"Finery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these thoughts that he reached the Rue d'Anjou and M. de Coralth's house almost before he was aware of it. To his great surprise, the concierge and his wife were not alone. Florent was there, taking coffee with them. The valet had divested himself of his borrowed finery, and had donned his red waistcoat again. He seemed to be in a savage humor; and his anger was not at all strange under the circumstances. There was but a step from M. de Coralth's house to the baroness's ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... but a small remuneration for the well timed hospitality he had afforded the travelers. But the ladies had selected sundry spare articles from their wardrobe, and delighted his daughters with the gift of finery, such as they had never possessed before. As L'Isle was turning to ride off, the farmer said, with a courteous air: "When you or any friend of yours come this way, pray remember, sir, you have a poor house here, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... Clothing. — N. clothing, investment; covering &c. 223; dress, raiment, drapery, costume, attire, guise, toilet, toilette, trim; habiliment; vesture, vestment; garment, garb, palliament|, apparel, wardrobe, wearing apparel, clothes, things; underclothes. array; tailoring, millinery; finery &c. (ornament) 847; full dress &c. (show) 882; garniture; theatrical properties. outfit, equipment, trousseau; uniform, regimentals; continentals [Am. Hist.]; canonicals &c. 999; livery, gear, harness, turn-out, accouterment, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... parish of Denmark it used to be the custom at Whitsuntide to dress up a little girl as the Whitsun-bride and a little boy as her groom. She was decked in all the finery of a grown-up bride, and wore a crown of the freshest flowers of spring on her head. Her groom was as gay as flowers, ribbons, and knots could make him. The other children adorned themselves as best they could with the yellow flowers of the trollius and caltha. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... as the tide sets her way, she will realize her power, and the church will have many more attendants. The very poor woman will not be so cruelly humiliated, and the wage-earning girl, who puts so much of her money into finery, will have a more artistic and ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... his mind to abandon his rough work, since his accumulated wealth now allowed him to employ substitutes. With these glittering coins, that represented so many strokes of a heavy axe from a strong arm, and so many drops of sweat from an overheated brow, he would go into the heart of the city and buy finery and style and accomplishments for Maria, and Nellie, and Sarah, and the old woman herself as well, and life would bear fruit at last to him, after all his ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Mother, could you lend me my wife for half an hour? The luggage has come, and I've been making hay of Amy's Paris finery, trying to find some things I want," said Laurie, coming in the next day to find Mrs. Laurence sitting in her mother's lap, as if being made 'the ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... dollars, for a pair of coarse canvas trousers, a jacket of the same, two check shirts, and a good straw hat. My heart misgave me when I saw his peculiar smile, as he placed my bond in his pocket-book. Pleased as I was with my finery, I feared I had done wrong, but did not know to what extent until next morning, when we joined the convicts at labour. As soon as they saw us in our new dresses, they burst out into ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... turned bravely to the north-west, the elder tree over the back door, the farm servants, all with white favours pinned on their breasts; the gentle bride, the handsome thoughtful bridegroom, the dear old father excited and merry, and above all, Morva decked out in wedding finery! How lovely she would look! Why was it that this sweet picture of home filled Will's heart only with discontent and an abiding unrest? The answer is plain, because he had determined, come what would, ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... made off, taking with them Jack Sloven dressed up in Fred's clothes, and, of course, leaving that disreputable young gentleman's garments behind for the dandy. They made home as fast as they could, and Jack, as quickly as possible, divested himself of his unwonted finery, and put on another of his own suits. Then the conspirators assembled in the playground with as many of us as had heard what was going on, and awaited the return of poor Fred. He was a long time coming, and before he arrived the head master and two ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... rose up and fled, as nimble as a deer. The Prince followed, but could not overtake her. She left behind one of her glass slippers, which the Prince took up most carefully. She got home, but quite out of breath, without her carriage, and in her old clothes, having nothing left her of all her finery but one of the little slippers, fellow to the one she had dropped. The guards at the palace gate were asked if they had not seen a princess go out, and they replied they had seen nobody go out but a young girl, very meanly dressed, and who had more the air of a poor ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... Daniel discovered signs of melancholy in Brigitte's eyes. She was a strange creature, as good and sincere—when you could get finery out of her head—as she was stupid when absorbed in such frivolous affairs. On occasion she could be both good and stupid. One fine day, when they were walking together, she threw herself into Brigitte's arms, and told her that she had noticed I was beginning to pay court ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... friendship born of her protective instinct, with Millicent Saunders, a frail, pale wisp of a child, whose black eyes looked very big indeed in her thin face, framed in a mass of black hair. The other pupils were apt to look down on Millicent, because, though few of them ran to finery, Millicent was shabby indeed. Pollyooly was quite unaffected by this, for in the days when she had lived in the dreadful fear that she and the Lump might be driven by necessity into the workhouse, she had gone shabby herself. She knew that Millicent's mother, who had once ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... passing out of the gate in the modern French wall, might have been the south of England in midsummer, had it not been peopled by the dignified Arab figures which never lost their strangeness and novelty for Stephen. Here, in the west country, they glittered in finery like gorgeous birds: sky-blue jacket, scarlet fez and sash glowing behind a lacework of green branches netted with flowers, where a man hoed his fields or ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... about the kitchen, preparing him the best dinner she could to cheer him when he came home at noon. To add a touch of grace she decided to set a bowl of petunias in front of him. He loved the homely little flowers in their calico finery, like farmers' daughters at a picnic. Their cheap and almost palpable fragrancy delighted him when it powdered the air. She hoped that they would bring a smile to him at noon, for he ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... author of the "Age of Reason." England was filled with Puritan gloom and Episcopal ceremony. The ideas of crazy fanatics and extravagant poets were taken as sober facts. Milton had clothed Christianity in the soiled and faded finery of the gods—had added to the story of Christ the fables of mythology. He gave to the Protestant church the most outrageously material ideas of the Deity. He turned all the angels into soldiers—made heaven a battle-field, put Christ in uniform, and described ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... get them in Denver. Father always sent to Denver for my finery. He was very particular about how I looked. You see, I was all he had—" She broke ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... work be permitted, let even that be in moderation, and just enough to teach the active mistress and her daughters what a world of scrubbing and elbow work they have saved themselves in the enjoyment of a plainly-finished house, instead of one full of gingerbread work and finery. None but the initiated can tell the affliction that chiseled finishing entails on housekeepers in the spider, fly, and other insect lodgment which it invites—frequently the cause of more annoyance and daily disquietude in housekeeping, because unnecessary, than real griefs from which ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... haughty. This Florence, the city of scholars, artists, intellectual sybarites, and citizens in whom the blood of the old factions beat, found herself suddenly possessed as a prey of war by flaunting Gauls in their outlandish finery, plumed Germans, kilted Celts, and particolored Swiss. On the other hand these barbarians awoke in a terrestrial paradise of natural and aesthetic beauty. Which of us who has enjoyed the late gleams of autumn in Valdarno, but can picture to himself ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... common prostitutes, their silken dresses soiled and torn, indecency on their brow, and insult on their lips, hundreds of women of the lowest description, and from the dregs of the people, recruited to swell the cortege, and excite commiseration from the garrets of the faubourgs, clothed in tattered finery, pale, emaciated, their eyes hollow, and their cheeks sunken from misery, the personifications of want, in fact the people, in all the disorder, the confusion, the exposure of a city suddenly summoned from its houses, its workshops, its garrets, its scenes and haunts of debauch and infamy; ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... was placed upright or upon its haunches, after which it was covered with timber, to support the earth which they lay over, and thereby kept the body from being pressed. They then raised the earth in a round hill over it. They always dressed the corpse in all its finery, and put wampum and other things into the grave with it; and the relations suffered not grass nor any weed to grow upon the grave, and frequently visited it and made lamentation." [Footnote: Hist. Indian Tribes of the United States, 1853, ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... have a splendid wardrobe for company, and a shabby and sordid one for domestic life. A woman puts all her income into party-dresses, and thinks anything will do to wear at home. All her old tumbled finery, her frayed, dirty silks and soiled ribbons, are made to do duty for her hours of intercourse with her dearest friends. Some seem to be really principled against wearing a handsome dress in every-day ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... his flock, as though he should never be old,' and the same poor country lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the finery of ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... if she could see how I have treated one of her masterpieces,' said she, as she straightened her crushed hat, and arranged her hair with those quick little deft pats of the palm with which women can accomplish so much in so short a time. Rumpled finery sets the hands of every woman within sight of it fidgeting, so Maude joined in at the patting and curling and ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... the captain of the guard and his orderlies advanced to the waggon and stood in front of it. They were splendid men, armed with great spears and shields, and adorned with feather head-dresses and all the wild finery of their regiment. Owen descended from the waggon and came to meet them, and so for a few moments they remained, face to face, in silence. A strange contrast they presented as they stood there; the bare-headed white man frail, delicate, spiritual of countenance, and the warriors great, ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... of the business girl. Most of the ill-breeding in the world is due to ignorance. Ignorance of the laws of beauty and taste causes one to make a display of finery, and over-dressing is a mark of vulgarity whether one can ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... in beaded finery. All wore moccasins—some men had long beaded stoles—others wonderful beaded waistcoats. The women wore long beaded hair ornaments reaching almost to the ground, as well as strings of beads and ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... of responsibility make factory work a dangerous rival to domestic care. There is something in the modern conditions of labour which act magnetically upon American girls, impelling them to work not for bread alone, but for clothes and finery as well. Each class in modern society knows a menace to its homes: sport, college education, machinery—each is a factor in the gradual transformation of family life from a united domestic group to a collection of individuals with separate ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... other. At length Milly rose from the sofa. The tinselled scarf, that other woman's delicate finery, had slipped from the white beauty of her shoulders. She drew it around her again slowly, and slowly with bowed head left ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... deacon's folks, had gone shambling past, head and tail drooping, clumsy hoofs kicking up clouds of dust, while the good deacon sat jerking the reins, in an automatic way, and the "womenfolks" patiently saw the dust settle upon their best summer finery. Wagon after wagon went along the sandy road, and when our boy's family started, they became part of a long procession, which sent up a mile of dust and a pungent, if not pious smell of buffalo-robes. There were ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... such thing," said Betty; "Mrs. Wilson's children are not suffering for clothes; the weather is warm, and they are as well clad as they will be the day after they are dressed up in your finery. ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... make fine birds; don't borrow finery; don't be attractive for your fine dresses; the men attracted by fluff, frills, feathers and furbelows ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... ladies going to see the various sights of the city and the neighbourhood, and I attending them. They soon got tired of sight-seeing, and of Paris too; and so did I. However, they still continued there, in order, I believe, that the young ladies might lay in a store of French finery. I should have passed my idle time at Paris, of which I had plenty after the sight-seeing was over, very unpleasantly, but for Black Jack. Eh! did you never hear of Black Jack? Ah! if you had ever been an English servant in Paris, you would have known ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Freddy's voice did not express much eagerness for Michael's company at the ball, and Michael knew the reason. Freddy was unable to decide in his own mind whether it was wiser to urge Mike to go and let him see Meg as Freddy knew he would see her in all her pretty finery, and let him enjoy the pleasure of her perfect dancing, or allow him to stay behind and so avoid the risk of meeting the woman whom he knew would be there. He had seen her name in the visitors' list in ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... people, Denas. That be the best finery. If roses and lilies did grow on the dusty high-road, they would not be as fitly pretty as blue-bells and daisies. I do think that, Denas; and it be the very same with women. Burrell Court is a matter of two miles beyond St. Penfer; 'tis a long ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... vague way of speaking about actual facts. Lady Lesbia might have spoken with more certainty. Her wardrobes and old-fashioned hanging closets and chests of drawers in Arlington Street were crammed to overflowing with finery; and then there were all the things that she had grown tired of, or had thought unbecoming, and had given away to Kibble, her own maid, or to Rilboche, who had in a great measure superseded Kibble on all important ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... vast libations at the bar. On the wharf an immense gathering of natives assembled to speed numbers of kind and generous patrons, who (with an eye to the future) had distributed a considerable amount of largesse and flattery, as well as silk and satin finery. What with the Germans and their native friends, egress from and ingress to the steamer were almost impossible; the gangway was choked, and the shouting and hurrahing actually drowned the ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... may do thee more harm than good; for in another place he says—Many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths. Again—It is foolish to lay out money in a purchase of repentance; and yet this folly is practiced every day at auctions, for want of minding the almanac. Many a one, for the sake of finery on the back, has gone with a hungry belly and half-starved his family. Silks and satins, scarlet and velvets, put out the kitchen fire, as poor Richard says. These are not the necessaries of life; they can scarcely be called the conveniences; and yet, only because they look pretty, how many ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... with cobwebs; her hearth never was littered with ashes. Well might Tom work cheerfully for such a wife; for he knew that every penny he saved, and gave her, was put to the best possible use. It didn't go for tawdry finery, I can tell you; and she knew how to turn a coat for Tom, or re-line the sleeves, or seat a pair of pants, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... at it, she had to shut the trunk and climb on the rounded lid, for the big wooden Noah's Ark was too heavy to lift, and too firmly wedged in among large pieces of furniture to be pushed out of the way. Kneeling on the trunk, regardless of her finery, Barrie grasped the picture frame with both hands and pulled it up from its narrow hiding-place. Then, scrambling down, she backed out into a space clear enough to permit of turning the picture, round. Then she could not help giving ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... went about the castle, at first wilfully, then submissively, then shyly. She had folded away all her finery in wondering silence, for Waring's face had shown disapproval, and now she wore always her simple white gown, 'Can you not put up your hair?' he had asked one day; and from that moment the little head appeared crowned with braids. She worked among her flowers and fed her gulls as usual, but she ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... church to the full sweet sound of an organ voluntary, played by Miss Janet Eden, who, as all the village said of her, 'was a rare 'and at doin' the music proper.' Each man and woman wore their Sunday best,—each girl had some extra bit of finery on, and each lad sported either a smart necktie or wore a flower in his buttonhole, as a testimony to the general festal feeling inspired by a day when ordinary work is set aside for the mingled pleasures of prayer, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... they would wander in the long evenings through the streets and look in at the dazzlingly lit shop-windows, with their tempting, glittering show of gold and finery. Louise kept asking continually how much he thought this thing or that cost—that lace, or the cloak, or the stockings, or those gold brooches. "Wait till you marry that doctor," Peer would say, "then you can buy all those things." So far neither ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... paper-mills, or in any other manufactory, for less than half the wages they would receive in service: but they think their equality is compromised by the latter, and nothing but the wish to obtain some particular article of finery will ever induce them to submit to it. A kind friend, however, exerted herself so effectually for me, that a tall stately lass soon presented herself, saying, 'I be come to help you.' The intelligence was very agreeable, and I welcomed her in the most gracious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... not have saved himself, if he had not been very differently brought up from such other lords as I have seen educated in this country; for these were taught nothing but to play the jackanapes with finery and fine words." (7) I am afraid Charles took such lessons to heart, and conceived of life as a season principally for junketing and war. His view of the whole duty of man, so empty, vain, and wearisome to us, was yet sincerely and consistently held. When ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when I laid hands on her bread and water and found on her great plenty of ornaments and rich apparel, necklaces, jewels and gold trinkets;[FN51] for it was their custom to bury women in all their finery. I carried the vivers to my sleeping place in the cavern-side and ate and drank of them sparingly, no more than sufficed to keep the life in me, lest the provaunt come speedily to an end and I perish of hunger and thirst. Yet did I never wholly lose hope in Almighty Allah. I abode ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... entertainment on festive occasions, such as a marriage. Some of their dances were in the daytime, and, like dress-balls of other countries, were accompanied with a display of fancy mats and other Samoan finery. At the night assemblies the men dressed in their short leaf aprons. Sometimes only the men danced, at other times women, and occasionally the parties were mixed. They danced in parties of two, three, and upwards, on either side. If the one party moved ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... further adventure. There she put on her extra finery. Her yellow sash was tied in a large bow, and her poppies ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... were engaged sewing dresses, for a festival was going to take place a few days hence at Balcarem, a village eight miles distant from Murucupi, and they intended to be present to hear mass and show their finery. One of the children, a naked boy about seven years of age, crossed over with the montaria to fetch us. We were made welcome at once, and asked to stay for dinner. On our accepting the invitation, a couple of fowls were ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... the trees were too ostentatious and flaunted their new, green finery impudently and hid Neptune's satellite or—'twas cloudy, I could not see. Come, come, I must and thou, too, have sleep if the God thereof doth not wantonly spend too much time with thy mistress;—but thou shalt ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... bear the name of an old colonial dignitary. There he sits, a major, a member of the council, and a weighty merchant, in his high- backed arm-chair, wearing a solemn wig and grave attire, such as befits his imposing gravity of mien, and displaying but little finery, except a huge pair of silver shoe-buckles, curiously carved. Observe the awful reverence of his visage, as he reads his Majesty's most gracious speech; and the deliberate wisdom with which he ponders over some paragraph of provincial politics, and the keener intelligence ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... river stretched away like a gilded floor. It was a strange throng. There were grave Spaniards in long cloaks and feathered beavers; jolly merchants and artisans in short linen jackets, each with his tabatiere, the wives with bits of finery, the children laughing and shouting and dodging in and out between fathers and mothers beaming with quiet pride and contentment; swarthy boat-men with their worsted belts, gaudy negresses chanting in the soft patois, and here and there a blanketed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... which necessitated the possession of a human head. When any person died, the relatives went into mourning. They put away their ornaments and finery, and these were tied together in bundles. At the feast in honour of the dead, these bundles were all undone, and the men and women were allowed to wear their ornaments again. Some man cut the string with which they were tied up, but before he could do such a thing, it was necessary ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... which induces one to set him down at once as a junior clerk to a tradesman or attorney. The girl no one could possibly mistake. You may tell a young woman in the employment of a large dress- maker, at any time, by a certain neatness of cheap finery and humble following of fashion, which pervade her whole attire; but unfortunately there are other tokens not to be misunderstood—the pale face with its hectic bloom, the slight distortion of form which no artifice of dress can wholly conceal, the unhealthy stoop, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... coronation, had been presented at the theatres, the armour of one of the kings of England having been brought from the Tower for the due accoutrement of the champion. And here we may note a curious gravitation of royal finery towards the theatre. Downes, in his "Roscius Anglicanus," describes Sir William Davenant's play of "Love and Honour," produced in 1662, as "richly cloathed, the king giving Mr. Betterton his coronation suit, in which he acted the part of Prince Alvaro; the Duke of York giving Mr. Harris his, who ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... passing, as on beings of an inferior rank in the creation. Some of the negroes actually seemed to envy the caparisons of their fellow-brutes, and eyed with jealousy their glittering harness. In imitation of this finery, they were fond of thrums of many-colored threads; and I saw one creature, who supported the squalid rag that wrapped his waist by a suspender of gaudy worsted, which he turned every moment to look at on his naked shoulder. The greater number, however, were as unconscious of any covering ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... say you are never to do so; I don't say you ought not sometimes to think of yourselves only, and to make yourselves as pretty as you can; only do not confuse coquettishness with benevolence, nor cheat yourselves into thinking that all the finery you can wear is so much put into the hungry mouths of those beneath you: it is not so; it is what you yourselves, whether you will or no, must sometimes instinctively feel it to be—it is what those who stand shivering in the streets, forming a line to watch you ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... change in their luxurious habits of life. It was impossible entirely to do away with their long-standing passion for fine purple robes and tapestry, rich banquets, and furniture: but he directed this love of finery to useful purposes, and soon brought them all to retrench their private expenditure, and to take a pride in the splendour of their military equipments. Their plate was sent to the crucible, and employed to gild corslets, shields, and caparisons; their public places were full of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... from active life and power, soon became bitterly sensible in his new position that he was senza parentado, with few relations, and flouted by the giovinastri, the dissolute young gentlemen who swaggered about the Broglio in their finery, strong in the support of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... her!" she broke out. "Girls isn't generally like that. Their heads is too full of finery. God bless her, 'Merican or no 'Merican! That's ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wonder was, how it would be possible for those ladies to use the hundreds of ells of stuffs that were soon spread out over chairs, tables, and sofas, and that, as it appeared to me, would have been sufficient to supply half the women of Louisiana with finery for the next five years. This Creole family was really a model of a joyous innocent existence; nothing constrained or artificial; but a light and cheerful tone of conversation, which, however, never degenerated into license, or threatened to overstep the limits of the strictest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... George, I can't say fine things to them; they freeze, they petrify me. They may talk of a comet, or a burning mountain, or some such bagatelle; but, to me, a modest woman, drest out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... it chiefly on his account, so ez to git 'im accustomed to seein' handsome things around, so thet when he goes out into the world he won't need to be flustered by finery. ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... first missing girl rode into Fort Apache on a fine horse, which was loaded down with buckskins and other Indian finery. Two cowboys followed her shortly and claimed the pony, which bore a C C C brand, and I gave it up to them. I took the girl into my office, for she was so tired that she could hardly stand up, while she was haggard and worn to the last degree. When she had sufficiently recovered she told ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... his poor little body showing quite plainly between his shirt-waist buttons and through the gashes he called pockets. This was his ordinary costume, and the funds of the house of Mogilewsky were evidently unequal to an outer layer of finery. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... compose a practical code of misery and servitude: the genius of human happiness must tear every leaf from the accursed book of God ere man can read the inscription on his heart. How would morality, dressed up in stiff stays and finery, start from her own disgusting image should she look in the mirror ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... booths, paint to the life the little flying flags, the gestures of the showmen, the bright balloons, the shooting-galleries, the gipsy tents, the crudely stained canvas walls, the groups of coachmen and servant girls and children in their holiday finery. At moments one can even smell ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... a silly notion of bein' romantic. Back in June she made a trip to the cabin double quick to warn the varmint roostin' there. In her haste she dropped a bow of purple ribbon which with some other finery a certain little store-keeper gives her to do his spyin' fur him. It's a blamed lovely cabal in this town. I know 'em ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... 1692, Port Royal was reputed the richest and the wickedest spot on earth, for it was the headquarters of the Buccaneers; here they divided their ill-gotten gains, and here they strutted about bedizened in their tawdry finery, drinking and gambling. I should be inclined to distrust the local legend that in the many taverns the wine was all served in jewelled golden cups, for, given the character of the customers, one would imagine that ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... vacuity. Just as skeletons always seem mysteriously elate. Their pride is an absence of everything else—a sort of rigid finery they put on in lieu of a shroud. Never mind staring after them, please. They are Mr. and Mrs. Jalonick who live across the street from my home. I dislike staring even after truths. Listen, I have something more to say about them if you'll not ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... an American, gives three million dollars to the poor of London. This money was not tossed out to purchase peace, and to encourage idleness, and to be spent in strong drink and frills and finery, and the ways that lead to Nowhere, but to provide better homes ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... truth instinctively. They find their highest happiness in make-believe. A child of the slums with a rag-doll and a few beads and a scrap of faded finery can make for herself a world of fairyland. She is a princess clothed in shimmering silk and hung about with pearls and diamonds. She is courted by a knight in golden armour. She is married amidst the acclamations of a loyal ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... though they were placed there to hold up the sky that was so heavy and dank. Alongside the track every ditch ran full of clay-colored water that wrapped little, ragged wreaths of dirty foam around every obstruction, like the tawdry finery of the slums. ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... man had been made a prefect of a small village, he bought his wife a new fur garment (melotam). She, proud of her finery and full of her new honor, entered church, capite elato et superbo, with her head raised, just as all the congregation rose to their feet, when the Gospel was to be read. When she, thinking it to be in her honor, and recollecting her former condition, said: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... be so fond of finery? I believe you are corrupting me into a taste for it. I used to hate every such thing before I ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... few seconds, however, came a modest knock on the room-door, and Mrs. Lake, wiping her hands, proceeded to admit the knocker. She was a smartly dressed woman, who bore such a mass of laces and finery, with a white woollen shawl spread over it, apparently with the purpose of smothering any living thing there might chance to be beneath, as, in Mrs. Lake's experienced eyes, could be nothing less than a baby of the most ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... when I used to go overseas. I keeps it because my Mary loved it so, though she 'lowed it was too rich for t' likes o' her to wear it much. But I guess it'll last now. 'T is t' last bit o' finery left," he smiled, "and 't is most time to be hauling that down. For I reckons Nellie won't last out to need it long. Eh, Doctor?" And for a moment a tear sparkled in his merry old eyes, as he peered from under his heavy ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... had time to introduce his "most discreet sister Griselda" as he called her, who came arrayed in all the finery of half a century before, and wearing a mysterious erection on her head, something between a wedding-cake and the Tower of Babel in a picture Bible, while his niece, Miss MacIntyre, a pretty young woman with something of bright wit about her, which came undoubtedly from her ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... poor creature, who, dressed in silks and finery, did not know her letters, and who was incapable of raising her voice to God. He was in a mood, through long solitude, for pitying others; under a strange name, known to nobody, separated from the world, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... ground-seemingly awaiting the good pleasure of some grand lady, is a sedan-chair, decorated with paintings by Fragonard. Farther on, there is one of those superb carved mother-of-pearl coffers, in which Oriental women lay by their finery and jewellery. A splendid Venetian mirror, its frame embellished with tiny figure subjects, and measuring two metres in width and three in height, fills a whole panel of the vestibule. Portieres of Chinese satin, ornamented with striking embroidery, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... then a wishing Glance or Sigh thrown as by chance; which when the happy Coxcomb caught— you feign'd a Blush, as angry and asham'd of the Discovery: and all this Cunning's for a little mercenary Gain— fine Clothes, perhaps some Jewels too, whilst all the Finery cannot hide the Whore! ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... an hour. After making Mind Purchases of about $8000 worth of washable Finery edged with Lace, a ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... cunning reader of features would have found a home for high thoughts behind the fine forehead, the lines of infinite tenderness upon the mobile lips, the light of some noble conflagration in the wild eyes. He was dressed in faded finery of many colours, so ragged and patched and hostile that he had very much the air of a gaudy scarecrow. His ruined cloak was tilted by a long sword; his disordered thatch was crowned by a battered cap grotesquely adorned ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... with eagerness, and Mr Bertrand listened with wrinkled brow. He had expected to be asked for articles of jewellery or finery, and the replies distressed him, as showing that the discontent was more deepseated than he had imagined. For several moments he sat in silence, as though puzzling out a difficult problem. Then his brow cleared, and he ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... he has a gold-mine. But even if I were rich, I should fear that the saints might punish me for wearing to school my best clothes. I would wish to win their good-will by wearing no finery," said Ana, piously. She was a plump girl, with eyes like splinters of coal in her suave brown face; despite the extreme softness of her voice, these glittering splinters rested with no ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... Markham hesitated. It might do Maddy a deal of hurt to go to Aikenside, he said, her humble home would look mean to her after all that finery, while the temptations to vanity and ambition would be greater there than at home; but Maddy put all his objections aside, and long before the doctor came she had written to Mrs. Agnes that she would go. The doctor could not understand why it was that in Maddy's home he ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... awe of her aunt to be anxious to conceal from her so much of her vanity as could be hidden without too great a sacrifice. She could not resist spending her money in bits of finery which Mrs. Poyser disapproved; but she would have been ready to die with shame, vexation, and fright if her aunt had this moment opened the door, and seen her with her bits of candle lighted, and strutting about decked in her scarf and ear-rings. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... interesting people. Crowded out behind the men and boys, and in many places packed against the walls of the house, were the women and girls. While the men were in many instances well and often brilliantly dressed in their finery, the women and girls were wretchedly ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... him all. Lydia would probably waste the money, and the old lady, though with perceptible hesitation, had decided to trust him rather than her daughter. It was so. Lydia considered that her mother was stingy, and that finery was indispensable while she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... school for working girls and grown women in connection with the principal part of the institution; also a Sunday school for children. Among the rules is one which forbids the wearing of artificial flowers or any tawdry finery during school-time. But in another part of London artificial flowers in a Sunday bonnet are a sign of a reclaimed female drunkard, as the clergyman has hit on the ingenious method of advising the women to leave off drinking, that they may be able to afford some Sunday finery wherewith ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... little voice in the world, appeared to have the desired effect. The eyes were dried, the sobs checked, and soon Elleney emerged from her garret, and came clattering down the corkscrew stairs in her unyielding little best boots, clad all in her Sunday finery, every sunshiny hair in its place, and her blooming face a vision of wonder and ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... they might be the parents of sons only. After the young people had endured this long enough, the curtains were let down round the dais, and only two or three old women kept going in and out. We found they were taking off all the finery, and dressing the bride and bridegroom in their usual clothes; for while we were drinking coffee and eating Malay cakes at the little table, they came out from the curtains, looking quite pleasant and natural. So we shook hands, made our congratulations, and bade them adieu. We got home at ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... country would be hurt by what she says. On the contrary, it is amusing to find the ills from which most of us have suffered at times recognised by the stranger within our gates. None of us admire the battered tawdry finery we see in our streets every day, and I cannot believe that German ladies admire the shocking garments in which their servants will come to the door and wait at table. But though these clothes are sloppy looking and unsuitable, they are never ragged; and ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... truth perhaps we name, 'Twas more simplicity than virtuous aim; Not much of industry, but honest heart; No wealth, nor lovers, who might hope impart. In Adam's days, when all with clothes were born, She doubtless might like finery have worn; A house was furnished then without expense; For sheets or mattresses you'd no pretence; Not e'en a bed was necessary thought No blankets, pillowbiers, nor quilts were bought. Those times are o'er; then Hymen ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... idea of "a sweet disorder in the dress" was a bit overdone in Daisy's case, but her merry, breezy laugh, and her whole-souled joy at seeing Mona again rather corresponded with her disarranged finery. ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... a mountain trapper, none the less this personage affected a certain finery. A brilliant sash encircled his waist, his hat bore a wide plume. At his belt hung pistols, and in his hand was a long rifle. He pulled up his horse squatting, its ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... there at that time. We saw a foreshadowing of this delightful future in the water. The bathing "facilities" consist of many miles of beach, and one bathing-house, in which ladies exchange their shore finery for their sea-weeds. Two brisk young fellows, Messrs. Whitey and Pypey, had come over in the same boat with us. We had fallen into a traveller's acquaintance with them, and listened to the story of the pleasant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... the Nest," said that semi-worthy fellow, "give us another call here. I should like my woman and Kitty to have a look at your finery, before you go down to ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... Essex Journal of Massachusetts of the late eighteenth century, commenting upon the follies common to "females"—vanity, affectation, talkativeness, etc.,—adds the following remarks on dress: "Too great delight in dress and finery by the expense of time and money which they occasion in some instances to a degree beyond all bounds of decency and common sense, tends naturally to sink a woman to the lowest pitch of contempt amongst all those of either sex who have capacity enough to put two ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... gone, Lady Everington fled to her boudoir and collapsed in a little heap of sobbing finery on the broad divan. She was overtired, no doubt; but the sense of her mistake lay heavy upon her, and the feeling that she had sacrificed to it her best friend, the most humanly valuable of all the people who resorted to her house. An evil cloud of mystery ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the most singular, and in some ways the most picturesque, in Paris—a Gothic church, tricked out in Renaissance finery. The nave is flanked by aisles, which are divided from it by round pillars, capped by a singular balustrade or gallery with low, flat arches, simulating a triforium. The upper arches are round, and the decorations Renaissance; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... progress for a dance; and as I returned, a slave boy ran across my path, toward the house, bearing a flaming pine torch and followed by two ambulances filled with daughters of the neighborhood in clouds of white gauze. I found the General in fatigue dress. His new finery hung on the tent-pole at his back. Old Dismukes, the bull-necked colonel of the Arkansans, lounged on a ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable |
