"Fancy dress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... familiar title, the pleasure of a formal introduction is denied. In the portrait the ruling passions—modesty and meekness—are graphically displayed. When it lies close—and it moves rarely, and then with a gentle lateral swaying—the fancy dress of seaweed is a garment of invisibility. It is far more true to character alive than as a museum specimen, for its natural complexion is a yellowish grey, the neutral tint of the blending of sand and coral mud upon ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... it always relapsed into its own customs with a contented sigh after the jolt of inexplicable requirements and imported ways. This year had been an especially fruitful one. The boarders had given a fancy dress party with amateur vaudeville combined, for the benefit of the old church, and Martha Waterman now, as she toiled up the hill to a meeting of the Circle, held the resultant check in one of her plump freckled hands. Martha was chief mover in all capable ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... for you, Despard,' says Clifford. 'You're wasting your chances—golden opportunities in every sense of the word. You'll never see such a spectacle as this, perhaps, again as long as you live. It's a fancy dress ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... ingenuity she had copied more or less correctly from the brass of an ancient, noble lady, whereof the two intended to take an impression. Also she had imitated some of the other peculiarities of that picturesque costume, including the long, hanging sleeves. In short, she wore a fancy dress which she proposed to use afterwards at a dance, and one of the objects of the rubbing they were about to make, was that she might study the details more carefully. At least, that was her object. Godfrey's was to obtain an impression of the crabbed inscription at the foot ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... in an embarrassed knot at the front gate." She herself cared little for these entertainments, and usually busied herself in helping others with the preparations for them. Her mother-in-law writes: "A fancy dress ball has been held in honor of the birthday of the Prince of Wales. Fanny designed a costume for Mrs. Gurr (a pretty Samoan girl) as Zenobia, Empress of the East. She wore a Greek dress, made in part of cotton stuff with a gold pattern stamped on ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... exclaimed Horace, who sat nearest the window, "there are two rummy-looking chaps coming to the front door, wearing a sort of fancy dress!" ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... sovereign had a predilection for masked balls,—a traditionally favorite amusement at the palace, I was told—and accordingly several fancy dress festivities were enacted on the royal premises during the carnival. The first I was unable to participate in because of an inflamed eye, and therefore awaited the second with ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... "Mrs. Leo Hunter's Fancy dress Dejeune." In b the finish and treatment are infinitely improved. Mr. Pickwick's face and figure is more refined and artistic. The way he holds his hat in his right hand and his left also are improved; both are more extended. Mr. Snodgrass's ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... name and address will strike many as suggesting a certain struggle of the soul against the environment. With the national heartiness they blazon their note-paper with heraldry and the hues of Gothic windows; with the national high spirits they assume the fancy dress of friars; but any one who should essay to laugh at them instead of with them would find out his mistake. For many of them do really know a great deal about mediaevalism; much more than I do, or most other men brought up on an island that is crowded with its ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... his usual view to the accomplishment of his cousin as a votary of Real Life in London, that he had proposed a visit to a fancy dress Ball at Almack's, and preparations had accordingly been ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... up, Sagamore Hill remained delightful for them. There were picnics and riding parties, there were dances in the north room—sometimes fancy dress dances—and open-air plays on the green tennis court of one of the cousin's houses. The children are no longer children now. Most of them are men and women, working out their own fates in the big world; some in our own land, others ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... magnificent affair, and a complete success, as the word goes. She chose to call it my debut party, but I never felt that it was so, or that I was more than any other guest. I would not have chosen a fancy dress for my first appearance, and she certainly was the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... weeping violently. Though Kolya and Lida did not understand what had happened, they had a feeling that it was something terrible; they put their hands on each other's little shoulders, stared straight at one another and both at once opened their mouths and began screaming. They were both still in their fancy dress; one in a turban, the other in the ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a busy morning reading, writing, receiving interviewers, and trying on my fancy dress for the Jubilee Ball. Lunch was early in consequence of Sir Henry and Lady Loch having to lay the foundation-stone of the Genevieve Ward of the hospital. I did not go to the ceremony, although I discovered afterward that I had been expected. The ladies ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... OUIDA. Resolved to follow her teachings at once. Changed my "frightful, grotesque, and disgraceful male costume" for the most picturesque garments I had—a kilt, a blue blazer, and a yellow turban, which I once wore at a fancy dress ball. Then strolled along Piccadilly to the Club. Rather cool. Having abandoned "the most vulgar form of salutation, the shake-hands," bowed distantly to several men I had known for years—but they looked another way. Met a policeman. "Hullo!" he said. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... on Jerry, "that is, until yesterday. The committee just decided upon it. You see, the girls always give a fancy dress party, but not always a masquerade. This year a freshman who was on the committee proposed that it would be a good stunt to make everyone dress as a character in some old fairy tale. The rest of the committee liked the idea, so you had better get busy ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... a very large fancy dress ball, at which two or three hundred people were present. The ball was in every way a success, but as the giver did not belong to the 'sacred circle,' the members of that body only condescended to go for a short time. I have no doubt (for there are lots of jolly people among them) ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... characters attended a fancy dress ball in their stage costume; and the pseudo ladies found partners in every dance, and won many hearts by their grace ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... give them," Mary explained, "and the big ones outside, just as they do for Hallowe'en. They have valentine boxes, you know, and sometimes fancy dress balls." ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... years," he went on, shewing that contempt for the things of this world which some men of the world like to affect, "we should read that the Queen of the Hellenes had arrived at Cannes, or that the Princesse de Leon had given a fancy dress ball. In that way we should arrive at the right proportion between 'information' and 'publicity.'" But at once regretting that he had allowed himself to speak, even in jest, of serious matters, he added ironically: ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... gay-looking party that waited for her in the hall. The two Misses Crosby had been there to dinner, and also Mr. Hoyt and Mr. Collins, and these, with the house party, were now all arrayed in their fancy dress. As they had agreed on Christmas Day, they were all in pairs, and as of course there could be no secrecy among them, they had not yet put ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... realizing the sort of girl she was. Pathetic—that's the word I want. Looked at you out of the photo as if she was a poor, lonely, but uncommonly fetching little thing, who wanted a strong, true man to shelter her from the evil world. She was got up in some sort of fancy dress which kind of heightened the effect. I don't altogether profess to understand what happened, though my wife says she does. But Simcox in a sort of way fell in love with her. That's not the way he put it He didn't feel that she was just an ordinary girl—the sort one ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... recital on the Bolophone on Thursday by Mr. Tertius Quodling, and, at the Grand Opera House, Pope Joan and The Flip-Flappers. On Saturday the Stridcar Golf Club will hold a series of competitions in rational fancy dress for the benefit of the Phonetic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... all his interest absorbed in the present case of violence, although he could not help having much anxiety to detect the murderer. He was busy looking at the only oil-painting in the room (a youth of eighteen or so, in a fancy dress), and conjecturing its identity with the young man so mysteriously dead, when the door opened, and Mr. Carson returned. Stern as he had looked before leaving the room, he looked far sterner now. His face was hardened ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... startin' nex' morning, an' arrive Montreal all right, Buy dollar tiquette on de bureau, an' pass on de hall dat night. Beeg crowd, wall! I bet you was dere too, all dress on some fancy dress, De lady, I don't say not'ing, but man's all w'ite shirt an' ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... devoted to some special entertainment prepared sufficiently in advance to render it an important occurrence. A dance after dinner, a fancy dress ball, or private theatricals are suitable; and often long moonlight drives, ending with a jolly little picnic, are planned ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... time our ancestors must have had was borne in upon me when, on one occasion, I appeared in character at a fancy dress ball. What I represented I am unable to say, and I don't particularly care. I only know it was something military. I also remember that the costume was two sizes too small for me in the chest, and thereabouts; and three sizes too large for me in the hat. I padded the hat, and dined in the ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... knee-breeches you would have been written down a vulgar fellow. Even the great Duke of Wellington in 1814 was refused admittance to Almack's because he presented himself in trousers. Now we relegate knee-breeches to fancy dress balls ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... into some trouble or other, his father, who was ill, sent for him, and he went at once in a fine dress that he had had made for a fancy dress party. It was of light blue satin with odd puckers in the sleeves, and at every pucker the tailor had left a little bit of blue thread and a tag like a needle. The king was very angry with the prince for daring to come into the royal presence in such a silly ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit |
