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Rustic   /rˈəstɪk/   Listen
Rustic

adjective
1.
Characteristic of rural life.  Synonyms: countrified, countryfied.  "Rustic awkwardness"
2.
Awkwardly simple and provincial.  Synonyms: bumpkinly, hick, unsophisticated.  "Rustic farmers" , "A hick town" , "The nightlife of Montmartre awed the unsophisticated tourists"
3.
Characteristic of the fields or country.  Synonym: agrestic.  "Rustic stone walls"



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"Rustic" Quotes from Famous Books



... has been heralded to the world; it is not strange that this maid, renowned even among her own people, should have struck the rustic priest to dumbness. He stood transfixed; and yet he wondered not, for it was seemly that such heavenly music should have sprung from the rarest of mortals. He saw that her hair, blacker than the night, rippled in a glorious cascade below her waist, and that her teeth embellished with the whiteness ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... heart and beaming eyes, the young girl gazed upon the scene that lay before her; then, walking to the center of the rustic bridge that spanned the stream from shore to shore, she leaned over the low railing and watched, with her mind teeming with pleasant visions of the future, her figure reflected as in a burnished mirror, upon the water ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... entertaining talk with Miss Lake. Her conversation was lively, and rather bold, not at all in the coarse sense, but she struck me as having formed a system of ethics and views of life, both good-humoured and sarcastic, and had carried into her rustic sequestration the melancholy and precocious lore ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... and prowess on every village green in the shire. He often makes his appearance at horse-races, and sports his half-guinea and even his guinea at a time; keeps a good horse for his own riding, and to this day is fond of following the hounds, and is generally in at the death. He keeps up the rustic revels, and hospitalities too, for which his paternal farm-house has always been noted; has plenty of good cheer and dancing at harvest-home, and above all, keeps the "merry night,"[A] as it is ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... he wrote the first act, in which scarcely anything is observable except a study, full of merriment and sarcasm, of the sly, lazy and parasitical class of peasant rogue. This type was not of Ibsen's invention; he found it in those rustic tales, inimitably resumed by Asbjoernson and Moe, in which he shows us that his memory was steeped. Here, too, he found the Boeig, a monster of Norse superstition, vast and cold, slippery and invisible, capable of infinite ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... stately Norway spruce; he could see the sheen of their foliage in the moonlight. He took his banjo out of its case and sat down on the bench, smiling to himself, for he was thoroughly enjoying, with that enjoyment of youth, health, and vitality which belongs to twenty-one, this rustic adventure. He touched the strings lightly with preliminary thrumming. It was a toss-up between "Annie Rooney" and "Oft in the stilly night." He decided for the latter. Raising his eyes to the closed blinds, behind ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... say that I still desired to leave it. I had long been tired of the place, notwithstanding that from our united exertions, we enjoyed many comforts which we could not have hoped for. Our hut we had metamorphosed into something Mrs Reichardt styled a rustic cottage, which, covered as it was with flowers and creepers, really looked very pretty; and the garden added greatly to its pleasant appearance: for near the house we had transplanted everything that bore a flower that could be found in the island, and had planted some shrubs, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... admittance. True, he had been to Durnmelling not unfrequently, but that was in the other world of the country, and even there Hesper had taken no interest in the self-satisfied though not ill-bred youth who went galloping about the country, showing off to rustic girls. It was merely, as I have said, that she could no longer endure a tete-a-tete with one she knew so little as herself, and whose acquaintance she was so little desirous ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply; And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist to die.[366-29] ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... as being to them in a great measure useless. The reason of the new doctrines recommended them to some, their novelty to many; the hatred and contempt of the established clergy to a still greater number: but the zealous, passionate, and fanatical, though frequently coarse and rustic eloquence, with which they were almost everywhere inculcated, recommended them to by ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... pastoral simplicity, in a slight intermixture of Scots words and phraseology, which is more in unison (at least to my taste, and, I will add, to every genuine Caledonian taste) with the simple pathos, or rustic sprightliness of our native music, than any English ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... he found Hamilton on his back under a tree, the last number of the Moniteur close to his hand, his wife and Angelica looking down upon him from a rustic seat. Both the women were in mourning, and Betsey's piquant charming face was aging; her sister Peggy and her mother had ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... flies that have their birth or being from a kind of dew, and on the inscrutable caprice of fish; also, in England, on the miller, who giveth or withholdeth at his pleasure the very water that is our element. The inquiring rustic who shambles up erect when we are lying low among the reeds, even he disposes of our fortunes, with whom, as with all men, we must be ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang

... to the blond cendre which distinguishes so many of Palma's donne than to the ruddier gold that Titian himself generally affects. The more passionate of the two, she gazes straight into the eyes of her strong-limbed rustic lover, who half-reclining rests his hand upon her shoulder. On the twin reed-pipes, which she still holds in her hands, she has just breathed forth a strain of music, and to it, as it still lingers in their ears, they yield ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips

... Spotsylvania. He had got rid of the vermin in the cabin by burning sulphur, and had stocked his establishment with a canvas-cot and a camp-stool and a lamp and an oil-can, and the usual supply of beans and bacon and rice and corn-meal and prunes. Also he had built himself a rustic table, and unpacked a trunkful of blankets and dishes and writing-pads and books. So once more his life was his own, and a thing ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... the bird to travel in, he left it alone, and came back to the fountain, holding his breath and walking on tip-toe all the way, for fear lest he should awake his prize. But what was his surprise, when instead of finding the fountain in the spot where he had left it, he saw in its place a little rustic palace built in the best taste, and standing in the doorway a charming maiden, at whose sight his mind seemed ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various

... large as their own trunks, fifty feet into salt water; an anchor-root extending perpendicularly at the extremity to support them. Thence they have sent up another tree as large as the parent stem, at high-water presenting the peculiarity of twin-trees, on shore and in the sea, connected by a rustic root bridge." These trees have no ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... Tennyson, that are perhaps not worth the telling. Bulwer was of Trinity Hall. He went one day to bathe in the Cam at Grantchester, and was robbed of his clothes. Before he could emerge from the water, the future dandy author of Pelham had to borrow a suit of corduroys from a rustic. He crept down by-lanes till he reached his rooms, but a friend met him, who teased him into an explanation, and afterward spread the story. He was noted at Cambridge for his foppishness, and for wearing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... indisposed, and had begged the Marchese not to invite any guests. Nevertheless, when I called to offer my good wishes on the occasion, they kept me there till evening. We then walked out in the garden—Natalie and myself, that is to say—and sat down upon a rustic seat, amidst a cluster of flowering shrubs that perfumed the air around us. I know not of what we spoke, but, after a short time, I found myself with my arm round Natalie's waist, her hand clasped in mine, her mask—alas! that I cannot say her face—resting upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... advantages which Connecticut enjoyed, and the good they did her. The climate and physical nature of the country required an active and wholesome life in the inhabitants, while yet the conditions were not so severe as to discourage them. They were of a rustic, hardy, industrious temper, of virtuous and godly life, and animated by the consciousness of being well treated. They lived and labored on their farms, and there were not so many of them that the farms crowded ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... half a mile from the house we crossed a lane, and our guide unlocking a gate entered the grounds at the brow of the hill. We again ascended, till we reached a broader way between two flourishing plantations, branching off to the left, and leading by a gently winding walk to a rustic sort of bungalow, which was discovered about a quarter of a mile off. "You must walk along here," said my friend, "and behold the prospect before we mount higher, for you will find the view repay you." It did indeed repay ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown

... about the big room, that seemed filled with all sorts of scenery, parts of buildings, rustic bridges—in short, all sorts of "props." She had been behind the scenes often in some of the plays in which her father took part, so this was not startlingly new to her. Yet it was different ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope

... before. Then they walked out on the porch and strolled down toward the bowling shed. Half way there was a little side path, leading off through an arbor into a shady way which crossed the brook on a little rustic bridge, which wound about between flowerbeds and shrubbery and back by another little bridge, and which lengthened the way to the bowling shed by about four times the normal distance—and they took that path; and when they reached ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester

... thatched cottage; the artist having introduced (in as effective a manner as he found compatible with their highly disproportionate dimensions) the real door and window. The modest sunflower and hollyhock were depicted as flourishing with great luxuriance on this rustic dwelling, while a quantity of dense smoke issuing from the chimney indicated good cheer within, and also, perhaps, that it had not been lately swept. A faithful dog was represented as flying at the legs of the friendly visitor, from the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... more heated words against this Argentine importation than the conservatives of a hundred years ago chose in their hatred of the waltz. Good society had confined its dancing to those forms of contact in which only the hands touched each other, leaving to the peasants the crude, rustic forms, and now suddenly every mother has to see her daughter clasped about the waist by any strange man. Even the dancing masters cried out against the intruder and claimed that it was illogical for a man to be allowed to press a girl to his bosom at the sound of ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... let me entreat you, and call my cottage your home; for your own doors do not open to you with more readiness than mine would. You will see the plain manner in which we live, and meet with rustic civility; and you shall taste the simplicity of rural life. It will diversify the scene, and may give you a higher relish for the gayeties of the court, when you return to Versailles. In these wishes and most respectful compliments, Mrs. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... entrails of America. And I am apt to think that he who shall employ all the force of his reason only in brandishing of syllogisms, will discover very little of that mass of knowledge which lies yet concealed in the secret recesses of nature; and which, I am apt to think, native rustic reason (as it formerly has done) is likelier to open a way to, and add to the common stock of mankind, rather than any scholastic proceeding by the strict rules of MODE ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... patronage: such relatives of influence and rank: as smiled upon me then, look coldly now; but there are smiling fields and waving trees in England's richest county; and by one village church—mine, Rose, my own!—there stands a rustic dwelling which you can make me prouder of, than all the hopes I have renounced, measured a thousandfold. This is my rank and station now, and here I ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... said Harry, who knew the title was accorded him by the rustic natives of Church Leet, as he bent down with his sunny smile to shake the old clerk's hand. "You are hearty as ever, I see, John. And so you have had a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... that only this afternoon, I saw a shepherd in trouble, tending this way, over the jagged stones of a neighbouring street. A magnificent sight it was, to behold him in his blouse, a feeble little jog-trot rustic, swept along by the wind of two immense gendarmes, in cocked-hats for which the street was hardly wide enough, each carrying a bundle of stolen property that would not have held his shoulder-knot, and clanking a ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... have seen the Cottage of Abbotsford, with the rustic porch, lying peacefully on the haugh between the lone hills, and have listened to the wild rush of the Tweed as it hurried beneath it. As time progressed, and as hopes arose, I have seen that cottage ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... way; but what of that? We were not walking for a record, nor were we road-surveying, or following the automobile route to New York. In fact, we had deliberately avoided the gasoline route, choosing to be led by more rustic odours; and thus our wayward wayfaring cannot be offered in any sense as a guide for pedestrians who may come after us. Any one following our guidance would be as liable to arrive at the moon as at New ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... especially a rustic or a clown, madam, that it is not possible for the sharpest-sighted wit in the world to discern any sparks of the gentleman in him, when ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... five-and-twenty years, the restoration of the line of Lancaster in the person of Henry VII. restored to lord de Clifford the name, rank, and large possessions of his ancestors; but the peasant-noble preferred through life that rustic obscurity in which his character had been formed and his habits fixed, to the splendors of a court or the turmoils of ambition. He kept aloof from the capital; and it was only on the field of Flodden, to which he led in ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... eve, while I was yet a boy, Some village hind has beckoned me aside, And sought mine aid, with shy and awkward joy, To carve the letters of his rustic bride, And make them clear to read as graven stone, Deep in the yew-tree's trunk ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... visit," she went on. "Mr. Clemens took me over Stormfield. It must have been a tract of three hundred acres. We went through the fields, which were not fields at all, since they were not cultivated, and across a rustic bridge over a little rushing brook which boiled and bubbled among the rocks in the bed of a great ravine, and we sat down under a rustic arbor and talked of the old days in Hannibal when he was a little boy and I a little girl, before he went ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... dressed man leading a bachelor life," as Mr. De Quincey observes, "in a rustic old fashioned house, amply furnished with modern luxuries, and a good library. Mr. Poole had travelled extensively, and had so entirely dedicated himself to his humble fellow countrymen, who resided in his neighbourhood, that for many miles round he was the general arbiter of their disputes, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... miss the opportunity of going to Mrs. Hoskyn's. People so often ask me whether I have been there, and whether I know this, that, and the other celebrated person, that I feel quite embarrassed by my rustic ignorance." ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... of the Moselle. And England—dear green England, fairest of all—the rich blue line of the Chiltern Hills, and Buckinghamshire beech woods bronze and yellow in the autumn. He remembered thatched cottages where he had bicycled for tea, and the naive rustic folk who had made ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... useless to describe this night of innocent revelry. It was a rustic community, and the people assembled were, with few exceptions, purely pastoral. There may have been earnest vows spoken under those spreading oaks—who knows? But if there were, the retentive ear which listened, and the cautious tongue ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... in the wall, lined with ivy; it contained a rustic seat. Mr. Rochester took it, leaving room, however, for me: but I stood ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... had caught a faint "click, click," in the direction of the wood; her quicker instinct and rustic training enabled her to determine that it was the ring of a horse's shoe on flinty ground; her knowledge of the locality told her it came from the spot where the trail passed over an outcrop of flint scarcely ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... of ruins of the beaver's engineering works. Countless dams and fillings he has made. On the upper St. Vrain he still maintains his picturesque rustic home. Most of the present beaver homes are in high, secluded places, some of them at an altitude of eleven thousand feet. In midsummer, near most beaver homes one finds columbines, fringed blue gentians, orchids, and lupines blooming, ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... character, or rather story, here sent you. In my travels westward last summer I lay at an inn in Somersetshire, remarkable for its pleasant situation and the obliging behaviour of the landlord, who, though a downright rustic, had an awkward sort of politeness arising from his good-nature that was very pleasing, and, if I may be allowed the expression, was a sort of good-breeding undrest. As I intended to make a pretty long journey the next day, I rose time enough to behold ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... down to a familiar spot by the lake, where a rustic bench was set under shadowing leafage; in front two skiffs were moored on the strand. The sky was billowy with slow-travelling shapes of whiteness; a warm wind broke murmuring wavelets along the pebbly margin. The ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... the crowd of lumberjacks, farmers, and Swedish families with innumerous children and grandparents and paper parcels, their foggy crowding and their clamor confused her. She felt rustic in this once familiar city, after a year and a half of Gopher Prairie. She was certain that Kennicott was taking the wrong trolley-car. By dusk, the liquor warehouses, Hebraic clothing-shops, and lodging-houses ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... speech, had lost all provincial dialect, was quite the gentleman. He had put off the rustic air entirely. He was grown a very handsome fellow, with oval face, full hair on his head, somewhat curling, and his large brown eyes were sparkling with pleasure at being again at home. In his whole bearing there ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... been from the tower of the boathouse that we had seen the light, and I hurried back to Craig to tell him so. But when I returned, I found that he was impatiently pacing the little rustic summerhouse, no longer interested in what he had sent me ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... When the gas was alight behind the blind, an effect was produced which was doubtless much admired. He also displayed in his window a model coffin, a work of art. It was about a foot long, varnished, studded with little brass nails, and on the lid was fastened a rustic cross stretching from end to end. The desire to decorate existence in some way or other with more or less care is nearly universal. The most sensual and the meanest almost always manifest an indisposition to be content with mere material satisfaction. ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... room was entirely changed; for now it looked like a garden, or one of the fairy scenes children love, where in-doors and out-of-doors are pleasantly combined. The ceiling was pale blue, like the sky; the walls were covered with a paper like a rustic trellis, up which climbed morning-glories so naturally that the many-colored bells seemed dancing in the wind. Birds and butterflies flew among them, and here and there, through arches in the trellis, one seemed to look into a sunny summer world, ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... at this discretion in a simple rustic; yet, on a second thought, found it consistent with the character of Deodatus, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... followed our guide along a trail that topped the river bluff, where honeysuckle ran riot in the shrubbery and tumbled in confusion to the beach below. The trail ended in a cleared spot on the crest of the bluff—a river lookout, where one could rest upon the rustic seat and enjoy the ever-varying picture ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... rose; he began to relish keenly his position as an experienced man of the world, and, in the agreeable glow of patronage and conscious superiority, chatted with hearty abandon with his little rustic beauty. ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... royal pair at my 'umble home, all its surroundings began to lose the charm of rustic simplicity, and appear shabby, inappropriate, and unendurable. It became evident that the entire place must be raised, and at once, to ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn

... five, people of fashion began to go. When you entered, you found the whole garden filled with masks and spread with tents, which remained all night very commodely. In one quarter, was a May-pole dressed with garlands, and people dancing round it to a tabor and pipe and rustic music, all masqued, as were all the various bands of music that were disposed in different parts of the garden; some like huntsmen with French horns, some like peasants, and a troop of harlequins and scaramouches in the little open ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... traversed by the nobleman's chariot and four, or by the ponderous waggons or strings of pack-horses which supplied the wants of trade and of the humbler traveller; and how the squire only emerged at intervals to be jeered and jostled as an uncouth rustic in the streets of London. He was not a great buyer of books. There were, of course, libraries at Oxford and Cambridge, and here and there in the house of a rich prelate or of one of the great noblemen who were beginning to form some of the ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... stopped the car on the other side of the road from a pretty cottage where a sign on the gate offered "Guaranteed, Analyzed Spring Water for Sale," and he and Mr. Harley disappeared with the bottles through the odd, rustic gate. ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley

... as to its condition. He disguised himself and entered the fort as a countryman, pretending that he wanted to be shaved. While hunting for the barber he kept his eyes open and used his tongue freely, asking questions like an innocent rustic, until he had learned the exact condition of affairs, and came out with a clean face and a ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... had scarcely arranged the room in due order, and taken his seat behind his desk, when a white-headed boy with a sunburnt face appeared at the door, and stopping there to make a rustic bow, came in and took his seat upon one of the forms. The white-headed boy then put an open book, astonishingly dog-eared, upon his knees, and thrusting his hands into his pockets, began counting the marbles with which they were filled. Soon ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... fellow, and handsomely dressed, stared at Foster's retreating figure in angry astonishment, then changing his mind about first visiting the Commissary, he opened the garden gate, and came suddenly upon Dorothy Scarsbrook seated upon a rustic ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke

... parietina, builds at the entrance of her dwelling an advanced fortification, an earthy cylinder, wrought in open work, like that of the Odynerus,[2] and curved like it, but of the width and length of a man's finger. When the community is a populous one, we stand amazed at the rustic ornamentation formed by all these stalactites of clay hanging from the facade. The other, A. pilipes, who is very much more frequent, leaves the opening of her corridor bare. The chinks between the stones in ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... may be compared to a machine that converts the food that it receives into motion. It receives nothing, it will produce nothing; but there is no reason why it should get out of order if it is not deteriorated by external agents. The legendary rustic who wanted to accustom his ass to go without food was therefore theoretically wrong only because he at the same time wanted the animal to work. The whole difficulty consists in breaking with old ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... was"—a pagan synonym for the hackneyed phrase that one is in full possession of one's faculties. This entire avoidance of flattering circumlocutions, though it sometimes produces these rather startling effects, gives a peculiar raciness to rustic oratory. Not long ago a member for a rural constituency, who had always professed the most democratic sentiments, suddenly astonished his constituents by taking a peerage. During the election caused by his transmigration, one of his former supporters said at a public meeting, "Mr. —— ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... valentines. Tibullus was popular as a sort of Latin Rousseau. He satirized rank, riches and glory as corrupting man's primitive simplicity. He pled for a return to nature, to country-side, thatched cottages, ploughed fields, flocks, harvests, vintages and rustic holidays. He made this plea, not with an armoury of Greek learning, such as cumber Virgil and Horace, but with an original passion. He cannot speak of the jewelled Roman coquettes without a sigh for those happy times when Phoebus himself tended cattle and lived ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus

... pursuit of his calling. ALFIO's discovery on Easter morning of his wife's unfaithfulness precipitates the catastrophe. Rejected and cast out by her betrayer, SANTUZZA in a moment of extreme jealousy, exposes the infamy of LOLA and TURIDDU. ALFIO challenges TURIDDU, according to the rustic Sicilian code, in which each party bites the other's right ear. It is understood between the combatants that the severity of the bite in the challenge indicates the degree of animosity to be expected in contest. TURIDDU regrets his evil course; but nevertheless ...
— Zanetto and Cavalleria Rusticana • Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, Guido Menasci, and Pietro Mascagni

... like a taunt flung out to sea and to the upper heights of air; for centuries they appear to have been crying aloud, "See what we can do, against your tempests and your futile tides—when we try" ... Rustic France along this coast still makes pilgrimages to the shrine of the Archangel St. Michael. No marriage is rightly arranged which does not include a wedding-journey across the "greve"; no nuptial breakfast is aureoled with the true halo of romance which is eaten elsewhere than on these ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... Mr. Gottesheim, looking around him with complacency, 'a very rustic corner; and some of the land to the west is most excellent fat land, excellent deep soil. You should see my wheat in the ten-acre field. There is not a farm in Grunewald, no, nor many in Gerolstein, to match the River Farm. Some sixty - I keep thinking when I sow - some sixty, and ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hand, away they strode to the northward edge of the plateau and went speedily along toward a point at the back of the hospital where there stood a little platform, railed about with untrimmed pine, a rustic lookout much affected by the men in the long evenings, but seldom visited when the sun was up. It took no time at all for half the remaining garrison to turn out and, at respectful distance, stand curiously watching them, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... it, however, there are but few lines that seem to be from the same author as the Sonnets and the greater of the recognized Shakespearean plays. The remainder of the play has no poetic merit which raises it far above the rustic poetry which is handed down by tradition as Shakespeare's. And if we give the unknown student all credit for authorship of the finer poetry of the greater dramas, may we not still assume that Shakespeare labored with ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson

... crying like a babe, if Stephen left him for a moment; but he never fell asleep without all the horror and dread of the sentence coming over him. Like all the boys in London, he had gazed at executions with the sort of curiosity that leads rustic lads to run to see pigs killed, and now the details came over him in semi-delirium, as acted out on himself, and he shrieked and struggled in an anguish which was only mitigated by Stephen's reassurances, caresses, even scoldings. The other ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... hour later Ted was seated on a log, near a small rustic bridge, beneath which flowed a limpid, gurgling stream. On a log beside him sat a girl of perhaps eighteen years, exceedingly handsome with the flaming kind of beauty like a poppy's, striking to the eye, shallow-petaled. She was vividly effective against the background of deep green spruces and ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... on long, low rustic couches in the big, cleared half-oval that was the Playground for their children. It began—this half-oval—in high land among the trees and spread down over a beach to the waters of a tiny cove. Between the high tapering boles of the pines at their back the ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... to a rustic double chair under the heavily fruited boughs of an apple-tree, and made him sit down. She began with a vivacious playfulness, poorly assumed, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... sight of that Master to whom we were addressing our worship—all men are equal. The service ended with a short address from London upon the subject of Lazarus, and the confirmation which the story of his resurrection afforded our hopes. The words were simple and rustic, and of course uttered in the peculiar sort of jargon which is the habitual negro speech; but there was nothing in the slightest degree incongruous or grotesque in the matter or manner, and the exhortations not to steal, or lie, or neglect to work well for massa, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... patriarchs of the wood which had survived the bivouacs of the allied armies. It stood upon the brink of a little glassy pool, whose tranquil bosom was the image of a quiet and secluded life, and stretched its parental arms over a rustic bench, that had been constructed beneath it for the accommodation of the foot-traveler, or, perchance, some idle dreamer like myself. It seemed to look round with a lordly air upon its old hereditary domain, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... the rue Blanche. The Norman, who wanted his luxury ready-made, bought Couture's furniture and all the improvements he was forced to leave behind him,—a kiosk in the garden, where he smoked, a gallery in rustic wood, with India mattings and adorned with potteries, through which to reach the kiosk if it rained. When the Heir was complimented on his apartment, he called it his den. The provincial took care not to say that Grindot, the architect, had bestowed ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... he care for a dress like a cloud, or the diamonds that shone like stars on it? Did she not know that he loved the little rain-washed habit which a certain rustic country girl wore, better than the choicest ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... quest of fugitives, found a shepherd arrayed in the royal robes, and brought him before the conqueror, believing him to be the king himself. Count Julian soon dispelled the error. On being questioned, the trembling rustic declared that while tending his sheep in the folds of the mountains, there came a cavalier on a horse wearied and spent and ready to sink beneath the spur; that the cavalier with an authoritative voice and menacing air commanded him to exchange ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... only a step away. What renders Torcello so individual among all the islands and islets of the lagoon, I should say, is her continual contrast between the ever-recurrent idyllicism of open meadows or wilding clusters of simple rustic thickets, and the enormous antiquity of these two hoary ecclesiastic fanes. History is in the air, and you feel that the very daisies you crush underfoot, the very copses from which you pluck a scented spray, have their delicate rustic ancestries, dating back to Attila, who is said once to have ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... bestowed in erecting a mansion, as nature seldom works in vain, martins win breed on for several years together in the same nest, where it happens to be well sheltered and secure from the injuries of weather. The shed or crust of the nest is a sort of rustic work full of knobs and protuberances on the outside: nor is the inside of those that I have examined smoothed with any exactness at all; but is rendered soft and warm, and fit for incubation, by a lining of small straws, grasses, and feathers, and sometimes by a bed of moss interwoven with ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... But at last it was the turn of the good old-fashioned dance which has the least of vanity and the most of merriment in it, and Maggie quite forgot her troublous life in a childlike enjoyment of that half-rustic rhythm which seems to banish pretentious etiquette. She felt quite charitably toward young Torry, as his hand bore her along and held her up in the dance; her eyes and cheeks had that fire of young joy in them which will ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... to know how far an humble lot Exceeds abundance by injustice got; How health and temperance bless the rustic swain, While luxury destroys ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... that there should be no witness to such a well-posed tableau, no audience to such a charming scene. The pity of it struck Destiny, and Destiny flashed the white of Betty's dress, a shrill point of light, into an eye a hundred yards away. The eye's owner, with true rustic finesse, drew back into the wood's shadow, shaded one eye with a brown rustic hand, looked again, and began a detour which landed the rustic boots, all silently, behind the shed, at a spot where a knot-hole served ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... Remarks.—A rustic apologue, which is scarcely more than a prolonged pun on "Coat o' Clay." Mrs. Balfour's telling redeems it from the usual dulness of folk-tales with a ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... the noon rest, mules and horses were unharnessed and led down to the stream to be watered and fed. Fires were built and rustic cranes improvised to hang the pots and kettles gypsy style. Since the first day out old Martha had been constituted cook and old John butler ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... hitherto vouchsafed more than a careless glance at the rustic garb of the questioner, now fixed his eyes full upon Kenelm, and said, with a smile, "Your voice betrays you, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... lovely spot at least I am. This is my world. Its sweetness oft and oft Has twined itself around my inmost heart. Here, nature, simple, rustic nature greets me, The sweet companion of my early years— Here I indulge once more my childhood's sports, And my dear France's gales come blowing here. Blame not this partial fondness—all hearts yearn For their ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... an ale-house and rural inn; so that the associations it suggests are not of labor only, but also of pleasure. It stands in the narrow defile, with its picturesque, thatched roof; thither throng thepeasants, of a holiday; and there are rustic dances ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... understanding that you are to put in an appearance at the hour for whist;" and with similar light talk they went down the walk under the apple-boughs, whence in Graham's fancy the fair girl had had her origin. As they passed under the shadow he saw the dusky outline of a rustic seat leaning against the bole of the tree, and he wondered if he should ever induce his present guide through the darkened paths to come there some moonlight evening, and listen to the fancies which her unexpected appearance had occasioned. The possibility ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... the cottage, from which the pretty, rural trait of its standing in its unfenced green door-yard led me away to notice the same sort of rustic beauty where the church stood. We did not stop to knock at the outside door,—for Aunt Molly was very deaf, and if we had knocked our little knuckles off she would not have heard us,—but went in, and, passing ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... poor grace, but a magnificent determination to come back and graduate. The effect of his punishment was shown when, after six months of rustic meditation, he set out for the university, leaving behind him his Fannie, who had been too timid to return to the scene of her discomfiture. Teed's good-by words ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... thought Mr. Arbuton as he went ashore. He had not the least notion whither the road led, but like the rest he followed it up through the village, and on among the cottages which seemed for the most part empty, and so down a gloomy ravine, in the bottom of which, far beneath the tremulous rustic bridge, he heard the mysterious crash and fall of an unseen torrent. Before him towered the shadowy hills up into the starless night; he thrilled with a sense of the loneliness and remoteness, and he had a formless wish that some one qualified ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... make a united effort and rescue her, and with their help drags her out and brings her back in triumph to earth. The play concludes with the restoration of the goddess to her ancient honours, the festivities of the rustic population and the nuptials of Trygaeus with Opora (Harvest), handmaiden of Peace, represented as a ...
— Peace • Aristophanes

... Spike. It would unsettle the rustic mind. They're fearfully particular about that sort of ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... rustic nymphs admired, Of vulgar charms, and easy conquests tired, Resolves new scenes and nobler flights to dare, Nor "waste his sweetness in the desert air," To town repairs, some famed assembly seeks, With red ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... every composition before even posing a model, as he used to tell his students, but in complicated compositions this was impossible, and he had small talent for artificial composition. Furthermore, he often distrusted—quite without reason, but after the fatal manner of the rustic—his own intuitions. But one mentions these qualifications of his genius and accomplishment only because both his genius and accomplishment are so distinguished as to make one wish they were more nearly perfect than they are. It is ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... indication of progress in the "cave-man" is his artistic skill. Exaggerated conclusions are sometimes drawn from the statuettes, carvings, and drawings which we find among the remains of Magdalenian life. Most of them are crude, and have the limitations of a rustic or a child artist. There is no perspective, no grouping. Animals are jumbled together, and often left unfinished because the available space was not measured. There are, however, some drawings—cut on bone or horn or stone with a flint implement—which evince great skill in line-drawing ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... rising wall, were clutching slim pillars with arms and legs, were astride on the necks of the rough statuary that here and there surmounted the entrances of the grander houses, were finding a palm's-breadth of seat on a bit of architrave, and a footing on the rough projections of the rustic stonework, while they clutched the strong iron rings or staples driven into the walls ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... an hour's traverse of a comparatively desert plateau called the Pedregal, covered with rocks and smelling of the patchouli-scented flowers of the mimosa, Aragon pointed out the straw sheds and grassy plaza of Chile-Chile. This rustic metropolis is not indicated on many maps, but for the travelers it had a special importance, bearing upon the inca history and etymological roots of Peru, for it was the residence of their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... portiere with one hand, while behind her appeared the white bonnet and rustic face of the nurse. No! she was not changed, but maternity, love, and a rich and easy life had expanded her beauty. She was dressed in a fresh and charming toilette. She blushed when she first recognized Amedee; and he felt with sadness that his ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... because it was the only way out of the tangle; but at the moment she almost hated him for making so much trouble, for hurting Stephen, for abasing her in her own eyes, and, above all, for giving her rustic lover the chance ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... on the fact that she never used them as 'copy.' Nothing could be further from the truth. She was of course quite ignorant of the conditions of life in the great towns, and she had but little money to give, but work, teaching, and sympathy were freely bestowed on rustic neighbours. A very good criterion of her attitude towards her own characters is often furnished by their relations with the poor around them. Instances of this may be found in Darcy's care of his tenants and servants, in Anne Elliot's farewell visits to nearly all the inhabitants of Kellynch, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... them, stretching away merrily, now in shadow, now in moonlight, between high land and meadow land, and a line of poplars in the meadows winding with the river that fed the vale and shot forth gleams of silvery disquiet by rustic ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the sycamore-tree, and scarified it with an iron comb just before it was getting ripe, as it was necessary and customary in that way to take from it the bitterness. He was the son of a poor shepherd, and stuttered; but before the stammering rustic the Philistines, and Syrians, and Phoenicians, and Moabites, and Ammonites, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... girls did neither one thing nor another. They dressed themselves in their best, making a point of it, and failed. They assembled themselves together of set purpose to be lively, and they were infectiously dismal. They did not dress well: one looked rustic; another was dowdyish; a third was over-fine; a fourth was insignificant. Their bearing was not good, in the main. They danced, and whispered, and laughed, and looked like milkmaids. They had no style, no figure. Their shoulders were high, and their chests were flat, and they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... setting; the envy and admiration of the whole neighbourhood—well known at church, and at Ormskirk market, where she attended weekly—at the latter place to dispose of her produce. Here she was the torment of many a rustic, unable to conquer, or even to understand, the power by which his heart was ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... of the Black Colonel's flames," said the lieutenant with a laugh, as he went out again, without the answer he had not expected, being himself a gentleman. "It needs a long spoon to sup with that dark devil at any time, but come between him and his rustic gallantries and you'll need a longer spoon than Corgarff Castle ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne

... the House willingly took the rustic chair the Frenchman brought forward, but John Gayther had no wish to hear the Frenchman's story. He had no fancy for the man, and he did not believe he would fancy his story. "Excuse me," he said to the Master of the House, "but I see that boy Jacob coming through the gate, and I must go ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... your sumptuous cheer, But rather sup my rustic pottage, While that sweet boon the gods bestow— The peace your mansions cannot know— Blesseth ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... the whole company smilingly, "put up high in a spot like this, to be filled up by and by, the rustic aspect of a farm would in that case be completely done away with; and it will be better, yea far better to erect this slab on the ground, as it will further make manifest many points of beauty. But unless a motto could be composed of the same excellence as that in Fan Shih-hu's ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... Hot Springs, another popular bathing resort. This place is mostly patronized by motorists and equestrians and is more fortunate than the others in its location. The little rustic hotel is built in the cosiest nook, just at the bend of the river; the fine old trees bend their graceful branches over the rushing waters in which the majestic mountains reflect their wondrous beauty. Here one may obtain private dressing rooms ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

... quietest along the city streets, then through the thinning suburbs, and finally, with the lights all behind them, the open country ahead, the long, low car came out upon the straight highway which leads a hundred miles before it comes again to any but insignificant hamlets and small, rustic inns. ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond

... one; and him your father backs: 'Tis Peter Plod-all, rich Plod-all's son and heir, One whose base, rustic, rude desert Unworthy far to win so fair a prize; Yet means your father for to make a match For golden lucre with this Coridon, And scorns at virtue's lore: ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... relieved by groves of beeches. Below Freudenthal verdant fields sweep away in soft undulations, broken here and there by beautiful orchards. The Graevenitz knew that an elaborate garden would be a false note in this rustic serenity, and her Freudenthal garden was designed in a simple style. She had found there a peasant's orchard, with many ancient fruit-trees; these she left untouched, merely sowing fine grass instead of the corn which waves beneath the apple- and pear-trees ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... often too elaborately expressed.[d] In one important respect, however, his letters fail to reflect that image of him which his poetry presents. It is remarkable that his descriptions of rural nature, and one might add of rustic life, so full and plentiful in his verse, are so few and slight in his letters. He seems to have reserved these ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... robbers. The light of education, a species of good taste reflected, however dimly, from a polished court, and perhaps a presentiment of the impending terrible awakening of the people, were spreading through the castles and even through the half-rustic manors of the lordlings. Ever in our midland provinces, the most backward by reason of their situation, the sentiment of social equality was already driving out the customs of a barbarous age. More than one vile scapegrace had been forced to reform, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... small but pretty rustic bridge, Beryl leaned against the interlacing cedar boughs twisted into a balustrade, and looked down at the winding stream, where the clear water showed amber hues, flecked with glinting foam bubbles, as it ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... I might travel over the ocean," said Ruth, "but here I remain—what shall I say?—a rustic in a bandbox, seeing the world through a pin-hole. That is the way my father puts it. Except, of course, that I think it very inspiring to live out here among wonderful mountains, which, as Mr. Roscoe says, are the most ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... muster'd, escaped from the plains, Of sight-loving lasses and holiday swains: Bob Bantam push'd forward and strutted before; Will Woodpecker modestly tapp'd at the door; Poor Robin, the rustic, a countrified clown, As he blush'd, look'd too simple by half for the town, There were scores in brown mantles, black, yellow, or green, From the villages round, and among them were seen, Luke Linnet, Sam Swallow, Mat Martin, and then, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset

... I remember no such stone fences as I have been speaking of in Warwickshire, nor elsewhere in England, except among the Lakes, or in Yorkshire, and the rough and hilly countries to the north of it. Hedges there were along my road, however, and broad, level fields, rustic hamlets, and cottages of ancient date,—from the roof of one of which the occupant was tearing away the thatch, and showing what an accumulation of dust, dirt, mouldiness, roots of weeds, families of mice, swallows' nests, and hordes of insects, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... log house was a real home, no tar-paper shack—rustic, we would call it now—with four rooms and a porch. There were honest-to-goodness beds, carpets and linoleum on the kitchen floor! Ida Mary was so proud of the linoleum that she wiped it up with skim milk to make it shine. There was a milk cow and consequently homemade ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... principal and most shining virtue. The man is every thing, as Lucy or Harriet says; which no man ever was, or will be. Homer in the Odyssey, and in the character of Euemaeus, has given an example of universal benevolence; but then he represents him an entire rustic, living constantly in the country, shunning all public concourse of men, the court especially, and never going thither, but when obliged to supply the riotous luxury and extravagance of the suitors. Mr. Fielding has imitated these circumstances, as far as was consistent with ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous

... which we bordered with large rocks; one of which I believe may remain to this day, as I carried it to the spot to form a seat, and my vanity was touched by the fact that it required two Arabs to raise it from the ground. I made a rustic table of split bamboos, and two garden seats opposite the entrance of the house, and we collected a number of wild plants and bulbs which we planted in little beds; we also sowed the seeds of different gourds that were to climb ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... nowadays to bear the name of Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and for the vicomte—if there are still any vicomtes—to be called Thomas, Pierre, or Jacques. This displacement, which places the "elegant" name on the plebeian and the rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing else than an eddy of equality. The irresistible penetration of the new inspiration is there as everywhere else. Beneath this apparent discord there is a great and a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... indolent fragrance, aroma pay, compensate face, physiognomy joy, rapture charitable, eleemosynary blame, blaspheme priest, presbyter coy, quiet prudent, provident pupil, disciple story, narrative pause, interval despise, abhor doctor, physician fate, destiny country, rustic aged, senile increase, increment gentle, genteel clear, apparent eagle, aquiline motion, momentum nourishment, nutrition pure, unadulterated closeness, proximity number, notation ancestors, progenitors confirm, corroborate convert, proselyte ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... knowing that, encouraged by the success of summer cricket-matches, I got up a quantity of foot-races and rustic sports in my field here on the 26th last past: as I have never yet had a case of drunkenness, the landlord of The Falstaff had a drinking-booth on the ground. All the prizes I gave were in money, too. We had two thousand people ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... cultivated with some care, and was not devoid of variety. A high and very thick fence of living box-wood, closely interlaced with the honeysuckle and the common rose, screened a few plots of rarer flowers, a small circular fountain, and a rustic arbour, both from the sea breezes and the eyes of any passer-by, to which the open and unsheltered portion of the garden was exposed. When I passed through the opening cut in the fence, I was somewhat surprised at not immediately seeing Isora. Perhaps she was in the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Rhody dressed corn-cob dolls in the settle corner, and Bose, the brindled mastiff, lay on the braided mat, luxuriously warming his old legs. Thus employed, they made a pretty picture, these rosy boys and girls, in their homespun suits, with the rustic toys or tasks which most children nowadays would find very ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... that Yvonne Deschamps has found a fairy godmother who has transformed her. She has now become a Femme Orchestre and for two sous will discourse sweet music to the rustic ear—mandolin and mouth organ, bells, ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... my native soil! For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent! Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content! And oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent From luxury's contagion, weak and vile! Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, A virtuous ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... paths along which I had once idled so happily with my little Mary. At every step I saw something that reminded me of her. Here was the rustic bench on which we had sat together under the shadow of the old cedar-tree, and vowed to be constant to each other to the end of our lives. There was the bright little water spring, from which we drank when we were weary and thirsty in sultry summer days, still bubbling ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... justified in our opinion, but we beg leave to observe, that of all Gay's performances, his Pastorals seem to have the highest finishing; they are perfectly Doric; the characters and dialogue are natural and rurally simple; the language is admirably suited to the persons, who appear delightfully rustic. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... devastations along the beautiful rural region of the South Hams, left poor little Calcombe out in the cold; and the consequence is that those few people who still love to linger in the uncontaminated rustic England of our wiser forefathers can here find a beach unspoiled by goat-carriages or black-faced minstrels, a tiny parade uninvaded by stucco terraces or German brass bands, and an ancient stone pier off which swimmers may take a header direct, in the early morning, before the sumptuary edicts of ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... is able to discern the reasonof things, and controls under his feet all changes and inexorable destiny, and the groaning of greedy Acheron! |I| Blessed also is he who knows the rustic gods, Pan and old Silvanus, and those sisters, the nymphs! |II| He is not moved by the people's axes, nor by the regal purple, nor by discord that rouses brothers to distrust each other. He is not moved by Dacus, coming down ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... rather low, and Jenny had brought out Jack our thrush and suspended his cage along with those of our piping bullfinch and some of the canaries, just above a rustic table, having an old armchair that had seen its better days, in front of it, which was father's favourite seat when at home and the weather was not too bad to go out ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... if these things, in their benignant, admonishing, reminding beauty, had not restored his decency, he was bound to soften and unbend, when, as they were going over the rustic bridge, Stanny tried to turn himself upside down among the water lilies. And as he captured Stanny by a miracle of dexterity, just in time, he realized, as if it had been some new and remarkable discovery, that his little son was dear ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... fate had placed at the head of affairs, allowed the ship of state to drift upon the rocks. Even the fine palace within the city gave too little scope for the diversion of the Intendant and his confederates, and, accordingly, a rustic chateau was built near the high hill of Charlesbourg. Here they paused when tired of the chase, and the revels of the mysterious Maison de la Montagne added sad but vivid colouring to the closing decade of French rule. To-day there is an air of pathetic interest about the picturesque ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... the world not to believe Luther's tales about the city of Rome. Luther, they say, came to Rome as a callow rustic comes to a metropolis. To the wily Italians he was German Innocence Abroad; they hoaxed him by telling him absurd tales about the Popes, the priests, the wonders of the city, etc., and the credulous monk believed all they told him. ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... had passed since the besieging army had retired to their winter quarters, when several of the citizens of Rome assembled themselves on the plains beyond the walls, to enjoy one of those rustic festivals of ancient times, which are still celebrated, under different usages, but with the same spirit, by the Italians ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... and so beautify them at all seasons of the year. Everywhere in such places the youth shall make gymnasia for themselves, and warm baths for the aged, placing by them abundance of dry wood, for the benefit of those labouring under disease—there the weary frame of the rustic, worn with toil, will receive a kindly welcome, far better than he would at the hands of a ...
— Laws • Plato

... shoes with turned-up toes ornamented with big black tassels; women with dingy handkerchiefs tied over their heads; children who looked almost like the spawn of the sun in their healthy, bright-eyed brownness. And these people had cheerful faces. Their rustic lot seemed enviable. Who would not shed his sorrows under these pine trees, in the country where the solitudes radiated happiness, and even bareness was like music? Here was none of the heavy and exotic passion, none of the lustrous and almost morbid romance ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... think—that pervades the twentieth century, we have not the superstition that we are offering anything as a positive fact. Rather often we have not the delusion that we're any less superstitious and credulous than any logician, savage, curator, or rustic. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... the arms well developed, the legs robust, with good substantial feet. The swell of the muscles on the naked limbs is perhaps exaggerated, but this very exaggeration of the modelling suggests the vigour of the model; it is a heavier, more rustic type than the Egyptian, promising greater strength and power of resistance, and in so far an indisputable superiority in the great game of war. The head is somewhat small, the forehead low and flat, the eyebrows heavy, the eye of a bold almond shape, with heavy lids, the nose aquiline, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... of variety and wide human sympathy almost Shakspearian, who could step from the musings of Windsor and the beautiful heroine, all romance and ethereal splendour, to the lasses in their gay kirtles, and Hob and Raaf with their rustic "daffing," as true to the life as the Ayrshire clowns of Burns, and all the clumsy yet genial gambols of the village festival. It is one of the most curious and least to be expected transformations of poetic versatility—for it is even amazing how he could know the life ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... to determine in what degree the feelings or intelligence of this class influenced the architectural design of the thirteenth century;—how far afield the cathedral tower was intended to give delight, and to what simplicity of rustic conception Quercia or Ghiberti appealed by the fascination of their Scripture history. You may at least conceive, at this date, a healthy animation in all men's minds, and the children of the vineyard and sheepcote crowding the city ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... thickly set for miles with the dark and sombre green of pines. Our nature-lover had taken, the year before, a neglected and dilapidated old farmhouse and had made it into what her friends and habitues liked to call a bungalow. The house had been put up—in the rustic spirit which ignores all considerations of landscape and outlook—behind a well-treed dune which allowed but the merest glimpse of the lake; however, a walk of six or eight minutes led down to the beach, ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... breeding of fowls. They used to go away with the dazed air of men who have heard strange matters, and Ukridge, unexhausted, would turn to interview the next batch. I fancy we gave Lyme Regis something to think about. Ukridge must have been in the nature of a staggerer to the rustic mind. ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse

... would not run with her hand in Baba's mane this winter. There was a new work for her, indoors. In a rustic cradle, which Alessandro had made, under her directions, of the woven twigs, like the great outdoor acorn-granaries, only closer woven, and of an oval shape, and lifted from the floor by four uprights of red manzanita stems,—in ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... roads that Shakespeare knew, to the woods of his poaching exploits, and the meadows over which he passed to thatched, half-timbered Shottery, where the village inn was still standing when men, now middle-aged, were born. Rustic gardens, white-blossomed orchards, tiny brooks beloved by the kingfisher, trees that may have seen the courting of the poet and his wife, still remain to tell the story of England's unchanging charm. In the spring and early summer there is such an atmosphere about the countryside ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan

... waned, the sights and sounds of the little border hamlet were, no doubt, like those of any other rustic New England village at the end of a winter day,—an ox-sledge creaking on the frosty snow as it brought in the last load of firewood, boys in homespun snowballing one another in the village street, farmers feeding their horses and cattle in the barns, a matron drawing a pail of water with ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... had been seen in the land, or ever shall be seen in the world, unless, indeed, what African travelers tell us, backed by Barnum and the man in the moon, should some day turn out to be true. To lend their rustic home a more genteel and civilized appearance, as well as to keep them in mind of the ever-to-be-remembered day just mentioned, Elster had tacked the show bill to the rough log wall of their best room, and against this, for a background, had hung their only looking-glass, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady

... provisions he deemed it no violation of honour to force a supply for the wants of his men, even from the stores of a friendly house. We may judge, moreover, of the character of his followers, as well from the remonstrance that was made by the parsimonious rustic to whom he sent them, as from the effect which a refusal produced upon their ardent tempers. "Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants now-a-days that break away every man from his master. Shall I then take my bread, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... experienced rankled in his memory. 'Look where you like at the present moment, you will find but doctors in grammar here; for in this happy realm there reigns a constellation of pedantic stubborn ignorance and presumption mixed with a rustic incivility that would disturb Job's patience. If you do not believe it, go to Oxford, and ask to hear what happened to the Nolan, when he disputed publicly with those doctors of theology in the presence of the Polish Prince Alasco.[93] ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds



Words linked to "Rustic" :   countryman, redneck, hillbilly, woodsman, cracker, countrified, coon, common man, ruralist, common person, bucolic, yahoo, rural, peasant, hayseed, provincial, rube, bumpkin, chawbacon, yokel, countrywoman, commoner, rusticity, woodman, agrestic, hick, bushwhacker



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