"Seedy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unworthy his speculation, nor his Pen, and though amongst Plants it be in bulk one of the smallest, yet it is not the least considerable: For, as to its shape, it may compare for the beauty of it with any Plant that grows, and bears a much bigger breadth; it has a root almost like a seedy Parsnep, furnish'd with small strings and suckers, which are all of them finely branch'd, like those of the roots of much bigger Vegetables; out of this springs the stem or body of the Plant, which is somewhat Quadrangular, rather then Cylindrical, most curiously fluted ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... SEEDY. I believe now, sir, that every thing is arranged in your will according to your instructions. Shall I read it over again; for although signed and witnessed, you may make any alteration ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Mr. Gibney was on his way to the Marigold Cafe for breakfast, he was mildly interested, while passing the Embarcadero warehouse, to note the presence of fully a dozen seedy-looking gentlemen of undoubted Hebraic antecedents, congregated in a circle just outside the warehouse door. There was an air of suppressed excitement about this group of Jews that aroused Mr. Gibney's curiosity; so he decided to cross over and ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... wrinkled his brows judiciously. "Do you know, I thought the dance a bit conscious to-night, for the first time. The fact is, she's feeling rather seedy, poor child. Westmere and I were back after the first act, and we thought she seemed quite uncertain of herself. A little attack ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... Lieutenants,—young athletic fellows, dressed in rich gray cassimere, trimmed with black, and wearing soft black hats adorned with black ostrich-feathers. Their spurs were strapped upon elegantly fitting boots, and they looked as far above the needy, seedy privates, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... of the church, exactly," Mr. Pewtap stumbled on, turning his seedy hat about like a slow wheel which had some connection with grinding out his speech, "that I—Yes, of course I mean that the good of the church must be considered ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... sapient physician, who had the art "to suit his physic to his patients' taste;" so when King Artaxaminous felt a little seedy after a night's debauch, the doctor prescribed to his majesty "to take a morning whet."—W. B. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... that the crown was well ceded by this time, and the poet's remark seems at this time far grander and more apropos than any language of the writer could be: so it is given here,—viz., "Uneasy lies the head that wears a seedy crown." ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... not be dried too hard; if too much moisture is removed they will not resume their original form when soaked in water. But the material must be dried sufficiently or it will mold. Haven't you often tasted extremely seedy dried berries? They were dried until they rattled. Stop the drying as soon as the berries fail to stain ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... court was a coterie of bookish men of fashion and rich women whose husbands were occupied in the stock-market. They set the tone and dispensed the favors; one who stood in their good graces would be practically immune to criticism, no matter how seedy his work might come to be. Nobody liked to "roast" a man with whom he had played golf at a week-end party; and who could be so impolite as to slight the work of a lady-poetess whom he had ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... back again," said Master Ben Jonson; "we've sucked the sweet from Stratford town—be off with his seedy dregs!" ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... again we met; but no bandit chief was there; His rouge was off, and gone that head of once luxuriant hair He lodges in a two-pair back, and at the public near, He can not liquidate his "chalk," or wipe away his beer. I saw him sad and seedy, yet methinks I see him now, In the tableau of the last act, with the blood upon ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... demands different conditions for its successful growth; in the North, at least two types of the species may be distinguished. Vines are found in the woods of New England which resemble Concord very closely in both vine and fruit, excepting that the grapes are much smaller in size and more seedy. There is also the large-fruited, foxy Labrusca, usually with reddish berries, represented by such cultivated varieties as Northern Muscadine, Dracut Amber, Lutie and others. Labrusca is peculiar amongst American grapes in showing black-, white- and red-fruited forms of wild vines ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... the seedy side around a piece of cream dough. The hand made cream can be made into various varieties of candy to suit ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... in his charms was too much even for his admirers. The mental juxtaposition of the seedy poet and the piquant actress in her frills and furbelows set the whole cafe rocking with laughter. Pinchas took it as a tribute to his ingenious method of drawing the soubrette-serpent's fangs. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... at home," he continued, jauntily poking a small log into place with the bellows, and then brushing his seedy trousers with his hand; "it was always my style. Most men that's been knocked about all their lives get shy and wary. But that's not Eben Slade. Well, when are you going ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... back to his polo and shad. One day a well set up, affable, cool young man disturbed him at his club, and he and O'Roon were soon pounding each other and exchanging opprobrious epithets after the manner of long-lost friends. O'Roon looked seedy and out of luck and perfectly contented. But it seemed that ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... sunken saucers emblazoned with the arms of the nations of the earth. These whirligigs of amateur crime are constantly surrounded by eager-eyed men and women, who try their luck for the amusement of the moment, or by broken-down, seedy gamblers, hazarding their last coin for a turn of fortune. Now and then, too, some sweet-faced girl, her arm in her father's, wins a louis with a franc, her childish laughter ringing out in ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... whole idea of the place, that it should be different. People are sick and tired of having their money gathered in by seedy-looking Dagoes in second-hand morning coats. We give 'em variety. It's not the Casino that's wrong: it's the darned island. What's the use of a republic to a place like this? I'm not saying that you don't want a republic ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Then I set off back to Watou. I came across Dickinson returning on horseback. Then I caught up Sergeant Dawson and Lance-Corporal Hopkinson; and we got on a lorry which took us right as far as St. Janster Biexen. We then walked back to Valley Camp. I had dinner. Then to bed, feeling a little seedy." ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... last. Mr. Perkupp has got an appointment for Lupin, and he is to go and see about it on Monday. Oh, how my mind is relieved! I went to Lupin's room to take the good news to him, but he was in bed, very seedy, so I resolved to keep it over ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... reviewals for eighteenpence a page—edits a Newgate chronicle. At another he wanders the country with a face grimy from occasionally mending kettles; and there is no evidence that his clothes are not seedy and torn, and his shoes down at the heel; but by what process of reasoning will they prove that he is no gentleman? Is he not learned? Has he not generosity and courage? Whilst a hack author, does he pawn the books entrusted ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... the little taverne at Beaumont, to start—as we fondly supposed—for Brussels, it was pitch dark in the square of the forlorn little town. With us the polite and pleasant fiction that we were guests of the German authorities had already worn seedy, not to say threadbare, but Lieutenant Mittendorfer persisted in keeping the little romance alive. For, as you remember, we had been requested—requested, mind you, and not ordered—to march to the station with the armed escort ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... embanked; our streets are paved; and we have a penny post. Almost all that is left to us of the good old times are these bars, arbitrarily set up across our thoroughfare, watched by a gentleman in a seedy suit, and a rain-beaten hat girt with tarnished golden lace. I beseech your Lordships, by your memories of infancy, by your love of our old Constitution, by the faith of your Order, by your fidelity to your Sovereign, to spare these last ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... littering an ugly rent in the rock, where perspiring men were toiling hard with pick and drill, they came upon Thurston before he was aware of them. Geoffrey stood with a heavy hammer in his hand critically surveying a somewhat seedy man who was just then offering his services. Savine, who had a sense of humor, was interested in the scene, and said to his daughter: "Thurston's busy. We'll just wait until he's through ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... well. To begin with, Good insisted upon keeping on his new-found trousers, and a stout, short gentleman with an eye-glass, and one half of his face shaved, arrayed in a mail shirt, carefully tucked into a very seedy pair of corduroys, looks more remarkable than imposing. In my case, the chain shirt being too big for me, I put it on over all my clothes, which caused it to bulge in a somewhat ungainly fashion. I discarded my trousers, however, retaining only my veldtschoons, having determined to go into ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... colonists should be; and what pleased Dick most, she never mentioned Falcon; yet he learned from the maid that worthy had been there twice, looking very seedy. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... school satchels. A gentleman with semi-military air, wearing his hat somewhat jauntily on top of a bloated face and figure, met them as he emerged from a side street, and, paternally patting their heads, called them 'little dears;' and, from his seedy dress and unoccupied manner, it was not hard to perceive that he must still be unsuccessful in his search after the employment to ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... their health. We fixed upon one of E.'s sheep, as it looked the fattest; and he being the richest, and never coming himself to look at his flock, will not care about a few sheep more or less. I'd kill one of my own, but they are such a seedy lot. No one is answerable for the murder of this sheep but myself, as I hereby confess that I killed it with my own hand, and afterwards held a coroner's inquest on the body, directing a verdict of "Visitation of Providence" to be recorded ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... modest trousseau had been turned inside out and upside down, only to be dyed and turned and twisted all over again. But what was a dyed gown, when one had all that money in the bank and the big house on the hill in prospect! Reuben's best suit grew rusty and seedy, but the man patiently, even gleefully, wore it as long as it would hang together; and when the time came that new garments must be bought for both husband and wife, only the cheapest and flimsiest of material was purchased—but the money in the ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... northern door of the cathedral. In reply to the rap of our knuckles at the huge portals, it slowly swung back on its hinges, and a grim, surly-looking face appeared. The figure which belonged to the face was clad in a rusty and seedy black robe, from beneath which a hand was thrust forth, and the words, "two-pence each," sounded harshly on our ears. Two-pence each was accordingly paid, and then the surly janitor, or verger, as he is called, admitted us within the building. In a moment ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... he was looking a little seedy before he went. Well, well, that's too bad. Right in the May trade, too. Is he ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... their expedition. The narrow track through the gorse and fern widened suddenly into a lane, a lane with very high, unmortared walls, over which grew a variety of bramble with a particularly luscious fruit. Every connoisseur of blackberries knows what a difference there is between the little hard seedy ones that commonly flourish in the hedges and the big juicy ones with the larger leaves. Nature had been prodigal here, and a bounteous harvest hung ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... length of time. It was dark when I reached it; having walked twelve miles after three p.m. There was only one inn, properly speaking, in the town, and since the old coaching time, it had contracted itself into the fag-end of a large, dark, seedy-looking building, where it lived by selling beer and other sharp and cheap drinks to the villagers; nineteen-twentieths of whom appeared to be agricultural laborers. The entertainment proffered on the sign-board over ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... wanderer. My parents left me a moderate fortune, and I have travelled pretty well and pretty constantly all over the world during the last twelve or fifteen years. How did I come to Needley? Well, you can call it luck, or something more than that, whichever way it appeals to you. I was feeling seedy, a little off-color, and I started down for a rest and lay-off in Maine. I happened to ask a man in Portland if he knew of a quiet place. He meant to be humorous, I imagine. He said Needley was the quietest place he knew of. I took him ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... passed on, the girl smiling at the little exchange of words with the stranger. But Lyster himself was anything but well pleased at the entire affair. He resented the fact that he had found her there gambling, that she had shown such skill, that she had turned to the seedy-looking stranger and exchanged words, as men might do, but as a girl assuredly should not do. All these things disturbed him. Why, he could scarcely have told. Only that morning she had been but a little half-savage child, who amused him by her varying moods and ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... satisfaction in a recovering Jacky, the track of the tornado in Maurice's mind was quite covered up with the old, ugly, commonplace of furtive security. In the security Maurice was conscious, in a kindly way, that poor old Eleanor looked pretty seedy; so he brought her some flowers once in a while; not as often as he would have liked to, for, though he had more money now, eight weeks of a private room in a hospital "kind o' makes a dent in your income," Maurice told himself; "but I don't begrudge it," he thought; "I'm ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... believe he's fainted for the want of wittles!" cried the cabman. "They keeps up till they drop, sometimes, these seedy swells—walks about, lookin' like so many Dossays, on a hempty stomach. Here, some one bring a plate o' cold meat, and look sharp ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... is wanted, I see, and what's not wanted I neither see nor perceive! There! Mother Matryona has also been young. I had to know a thing or two to live with my old fool. I know seventy-and-seven dodges. But I see your old man's quite seedy, quite seedy! How's one to live with such as him? Why, if you pricked him with a hayfork it wouldn't fetch blood. See if you don't bury him before the spring. Then you'll need some one in the house. Well, what's wrong with my son? He'll do as well ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... not in a state to stand much more joking, he altered his tone. 'Yes, he has arrived, looking rather seedy, but he is alive. He has been closeted with the governor for the last two hours, giving an account of himself. I hope it is all fair and square, but he won't let us into his secrets, though I told him his conduct had been rather "fishy" in our eyes. What are you going to do? Run away from me? ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... sprung into life. For the first time he realized the intense ugliness of this scene of his daily labors. The long desk, ink-splashed and decrepit, was covered with untidy piles of papers, some of them thick with dust; the walls were hung with seedy-looking files and an array of tattered bills; there were cobwebs in every corner, gaps in the linoleum floor-covering. In front of the office-boy—a youth about fourteen years of age, who represented the remaining clerical staff of the establishment—were pinned up ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he ran past James, and through the empty outer offices. In two minutes he returned, herding before him an individual, seedy and soiled. In appearance the man suggested that in life his place was to support a sandwich-board. Ford reluctantly relinquished his hold upon a folded paper which he laid ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... "You look seedy still.... Are you really feeling better?" Jenny took no notice. "Well, yes: I suppose all of them. They all want to take possession of you. They're never satisfied ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... not very healthy-looking person of about fifty years of age, ill-dressed in seedy black clothes and a flaming red tie, with a fat, pale face, a pugnacious mouth, and a bald head, on the top of which isolated hairs stood up stiffly. I knew him by sight, for once he had argued with me ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... the lid on an empty cigar-box; but he will continue his sham meditations. "Ah, my friend," he seems to say, "you are empty and frivolous—I cogitate the profounder immensities of esoteric cogibundity." The fact being that he is very seedy after his previous ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... bicitle," said a nursemaid on the path to a personage in a perambulator. That healed him a little. "'Gentleman wizzer bicitle,'—'bloomin' Dook'—I can't look so very seedy," he ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... "You look seedy this morning, Mr. Weston," said Williams, as George entered the office on the following day. "The effect of last night's dissipation, I suppose. How did you like ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... all through the week. All through that Saturday forenoon he moved about in a trance of exultation. Yet, underneath it all, he was somewhat seedy in a physical sense, for he had been out late the night before to meet Tip ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... idea of him as quite a pearl among men. Now that she saw him, she could not repress a feeling of disappointment. He was badly dressed, and bore a sad, depressed, downtrodden aspect. His whole appearance was what the world now calls seedy. And he seemed to be almost unable to speak. Miss Marrable knew that Mr. Gilmore was a man disappointed in his love, but she did not conceive that love had done him all these injuries. Love, however, had ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... he could by no means content himself with the companionship of staid practical persons, who on account of his latent worth would have readily countenanced, and with the least opportunity even served him, but he invariably paid his court to adventurers; such creatures, for instance, as seedy 'professors' of one kind or another, who, in the inevitable shawl and threadbare suit of black, were constantly dismounting at the village tavern, with proposals either to 'lecture' on something, or 'teach' somewhat, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... plenty of places can put it all over that Osage country for straight scenery, but I never saw such a contented-looking place as that big prairie-land was that morning. I've seen it with the tears running down its face, and pretty well draggled and seedy; but when we started out with the sun shining against our cheeks and the hills looking so warm and lazy and the hollows kind of smiling to themselves over something, and the prairie-dogs gossiping worse than a ladies' self-culture ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... States some day, and you'll be in jail." But Model Harry sat around all his life being a model. I believe Mr. Webster defines a model as a small imitation of the real thing. Harry certainly was a successful model. He became a seedy, sleepy, helpless relic at forty. He was "perfectly lovely" because he hadn't the energy to be anything else. It was the boys who had the hustle and the energy, who occasionally needed bumping—and who got it—who ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... as his private secretary, I was naturally prepared to accept him as a hero. With my strict English ideas as to the class of clothes to be worn by a prominent man, there was nothing in Edison's dress to impress me. He wore a rather seedy black diagonal Prince Albert coat and waistcoat, with trousers of a dark material, and a white silk handkerchief around his neck, tied in a careless knot falling over the stiff bosom of a white shirt ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... seedy now while holding down my claim, And my victuals are not always served the best; And the mice play shyly round me as I nestle down to rest In my little old sod shanty ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... successfully baffled the police. We had found Dawson wild with excitement over the affair, and here again Tracy was the topic of the hour. Entering the hotel with some fellow passengers, I took up a Seattle newspaper and carelessly glancing at the portrait of a seedy-looking individual of ferocious exterior, passed it on to a neighbour, remarking (with reference to Tracy), "What a blood-thirsty looking ruffian!" "Why, it's yourself!" exclaimed my friend, pointing ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... perfume while roasting; and an old double-Gloucester cheese, full of jumpers and mites; and after it a bottle of old port, at which he is often joined by the parson, and always by a queer, quiet sort of a tall, thin man, in a seedy black coat, and with a crimson face, bearing testimony to the efficacy of the squire's port and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... dancing much with the fair Arethusa," he said. "What's the matter, Grid? Feeling anyways seedy?" ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... not," he said. "But, Jack, what on earth are we going to do about clothes? These uniforms are getting seedy, though it is lucky that we had on our best when we were caught, owing to our having had the others torn to pieces the night of the wreck. But as for other things, we have got nothing but what we have on. We washed our flannel shirts and stockings as well as we could whenever ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... minute of his old hearty laugh, but it was soon stifled. As they had kept up in Paris all their suburban habits, there appeared at the breakfast hour, in the midst of this household disorganized by poverty and illness, a parasite, a seedy looking little bald man, cranky and peevish, of whom they always spoke as "the man who has read Proudhon." It was thus that Heurtebise, who probably had never known his name, introduced him to everybody. When he was asked "Who is that?" he unhesitatingly ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... me all his new feathers. I asked him about the theft of the coat and what the prince was going to do; but he did not know much about it; he said that for his part he thought people made a very ridiculous fuss about a seedy old coat. But just then we were joined by the Rabbit. The Peacock rather despised him; he whispered to me—so loud that I am sure the Rabbit must have heard—'Did you ever see such an absurd tail?' But I am sure the Rabbit is very beautiful and much more intelligent. The Peacock has such a disagreeable ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have sufficient acquaintance with the language to check and reject ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... window as creaks, and him out at sea. And if you are too proud to drive the linen in a light cart, why, I could pay a man." In short, she told him plainly she would not marry till she was above the world; and the road to above the world was through that great battered house and seedy garden in Chancery. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... at the turning of the path, just where Middleton had met Eldredge, the new-comer appeared in sight. It was Hoper, in his usual dress of velveteen, looking now seedy, poverty-stricken, and altogether in ill-case, trudging moodily along, with his hat pulled over his brows, so that he did not see the ghastly object before him till his foot absolutely trod upon the dead ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... half, length ways, scoop out the seedy part, and lay it in vinegar that has been boiled with mustard-seed, a little garlic, and spices, for twenty-four hours, then fill the cucumber with highly-seasoned forcemeat, and stew it in a rich gravy, the cucumber must be tied to ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... banks squeeze the merchants, to the last drop of blood; and the merchants perish in the process, carrying with them hosts of mechanics, farmers, and professional men.—Not so, bellows a fourth philosopher, perhaps a little more seedy than the rest; it is all the work of "the infernal credit system,"—of the practice of making money out of that which is only a promise to pay money,—out of that which purports to have a real equivalent in some vault, when no such equivalent exists, and is, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... their parks and gardens and hedges, filled him with admiration. He was also greatly struck with Greenwich Hospital, which looked to him like a royal palace (as it was originally), and he greatly wondered that the old seedy and frowsy pensioners should be lodged so magnificently. The courts of Westminster surprised him. "Why," said he, in reference to the legal gentlemen in wigs and gowns, "I have but two lawyers in my dominions, and one of them I mean to hang as soon as I return." But while he visited everything, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... back over his forehead, and cadaverous cheeks and long upper lip which all the shaving in the world could not redeem for the blue shade of the strong black beard which at midnight showed almost black. But for his black, mocking eyes, he might have been taken for the seedy provincial tragedian of the ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... their legal nostrums. A few, more respectably clothed and less vicious of aspect, sit writing at a table inside the bar, while a dozen or more punch-faced policemen, affecting an air of superiority, drag themselves lazily through the crowd of seedy humanity, looking querulously over the railing encircling the dock, or exchanging ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... as I heard of Miss Mitty's legacy. 'The old Bending place is for sale and will go cheap,' I said. 'Why not move out into the country and give Ben and the youngster a chance to breathe fresh air? He's beginning to look seedy and fresh air ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... railway stags on both shores, if you will only buy their stock to establish it; and, at all events, it would improve the City of the Falls, which now exhibits the deplorable aspect of three stuccoed cottages turned seedy, and a bare common, in place of a magnificent grove of chestnut trees, which ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... on it every day. I saw a bleary-eyed dope fiend going along the street the other day. He has built a temple—a temple to the god Appetite. His temple is truly a sorry looking shack, but it is good enough for the god he serves. I know a very seedy individual, going around begging a living of whomsoever will give him a dime or a nickel. He has built his temple to the god Idleness. It is a ramshackle affair, to be sure, but it is plenty good for the god he serves. ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... roused her from her revery. "I say, Amanda, are we going to stay here all night? Why in thunder can't those fools go home so you can lock the door and go! And I say, Amanda, don't you think Martin Landis is letting himself grow shabby and seedy? He's certainly settling into a regular clodhopper. He shuffled along like a hecker to-night. I don't believe he ever has his ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... poetry, let's have it in prose. Boys, pay more attention to your manners than to your moustache; keep your conduct as neat as your neck-tie, polish your language as well as your boots; remember, moustache grows grey, clothes get seedy, and boots wear out, but honor, virtue and integrity will be as bright and fresh when you totter with old age as when your mother first looked love into ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... right—I never let myself get seedy," returned Perry, with his loud though pleasant laugh. "That's the mistake ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Nettleton station, the descending mob caught them on its tide, and they were swept out into a vague dusty square thronged with seedy "hacks" and long curtained omnibuses drawn by horses with tasselled fly-nets over their withers, who stood swinging their depressed heads drearily from side ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... "We're lookin' rather seedy now, While holdin' down our claims, And our vittles are not always of the best, And the mice play slyly round us As we lay down to sleep In our little old tarred ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the side of a building, was a tall man in seedy clothes. A card on his breast bore the sad legend, "Help the Blind." The man's eyes were covered with large blue goggles, and in one hand he held his hat, and in the other a couple of dozen ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... leaped up, scattering the men on the checker-board which flew up and struck Judge Gordon in the face, knocking him off his stool. The old Colonel was ashy pale, and his eyes glared out from under his huge brow like sapphires lit by flame. His spare form clothed in a seedy Prince Albert frock towered with a singular dignity. His features worked convulsively a moment, and then he burst forth like the explosion of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... to refuse, for he suddenly recalled—oh! the torture and suffering of poor young men! that his Sunday coat was almost as seedy as his everyday one, that his best pair of shoes were run-over at the heels, and that the collars and cuffs on his six white shirts were ragged on the edges from too frequent washings. Then, to go to dinner in the city, what an ordeal! What must he do to be presented in a drawing-room? ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... seedy, old man! I'd have come at once," Dan said. "I've been on the spree again, for a day or so. It's the end. I'm not going to play the fool that ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... approaching conflict was a seedy person, who thrust a paper into Frank's hand as he emerged from The Lindens in the morning. It was another letter from Her Majesty, in which sub poena (Her Majesty has not a gracious way of putting things in these documents), Mr. Frank Crosse had 'to attend at the ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... understands the character. FANNY MORANT can't play LADY MACBETH as perfectly as it should be played; but she tries to do her best, and is quite respectable. Nobody else plays any part with common decency. But then the scenery is good; the Scottish nobility look sufficiently hungry and seedy, and MOLLENHAUER is superb." ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... remarked. "I was in Liverpool yesterday, and I could have sworn that I saw him hanging around the docks. I should never have doubted it, but Morrison was always so careful about his appearance, and this fellow was such a seedy-looking individual. I called out to him and he vanished like ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... come! And they found on top of the snow a pile of dusty sweepings from the hay-mow, with grass-seeds in it and some cracked corn and crumbs. And there were squash-seeds, and sunflower-seeds, and seedy apple-cores that had been broken up in the grinder used to crunch bones for the chickens; and there were prune-pits that had been ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... indignation, and was perhaps unconscious himself of experiencing that nameless, shadowy satisfaction which Rochefoucauld says we find in the adversity of our best friends. Certainly Richard looked very seedy in his suit ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... minutes afterwards a horseman made his appearance coming up on to the heath from the opposite quarter to that by which he himself had reached it. The stranger was manifestly in no hurry, but allowed his horse, a big, gaunt, and seedy-looking animal, to take its own time, which clearly was not a very rapid one. The costume of the new-comer was in keeping with the appearance of his steed, being ample but considerably the worse for wear. As the two riders slowly approached ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... was considerable good-natured fooling among the members as they left, relieved as they were from the strain of the meeting) Whittier was given my hat by mistake. When I came to go, there was nothing left for me but a rather seedy gray derby with a black band, containing the initials "J.G.W." As the poet was visiting in Cambridge at the time I took opportunity next day to write the ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... lives of other writers, because this was his one way of accounting for his want of success. He did not write books, to be sure. He only wrote poetical advertisements. But they were printed and paid for, and this gave him a sort of prestige among his less lucky friends. He was seedy; only moderately clean, and wholly unshaven, thus avoiding, by one happy invention, both soap and the barber. Fierce he was to look at, with his rugged beard and eyebrows, and fierce in his resentment of the world's indifference. A Christmas invitation to the Grapewine's made his ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... "The seedy swell of Naples or Rome—he is irresistible to the Italian girl," she said, on one occasion. "You know him; his shirt open at the neck down almost to his chest—his trousers tight at the knee and enormously wide at the foot—a poncho-looking kind of cloak, with a greasy Astrachan ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los Pinos swinging his legs to and fro. At his side sat another man, fat, melancholy, and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat—seamy ...
— Options • O. Henry
... is a rusty old knocker, too— very loose, so that it slides round when you touch it—and if you learn the trick of it, and knock long enough, somebody comes. The brave Courier comes, and gives you admittance. You walk into a seedy little garden, all wild and weedy, from which the vineyard opens; cross it, enter a square hall like a cellar, walk up a cracked marble staircase, and pass into a most enormous room with a vaulted roof and whitewashed walls: not unlike a great Methodist chapel. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... are a seedy, plum-like fruit common to the southern and southwestern parts of the United States. This fruit is very astringent when unripe, but is sweet and delicious when ripe or touched by frost. Well-frosted persimmons should be selected for canning. Blanch them so that the ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... yet you tell us a man is the stronger. I tell you, my dear, I know a dozen women who could discount any soldier that ever fought in the Crimean wars, for downright heroism and pluck. Where do you find the man who is willing to wear shabby clothes and old boots and a seedy hat that his boys may go fine as fiddles? Where do you find a man who will get up cold mornings and make the fire, tramp to work through snow, pick his way through flooding rain, weather northeast blasts and go hungry and cold that ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... dutifully submitted, but even port was powerless to keep me well at Oxford. I always felt "seedy"; and the nervous worry inseparable from a time of spiritual storm and stress (for four of my most intimate friends seceded to Rome) told upon me more than I knew. An accidental chill brought things to a climax, and ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... term; that "run down" may stand for a fatigue of mind or body from which a week or a month of rest will completely restore the over-worked patient, or an advanced stage of a mortal illness; that "seedy" may signify the morning's state of feeling, after an evening's over-indulgence, which calls for a glass of soda-water and a cup of coffee, or a dangerous malady which will pack off the subject of it, at the shortest notice, to the south of France. ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and involuntary sham of it, the shirking of a dull and irksome duty—a bore, though the route be only a mile or so. The satisfied undertaker, and the hard-up professional mutes and mourners in seedy, mouldy, greeny-black, and with boozers' faces and noses and a constant craving for beer to help them bear up against their grief and keep their mock solemn faces. Out there you were carried to the hearse or trap from your home, and from the hearse or trap to your grave—and with infinite carefulness ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... Miss Grant," he said, "but I can't give you back your money now, for the simple reason that I banked most of your capital and mine this afternoon. I felt rather seedy, and didn't mean to play seriously to-night. If only you'd spoken in time, it would have been all right enough. But now I'm afraid the best I can do for you, until to-morrow, will be a few hundred francs. My wife and I must see what we ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... An affable old Turk, seedy in appearance, but extremely entertaining, owned to six languages, not counting others of which he had only a smattering. Serb he didn't count as he said he could only talk on easy subjects in that tongue. It is very humiliating, that sort of thing, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... head of a certain sad-faced, seedy-looking young fellow in the piazza, or square, beneath, descended a rattling shower of bonbons, thrown by the hand of the speaker, a brown-faced Venetian ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... manner, as fatiguing as months of penal servitude, and they went none too soon, when the summer arrived, to breathe the sea air or enjoy the sunshine of the country, in order to restore their frames, wan, worn-out, seedy and "gruelled," as Sabine Marsy said, when she recalled her connection with ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... was "feeling very, very queer," and he cheerfully assured her that she "had best stop in bed a day or two and all would be well," after which he told her that he was not going back to England with the party, and, with a further remark to the effect that she "was looking awfully seedy," discovered that he was late for his train, was again pleasantly sure that she would "be all right soon," and hurried off to the station, well pleased to think that he should see Edith in a few hours. It is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... "The Baby" sat like a rock, with a grim smile, and preserving throughout a silence and sang froid which nothing seemed able to overcome. Two more seedy-looking animals made up the entry. The lamer one of the two was ridden by a stout major with a redundancy of moustaches, the other by a lanky cornet of Heavy Dragoons, who seemed not to know where on earth to dispose of his ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... at side of a seedy house in a shabby street, slimy and straw-bestrewn. Yard is paved with lumpy, irregular cobbles, and some sooty and shaky-looking sheds stand at the bottom thereof. Enter together, Clerical Gent and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... Interrogation Room was named Alexis Brubitsch. The other two, who were presumably waiting separately in other rooms, were Ivan Borbitsch and Vasili Garbitsch. The collection sounded, to Malone, like a seedy musical-comedy firm of lawyers: Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch. He could picture them dancing gaily across a stage while the strains of music followed them, waving legal forms and ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... very cold, although it had been very warm during the day. They had all been drilling hard, and were dog-tired. One of the men was evidently very seedy. He complained of a sick headache, and he was shivering ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... an excellent plan,' retained Michael slowly; "knowledge is power"—we all know that. Do you know,' drawling out his words a little, 'that I have been working at Greek, too, for the last two years? I took it up as a sort of amusement when I was seedy; it would not be bad fun to work together sometimes. I daresay you are ahead of me in Greek, but I don't believe you could beat me in mathematics. We could help each other, and it would be good practice. I suppose your brother gives you ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "breaking loose for once" was like any other man's. Night after night saw him at Jake's, though he never played to win after that first game. As the weeks went on, he got anxious-looking; his clerical coat began to grow seedy, his white ties uncared for; he lost his fresh, cheeky talk, and the climax came late in March when one night I found him at Jake's sitting alone, his face bowed down on the table above his folded arms, and something so disheartened in his attitude that I felt ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... Omnibus one evening with Rocjean, was accosted by a very seedy-looking man, with a very peculiar expression of face, wherein an awful struggle of humor to crowd down pinching poverty gleamed brightly. He offered for sale an odd volume of one of the early fathers of the Church. Its probable value was ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... home of sportsmen and the sanctuary of honest boxers. After duly characterising the stranger's eyes and his awkwardness, the Patron will resume his seat near the ropes, and will stare vacuously at the brilliant gathering of touts, loafers, parasites, usurers, book-makers, broken-down racing men, seedy soldiers, and over-fed City men who are assembled round the room. Inspired by their society with the conviction that he is assisting in an important capacity in the revival of a manly sport, he will adjust his hat on the back of his head, rap with his gold-headed cane upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... Captain Pring, from Quebec. It would appear the roystering middies, having sacrificed copiously to the rosy god, after rising from a masonic dinner in the Albion Hotel, in Palace street, had noticed the "General" by the pale moonlight, looking very seedy, and considering that a sea voyage would set him up, had carried him on board. The General was driven down in a caleche by Colvin of St. Louis street—a carter—through Palace Gate, standing erect; the sentry presenting arms, as if he were saluting the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... The war debate was on in all its fury, with the whole world listening breathlessly. Pictures of the ill-fated Maine were much in evidence, and maps of Cuba in the shop windows were closely scanned. The probability of war with Spain was loudly and boastfully discussed by seedy looking men in front of the cheaper hotels and restaurants. Extra editions of the New York papers with huge scare headlines were eagerly bought up. The latest news from the Capitol—via New York—was seized upon with avidity. The papers were filled with the rumored departure of the American ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... who had been listening, groaned as Mr. Farrar passed through the door. "Ugh! Call that a way of doing business? Why, if it had been me, I'd have bought the book off of that old chap for a couple o' pounds, I would. Ay, or a sov, so seedy he is, and wants money so bad. And I know who'd have given twelve pound for it, in the trade too. Call that carrying on business? He may well add up his investments every day, it he can afford to chuck such chances. Ah, but he'll retire soon." His fiery eyes brightened, and his face glowed with ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... the boys were drinking it up themselves, when Sherman gallantly proposed to treat the little girls. The supply was getting low by this time, but they carried over one rather skimpy and distressingly seedy glass to ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... Whiskers! I knowed yuh'd hear. Yer ears is allus skinned fer the whistle, ain't they—an' eyes like a cat's, same as yer boss, eh? Yuh got to git some now, ole gal. Yuh ain't had a real run fer so long mebbe yuh're gittin' a bit seedy, like me. Well, yuh got a coupla miles right on yer ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... Constantly employed in creeping into small holes, and daubing themselves with honey, they often lose all the bright feathers and silky plumes which once so beautifully adorned their bodies, and assume a smooth and almost black appearance; just as the hat of the thievish loafer, acquires a "seedy" aspect, and his garments, a shining and threadbare look. Dzierzon is of opinion that the black bees which Huber describes, as being so bitterly persecuted by the rest, are nothing more than these thieving bees. I call them old convicts, dressed in prison garments, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... stroll leisurely down the long incline. The whole town tips that way. A variety of more or less quaint vehicles move about—cabriolets drawn by donkeys and ponies; sedan chairs; a species of easy-chair on wheels, with a wooden apron, and propelled by a boy or a decayed footman in seedy livery with bibulous habits written on his face. Something of a similar sort was seen at the Centennial, yet utterly unlike this, notwithstanding a resemblance in principle. These invalid go-carts are very convenient at Tenby, as they may be trundled everywhere, even on the sands, which are hard ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... It was a long, two-story frame building, that had once been inhabited by genteel people. Why they ever built it in that shape, or why they daubed it with yellow paint, is more than I can tell. But it had gone out of fashion, and now it was, as the boys expressed it, "seedy." Old hats and old clothes filled many of the places once filled by glass. Into one room of this ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... no. You have read it twice, Mr Seedy, and you may leave me now. I am ill, very ill, and wish to ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... well. Then another man jumped into the river, and made his way in the cold water with the ease of a fifth-rate professional swimmer. Then a second young woman recited something or other in German, with an atrocious English accent. And the whole concluded with a lecture upon chemistry (given by a seedy-looking old man), which was illustrated with some ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... voice; "never talk of what you hear of gentlemen, except you wish to bring them to their last dying speech and confession. But come with me, my lad; there is a tavern hard by, and we may as well discuss matters over a pint of wine. You look cursed seedy, to be sure; but I can tell Bill the waiter—famous fellow, that Bill!—that you are one of my tenants, come to complain of my steward, who has just distrained you for rent, you dog! No wonder you ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... liquor from the Vega, the Chukches at Yinretlen had the means of indulging in a general fuddle, and that even their friendly disposition gives way under the effects of the intoxication we had a manifest proof, when the day after they came on board with blue and yellow eyes, not a little seedy and ashamed. In autumn a tall and stout Chukch giantess, who then paid us a visit, informed us that her husband had been murdered in ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... a frown. "I don't personally think that Joicey knows or remembers whether he did see Heath. My Superintendent swears that he did go down Paradise Street on the night of the twenty-ninth, but Joicey is ill, and he said he wasn't in Mangadone then. He has been seedy for some time and may have mixed ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... you are right," he said, taking my hand as we came in sight of the red gables of Okehurst, and speaking in a weak, tired, humble voice. "I don't understand you quite, but I am sure what you say is true. I daresay it is all that I'm seedy. I feel sometimes as if I were mad, and just fit to be locked up. But don't think I don't struggle against it. I do, I do continually, only sometimes it seems too strong for me. I pray God night and morning to give me the strength to overcome my suspicions, or to remove these ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... The seedy man, staring with imperturbable countenance at a train which clattered overhead, interrupted in an expressionless voice—"Ah, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... is doubtful whether the present constitution of Poland can last. It already isolates Poland economically from the rest of Europe, and she cannot import goods even from Germany at such a rate. There is a vast, poor, seedy, underfed population. Food is comparatively cheap, and the peasant is evidently being quietly robbed, by giving him only a fifth of the money-value of his products, but even so a tiny loaf of bread costs twenty marks. There is butter. There is no sugar ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... ruddy cheeks abounded on this typical winter day. Mr. Trotter possessed no overcoat, but presumably following the fashion set out by other wintry pedestrians, his thin sack coat was buttoned tightly and the collar turned up defiantly. His well-brushed though seedy Derby looked chilly as it topped off his shivering features. His face was blue, not ruddy. Here and there he passed companions in poverty, but their rags were worse than his, their faces more haggard. Never did he feel more like the gentleman than when he saw what ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... his large store of leisure by reading narratives dealing with life in the prairies, which he acquired at a neighbouring shop at cut rates in consideration of their being shop-soiled. It was while he was engrossed in one of these, on the morning following the visit of Mr. Parker, that the seedy-looking man made his appearance. He walked in from the street, ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... proceeded to state hopeful conjecture as established fact, thereby doing homage to the spirit of delusion which so conspicuously ruled him even to his inmost thought. But a spell of cold weather in the winter of 1862 struck a little too shrewdly through Pascal's seedy overcoat, causing that tender- hearted subverter of society to cough his life out, with all possible despatch, in the third-floor back of a filthy lodging-house off ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... with the steamer "Neimen" I had as sailors Malays. The firemen were seedy boys, or Nubians. The steward was a Goa Portuguese. The servants were Chinese, and the cook a Chinese who claimed to be an American, he having been trained by Captain John Parrott, of San Francisco, "a number one American man," who had taught him to ...
— Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life • Arthur E. Knights
... that the recourse to coca and kola is an attempt to get more out of the body, and the mind, than nature intended. Overwork, overstrain, worry, all produce exhaustion of physical and nervous power. Nature pulls us up by asserting herself, and we feel run down and seedy, and, perhaps, quite unwell. What is wanted is rest, proper diet, and change. These would quickly be restorative, and once again we should be fit for the duties ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... Mr. Gunning's folly, and his bulging portmanteau, packed as brutally as only a man in a passion can pack; when he reached the hall, it also with equal inappropriateness irradiated the short figure and seedy tidiness of the dealer who had been his confederate in the purchase ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... rigged out in best shore-going clothes—tarpaulin hat, blue coat and waistcoat, and duck trousers, with a broad waist-belt of leather. Behind him stood another sailorman, older and more gloomy looking; and behind the pair of them Susannah's eye ranged over half a dozen seedy tide-waiters and longshoremen, all very bashful-looking, and crowded among a bevy of damsels of the sort that you might best describe ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hadn't—and it and his pants was made of the loudest kind of black-and-white checks. No nice quiet pepper-and-salt, you understand, but the checkerboard kind, the oilcloth kind, the kind that looks like the marble floor in the Boston post-office. They was pretty tolerable seedy, and so was his hat. Oh, he was a last year's bird's nest NOW, but when them clothes was fresh—whew! the northern lights and a rainbow mixed wouldn't have been more'n a cloudy ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... have been intended to have a military air when it was new, but which was now much the worse for wear. The coat was so odd as to have caught young Talbot's attention at once. And the man's hat was old and seedy. But there was a look about him as though he were by no means ashamed either of himself or of his present purpose. "He came in a gig," said Talbot to his friend; "for I saw the horse standing at the gate, and the man ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... have explained. At this, the man, also turned and looked. An impartial observer of both would have said that these two were in doubt as to whether they recognized each other. The man on the sidewalk, while clean, was rather seedy-looking and apparently a foreigner. His face was drawn and hollow as though privation had sculptured there. His beard was full and streaked with gray. His eyes alternately burned with the fires of inward visions and dulled with disappointment at hopes destroyed. Carter ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... bush makes them run like hares. Yet an English officer actually proposed to recruit a force of these recreants for field-service in Ashanti. He probably confounded them with the Wasawahili, the 'Seedy-boys' of the east coast, a race which some day will prove useful when the Sepoy mutiny shall repeat itself, or if the difficulties in Egypt be prolonged. A few thousands of these sturdy fellows would put to flight an army ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... eight bushels of ripe fruit, to make one of dry—this when the peaches were big and fleshy. Small, seedy sorts demanded ten bushels for one. Unpeeled, the ratio fell to seven for one. But there was seldom any lack of fruit—beside the orchard, there were trees up and down all the static fence rows—the corner of a worm fence furnishing ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... hat! poor old hat! awm reight fast what to do, To burn thi aw havnt the heart, If aw stow thi away tha'll be moth etten throo, An thart seedy enuff as tha art. Tha's long been a comfort when worn o' mi heead, Soa dooant freeat, for to pairt we're net gooin, For aw'll mak on thi soils for mi poor feet asteead, An aw'll wear thi once moor ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... was about to prove so eventful to the family history, he sallied forth with the same lofty contempt of conventionalities that had characterised his very long career. How different the elated and aspiring heir of Moses! No wonder he spurned with indignation the offer of his seedy parent's arm. No wonder he walked a few paces before him, and assumed that unconcerned and vacant air which should assure all passengers of his being quite alone in the public thoroughfare both in person and in thought. Aby had been intensely persevering at his morning ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... said Roger. "Why not this?" and he pointed to the door of a seedy-looking private hotel, over which a lamp burned with ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... help wondering how it happened in that case that the professor should look so seedy. A genius appreciated so highly ought to have brought in ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... not exactly scared, she did give a gasp of surprise. For there stood Joe, made up to represent a public-house loafer; and he looked the part to perfection, with his hair combed down raggedly over his forehead, his seedy-looking, ill-fitting, dirty clothes, and ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... and starved aspect, staggered along with cartloads of fusty vegetables and dirty-looking fish, while the vendors thereof howled the nature and value of their wares with deliberate ferocity. Low pawnbrokers (chiefly in the "slop" line) obtruded their seedy wares from doors and windows halfway across the pavement, as if to tempt the naked; and equally low pastry-cooks spread forth their stale viands in unglazed windows, as if ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... to take me at my word, I'd have suspected that man of tellin' me a untruth! (To a simple-looking spectator.) Will you 'old this purse for me? Yer will? Well. I like the manly way yer speak up! (Here the Gent. Onl., observing a seedy man slinking about outside, warns the company to "mind their pockets"—which excites the Purse-seller's just indignation.) "Ere!—(to the G.O.) you take your 'ook! I've 'ad enough o' you. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... at the wharf, disguised in ill-fitting duster and broad-brimmed hat, ready to embark. Some rough-looking men are at the dock, to whom this seedy stranger is a butt of much coarse comment. Incensed at their ridicule, Oswald longs to chastise ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... admonished Mrs. Budlong. Mrs. Budlong ran the letters together so that strangers often had the impression she was calling her husband "Seedy," though the name was as unsuitable as well could be, since Mr. Budlong in his neat blue serge suit, blue polka-dot scarf, silk stockings, and polished tan oxfords was well groomed and ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... ill," said Jack, trying to realize whether the news that she was to be his (for dinner) made him feel any better or only just about the same. "I don't know what ails me. Do I look seedy?" ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... in bed, told Rodney one morning, "a single, blessed, mortal thing to do all day." Some fixture scheduled for that morning had been moved, she went on to explain, and Eleanor Randolph was feeling seedy and had called off a little luncheon and matinee party. So, she concluded with a deep-drawn sigh, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... matter though seedy his hat and his coat. That his pantaloons bagged and were ragged and frayed? Still the world by its modern, unanimous vote Says it danced to the tune that his chin-music played! At the touch of his hand, at the thrill of his thought, It leaped on the paths where the greater truths ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... I suppose he could be made to take a hand with you, sir—two-handed picket or ekkarty, you being seedy and keeping indoors—just to pass the time. For all we know, he may be one of them hot ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... (about the beginning of May) the flowry-leaves of Tulips do fall away, and there remains within them the end of the stalk, which in time will turn to seed. Take that seedy end (then very tender) and pick from it the little excrescencies about it, and cut it into short pieces, and boil them and dress them as you would do Pease; and they will taste like Pease, and ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... there's a gentleman here, as wants to speak to him partickler." So the servant he opens his eyes, and stares about him all ways—looking for the gentleman, as it struck me, for I don't think anybody but a man as was stone-blind would mistake Fixem for one; and as for me, I was as seedy as a cheap cowcumber. Hows'ever, he turns round, and goes to the breakfast-parlour, which was a little snug sort of room at the end of the passage, and Fixem (as we always did in that profession), without waiting to be announced, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... high-class hotel that seedy-looking persons seldom dared to put a foot within the palatial entrance. The porter, unused to dealing with the obtrusive impecunious type to which he believed Mr. Kemp to belong, made the mistake of trying ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... a while longer, Bud decided to telephone Morris's home. But at that moment a thin, seedy-looking man came into the lounge. His close-set eyes and loudly striped suit combined to give him ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... road" to Rochester and Chatham on a certain Sunday. Afterwards, when he had found a home and a protecting providence with his aunt, he met with his "first fall in life" on the Canterbury coach, being asked by the coachman to resign the box seat to a seedy gentleman, who proclaimed that "'Orses and dogs is some men's fancy. They're ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... labours, And tired of the night with its lack of repose, I am sick of myself, my surroundings, and neighbours, Especially Aryan Brothers and crows; O land of illusory hope for the needy, O centre of soldiering, thirst, and shikar, When a broken-down exile begins to get seedy, What a beast ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... yellow and tattered; his hair hung long and lank; and his skin had a sallow, unwholesome tint. The diamond ring upon his finger was altogether out of keeping with his threadbare coat, buttoned up to the chin, as if there were no waistcoat beneath it. From head to foot he looked a broken-down, seedy fellow, yet still preserving some lingering traces of the gentleman. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... you call him, has heard some of the best prima donnas in Europe. He is poor, he is seedy—for his voice left him just as he was on the eve of success—but he was the only person in the room who could tell me that I sang as well as the greatest of them." Her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Morgan met me at Calais, and told me to wait at Dunkirk, as everyone was quitting Furnes. One of our poor nurses was killed, and the Joos' little house was much damaged. I stopped at Mrs. Clitheroe's flat, very glad to be ill in peace after my seedy condition in London and a bad crossing. Rested quietly all Sunday in the flat by myself. It is an empty, bare little place, with neither carpets nor curtains, but there is something home-like about it, the result, I think, of having an open ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... and doesn't want to own it!" interrupted Lorimer sententiously. "You will excuse him; he means well! He looks rather seedy. I think, Mr. Gueldmar, we'll be off to the yacht. By the way, you're coming with us to-morrow, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... as a sudden change of fortune. The anemone of the garden differs scarcely more from its unpretending prototype of the woods, than Robert M'Corkindale, Esq., Secretary and Projector of the Glenmutchkin Railway, differed from Bob M'Corkindale, the seedy frequenter of "The Crow." In the days of yore, men eyed the surtout—napless at the velvet collar, and preternaturally white at the seams—which Bob vouchsafed to wear, with looks of dim suspicion, as if some faint reminiscence, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... recuperative power that I do hope for the best. I am as tired as man can be. This is a great trial to a family, and I thank God it seems as if ours was going to bear it well. And O! if it only lets up, it will be but a pleasant memory. We are all seedy, bar Lloyd: Fanny, as per above; self nearly extinct; Belle, utterly overworked and bad toothache; Cook, down with a bad foot; Butler, prostrate with a bad ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and, as in the legends of every country, there is an identical element which the anthropologists call 'human'; so in the annals of adventure there is a set of invariable incidents, which are the essence of thievery. The industrious hacks, to whom we owe the entertainment of the chap-books, being seedy parsons or lawyers' clerks, were conscious of their literary deficiencies: they preferred to obey tradition rather than to invent ineptitudes. So you may trace the same jest, the same intrigue through the unnumbered lives of three centuries. And if, being a philosopher, you neglect ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... clerk to my committee in the senate, which paid him six dollars per day; then I hired a man for one hundred dollars per month to do the work!" His mischievously extravagant description of Mark Twain at this time is eminently worthy of record "He was arrayed in a seedy suit which hung upon his lean frame in bunches, with no style worth mentioning. A sheaf of scraggly, black hair leaked out of a battered, old, slouch hat, like stuffing from an ancient Colonial sofa, and an evil-smelling cigar butt, very much ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson |
