"Decently" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... four-square, with a patched-up conservatory on one wing. In the front room they found the recluse's body decently disposed, with an undertaker's assistant in charge. From the greenhouse came a ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... avoid the blow Phil had struck him lightly on the face. For one half second a veritable devil peeped out of Acton's eyes as he sprung at Phil. But Phil quickly backed, and said coolly, "No—no, sir! Let us do the thing decently and in order. You can try to do all you wish to-morrow morning very much at your ease. I apologize for striking you in your own room, ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... would have had a hard job to persuade Frank Kingston that you lost anything by being religious. He knew far better than that; and while of course he was too thorough a boy, with all a boy's hasty, hearty, impulsive ways, to do everything "decently and in order," and would kick over the traces, so to speak, sometimes, and give rather startling exhibitions of temper, still in the main and at heart he was a sturdy little Christian, who, when the storm was ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... kept it secret for a long time, and it is only now that it's coming out. Good dog-teams will be at a premium in another twenty-four hours. Now, you've got to get away as decently as you can as soon as dinner is over. I've arranged it. An Indian will come with a message for you. You read it, let on that you're very much put out, make your excuses, and ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... said Shenac Bhan, laughing, and holding the wool-shears towards Mrs More. "I must do it, Hamish; it takes such a time to keep it decently neat. My mother does not care, and why ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... "What is normally? Decently, anyhow. Here again I may be forgetting much secret and shameful curiosity. I got my ideas into definite form out of a little straightforward physiological teaching and some dissecting of rats and mice. My schoolmaster was a capable sane man in advance ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... at the Mission; and he thought of her again, and wondered curiously whether, if Mart were dressed in the shining black dress, and fur wraps and feather-decked bonnet that the lady had worn, she would really resemble her. How would Mart look dressed up, he wondered; even decently dressed, as the girls were whom he met on the streets. He had never seen her in anything much more becoming than the ragged quilt. He was studying her in a way that Mart did not in the least understand. She broke ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... being devoured by these abominable brutes. Do you carry the child, and I will convey the poor mother into the nearest waggon. We can cover her up sufficiently to prevent the wolves getting at her until we return, when we can bury her decently, as well as the rest ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... so much towards shaping me into the likeness of a modest, reserved, sporting, seemly, clean and brave, patriotic and decently slangy young Englishman, he was constantly reverting to that view of existence. He spoke of failures and successes, talked of statesmen and administrators, peerages and Westminster Abbey. "Nelson," he said, "was once ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... wife's flesh and blood. Not openly at least could he groan; but he could and did do it in bed. Why on earth that silly mother of theirs couldn't have stayed quietly on her Pomeranian sand-heap where she belonged, instead of coming gallivanting over to England, and then when she had got there not even decently staying alive and seeing to her children herself, he at frequent intervals told Aunt Alice in bed that he would ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... have gone hard with him but for the foster-brother. Bertrand St. Wain took the guilt upon himself by disappearing suddenly. He was supposed to have drowned himself in the lower Mississippi, for his body, recognized only by some clothing, was recovered later in a drift and decently buried. So he was effaced from the records ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... child, if it lives, has enough to bring it up decently, and set it out in life, and I can teach it an honourable and useful profession. It will be rather an amusement than a trouble to me, and I want to make some remarks on the childish diseases, which, with God's blessing, ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... could support my wife decently well, if not in such state as that to which she was accustomed in her father's house. As for style, neither Miss Mason nor I care for it. And, if things go right, I may be able to bring her as much ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... of a lover I have! Are all men like that? I'm as much in love with him as he with me and I can behave myself decently and keep outwardly calm and observe the conventions of life. Why can't he be decent? How can it comfort a man in love to throw away a splendid career, abandon a great income and vanish from the ken of all who love him? What madness is this with which the gods afflict him? Oh, I could ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... and colours for a gilt frame, and white and silver within ebony or walnut settings. I would recommend this style of work to the consideration of our decorators. It is interesting to find in an old catalogue at Hampton Court, how pictures of sacred subjects were thus decently veiled, in the profaner moments ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... all the ugly school for paupers I had expected to find. The students were not the charity children I had carelessly pictured; they were not so young, for one thing, and they seemed to be appareled decently enough. ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... a dark house. The windows were all withered away behind stiff curtains, and the light that labored between these was chastened to the last degree of respectability. The doors skulked behind heavy plush hangings. The floors hid themselves decently under thick red and black carpets, and the margins which were uncarpeted were disguised by beeswax, so that no one knew they were there at all. The narrow hall was steeped in shadow, for there two black velvet portieres, at distances of six feet apart, depended from rods in the ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... just then," she said placidly, as she covered him decently with his coat, "you'd have been drownded. Took ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... mine. It troubled Tom Lane to be honest and it kept him poor. All Tom Lane's conscience ever aggravated him to do was just to live along in a religious sort of fashion and rear his family and be decently stowed away in the graveyard when his time was up if the sea didn't cotch un first. But 'twas a busy conscience for all that—and as sharp as a fish-prong. No rest for Tom Lane if he didn't fatten his wife and crew of little lads and maids! No peace ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... she was an O'Hara: and all the O'Haras that had been were recklessly extravagant, squandering alike their feelings and their money. There wasn't a member of the house of Gaverick decently well to do, excepting indeed Eliza, Countess of Gaverick. She had been a Glasgow heiress and only belonged to the aristocracy by right of marriage with Bridget's uncle, the late Lord Gaverick, who on the death of his brother, ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... a row," said Dunn from a new direction. "Do you want to raise the whole neighbourhood? Haven't you played the fool enough? If you want to commit suicide, why can't you cut your throat quietly and decently at home, instead of coming alone to the ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... standing near the door, Mrs Williams unexpectedly came out. Jarwin, feeling ashamed to appear in so very light a costume before a lady, turned smartly round and walked away. Then, reflecting that he was quite as decently clothed as the other natives about, he turned again and slowly retraced his steps, pretending to be interested in picking stones and plants from ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... left in this briary world without his daily guide and nocturnal monitress, he was in the ripe fulness of fifty- seven. For three hours at least after he went to bed—such slaves are we to habit—he could not close an eye. His wife still talked at his side. True it was, she was dead and decently interred. His mind—it was a comfort to know it—could not wander on this point; this he knew. Nevertheless, his wife was with him. The Ghost of her Tongue still talked as in the life; and again and again did Job Caudle hear the monitions of bygone years. At times, so loud, so lively, so real were ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... Rome," said Folces, "made ere he died a testament wherein he did command the freedom of all his slaves, and ordered a certain sum of money to be set aside which will enable even the humblest amongst us all to live decently like freedmen. The house in Rome and the villa at Ostia are to be sold, whilst the remainder of Taurus Antinor's private fortune is to be administered by his general agents. He said that he would see to it later on. I am still his slave; he did not ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... joy of life. There was a tonic quality in his physical presence, and while she walked at his side down Fifth Avenue she felt as if she were swept onward by one of the health-giving, pine-scented winds of Colorado. And she told herself reassuringly that only a man who had lived decently could have kept himself so extraordinarily young and exuberant ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... body under the shade. As they disposed it decently, Bob experienced again that haunting sense of having known him elsewhere that had on several occasions assailed his memory. The man's face was familiar to him with a familiarity that Bob somehow felt antedated his ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... any faith in the antique busts of Homer. "No, truly," he answered, smiling, "for if there had been either limners or stuccoyers worth their salt in those days, the owner of such a headpiece would never have had to trail the poke. They would have alimented the honest man decently among them for ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... ceremony was finished, which Captain Cook put an end to as soon as he decently could, we quitted the morai, after distributing amongst the people some pieces of iron and other trifles, with which they seemed highly gratified. The men with wands conducted us to the boats, repeating the same ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... residence in the capital of the Moslem world. The feeble successor of Mahomet obtained a respite of ten days; and before the expiration of the term, the Barbarian was summoned by the angel of death. His ambassadors at Constantinople had asked in marriage a Roman princess; but the proposal was decently eluded; and the daughter of Alexius, who might herself have been the victim, expresses her abhorrence of his unnatural conjunction. [46] The daughter of the sultan was bestowed on the caliph Moctadi, with the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... to resume the role of lover, and leave us and other honest folk to put the best face we can on the muddle you have made! I suppose you are going across the road now to tell her how much you enjoyed yourself yesterday?—or to ask for a respite till to-morrow, to give you time to pass decently through a process of purification? May I ask where you are going to find it and what it is going to consist of? Oh, don't look so melodramatic! If you can put up with what you got from Riis's girl yesterday and her mother to-day, ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... heard in reply in Swift's case, and after a short discussion the court came to a resolution to upset Sir John Nicholl's decision. Brougham behaved very decently to-day, and stated fairly enough his opinion, but he was quite clear, and so was Baron Parke, as to the judgment. The Vice-Chancellor with hesitation acquiesced, and Erskine said nothing; the Lord President went with them, so that the court ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... considered as too indulgent to vanity, or too studious of interest, if, from that labour which has hitherto been chiefly gainful to others, she endeavours to obtain at last some profit for herself and her children. She cannot decently enforce her claim by the praise of her own performances; nor can she suppose, that, by the most artful and laboured address, any additional notice could be procured to a publication, of which Her MAJESTY has ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... welcomed by the appearance of two or three decently clad house-servants, mulattoes, and an athletic negro, of average nigritude,[2] every tooth in whose head glistened, as his black face rippled into a laugh, when his master favored him with some familiar and approving jocularity. Officiously taking charge of the horse and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was in some other ways. She would tell any one how old she was. She once informed Mr. de Lancey that she was so much more of a man than any British officer she knew that she did not see how she could decently ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... round the sun was no sooner engendered by the conflicting impulses above described than it became a regular revolution independent of the cause which gave it origin. His learned brethren readily joined in the opinion, being heartily glad of any explanation that would decently extricate them from their embarrassment; and ever since that memorable era the world has been left to take her own course, and to revolve around the sun in such orbit as she ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... trap so that it won't work," he remarked after a few moments. "I've got the dagger, as you see, and old Bellett's getting about again, so that the whole business can be hushed up, decently. All the same I fancy the Chapel will never lose its reputation as a dangerous place. Should be pretty safe ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... there under the shed on the north side which the flames had not reached the men were dozing, or in low, awe-stricken tones, talking of the tragic events of the night. Near the east gate, reverently and decently covered with the only shroud to be had, the newest of the saddle-blankets, lay the stiffening remains of poor Donovan and his comrade. Lurking about the westward end of the enclosure, their beady eyes every now and then glittering in the fire-light, the Mexicans, ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... the prolific mother of wrongs," said Mrs. Gilmer, "and the fact that the woman with the broom is neither sufficiently appreciated nor decently paid brings its own train of evils. It is at the bottom of the distaste girls have for domestic pursuits and the frantic mania of women for seeking some kind of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... the evening, "I haven't had a decent dinner since we came back. Mr Bunker can go to the devil for to-night, I'm going to dine decently. I'm sick of going round pubs, and not even stopping to have ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... generous notions of things, it would thank its provident partner, that she had been more solicitous to defend it from dishonors at its dissolution, than careful to pamper it with good things in the time of its union. If Caesar were chiefly anxious at his death how he might die most decently, every Burial Society may be considered as a club ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... appreciation of the brotherhood of man; yet as an artist and thinker and poet he is particularly contemptuous of the usurer and trader in other men's necessities, and therefore, when Antonio meets Shylock, though he wants a favour from him, he cannot be even decently polite to him. He begins by saying in the third scene ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... talk," returned Brace. "And I'm not so sure about there being any moral question yet. You are assuming too much. There is no reason why she shouldn't run the tienda as decently—barring the liquor sale, which, however, is legal, and for which she can get a license—as a man could, and without interfering ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of nature and art, and my income is not enough to permit my living decently in London. I had to leave the army because I was so poor. Garvington has given me this cottage rent free, so I'm jolly enough with my painting and with Mrs. Tribb as housekeeper and cook. She's a perfect dream of a cook," ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... whom Mrs. Wilders had hesitated to surrender to old Lord Essendine, from greed rather than maternal instinct, was not neglected by the old peer. After the mother had passed out of sight, the son was brought up decently, given a good education, and eventually started in life. He adopted the military profession, and was not denied the support and encouragement of ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... Reader's favour, suppose him fixed at Bemerton, and grant him to have seen the Church repaired, and the Chapel belonging to it very decently adorned at his own great charge,—which is a real truth;—and having now fixed him there, I shall proceed to give an account of the rest of his behaviour, both to his parishioners, and those many others that ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... that," said the lawyer, shuddering as he looked at his client. "You will receive a quarterly stipend which will clothe you decently." ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... all wore sober dresses, in keeping with the simplicity of the house, and but for the vacuity of their faces the group might have been that of a Professor's family in an English or American University town, decently costumed for an Arabian Nights' pageant in the college grounds. I was never more vividly reminded of the fact that human nature, from one pole to the other, falls naturally into certain categories, and that Respectability wears the ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... might have Joseph with him into a room; where, ordering his servant to take out a suit of his own clothes, with linnen and other necessaries, he left Joseph to dress himself, who, not yet knowing the cause of all this civility, excused his accepting such a favour as long as decently he could. Whilst Joseph was dressing, the squire repaired to the justice, whom he found talking with Fanny; for, during the examination, she had flopped her hat over her eyes, which were also bathed in tears, and ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... useless. I couldn't qualify as a Scientist. Maybe I lacked concentration, for between looking out for another avalanche and wondering how soon I could decently ask for another cup of coffee from the ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... a good deal in the old days—he had helped everybody, for that matter. You would probably find traces of Lea's influence in the beginnings of every writer of about my decade; of everybody who ever did anything decent, and of some who never got beyond the stage of burgeoning decently. He had given me the material help that a publisher's reader could give, until his professional reputation was endangered, and he had given me the more valuable help that so few can give. I had grown ashamed of this one-sided friendship. It was, indeed, partly because ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... of separate teaching ceased, and young and old assembled for public worship. A sanctuary, spacious and lofty, and airy withal, was comfortably filled with men, women, and children, for the most part decently dressed." ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... and I spent as willing and, on the whole, decently treated captives within the lines of the German Army of the North, talking freely with cultivated officers and grimy men of the ranks, and in this way learning much of the German war machine, the opinions of the officers and the men at their command. It would be interesting to tell how in Brussels ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... folk of the town were at their doors and windows to witness the great occasion of the town-council going away up like gentlemen of rank to take their dinner with his lordship. That it was a terrible trial to all cannot be for a moment denied; yet some of them behaved themselves decently; and, if we confess that others trembled in the knees, as if they were marching to a field of battle, it was all in the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... it for public veneration. She deposited it in the little wooden shed she had erected after her first return from France, expecting to be able to place it more honorably in the large chapel, that was to be built of stone, and decently ornamented. This chapel was to be a kind of station for the ordinary parish processions, and a place of pilgrimage for those who had a devotion to the most holy Virgin, when they wished to visit the statue in order to obtain spiritual or temporal ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... These gods smile for ever: if you find one who frowns, like Fudo, the frown seems but half in earnest; it is only Emma, the Lord of Death, who somewhat appals. Why religion should be considered too awful a subject for children to amuse themselves decently with never occurs to the common Japanese mind. So here we have images of the gods and saints for toys— Tenjin, the Deity of Beautiful Writing—and Uzume, the laughter-loving -and Fukusuke, like a happy schoolboy—and ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... disputing over a dirty pack of cards; among them I saw a girl who appeared to be very young and very pretty, decently clad, and resembling her companions in no way, except in the harshness of her voice, which was rough and broken as though it had performed the office of public crier. She looked at me closely as though astonished to see me in ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... how to take care of itself decently; when there are no dirty evil places upon it, with innocent children born daily and hourly into conditions which inevitably produce a certain percentage of criminality; when the intelligence and good breeding which now distinguish ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... in good spirits. It was his first taste of wilderness warfare, and he knew that he had done well. The dead were laid decently among the bushes to receive Christian burial later, if the chance came, and the wounded, their hurts bound up, prepared to take what part they could in a new battle. Robert crept to the edge of the cliff, ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... What about?" "Why, ma'am" (with a low bow), "about Mrs. Kemble, of course." Now, my worthy agent's remuneration was to consist of a certain proportion of the receipts of the readings, and, that being the case, I felt I had no right absolutely to forbid him all puffing advertisements and decently legitimate efforts to attract public attention and interest to performances by which he was to benefit. At the same time, I also felt it imperatively necessary that there should be some limit to these proceedings, if I was to be made a party to them. I therefore told him that, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... walked very quickly home, and, once in the parlour, they began to have it out. And, before they had done, the reading of cricket news on Sunday was as nothing compared to the desecrating iniquity which they committed. The scene was not such as can be decently recounted. But about six o'clock Maggie entered, and, at considerable personal risk, brought them back to a sense of what was due to their name, the town, and the day. She then stated that she would not remain in such a house, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Cecily. You never could tell what might happen. Cecily took the wishbone in her trembling little hands and began her backward pacing, repeating solemnly, "I wish that we may find Paddy alive, or else his body, so that we can bury him decently." By the time Cecily had repeated this nine times we were all slightly infected with the desperate hope that something might come of it; and when she had made her nine gyrations we looked eagerly down the sunset lane, half expecting to see our lost pet. But we saw only the Awkward Man turning in ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... suddenly, as I said, and we were all very sorry, and the school was broken up. But he had taught us all to write fairly and to keep accounts, to read and spell decently, and to know a little geography. It wasn't a great deal, but what we knew we knew well, and I often think of what he said, now it's too late, we ought to have made better use of it. After school broke up father said Jim and I knew quite as much as was likely ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... you?" he says, vehemently. "Why cannot I feel even decently angry with you? You torment and charm in the same breath. At times I say to myself, 'She is cold, heartless, unfeeling,' and then a word, a look—Molly," seizing her cool, slim little hand as it lies passive in her lap, "tell me, do you think you will ever—I do not mean to-morrow, or ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... I shouldn't have let you go, sir. And then you could have come back with what we wanted decently, and not come crawling into the house as if you had been found out committing a theft, and the ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... economy, the eye of the master or the mistress is always necessary to see that nothing is lost, that everything is put to its proper use and kept in its proper place, and that all things are done decently and in order. It does no dishonour to even the highest individuals to take a personal interest in their own affairs. And with persons of moderate means, the necessity for the eye of the master overlooking everything, is absolutely necessary for ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... he talks away, without stopping, on art and nature, and beauty and duty, and fifty fine things that are all so much Latin to me. I beg you to understand that he has never said a word to me that I mightn't decently listen to. He may be a little cracked, but he's one ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... in New York with her aunt, which made her a little more self-conscious when in the presence of the strange young men. Hunter was hired by the company at a dollar a day to live here and see that things were not wantonly destroyed, but allowed to go to decay properly and decently. He had a substantial roomy frame house and any amount of grass and woodland. He had good barns and kept considerable stock, and raised various farm products, but only for his own use, as the difficulties of transportation to market some seventy miles distant make it no object. He usually went ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... spare than the idlest person in the parish, and more money than the richest. He accepted the needless inequalities and inconsistencies of his life, with a kind of conventional submission that was almost slavish; and any daring layman who would have adjusted such burdens as his, more decently and graciously, would have ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... brought to the executive of the United States, and his instructions, which he occasionally communicated, were, in a high degree, flattering to the nation, and decently respectful to its government. But Mr. Genet was also furnished with private instructions, which the course of subsequent events tempted him to publish. These indicate that, if the American executive should not be found sufficiently compliant with the views of France, the resolution ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Okehampton belonged Floyer's Hayes, in the parish of St Thomas the Apostle, near Exeter, and it was held on this curious tenure: 'That if the Courtenays, Earls of Devon, came at any time into Exe Isle, they [the Floyers] were to attend them, decently apparelled with a clean towel on their shoulders, a flagon of wine in one hand and a silver bowl in the other, and offer ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... things a gentleman must not do. Perhaps I don't know what the word means. In New York a gentleman can get drunk at dances, swear, treat people impolitely, and as long as he comes of a good family or has money back of him nobody questions him. So long as I treat people decently and do no one any harm I'm willing to take my chances with God Almighty. With Sailor Clancy fighting is a business. With me it's a sport. He hasn't had many good matches. I've given him a chance to make five thousand dollars and gate receipts. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... him, she gave herself gladly to many interests and duties. A second mother to her numerous small brothers and sisters, and to her amiable inefficient father as well, she had somehow managed school and college for herself, and in accepting John and his worldly goods she gave up a decently paid library position. The insides of books were also familiar to her, in impersonal concerns she had a shrewd sense of people, in general she faced the world with a brave and delicate assurance. Finally she believed with fervour the creed and ethics that John happened to inculcate ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... or 'this is undoubtedly the sausage of the year.' Why are such distinctions drawn by the publisher? When he publishes, as he sometimes does, a novel that is a book (or at any rate would be a book if it were decently printed and bound) then by all means let him proclaim its difference—even at the risk of scaring away the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... harassed Hsi Jen that she hastened to put her hand over his mouth. "Speak decently," she said; "I was on account of this just about to admonish you, and now here you are uttering all this ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... his clothes will hang there till he comes back, when he intends to appear decently, I hope, at the ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... but all the same we wish to act decently. If mother Coupeau has left us nothing, it's no reason for pitching her into the ground like a dog. No; we must have a mass, and a hearse ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the life of corruption that goes on there, so pinched and meagre and cowardly, with its concealment and ignoring, rather than restraint of, natural longings; which does not forbid the greedy indulgence in them if it can but be decently hidden. ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... many keys there might be provided, he knew that there would never be one in his pocket when he wanted it. And he was wont to add, when his wife would tease him on the subject, that they who desired to come in decently were welcome, and that they who were minded to make an entrance indecently would not be debarred by such rails and fences as hemmed in the vicarage grounds. Gilmore, as he passed through the corner of the churchyard, clearly saw a man standing near to the stile leading from ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... and the old man creeps back to his chair again, and composes himself decently, with reverent, folded hands, and head bowed in waiting. "'He holdeth the waters in the hollow of His hand. Behold, He taketh up the isles as a very little ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... nose, as if it had been wrenched from its roots and replaced by a round little ball of meat. It seemed that he looked at the same time with his eyes and with the two little nasal orifices. He was clean-shaven, dressed pretty decently, and wore a round woollen cap with ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... degraded with the name of "mistress," and the worse he treats her and her children the more his "morality" is approved, just as the Catholic Church, when struggling to establish sacerdotal celibacy, approved more highly the priest who had illegitimate relations with women than the priest who decently and openly married. If his neglect induces a married man's mistress to make known her relationship to him the man is justified in prosecuting her, and his counsel, assured of general sympathy, will state in court that "this woman has even been ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Margaret, decidedly, "I cannot have this! While you are with me, I expect you to behave decently." ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... proconsuls received their appointment from him. Thus he became supreme arbiter of all fortunes, the fountain of all influence, the centre of all power, absolute over the lives and fortunes of all classes of men. Strange that the people should have submitted to such monstrous usurpations, although decently veiled under the names of the old offices of the republic. But they had become degenerate. They wished for peace and leisure. They felt the uselessness of any independent authority, and resigned themselves to a condition which the Romans two centuries ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... respect; it is not easy to overestimate either its delightfulness or its moral power. It is not possible for a great society to place before itself a more eminently Christlike purpose. It has been greatly honored of God in its results thus far. And no decently intelligent history of America will ever fail to note the vital and decisively critical part which, in the Providence that overrules all history, has been given to this so timely and so sagaciously Christian organization to take in preparing the ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... and another, sitting bolt upright at a card-table, staring hideously; the birth of Christ; the trial of Christ; Abraham Lincoln, dead and ghastly, upon a bier; and other groups, all revolting beyond description. The only decently executed thing in this Sacred Museum was highly indecent; it was a young lady in wax, who, before lying down, had forgotten to put on her night-gown. There was a most miserable Happy Family; one or two monkeys, still and dejected; a dismal, tired rooster, who wanted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... contrary, I think it makes me think of the building. I used somehow to imagine that service in the open air was necessarily associated with cant. Now I like it far the best. Not merely because it is more sanitary—till some one learns how to ventilate a building decently—but because it absolutely forces you to feel insignificant, and anxious that the great Creator should condescend to care about a mosquito like you. Moreover, I have often noticed out in the open a unity between those of ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... with a rasping in his throat. He cleared it twice and spat before he could open a passage for a decently cheerful voice in which to suggest a rise of spirits. But Herb was too faithful a guide to bear the thought that his employers' trip should end in any gloom because the one painful chapter in his own life ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... nod their heads, or shake them at each other, according as they agree or disagree in the manner of the interpretation. Half the audience probably know every bar of the music by heart, and no inconsiderable number could perhaps perform it very decently themselves. It is indeed at these quartett and quintett meetings, that you see genuine specimens of musical knowledge and musical enthusiasm. They take place by half-dozens during the season; and you always find the same class of audience, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... course, I shall not find one. You understand? You have done your work completely. She will die at sunset. You had better send for a missionary or priest, and have her buried as soon as possible. Let the grave be dug under the palm trees, on the south side of the plantation, and have all done decently and in order, and the master will attach no blame to any one or have any suspicion that foul play has been used, then you can easily persuade him to allow the body ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... were hardly decently over the morning after the picnic before Jane Morton climbed into her father's lap armed with a fine tooth comb and a ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... British soldier is officially supposed to be above proof, and, as a general rule, it is so. The exceptions are decently shovelled out of sight, only to be referred to in the freshest of unguarded talk that occasionally swamps a Mess-table at midnight. Then one hears strange and horrible stories of men not following their officers, of ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... and it has been taken up by our scarlet runners or verandah parasites, in our name. Now, dear Vanity, you may call me a Russophile, or by any other marine term of endearment you like, if I don't think the old plan was the better of the two. We ourselves could conduct corruption decently; but to be responsible for corruption over which we exercise no control is to lose the credit of a good name and the profits of a ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... live, I hope to show it. You have raised my spirits: and now, dear Francesco! do say a couple of prayers for me, while I lay together the materials of a tale; a right merry one, I promise you. Faith! it shall amuse you, and pay decently for the prayers; a good honest litany-worth. I hardly know whether I ought to have a nun in it: ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... who was his favorite, probably because he bore the family name and inherited some independent property, Mr. Willcoxen would, however, have afforded a more liberal and gentlemanly education, could he have done so and at the same time decently withheld from going to some expense in giving his penniless grandson, Cloudy, the same privilege. As it was, he sought to veil ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... carrying of it on." "Being well informed," runs the Prospectus, "that there is a pious, good, commendable work for maintaining near forty poor or fatherless children, born all at or near Highgate, Hornsey, or Hamsted: we, whose names are subscribed, do engage or promise, that if the said boys are decently cloathed in blew, lined with yellow; constantly fed all alike with good and wholsom diet; taught to read, write, and cast accompts, and so put out to trades, in order to live another day; then we will give ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... childishly resented her little nagging economies—and especially because he knew they were generally necessary. He chafed at the practical, sensible view he was argued resolutely into on every matter. What made it hard was that Haldane could not decently account for his revulsion of feeling toward Ida, now she was his wife. Worse than all, he saw how lightly she held in esteem his music—his one real love. To her it was a graceful trade to earn a living by—nothing else. And when she finally made it out that in his position in the ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... has its own rules," said Arkwright. "You'll get on better—quicker—go further—here if you'll learn a few elementary things. I don't see that wearing a whole shirt decently done up is going to compromise any principles. Surely you can do that and still be as common as you like. The people look up to the fellow that's just a little better dressed ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... and improvising what tools they could, the boys made their way sorrowfully to the scene of the previous night's tragedy. Buck's body was carefully removed and decently buried. A mound of boulders was made over the grave to designate the spot, and with the hope that some day they might return and suitably mark the desert tomb the ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... and Testament. And First I Recommend my Soul into the hand of God who gave it—Hoping through grace to obtain Salvation thro' the merits and Mediation of Jesus Christ my only Lord and Dear Redeemer, and my body to be Decently interd, at the Discretion of my Executer, believing at the General Resurection to receive the Same again by the mighty Power of God—And such worldly estate as God in his goodness hath graciously given me after Debts, funeral ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... family influence, and I must hope to make friends who will open a way for me. I have always lived apart from society; but that isn't natural to me, and it becomes more distasteful the older I grow. The probability is that I shall settle somewhere in the country, where I can live decently on a small income. After all, it's better I should have let you know this at once. I only realised a few minutes ago that to be silent about my projects was in a way to be guilty of ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... was not the aggressor. He kept in, very decently, till the enemy began to let out, as they did, in plundering, burning, and hanging the poor whigs; and then, indeed, like a consuming fire, his smothered hate broke forth: "That hate which hurled to Pluto's gloomy reign The souls of royal ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... from your vantage point of cold view, what in your mind is the cause. Can American Jews do anything to correct it either in America or abroad? Will it ever come to an end? Will a Jew be permitted to live honestly, decently, and peaceably like the rest of mankind? What has become of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... all in my power. I offered her five hundred pounds down. She wouldnt have it, of course; but could I help that? Next day, when she sent her maid for her things, I felt so uneasy that I came to Conolly, and told him the whole affair. He behaved very decently about it, and said that I might as well have left her six months ago for all the good my staying had done or was likely to do. He has gone off to see her to-day—she is in lodgings somewhere near the theatre; and he will let me know in case any money is required. I should like to know what they are ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... bequeathed immense property in trust to the priesthood for pious uses; and the priesthood kept it for themselves. The National Assembly has ordered it to be sold for the good of the whole nation, and the priesthood to be decently provided for. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... of the blood royal. Her grandmother's sister was the last queen and was murdered in cold blood. Yes, sir, and there weren't men enough there to get up and shoot the bunch who did it. Pretty soon these fellows began to get fresh. She didn't mind them, but after standing it as long as she decently could, she rose and prepared ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... religion, all his churchism, all his protestantism, and his habitual appeal to the word of God, the minister was yet a most reverential worshipper of Mammon,—not the old god mentioned in the New Testament, of course, but a thoroughly respectable modern Mammon, decently dressed, perusing a subscription list! No doubt justice ought to be done, and the young man over at Roughrigs was sure to be putting in a false claim, but where were the lawyers, whose business it was? There was no need of a clergyman to remind them of their ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... Betterton, then to Mr. Smith, two celebrated actors," says Chetwood, "but they decently refused him for fear of the resentment of his family. But this did not prevent his pursuing the point in view; therefore he resolv'd for Ireland, and safely arrived in June 1698. His first rudiments Mr. Ashbury[A] taught him, and his first appearance was in the part of Oroonoko, where he acquitted ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... forward or contemplate the future at all, I knew better how to deal with the present hour and the present day. There was no joy in them, but there was a sort of acquiescence in me. If life—as seemed the only possible thing—was to be joyless for me, I could at least behave decently. Also a certain sort of pride, I think, came to my help. I felt that it was bad manners to appear as I felt—just as when one has a headache one makes an effort to appear more brilliantly well than usual. One doesn't like people to ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... one of the remotest counties, he was authorised to make her, in four quarterly payments, the yearly allowance of three hundred pounds, that being the income that Lord Monmouth, who was the shrewdest accountant in the country, had calculated a lone woman might very decently exist upon in a small market town ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Beauty to a Poem, especially of this Nature; without which it must of necessity sink and languish. However so much of Truth, I must confess, there is in what he says, that I verily believe Magor-missabib, or Mahershal-alhashbaz, wou'd scarce yoke decently in one of our Pentameters, but be near as unquiet and troublesome there, as a Mount Orgueil it self. Nor can partiality so far blind my Judgment as not to be my self almost frighted at second hearing of such ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... absence I shall tell you nothing—not one word; all shall be forgotten now—sufferings, madness, crime, remorse! Nothing shall ever vex you again—not Nuflo, who vexed you every day; for he is dead now—murdered, only I shall not say that—and I have decently buried his poor old sinful bones. We alone together in the wood—OUR wood now! The sweet old days again; for I know that you would not have it different, nor ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... that foreigners may be shoved into the good benefices, where formerly abbots were chosen out of the chapters! And we're to believe it's for the sake of religion. We know better. Three bishops were enough for us; things went on decently and reputably. Now each must busy himself as if he were needed; and this gives rise every moment to dissensions and ill-will. And the more you agitate the matter, so much the worse it grows. ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... which they had induced the King to put this gross and public affront on his mother were unfounded. The friends of the Princess in the House of Commons moved that her name should be inserted. The ministers could not decently attack the parent of their master. They hoped that the opposition would come to their help, and put on them a force to which they would gladly have yielded. But the majority of the opposition, though hating ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... having been arranged silently, secretly, decently and in order—the members of the committee were under oath as well as under arms—they decided to take matters into their own hands; and in order to do this Casey must be removed from jail—peaceably if possible, forcibly if necessary—and given a lodging and a trial ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... of course. I'll get the money, never fear. I know everybody, and I've borrowed thousands of dollars when I didn't need it. My rooms at the Charlevoix are full of expensive junk; I'll sell it, and that will help. As soon as we're decently settled I'll look for a salaried job. Then watch my smoke. To quote from the press of a few months hence: 'The meteoric rise of Robert Wharton has startled the financial world, surpassing as it does the sensational ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... wrathful and sullen, had scarce understood what the whole pother was about. She was hard of hearing, and Petty Constable Pyot was at great pains to explain to her that by the major-general's orders the body of the murdered man should be laid decently under shelter, until such time as proper burial ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... trust In Jenny knew no bound, And Jenny kept her pure and just, Till even malice found No sin or sign of ill to be In one who walked so decently The duteous helpmate's round. ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... have since learnt, told his Lordship, that he fancied I had some Glimmerings of Reason, notwithstanding the hideous Make of my Person, and gave for an Instance, my getting into my Bed as decently as a Cacklogallinian; and that of my Species certainly had a Language among 'em, for he had heard me very distinctly utter some unintelligible Words, and even repeat some ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... the side which took him, from the very moment of his giving in. He must utterly renounce his former allegiance, and fight for his new party as fiercely as formerly he had done against them. This is the only way of decently prolonging strife when the combatants are well matched, but various prejudices stand in the way of applying ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... thinking that there was no other provincial town in England in which a maiden lady could live safely and decently. London to her was an abode of sin; and though, as we have seen, she delighted to call herself one of the county set, she did not love the fields and lanes. And in Exeter the only place for a lady was the Close. Southernhay and Northernhay might be very well, and there was doubtless a respectable ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... just so the cooking was over with as quickly as possible. They had no sympathy; anything seemed to the cooks good enough if it did not poison him. On our return we had plenty to eat if it had been cooked decently so that men could eat it. The reader may say that it should have been reported to the officer in command. This was done, and reported also to the officer of the day, and the next day after the reports were made we were given cabbage for dinner, and every man founds big ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... a forest fire. It comes in pale yellow sheets instead of big black balls loaded with the dirt or sticks and stones that the honest Indian sometimes adds to make a bigger lump. What's better, the man who milks the rubber trees on a plantation may live at home where he can be decently looked after. The agriculturist and the chemist may do what the philanthropist and statesman could not accomplish: put an end to the cruelties involved in the international ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... to a house walled round; into which having been admitted by an old woman, they hurried me forward up stairs, and shut me into a room decently furnished, with a fire in it and a bed-chamber adjoining; but with the windows barred up, and in which every precaution had evidently been ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... decently regardless of threats or invitations, and having a wholesome opinion of his own that in holiday time Mr. Linden had nothing to say to him. In no possible time had he anything to say to Mr. Linden that he could help. So it happened, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... condition of the poorer classes, I went yesterday into some of the back slums in the neighbourhood of the Boulevard de Clichy. The distress is terrible. Women and children, half starved, were seated at their doorsteps, with hardly clothes to cover them decently. They said that, as they had neither firewood nor coke, they were warmer out-of-doors than in-doors. Many of the National Guards, instead of bringing their money home to their families, spent it in drink; and there are ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... said in private houses. In Herefordshire it was not considered proper for the husband to appear in church at the service, or at all events in the same pew. In some parishes there was a special pew known as "the churching seat." The words in the rubric requiring the woman to come "decently apparelled" refer to the times when it was thought unbecoming for a woman to come to the service with the elaborate head-dress then the fashion. A veil was usually worn, and in some parishes this was provided by the church, for an inventory of goods belonging to St Benet's, Gracechurch ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... humble little Professor Cardegna, who had patiently explained Dante and Leopardi to her for months, bowing to the ground in her presence, and apologising when he corrected her mistakes, as though his whole life was to be devoted to teaching foreigners his language; the decently clad young man, who was always pale, and sometimes pathetic when he spoke of himself, was no other than Giovanni Cardegna the tenor, singing aloud to earth and heaven with his glorious great voice—a man on the threshold of a European fame, such ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... when they no longer know how to work them; there is anarchy when they lose their political goodwill. But when their taste decays they do not know that it has decayed. And with it decays their artistic capacity, so that, quite complacently, they lose the power of doing decently a thousand things that their fathers ...
— Progress and History • Various
... I want to be treated decently, that's all. When I came here I intended doing things to help the town. I should have enjoyed doing it. I told some of them so. Look at the money I've spent. Look at the taxes I'll pay. Why, they ought to be glad to have me here. They ought ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... truth, we had so much playing in the convent garden, and such a long walk home in the evening, that we were generally rather tired and glad to get quickly to bed as mamma bade us. She, poverina! always sat up, patching and darning, long after we were in bed, so that we might go decently ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various |
