"Disreputable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the proprietor. Oil was desirable, salt was within the reach of probability; if the former failed, the latter might probably be secured; and if neither object was attained, the search for salt would be considered neither visionary nor disreputable. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... once, if he can show his fitness for such a beginning,—that he is fitter than the rest who offer themselves for the same post. The entry into it can only justly be made through the door of merit. And whenever any one aspires to and attains such high post, especially if by unfair and disreputable and indecent means, and is afterward found to be a signal failure, he should at once be beheaded. He is the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... denied that it was so. Her mother's word on such a subject was supposed to be more credible that her own; and now this man with whom she was believed to be so closely connected had disappeared from the world among the most disreputable circumstances. But when she explained the difficulty to her mother her mother bade her hold her tongue for the present, and seemed to hold out a hope that the captain might at last be restored to his ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Then two very disreputable-looking persons tossed their respective principals' high hats into the ring, and the crowd, recognizing in this relic of the days when brave knights threw down their gauntlets in the lists as only a sign that the fight was about to begin, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Robert Owen as to methods; but neither did he reject his schemes as inevitably absurd because they were new and untried. One would not gather from his correspondence with Frances Wright that this was the notorious Fanny Wright whom the world chose to consider, as its way is, a disreputable and probably wicked woman, inasmuch as she proposed some radical changes in its social relations which she thought would be a gain. He gave much attention to popular education, and all the influence he could command was devoted, through all the later years of his life, to the establishment ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... very common impression that a principal evil of the condition of the southern blacks, is the severity of their treatment. THIS IS AN ERROR. It is almost every where disreputable to treat slaves with severity; and though there are indeed exceptions, yet in most cases in the South, even tyranny itself could not long withstand the reproaches of public opinion. A STILL GREATER AND MORE DANGEROUS EVIL, IS THE VERY ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... a kind of gala-day. I think I have never seen a populace before coming to England; but this crowd afforded a specimen of one, both male and female. The women were the most remarkable; though they seemed not disreputable, there was in them a coarseness, a freedom, an—I don't know what, that was purely English. In fact, men and women here do things that would at least make them ridiculous in America. They are not afraid to enjoy themselves in their own way, and have no pseudo-gentility to support. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... too much respect for you all to think of doing such a thing! Of course I know, ma'am, that it is not to be cast up to any lady that she is like anybody disreputable." ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a gesture of throwing the disreputable epic at my head, and I curved my arm in an attitude only too ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... very frequently. He had, of course, information which certain degraded men might use in a contemptible way, but he, Mortimer, did not resemble such men in any particular. All he desired was to do Plank a good turn. There was nothing disreputable in doing a wealthy man a favour. ... And God knew a wealthy man's gratitude was necessary to him at that very moment—gratitude substantially acknowledged. ... He liked Plank—wished him well; that was all right, too; but a man is an ass who doesn't ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... with strangers. He was a tired-looking, middle-aged Englishman, with a tanned, plump face that had something whimsical and what Marjorie characterized to herself as motherly about it. And the fact that he was clad in a flannel shirt and very disreputable overalls did not make him the less distinctively gentle-bred. He greeted her courteously, and took out his pipe—a pipe that was even ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... distressing to observe how remote we were from proper surroundings. There was no shelter and no modern conveniences; not even a wash-hand-stand or water-jug. There was, of course, no central heating, and no electricity for one's smoothing-iron, so that one's clothing must become quite disreputable for want of pressing. Also the informal manner of cooking and eating was not what I had been accustomed to, and the idea of sleeping publicly on the bare ground was repugnant in the extreme. I mean to say, there was no vie intime. Truly ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... say nothing of Richard the Third, with whom all our play-going friends are familiar, and who made the disgraceful offer, if Shakspeare is to be believed, of parting with the whole kingdom for a horse, though it does not appear that the disreputable bargain was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... said the father. Then he showed him how wicked it was to associate with bad companions, the probable results of it; how, when he had once acquired bad habits, he would find it nearly impossible to break with them; how he would be enticed into disreputable places, and a ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... table made a regular playground for him, his plan being to push and pull at the back of one till he got it loose from the rest, and then work at it till it fell to the floor. He never failed to reduce the pile to a disreputable-looking muss. ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... poverty is just beginning to dawn upon me. It is strange how long one can live with one's eyes entirely closed to certain things. In Italy I never thought about it; I sometimes felt sorry for a beggar, but never quite believed in poverty as an actual state; it merely seemed a rather disreputable but picturesque profession. Here in England I have come face to face with destitution; with hunger, labour, sweat, and barren joylessness. My first thought was that money might set all this straight; ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... for the captain and I had taken up our abode at Dr. Saugrain's. It was not without much demur that we had, at last, accepted the doctor's urgent invitations to do so. To be sure, there was no hostelry in the village, except the low tavern where the disreputable Indians and rough river-men congregated, and we would have been obliged to accept some of the many hospitable invitations extended us by the Chouteaus, the Papins, the Cerres, indeed by nearly every leading citizen of St. Louis, all eagerly ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... the ears of those who recognized them as the utterances of one whose conversation was always flippant and puerile, and whose daily life, in the enormity and uninterrupted persistency of its profligacy, rendered him the acknowledged leader of all that was most disreputable and contaminating in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... as a barrister. You have put the whole thing in such a light that I do not know what to think of that Roumanian chap. All I know about it is that some kind of transaction about his wife had occurred, and that, put it in whatever light you will, is always a disreputable thing. Besides, as I am somewhat of a merchant myself, I will tell you another thing: a bankrupt can always find a way out of his difficulties: he either makes another fortune and then pays his debts, or he blows out his brains ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... is so disreputable. When you say of a woman, "She is one of those honest, outspoken persons," it means that she will probably hurt your feelings, or insult you in your first ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... imagine that it is vulgar and ungenteel to know how to work. This is one of the relics of an aristocratic state of society, which is fast passing away. Here, the tendency of every thing is to the equalisation of labor, so that all classes are feeling, more and more, that indolence is disreputable. And there are many mothers, among the best educated and most wealthy classes, who are bringing up their daughters, not only to know how to do, but actually to do, all kinds of domestic work. The writer knows young ladies, who are daughters of men of wealth ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... boys, and nullifying the social compact, ought to have made him dislike his grandfather for life. He could not recall that it had this effect even for a moment. With a certain maturity of mind, the child must have recognized that the President, though a tool of tyranny, had done his disreputable work with a certain intelligence. He had shown no temper, no irritation, no personal feeling, and had made no display of force. Above all, he had held his tongue. During their long walk he had said nothing; he had uttered no syllable of revolting cant about the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... holes of which the little children were accustomed to thrust their fingers, getting them caught sometimes, and howling until released. Now its back was of stout canvas, and its seat of cords, upon which a cushion rested. It was in general appearance, though stout enough, a most disreputable chair among the finer and more modern ones which stood along the porch upon either side. But it was this chair that the aging woman loved. "It was this chair he liked," she would say, "and it shall not be discarded. He used to sit in it and rock and dream, and ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... belongings was well bestowed. The sofa, which appeared to affect her aesthetic sense most keenly, was certainly a dilapidated article. Having but three legs, it leaned in a loafing way against the wall, and its rags of horsehair and protruding springs gave it a most trampish and disreputable appearance. The chairs were solid, for the smith had bound them in iron clamps. And the carpet?—Well, I pitied it. It was threadbare and transparent. Yet, when I looked around, I felt no feminine scorn. They all appealed to me ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... it, and, turning about bravely, presented his horned front. This the hyaena could not find stomach to face. For two hours he manoeuvred to take the goat in rear, but it turned as he circled, and stood up to him stoutly till the dawn came, and my friend cut short its disreputable career with ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... seated at a table with two of the most villainous specimens of humanity I had ever beheld. They were of the same class as the men with whom he had been talking at the Milan, but still more disreputable. He welcomed ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was the governor of the fortress, a tried soldier, but a ruffian of low habits and cruel nature. He had risen under the Landgrave's patronage, as an adventurer of desperate courage, ready for any service, however disreputable, careless alike of peril or of infamy. In common with many partisan officers, who had sprung from the ranks in this adventurous war, seeing on every side and in the highest quarters, princes as well ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the place accorded Balzac's letters to Madam Hanska, which caused Georgia to retort that perhaps it would be better if people arranged their own libraries, and then they could put things where they wanted them. Then after she had given a resting place to what she denounced as some very disreputable French novels, she leaned against the shelves and declared it was time ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... "Critic," and a few other trifles not usually familiar to sub-Freshmen, and took my departure, very much pleased at having entered on a life where my favourite reading did not really seem to be quite silly or disreputable. I remember, however, being very much surprised indeed at finding that the other students, in whom I expected to encounter miracles of learning, or youth far superior to myself in erudition and critical knowledge, did not quite come up to my anticipations. However, as ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the happiest outcome. Panurge, for whom the suggestion was derived from the macaronic poet Folengo, is the fellow of Shakespeare's Falstaff, in his lack of morals, his egoism, his inexhaustible wit; he is the worst and best of company. We would dispense with such a disreputable associate if we could, but save that he is a "very wicked lewd rogue," he is "the most virtuous man in the world," and we cannot part with him. Panurge would marry, but fears lest he may be the victim ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... calculating each day's march, a fortnight from that time upon the chief place at the Hague. D'Artagnan recommended his men to go in couples, as they liked best, from sympathy. He himself selected from among those with the least disreputable look, two guards whom he had formerly known, and whose only faults were being drunkards and gamblers. These men had not entirely lost all ideas of civilization, and under proper garments their hearts would beat again. D'Artagnan, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... your cousin is such an unmanageable old fiend. Of course I went to him immediately, and what do you think? He demanded five hundred dollars for that strip of land! Five hundred dollars for a few inches of swamp meadow not worth ten dollars the acre! 'Then take your disreputable old mill off my property!' says Shackford,—he called it a disreputable old mill! I was hasty, perhaps, and I told him to go to the devil. He said he would, and he did; for he went to Blandmann. When the lawyers got hold of it, they bothered the life out of ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... I'm afraid,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'Perhaps you will be kind enough to come to your cabin and take off that ball gown, and make yourself just a little less disreputable in outward appearance, while I get a cup ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... it was in reality only two hours later when Lillian Gale returned from the apartment across the hall, heavy eyed and dishevelled, her gown splashed with water, her rouge rubbed off in spots, her whole appearance most disreputable. ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... there are but two of us, sons of a country squire, of old family, which once possessed large possessions and something of historical renown. We lived in an old country-place; my father was a convivial dog, a fox-hunter, a drunkard, yet in his way a fine gentleman,—and a very disreputable member of society. The first feelings towards him that I can remember were those of shame. Not much matter of family pride here, you will say! True, and that is exactly the reason which made me cherish family pride elsewhere. My father's house was filled with guests,—some high ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sourly went away. There had been no particular consequences of Johnny Simms' inability to remember what was right and what was wrong. But Holden felt like a normal man about men whose wives look patient. Even psychiatrists feel that it is somehow disreputable to illtreat a woman who doesn't fight back. This attitude is instinctive. It is what is called the fine, deep-rooted impulse to chivalry which is one of the prides ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Events transpired which have their place in history. Under a government which the community by and by saw was conducted in their interest, smuggling began to lose its respectability and to grow disreputable, hazardous, and debased. In certain onslaughts made upon them by officers of the law, some of the smugglers became murderers. The business became unprofitable for a time until the enterprising Lafittes—thinkers—bethought them ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... breakfast? Then if you have not, there is one delight left you. But you must be away out in Wyoming, with the morning sun just gilding the distant peaks, and your pork and beans must be out of a can, heated in a disreputable old frying-pan, served with coffee boiled in a battered old pail and drunk from a tomato-can. You'll never want iced melons, powdered sugar, and fruit, or sixty-nine varieties of breakfast food, if once you sit Trilby-wise on Wyoming sand and eat the kind of breakfast ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... when Spitalfields are starving. The wilful and wicked minority who took pleasure in their pungent pages, did so clandestinely, and with precaution. In carefully-locked desk, or on topmost shelf of bookcase, lurking behind an honourable front-rank of history and essay, the disreputable literature was bestowed. Nor was its reception more openly hospitable when arrayed in English garb. Translators there were, who strove to render into the manly, wholesome Anglo-Saxon tongue, the produce—witty, frivolous, prurient, and amusing—of Gallic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... of heart failure," said my father, "in a disreputable place. They tried to hush it up, but the facts came out. When I heard of it, I plumped right down in a chair and laughed till I was almost sick. I knew what he was," he said with sudden savageness, "all along. But ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... no secret," the mayor replied. "According to the act of parliament and the request of her majesty's minister I drew up a list of fifty of the most useless and disreputable of the inhabitants of this town, and I rejoice to say that the place is rid of them all. The respectable citizens are all grateful to me for the manner in which I have fulfilled the task laid upon me, and as to the clamor of a few angry women, ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... was not among the best students. Sometimes she used her time diligently. She was accused of having instigated all kinds of dirty tricks that took place. When it became know that the head of the institution had met her in the evening on a disreputable street, it was expected that she would be dismissed from school. In the proceedings against a teacher of literature at the high school who, in spite of being accused of having committed several sexual crimes, had to be acquitted, she was the ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... anchor. So, instead of starting to lay the cable to Misamis, we used the machinery as a fishing tackle, and, after some little trouble, hooked the Cagayan cable in a hundred and twenty-five fathoms of water. Later in the day the buoy was picked up, a most disreputable looking object, banged and battered almost beyond recognition, which showed it had undoubtedly been struck during the night by the ship's propeller, owing to the tremendously ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... he got so low that he spent much more than half his time in jail. He became a perfect vagabond, and with his clothes ragged and dirty might be seen reeling about or standing around the street corners near disreputable bars, waiting for a chance drink, or sitting asleep in doorways of untenanted buildings. His companions would be one or two chronic drunkards like himself, with red noses, bloated faces, dry hair, and filthy clothes. Sometimes ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... apart, the king might personally break the law; and we know that the first and only attempt which his successor made brought on the crisis which cost him his throne and his head. But the declaration that the proposition was false far exceeds in all that is disreputable the decision of the Inquisition against the earth's motion. We do not mention this little matter in England. Knight was a Puritan, and Neal[162] gives a short account of his sermon. From comparison with Wood,[163] I judge that the theses, as given, were not Knight's words, but ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... rose to trouble me. In the course of my meanderings I had made the acquaintance of an old sailor, one of the most disreputable specimens possible to find; and had learned to love him. Our first meeting had been outside a confectioner's window, in the Commercial Road, where he had discovered me standing, my nose against the glass, a mere palpitating Appetite on legs. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... me to bear this!" was Guy's inarticulate prayer as those last words reached his ears. "Of all the infamous blackguards and disreputable scoundrels I ever met"—here he stopped, and listened again. They had resumed the topic ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... funeral if she could. And there's Charley Bridgenorth in the club balcony—I wonder what he finds to do in peace time?—and old B—— talking to him. What does Charley mean by letting himself be seen in the same balcony with that disreputable old fellow? I hope he won't get his morals corrupted! Ah! So here we ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... there is much to be said even for him as a model of continuance. His note will soon change. He will become hoarse and only half-articulate. He will cease to be the flying echo of the mystery of skies and wood at dawn and in the still evening. The disreputable bat, whose little wings flutter half visibly like waves of heat rising above a ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... tied it round under my arms it would look better," she suggested. She was very anxious to be a credit to her new friend, and she was even more anxious not to shock Miss Rose, at first sight, by her disreputable appearance. ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... a bathrobe, hastily flung on over a damp bathing suit, his bare legs terminating in a pair of disreputable slippers. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... such people should be most severe in dealing with those who dared to lower the high morality of the new commonwealths dedicated to righteousness. But even the Puritans and Cavaliers were merely human, and crime would enter in spite of all efforts to the contrary. Bold adventurers, disreputable spirits, men and women with little respect for the laws of man or of God, crept into their midst; many of the immigrants to the Middle and Southern Colonies were refugees from the streets and prisons ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... Nikky was saying. "He always eats. And when I take him for a walk in the park, he digs up bones that other dogs have buried, and carries them home with him. We look very disreputable." The Crown Prince laughed with delight, but just then Nikky saw Hedwig, and ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... I found myself in the street, and as I emerged from the slightly disreputable neighborhood where I had passed the night I felt sure that a glance in the mirror would show me up a haggard, white-haired wreck. The air was wonderfully reviving, though, and I felt a subtle change stealing over me. An odd, pricking sensation, like one's foot awakening from sleep, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... conscience any good. I hate a conscience. It's always making you feel low down and disreputable. I don't believe I will say anything to my children about one, and let them have ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... house, the lower windows of which were secured by iron bars; while, on the drawing-room floor, the panes of glass were large, and showed white curtains within; the attic windows again being dirty, dusty, and here and there broken; in short, the house had a disreputable air, reminding one of an old gipsy who has thrown a new and gayly-colored shawl over ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... a train of parasites, could be the man on whom, as Horace tells us, civic anxieties and foreign dangers pressed a ceaseless load. He had built himself a palace and laid out noble gardens, the remains of which still exist, at the foot of the Esquiline hill. It had been the foulest and most disreputable slum in Rome, given up to the burial of paupers, the execution of criminals, the obscene rites of witches, a haunt of dogs and vultures. He made it healthy and beautiful; Horace celebrates its salubrity, and Augustus, when an invalid, came thither to breathe its air. (Sat. ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... "So disreputable a lot as you are I never saw!" said a sleepy rat to the casks in a wine-cellar. "Always making night hideous with your hoops and hollows, and disfiguring the day with your bunged-up appearance. There is no sleeping when once the wine has ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... Dan saw the letter; but it did bring him, and one November day Mr Laurie helped a feeble man out of a carriage at the door of Plumfield, and Mother Bhaer received the wanderer like a recovered son; while Ted, in a disreputable-looking hat and an astonishing pair of boots, performed a sort of war-dance round the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... worth of goods furnished. The American public looked upon Paine as a victim to state policy, and his position with his friends did not suffer at all in consequence of his disclosures. Personally, he exulted in his conduct to the end of his life, and took pleasure in watching and recording Deane's disreputable career and miserable end. "As he rose like a rocket, so he fell like the stick," a metaphor which has passed into a proverb, was imagined by Paine to meet Deane's case. [1] The immediate consequence of Paine's resignation was to oblige him to hire himself out as clerk to an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... political magnate would do that Sir Richmond would not dream of doing, and a number of things that such a man would not feel called upon to do that he would regard as imperative duties. And mixed up with so much fine intention and fine conduct was this disreputable streak of intrigue and this extraordinary claim that such misconduct was necessary ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... his probably moderate deserts and abilities, and in occupying a position of responsibility he inevitably displaces a more competent substitute. In our own country the enjoyment of such political favors is known as a "pull," and is a popular but disreputable method of political advancement, whereas in England the whole social, and a large part of the political, structure is constituted on the basis of a systematic and hereditary "pull." The spirit thereof is highly honored in the most sacred precincts of English life. ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... somewhat lame and impotent conclusion of the play when Athene—herself in reality one of the most infamous of the Olympian deities—is brought on the stage to save the prestige of the oracle at Delphi and to explain away the altogether disreputable behaviour of the no less infamous Apollo. But no one before Verrall had thought of coupling together the free-thinking and the episode in the play. This is what Verrall did. Ion sees that the oracle can lie, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... the brethren was for Joseph, and their first concern, to seek him. For three days they made search for him everywhere, even in the most disreputable quarters of the city. Meantime Joseph was in communication with the overseer of the station kept open for the sale of corn, and, hearing that his brethren had not appeared there, he dispatched some of his servants to ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... will pardon me for appearing in such a disreputable condition," begged the lad. "I really am ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... father," Alice said, "'twould grieve you, would it not? To discover that I was a most disreputable lot! Of all unhappy sinners I'm the most unhappy one!" The padre said, "Whatever have you been and gone ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... and say how glad he was I had escaped. But he happened to be the ship's purser, and, instead of embracing me, he told me coldly that steerage passengers are not allowed aft. But I did not mind, I knew that I was a disreputable object, but I also knew that I had gold in my money-belt, and that clothes could be ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... there came bustling round the right-hand horn of the bay a most disreputable, bedraggled-looking vessel. By her lines a yacht, her decks would have been a disgrace to the oldest and most battered tin-pot of an ocean tramp. Her masts had gone, there were gaps in her bulwarks, and the smoke of her furnaces, pouring through a hole in her deck over ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... whole work, of which I have given but a very slight description. I should say that this most energetic lady has also secured several houses for the accommodation of soldiers' families, who would otherwise be driven into dirty or disreputable lodgings. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... which they have no reputable evidence. Thus does this very brave apostle of 'the other side' fearlessly assert, with no proof for his statement, that all the various persons who have given evidence in this case in Mr. Smith's favor are disreputable, and their testimony of no value. Truly this is a bold statement, and it would seem that sometimes pens as well as tongues need 'curbing.' Although Fair Play declares that he 'offers nothing in the defence of lawbreakers,' yet his entire epistle is plainly ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... at once to the Vicar, and was rewarded by a long and grateful letter. "It is a disreputable affair," he wrote, "and it has upset me very much, and Maud even more. But you have put it in the right light, and I am very grateful to you for your good offices. I couldn't have believed it of Jack, but I look back to dear old Pembroke, and ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... no; I wouldn't have her here on any account," I answered as I thought of the disreputable characters who in shoals would soon be crowding the decks, and who were even now waiting in the boats until they were allowed to ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... against one of his own prophecies. Others again aver, and probably with equal accuracy, that he was at no time other than what he is when the world first becomes aware of his existence—the blatant, cringing, insolent, able and disreputable wielder of a pen which draws much of its sting and its profit from the vanities and fears of his fellow-creatures. Be that as it may, he somehow becomes a power. He attaches himself to many journals, the editors of which he first pesters, afterwards ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... forward I find Sandford. He is a most disreputable-looking specimen. Garbed in weather-stained corduroys, and dried-grass sweater, and great calfskin boots, he sprawls among gun-cases and shell-carriers—no sportsman will entrust these essentials ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... thought of things in general. There was, to be sure, the French book, and there were other circumstances already mentioned from which suspicion or certainty (suspicion, as we have seen, passing immediately into certainty in Langborough) of infidelity or disreputable conduct followed, but no corroborating word from her could be adduced. She attended to her business, accepted orders with thanks and smiles, talked about the weather and the accident to the coach, ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... have made a mistake in calling some of you 'men,' since you take orders from such disreputable characters as these gamblers and bootleggers," Tom taunted them mildly. "Now, all I will say is that those of you who wish to do so may pass outside. The rest may remain here, though they'll be sorry, afterwards, that they stayed. All who want to get ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... intercepted sums of money intended for charity, and when the whole household was supposed to be at rest they were supping on presents of game sent to Mrs. More; they had secretly harbored in the house one of their relatives who had lost her place for disreputable conduct: in short, Mrs. Jellaby's household would have been a paradise in comparison with this one. What did Hannah do? She left for ever the home of her life: she ran away! A house was secretly taken at Clifton, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the stripes distinctly. This gave us an idea of their truthfulness, as there is no striped tiger in all Africa. All who resolved on skulking or other bad behaviour invariably took up with the sepoys; their talk seemed to suit evil-doers, and they were such a disreputable-looking lot that I was quite ashamed of them. The havildar had no authority, and all bore the sulky dogged look of people going where they were forced but hated to go. This hang-dog expression of countenance was so conspicuous that I many a time have heard ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... exceedingly. That very brig, the William, belongs to my friends, Hodge, Podge, and Company, of Liverpool; and I am sure they would have consigned her to me, had they intended her to come here. Here she came, however, consigned to a Jew, a man of very disreputable character; and I understand that she discharged but a very small part of her cargo. We must try and find out what has become of it, and see if Captain Hudson can identify any portion of it. When I ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... an unfeigned relief, even gladness? He was formerly a charming and brilliant creature, full of enthusiasm and artistic impulses, fitful, wayward, wilful. Somehow he missed his footing; he fell into disreputable courses; he did nothing, but drifted about, planning many things, executing nothing. The last time I saw him was exquisitely painful; we met by appointment, and I could see that he had tried to ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a lover, and a sister who was very disreputable It rather adds than otherwise to the romance of the affair,—the idea that this pretty little elf has no right whatever to the asylum which she has found. Her name ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... took him through Africa and the East, whence he brought to New York a number of living creatures of many species, all of which, however, he had shipped for Havre before I met him, with the exception of two or three of the least disreputable kinds, which he meant to keep about him as pets. The most valued of these treasures were a small animal called a Mangouste, and a cage containing a family of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... kindness, but failed to obtain the exclusive affection which the poor thing lavished upon its rescuer. By the time Ulick came home, it had arrived at limping upon three legs, and was bent on following him wherever he went. Disreputable and heinously ugly it was, of tawny currish yellow (whence it was known as the Orange-man), with a bull-dog countenance; and the legs that did not limp were bandy. Albinia called it the Tripod, but ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... utter stranger in a foreign town. Georgi became hungry; whether he had sold his good clothes to provide for the coats of his stomach I cannot say, but the rags in which he first appeared to me were utterly unsaleable, and few people would have ventured upon an engagement with so disreputable a person. However, I liked his face; he could speak Turkish and Arabic fluently: Greek was his mother-tongue, and he had a smattering of French. I sent for the tailor, and had him measured for a suit of clothes to match those of Amarn—a tunic, waistcoat, knickerbockers, and gaiters of navy-blue ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... still high in the sky as Ruth and Dixon emerged from the tunnel, but it was already beginning to drop gradually down toward the west. Dixon wheeled his disreputable flivver out of its nearby shed. With engine silent they started coasting down the rough winding road ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... that's a good dragon, Leo, lad," Terrence spoke up. "This dragon is going to desert his disreputable companions and come over on your side and be a Saint Terrence. And this Saint Terrence has a lovely ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... with a pang, the trunkful of half-worn garments of various kinds, which her mother had sent her from time to time, and which she could never bring herself to wear, because of the association. They had been worn in the moral mire of Monte Carlo and other places equally disreputable, and Bessie could no more have put them on than she could have adopted her mother's habits. In her linen dress, which she bought with money paid her for roses by the ladies who frequented the "George," she felt pure and respectable. But this gift from Neil, her cousin, she ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship, 267; F. Cumont, 'Les Actes de S. Dasius', in Analecta Bollandiana, xvi. 5-16: cf. especially what St. Augustine says about the disreputable hordes of would-be martyrs called Circumcelliones. See Index to Augustine, vol. xi in Migne: some passages collected in Seeck, Gesch. d. Untergangs der antiken Welt, vol. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... who shuffled about the temples were a hard lot. Most of them were fugitives from justice and certainly looked the part, for a more disreputable, diseased and generally undesirable body of men I ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... Mrs. Carey were frankly shocked at Philip's idea of being an artist. He should not forget, they said, that his father and mother were gentlefolk, and painting wasn't a serious profession; it was Bohemian, disreputable, immoral. And ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... characters and budmashes in Calcutta. It was a dirty, filthy, narrow sort of lane having no side-paths and the houses being built most irregularly and without any attempt at symmetry or alignment. In fact it had altogether a most disreputable and evil appearance. The street as all can see has undergone quite a transformation, more particularly in that section near the Chowringhee end, and has now become an ornament and ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... I imagined that we, the very ones who have brought and have been bringing these women to this condition for several generations, would take thought some fine day and reform all this. But, in the mean time, if I had only recalled my conversation with the disreputable woman who had been rocking the baby of the fever-stricken patient, I might have comprehended the full extent of the ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... the act should be postponed to fifteen months, instead of six, after its passing, as proposed by government; and Lord Ellenborough moved a clause to empower the governor and two-thirds of the council to suspend any member guilty of unworthy and disreputable conduct. Both these amendments were agreed to, and the bill afterwards was read a third time. A bill introduced by Lord John Russell for the sale of the Canada clergy reserves also subsequently passed, without much opposition, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... coat used to save him from fighting in fighting days; and even in these days, in which broils and personal encounters are held to be generally disreputable, it saves the wearer from certain remote dangers to which other men are liable. And the reverse of this is also true. It would probably be hard to extract a first blow from the whole bench of bishops. And deans as a rule are more sedentary, more ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... modern times.[51] The elder Africanus was unfortunate in his sons. The younger of these attained to the praetorship in 174, but was immediately driven from the senate by the censors of that year on account of his disreputable life. The elder was an invalid, who never held any office except that of augur, and died at an early age. He adopted the son of L. Aemilius Paulus, the victor of Pydna; the adopted son bore the name Aemilianus in memory of his origin. Cato's son married a daughter of Paulus, so that the censor ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... appointment. He wished them 'Good morning' in an awkward hesitating undertone as if he were doubtful how his greeting would be received. Sweater nodded slightly, but Rushton ignored him altogether and Nimrod passed on looking and feeling like a disreputable cur ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... have you got any old disreputable clothes with you? Well, then, go into the tent and put them on; then come out and lie on your back and look up at the leaves. You're a good fellow, Renny, but decent clothes spoil you. You won't know yourself ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... imagination was accompained by a want of purpose; and Seneca, instead of trying to train him in habits of serious attention and sustained thought, suffered him to waste his best efforts in pursuits and amusements which were considered partly frivolous and partly disreputable, such as singing, painting, dancing, and driving. Seneca might have argued that there was, at any rate, no great harm in such employments, and that they probably kept Nero out of worse mischief. But we respect Nero the less for his indifferent singing ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... me, you rascals?" he cried—a greeting which provoked a retort in no measured terms. At this juncture, the natives began to crowd round, and several foreigners strolled along. Caught in the very act of speaking to such disreputable acquaintances, Wilson now fidgeted, and moved rapidly toward his office; the men following. Turning upon them incensed, he bade them be off—he would have nothing more to say to us; and then, hurriedly addressing Captain Bob in ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... in, his curiosity working furiously at this strange combination of persons. What on earth could be the link between Verschoyle and the shabby, disreputable menage on the third floor?... ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... ground is gravel, not clay, and the stone is basalt. The upper heights are forested and full of game; the lower are cleared and await the colonist. With the pure and keen Atlantic breeze ever blowing over it, the Mount is a ready-made sanatorium. Its youth has been disreputable. Here Captain Canot, [Footnote: Wanderings in West Africa, vol. i. chap. v.] the Franco-Italian lieutenant of Pedro Blanco, sold the coast till compelled by H.M. cruisers to fall back upon honest trade. His name survives in 'Canot's Tree,' under whose shade he held his palavers. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... good as his word, for when, after an absence of more than an hour, White reappeared on the scene he found the factory in full blast, with its operatives working as they had never worked before, and Cabot Grant, the most disreputable-looking of the lot, urging them on by voice and example to still greater exertions. He seemed to be everywhere and doing ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... asked, 'should you wish to return to that particular doll's house? Having taken, like Nora, the bold step against convention, having made yourself in the conventional sense disreputable, having dared to be free, why should you not take advantage of your freedom? As the greatest modern writers have pointed out, what you called your marriage was only your mood. You have a right to leave it all behind, like the clippings ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... professors of geomancy, rising to the occasion, triumphantly surmounted the difficulty and obviated the danger. By filling up two wells, which represented the eyes of the tortoise, they at once blinded that disreputable animal and rendered him incapable of doing ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... met, Cerizet had the bad taste to try to explain the disreputable position in which he had ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... falsehood to your conduct. I understand quite enough. Your own brother saw you bidding him an affectionate good-night at one o'clock, on my doorstep. Such things do not happen by accident. I wonder that you dare look me in the face after roaming the streets at that time of night with such a disreputable character." ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... engaged when I heard the slight creaking of a door, and I looked up as a stranger entered. He was a rough-looking man, with a shabby overcoat and a still more disreputable muffler around his throat and the lower part of his face. Considerably annoyed at his intrusion, I turned upon him rather sharply, when, with a mumbled, growling apology for mistaking the room, he shuffled out again and closed the door. I followed him quickly to the ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... the men who knew why Quintana might come to America was James Darragh, recently of the Military Intelligence, but now passing as a hold-up man under the name of Hal Smith, and actually in the employment of Clinch at his disreputable "hotel" at Star ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... political trickery that ever follows in the wake of war overtook us. So flagrant became the political scandals that reputable men began to leave politics alone, and politics consequently became disreputable. Men began to pride themselves on having nothing to do with their own government, and to agree tacitly with those who regarded public office as a private perquisite. In this state of mind it became easy to wink at the suppression of the Negro vote in the South, and to advise ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... china, or a coin, emanating from a less favoured soil; nor will he willingly acquire even a volume of native origin in any state but the orthodox morocco; but his first impulse and act, if he does so under protest, is to strip and re-clothe the disreputable article, and have it put into habiliments worthy of ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... what invisible spirits the child appealed. They were certainly disreputable ones, as will be seen; but they heard her prayer, and came to her now in her extremity. Hardly knowing what she did, she opened on this man a pair of eyes seraphically innocent, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the State monopoly of the drink traffic is neither honourable nor wise. It not only gives unwonted and unwarrantable dignity to a disreputable business, it also involves the State in the business of making a large army of drunkards in the land. To take up a traffic like this, for the revenue there is in it, is to trifle with the higher interests of the subjects ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... water, in the dingy and disreputable Hotel du Commerce, Dorothy waited in her room, doubtless the prey of unnumbered nameless terrors, while aboard the brigantine her fate was being decided by a council of three unspeakable scoundrels, one of whom, professing himself her father, openly ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the captain, through a dingy little passage, into a room with a sanded floor, and a little platform at one end. The room was full of sailors and disreputable-looking women; and was lighted by several jets of coarse gas, which flared in the bleak ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Johann, the apothecary, was ill in the summer of 1823, and during that time his disreputable wife visited her lover, an officer, in the barracks, and was often seen walking with him in the most frequented places, besides receiving him in her own house. Her husband, though confined to bed, could see her adorning herself ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... out of the cracks in the stone flagging, he handed me the tattered, disreputable-looking copy of "A Modern Circe" with a bow that wouldn't have disgraced a Chesterfield, and then went back to his easel, while I fled after aunt ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... proceeds to soil a new suit of khaki garments which he has been compelled to buy, lest some one take him for a novice in the shooting line, so those who play football take the keenest pride in their most disreputable clothes. Every stain stands for a possible struggle on the field that may have spelled a crowning event for the participant. So they come to look upon these marks as those of distinction, just as a soldier would the medal he so proudly wears ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... hinges on a fortune left to Sam Willett, the hero, and the fact that it will pass to a disreputable relative if the lad dies before he shall have reached his majority. The story of his father's peril and of Sam's desperate trip down the great canyon on a raft, and how the party finally escape from their perils is described in a ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... asked the man, hardly believing that any guest in that hotel would claim a son from that rather disreputable-looking party, for Paul looked almost as dirty and ragged as the ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... job here, boss?" Joe looked up to see a somewhat disreputable figure of a man observing him. The fellow looked like the typical tramp, perhaps not quite so ragged and dirty, but still in that class. However, there was something about the man that attracted Joe's attention. As he said ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... wash my hands of him. It is not to make excuses for him or Burtis that I have come, but to ask you about one matter. On his way back to the agency your comrade Mr. Sanders came to town and heaped reproaches on Willett and on the proprietor of the restaurant, alleging that certain disreputable people were allowed to occupy the adjoining dining-room while the party from the fort was dancing. Cresswell was very indignant at the charge. He says that the party in the adjoining room was the family of old Pierre Robideau, from Kearney,—just himself, his ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... distance. With a whispered welcome and a drooping head, she pointed to a seat. Louis sat down nervous and overawed, wishing that he had never undertaken this impossible and depressing task. Who was he to be dealing with such a character as this dubious and disreputable woman? ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... petty scandal of the day, in which all the parties were so disreputable that no one could feel any sympathy for a single one of them. How the dupe himself ended is not known. The last days of fops and beaux are never glorious. Brummell died in slovenly penury; Nash in contempt. Fielding lapsed into the dimmest obscurity; and as far as evidence ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... worst spec I ever made in my life. Fed on pork, fluted deaf, bit with bugs, and robbed at cards—fairly, downrightly robbed. Never was a more reg'ler plant put on a man. Thank goodness, however, I haven't paid him—never will, either. Such a confounded, disreputable scoundrel deserves to be punished—big, bad, blackguard-looking fellow! How the deuce I could ever be taken in by such a fellow! Believe he's nothing but a great poaching blackleg. Hasn't the faintest outlines of a gentleman about him—not the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... opposition to internal improvements, his policy of sacrificing the public lands to individual speculators, his warfare against the Bank of the United States conducted by methods the most unjustifiable, the transaction of the removal of the deposits so disreputable and injurious in all its details, the importation of Mrs. Eaton's visiting-list into the politics and government of the country, the dismissal of the oldest and best public servants as a part of the nefarious system ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... over his back stopped me and said that he was 'dans la misere.' Doubtless he guessed that I was not quite so deep in it as himself, and that I might be able to spare him something. As I always look upon the tramp with a fraternal interest, however disreputable he may appear, because my own wayfaring has helped to teach me contempt for appearances, I stopped to talk with the aged wanderer while hunting for some stray sous. His matted gray beard and sunken cheeks gave him the air of a Job of the studios; but no such luck had ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... fifty thousand go upon the street as a praying-band?' The liquor-dealers said: 'Send committees of two or three and we will talk with them; but coming in a body to pray with us brands our business as disreputable.' The time came when the Master seemed to call for a mightier power to bear upon the liquor traffic, and a company of heroic women, many of them the wives of prominent clergymen, led by Mrs. W.A. Ingham, said: 'Here am I; the ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... after their founder, devoted themselves to all manner of blasphemy, to all manner of offence. In a spot whose beauty might well be expected to have only a softening influence, whose memories might at least be found exalting, a handful of disreputable men gathered together to degrade the place, and, as far as that was possible, themselves, with the beastly pleasures and beastly ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... swipe on your shoulder, and there's a tear on your shoulder, in the flesh as well as in your coat, and one eye will be black as soon as the blood settles under the contusion. Take it up one side and down the other, you're a pretty disreputable looking object!" ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... nothing has been as yet related? As their name implies, they were men, and for the most part young men, travelling from university to university in search of knowledge. Far from their homes, without responsibilities, light of purse and light of heart, careless and pleasure-seeking, they ran a free, disreputable course, frequenting taverns at least as much as lecture-rooms, more capable of pronouncing judgment upon wine or women than upon a problem of divinity or logic. The conditions of medieval learning made it ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... meals, a husband who is not jealous, and refrains from assailing his rival with his fists, is regarded as a ridiculous, contemptible and cowardly cuckold. And the laboring class is divided into the respectable section which takes the tradesman's view, and the disreputable section which enjoys the license of the plutocracy without its money: creeping below the law as its exemplars prance above it; cutting down all expenses of respectability and even decency; and frankly accepting squalor ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... just because two strange men signal us. Indeed I'm not going to!" and Betty turned on more power. She gazed straight ahead as though she did not see the men in the approaching craft, who were now wildly waving their hands, and turning their rather disreputable-looking craft in the direction ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... ended in a row of high, disreputable-looking houses that were, however, picturesque enough, and across the pave in front of them commenced the docks. One walked in and out of harbours and waterways, the main stretch of harbour opening up more and more on the right hand, and finally showing two ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... two sensible married sisters to aid him with their counsel; and even they, though not lacking in decision as a rule, regarded first the Colonel's letter and then their brother with disturbed and doubtful eyes. He gave them no hint of the dreadful and disreputable change in their father's very being; that was positively too shocking to confide even to a sister (besides, they wouldn't have believed him), but he considered that the essentials of the problem were now fairly grasped by them both, and he was pleased to ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... Issy, who declared that Ves Young's rattle-trap wan't fit to do nothin' but haul fish heads to the fertilizer factory, the Calvin beams and boards were piled high on the wagon and with Ves on the driver's seat and Simp perched, like a disreputable carrion crow on top of the load, the ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... should not be likely to do," replied the widow; "but still I regret to see a person, evidently intended for better things, employed in so disreputable a profession." ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and disreputable march, Lord George Murray knew nothing until it was begun. The very morning on which it took place, the church of St. Ninian's, where the powder was lodged, was blown up. Lord George Murray was in his quarters when he heard the great noise of the explosion, and thought it was a firing from the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... which we found thus defended? We should exceedingly well know that it was lost. And yet our leading theologians are to be applauded and set in high places for condescending to such sharp practice as would be despised even by a disreputable attorney, as too transparently shallow to be of ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... awhile "for the church"? This was a savage witticism the men had, which Jurgis had to have explained to him. Old man Jones was great on missions and such things, and so whenever they were doing some particularly disreputable job, the men would wink at each other and say, "Now we're ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... the order—to go first and pretend that you have run away from a man-of-war, and want to be kept in hiding till she has sailed. You, of course, are to dress up as seamen in old clothes—the more disreputable and dirty you look the better. We know the houses where the men are stowed away, in the lowest slums of Cork, and we can direct you to them. You're to get into the confidence of the men, and learn what they intend doing; when you've gained that, ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... much liquor. Rutland and his friends swore to one lie upon another, and father believes that the judge who tried the case was bribed. Father intends to appeal to Parliament, but even in Parliament he fears he cannot obtain justice. Lord Rutland's son—a disreputable fellow, who for many years has lived at court—is a favorite with the queen, and his acquaintance with her Majesty and with the lords will be to ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... meritorious young authors into profitable publicity was shamefully abused,—as in the case of Maitland, an Englishman, who deliberately forged an absurdly distorted paraphrase of a note of Mr. Irving's, besides other disreputable use of the signature which he had enticed from him in answer to urgent appeals. But these were among the penalties of honorable fame and influence which he might naturally expect to pay. The sunny aspect on the "even tenor of his way" still prevailed; and until the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... of the rates, and thus the ratepayers were often ruined. In the midst of the street stood the old Poorhouse. It had no governor nor anyone to see that order was kept or work done there, and everybody that was homeless, or lazy, or disreputable, drifted in there. They went in and out as they pleased, and had a weekly allowance of money. Now and then there was a great row among them. One room was inhabited by an old man named Strong, who was considered a wonder because he ate adders ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to say that as a boy he was a very mean one, saucy, quarrelsome, and wicked, liked horse-racing and card-playing—both alike disreputable in those times. In early manhood he "experienced religion" and joined the Old-School Baptist Church, of which his parents were members, and then all his bad habits seem to have been discarded. He stopped swearing and Sabbath-breaking, and other forms ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... is, dear. I stand in no fear. Why do you wish to force me to do what I believe would be a wrong to you? Can't you respect my disreputable convictions?" ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... rights of membership and hold office therein; must, in accordance with Christ's command, so far as external evidence shows: 1.) Be baptized; 2.) Receive the Lord's Supper; 3.) Not live in open works of the flesh, Gal. 5:19; but, 4.) lead a Christian life, and not be engaged in any disreputable occupation; 5.) Contribute, according to ability, to the support of church and school and of the laborers in the same, so long as there is need, be it little or much, though it were only a cold water; 6.) Be subject to Christian order and discipline, and ...
— The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America • Beale M. Schmucker
... the formal black coat and vest, which seemed somehow to symbolise the inflexible severity of Bulldog's reign? and the hat, and the gloves, and the stick—what had become of his trappings? Was there ever such a pair of disreputable old slippers, down at the heel, out at the sides, broken at the seams, as those that covered the feet of Bulldog in that garden. The very sight of those slippers, with their suggestion of slackness and unpunctuality ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... him with her sharp little eyes, and seeing nothing disreputable about him, led the way upstairs, crackling loudly the whole time. This so astonished Mr. Gorby that he cast about in his own mind for ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume |
