mr. Addison, Colonel Freind,(25) and I, went to see the million lottery(26) drawn at Guildhall. The jackanapes of bluecoat boys gave themselves such airs in pulling out the tickets, and showed white hands open to the company, to let us see there was no cheat. We dined at a country-house near Chelsea, where Mr. Addison often retires; and to-night, at the Coffee-house, we hear Sir Simon Harcourt is made Lord Keeper; ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... Arabella. On the third, he himself had borne his child in his arms as his father had before borne him; he was then in the zenith of his pride, and though the tenantry whispered that he was somewhat less familiar with them than of yore, that he had put on somewhat too much of the de Courcy airs, still he was their squire, their master, the rich man in whose hand they lay. The old squire was then gone, and they were proud of the young member and his lady bride in spite of a little hauteur. None of them were proud of ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... division taking the van; but the wind, shifting to east, threw the fleet on the port tack, on which the rear under Rear-Admiral Rowley had to lead. It became necessary, therefore, for this division and the centre to pass Lestock, which took some time with the light airs prevailing. Two or three manoeuvres succeeded, with the object of forming the fighting order, a column similar and parallel to that of the enemy, and to get closer to him. When night fell a signal was still flying for the line abreast, by which, if completed, the ships would be ranged on ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... histrionic power? That was indispensable for the grand opera. But in three years—perhaps four—with fine teachers her voice might be very rich, very charming. Now it was harsh, crude, unformed. Yes, it wanted the soft, mellowing airs of Italy. Where had madame been ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... with his hands behind his back, and instead of bowing, merely making a contemptuous salutation to Napoleon with his hand. It was at the Tuileries that these haughty Republicans should have shown their airs. To have done so on the road to Elba was a mean insult which ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... for I did not like the airs as he give 'isself. He didn't get angry, as I 'oped he would, but he smiled a kind of insolent smile, with a mouth full of white, sharp teeth. 'Oh no, they ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... William Beebe, who recently has visited the Far East, has described how the state of Selangor, between Malacca and Penang, has taken on many airs of improvement since 1878, and sections of Sarawak Territory are being cut down and burned for the growing of rubber. Despite this I am trying to think that those developments menace the total volume of the wild ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... not in a nice mood. That was the worst of Philippa, Maisie always found. You could never take her up just at the point you left her; she might be agreeable, and she might be just the opposite. To-day she had her grown-up manner, and was full of little affected airs and graces, and Maisie, glancing at her once or twice, saw the reason of it. Philippa was wearing a new hat of the latest fashion, covered with the most beautiful drooping feathers, and she could not ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... with the html version of this text includes pdf and midi (sound) files for all Airs. More information is at the end ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... mistress. The rest, of course, was easy. How was he to resist this pretty woman, with her captivating manners, her well-timed tears, her parenthetic sighs? Lingering farewells, joyful welcomes, judicious airs and graces, song and lyre,—all were brought to bear upon him. Dinias was soon a lost man, over head and ears in love; and Chariclea prepared to give the finishing stroke. She informed him that ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... that she was a little painted puppet, of no value at all, and quite disguised with affectation, full of odd airs of rural elegance; and he made out some comical scenes, by mimicking her in a dialogue he pretended to have overheard. I do not know whether he meant such stuff to be believed or no, it was so comical; nor did I indeed ever see him represent her ridiculously, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Ah, Adolphus, there is not a fibre in our bodies or souls—and why should not souls have fibres?—that does not vibrate in harmony! We are like AEolian harps that make the same music to the same airs of the affections, while electrically our brains respond sympathetically to the same wave-current of idea. Emotionally, intellectually, we are one. Why should I allow an absurd custom of conventional civilisation, degrading to the sex, ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... said to himself, with exultation. "That'll fix him! Perhaps he'll wish he hadn't put on quite so many airs." ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... of sixteen, and this weird, shaky flaxpole. The doors of my deserted home were often opened for this strange guest, who made me play my compositions to him while he ate bread and cheese. In return, he once arranged one of my airs for wind instruments, and, to my astonishment, it was actually accepted and played by the band in Kintschy's Swiss Chalet. That this man had not the smallest capacity to teach me anything never once occurred to me; I was so firmly convinced of his originality that there ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... "Come in here," they cried. So in she ran, took a place between them, and they silently listened to the maskers' serenade. The musicians sang at first the gayest of tunes, but suddenly, by some subtile impulse, they changed to quieter minor airs, and sang songs full of tears and passion and love and tenderness. Then they silently turned to go. Norman Mann touched Mae on the shoulder. He handed her a bunch of Carnival flowers. They were Bero's, but she flung them unhesitatingly ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... and it is excellent well. Positively, you must not leave off reviewing. You shine in it—you kill in it; and this article has been taken for Sydney Smith's (as I heard in town), which proves not only your proficiency in parsonology, but that you have all the airs of a veteran critic at your first onset. So, prithee, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... accordingly to the vault. On the way her mind seemed to run more upon the scene which had just passed, than on her own approaching death. "There were three of them set upon him—I brought the twasome—but wha was the third?—lt would be himself, returned to work his airs vengeance!" ' ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the dress of a page, but bearing an air of haughty aristocratic boldness and even insolence in his look and manner, that might have made Dryfesdale conclude he had pretensions to superior rank, had not his experience taught him how frequently these airs of superiority were assumed by the domestics and military retainers of the Scottish nobility.—"The pilgrim's morning to you, old sir," said the youth; "you come, as I think, from Lochleven Castle—What news of our bonny Queen?—a fairer ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... had taught him to drop instinctively into the mannerism—even the dialect—of those he hoped to cajole. With the well-bred he could speak glibly, and had airs himself. With the illiterate and the low-bred, he could out-Caliban the herd ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... of humour and drollery as he had then wi' him. Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring and singing. Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsel' the great man or took ony airs in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk—(this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare)—but drunk or sober he was aye the gentleman. He looked excessively heavy and stupid when he was fou, but he ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... playing her own accompaniment; Mr. Frank Lincoln gave some of his amusing impersonations; Miss Maud Powell of Chicago, only fourteen years of age, who had been taking lessons in France and Germany for some years, played exquisite airs on the violin; Mrs. Flora Stark, Miss Alice Blatch and Miss Conway gave us some fine classical music on the piano, and Nathaniel Mellen sang some pathetic negro melodies.[581] Altogether it was a pleasant ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... ever crowned Grecian Parthenon, or adorned with Parian marble the temples of Augustan Rome. The press would glow with enthusiasm, and the procession of nations march in the grand ovation, not to national airs, or under national banners, but under the world's new flag, and to the music of the world's new anthem of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... judges. He had come out of his trial with a determination to be revenged on the persons from whose tongues he had suffered most severely in the senatorial debates. Of these Cato had been the most savage; but Cicero had been the most exasperating, from his sarcasms, his airs of patronage, and perhaps his intimacy with his sister. The noble youth had exhausted the common forms of pleasure. He wanted a new excitement, and politics and vengeance might be combined. He was as clever as he was dissolute, and, as clever men are fortunately ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... sea. Then still cried my white mare to me, 'Ride, ride my gallant rider—all things ride!' Now, thinking how little was a priest in this torment of the seed of worlds, nature always clasped together, and metals, stones, waters, airs, thunders, fish, plants, animals, men, spirits, worlds and planets, all embracing with rage, I denied the Catholic faith. Then the Succubus, pointing out to me the great patch of stars seen in heavens, said to me, 'That ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... direction of Mr. Isaacson, has been, in part, selected from such ancient airs as remain to us of, or anterior to, the date of Henry the Fifth, and, in part, composed to accord with the same period. The "Song on the Victory of Agincourt," published at the end of Sir Harris Nicholas's interesting narrative, ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... And whoever dined more regally, more divinely, even, though upon nectar and ambrosia, than our merry-makers as they sat at their well-spread board, with such glowing, heaven-tinted pictures before their eyes, such balmy airs floating about their happy heads, and such music as the sunshiny waves made in their glad, listening ears? It was like a picture out of Hiawatha. At least it seemed to strike our young lady so, who in a voice of peculiar sweetness and power recited the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... a certain number of visiting teachers completed the staff at Briarcroft Hall. The greater proportion of the pupils were day girls, and the boarders, though they gave themselves airs, were decidedly in the minority. Such was the little community into which Gipsy was to be launched, and where for many months to come she would have to make and keep ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... sat in the corner of the railway carriage he saw that he had done nothing. He was angry with himself for his weakness. It was despicable to have allowed himself to be turned from his purpose by the pompous airs of the Vicar and the tears of his aunt. But as the result of he knew not what conversations between the couple another letter was written to the headmaster. Mr. Perkins read it with an impatient shrug of the shoulders. He showed ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Church, there was much, the growth of ignorance and neglect, to be reformed. The Church of England had never had a real affinity with Rome. The gorgeous and sensual ceremonies which, in the indolent airs of the Mediterranean, were imposing and attractive, palled upon the taste of the more phlegmatic Englishmen. Institutions organized at Rome did not flourish in that higher latitude, and abuses were currently discussed even before any ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... queen and I the charming prince Elected from a world of mortal men. You loved me once. . . . What pity was it, then, You loved not Love. . . . Deep in the emerald west, Like a returning caravel caressed By breezes that load all the ambient airs With clinging fragrance of the bales it bears From harbors where the caravans come down, I see over the roof-tops of the town The new moon back again, but shall not see The joy that once it had ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... simply a captain, but was regarded as one of the most able and accomplished officers of the army. His promotion was rapid beyond precedent; but his head was turned by his elevation, and he became arrogant and opinionated, and before long even insulted the President, and assumed the airs of a national liberator on whose shoulders was laid the burden of the war. He consequently estranged Congress, offended Scott, became distrusted by the President, and provoked the jealousies of the other generals. But he was popular ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... were wreathed So thick with leaves and mosses, that they seem'd Large honeycombs of green, and freshly teemed With airs delicious." ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... candle in the middle of a game; or ring for a servant, till it was fairly over. She never introduced, or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during its process. As she emphatically observed, cards were cards: and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine last-century countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman of a literary turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded to take a hand; and who, in his excess of candour, declared, that he thought there was no harm in unbending the mind now and then, after serious studies, in recreations ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... HONOR.—Think of a man like that; in whom the passions and vices have burned themselves out, putting on the airs of a saint and claiming to have reformed. Aye, reformed, when there is no longer sweetness in the indulgence of lust. Think of such loathsome bestiality, dragging its slimy body across the threshold of honor ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... solely With the object of urging the teams on to deeds of glory. These choruses had been written hurriedly by loyal fans who had more enthusiasm than ability as verse writers, and fitted to popular airs. The fact that they possessed neither rhythm nor style troubled no one. The main idea was to make a great deal of noise in singing them, and ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... easy entertainment which deaden rather than stimulate the creative faculty. And there sits the little old spinet-piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children, on which Beth played the old Scotch airs, and played at ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... quite rich now, aren't you?" remarked Dorothy. "I suppose your father will buy a big house, and maybe next time we meet you, you will put on airs and walk like this?" and Dorothy went up and down the room like the pictures ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... processions, huge balls were rolled along to the cry, "Keep the ball a-rolling." Every log cabin had a barrel of hard cider and a gourd drinking cup near it. On the walls were coon skins, and the latch-string was always hanging out. More than a hundred campaign songs were written and sung to popular airs. Every Whig wore a log-cabin medal, or breastpin, or badge, or carried a log-cabin cane. Read McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., Vol. VI, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Dandridge and Major Edward upon the wide porch. The wind had torn away a great bough from one of the poplars, and Colonel Dick and Deb upon the drive below were superintending its removal. Birds were singing, delicate airs astir. "It's going to be the divinest day!" said Unity, and led the way ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... had brought their tiny violins and some their elfin flutes, and as all were in a merry mood they played rollicking airs such as "The Wind Tinkles the Fairy Bells" and "Mother Hulda ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... tiger-cat. She gives you, as in "Malia," the whole animal, snarling, striking, suffering, all the pangs of the flesh, the emotions of fear and hate, but for the most part no more. In "La Folfaa" she can be piquant, passing from the naughty girl of the first act, with her delicious airs and angers, her tricks, gambols, petulances, to the soured wife of the second, in whom a kind of bad blood comes out, turning her to treacheries of mere spite, until her husband thrusts her brutally out of the house, where, if she will, she may follow her lover. Here, where there is no profound ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... one morning I was agreeably surprised by the arrival of Mrs. Jameson, whom I had previously expected to spend some time with me, and found her a most agreeable, refined and intelligent guest, with none of the supercilious and conceited airs, which I had noticed in some of her traveling countrywomen of the class ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... that those travellers who complain of discourtesy in the West Indies can have only themselves to thank for it. The West Indian has self-respect, and will not endure people who give themselves airs. He has prudence too, and will not endure people whom he expects to betray his hospitality by insulting him afterwards in print. But he delights in pleasing, in giving, in showing his lovely islands to all who ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... some trifling inconvenience, such as a dropped acorn on his head, a fallen leaf, or a little moss shaken from the boughs. Finally, he takes leave of them,—points out the way to Utgard Loke's palace, advises them not to give themselves airs at his court,—as unbecoming "such little fellows" as they were, and disappears in the wood; "and"—as the old chronicler slyly adds—"it is not said whether the OEsir wished ever ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... an infant daughter, in whose future felicity he was strongly interested. He had often considered the subject of education, and had become the determined enemy of boarding-schools, where every thing is taught and nothing understood; where airs, graces, mouth primming, shoulder-setting and elbow-holding are studied, and affectation, formality, hypocrisy, and pride are acquired; and where children the most promising are presently transformed into vain, pert misses, who imagine that to perk up their heads, turn ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... he would rather turn sexton and bury other people than be buried alive himself in a hole like that, which was not a nice thing for him to say to his father,—but that was no reason why Cousin John should swear at him, and tell him he was sick of his capitalist airs, and he for one should not be surprised if he came some day to beg for aid from the bank he thought too insignificant to ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... would have been better for Herbert to stop disputing, and to have taken no notice of Oscar's words. But Herbert was not perfect. He had plenty of spirit, and he was provoked by the airs Oscar chose to assume, and by no means inclined to allow him to arrogate a superiority over himself, merely on account of his wealth. Though manly and generous, he was quick to resent an insult, and accordingly, when Oscar ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... however, as Martinet brought his prizes into Calao, and the Frenchmen had received their shares of the prize-money, forgetting the ancient antipathy of the Spaniards for the French, they gave themselves extravagant airs on shore, by dancing and drinking, which still more incensed the creolians against them, who called them cavachos and renegados, for falling foul of their own countrymen. From one thing to another, their mutual quarrels grew so high, that the Frenchmen were obliged to go about Lima and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... airs (as the housewives of Yonville called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. She was pale all over, white as a sheet; ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... but a variation of the comic opera. The essential difference is that it dispenses with composition, by which the comic opera forms a musical whole, as the songs are set to well-known popular airs. The incessant skipping from the song to the dialogue, often after a few scrapes of the violin and a few words, with the accumulation of airs mostly common, but frequently also in a style altogether ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... when they read at all, educated their children, some of whom became governesses, travelled a little in the summer, were hospitable to their limited circle of friends, were kind and obliging, put on no airs, and were on the whole useful and worthy people, if we can not call them "respectable members of society." They were, perhaps, the happiest and most contented of all the various classes, since they were virtuous, frugal, industrious, and thought ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... indignation as Cecily could feel, "and I don't think she need shut me out of everything. When I wanted to stone the raisins for the mince-meat she said, no, she would do it herself, because Christmas mince-meat was very particular—as if I couldn't stone raisins right! The airs Felicity puts on about her cooking just make ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in the towers at either end of the row of carceres; but it was less stirring and cheerful than of yore, for flutes, and several of the heathen airs had been prohibited. Formerly, too, the Hippodrome had been a place where lovers could meet and where many a love-affair had been brought to a happy climax; but to-day none of the daughters of the more respectable families were ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... had with John Binder and others of our neighbours; and when the frost came in January, we found that the stones had been taken out of the pond, and my father gave us a sharp lecture against being quarrelsome and giving ourselves airs, and it ended with—"The pond is mine. I wish you to remember it, because it makes it your duty to be hospitable and civil to the boys I allow to go on it. And I have very decidedly warned them and their parents to remember it, because if my permission for fair amusement is abused to damage and ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... four ways to wanst huntin' Dempsey. I was mad to think that wid all my airs among women I shud ha' been chated by a basin-faced fool av a cav'l'ry-man not fit to trust on a trunk. Presintly I found him in our lines—the Bobtails was quartered next us—an' a tallowy, topheavy ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... and Mendelssohn, and Schubert, and Verdi, and all the great masters, caught their sweetest dreams from nature's musicians. I think their richest airs of mirth, and gladness, and joy, were stolen from the purling rivulet and the rippling river. I believe their grandest inspirations were born of the tempest, and the thunder, and the rolling ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... on grand airs, it seems, so then it will go that people of course will speak ill of ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr |
