|
|
|
More "Flimsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is that the Great man abides by what is solid, and eschews what is flimsy; dwells with the fruit and not with the flower. It is thus that he puts away the one and ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... jerked the book away and with a screwed up face and many gestures toward the kitchen recalled to them that a flimsy partition, though it may shut out the vision, is hardly to be counted on to stop the ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... Plymouth, receiving an extraordinary ovation by the sober English people, who seemed temporarily to have gone wild with enthusiasm. Back of that demonstration was the conviction that blood had proved thicker than water and that the apparently flimsy ties that bound the colonies to the empire were bonds that were unbreakable. The German conviction that the British colonies would fall away and the British Empire disintegrate upon the outbreak of a great war had proved fallacious. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... cool off and then you'll feel better after such a long ride. Shall I send Polly to the spring-house for some cold milk?" asked the lady of the house, folding the flimsy crepe token of ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... them what was the matter. One of the balls of fire had struck a curtain and ignited the flimsy material. The fire was now dropping down on some fireworks Tom had left on a chair. Just as they entered a pinwheel, lying flat, began to fizz, sending a shower of sparks across ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... may mention, without offending delicacy, the well-known name of SIR GEORGE FLIMSY, of the firm of FLIMSY, DIDDLER AND FLASH) smilingly asked MR. JAMES what was the amount of his savings, wondering considerably how—out of an income of thirty guineas, the main part of which he spent in bouquets, silk stockings and perfumery—MR. PLUSH could ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... vulgar, and another for themselves; or in an easy-chair, in the study, whither my lord retires every Sunday for his devotions. It dealt in private scandal and ribaldry, only the more piquant for its pretty flimsy veil of double-entendre. It was a fortune to the publisher, and it became a necessary to the reader, which he could not do without, any more than without his snuff-box, his opera-box, or his chasse after coffee. The delightful novelty could not ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... use imagination to feed life. In these sad weeks I have been like a sleeper awakened. The world of imagination, in which I have lived and moved, has crumbled into pieces over my head; the wind and rain beat through the flimsy dwelling, and I must arise and go. I have sported with life as though it were a pretty plaything; and I find it turn upon me like a wild beast, gaunt, hungry, angry. I am terrified by its evil motions, I sicken at its odour. ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stumbled, sprawling headlong and carrying the lamp down with him. For a moment he lay where he had fallen, too dazed and befuddled to rise, but presently he clambered up, his eyes wide and terrified, for his rising was Phoenix-like—mantled in flame. With incredible swiftness the flimsy coverings of his bed had burst into a crimson glare and even his clothing ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... showed to their hawk-like eyes, their rifles cracked sharply, to be generally rewarded with a howl of pain from some cutthroat who had been winged. But there could be but one end to such a battle. The convicts were well protected behind big trees, while the flimsy sides of their canoes afforded the brave little band of Seminoles almost no protection. Still they fought stubbornly on, answering shot with shot until the point and canoes were shrouded in ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... groaned and shuddered, and now a mass of plaster from the wall would slide and smash, and now some loosened tile would rattle down the roof and crash into the empty greenhouse below. Elizabeth shuddered, and was still; Denton wrapped his gay and flimsy city cloak about her, and so they crouched in the darkness. And ever the thunder broke louder and nearer, and ever more lurid flashed the lightning, jerking into a momentary gaunt clearness the steaming, dripping room in ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... hands, but he had neither the height nor the weight, being a flimsy creature alongside a man like me, and, besides, I was blazing to that height of wrath that I could have bit into a chisel. I gave him first the one and then the other, so that I could hear his head rattle and crack, and he went ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... repairs, to start once more on its erring course, or, perhaps, to go forth unfinished, remanded just there to death. The ten-thirty express was now pulling out through the yards in a powerful clamor of clattering switches and hearty pulsations that shook the flimsy walls of St. Isidore's, and drew new groans from the man on the chair. The young nurse's eyes travelled from him to a woman who stood behind the ward tenders, shielded by them and the young interne from the group about the hospital chair. This woman, having no uniform of any sort, must ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... shipyards whence the Alabama had gone to sea, were approaching completion. Other iron-clads, not less powerful, were under construction in France, with the personal connivance of the Emperor, under the flimsy pretence that they were intended for the imperial government of China. Finally, on the 10th of June, casting all promises and pretexts to the winds, the French troops had marched into the capital of Mexico, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... carefully inspected the door, its fastenings and the strength of its hinges. The iron of the hinges was flimsy. The fastening was the old-fashioned wooden shutters hung outside and closed with a single slide. He noted with a quick glance that there was no cross bar of heavy wood nor any sockets in which such a ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... There were no other lights burning downtown after nine o'clock. On starlight nights I used to pace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side, with their storm-windows and covered back porches. They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... tinkers?" "Why, Gypsies, without a doubt," answers the reader, and makes no struggle to escape the conclusion thus skilfully sprung upon him. Will it be credited that the inventor of this theory was denied admittance to the columns of the religious newspapers in this country, on the flimsy pretext that the editors could not afford the space for a disquisition on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... doth disdain Flimsy safeguards raised by man, Struck a blow more swift and sure In that I ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... Harrison than from Ward or Cardinal Manning. In the arguments at the 'Metaphysical Society' he was on the left wing as against both Catholics and the more or less liberal theologians, whose reasoning seemed to him hopelessly flimsy. His first principles in philosophy were those of the agnostics, and in discussing such principles he necessarily took their part. He once told Mr. Harrison that he did not wish to have any more controversies with him, because dog ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... was undoubtedly right for that matter; but then—the Zu-Zu was the rage, and if ever she should be sold up, great ladies would crowd to her sale and buy with eager curiosity at high prices her most trumpery pots of pomatum, her most flimsy gew-gaws of marqueterie! ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... into the corral at the ranch he saw that another sign had been put on the corral wall. He had destroyed the first, speaking his mind in full at the time. He swept his gloved hand upward with a rush, tore the flimsy board from its fastenings, broke it to pieces across his saddle, and tossed the fragments from him. He was angry, for he had warned the outfit that they were carrying the joke too far, that Johnny was giving way to hysterical rage more frequently, and ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... frock!" cried his daughter, lifting out the top garment and holding it up before them both. "Oh, what a dress to send a poor country cousin! Fluff and flimsy, trimmed with sparklers; cut frightfully low, no sleeves, and a draggly train. Doesn't it look suitable for me?" She flung it aside with a gesture of scorn. "Ah, here's something a shade better! A little dancing frock of rose-coloured ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... you have received no benefit? If a house were given you, bright with marble, its roof beautifully painted with colours and gilding, you would call it no small benefit. God has built for you a huge mansion that fears no fire or ruin, in which you see no flimsy veneers, thinner than the very saw with which they are cut, but vast blocks of most precious stone, all composed of those various and different substances whose paltriest fragments you admire so much; he has built a roof which glitters in one ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... Madam, if her Ladyship's a'ground, your Face may put both Sexes out o'Countenance. [Exeunt Lady Toss-up, and Mrs. Flimsy. ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... reciprocity of ignorance. All this makes for better social and intellectual relations, good understanding and friendship, and so for political relations much more substantial in the case of many of the republics than the rather flimsy Pan-Americanism celebrated in eloquent speeches ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... look! and listen!" He caught up the day's issue from the floor and flaunted it, riddling the flimsy surface with the stiffened finger of indictment. "Look at it! Look at this ad.—and this—and this." The paper was rent with the vehemence of his indication. "Put my copy next to that, and it'd come to life and squirm to ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... knew little concerning the science of self-defense. What happened—without any further abusive language—was this: the longshoreman and the cowboy (while using due caution against coming too close to the flimsy railing of the stairs) each set about throwing ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... "Lone Cypress." We paused yet another time down where the marsh reeds lined the way. Grasping handfuls of the coarse grass, the Commodore started to illustrate how the colonists bound thatch, doubtless from that very marsh, to make roofs for their flimsy cabins. But the marsh furnished something besides grasses; and before the Commodore's explanation had gone far, his auditors had gone farther. He valiantly slew the snake, the whole six inches of it, and hastening forward found those more progressive houseboaters ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... wailing sigh, Sad as the gust that sweeps the clouded sky. Ask him his griefs; what midnight demons plough The lines of torture on his lofty brow; Unlock those marble lips, and bid them speak The mystery freezing in his bloodless cheek. His secret? Hid beneath a flimsy word; One foolish whisper that ambition heard; And thus it spake: "Behold yon gilded chair, The world's one vacant ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Indian copartners. Of course, the white men themselves were satisfied with such deals, as were also the Indian men for that matter. Having sold their daughters and sisters for cotton blankets and obsolete rifles and traded their warm furs for flimsy calico and bad whisky, the sons of the soil promptly and cheerfully succumbed to quick consumption and other swift diseases correlated with the ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... can wait!" This was the dictum of those in authority and the underlings were only too eager to fulfil it to the letter. If there were the slightest opportunity to deprive us of our food, on the flimsy pretext that we had not answered the summons with sufficient alacrity, it was eagerly grasped. Under these conditions we had to go supperless to bed, unless we could procure something at the canteen or our more fortunate comrades came to our assistance ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Tazewell, that the lyric to which you have reference is celebrated, both for its antiquity, and the pleasing harmonies that must ever commend it to the taste of the true lover of music; although I allow that to a disciple of the modern and more flimsy school of this glorious art, it may seem puerile and ridiculous," he remarked, in grandiose patronage. Then, again to Mabel, "There were four of us—as I said—all students. What is ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... warehouse, which was empty now and silent, the mere ghost of what it had been, he seemed in no hurry to show me. On the contrary, he went back to the ledgers of his earliest years in business, on the flimsy pretext of looking up certain figures and dates. He did not need me here, the work he gave me was absurd, I was simply taking the musty books from their piles in the closet and arranging them by years on the floor. "To save time," he said. But he himself was still on that first ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... kicked, brought out his chariot and others shut the gate behind it. Commodus admired the team a minute, then examined the new high wheels of the gilded chariot, that was hardly wider than a coffin—a thing that a man could upset with a shove and built to look as flimsy as an egg shell. Suddenly he seized the reins and leaped in, throwing ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... of her pocket. Nora clutched it very hard, but her trembling fingers could scarcely take the little flimsy pink sheet out of its envelope. At last she had managed it. She spread it before her; then she found that her dazed eyes could not see the words. What was the misery of the morning to the agony of ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... they pressed it. Still holding her with one arm, pressed to him as though the two young bodies were gripped together by a vice, he loosened the other arm and thrust it at the back of her dress, through the flimsy gauze of her scarf, down next her body. His stiff cuff caught on the edge of her dress, and his sleeve slid up—it was his bare arm against her naked flesh. He gave a savage, smothered, gasping exclamation, pressed his fingers ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... truths of mortal nature. So true and real a book is it, he once said,—such a record of practical humanity and of the discipline of the soul amidst its wonderful poetical intensity and imaginative power. In him this meant no spurious revivalism, no flimsy and fantastic affectation. It was the real and energetic discovery in the vivid conception and commanding structure of Dante, of a light, a refuge, and an inspiration in the labours of the actual world. 'You have been good enough,' he once wrote to an Italian ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... would all be interesting enough, if properly remembered and ably told. But it was all too much like a dream—anybody's dream—not one of mine—all too slight and flimsy to have left an abiding remembrance, or ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... will have no effect, for they already know all that I can say. On what ground do they pretend to deprive America of the service of any of her citizens without assigning a cause, or only the flimsy one of my being born in England? Gates, were he here, might be arrested on the same pretence, and he and Burgoyne be ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... kicks and blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip; but the spectre started full jump with him. Away, then, they dashed through thick and thin; stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod's flimsy garments fluttered in the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse's head, in the eagerness of ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... peculiar to this country; for, although France, England, Italy, and even Germany, annually produce much music which is not worth the printer's ink, yet in comparison with ours it might almost be called classical. And the melancholy thing about it is, that specimens of these flimsy productions may be seen lying about freely on the pianos of people who would blush at the mere thought of having books of the same intellectual and aesthetic level lying on their parlor-tables for general inspection and for the entertainment of guests. For, while the corrupting influence of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... in, "I like 'em fine—like 'em better than those flimsy danged skirts! But if you're too good ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... Vining's room opened. It was a low, wainscoted apartment, and its deep-set window, revealing the thickness of the wall, looked out upon a dismal yard littered with brooms and buckets. Opposite the foot of the bed—a modern French bedstead, by the bye, whose brass fittings and somewhat flimsy hangings were strangely incongruous with their venerable surroundings—was an ingle, containing the smouldering relics of what had doubtless been intended for a fire, but which needed considerable coaxing before it ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... put one hand—one broad, brown, steel-strong hand with its broken discoloured nails—on Miss Ahearn's arm, in its flimsy georgette sleeve. Miss Ahearn's eyelids would flutter and close, and a little shiver would run with icy-hot feet all ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... a beard of flies' legs, a flimsy, old, grey, ruined, shaggy beard—beard without comprehension, beard without shame, without any feminine respect—beard which pretends neither to feel nor to hear, nor to see, a pared away beard, a beaten down, disordered, gutted beard. May the Italian ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... appearance and deportment than Pelagie and Suzette, but in character genuine Parisian coquette, perfidious, mercenary, and dry-hearted. A fourth maitresse I sometimes saw who seemed to come daily to teach needlework, or netting, or lace-mending, or some such flimsy art; but of her I never had more than a passing glimpse, as she sat in the CARRE, with her frames and some dozen of the elder pupils about her, consequently I had no opportunity of studying her character, or even of observing her person much; the ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... ordered to be taken to the village square, where a dozen old men of the village were being held by the Germans under sentence of death on the flimsy charge of having resisted the Prussians. One by one these unhappy Frenchmen were being lined up before a firing squad and shot down. The sergeant, who, of course, was to share a like fate, was reserved for the last that he might have more time for fear to sink ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... moments the place was invested, with riflemen on every side except the south, which fronted on the bay. The steel-jacketed bullets from the high-power guns tore through and through the flimsy walls. Nevertheless the defenders replied pluckily, and the siege might have dragged on for hours had it not been for the courage and resource of Kuroki. Gaining the stable, Kuroki found an old pushcart there. He piled three bales of hay upon it, and then ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... another. Then there is the friendship based on a purely personal attraction, with mutual respect and self-respect as its dedicated corner-stone. This does not mean that one cannot see any faults in the friend, or know that one's own are seen, without losing affection. There is always something flimsy and insecure about a friendship that simply idealizes. Any relation should be all the stronger for a frank acknowledgment of its imperfections. If a girl cares enough she will be willing to admit her own faults and wish to make herself more ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... unrolled the boat and tied them in, lashing poles for gunwales at the sides, and in a short time our canvas canoe, buoyant as a cork, was floating on the water. The guides, who had been unable to believe that the flimsy bag they carried could be used as a boat, were in ecstasies. Rude but efficient paddles were hastily hewn from the nearest tree, and soon we were all gliding in our ten-pound boat over the waves of Ampersand, which glittered in the morning sunlight. To the guides the boat ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... which, as is plain from the Preface to the Miscellanies, were among his earliest attempts. In the little farce of Miss Lucy in Town, 1742, he had, he says, but "a very small Share." Besides these, there are three hasty and flimsy pieces which belong to the early part of 1737. The first of these, Tumble-Down Dick; or, Phaeton in the Suds, was a dramatic sketch in ridicule of the unmeaning Entertainments and Harlequinades of John Rich at Covent Garden. This was ironically dedicated ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... the pretence that they were engaged in bringing him negroes to work on his plantations; although, were his island ten times the size that it really is, he could not have employed one-tenth of the blacks carried off to slavery. On this flimsy pretext they might therefore find a dhow full of blacks, and yet not be able to capture her. This, of course, was often the cause of great disappointment to the crews engaged in the suppression ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... he probably proposed to make the great military triumph of his reign came in 1870, when, on a flimsy pretence, a misunderstanding which called only for diplomatic adjustment, he suddenly declared war against Germany and rashly put his armies into the field to cope with that powerful rival. Never had there been a more unwise or suicidal proceeding. In shameful ignorance of the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... the scent of the foe that killed his "Silver-brown," and would have followed, but it ceased at a place where a horse-track joined. Yet he found it again that night, mixed with the sheep smell so familiar once. He followed this, sore and savage. It led him to a settler's flimsy shack, the house of Tampico's parents, and as the big Bear reached it two human beings scrambled ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... passage divided into two equal portions, one of which leads to the editor's room, and the other to the grated counter where the clerk sits to receive subscribers. Everybody knows the appearance of these old houses, these staircases, these flimsy partitions, with their bad light coming through a window whose panes are veiled with a triple coating of dust, smoke, and soot,—the whitewashed walls bearing innumerable traces of fingers covered with ink, mingled with pencil-caricatures ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... offensive. Again, we find the Tojin baka often fail to discriminate between different classes of females. Discovering that the Japanese were lewd beyond all other people, with institutions fostering vice, without even the flimsy pretext of hygienic considerations, they take liberties which rouse the vindictive rage ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... said that the repertory is at fault; but I am convinced that if there were plenty of good singers in the field, many of the operas that were formerly in vogue might be revived successfully—always excepting the flimsy productions of Bellini and Donizetti. It was formerly believed for years that "Lohengrin" was the only one of Wagner's early operas that American audiences cared for. But "Tannhaeuser" has, in a few years, become more popular than "Lohengrin," thanks largely to ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... enough to turn away from excitement offered on any terms, or that their position was less desperately tantalising than his; and the latter explanation is the more probable one, since few lads in and about Kilmacrone can have had their martial aspirations baulked by an impediment so flimsy and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... on the petition of his friends, he was respited and deported to France; he died at Orthez early in the following year. His verses are modelled on those of Melendez Valdes; though not deficient in technique or passion, they are often disfigured by spurious sentimentality and by the flimsy philosophy of the age. Cienfuegos was blamed for an unsparing use of both archaisms and gallicisms. His plays, Pitaco, Zoraida, La Condesa de Castilla and Idomeneo, four tragedies on the pseudo-classic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... whom Adele's charities have flowed with a profusion that has astounded the Doctor, repays some new gift by placing in her hands a little embroidered kerchief, "too fine for such as she," which had belonged to Madame Arles. A flimsy bit of muslin daintily embroidered; but there is a name stitched upon its corner, for which Adele treasures it past all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... compounded of powders while the customer waited—there seemed to be a brisk demand for these—fish, presumably from the lake, alive and swimming about in a large tank from which they were withdrawn as required by means of a hand net; light flimsy muslins, white or dyed in a number of brilliant colours; lengths of exquisite embroidery in gold, silver, or silk thread, and in some cases studded with what looked very much like uncut gems; saddlery ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... before I have vented a note of my most sincere concern for your bad account of your health. I feel for it heartily, and wish your frame were as sound as your soul and understanding. What can I recommend? I am no physician but for my own flimsy texture; which by studying, and by contradicting all advice, I have drawn to this great age. Patience, temperance, nay, abstinence, are already yours; in short, you want to be corrected of nothing but too much piety, too much rigour towards yourself, and too ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... logic-chain, with some pretty flimsy strands in some places, but I'm afraid I'm stuck with it. King was greedy and hungry when I first talked to him, but I think I scared him off. I think, left to himself, he would ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... authors we had studied, I had the audacity to produce a composition in which I weighed Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced him wanting in the balance. I supported this heresy by a profusion of bad reading and flimsy argument. The wrath of the Professor was extreme, while at the same time he could not suppress his surprise at the quantity of out-of-the-way knowledge which I displayed. He pronounced upon me the severe sentence—that dunce I was, and dunce ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... picnic, completely overgrown with wild grape, and still gay with bloom. The habitations on the way are mostly board shanties and mean frame cabins, but the railway is introducing ambitious architecture here and there in the form of ornamental filigree work on flimsy houses; ornamentation is apt to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had a transitory look; two light wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the recess—all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... quickly extricated himself from this difficulty. He fell back upon the corrupt judiciary. Upon various flimsy pretexts, he and Fisk, in a single day, procured twelve sweeping injunctions and court orders. [Footnote: Gold Panic Investigation, etc. 18.] These prohibited the Stock Exchange and the Gold Board from enforcing ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... errors. The Duke of Nevers was not absent. He gave his opinion at the council before the feast of St. Bartholomew, and Henry of Navarre did not follow the procession four days after. Henry III. did not come back from Poland so quickly. Besides, how many flimsy devices! The miracle of the hawthorn, the balcony of Charles IX., the poisoned glass of Jeanne d'Albret—Pecuchet no longer had ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... is an absurd position—for man, the heir of all the ages: hag-ridden by the flimsy creatures of his own brain. If a pebble in our boot torments us, we expel it. We take off the boot and shake it out. And once the matter is fairly understood it is just as easy to expel an intruding and obnoxious thought from the mind. About this there ought to be no mistake, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... South, a great fleet of iron-clad pirate vessels, which are intended to prey on our commerce. How long will it be before retaliation on England begins, and, when it begins, how will it end? Ay—how will it end? It is not to be supposed that we can long be blinded by such a flimsy humbug as a transfer to Southern possession of these vessels 'for the Chinese trade!' Are the English mad, demented, or besotted, that they suppose we intend to endure such deliberate aid of our enemies? When those ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... dead. We can bear the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong enough, while the nations of the earth stand afar off. I have no word of this To-Day to speak. I write from the border of the battlefield, and I find in it no theme for shallow argument or flimsy rhymes. The shadow of death has fallen on us; it chills the very heaven. No child laughs in my face as I pass down the street. Men have forgotten to hope, forgotten to pray; only in the bitterness of endurance, they say "in the morning, 'Would God it were even!' ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... falling upon the floor, which shook beneath me as I lay. I sprang to a sitting posture and groped at my side for my gun; my notion was that some wild beast had leaped in through the open window. While the flimsy structure was still shaking from the impact I heard the sound of blows, the scuffling of feet upon the floor, and then—it seemed to come from almost within reach of my hand, the sharp shrieking of a woman in mortal agony. So horrible a cry I had never ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... this founded upon a few "sports" from one species of plant, itself of doubtful origin (variety or hybrid), and offering phenomena in no way different from scores of other cultivated plants. Never, I should think, has such a vast hypothetical structure been erected on so flimsy a basis! ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... it," said Miss Dorothy. "Well, dear, I hope your grandmother will not be very hard on you. The only point I can see that needs blame, is your wearing that flimsy delicate frock, but as you had never been blackberrying before, you couldn't know the unkindness ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... them I thought that Mrs. L'Hommedieu might be the Mrs. Helmuth in whose history I was so interested, but from all I could learn she was a very different sort of person. Mrs. L'Hommedieu was gay, dashing, and capable of making a show out of flimsy silk a shopgirl would hesitate to wear. Yet she looked distinguished and wore her cheap jewelry with more grace than many a woman her diamonds. I would, consequently, have dropped this inquiry if some one ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... extenso to the reporter, who took it down in shorthand, and promised to let him have a copy to lecture from next morning. But the fair copy did not come till the last moment. To his horror he found this was written out upon "flimsy," from which it would be impossible to read properly. Again he turned it down on the desk and boldly trusted to memory. This second version was taken down verbatim by the Baltimore reporters in their turn. What if it ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... ne'er adorn The flimsy robe by pleasure worn; Its feeble texture soon would tear, And give those jewels ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... locked up in the flimsy jail without breakfast. He was furious, but as he paced up and down the narrow beat beside the bed his anger gave way to anxiety. Surely the Pagets could not believe he had done such a thing. And Sheba—would she accept as true this weight of ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... than that to honor and truth, that the baser impulses are quicker with their response? It was a great bubble upon credit, and carried with it the seeds of self-destruction. True, the bank held mortgages on rows of flimsy-built houses where walls were cracking apart, foundations settling, plumbing in such a condition that it was a hotbed of disease. They would not cover the indebtedness. The available cash had been drawn out by large depositors, the best bonds ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... make some flimsy excuse for going to war. The truth of the matter is that men go to war because they want to go to war. They can't help themselves. They are impelled by forces over which they have no control. By forces outside ...
— Disturbing Sun • Robert Shirley Richardson
... baron will not cry abroad the cause of the meeting," said the soldier, gravely. "These fashionable affairs need but flimsy pretexts." ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... butchery was going on, numbers were observed pushing off in the barks that lined the shore, and making the best of their way across the lake. They were constantly intercepted by the brigantines, which broke the flimsy array of boats, sending off their volleys to the right and left as the crews of the latter hotly assailed them. The battle raged as fiercely on the lake as on the land. Many of the Indian vessels were shattered and overturned. Some few, however, under cover of smoke, which rolled ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... means averse from the imposition of such fiscal burdens as might be necessary for raising the amount of revenue required for State exigencies. The difference between one sort of impost and the other, would seem little more than a change of name—a flimsy juggle of words—"a rose by any other name would smell as sweet;" and, to the consumer, it matters little whether the tax he pay is levied for protection or finance, the sum being equal. It is, and it has been objected against various ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... him—at least in discreet outline—of their conversation. She also saw that if she reopened the subject she would find herself straightway whirled out upon a stormy sea of danger that might easily overwhelm her flimsy boat. She silently and sullenly dropped into her place; she ministered to the general's pleasure in packages of finery. But she did not exclaim, or admire, or respond in any way. The honeymoon was over. Her dream of ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... the age is to be complied with. M.B. will tell you the sort of girl I request the ten lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast, what you admire. The lines may come before the Law question, as that can not be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not burnt your returned letter, pray re-send it me, as a monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... them, I say, each or all of these, or a hundred more like them, and to any one you so speak, the answer is—"Pooh, pooh, my dear fellow, never fear—don't fuss yourself —take it easy—to-morrow will do just as well." If, on the other hand, however, you reject such flimsy excuses, and simply say, "I'm booked in the mail," the opposition at once falls to the ground, and your quondam antagonist, who was ready to quarrel with you, is at once prepared to assist in ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... Malcolm came in, in a flimsy dressing gown of yellow, with blue ribbons in it, her hair wet and still done up in a towel. Superbly she trusted to her big eyes of limpid brown, and to the marble-like pallour of her complexion, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... dark, and I made haste to make up my flimsy little tent. The ground was desperately rocky. I made out, however, to level down a strip large enough to lie on, and by means of slim alder stems bent over it and tied together soon had a home. While thus busily engaged ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... time as a partial background for their contents; while portieres are not only aesthetic but useful in deadening sounds, cutting off draughts, and screening one room from another. "Drapes," those flimsy, go-as-you-please looking bunches of poor taste knotted, cascaded, and festooned over mantels, pictures, and chair backs, we have outgrown, confining our efforts in this line to the silk draught curtain to conceal the inelegant yawn of an open grate; and ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... decently, as you see us do. How will you manage when a regular storm comes? Take it from me, the wind shakes the tree-tops finely! He has many a time come whistling through my old branches; and how do you think that you'll come off, with that flimsy finery which you ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... thoughtfully, taking down a flimsy yellow book rather tattered. "I've heard of him; if his novels are as bad as his reputation I ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... obtained a glimpse of some very pretty faces; oval faces with large dreamy black eyes, and a flush of warm sunset on brownish cheeks. The indoor costume of Persian women is but an inconsiderable improvement upon the costume of our ancestress in the garden of Eden, and over this they hastily don a flimsy shawl-like garment to come out and see me ride. They are always much less concerned about concealing their nether extremities than about their faces, and as they seem but little concerned about anything on this occasion save the bicycle, after riding for them I have to congratulate ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... his officers were sentenced to imprisonment in Holloway jail, the rumors died out. They revived again as one man after another was released from jail before his time was up. The various excuses offered were so flimsy that the public began to think that it was true that they had powerful ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 34, July 1, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... his face, of his clothes, of his dull severity, of his solemn grief, repeated the wide gesture that in its comprehensive sweep indicated an infinity of moral sweetness, embraced the walls, the hangings, the whole house, all the crowd of houses outside, all the flimsy and inscrutable graves of the living, with their doors numbered like the doors of prison-cells, and as impenetrable as the granite ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... than the West Indies. The Spanish ladies in the Philippines are dressed as in the ancient cities of their own renowned peninsula. The Filipinos are of the varied styles that adorn Africans and the Asiatics. They are gay in colors and curious in the adjustment of stuffs, from the flimsy jackets to the fantastic skirts. The first essential in the dress of a Filipino is a jacket cut low, the decolette feature being obscured to some extent by pulling out one shoulder and covering the other, taking the chances of the lines that mark the concealment and disclosure of breast and ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Carty and the telephone business have grown up together, he always a little distance in advance. No other man has touched the apparatus of telephony at so many points. He fought down the flimsy, clumsy methods, which led from one snarl to another. He found out how to do with wires what Dickens did with words. "Let us do it right, boys, and then we won't have any bad dreams"—this has been his motif. And, as the crown and climax of his ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... ago. She admired with all her soul the hard, staring flowers which these colors produced. They looked, she said, substantial and durable. They looked like artificial flowers; nobody could mistake them for the real article, which was occasionally known to be the case with that flimsy, in her opinion, ugly, art embroidery. No, no, Mrs. Cameron would not be smitten by the art craze. "Let nature be nature!" she would say, "and worsted work be worsted work, and don't let us try to clash the poor things into one, as that wretched art-school is always ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... religious duties; but, like other unwise human inventions, which do not take into consideration the evil tendencies of the human mind, they have led to a system of degrading idolatry, while the simple truths of Christianity have been superseded by a flimsy tissue of falsehoods. Although the members of the Greek Church are iconoclasts, or image-breakers, and allow no actual images to be set up on their altars, it must be owned that they pay just as much adoration to the pictures of their saints ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... was the conviction that she was made for love, as he had said to himself while he listened to her at Mrs. Burrage's. She was profoundly unconscious of it, and another ideal, crude and thin and artificial, had interposed itself; but in the presence of a man she should really care for, this false, flimsy structure would rattle to her feet, and the emancipation of Olive Chancellor's sex (what sex was it, great heaven? he used profanely to ask himself) would be relegated to the land of vapours, of dead phrases. The ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... the byways leading to the abbey from the north of the Tweed were not very practicable for motors and we therefore approached it from the other side. This made it necessary to cross the river on a flimsy suspension bridge for foot-passengers only, and a notice at each end peremptorily forbade that more than half a dozen people pass over the bridge at one time. After crossing the river it was a walk of more than a mile to the abbey, and as we were tempted to linger rather ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... possible to serve mammon with impunity, and for as long as it suited him. He knew better now. At this moment he was undergoing the sensations of one who, having taken shelter in what he thinks a light and flimsy structure, finds that it is built of the solidest stone. Worse still: that he has ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... how they feel about taking up a proposition that may mean war. May I ask you to come at once to me with their answer. It is possible that they will call for a consultation with the ministers, nobles and high officers. Still, I fear they will be unwilling to risk much on the rather flimsy proof you can give. Gabriel is powerful and we do not seek a war with him. There is another foe for whom we are quietly whetting our swords." The significant remark caused both listeners to prick up their ears. But he disappointed, ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... more stairs. At the top he found another room exactly similar to the one below, furnished in the same bare way. In one corner he saw something gray. Examining it, it proved to be a flimsy gauze-like wrap; it was not old, nor torn. There was a white cloth, also a ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... are built on the same plan. There is one guest-room, a bare carpetless apartment, with a rough wooden bench, a table, and two straight-backed wooden chairs, and the room is heated to suffocation by a huge stove, which occupies a corner of the room. The flimsy plank partition is unpapered, but generally plastered with the cheap, crudely coloured prints sold by pedlars. Some of these depicted events connected with our recent war in South Africa, and it is needless to add that the English troops were invariably depicted in the act of ignominious ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... one hears the song of a shell. One day just before tea we were treated to a Jack Johnson, and during our meal in the tent those of us who had not made off to our funk holes ducked at every sound under the table, or behind a biscuit tin or any other flimsy object utterly useless to give cover. Each time we raised our heads we had a good laugh at ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... there is a low, momentary rumble, and you are assured that the swift, delightful, dangerous shower, that cools the earth without interrupting our pleasures for dreary days, is approaching. No one whose dwelling is not better protected than most of those which bear the vain and flimsy decorations called "lightning-rods" can know whether his own house may not in a few moments receive a ruinous stroke, or that it may not be his lot to enter eternity with the first flash from that dark, towering ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... his associates having possession of the other end. Suddenly a most wonderful reform was apparent, as rats disappear from view after a few have been captured. Those who were at Invincible Club hall, and made secession speeches, declared they were all drunk, or were not in earnest, and other equally flimsy excuses;—these are the apologies members made to each other, presuming they were addressing the party who had surrendered them to the government. It was amusing to notice their trepidation. They were variously affected. ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... ears there has come a rumor at some time that his claim to the mine in Mexico is a very flimsy one and that he may ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... he swallowed his thumping heart. It couldn't be serious, not as far as he personally was concerned anyway. If that had been the case, a squad of monitors would have been at the door. Not this message tube.... He broke the seal and unfolded the flimsy with elaborate care. Slowly, he scanned it. Underneath the official letterhead, the words were curt. "Dis iz A matr uv urjensE and iz top sEkret. destrY Dis letr and Du tUb kontAniN it. tUmOrO, 15 jUn, at 2130 ourz, U wil gO tU Du obzurvatOrE, A nIt klub ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... the first stanza is quite too much in the flimsy strain of our ordinary street ballads; and on the other hand, the second distich is too much in the other extreme. The expression is a little awkward, and the sentiment too serious. Stanza the ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... like her. I pitied her. I always thought her a poor, flimsy little thing. But that ought n't to make any difference, if ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... end she would go into Parliament. It would be bound to come soon, the woman's vote. And after that the opening of all doors would follow. She would wear her college robes. It would be far more fitting than a succession of flimsy frocks that would have no meaning in them. What pity it was that the art of dressing—its relation to life—was not better understood. What beauty-hating devil had prompted the workers to discard their characteristic costumes that had been both beautiful and serviceable for these ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... the hostile machinations of Dost Mohammed, and the philanthropic and disinterested wishes of the Indian Government for (to quote a notable phrase to which we have more than once previously referred) "the reconstruction of the social edifice" in Affghanistan. But now that all these subterfuges, flimsy as they were at best, have been utterly dissipated by this undisguised declaration of Lord Palmerston, that the real object of the war was to seize and hold the country on our own account, the attempt of the Globe to claim for Lord Auckland the credit of having ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... you best." Mrs. Ericson had dropped into a blandly agreeable tone which Nils well remembered. It seemed to amuse him a good deal and his white teeth flashed behind his pipe. His mother's strategies had always diverted him, even when he was a boy—they were so flimsy and patent, so illy proportioned to her vigor and force. "They've been waiting to see which way I'd jump," he reflected. He felt that Mrs. Ericson was pondering his case deeply as she ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... of them couldn't after the boys began to shoot. Soon as the Toltecs broke away a little, Nebraska and Taylor made for where we stood. I saw them coming and told the girl to lead us. The three of us—the girl, Taggart, and me—got to the bridge, which was a light, flimsy, narrow affair made of two long, straight saplings lashed together with vines, with a couple of strips of bark for a bottom—and crossed it. Then we stood on the ledge in front of the mouth of the cave, watching Nebraska and Taylor. They were coming for all they were worth, ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... incorrect and antiquated piece of information respecting this library in a flimsy work, published in 1850, entitled, A Graphic and Historical Sketch of the Antiquities of Totnes, by William Cotton, F.S.A., note, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... It wasn't easy to criticize that figure, lifeless though it was. "On a planet like this, with such slight gravitation, there is no need for such huge strength. The typical Mercurian should be tall and flimsy in build, ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... than the king's, and words were assuredly at a discount just then. A perusal of the international correspondence of the period leaves the reader marvelling why time was wasted in covering paper, with flimsy, insincere phrases, mendacious sign-posts which gave no true indication of the road to be travelled. There are, however, differences in the art of dissimulation and Charles never attained a mastery ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... present, was incontinently discarded. In its stead Victor favoured Karslake with a slow smile of understanding that broadened into an insuppressible grin of successful malice, a grimace of crude exultation through which peered out the impish savage mutinously imprisoned within a flimsy husk of ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... was lit, and the papers burned, and Alfy waved the flimsy, flaming torch bravely for a minute or so, that the watchers in the island house might just catch a glimpse of them ...
— The Island House - A Tale for the Young Folks • F. M. Holmes
... government land, but Austin established the shadow of a claim under mineral regulations, and, by obstructionist tactics, had prevented all the red tape from being unwound. His mineral claim was flimsy; he knew it, and everybody else knew it. But until the case should be reported back, he remained where he was. It was up to Plant; and Plant had been lenient. Probably Austin could have ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... be at his work," said Constans to himself. "Wait until his teeth show through that flimsy ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... ashore, she discovered the first of the series of tilts which Bob and Shad had built, and, immediately pushing aside the flimsy bark door, entered the tilt and struck a match. Its flare disclosed a half-burned candle on a shelf near the door, and lighting it she held it aloft for a survey of the interior of ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... grudging boundaries all about it, but with everything worse excluded, being of course the most insolently-pleasant thing in the world. In addition to which, when the garden is in the Italian manner, with flowers rather remarkably omitted, as too flimsy and easy and cheap, and without lawns that are too smart, paths that are too often swept and shrubs that are too closely trimmed, though with a fanciful formalism giving style to its shabbiness, and here and there a dusky ilex-walk, and ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... (Vol. iii., p. 181.).—Cordially do I agree with every word of your correspondent LAUDATOR TEMPORIS ACTI, and especially as to the prayer-books for churches and chapels, printed by the Universities. Experto crede, no solicitude can preserve their "flimsy, brittle, and cottony" leaves, as he justly entitles them, from rapid destruction. Might not the delegates of the University presses be persuaded to give us an edition with the morning and evening services printed on vellum, instead of the miserable ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... invariably one runs to the right and one to the left, so that the driver cannot favor them at all, but has to crowd between them, and drive both into the mud. That is palpably interested false witness. He thinks it is fine fun to push women into the mud, and frames such flimsy excuses. But as a woman's thoughts about women, this woman's utterances are deserving of attention; and she says that women are not to be depended upon. She is never sure that they will not turn out on the wrong side. They are nervous; ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... you less brains, my jolly Jack, then I have given you credit for," said the other. "The story you speak of is somewhat too flimsy to serve us long. We must have a better claim to the lands than can come of possession in trust for an heir not to be produced, till we can find the way to Abraham's bosom. We have now obtained it: the younker, thanks to your Piankeshaw cut-throats, is on the path to Paradise; ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... to feed the imagination, not to use imagination to feed life. In these sad weeks I have been like a sleeper awakened. The world of imagination, in which I have lived and moved, has crumbled into pieces over my head; the wind and rain beat through the flimsy dwelling, and I must arise and go. I have sported with life as though it were a pretty plaything; and I find it turn upon me like a wild beast, gaunt, hungry, angry. I am terrified by its evil motions, I sicken at its odour. That is the deep mystery and horror of life, that one ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to follow the Tressidys into the country on a pretence of hunting, or some other flimsy pretext of the sort, I would be near her. I had luckily kept my head sufficiently to breathe no word of love to Karine. I had even dwelt with some emphasis upon my "friendship," as though to assure her that she need fear no ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... once have drawn at will. Like a fool he had believed it possible to serve mammon with impunity, and for as long as it suited him. He knew better now. At this moment he was undergoing the sensations of one who, having taken shelter in what he thinks a light and flimsy structure, finds that it is built of the solidest stone. Worse still: that he has been ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... doubt, though, on the point, no possible doubt. Sabellius states it plainly. Artemidorus Minor, I grant you, holds the question debatable, but his reasons for doing so are tolerably notorious. Besides, what does all his flimsy sophistry avail against Nicanor's fine chapter on this very subject? Crushing, I consider it. His logic is final and irrefutable. What can anyone say against Saevius Nicanor?—ah, what indeed?" ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... it is when it is itself corrupted! The taste of our times, with all our glorious Christian literature, and our public libraries, our lecturers, our preachers, our professors, and our standard classical authorities, is scarcely kept from being perverted by the flimsy literature which has inundated us, and the newspaper platitudes which we devour with our breakfast. With every effort of true and Christian philanthropists, it is questionable whether there is any moral progress among us. There is a material growth; but does the moral correspond, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Peter seized on this flimsy excuse with a wave of relief and thankfulness to Cissie. He had to restrain himself as he strode across the room and swung together the two halves of the somber curtains in order to preserve an appearance of an ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... only amongst many—soon disillusioned Hyde. The great hopes which he had formed from estimating the splendid chances opened by the Restoration, were grievously dispelled. He learned how selfish and how flimsy was much of the noisy loyalty. He soon learned, also, to take a just estimate of the character of the King. During the time of exile he had formed a high opinion of Charles's abilities, and had frequent cause to appreciate his tact and abundant fund ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... at once he remembered one of Rebecca's early confidences,—the little pink sunshade that had given her the only peep into the gay world of fashion that her childhood had ever known; her adoration of the flimsy bit of finery and its tragic and sacrificial end. He entered the shop, bought the extravagant bauble, and expressed it to Wareham at once, not a single doubt of its appropriateness crossing the darkness of his masculine mind. He thought only of the joy in Rebecca's eyes; ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the other room being occupied by an Italian. We had to make a flying start for Naples at 5 A.M., and I got up at 4, in order to shave, dress and breakfast in time to catch the train. I opened the proceedings by starting to strop my razor on a big leather strop; the door being quite flimsy, my Italian neighbor heard me distinctly, and as he was trying to fall asleep he became very angry, jumped out of bed and protested in loud and profane language. I paid no attention to his protest and then he rang his bell long and violently. As I wanted to make a respectable ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... seclusion. The softest music breathes from a full orchestra. Gold is everywhere, in slugs, doubloons, and heaps of nuggets. Gold reigns here. Silver is a meaner metal hardly attainable. Bank notes are a flimsy possibility of the future. Piles of yellow sovereigns and the coinage of every land load the tables. Sallow, glittering-eyed croupiers sweep in, with affected nonchalance, this easy-gained harvest ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... But The Bottle Imp is perfectly constructed: the last page ends the tale, and the tale is told with a light grace, sportive within restraint, that takes nothing from the seriousness of the subject. Some may think this extravagant praise for a little story which, after all (they will say), is flimsy as a soap bubble. But let them sit down and tick off on their fingers the names of living authors who could have written it, and it may begin to dawn on them that a story has other dimensions ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Neapolitan dialect that his notion of happiness was to stroll up and down the Toledo ogling the girls. When he had finished acknowledging the applause he departed and his place was taken by a lady no longer young, in flimsy pale blue muslin, a low neck and sham diamonds. There lingered about her a hungry wistfulness, as though she were still hoping to get a few more drops of enjoyment out of the squeezed ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... This was easy, as we have said, so long as his goddess smiled, even though it were as a goddess indeed,—as a creature unattainable. But when she frowned, and the heavens grew dark, Richard's sole dependence was in his own will,—as flimsy a trust for an upward scramble, one would have premised, as a tuft of grass on the face of a perpendicular cliff. Flimsy as it looked, however, it served him. It started and crumbled, but it held, if only by a single fibre. When Richard had cantered fifty yards away from Gertrude's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... the repertory is at fault; but I am convinced that if there were plenty of good singers in the field, many of the operas that were formerly in vogue might be revived successfully—always excepting the flimsy productions of Bellini and Donizetti. It was formerly believed for years that "Lohengrin" was the only one of Wagner's early operas that American audiences cared for. But "Tannhaeuser" has, in a few years, become more popular than "Lohengrin," thanks largely to its better staging and interpretation. ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... had set fire to his imagination. It had to do with the lives of the men, the engineers who dared to deal with the wild and terrible power of the western hills, who harnessed and conquered roaring rivers, and sent the power hundreds of miles over the wilderness, by flimsy wires, to turn the wheels of industry and light the dark places of the cities. And, like all men who came into touch with elemental mysteries, they had their moments of pure ecstasy, gaining a tingling, intenser life from the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the lift in silence for a little while. Then Bates caused it to descend again, and Theydon examined the rather flimsy device which fastened ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... me awake, and a worse came to keep it company. The men from the next room came home—students, I suppose. They talked gaily enough, their remarks interspersed by the thuds of falling boots and the other incomprehensible noises of the night. Through the flimsy partition I caught half sentences in that sort of French intonation that is so impossible to attain. It reminded me of the voices of the two men at the Opera. I began to wonder what they had been saying—what they could ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... There is, shall we say, no science of sociology—merely a heap of vague, empirical observations, too flimsy to be useful in strict logical inference? I should, I confess, be apt to say so myself. Then, you may proceed, is it not idle to attempt to introduce a scientific method? And to that I should emphatically reply, No! it is of the highest importance. ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... building, it groaned and shuddered, and now a mass of plaster from the wall would slide and smash, and now some loosened tile would rattle down the roof and crash into the empty greenhouse below. Elizabeth shuddered, and was still; Denton wrapped his gay and flimsy city cloak about her, and so they crouched in the darkness. And ever the thunder broke louder and nearer, and ever more lurid flashed the lightning, jerking into a momentary gaunt clearness the steaming, dripping room ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... a little circuit because the water was coming up further in some of the town streets all the tune, with a rather swift current that threatened to undermine the foundations of numerous flimsy buildings, if ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the morning when the terrific earthquake shook San Francisco and the surrounding country. One shock apparently lasted two minutes and there was an almost immediate collapse of flimsy structures all over the former city. The water supply was cut off and when fires broke out in various sections there was nothing to do but to let the buildings burn. Telegraphic and telephone communication ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Rowdy, from wondering what had made Pink change his attitude so abruptly, began to plan industriously the next meeting with Jessie Conroy, and to build a new castle that was higher and airier than any he had ever before attempted—and perhaps had a more flimsy foundation; for it rested precariously ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... permit me to turn my face towards this stone wall, for I cannot bear to look at the flimsy piece of wire, which is the only battlement of defence that interposes betwixt me and the precipice." He spoke of the bronze balustrade, six feet high, and massive in proportion. Thus saying, and holding fast by the physician's arm, Ursel, though himself a younger and more able man, trembled, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... "It is my destiny. And yet," said she, after a pause, "I would not have you remember me by that flimsy thing. Let me sing you a song your mother loved; let me be remembered in this house, as a singer, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... at all inferior to those of the Kayans, and very similar to them in general plan. But in this as in all other respects the Klemantans exhibit great diversities, some of their houses being built in a comparatively flimsy manner, light timber and even bamboos being used, and the roof being made of leaves. The houses of the Muruts are small and ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the present case belongs to this list of incredible patents which the Patent Office has spawned. The fact that a patent as flimsy and as spurious as this one has to be brought all the way to this Court to be declared invalid dramatically illustrates how far our patent system frequently departs from the constitutional standards which are supposed ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... in the group. Mr. Craske had caught sight of Lady Ostermore and Mistress Winthrop, and he fell to giggling, a flimsy handkerchief to his painted lips. "Oh, 'Sbud!" he bleated. "Let me die! The audaciousness of the creature! And behold me the port and glance of her! Cold as a ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... but they are not meant for self-respecting American women. I fancy my sister-in-law may not wholly approve of it, but I don't know. I shall take pleasure in showing her and the rest that it would be wicked as well as foolish to let a flimsy suggestion of evil interfere with the happiness of two people situated ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... much to be attended to. But here, also, you are to discriminate carefully between true desire and false. The medical men tell us we should eat what we truly have an appetite for; but what we only falsely have an appetite for we should resolutely avoid. It is very true; and flimsy, desultory readers, who fly from foolish book to foolish book, and get good of none, and mischief of all—are not these as foolish, unhealthy eaters, who mistake their superficial false desire after spiceries ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... it is, I call that very flimsy evidence; and I again warn you to be careful how you ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... island do not speak to the other half. And, worse than all, religious differences have been brought up as engines wherewith to wreak political animosities. I never saw a community in which people appeared to hate each other so cordially. The flimsy veil of etiquette does not conceal the pointed sneer, the malicious innuendo, the malignant backbiting, and the unfounded slander. Some of the forms of society are observed in the island—that extreme of civilisation vulgarly ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... great camp, and had caused temporary bridges to be built over all the streams on the way. Owing to the convenient bamboo, this is fairly easy of achievement, for the bamboo is at the same time tough and pliable, and bamboo bridges, in spite of their flimsy appearance, can carry great weights, and can be run up in no time, and kindly Nature furnishes in Bengal an endless supply ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... the Khedivial Palace near Cairo "Kasr al-Nuzhah;" literally, "of Delights;" one of those flimsy new-Cairo buildings which contrast so marvellously with the architecture of ancient and even of mediaeval Egypt, and which are covering the land with modern ruins. Compare Mohammed Ali's mosque in the citadel with the older Sultan ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... in the lock. Kronberg, huddled in a corner, stirred and cunningly hid the flimsy coverings of chintz he had unearthed from an ancient trunk. For three days he had not spoken, three days of bitter, biting cold, three days of creaking, lonely quiet, of mournful wind and shifting lights ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... uselessly down and fire showered thick upon it. Timbers and beams crumbled like paper things and were no more. The whole flimsy ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... many modern aspects of Nagasaki, the residences almost without exception were of flimsy, typical Japanese construction, consisting of wood or wood-frame buildings, with wood walls with or without plaster, and tile roofs. Many of the smaller industries and business establishments were also housed in wooden buildings or flimsily built ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... repeated, in short, the thousand incidents of the fusion of two hearts long separated—stand out in bright array upon the sombre background of the actual scene. Our souls knew each other to their depths under this test, which many a warm affection is unable to bear, finding life too heavy or too flimsy in the close ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... made them seem still more exasperating, and bewildering. Newsboys with shrill voices rasped the air with invitations to buy, and everywhere eager, nervous hands held out their half-pennies for the flimsy sensational rags. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... powers of apprehension were so uncommonly quick as almost to resemble intuition, and the chief care of his preceptor was to prevent him, as a sportsman would phrase it, from over-running his game—that is, from acquiring his knowledge in a slight, flimsy, and inadequate manner. And here the instructor had to combat another propensity too often united with brilliancy of fancy and vivacity of talent—that indolence, namely, of disposition, which can ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... up here in the mountains—why are you not at your station? The potato-sack story is pretty flimsy. Do better than that ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... the residence of a landholder. A huge palace of pine boards immediately springs up in the midst of the wilderness, large enough for a parish church, and furnished with windows of all dimensions, but so rickety and flimsy withal, that every blast gives it ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... is being repaired by the present Rana, under the superintendence of our host and a party of native workmen. Masons and most skilful carvers in stone were busily engaged in the restoration of parts that had fallen into dangerous decay—an extremely flimsy-looking scaffolding, made apparently of light bamboos, tied together in wisps, and forming a fragile-looking ramp, wound spirally up the outside of the tower. My host seemed to consider it a perfectly safe means of ascent, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... twelve years' imprisonment. When he arrived at the penitentiary, he answered the customary questions. "What occupation?" "Statesman." "What religion?" "None." He served one year and was then released on a flimsy technicality by the Court of Appeals. Civil suits were now brought, and, unable to obtain the $3,000,000 bail demanded, the fallen boss was sent to jail. He escaped to Cuba, and finally to Spain, but he was again arrested, returned to New York on a man-of-war, and put into Ludlow Street jail, ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... didn't seem to give comfort, either. And as the boiler was moaning with excess of heat, Lucille dashed for the bathtub. She talked to Marjorie through the flimsy door as she splashed, to the effect that Marjorie had much better let her call up another man and go out on a nice little foursome, instead of staying at home. But there Marjorie was firm. She would have preferred anything to her own ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... Tell them, I say, each or all of these, or a hundred more like them, and to any one you so speak, the answer is—"Pooh, pooh, my dear fellow, never fear—don't fuss yourself —take it easy—to-morrow will do just as well." If, on the other hand, however, you reject such flimsy excuses, and simply say, "I'm booked in the mail," the opposition at once falls to the ground, and your quondam antagonist, who was ready to quarrel with you, is at once prepared to assist in packing ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... sequence, and with development passages, etc.—of these there were none. Some composers were groping blindly after a something they wanted, but they did not hit on it. Self-sustaining musical structures, independent of words, were poor and flimsy. The form of the music that matters was determined by the words. From beginning to end of each composition voice followed voice, one singing, higher or lower, what had been sung by the others, while those others added melodies that made correct harmony. Thus a web ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... had followed for a time the straight road along the sea on that level plain which is the Condamine, the girl turned up a side street. "We live here," she said, and stopped before a structure of white stucco, rococco decoration, and flimsy balconies. Large gold letters, one or two of which were missing, advertised the house as the Hotel Pension Beau Soleil; and those who ran might read that it would be charitable to describe its ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... would have time to make another one. If it proved to be a success, he would be able to warm it up on the following morning. But, just as he began to read the recipe, he noticed that the fire had burnt low and needed instant attention. In his anxiety to prevent it from going out, he put down the flimsy little book and began shovelling coals on the fire. While he was doing that a gust of wind swept through the galley, and carried the recipe-book out through the porthole and into ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the piano, had a transitory look; two light wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the recess—all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... the Pope was supported by French bayonets, but his light coinage would not pass in Paris. Now Papal zouaves are killing the citizens of Paris, and we take light silver and lighter paper. The piece is flimsy enough. It is not its political significance that makes it diverting, but the double-entendre therein. One must laugh a little, you understand. Men are dying out yonder, we might as well laugh a little here. Low whispers in the baignoires, munching of sugared ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... the flimsy railing, a slender body cut through the moonlight, parted the water with a clean sush! and bobbed up almost immediately, within three feet of the boat. Jerry Ring did not have the reputation of being the best diver in Watertown ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... But I am half inclined to believe it because it is so flimsy. I watched him very carefully, as you no doubt did. I was impressed with the belief that the charge of murder surprised him. And it did not appear the surprise of a murderer who thought he had his ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... became so jealous of WILSON, that he took every opportunity of depreciating his singular excellence. Stung by the madness of jealousy, BARRY one day addressing Sir Joshua on his lectures, burst out, "Such poor flimsy stuff as your discourses!" clenching his fist in the agony of the convulsion. After the death of the great artist, BARRY bestowed on him the most ardent eulogium, and deeply grieved over the past. But the race of genius born too "near the sun" have ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... men's expectations by your old wives' fables, and the fire kindled by your accusations has burned itself away. I ask you, Maximus, have you ever seen fire spring up among the stubble, crackling sharply, blazing wide and spreading fast, but soon exhausting its flimsy fuel, dying fast away, leaving not a wrack behind? So they have kindled their accusation with abuse and fanned it with words, but it lacks the fuel of facts and, your verdict once given, is destined to leave not a wrack of calumny behind. The whole of Aemilianus' calumnious accusation was centred ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... his mother, all these became easily apparent. With difficulty Ranald restrained his indignation. He let him talk for some time and then opened out upon him. He read him no long lecture, but his words came forth with such fiery heat that they burned their way clear through all the faults and flimsy selfishness of the younger man till they reached the true heart of him. His ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... name, Madame, that everyone remembers, because it means nightingale," said Leontine, gingerly tearing off an end of the flimsy yellow envelope. ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... doubt, about himself, about his way of living, about all his persuasions. It was a general doubt. It was not a specific suspicion upon this point or that. It was a feeling of detachment and unreality at once extraordinarily vague and extraordinarily oppressive. It was as if he discovered himself flimsy and transparent in a world of minatory solidity and opacity. It was as if he found himself made not of flesh and blood ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... alone to carry on the difficult enterprise of civilizing the natives. In 1830 he wrote to the Secretary of War telling of the progress he had made and of his plans for a log village in which the Indians could live, instead of in the flimsy bark houses, and a log house for the protection of the Indians' property. He begged for financial aid, saying that "Six or eight hundred dollars would mature what has happily been begun, and this sum from the Civilization fund would ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... it. That was brought home to Sir Isaac, very suddenly and disagreeably, while he was lunching at the Climax Club with Sir Robert Charterson. A man named Gobbin, an art critic or something of that sort, one of those flimsy literary people who mar the solid worth of so many great clubs, a man with a lot of hair and the sort of loose tie that so often seems to be less of a tie than a detachment from all decent restraints, told him. Charterson was holding forth upon ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... age, have imitated, if not surpassed, all the excesses of riot, and lust and rapine, ever practiced under the barbarism of the ages of antiquity? Do not the women of this age go lower in shamelessness than the women of ancient times? Here we see them veiling their faces with the flimsy gauze of artifice, and befouling the pure waters of life with the turbulent stream of their own vanity. They pollute the purity of real beauty by the foul arts of beautifying, and cry out in loud rude voices in every assembly ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... impose on me in the least. I was too much accustomed to analytical labors to be baffled by so flimsy a veil. I determined to probe the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... places with the affairs of the Roman Empire, of which we have several credible histories. Now, there are two modes of investigation open to us, the dogmatic and the inductive. We may take either. We may construct for ourselves, from the most flimsy suppositions, a metaphysical balloon, inflated with self-conceit into the rotundity of a cosmogony, according to which, in our opinion, the world should have been made, and we may paint it over with the figures ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... sleepless, smoked on; he was thinking of Evelyn Langham. After his interview with her husband that afternoon he had gone to his own apartment. His bedroom adjoined North's parlor and through the flimsy lath and plaster partition he had distinctly heard a woman's voice. The sound of that voice and the suspicion it instantly begot added to his furious hatred of North, for he had long suspected that something ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... he took a firmer hold, in one hand seizing my arm above the elbow, and gripping my shoulder with the other so tightly that, through my flimsy covering, his strong fingers bruised me so severely that in a calmer moment I would have squirmed and ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Mutiny in a Madhouse. Dressgoods was being looted by a howling mob of women, who were pulling bolts of material from shelves and fighting among themselves over them. Somebody had turned on the electric fans, and long streams of flimsy fabric were blowing about like a surrealist maypole dance. Somebody in Household Furnishings had turned on a couple of fans, too, and a mob of hoodlums were opening cans of paint and throwing them into the ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... works. It would be tedious to both the reader and author, here to repeat what has been before written of Sir Thomas More—whose memory lives in every cultivated bosom. Of this edition of the Utopia there appeared a flimsy and tart censure in the Edinburgh Review, by a critic, who, it was manifest, had never examined the volumes, and who, when he observes upon the fidelity of Bishop Burnet's translation of the original Latin of More, was resolved, from pure love of ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... without wondering which dead Caesar my saucy Burt boot No. 2 is walking over. I shouldn't mind trampling old Caligula, but I don't like the thought on general principles. I feel all out of place, so modern and fixed up and flimsy. If I could get into old picturesque clothes and out of the English-speaking quarter, I should not be so oppressed and might worship Rome. But I seriously think I shall die if I stay here much longer. There's a spirit-malaria that eats into my life. I feel as if all the volumes of Roman ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... and the Italian Republics, the gradual liberation of Russia the use made of the caravan routes by some of the most active of the Western clergy, are the chief notes of the time between the Polos and Prince Henry; and the flimsy fabrications of Mandeville—"of all liars that type of the first magnitude"—would be fairly left without a word even in a minute history of discovery, if he had not, like Ktesias with Herodotus, won a hearing for himself and drawn men's minds away from the truth-telling original ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... readers as take interest in genuine records of glowing patriotism, to turn to general Miller's "Memoirs"—for such volumes of exhaustless variety and importance are seldom met with in these days of flimsy literature. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... tale, and Spiridion thought exactly like him. As for the innocent Pascalon, he was horribly afraid of women, and reddened to the ears when the name of the Little Scheideck was uttered before him, thinking some lady of flimsy morals was referred to. The poor lover was therefore reduced to keep his confidences to himself, and console himself alone—which, after all, is the ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... pomp of words to raise A courtly monument of empty praise, Where self, transpiring through the flimsy pile, Betrays the builder's ostentatious guile, Accept, oh West, these unaffected lays, Which genius claims and grateful justice pays. Still green in age, thy vig'rous powers impart The youthful freshness of ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... one species of plant, itself of doubtful origin (variety or hybrid), and offering phenomena in no way different from scores of other cultivated plants. Never, I should think, has such a vast hypothetical structure been erected on so flimsy a basis! ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... tapestry, preserved by the careful mending of many hundreds of needles worked by hands long ago mingled with the dust of the grave, and, strange as it may seem to those who are only acquainted with the flimsy manufactures of to-day, the same stout hand-wrought linen, which, mended and replenished each year, lasted so long because never washed by modern methods, but always by hand in clear cold running water. There were presses full of this linen, deliriously scented with lavender, and there were also ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... downtown after nine o'clock. On starlight nights I used to pace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side, with their storm-windows and covered back porches. They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... leave strong memories behind him. Yet Rex knew well by what strange accidents the deceit of an assumed identity is often penetrated. Some old comrade or companion of the lost heir might suddenly appear with keen questions as to trifles which could cut his flimsy web to shreds, as easily as the sword of Saladin divided the floating silk. He could not afford to ignore the most insignificant circumstances. With consummate skill, piece by piece he built up the story which was to deceive the poor mother, and to make him possessor ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... wire in silence. Her face turned a shade whiter than before, if that were possible, and there was a smouldering anger in her eyes as she crushed the flimsy sheet in suddenly tense fingers and tossed it into ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... was to suppress disorder, maintain the public peace, and protect persons and property of loyal citizens—all simple police duties. For issuing his proclamation without consultation with the President, he could offer only the flimsy excuse that it involved two days of time to communicate with Washington, while he well knew that no battle was pending and no invasion in progress. This reckless misuse of power President Lincoln also corrected with his dispassionate prudence and habitual courtesy. He immediately ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... to get up a sensation in the interest of their own flimsy sheets. There is some disturbance, but nothing like what people are made believe by ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... of Sirens or of Odysseys, hold their own theory with regard to the disputed name, which they connect with the construction of a harbour at distant Salerno, and though this legend sounds foolish enough, it is scarcely less flimsy than the notions already quoted. A certain enchanter, one Pietro Bajalardo, undertook—in modern parlance, contracted—to build in a single night the much needed breakwater at Salerno on the strange ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... But, by the way, my dear, did you introduce any real proof that he is the scoundrel you say he is? Seems to me the poor girl is right in the stand she takes. She wants proof, and positive proof, you know. I don't blame her. How the deuce can she break it off with the fellow on the flimsy excuse that Phil Quentin and Lady Saxondale say he is a rascal? You've all been acting like a tribe of ninnies, if you'll pardon my ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... certain bad issue. The moral of the Jesuit's story I think as wholesome a one as ever was writ: the artfullest, the wisest, the most toilsome, and dexterous plot-builders in the world—there always comes a day when the roused public indignation kicks their flimsy edifice down, and sends its cowardly enemies a-flying. Mr. Swift hath finely described that passion for intrigue, that love of secrecy, slander, and lying, which belongs to weak people, hangers-on of weak courts. 'Tis the nature of such ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you want a drink of milk," said the visitor. In comparison with the dwellings of small farmers in Eastern France or in Southern Italy this Donegal cabin was not only clean but attractive. It was more squalid perhaps, but less dreary than the extemporised and flimsy dwellings of settlers in the extreme Far West of the United States, and I should say decidedly a more wholesome habitation than the hermetically sealed and dismal wooden houses of hundreds of struggling farmers in the older Eastern States. I am ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... previous instructions, promptly seized a helmet and poleaxe and made his way to the front. The fire had started in one of many flimsy wooden buildings, and had rapidly spread to threaten a whole district. Men from the hook and ladder companies were already at work on some of the hopeless cases. A fireman or two mounted ladders to ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... American federal republic. He decorates it with "social institutions"; he would regulate the property relations "according to rational principles," and the seven great measures wherewith he would abolish the old bourgeois society are by no means wretched flimsy recipes collected from modern, objectionable ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... wealth.' What contempt is expressed in putting the two side by side! It is as if the author had said, 'Look on this picture and on that!' Two fortresses! Yes! The one is like Gibraltar, inexpugnable on its rock, and the other is like a painted castle on the stage; flimsy canvas that you could put your foot through—solidity by the side of nothingness. For even the poor appearance of solidity is an illusion, as our text says with bitter emphasis—'a high ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... initials P. P. C. (pour prendre conge) in the right-hand corner. In New York many men send cards by mail, offering the excuse that the city is too large to get about to make personal calls. This is only a flimsy pretext, and should have ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... inventions, which do not take into consideration the evil tendencies of the human mind, they have led to a system of degrading idolatry, while the simple truths of Christianity have been superseded by a flimsy tissue of falsehoods. Although the members of the Greek Church are iconoclasts, or image-breakers, and allow no actual images to be set up on their altars, it must be owned that they pay just as much adoration to the pictures of their saints as the Roman Catholics ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... four walls of London. Howsomever, what I principally notised was, that the tea and coffee is not made by the lady of the house, but out of the room, and brought in without sugar or milk, on servors, every one helping himself, and only plain flimsy loaf and butter is served—no such thing as shortbread, seed-cake, bun, marmlet, or jeelly to be seen, which is an okonomical plan, and well worthy of adaptation in ginteel families with narrow incomes, in ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... Rosenblatt had finally been appeased. The place was deserted and lay bare and ugly in the dull light. The gallant ship of the night before was seen to be a poor, flimsy make-shift. No wonder Mr. Rosenblatt had wished billows to engulf it and mist to shroud it. He sat on a beam lying at the ship end of the pool and stared moodily ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Shreds of the wreck flapped wildly in its eyes. Spider-like ribs clung to its massive limbs and poked its reeking sides, while the swaying handle kept tapping its cheeks and ears and nose, as if taunting the creature with being held and badgered by a thing so flimsy and insignificant! ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... the last words, when a startling interruption led to consequences which the persons present had not foreseen. A shrill, wailing voice suddenly pierced through the flimsy partition which divided the front room and the back room. "Bread!" cried the voice in French; "I'm hungry. ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... would my greenhouse be? And where would this house be, for that matter? and the furniture in it? and how should we all dress? Your mother wouldn't wear velvet dresses, that you like so much; and mine wouldn't wear that flimsy muslin stuff that she likes so much; and grandmamma's lace shawl would never have been mended, for it never would have been here to get burnt. It's all a lot of nonsense, that's ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... with a mind suddenly swept into a new atmosphere, and opened the flimsy cover. Shutting her eyes, she lay still for a moment —still and vague; she was only conscious of one thing, that a curtain had dropped on the terrible pictures she had seen, and that her mind was in a comforting quiet. Presently she roused herself, and turned the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... confidence, that it will on all hands be admitted that we have not sought to evade the difficulties of our position; that we have not concealed those difficulties, either from ourselves or from others; that we have not attempted to counteract them by narrow or flimsy expedients; that we have prepared plans which, if you will adopt them, will go some way to close up many vexed financial questions—questions such as, if not now settled, may be attended with public ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... compromised, or rather sacrificed, by the treaty. She readily discerned in the provision for her marriage with an infant still in the cradle, only a flimsy veil intended to disguise the king of Portugal's desertion of her cause. Disgusted with a world, in which she had hitherto experienced nothing but misfortune herself, and been the innocent cause of so much to others, she determined to renounce ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... condemning the Puritans. The book speedily became famous and was the source of all Royalist arguments against the Commonwealth. In 1649 appeared Milton's Eikonoklastes (Image Breaker), which demolished the flimsy arguments of the Eikon Basilike as a charge of Cromwell's Ironsides had overwhelmed the king's followers. After the execution of the king appeared another famous attack upon the Puritans, Defensio Regia pro Carlo I, instigated by Charles ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... does not belong to a false man: the false man sees false shows, plausibilities, expediences: the true man is needed to discern even practical truth. Cromwell's advice about the Parliament's Army, early in the contest, How they were to dismiss their city-tapsters, flimsy riotous persons, and choose substantial yeomen, whose heart was in the work, to be soldiers for them: this is advice by a man who saw. Fact answers, if you see into Fact. Cromwell's Ironsides were the embodiment of this insight of his; men fearing God; and without any other fear. No more ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... very justice to the dead, to convince himself that the mother of his children was corrupt only at heart,—that the Black Horses had come to the door in time,—and, wretchedly consoled by that niggardly conviction, flinging into the flames the last flimsy tatters on which his honour (rock-like in his own keeping) had been fluttering to and fro in the charge of a vain treacherous fool,—envy you that mourner? No! not even in his release. Memory is not nailed down in the velvet ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the blaze Those bright burning-glasses contain, Whose lens with concentrated rays Proved fatal to old Drury Lane? 'Twas all accidental, they cry, - Away with the flimsy humbug! 'Twas fired by a flash from the eye ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... on it, and it was 'anything to take off her thoughts from that man.' So I went into her room, and oh! if you could have seen the poor thing, with her short breath and racking cough, her cheeks burning and her eyes glistening at that flimsy trumpery. One bunch of the silver flowers on my skirt was wrong; she spied it, and they would not thwart her, so she would have the needle, and the skeleton trembling fingers set them right. They said she would sleep the easier ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the auto had turned the bend in the river road, and the occupants saw the toll-bridge and the peaceful hamlet of Culm Falls. There was no stir there. The toll-bridge keeper was not even out of his cottage, and the light and flimsy gates were down across the driveway at either end of the bridge. The bend in the river hid the advancing wall of water. Perhaps, too, it deadened the sound of the bursting dam and ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... baby dolls with bodies made of grey cardboard, smiling after the manner of idols, monstrous and serene as they. Little six-penny dolls, dressed like servant girls, stretch out their arms, little stumpy arms so flimsy that the least breath of air sets them a-tremble. But the little maid whose hair is made of liquid light, has no eyes for these dolls and puppets. Her whole soul hangs upon the lips of a beautiful baby doll that seems to be calling her ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... which his honest heart would not let him believe. He stared stupidly at Vada's dirty face. Then, as the child withdrew to her play, he suddenly crossed the room to the curtained bedroom doorway. He passed through, and the flimsy ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... the land, they said, such things was happening all the time from the same cause. And we knew it well, we knew of the wide open pit, veiled with tempting covering, wove by Selfishness and Greed, scattered over with flimsy flowers of excuse, palliation, expediency that tempts and engulfs our brightest youth, the noblest manhood, old and young, rich ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... women were eating the dulces passed by the Indian servants. The men had not yet gone into the dining-room. Valencia dropped her handkerchief; Reinaldo, stooping to recover it, kissed her hand behind its flimsy shelter. ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... This rather flimsy piece of evidence rests upon a conclusion drawn from the end of my conversation with the spirit. I was still banging about the room, then, and I said that I had finished with psychical research, that never again would I make the least ...
— The Psychical Researcher's Tale - The Sceptical Poltergeist - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • J. D. Beresford
... who doth disdain Flimsy safeguards raised by man, Struck a blow more swift and sure In that I was ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... Fanny's second visit was not as her first. The first had seen the outraging and repelling of the nobler nature by the ignoble. Diana had frankly not been able to endure her cousin. There was not a trace of that now. Her father's papers had told her abundantly how flimsy, how nearly fraudulent, was the financial claim which Fanny and her belongings had set up. The thousand pounds had been got practically on false pretences, and Diana knew it now, in every detail. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... open range with nothing except the sky for shelter, so towns were knocked together—queer, greasy, ramshackle settlements of flimsy shacks—and so quickly were they built that they outran the law, which is ever deliberate. The camps of the black-lime district, which had been considered hell holes, were in reality models of order compared with these mushroom ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... this mars the effect. The work is carried out in a frame; it is quickly executed and economical, the thread being practically all upon the surface. Owing to the length of the stitches, this is not a very durable method, so it should not be subjected to hard wear. The work has sometimes a flimsy, unsatisfactory appearance, probably because of these long stitches. It will be seen that the silk passing through to the back, and then immediately to the front again, takes up very little of the material. A method in use for giving greater strength in this way is to lay ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... show," Mrs. Ladybug declared. "They're so flimsy and delicate that Betsy Butterfly never dares venture out in bad weather. Of what use would I be to Farmer Green if I had wings like hers? If I stayed under cover whenever the sun didn't shine, the orchard would ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... or putting final touches to their toilet in the broad light of day. The native officers alone aspired to a certain degree of privacy. Their huts were detached a little space from those that guarded the horses; and flimsy walls of grass matting, set around them, imparted a suggestion of dignity and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... recommendation of the assembly by a similar resolution. From your own acknowledgment at the City Tavern, the resolution of the Council was never obtained, or even moved for, by you, and for this flimsy reason, that no formal information, of such resolution having passed, had been communicated to you; though known to all the world; and that it could not be expected that Council would "tag" after the assembly, in a measure relating to the public. Yet you had the effrontery ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... we may mention, without offending delicacy, the well-known name of SIR GEORGE FLIMSY, of the firm of FLIMSY, DIDDLER AND FLASH) smilingly asked MR. JAMES what was the amount of his savings, wondering considerably how—out of an income of thirty guineas, the main part of which he spent in bouquets, silk stockings and perfumery—MR. PLUSH could have ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... thing has happened!" exclaimed Matty, who was seated on a very flimsy chair, which she had purchased from Mr. Fiction. It gave such a loud crack as she leant back upon it, that Nelly expected to see it come to pieces beneath the weight ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... enough not to turn on full speed, knowing what a terrific strain this condition of affairs must be upon the entire fabric, flimsy at best; and if anything gave way it was all over with them; for if a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a heavier-than-air flying machine certainly comes under ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... such a flimsy, round-about, unmeaning commencement as this, would expect the delightful, unexaggerated, home-felt descriptions of natural scenery, which are scattered in such unconscious profusion through this and the following cantos? For instance, the very next passage is crowded with a ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... Muller, his tall bearded son Rufus, and a thin but motherly-looking elderly woman, came forth to meet the travellers; and in the front, full stare, stood a trollopy-looking girl, every bar of her enormous hoop plainly visible through her washed-out flimsy muslin. This was Miss Ianthe, who condescended to favour the family with her assistance till she should have made up dollars enough to buy a new dress! The elder woman, who went by the name of Cousin Deborah, would have been a housekeeper in England—here she was one of the family—welcomed ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... experience of the Society," he said, "and never perhaps in the history of astronomy, had an alleged discovery of such magnitude and consequence been promulgated on the strength of such flimsy evidence;" and after traversing in detail all the arguments of his opponent, he declared it his firm conviction that the effects which Professor Gazen had thought fit to advance as a "discovery," were neither more nor less than an optical illusion, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... him—she did lead him in spiritual things; led him out of common circles of thought, into refreshing new spheres; he had reminiscences of his having relished the juices of the not quite obviously comic, through her indications: and really, in spite of her inferior flimsy girl's education, she could boast her acquirements; she was quick, startlingly; modest, too, in commerce with a slower mind that carried more; though she laughed and was a needle for humour: she taught him at times to put away his contempt of the romantic; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "MIMSY" is "flimsy and miserable" (there's another portmanteau for you). And a "BOROGOVE" is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round—something ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... body, pampered with easily obtained luxuries, instead of having to win the necessaries of life by heavy toil, loses its self-helpfulness; and with self-respect and self-help vanish all the savage virtues, few and flimsy as they are, and the downward road toward begging and stealing, sottishness and idleness, is ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... to me, with a full discharge on the back of it, to be shown on occasion, but to secure to him the benefit of my service, I was to sign new indentures for the remainder of the term, which were to be kept private. A very flimsy scheme it was; however, it was immediately executed, and the paper went on accordingly, under my name ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... the hill. The troopers who were left behind stacked their guns and sallied out after railroad ties with which to build defenses. Anderson, the scout, rode up the slope to a secluded point from which he was to keep watch. The women were instructed to stay inside the log cabin that adjoined the flimsy quarters of the engineers. Baxter, with his assistants, overhauled the guns and ammunition left; and Neale gathered up all the maps and plans and drawings and put them in a ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... Quarrier, showing the edges of his well-kept teeth. "Is this intimidation, Mr. Siward? Do I understand that you are proposing to bespatter others with scandal unless I am frightened into going to the governors with the flimsy excuse you attempt to offer me? In other words, Mr. Siward, are you bent on making me pay for what you believe you know of my private life? Is ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... heavy sash windows opening on a narrow brick-walled town-garden sloping down to a river, and neatly kept. The same might be said of the room, where heavy old-fashioned furniture, handsome but not new, was concealed by various flimsy modernisms, knicknacks, fans, brackets, china photographs and water-colours, a canary singing loud in the window ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... himself so well; he cut, capered, and set to his partner with unusual agility; we naturally participated in the admiration he excited, and in the fullness of our triumph, while brushing past the flimsy nankeens worn by Tibbins, I could not refrain from bestowing a smart kick upon his shins, that brought the tears to his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... makes for better social and intellectual relations, good understanding and friendship, and so for political relations much more substantial in the case of many of the republics than the rather flimsy Pan-Americanism celebrated in eloquent ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... style in the "Mekor Hayim" is against him. It is devoid of all merit whether of literary beauty or of logical conciseness and brevity. It is diffuse to a degree and frequently very wearisome and tedious. One has to wade through pages upon pages of bare syllogisms, one more flimsy than another. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... houses are curious to look at, for they have neither windows nor doors; for the best dwellings are built round an open court, and the windows, or air-holes as they might more properly be called, open on to that. Instead of being light and built of some flimsy stuff, as you might expect, the houses are all put up 'on the heat-resisting principle,' as I heard an engineer describe them— just like the Irishman that wore his Connemara frieze coat in summer to keep out the ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... had the happiness of being recommended. She very obligingly presented me to some of the most distinguished of the Venetian families at their great casino, which looks into the piazza, and consists of five or six rooms, fitted up in a gay flimsy taste, neither rich nor elegant, where were a great many lights, and a great many ladies negligently dressed, their hair falling very freely about them, and innumerable adventures written in their eyes. The gentlemen were lolling upon the sofas ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... ever such an uproar!" exclaimed Martie, ceasing her operations at the machine and leaning back in her chair with a long sigh. The lengths of flimsy white curtaining she had been hemming slipped to the floor; she put her hands behind her head, and yawned luxuriously. The room was close, and even at four o'clock there was need of lights; its other occupants were only two, the child who played ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... flimsy sheet again and re-read the pitiful words. The letter could be answered easily enough. If she replied truthfully, she would relate a tragic history of a winter of lonely despair lived out in the ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... with too much money, more money than she could possibly have used for herself in any legitimate way. First, she got her father to give her all she could get out of him. Her second step would be to write to me for all I could spare, making flimsy excuses for her need ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... of the street. But not for a moment did he think of turning back, though he knew how awful the danger would be if he tried to go up that burning stairway. He cast about for some sort of protection. A flimsy curtain of cotton material was stretched across a doorway. This Hodge pulled down and wrapped round his head, protecting his hands with it also as well as he could. Then he measured the stairway and its direction with ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... from the neighbors that neither the two women nor the aged marquis had been abroad since the day upon which the duenna had surprised a glance between the young girl in her charge and Henri. The bond, so flimsy withal, which united the two lovers ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... edge of the table, produced a cigarette, lighted it, picked up the four pages of formulas, and held the burning match to their edges. The flame caught, flared up the flimsy paper. Darrow dropped the burning corners as it scorched his fingers. It fell to the floor, flickered, ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... grip, and gave it a yank. Then I twisted opposite corners around my fingers and frankly pulled at it. The absurd sheet refused to tear, and I realized how ridiculous I must look to Callahan to be unable to tear a flimsy sheet of paper. I suppose I lost my temper a little. I gathered as much of the paper as I could in each hand, bent over to put my hands on the inside of my knees, and pulled until I heard my back muscles crack. I let out my breath explosively ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... had told. The passion of investigation, which had grown lusty by long exercise, rose within him triumphing over his personal inclinations. Too much was at stake to miss a chance like this. Honour in this situation seemed like a flimsy sentiment. He waited for the answer of the girl's ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... sleeping-corner before her mother's return, when in his drunken helplessness he fell against the table, overturning the kerosene lamp, and the curtains were all aflame in an instant. It was just after taps—or ten o'clock—when Kate's shrieks aroused the inmates of Sudsville and started the cry of "Fire." The flimsy structure of pine boards burned like so much tinder, and the child and her stupefied father had been dragged forth only in time to save their lives. The little one, after giving the alarm, had rushed again into the house and was tugging at ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... no flimsy, transitory, noisy, ignorant, hysterical agitation. Smoke is not fire. If the temperature were higher, and the fire more wisely fed, there would not be any. But we do want a more obvious and powerful ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... soon ripened into friendship, leading to much personal intercourse and a variety of literary schemes. Mr. Gilchrist first started a proposal to publish a 'Select collection of Old Plays,' in fifteen volumes, and on the failure of this scheme, owing to the sudden appearance of a flimsy kind of work called 'Old Plays,' Mr. Taylor and he agreed to launch a new monthly publication, under the revived title of 'The London Magazine.' The negotiations for carrying out this work were pending between writer and publisher, when ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... degree. He planned, vaguely, to invite a friend who was skilled in the diagnosis of obscure mental disorders to spend a week-end with him, a little later on, and to ask him to observe his father closely. He did not doubt but that Anthony Dexter would see quickly through so flimsy a pretence, but, unless he improved, something of the kind would have ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... Code Schofield, I presume," he announced, thrusting his hand nervously into his pocket and bringing out a fistful of papers. So eager and excited was he that, unnoticed, he dropped one flimsy sheet, many ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... whisper be heard against his name. Under the coarse, rusty, one-pronged spur of sectarian or political rancor, or from the knawing consciousness of sterile inferiority to a creative mind, plenty of people are ready and eager to try, with their net-work of flimsy phrases, to cramp the play of a giant's limbs, or, with the slow slimy poison of envy and malice, to spot and deform his beauty and his symmetry. To such, to the half-eyed and the half-souled, to the prosaic and the unsympathetic, be left ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... always carried in the air, her light eyes unmeaning, her flaxen eyebrows heavy, her flaxen curls crowned by a pea-green turban. Her choice attire was generally composed, as to-day, of some cheap, flimsy, gauzy material bright in colour. This evening it was orange lace, all flounces and frills, with a lace scarf; and she generally had innumerable ends of quilted net flying about her skirts, not unlike tails. It was certain she did not spend much money upon her own attire; ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in such a crowd anyway?" continued the woman, "when you're so weak. You look as flimsy as a dish-rag. What have you been doing? Let me give ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... trait in illustration of the nature which from time to time pierced through and rent the flimsy fabric of his opinions. This anecdote is ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... their hearts this weight and extent of the reasons that call that they should join in united effort for the salvation of the nation and the conversion of the world; and that this does not allow that there shall be anything of flimsy, shallow, or hypocritical concealment of ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... Surrounded by a few villagers, he squatted before his flimsy, frond-roofed hut, his mouth in grotesque motion. Now, he stopped his noisemaking and poised his head. Then he nodded, looking ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... Plaster statues stand here and there, one of them without a head, thus disclosing the hollowness of the trunk; there were one or two little drizzly fountains, with the water dripping over the rock-work, of which the English are so fond; and the buildings for the animals and other purposes had a flimsy, pasteboard aspect of pretension. The garden was in its undress; few visitors, I suppose, coming hither at this time of day,—only here and there a lady and children, a young man and girl, or a couple of citizens, loitering about. I take pains to remember these small items, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... leading might have become habitual, and he might possibly have been saved from the sad fate that awaited him. However, though tempted for a moment, he refused because it did not seem a good investment, being a flimsy little building, not ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... was saying. Hardy people, those dwellers in that cottage. Shrapnel was dropping about here and there in the fields near by, and at any moment might come into the roof of their cottage, or through the flimsy walls. ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... badly-repaired ten-roomed house, with a great flimsy saloon built at one side of it, smelling of paint and damp plaster, and called the Lecture Theater. It was the chilliest, ugliest, emptiest, gloomiest place I ever entered in my life; the idea of doing anything ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... Presently there were thumps and bangs as grapplers clanged on the surface of the craft. Mud gurgled around them as they were hauled up and out with the sound of a giant sipping soup. A mud-encrusted hatchway flew open, and Kielland stepped down on a flimsy-looking platform below. Four small rodent-like creatures were attached to it by ropes; they heaved with a will and began paddling through the soupy mud dragging the platform and Kielland toward a row of low wooden buildings near some ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... expenditure, soon rendered him bankrupt. He had no means of paying the soldiers or meeting his own appetites. Then began, or increased, his attacks on wealthy persons, his executions and banishments of senators and other wealthy men, and his flimsy pretexts for all manner of confiscation. The Senate he hated and the Senate hated him. Nevertheless, so far as the empire itself was concerned, no systematic or widespread oppression can have been perceptible. His officers and the officers of the Senate were ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... buy flimsy furniture, however cheap. As a rule, there is too much furniture in the American home. It is better to get along with a few good, durable articles, even though a little expensive, than with a profusion of inferior ones. These soon reveal their "cheap and nasty qualities," ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... Away with the flimsy idea that life with a past is attended. There's now—only now—and no past. There's never a past; it has ended. Away with the obsolete story and all of its yesterday sorrow! There's only Today, almost gone, and in front of Today ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... defence and impossible to justify. It is not surprising that people begin to say: "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Let us experience all we desire. Let us act like the normal healthy creatures that we are. Let us ignore the flimsy barriers a corrupt and imbecile moral code would erect between us and ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... chapter of my own story was written by unknown hands. The epilogue remained, in which I was to go on seeking what contentment I could find in action. But my whole story was not written on these flimsy pages. It was before me always and always I was turning to it, always asking myself how it would have run had this not happened or had that occurred. Studying it over and over again in my room at night and on my long walks up-town, I found that I could not ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... the injured de Lamotte, but the bourgeoisie accepted the grocer's story and made merry over the deceived husband. Interrogated, however, by the magistrate of the Chatelet, Derues' position became more difficult. Under the stress of close questioning the flimsy fabric of his financial statements fell to pieces like a house of cards. He had to admit that he had never paid Mme. de Lamotte 100,000 livres; he had paid her only 25,000 livres in gold; further pressed he said that the 25,000 livres had been made up partly in gold, partly in ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... if you were to give out that you composed my speech, you know very well that people would say it was only your raillery, your fondness for putting a victim in the pillory and amusing the public at his expense. It is too flimsy, Miss Hawkins, for a person of your fine inventive talent—contrive an abler device than ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... place was that of dullness and primness. This fortunate chance has protected the little town from the vulgarizing influences of the unlettered hordes let loose upon the coast in summer-time, and we find a sea-front without the flimsy meretricious buildings of the popular resorts. Instead of imitating Blackpool and Margate, this sensible place has retained a quiet and semi-rural front to the sea, and, as already stated, has not marred its appearance ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... had made Pink change his attitude so abruptly, began to plan industriously the next meeting with Jessie Conroy, and to build a new castle that was higher and airier than any he had ever before attempted—and perhaps had a more flimsy foundation; for it rested precariously on Pink's ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... the order he objects to could operate), or in presuming a fall of exports from a regulation which took place only in November, 1766; whose effects could not appear until the following year; and which, when they do appear, utterly overthrow all his flimsy reasons and affected suspicions upon the effect ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... ornaments, by the Kotzebues, and other 'intellectual Jacobins,' whose productions have brought what we falsely call the 'German Theatre' into such deserved contempt in England. Some portion of the gall, due only to these inflated, flimsy, and fantastic persons, appears to have acted on certain critics in estimating this play of Schiller's. August Wilhelm Schlegel speaks slightingly of the work: he says, 'it will hardly move us by its tone of overstrained sensibility, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... that, excepting the extraordinary behaviour and the veiled but significant statements of Nicol Brinn, his theory that Sir Charles Abingdon had not died from natural causes rested upon data of the most flimsy description. From Phil Abingdon he had learned nothing whatever. Her evidence merely tended to ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... real proof that he is the scoundrel you say he is? Seems to me the poor girl is right in the stand she takes. She wants proof, and positive proof, you know. I don't blame her. How the deuce can she break it off with the fellow on the flimsy excuse that Phil Quentin and Lady Saxondale say he is a rascal? You've all been acting like a tribe of ninnies, if you'll pardon my ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... to disregard the tortuous writhings of the long supple body.—Again. These attacks are seven. Must seven men with "concert and comparison,"—with leisure and inclination too,—be procured to demolish this flimsy compound of dogmatism and unbelief? to disperse these cloudy doubts, and to analyse and repel these many ambiguous statements?—Once more. A fool can assert, and in a moment, that 'There is no GOD.' But ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... your flimsy things, cried Natty, throwing loose the folds of a covering buckskin that he carried on his arm, and wrapping her form in it, in such a manner as to envelop her whole person; now follow, for its a matter of life and ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... had been growing more sultry and oppressive every moment; a heavy storm was evidently gathering—already a few heat-drops had fallen. Malcolm was a man who noticed details; he perceived at once that the ragged cover of the perambulator offered a flimsy and insufficient protection. Then he glanced at the umbrella in his hand; it was a dandified article, with a handsomely ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to a lean mustang. Lucy swung into the saddle. She thought how singular a coincidence it was that she had worn a riding-habit. It was dark and thick, and comfortable for riding. Suppose she had worn the flimsy dress, in which she had met Slone every night save this one? Thought of Slone gave her a pang. He would wait and wait and wait. He would go back to his cabin, not knowing ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... unimportant. Just a note from a girl on Vesta. He promised himself that he'd make his next break at Vesta, come what may. He stuck the flimsy in his pocket, and waited while the checker went through the routine of recording his log and making out ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... occasioned by Solange's dramatic entrance, noises of the camp could be heard through the flimsy walls. Far down the canyon faint shouts could be heard. Some one was calling to animals of some sort, apparently. A faint voice, muffled by snow, ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... easy enough now," he remarked. "The partition between this sitting room and that little bedroom is only an artificial one—something almost as flimsy as a screen. You see," he continued, tapping with his knuckles, "you can almost put your hand through it. If you look a little lower down, you will see where an opening has been made. Fluffy Dean was being taken ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... encounter between them I played a clumsy detective in proving that the two avoided each other and that there had been some interwovenness of interests in the past. Several times when I asked Father Michel to join us at table he gave me flimsy excuses, and once the duke pleaded indisposition when I proposed that he should accompany Father Michel on an inspection of some stained glass which Nancy was having put in the altar ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... way to the rear room separated from the front shop only by a flimsy wooden partition, I expected I know ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... succeeded in setting up the tent on the leeward side of the ledge. Blinded by the vivid flashes of lightning, and drenched by the rain, which fell in torrents, we crept, half dead with fear and anguish, under our flimsy shelter. Neither the anguish nor the fear was on our own account, for we were comparatively safe, but for poor little Binny Wallace, driven out to sea in the merciless gale. We shuddered to think of him in that frail shell, drifting on and on to ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... report of this speech brought a radiant smile of relief to Sewell's face. "Ah, well, then! That settles it! I feel perfectly sure that 'Manda Grier will win the day. That poor, sick, flimsy little Statira is completely under 'Manda Grier's thumb, and will do just what she says, now that there's no direct appeal from her will to Barker's; they will never be married. Don't you see that it was 'Manda Grier's romance in the beginning, and ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... as of evil spirits spoke close in our ears—tauntingly, temptingly, whispering to the mischievous wild beast which lurks in the bottom of all our hearts, now, "Rouse up! art thou a man and darest not do this thing?" now, "Rise, kill and eat—it is thine, wilt thou not take it? Shall the flimsy scruples of this teacher, or the sanctified cant of that, bar thy way, and balk thee of thine own? Thou hast strength to brave them—to brave all things in earth, or heaven, or hell; put out thy strength and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... little book, which smelled faintly of jasmine. Momentary shame overcame him at thus stealing the secrets of an unknown girl. Necessity, however, left him no choice but to seize any chance of learning more of this ship of mystery and her invisible haunter. He broke the flimsy fastening. ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... said Anthony, his grey eyes very wide and bright. "There is a lady in the room yonder and the doors are devilish flimsy, otherwise I should endeavour to describe the kind of thing you are—I intend very shortly to tread on ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... to-day from the life of the gatherer of wild rubber in the jungle. In Brazil, the solitary workers have to plunge at dawn into the perilous forest, with its lurking wildcats and jaguars, its coiled and creeping serpents. The dwellings are flimsy huts, food is scarce and expensive, and disease and fever cause ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... us at that moment. You will see that there is a mass of evidence against him, and practically the whole defence is that such a crime would be impossible to one of his temperament. You know yourself how flimsy ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... of Donnaville. Let him but get his applications past the land ring's tool in the state land office, and a receipt issued for his first payment, and Donnaville would be no longer a dream. Should the applications be rejected later on some flimsy pretext, he would commence a mandamus suit to enforce the selection of his lands, and force action of the pending applications of the land ring, whereby they so artfully "tied up the basis" of exchange. If he should find himself opposed by a corrupt judge who should rule ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... under previous instructions, promptly seized a helmet and poleaxe and made his way to the front. The fire had started in one of many flimsy wooden buildings, and had rapidly spread to threaten a whole district. Men from the hook and ladder companies were already at work on some of the hopeless cases. A fireman or two mounted ladders to the eaves, dragging with them a heavy hook on the end of a long pole. Cutting a small ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... that sweeps the clouded sky. Ask him his griefs; what midnight demons plough The lines of torture on his lofty brow; Unlock those marble lips, and bid them speak The mystery freezing in his bloodless cheek. His secret? Hid beneath a flimsy word; One foolish whisper that ambition heard; And thus it spake: "Behold yon gilded chair, The world's one vacant throne,—thy ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... about with him as she does. She hardly lets him get out of her sight when he's in town. I invited them to tea the last time they were here and she wouldn't let him come; kept him at her house, made some flimsy excuse, and had the evening with him to herself. She's tried her best ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... leaves to feed upon. When full grown the caterpillars measure about one inch in length and are covered with hairs both long and short. The matured caterpillars leave the webs and crawl down the trees to hunt for places beneath the bark, under sticks, weeds and trash in which to pupate. A light, flimsy cocoon, composed of silk and the hairs of the larva, is made. From this, in due time, a beautiful moth, an inch or an inch and a quarter across the wings, emerges. The wings are pure white or white spotted with black or brownish-black. The eggs are laid in masses of four or five hundred ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... of Magic Carpets we writer chaps have. A thing of flimsy dreams and fancies! But I forgot the millionaire's. His is real, made of legal-tenders woven intricately, wonderfully. Does he wish a palace, a yacht, a rare jewel? Whiz! There you are, sir. No flowery flourishes; the cold, hard, beautiful facts of reality. Killigrew ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... scant pastures and the green charity which a spindling second-growth spread over the nakedness of rotting forest bones—here amid the wasted uplands and into this flimsy wooden building came the rank and file of the metropolis in search of air, of green, of sky, for ten days' surcease from toil and heat and the sad perplexities ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... should forget entirely to ask about the little shoe, or the tall gentleman of the attic. Nevertheless I did, as I went out, throw a glance up to the window of the court—alas! there were more panes broken, the placard was gone, the veil was gone—there was nothing but a flimsy web which a bold spider had stretched across one of the comers. I felt sure that the last six months had brought its changes to other houses, as well as the house ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Isn't it absurd that I should array myself in these gorgeous gowns to compete with that Indian in her few flimsy calicoes and silks? The contrast is out of all proportion. It's the sublime and the ridiculous. And yet she looks well in anything! Dress her in rags and she is picturesque; robe her in silks ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... revolving these thoughts in my mind, I held in my hand some flimsy particles of the reputed diamond, which of a truth I firmly believed to be such. Now hope is immortal in the human breast; therefore I felt myself, as it were, lured onward by a gleam of idle expectation. Accordingly, I took up a little knife and a few of those ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... betraying secrets of the King's table.' Sorrow on your red wig, and you!—It is certain La Beaumelle, soon after this, left Berlin: not in love with Voltaire. And there soon appeared, at Franfurt-on-Mayn, a Pirate Edition of our brand-new SIECLE DE LOUIS QUATORZE (with Annotations scurrilous and flimsy);—La Beaumelle the professed Perpetrator; 'who received for the job 7 pounds 10s. net!' [Ib. xx.] asseverates the well-informed Voltaire. Oh, M. de Voltaire, and why not leave it to him, then? Poor devil, he got put into the Bastille too, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... Rosario, that seemed to declare him more than indifferent to circles in which he would not meet them. In the end our argument left me ridiculously irritated—it was simply distressing to see the platform from which he obtained so wide and exquisite a view of the world upheld by such flimsy pillars—and my nerves were not soothed by his proposal to walk with me to the Club. I could hardly refuse it, however, and he came along in excellent spirits, having effected the demolition of British ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Reine Margot especially swarms with errors. The Duke of Nevers was not absent. He gave his opinion at the council before the feast of St. Bartholomew, and Henry of Navarre did not follow the procession four days after. Henry III. did not come back from Poland so quickly. Besides, how many flimsy devices! The miracle of the hawthorn, the balcony of Charles IX., the poisoned glass of Jeanne d'Albret—Pecuchet no longer had any confidence ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... may be the reason that the masculine mind does not, in general, appreciate these lovely textures, but rather despises them (even when the designs are beautiful and ingenious), as being flimsy and deficient in honest intention; whereas women have always greatly prized them for their delicacy and refinement, and their great value, on account of the time, trouble, and eyesight expended upon them. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... through an open door the bountiful refreshments prepared for us in the supper room, I felt guiltier than ever. Suddenly I took a resolution. It was a queer one, and may serve to show you some of the oddities of my nature. Though I was engaged for the next dance, and though I was dressed in the flimsy garments suitable to the occasion, I decided to leave the ball and carry some sandwiches down to these old men. Procuring a bit of paper, I made up a bundle and stole out of the house without having said a word to anybody of my intention. Not wishing to be seen, ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... of any of us.—I beg, quoth he, that you would reflect a Moment upon the Cob-Web which Trim went so far for, and brought back with an Air of so much Importance, in his Breeches Pocket, to lay upon the Parson's cut Finger.—This said Cob-Web, Sir, is a fine- spun Satyre, upon the flimsy Nature of one Half of the Shop-Medicines, with which you make a Property of the Sick, the Ignorant, and the Unsuspecting.—And as for the Moral of the Close-Stool-Pan, Sir, 'tis too plain, Does not nine Parts ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... if her Ladyship's a'ground, your Face may put both Sexes out o'Countenance. [Exeunt Lady Toss-up, and Mrs. Flimsy. ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... Blackwood's Magazine was the exhibition of his first Venetian picture exhibited in that year—it is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. "What is Venice in this picture?" wrote Blackwood's critic. "A flimsy, whitewashed, meagre assemblage of architecture, starting off ghost-like into unnatural perspective, as if frightened at the affected blaze of some dogger vessels (the only attempt at richness in the picture). The greater ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... squaring himself. "Ah," with a sigh, "I shall make a poor lawyer, I fear. Ain't used, you see, barber, to a business which, ignoring the principle of honor, holds no nail fast till clinched. Strange, barber," taking up the blank paper, "that such flimsy stuff as this should make such strong hawsers; vile hawsers, too. Barber," starting up, "I won't put it in black and white. It were a reflection upon our joint honor. I will take your word, and ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... loved to lose ourselves in all the carelessness of our childhood, and perhaps too in the first awakening instincts of our youth. Nothing but a memory remains of that enchanting spot. It was confiscated by Napoleon III. on some flimsy pretext or other, and forthwith cut to pieces, so as to destroy every trace of those who had owned and lived in it. It is as much as I can do, as I drive along the Avenue Bineau, to find, among the villas which ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... wands of Jacob's wit, Their verses tallied. Easy was the task: A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race! That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face, And did not know it,—no, they went about, Holding a poor, decrepid standard out Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large The ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... am not sick of my mind, as you seem to be of yours; I am only somewhat tired of the little cage in which, since it has been alone, it ruffles its plumes against the flimsy wires that confine it from wider space. I shall take up my home for a time with the new-married couple: they want me. Ashleigh Sumner has come into parliament. He means to attend regularly and work hard, but he does not like Jane to go into ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... adopted the traditional principle that death is preferable to dishonour, that a lie is essentially dishonourable, will be far more likely to die for the truth, than one who has philosophized much about honour and veracity, and whose resolution is enfeebled by the consciousness of the weak and flimsy support which theory lends to these healthy and universally received maxims. And similarly those who have received the faith by tradition, who for years have assumed it in their daily conduct as a matter of course, in whom therefore ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... and massive, seemed awkwardly constricted in ill-fitting, blue cotton overalls such as American laborers wear over street-clothes. Their huge bodies seemed about to break through the flimsy bindings, and the carriage of their striking heads made the garments ridiculous. Most of them had fairly regular features on a large scale, their mouths wide, and their lips full and sensual. They wore no hats or ornaments, though it has ever been the custom ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... North American federal republic. He decorates it with "social institutions"; he would regulate the property relations "according to rational principles," and the seven great measures wherewith he would abolish the old bourgeois society are by no means wretched flimsy recipes collected from modern, objectionable communist ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... came forth bearing a dead tree-trunk between them, he got two more of them. And then the timber crashed against the flimsy door; the rended boards flew across the room; the sod walls trembled to the shock. He dropped his rifle and drew his revolver as ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... She had caught a cold, her eyes were frightfully swollen and her chest was shaken with fits of coughing, which doubled her up beside the work-table. With all that she had not even a handkerchief round her neck and she was dressed in some cheap flimsy woolen stuff in which she shivered. Close by, Madame Putois, wrapped up in flannel muffled up to her ears, was ironing a petticoat which she turned round the skirt-board, the narrow end of which rested on the back of a chair; whilst a sheet ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... know full well that at first view some will be able to judge my artistic caprices low and flimsy, but they ought to know that it requires as much grace, art and nature to draw well a role of comedy as to represent a wise old grumbler." ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... Well, then, "MIMSY" is "flimsy and miserable" (there's another portmanteau for you). And a "BOROGOVE" is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round—something like ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... spirit of a People, composed as that of England now is, were once put into a ferment, by organizing a democracy on this scheme, and to this extent, with a Press as free and licentious as our's has long been, what a flimsy barrier would remain to check the impetus of the excluded! When, in thousands, they bore down upon the newly constituted House of Assembly, demanding to be placed upon a level with their fellow-subjects, it would avail little to send ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... sacklike hammock, the Navaho began to shake faintly, and weight piled up. It was mild compared to that on the shuttle, since the big ships couldn't take high acceleration. Space had been conquered for more than a century, but the ships were still flimsy tubs that took months to reach Mars, using immense amounts of fuel. Only the valuable plant hormones from Mars made commerce possible at ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... a heavy storm set in, and next day the boys found their flimsy wigwam blown down—nothing but a heap ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... entire dominions of a third, who had given no cause for umbrage, and with whom they were both at that time in perfect peace and amity. Similar instances of political robbery (to call it by the coarse name it merits) have occurred in later times; but never one founded on more flimsy pretexts, or veiled under a more detestable mask of hypocrisy. The principal odium of the transaction has attached to Ferdinand, as the kinsman of the unfortunate king of Naples. His conduct, however, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... first listening to make sure that the constable and his wife were in the bedroom the other side of the flimsy wall, complied, and in a voice that rose gradually to a piercing falsetto told Mr. Grummit things that had been rankling in her mind for some months. She raked up misdemeanours that he had long since forgotten, and, not content with that, had a fling at the ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... calceolarias, she said, "Aunt Charlotte, papa says I ought to tell you something; I mean, why Avice could not come to-day, and why she has nothing to wear but her round hat. It is because she and Pica spent all they had in paying for that Maude Harris at the Convalescent Home. They had some kind of flimsy gauzy bonnets that were faded and utterly done for after Commemoration week; and as Uncle Martyn is always growling about ladies' luggage, they thought it would be a capital plan to go without all the time they are down here, till another ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a due disdain of the flimsy foundations of human pride, have shown that every man is equally descended from a million of ancestors, within a given number of generations; thereby demonstrating that no prince exists who does not participate in the blood of some beggar, or any beggar ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... Mississippi dreams! A rage that time seems only to redouble— The Banks, Joint-Stocks, and all the flimsy schemes, For rolling in Pactolian streams, That cost our modern rogues so little trouble. No matter what,—to pasture cows on stubble, To twist sea-sand into a solid rope, To make French bricks and fancy bread of rubble, Or light with gas the whole celestial ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... clearing, evidently once a rather pretentious summer residence, though now there were many signs of delapidation. The pier on the beach had been almost entirely beaten down by storms, and a small, flimsy slip had taken its place, running far down into the water. A thin line of smoke rose from the chimney of one of the outbuildings; and while they looked and listened the raucous cry of a peacock came to them over the still ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... much warmer, a sure precursor of a southerly wind; and the ladies had, in consequence, changed their dresses immediately after luncheon, discarding the woollen fabrics in which they had embarked and substituting for them dainty costumes of cool, light, flimsy material, arrayed in which they established themselves for the ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... hooting from beneath the house roof; the bats rustled with flimsy wings, and flew towards the house, where shone the panes of the windows and human faces; but nearer, the little sisters of the bats, the moths, hovered in a swarm, attracted by the white garments of the women; they were especially ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Republican; and excellent papers they are. Both in appearance and in matter, O Mundo and A Lucta ("The Struggle") would do credit to the journalism of any country. In size, in excellence of production, and in the well-considered weight of their articles, they contrast strangely with the flimsy, ill-printed sheets that content the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... character; and the design of this brief work is, in part, to drag it forward into the light of the middle of the nineteenth century, to strip the flimsy vizor off its face, and to bring it, with all its abuses, corruptions, and hypocritical Protestant advocates, before the bar of enlightened public opinion, for judgment in the case. Roman Catholics misrepresent their own creed, their ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... dimly lighted, and was open to the peak of the roof. From the rough-hewn rafters above hung hundreds of hideous bats. At the far end stood the altar. It was adorned with decrepit images, and held a large wooden statue of the Virgin. This latter object was veiled with two flimsy curtains, which were designed to be raised and lowered with great pomp and the ringing of a little bell during service. The image was attired in real clothes, covered with tawdry finery, gilt paper, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... after a little more thought, a broad view of the whole scheme of man's salvation as revealed in the holy Scriptures appeared to me the best antidote for this insidious poison. I read through the New Testament with increased enjoyment, and casting from me the wretched fabric of lies, with all its flimsy pretences, I resolved, instead of attempting a reply to what I saw to be falsehood, to set forth a plain statement of what I knew to be truth. Indeed it is indescribable how disgusting the painted ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... temporary repairs, to start once more on its erring course, or, perhaps, to go forth unfinished, remanded just there to death. The ten-thirty express was now pulling out through the yards in a powerful clamor of clattering switches and hearty pulsations that shook the flimsy walls of St. Isidore's, and drew new groans from the man on the chair. The young nurse's eyes travelled from him to a woman who stood behind the ward tenders, shielded by them and the young interne from the group about the hospital ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... not see how their betters ordained one thing for the vulgar, and another for themselves; or in an easy-chair, in the study, whither my lord retires every Sunday for his devotions. It dealt in private scandal and ribaldry, only the more piquant for its pretty flimsy veil of double-entendre. It was a fortune to the publisher, and it became a necessary to the reader, which he could not do without, any more than without his snuff-box, his opera-box, or his chasse after coffee. The delightful novelty could not for any ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and Spiridion thought exactly like him. As for the innocent Pascalon, he was horribly afraid of women, and reddened to the ears when the name of the Little Scheideck was uttered before him, thinking some lady of flimsy morals was referred to. The poor lover was therefore reduced to keep his confidences to himself, and console himself alone—which, after all, is ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... rose on both sides, and the arrows leaped from the bowstrings" (XV. 313). Manifestly the arrows are always on the wing, hence the need for the huge Homeric and Mycenaean shields. Therefore, as the Achaeans in Homer wore but flimsy corslets (this we are going to prove), the great body- covering shield of the Mycenaean prime did not go out of vogue in Homer's time, when bronze had superseded stone arrow-heads, but was strengthened by bronze plating over the leather. In a later age the bow was more and more ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... 'Flimsy sort of grub!' growled an old skipper. 'Only fit for this sort of a tea—not to make a real meal on, fit ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... driven with him, it would be impossible for him to decline sailing with Buller; but he must see the boat. There was a train for his home at a quarter past seven; if he were not on the premises he could not be asked to sail. If Buller's boat were a little, flimsy thing, he would take that train—but ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... before Goldsmith's death, Dr. Kenrick, a vulgar satirist of the day, wrote an anonymous letter in an evening paper called The London Packet, sneering at the poet's vanity, and calling "The Traveller" a flimsy poem, denying the "Deserted Village" genius, fancy, or fire, and calling "She Stoops to Conquer" the merest pantomime. Goldsmith's Irish blood fired at an allusion to Miss Horneck and his supposed rejection by her. Supposing Evans, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... p. 181.).—Cordially do I agree with every word of your correspondent LAUDATOR TEMPORIS ACTI, and especially as to the prayer-books for churches and chapels, printed by the Universities. Experto crede, no solicitude can preserve their "flimsy, brittle, and cottony" leaves, as he justly entitles them, from rapid destruction. Might not the delegates of the University presses be persuaded to give us an edition with the morning and evening services printed on vellum, instead ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... has not the musical, harmonious, sympathetic quality which seizes us in even the prose of such a book as Rousseau's Confessions. Macaulay thought the Prelude a poorer and more tiresome Excursion, with the old flimsy philosophy about the effect of scenery on the mind, the old crazy mystical metaphysics, and the endless wilderness of twaddle; still he admits that there are some fine descriptions and energetic declamations. All Macaulay's tastes and habits of mind made him a poor judge of such ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... Mrs. Chudleigh had no pressing invitation to come back and has not been away long; after all, she and Lucy Foster are not great friends. Now she has only a flimsy excuse for the visit—I've seen her letter. Why should the woman force herself into Hazlehurst, unless it's to be within striking ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... years later the young man came back in a soldier's uniform, arrayed in a thousand colours, and all over glass trinkets and fine steel chains. To-day he would appear in one gay dress, to-morrow in another; but all flimsy and gaudy, of little substance and less worth. The peasant folk, who are naturally malicious, and when they have nothing to do can be malice itself, remarked all this, and took note of his finery and jewellery, piece by piece, and discovered that he had three suits of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... their amending it at the time, they could pass that, and then, Chase's amendment being merged, put it in the shape they wanted. They did not choose to do so, but they went into a quibble with Chase to get him to add what they knew he would not add, and because he would not, they stand upon that flimsy pretext for voting down what they argued was the meaning and intent of their own bill. They left room thereby for this Dred Scott decision, which goes very far to make slavery national throughout ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... authority than my own it will have no effect, for they already know all that I can say. On what ground do they pretend to deprive America of the service of any of her citizens without assigning a cause, or only the flimsy one of my being born in England? Gates, were he here, might be arrested on the same pretence, and he and Burgoyne be ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... this—one only amongst many—soon disillusioned Hyde. The great hopes which he had formed from estimating the splendid chances opened by the Restoration, were grievously dispelled. He learned how selfish and how flimsy was much of the noisy loyalty. He soon learned, also, to take a just estimate of the character of the King. During the time of exile he had formed a high opinion of Charles's abilities, and had frequent cause to appreciate his tact and abundant fund of humour and of common-sense. What he ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Folkestone and conscientiously replied: "Even with those things of Mrs. Meldrum's." I begged him not to think my laughter in bad taste: it was only a practical recognition of the fact that we had built a monstrous castle in the air. Didn't he see on what flimsy ground the structure rested? The evidence was preposterously small. He believed the worst, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... of August, 1794, "as I was straying out," says Burns, "and thinking of 'O'er the hills and far away,' I spun the following stanzas for it. I was pleased with several lines at first, but I own now that it appears rather a flimsy business. I give you leave to abuse this song, but do it in the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Prophet possess'd half an atom of sense, [iii] He ne'er would have woman from Paradise driven; Instead of his Houris, a flimsy pretence, [iv] With woman alone he ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... as wholesome a one as ever was writ: the artfullest, the wisest, the most toilsome, and dexterous plot-builders in the world—there always comes a day when the roused public indignation kicks their flimsy edifice down, and sends its cowardly enemies a-flying. Mr. Swift hath finely described that passion for intrigue, that love of secrecy, slander, and lying, which belongs to weak people, hangers-on of weak courts. 'Tis the nature of such ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... know, and in so doing are becoming all that it profits us to be. Mere amusement in thought as in sportive action is tedious and illiberal: it marks a temperament so imperfectly educated that it prefers idle to significant play and a flimsy ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... physical condition, that anxiety in "seeking the phrase," which gathered all the other small ennuis of a really quiet existence into a kind of battle, was connected with his lifelong contention against facile poetry, facile art—art, facile and flimsy; and what constitutes the true artist is not the slowness or quickness of the process, but the absolute success of the result. As with those labourers in the parable, the prize is independent of the mere length of the actual day's work. "You talk," he writes, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... street being suddenly checked by another huge barricade, we wound round to the right, and at last reached a house where less than a score of Mobiles were gathered, protected from sudden assault by a flimsy barrier of planks, casks, stools, and broken chairs. This was the most advanced French outpost in the direction we were following. We passed it, crossing some open fields where a solitary man was calmly digging potatoes, risking his life at every turn of ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... and stores, or scattered helter-skelter down the street. Jurgis and his gang joined in the sport, every man singling out his victim, and striving to bring him to bay and punch him. If he fled into a house his pursuer would smash in the flimsy door and follow him up the stairs, hitting every one who came within reach, and finally dragging his squealing quarry from under a bed or a pile of ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... there are foolish people who send useless things too. Scattered through the boxes are now and again found evening clothes for men and women, silk top hats, flimsy little women's bonnets, dancing pumps, and even crepe-de-chene nighties. These serve as playthings for the grown-ups, many of whom, especially the Indians and Eskimos, are quite childlike with gimcracks. I recall once seeing an Eskimo parading around on a warm day in the glory of a full dress ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... explained by the nature of the remains of the victims they had brought with them as provisions from Mars. These creatures, to judge from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, were bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons (almost like those of the silicious sponges) and feeble musculature, standing about six feet high and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and all ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... discourteous," he said, "I must say that I think the arguments just set forth are exceedingly flimsy. There can be no question but that Vernondale would be a far better and more appropriate home for the young lady in question than any other spot on the globe. Here we have wide streets, green lawns, fresh air, and bright sunshine; all conducive ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... to know it only possible! Some wishes cross'd my mind and dimly cheer'd it, And one or two poor melancholy pleasures, Each in the pale unwarming light of hope Silvering its flimsy wing, flew silent by— Moths in the moonbeam!— —Behind the thin Grey cloud that cover'd, but not hid, the sky, The round full moon look'd small. The subtle snow in every passing breeze Rose curling from the grove ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... discover if the plots were directed against the queen. The precaution was unnecessary. There was no ground for believing that the designs of the women accused had included the queen. Indeed the evidence of guilt of any kind was very flimsy. But the excitement of the public had been stirred to the highest pitch. The privy council had shown its fear of the women and all four of ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... deep prisons below are hewn out of the rock itself. Up to what we should call the third story, every room is vaulted. Above that the floors are laid on beams, and the walls are not more than eight feet thick—comparatively flimsy for such a place! Nine-tenths of it was built for strength—the small remainder for comfort; there is not a single large hall in all the great fortress, and the courtyard within the main gate is a gloomy, ill-shaped little paved space, barely big enough to give fifty men standing ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Vienna, did not content himself with submitting the request to the Acting Foreign Minister (Baron Macchio) but to deprive Austria of the flimsy excuse of Berchtold's absence at Ischl, the Russian Charge went over the head of the Austrian Acting Foreign Minister and telegraphed the request for time to Count Berchtold at Ischl. Let the record tell for itself how this most reasonable request ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... to chant a dirge of gloom— To weave the cypress for a youthful brow: To moan a requiem o'er an early tomb, And sing in sorrow as I'm singing now. While men raise mausoleums to die brave— With flimsy flatt'ries gilded tombs besmear— We need no banner o'er our Brother's grave To tell what wealth of worth ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... legends, and in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy, whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I have chid him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in his Vaticination on the Death ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... self-confidence. The pendulum had at last swung safely in the right direction, and henceforth California could be and was reckoned as a loyal asset to the Union. Such expressions of disloyalty as her secessionists continued to disclose, were of a sporadic and flimsy nature, never materializing into a formidable sentiment; and, adding to their discouragement, the failure of the Confederate invasion of New Mexico in 1862, was no doubt an important factor in suppressing any further ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... the shadow of our hotel on the embankment, the crowd of natives in their best behaviour and best clothes move to and fro making holiday, watching the ships and any ceremony that may come off in their neighbourhood, for like our own natives they love a tamasha. They wear flimsy clothes of varied colours, lemon-yellow and pale rose, white and pale green, and the Southern light softens all these by making each reflect a little on ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... north shore of the lake,[300] an exploit creditable enough in itself, but utterly trivial in relation to pending issues; and on the 8th he wrote that some changes of officers and crews, incidental to the absence of a particular captain, would detain him a few days longer.[301] These were flimsy reasons for inactivity at a moment of great national interest, and when the operations in progress had been begun absolutely upon the presupposition of naval control and co-operation, for which he had undertaken ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... superior skill, and wealth, and wisdom, loses at first its self-respect; while his body, pampered with easily obtained luxuries, instead of having to win the necessaries of life by heavy toil, loses its self-helpfulness; and with self-respect and self-help vanish all the savage virtues, few and flimsy as they are, and the downward road toward begging and stealing, sottishness and idleness, is easy, if ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... produces a thousand despots instead of one. Muley Moloch cannot lop off many heads with his own hands; at least, he takes those in his way. those of his courtiers; but his bashaws and viceroys spread destruction every where. The flimsy, ignorant, blundering manner in which Hume executed the reigns preceding Henry the Seventh, is a proof how little he had examined the history ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... very well," said one of the officers, with a glance at a piece of flimsy paper which had just come from the Signals Department across the street. But things would not have gone so well unless at General Headquarters every officer had done his duty to the last detail, whatever the fatigue of body or spirit. The place was quiet, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... France, and indeed in all Europe, was that of Rossini. He may be said to have built on Gluck's ideas in many ways. Born in 1792, at Pesaro, in Italy, he wrote many operas of the flimsy Italian style while still a boy. At twenty-one he had already written his "Tancredi" and the opera buffa, "The Italians in Algiers." His best work (besides "William Tell") was "The Barber of Seville." Other works ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... solemn theatre. A far-fetched motive, an ingenious evasion of the issue, a witty instead of a passionate turn, offend us like an insincerity. All should be plain, all straightforward to the end. Hence it is that, in "Rhoda Fleming," Mrs. Lovel raises such resentment in the reader; her motives are too flimsy, her ways are too equivocal, for the weight and strength of her surroundings. Hence the hot indignation of the reader when Balzac, after having begun the "Duchesse de Langeais" in terms of strong if somewhat swollen passion, cuts the knot by the derangement ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reached me on Sunday, and the note which you were so kind as to send with it, I can only repay you in this the old paper of unproductive thanks, but the sincerity of them will be held in some estimation by the mind actuated by the kindness that has excited them, and, therefore, flimsy as they are, I venture to beg your acceptance of them. I have nothing new, Madam, to send you for your entertainment from this great city. That the Regent is going to divorce the Princess of Wales, and excite the hope of the husbands and the fear ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... theatre, rudely constructed of boards and canvas. I peeped through an aperture, and saw the whole dramatis personae, tragedy, comedy, pantomime, all refreshing themselves after the final dismissal of their auditors. They were merry and gamesome, and made their flimsy theatre ring with laughter. I was astonished to see the tragedy tyrant in red baize and fierce whiskers, who had made my heart quake as he strutted about the boards, now transformed into a fat, good humored fellow; the beaming porringer ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... and after a minute's scurrying of figures on the deck a flimsy companion-ladder rattled down over ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... up all description of political badges—badges for the court, for processions, school badges, military badges, flimsy bits of coloured ribbon and gold fringe which go the tour of the world, rallying men to glory. In the dismal twilight our fingers were now busied with black-and-silver "in memoriam" badges, to be worn as a last tribute to some dead ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... crossing, we were astonished to see a man seated in a sulky in the middle of the river and playing for his life on a fiddle. The horse was up to his middle in water, and it seemed as if the flimsy vehicle was ready to be swept away by the current. Still the fiddler fiddled on composedly as if his life had been insured. We thought he was mad, and shouted to him. He heard us and stopped ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... had turned the bend in the river road, and the occupants saw the toll-bridge and the peaceful hamlet of Culm Falls. There was no stir there. The toll-bridge keeper was not even out of his cottage, and the light and flimsy gates were down across the driveway at either end of the bridge. The bend in the river hid the advancing wall of water. Perhaps, too, it deadened the sound of the bursting dam and the roar ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... a house were given you, bright with marble, its roof beautifully painted with colours and gilding, you would call it no small benefit. God has built for you a huge mansion that fears no fire or ruin, in which you see no flimsy veneers, thinner than the very saw with which they are cut, but vast blocks of most precious stone, all composed of those various and different substances whose paltriest fragments you admire so much; he has built a roof which glitters in one fashion by day, and in another ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... about, that it puzzled her to think where all the spiders were who had spun them. There were no spiders now, but there were masses of cobwebs in every nook and corner, some of them waving in the dimness like flimsy grey veils, others spread about in such strange shapes that they almost seemed alive. No doubt bats lived up there, Maisie thought, and she even fancied she could see them clinging to the wall, dusky and shadowy as the cobwebs themselves. She turned her eyes with a little ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... they didn't stink sweaty. They wore starched clean ironed clothes. They cooked wheat flour and made clothes. When the War come on their clothes was ironed and clean but the wheat was scarce and the clothes got flimsy. John D. Kidd was loved by black and white. He was a good man. Grandpa George had a son sold over close to Memphis. They had twelve children last letter mama had from them. I've never seen any ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... was packed. In the back pew I remember noticing three young men with pads of flimsy paper and well-sucked pencils. I distinctly caught sight of the words "Sacred edifice" in the nearest MS., and I have no doubt the ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... is nearly as popular as Leech, and is certainly a greater favourite with cultivated audiences. He is not so much a humorist as a satirist of the Thackeray type,—unsparing in his denunciation of shams, affectations, and flimsy pretences of all kinds. A master of composition and accomplished draughtsman, he excels in the delineation of "society"—its bishops, its "professional beauties" and "aesthetes," its nouveaux riches, its distinguished ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... through Philadelphia with his slaves. Thus, to make an effective blow, all the pro-slavery elements of Philadelphia were brought into action, and matters looked for a time as though Slavery in this instance would have everything its own way. Passmore was locked up in prison on the flimsy pretext of contempt of court, and true bills were found against him and half a dozen colored men, charging them with "riot," "forcible abduction," and "assault and battery," and there was no lack of hard swearing on ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... as an established fact, not to be denied; and have too blindly admired, and hence endeavoured (though for lack of the material they have failed) to imitate him in this one department, his colour. The result has been melancholy enough; an inferior, flimsy, and flashy style has been engendered, utterly abhorrent from any sound and true principle of colouring. Even in Rubens, there is this tendency to the flimsy, to the light glitter, rather than to the substantial glory of the art: but it is much disguised under ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... have answered. But the gauzy curtain that was covered over this foul tableau, has been lifted up, and you see it in all it hideous deformity. As I have before stated, you have seen, gentlemen, the flimsy evidence upon which is attempted to predicate a conviction for grand larceny. I am confident that in spite of all the attempts that have been made by a shameless wanton and her pretended husband, to crush this man, despite the meretricious trickery and villainous conspiracy which instigated, concocted ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... not, I shall come back hither and give thee belabourings enough with my cudgel to make thee a sad man for the rest of thy days.' What more he said, I dare not tell you, unless you first pardon me." Whereat our flimsy pumpion-pated Lady Lackbrain was overjoyed, taking all the friar's words for gospel. So after a while she said:—"And did I not tell you, Fra Alberto, that my charms were celestial? But, so help me God, I am moved ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... sergeant was ordered to be taken to the village square, where a dozen old men of the village were being held by the Germans under sentence of death on the flimsy charge of having resisted the Prussians. One by one these unhappy Frenchmen were being lined up before a firing squad and shot down. The sergeant, who, of course, was to share a like fate, was reserved for ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... of the ladies exclaimed, "not to be travelling with half a dozen trunks and a hat-box! Oh, yes, I realize what I'm doing. I'm going to live in one of those flimsy portable houses with twenty cots and no privacy and wear the same clothes for months, but it's better than thrashing around looking for something to do and never finding it, never getting anything real to spend one's energy-on. I've closed my country house, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... estates of "Belmont" and "Belle Alliance." Early one morning in the middle of October, 1878, a young man, whose age you would have guessed fifteen years too much, stood in scrupulously clean, ill-fitting, flimsy garments, on the strong, high levee overlooking these two plantations. He was asking the way to a place called Grande Pointe. Grand Point, he called it, and so may we: many names in Louisiana that retain the French spelling are habitually ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... of good, there is no doubt of that, especially when one's grandfather was a Revolutionary notability, and other antecedents of a piece—but men are all alike at heart, only the worldly ones wear flimsy masks, you know, and pretend to adore intellect and ugliness, when beauty is the only thing they care for—all a sham, my dear, in ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... part of Madame; with a proviso, That as the curtains of that bed are of a flimsy transparent cotton, and appear likewise too scanty to draw close, that the fille de chambre shall fasten up the opening, either by corking pins, or needle and thread, in such manner as shall be deem'd a sufficient barrier on the ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... like cow-byres, like dog-kennels. The horseman hammered with the butt of a heavy revolver at the doors of low pulperias, of obscene lean-to sheds sloping against the tumble-down piece of a noble wall, at the wooden sides of dwellings so flimsy that the sound of snores and sleepy mutters within could be heard in the pauses of the thundering clatter of his blows. He called out men's names menacingly from the saddle, once, twice. The drowsy answers—grumpy, conciliating, savage, jocular, or deprecating—came ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... course; their disputes were nauseating in origin, in manner, in the spirit of mean selfishness. These women, too, seemed to enjoy greatly any sort of row and were always ready to combine together to make awful scenes to the luckless girl on incredibly flimsy pretences. Thus Flora on one occasion had been reduced to rage and despair, had her most secret feelings lacerated, had obtained a view of the utmost baseness to which common human nature can descend—I won't ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... I am half inclined to believe it because it is so flimsy. I watched him very carefully, as you no doubt did. I was impressed with the belief that the charge of murder surprised him. And it did not appear the surprise of a murderer who thought he had his ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... closes his chapter on the 'Mysticism of the Middle Ages' have their application to the mysticism of the nineteenth century:—'Experience collects her stores in vain, or ceases to collect them, when she can only pour them into the flimsy folds of the lap of Mysticism, who is, in truth, so much absorbed in looking for the treasures which are to fall from the skies, that she heeds little how scantily she obtains, or how loosely she holds, such riches as she ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... since—owed its temporary degradation." And the professor was accused of audaciously seeking to blind his audience. Samuel Wilberforce, then Bishop of Oxford, was equally denunciatory in The Quarterly. He hopes that "this flimsy speculation" will be completely put down. "It is a dishonouring view of nature.... Under such influences," says the courtly bishop, "a man soon goes back to the marvelling stare of childhood at the centaurs ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Pete heard a faint shuffling sound in the hall outside. Before he could turn the door crashed inward. He leapt to his feet. With the leap his hand flashed to his side. Unaccustomed to a coat, his thumb caught in the pocket just as the man who had shouldered the flimsy door down, reeled and sprawled on the floor. Pete jerked his hand free, but in that lost instant a gun roared in the doorway. He crumpled to the floor. The heavy-shouldered man, followed by two officers, stepped into ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... dead, to convince himself that the mother of his children was corrupt only at heart,—that the Black Horses had come to the door in time,—and, wretchedly consoled by that niggardly conviction, flinging into the flames the last flimsy tatters on which his honour (rock-like in his own keeping) had been fluttering to and fro in the charge of a vain treacherous fool,—envy you that mourner? No! not even in his release. Memory is not nailed down in the velvet coffin; and to great loyal natures less bitter is the memory of ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... so with a contemptuous smile. Had I wanted to follow him, my weight flung against the flimsy door would have crushed it in. And I was left standing there alone in the smoke-filled room with nothing but the thunderings of my own pulses ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... type. If there was in it nothing that could actually offend the eye, there was certainly nothing to satisfy it. There was a profusion of gilt mirrors, and an aching lack of pictures: the lighting was too new and glaring: the upholstery too flimsy. But there were baths and soap! It was too late for the baths, but ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... of posturing, smirking chamberlains took me in charge, and ushered me with their flimsy golden wands to the dais at the farther end. It appeared that I was to sit on Phorenice's divan, and eat my meat out of ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... appealed to the Delphic oracle for some means of cure. The god prescribed a peculiar form of sacrifice, which would be effective if they could carry it through without laughing. They did their best; but the flimsy joke of a boy upset their unaccustomed gravity, and in this way the oracle taught them that even the gods could not prescribe a quick cure for a long vitiation, or give power and dignity to a people ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the reasonable question which I originally put "may be followed by a series of similar questions to which there is no end," the goodness of God must simply be pronounced a delusion. For the question which I originally put was no mere flimsy question of a stupidly unreal description. My own moral depravity is a matter of painful certainty to me, and I want to know why, if there is a God of infinite power and goodness, he should have made me thus. And in answer ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... your own necessities! Why don't you pluck up the nerve to shoot, and be done with it? I'll make it still more binding upon you: if you don't kill me now, while you have the chance, as God is my witness I'll hang you both for those murders last night at Silver Switch. I know you, in spite of your flimsy disguise: I can call you both ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... said Porthos, while the comte was looking about, "are constructed in a ridiculously flimsy manner. In my early days, when I used to sit down with far more energy than is now the case, I do not remember ever to have broken a chair, except in taverns, with ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... know; a man's friends don't last long after his money is gone. Besides, nobody wants to buy now. Raphael himself couldn't sell a picture here till times improve. A painter is a pretty butterfly for fine weather; what is he to do with his flimsy wings in such a hurricane ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... pirate vessels, which are intended to prey on our commerce. How long will it be before retaliation on England begins, and, when it begins, how will it end? Ay—how will it end? It is not to be supposed that we can long be blinded by such a flimsy humbug as a transfer to Southern possession of these vessels 'for the Chinese trade!' Are the English mad, demented, or besotted, that they suppose we intend to endure such deliberate aid of our enemies? When those vessels 'for the Chinese' are afloat, and our merchants begin ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of Japan, though interesting for its arrangements, and for its sensible and artistic use of the most flimsy materials, is too trivial in scale, detail, and construction to receive more than passing reference. Even the great palace at Tokio,[28] covering an immense area, is almost entirely composed of one-storied buildings ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... think not," he said, drily, as he looked about him. "The other morning finished up the rags on hand—but you are doing your best, with flimsy finery, to ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... whose imagination was of a more flimsy texture, formed a thousand chimerical conjectures, which he communicated to Pickle, in imperfect insinuations, hoping, by his answers and behaviour, to discover the truth: but the youth, in order to tantalise him, eluded all his inquiries, with such appearance of industry and art, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and the product of many silk dresses ("scarcely soiled") in furnishing that objectionable and disreputable suitor of hers with funds for his extravagance. He has beggared two or three of her acquaintance already, under the same flimsy pretense of intended marriage, that scarcely deludes poor Abigail; she has sore misgivings as to her own fate. Alternately he bullies and cajoles, but all the while she knows that he is lying, deliberately ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... table near us two men had sat and were talking even as we, but one had a half-penny paper, and turned the flimsy thing about, I fancy in search of ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... of junior members of the bar who were in court watching his conduct of the case in order to see if they could pick up a few hints, he intimated that his case was closed. It seemed to them that the great K.C. had put up a very flimsy case for the defence, and that in spite of the fact that the prosecutor's case rested mainly on the evidence of a tainted witness Holymead would be very hard put to it to get ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... which she separated with her finger-nail. She had caught a cold, her eyes were frightfully swollen and her chest was shaken with fits of coughing, which doubled her up beside the work-table. With all that she had not even a handkerchief round her neck and she was dressed in some cheap flimsy woolen stuff in which she shivered. Close by, Madame Putois, wrapped up in flannel muffled up to her ears, was ironing a petticoat which she turned round the skirt-board, the narrow end of which rested on the back of a chair; whilst a sheet laid on the ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... honour, it is true, not overmuch valued by its recipients, for Mrs. Gurley's bedroom lay just above, and that lady could swoop down on whoever was weak enough to take a little rest. But Laura snapped her fingers at such a flimsy objection; for this was the wonderful room round the walls of which low, open bookshelves ran; and she was soon bold enough, on entering, hastily to select a book to read while she played, always on the alert to pop it behind her music, should ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... house was roomy and comfortable, as I have said, it was not, by any means, a handsome one. It was composed of dark red brick, with small windows, and thick white sashes; a porch, too—none of your flimsy trellis-work, but a solid projection of the same vermillion masonry—surmounted by a leaded balcony, with heavy, half-rotten balustrades, darkened the hall-door with a perennial gloom. The mansion ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... It's a pity somebody don't tell her how it looks to be seen going about with him as she does. She hardly lets him get out of her sight when he's in town. I invited them to tea the last time they were here and she wouldn't let him come; kept him at her house, made some flimsy excuse, and had the evening with him to herself. She's tried her ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... trivial in relation to pending issues; and on the 8th he wrote that some changes of officers and crews, incidental to the absence of a particular captain, would detain him a few days longer.[301] These were flimsy reasons for inactivity at a moment of great national interest, and when the operations in progress had been begun absolutely upon the presupposition of naval control and co-operation, for which he had undertaken to provide the means, even if not pledged as to ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... no time for debate. The blue line led by Bennett flung itself upon the dark-brown mass of Rebels like an angry wave dashing over a flimsy bank of sand, and in an instant there was nothing to be done but pursue the disrupted and flying ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... pulled harder, and still nothing. I smiled at Callahan, got a better grip, and gave it a yank. Then I twisted opposite corners around my fingers and frankly pulled at it. The absurd sheet refused to tear, and I realized how ridiculous I must look to Callahan to be unable to tear a flimsy sheet of paper. I suppose I lost my temper a little. I gathered as much of the paper as I could in each hand, bent over to put my hands on the inside of my knees, and pulled until I heard my back muscles ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... here have we a government insisting upon extending, without a moment's hesitation, this system which has already so deeply injured us, to three-fourths of the commercial marine of this country. And what are the flimsy pretences in addition? Why, that Prussia has threatened on one hand, and the United States coaxed on the other, and that British masters and mates are intemperate, and British seamen insubordinate. I will take the libel first, and ask Mr. Labouchere and the whig government how it happens that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... involved in the present case belongs to this list of incredible patents which the Patent Office has spawned. The fact that a patent as flimsy and as spurious as this one has to be brought all the way to this Court to be declared invalid dramatically illustrates how far our patent system frequently departs from the constitutional standards which are ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... my own story was written by unknown hands. The epilogue remained, in which I was to go on seeking what contentment I could find in action. But my whole story was not written on these flimsy pages. It was before me always and always I was turning to it, always asking myself how it would have run had this not happened or had that occurred. Studying it over and over again in my room at night and on my long walks up-town, I found that I could not think ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... stillness so complete, so final as this. Nor was there any fresh lightness in the morning air. It seemed to press downward like an enormous invisible bat; or like the shade of buried cities, vain outcroppings of a vanished civilization, brooding menacingly over this recent flimsy accomplishment of man that Nature ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... yet the subject not be dealt with sectionally, for that is not the way in which the things occurred. The historian must, therefore, beware that those divisions of the subject which he makes for our ease and convenience, do not induce him to treat his subject in a flimsy manner. He must not make his story easy where it ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... (Life, p. 91) places the scene of such a conversation in the house of the Bishop of Salisbury. 'Boscovitch,' he writes, 'had a ready current flow of that flimsy phraseology with which a priest may travel through Italy, Spain, and Germany. Johnson scorned what he called colloquial barbarisms. It was his pride to speak his best. He went on, after a little ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... pressed it. Still holding her with one arm, pressed to him as though the two young bodies were gripped together by a vice, he loosened the other arm and thrust it at the back of her dress, through the flimsy gauze of her scarf, down next her body. His stiff cuff caught on the edge of her dress, and his sleeve slid up—it was his bare arm against her naked flesh. He gave a savage, smothered, gasping exclamation, pressed his fingers ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Descent. In the morning, when we went down for our animals, we found that they had broken through the flimsy fence of the Navaho, and had worked considerable havoc in his corn-patch. The Navaho grumbled and gesticulated, and showed unmistakable anger, but I took the matter coolly and, after seeing the extent ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... of the world, mankind is supposed to have worn very little or no clothing. Then leaves and the inner bark of trees were fashioned into a protection from the weather. These flimsy garments were later replaced by skins and furs. As man advanced in knowledge, he learned how to twist wool and hairs into threads and to weave these into durable garments. Still later, perhaps, he discovered that some plants conceal under their outer bark soft, ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... before served with success in that capacity, to command the combined fleets. The Lacedaemonians, to gratify their allies, and yet preserve the semblance of an adherence to their ancient institutions, had recourse to the flimsy subterfuge of investing Lysander with the real power of admiral, under the nominal title of vice-admiral. This instance is selected from among a multitude that might be cited to confirm the truth already advanced and illustrated by domestic examples; ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... disdain Flimsy safeguards raised by man, Struck a blow more swift and sure In that I ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... it. If a State is sufficiently strong and well organised, its control over the money power is unlimited. If it can rule its people, and if it has the necessary resources of men and material within its borders, it can go on in a state of war so long as these things last, with almost any flimsy sort of substitute for money that it chooses to print. It can enrol and use the men, and seize and work the material. It can take over the land and cultivate it and distribute its products. The little man ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... note: The original text refers to "vitres epaisses", thick panes, without specific dimensions. Glass only a millimetre thick would have been rather flimsy.] ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... upon the sidewalk. There was a flimsy piece of paper fluttering about impelled by the wind. He ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... is perhaps the only real enemy he has to fear. How his heart and his flimsy paper must flutter in the unruly gusts of a March wind! We only imagine him pasting up a "Sale of Horses," in a retired nook, and seeing his bill carried away on ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... all these became easily apparent. With difficulty Ranald restrained his indignation. He let him talk for some time and then opened out upon him. He read him no long lecture, but his words came forth with such fiery heat that they burned their way clear through all the faults and flimsy selfishness of the younger man till they reached the true heart of him. His last ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... invasion of Mexico by any such allegation as that she has received Napoleon's assurances that he does not intend to make a French province of Mexico. She must know, that no confidence can be placed in his veracity. She must know, that such assurances are but a flimsy veil to deceive her and other nations. They are designed to meet the contingency—of Federal success in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... "Alexandre et Napoleon," p. 519. Welschinger, "Le Divorce de Napoleon," ch. ii.; he also examines the alleged irregularities of the religious marriage with Josephine; Fesch and most impartial authorities brushed them aside as a flimsy excuse.] ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... in his heart knew that Lanyard didn't exaggerate. The murder of the inventor had exasperated all France; and though tonight's weather kept a third of Paris within doors, there was still a tide of pedestrians fluent on the sidewalk, beyond the flimsy barrier of firs, that would thicken to a ravening ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... undoubting confidence, that it will on all hands be admitted that we have not sought to evade the difficulties of our position; that we have not concealed those difficulties, either from ourselves or from others; that we have not attempted to counteract them by narrow or flimsy expedients; that we have prepared plans which, if you will adopt them, will go some way to close up many vexed financial questions—questions such as, if not now settled, may be attended with public inconvenience, and even with public danger, in future years and ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... "criticism is a kind of brush which must not be used upon flimsy stuff, or it carries it all away with it. That is enough of the craft, now listen! Do you see that mark?" he continued, pointing to the manuscript of the Marguerites. "I have put ink on the string and paper. If Dauriat reads your manuscript, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... some very pretty faces; oval faces with large dreamy black eyes, and a flush of warm sunset on brownish cheeks. The indoor costume of Persian women is but an inconsiderable improvement upon the costume of our ancestress in the garden of Eden, and over this they hastily don a flimsy shawl-like garment to come out and see me ride. They are always much less concerned about concealing their nether extremities than about their faces, and as they seem but little concerned about anything on this occasion ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... advance here before they found their retreat was cut off. They have thrown up some shelters. We noticed from afar off several very conspicuous stone sangars, but coming close, we were surprised to find that they were made of stones loosely put together with big chinks, very flimsy and frail, and much too high for their purpose, too. They evidently were not intended for shelters at all. What were they there for? We looked carefully round, and at last the meaning of the device struck us. A hundred yards to the right the ground dropped sharp, leaving an edge; ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... stopped. The women were eating the dulces passed by the Indian servants. The men had not yet gone into the dining-room. Valencia dropped her handkerchief; Reinaldo, stooping to recover it, kissed her hand behind its flimsy shelter. ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... by Solange's dramatic entrance, noises of the camp could be heard through the flimsy walls. Far down the canyon faint shouts could be heard. Some one was calling to animals of some sort, apparently. A faint voice, muffled by ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... but an atom of sense, He ne'er would have woman from Paradise driven, But instead of his Houris a flimsy pretence, With woman alone, he had ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... his hand on the cloth, and drew forth a flimsy pair of tights of carmine hue—part of the Mephistophelian costume that Theodore had worn on the night of the party next door. With this in his hand, and a clearer understanding of the house, with its staircase at the rear. Garrison comprehended the ease with ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... of the native Prince, whom they had always been accustomed to respect, than to that of a rival trading corporation. This policy may, at that time, have been judicious. But the pretence was soon found to be too flimsy to impose on anybody; and it was altogether laid aside. The heir of Meer Jaffier still resides at Moorshedabad, the ancient capital of his house, still bears the title of Nabob, is still accosted by the English as "Your Highness," ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... public opinion. The guarantees for the future given by our own brethren, that we shall be permitted the free and unrestricted exercise of our religious observances as well as the right to worship God according to the dictates of our own consciences, are of more endurable texture than the flimsy promises of the enemy. Our noble and generous ally, France, already has procured for us that respect and recognition so indispensable to our safety and, contrary to the opinion already expressed here tonight, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... in range with the fire and lamplight, Paul saw a most extraordinary person. The man, although very old, was tall and dignified in appearance, with deep-set, mysterious eyes, and flowing white moustache and hair. The top of his head was lightly bound in a turban of some flimsy material, and a loose robe of crimson silk hung from his shoulders, gathered together with a cord about the waist. As he advanced Henley observed that the bones of his cheeks were high and prominent, ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... from her bedroom between the red trunks of the bird-haunted Scotch firs in the Wilderness. First thing, on clear mornings, the sunlight glittered on the glass of their small windows. Last thing, at night, the dim glow of lamp-light showed through open doorway, or flimsy curtain from within. They stood alone, but curiously united and self-sufficing, upon the treeless inhospitable piece of land, ringed by the rivers, the great whispering reed-beds and the tide. Their life was strangely apart from, defiant of, that of the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of more or less undressed dancing girls; nondescript packages in wrappers like patent medicines; closed yellow paper envelopes, very flimsy, and marked two-and-six in heavy black figures; a few numbers of ancient French comic publications hung across a string as if to dry; a dingy blue china bowl, a casket of black wood, bottles of marking ink, and rubber stamps; a few books, with ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... forgotten and neglected. It is still less pleasant to walk home alone along a country road, at one o'clock in the morning, wearing a pale green voile. Lucinda was not prepared for such a walk. She had nothing on her feet save thin-soled shoes, and her only wraps were a flimsy ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... deliberate acceptance of wild improbability as historic basis, all unite to give it special place in the regard of readers. The theme is of course familiar. It is that of a small Chinese boy playing with fire who burnt down his father's flimsy hut so that a whole litter of piglings was roasted in the conflagration. The boy touched one of the incinerated little ones to feel if it were alive; burnt his fingers and applied them to his mouth. His father returned and did the same, and thus roast sucking-pig ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... made you the object of his unrepressed admiration, was your father? Why, that man was not old enough to be your father,—and if ever profligacy was written on a human countenance, its damning lines were traced on his. Your father! Away with a subterfuge so vile and flimsy, a ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... planned. Indeed, under the name of "peonage" the work of re-establishing a system of slaveholding that is barbarous in the extreme is already begun. Men and women have been seized upon by force, and upon the most flimsy pretexts have been subjected to a bondage that in its inhumanities may easily equal even the slavery of the olden time. The number of victims is undoubtedly much larger than the general public has ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... knife-stroke across the throat, which was, however, a mere matter of butcher-craft. He was proud of the good strong bay horse that he rode, which so easily carried double, and proud of his big boots and long spurs; and he scorned flimsy town clothes, and thought that good home-woven blue jeans was the gear in which a man who was a man should clothe himself withal. He glanced more than once at the different toggery of his companion, evidently a man of cities, whom he had chanced to meet by the wayside, and with ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... periods; the heroine excels in cheap but glittering repartee, wears "spangled muslin," and has "practised tripping, gliding, flitting, and tottering, with great success." Shreds and patches torn with a ruthless, masculine hand from the flimsy tapestry of romance, fitted together in a new and amusing pattern, are exhibited for our derision. The caricature is entertaining in itself, and would probably be enjoyed by those who are unfamiliar with the romances ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... the interview had told on him. This was the first actual buffet of the beast's paw. He led the way to his son's room and watched Barrant go through his intimate belongings with the feeling that intelligence was a flimsy shield against the brutal force of authority. The law in search of prey cared nothing for such civilized refinements as intellect or self-respect. As well try to stop ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... with her on the subject of education, she observed that 'all Misses now-a-days, wrote so like each other, that it was provoking;' adding, 'I love to see individuality of character, and abhor sameness, especially in what is feeble and flimsy.' Then, spreading her hand, she said, 'I believe I owe what you are pleased to call my good writing, to the shape of this hand, for my uncle, Sir Robert Cotton, thought it was too manly to be employed in writing like ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... a corner, we came to a white wooden house on the Rue Royale, with a flight of steps leading up to the entrance. In place of a door a flimsy curtain hung in the doorway, and, pushing this aside, we followed Xavier through a darkened hall to a wide gallery that overlooked a court-yard. This court-yard was shaded by several great trees which grew there, the house and gallery ran down one other side of it; and the two remaining sides ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... contour of the shore. High in the colourless sunshine a solitary bird, all black, hovered, dropping and soaring above the same spot with a slight rocking motion of the wings. A ragged, sooty bunch of flimsy mat hovels was perched over its own inverted image upon a crooked multitude of high piles the colour of ebony. A tiny black canoe put off from amongst them with two tiny men, all black, who toiled exceedingly, striking down at the pale water: and the canoe seemed to slide ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... with little clothing on, and plenty of flies about. Then we would see if he wouldn't sympathize with the poor, dumb beast. It's the most senseless thing in the world, this docking fashion. They've a few flimsy arguments about a horse with a docked tail being stronger-backed, like a short-tailed sheep, but I don't believe a word of it. The horse was made strong enough to do the work he's got to do, and man can't improve on him. Docking is a cruel, wicked thing. Now, there's a ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... call. On leaving the country you should write the initials P. P. C. (pour prendre conge) in the right-hand corner. In New York many men send cards by mail, offering the excuse that the city is too large to get about to make personal calls. This is only a flimsy pretext, ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... The Commandant took the tools from him and easily pried open the lid, for the scantling was light, almost flimsy. Within lay an object in an oilskin case, by the shape of it, apparently a violin; and yet ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Note.) He tells us how a Mason-bee's nest was enclosed in a glass funnel, the mouth of which was covered merely with a bit of gauze. From it there issued three males, who, after vanquishing mortar as hard as stone, either never thought of piercing the flimsy gauze or else deemed the work beyond their strength. The three Bees died under the funnel. Reaumur adds that insects generally know only how to do what they have to do in the ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the Montagne de la Cour, who is willing to take my sketches at a decent price. Look here, Clary, how do you like this little bit of genre? 'Forbidden Fruit'—a chubby six-year-old girl, on tiptoe, trying to filch a peach growing high on the wall; flimsy child, and pre-Raphaelite wall. Peach, carnation velvet; child's cheek to match the peach. Rather a nice thing, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... them mighty everlastin' waves, forever flowin' back and forth, forth and back, the world of the flimsy and the false seemed to pass away and the Real more nigh to me than it did in the painted land of shams and onreality I had been passin' through. And as I meditated on the disgraceful sight I had seen—that gaudy, guilty creeter with ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... from one side of the table to the other, shaking the flimsy sheets in an angry hand, and scattering pins and needles broadcast on the carpet, while Eunice, like the tortoise, toiled slowly away, until bit by bit the puzzle became clear to her mind. She discovered ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... of winter there were five thousand people in the valley to be fed with miraculous loaves and fishes. Half of these were without decent shelter, dwelling under wagon-covers or in flimsy tents, and forced much of the time to be without fuel; for wood had to be hauled through the snow from the distant canons, and so was precious stuff. For three months the cutting winds came down from the north, and the pitiless winter ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... talk in that way before Sally, father, for her head is full of all sorts of vanity now; and as to Mara, I never did see a more slack-twisted, flimsy thing than she's grown up to be. Now Sally's learnt to do something, thanks to me. She can brew, and she can make bread and cake and pickles, and spin, and cut, and make. But as to Mara, what does she do? Why, she paints pictur's. Mis' Pennel was a-showin' on me ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... less brains, my jolly Jack, then I have given you credit for," said the other. "The story you speak of is somewhat too flimsy to serve us long. We must have a better claim to the lands than can come of possession in trust for an heir not to be produced, till we can find the way to Abraham's bosom. We have now obtained it: the younker, thanks to your Piankeshaw cut-throats, is on the path ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... December was truly appalling. All trenches were knee-deep and more in mud and water, and it is on record that the B.G.C., 19th Infantry Brigade, had his boots sucked off by the mud and went round trenches without them. Parapets would not stand and were so flimsy that many men were shot through them. But the weather eventually improved, material for revetment began to appear, and by the commencement of 1915 it was possible to move in the trenches in ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... to him as she could, sheltering him in the crevice of the cliff. Her one flimsy petticoat was soaked, and her legs felt like ice; but those little choking snores filled her with a joy almost too great ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... lines—even had One-Eye and Big Tom known how to wage such a bout; and both men knew little concerning the science of self-defense. What happened—without any further abusive language—was this: the longshoreman and the cowboy (while using due caution against coming too close to the flimsy railing of the stairs) each ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... absurd that I should array myself in these gorgeous gowns to compete with that Indian in her few flimsy calicoes and silks? The contrast is out of all proportion. It's the sublime and the ridiculous. And yet she looks well in anything! Dress her in rags and she is picturesque; robe her in silks ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... masterpieces of his skill? 'Intellectual ability wasted' among a people whose scholars smile inwardly at the ignorance of the average Western! Brothers, if God is calling you, be not deterred by flimsy subterfuges such as these. You will need the power of God the Holy Ghost to make you an efficient missionary. You will find your reputation for scholarship put to the severest test in India. Here is ample scope alike for men ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... the unutterable scoundrel, set himself up as Don Luis Montez. He imposed on the nurse, and took her away with my infant child whom I had never seen after she was three months old. Rabasco went to the United States as soon as he had established a flimsy title to my modest property. In after years he returned, an older and more successful impostor. Yet he feared to live on my estate, dreading that some day his treachery might be discovered. So, still calling himself ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... town, to which I made my first voyage. And I think that with regard to a matter, concerning which I myself am wholly ignorant, it is far better to quote my old friend verbatim, than to mince his substantial baron-of-beef of information into a flimsy ragout of my own; and so, pass it off as original. Yes, I will render unto my honored guide-book ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... than his judgment. I could say a great deal more upon this subject to your Lordship, but I am afraid I have already said too much. I would rather, for my own part, have the solid reputation of your most respectable president, though exposed to the insults of a brutal mob, than all the vain and flimsy applause that has ever yet been bestowed upon either or both the other two.—I have the honour to be, with the highest esteem and regard, my Lord, your Lordship's most obliged ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... their source of nourishment is partly explained by the nature of the remains of the victims they had brought with them as provisions from Mars. These creatures, to judge from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, were bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons (almost like those of the silicious sponges) and feeble musculature, standing about six feet high and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and all were killed ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... understanding nothing of Sirens or of Odysseys, hold their own theory with regard to the disputed name, which they connect with the construction of a harbour at distant Salerno, and though this legend sounds foolish enough, it is scarcely less flimsy than the notions already quoted. A certain enchanter, one Pietro Bajalardo, undertook—in modern parlance, contracted—to build in a single night the much needed breakwater at Salerno on the strange condition that all cocks in the neighbourhood should first be killed; for the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... being almost openly built to the order of the Confederacy in the port of Liverpool, in the very shipyards whence the Alabama had gone to sea, were approaching completion. Other iron-clads, not less powerful, were under construction in France, with the personal connivance of the Emperor, under the flimsy pretence that they were intended for the imperial government of China. Finally, on the 10th of June, casting all promises and pretexts to the winds, the French troops had marched into the capital of Mexico, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... none shall dare to come in between woman and her Maker, and with unhallowed hands attempt to plant their shallow posts and draw their flimsy cords around the Heaven-wide sphere of an immortal spirit! We maintain that God has not so failed in His adaptations as to give powers to be wasted, talents to be wrapped in a napkin; and that the possession of faculties and capabilities is the warrant ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... not matter what one believes if one is only sincere," are more despicable than the Yankees who burned witches in Salem. Better that a man be "narrow" than that he be so "broad" as to take in "the devil and all his angels." Out upon our folly when we barter away the truth of God for a flimsy, tissue-paper bond of ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... "sailorising," not then on account of his nerves, but because ambition to possess a sweet-potato patch, pumpkins and a few bananas, melons, mangoes, had got hold of him. He had taken up a piece of land, but having no money his flimsy fencing was no barrier to the wallabies, and he abandoned the enterprise to them. Now he had abandoned his beche-de-mer project, had bought wire netting to keep out the wallabies, and would make a second effort ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... her husband left for the day I should go around half-naked, washing and dressing myself, in the same crowded little room in which she was then doing her work, as scantily clad as I was and with the sleeves of her flimsy blouse rolled up to ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... entirely to ask about the little shoe, or the tall gentleman of the attic. Nevertheless I did, as I went out, throw a glance up to the window of the court—alas! there were more panes broken, the placard was gone, the veil was gone—there was nothing but a flimsy web which a bold spider had stretched across one of the comers. I felt sure that the last six months had brought its changes to other houses, as well as the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... earnest that in spite of herself a little unacknowledged comfort comes into her heart. She feels it is no flimsy passion of an hour he is giving her, but a true affection that will ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... figure in a pier-glass? Was but the lovely H—k as much enamored, you would not sigh, my gentle swain, in vain. But your vanity is preposterous. How will this same bard of Bedlam ring the changes in the praise of Goldy! But what has he to be either proud or vain of? The Traveler is a flimsy poem, built upon false principles—principles diametrically opposite to liberty. What is The Good-Natured Man but a poor, water-gruel dramatic dose? What is The Deserted Village but a pretty poem of easy numbers, without fancy, dignity, genius, or fire? And, pray, what may be the last speaking ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... embankments, where building was unhandy and streets almost impossible, to be convenient to the mills. Six big factories in all, some on one side of the state line and some on the other, daily breathed in their live current of operatives and exhaled them again to fill the litter of flimsy shanties. ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... swarms with errors. The Duke of Nevers was not absent. He gave his opinion at the council before the feast of St. Bartholomew, and Henry of Navarre did not follow the procession four days after. Henry III. did not come back from Poland so quickly. Besides, how many flimsy devices! The miracle of the hawthorn, the balcony of Charles IX., the poisoned glass of Jeanne d'Albret—Pecuchet no longer had any confidence ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... production. In this he addressed the author under the title of 'your lordship', with such solemnity, that the public swallowed the deceit, and bought up the whole impression. The wise politicians of the metropolis declared they were both masterly performances, and chuckled over the flimsy reveries of an ignorant garreteer, as the profound speculations of a veteran statesman, acquainted with all the secrets of the cabinet. The imposture was detected in the sequel, and our Hibernian pamphleteer retains no part of his assumed importance but the bare title of 'my lord', and the upper ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... themselves but loud enough for her to catch a word now and then, made her wonder if the town was really safe for her father, or for herself. A storm was coming up, and the rising wind whipped the flimsy lace curtains of the windows and kept them fluttering like flags. The distant muttering of the thunder and an occasional sharp flash of lightning wore on her tired nerves until she could sit ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... rubber plantations of to-day from the life of the gatherer of wild rubber in the jungle. In Brazil, the solitary workers have to plunge at dawn into the perilous forest, with its lurking wildcats and jaguars, its coiled and creeping serpents. The dwellings are flimsy huts, food is scarce and expensive, and disease and fever cause ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... of whose white splendour and inward preciousness, the innocence thou hadst lost was but a bauble, being but a thing that turned to dross in the first furnace of its temptation? Innocence is indeed priceless—that innocence which God counteth innocence, but thine was a flimsy show, a bit of polished and cherished glass—instead of which, if thou repentest, thou shalt in thy jewel-box find a diamond. Is thy purity, O fair Psyche of the social world, upon whose wings no spattering shower has yet cast an earthy ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... at the fingers for signs of force and suddenly caught his breath. Under the woman's flimsy sleeve was a wrought gold bracelet, smaller than that one he himself had worn in Delhi and up the Khyber—exactly like the little one that Yasmini wore on her wrist in the Cavern of Earth's Drink! He raised the loose sleeve to look ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... intense as I passed from northwest Iowa into southern Dakota. The houses, bare as boxes, dropped on the treeless plains, the barbed-wire fences running at right angles, and the towns mere assemblages of flimsy wooden sheds with painted-pine battlement, produced on me the effect of an almost helpless ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... simultaneously in France. As it was evident that the Spanish children could not be disposed of in both markets at the same time, it was plain to the dullest comprehension that either the brokerage of Toledo or of Girono was a sham, and that a policy erected upon such flimsy foundations would soon ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... prophecy' to 'unawakened earth.' Shelley had sat at the feet of Godwin, and represented that vague metaphysical dreaming to which the Utilitarians were radically hostile. To the literary critic, Shelley's power is the more remarkable because from a flimsy philosophy he span an imaginative tissue of such magical and marvellous beauty. But Shelley dwelt in an ethereal region, where ordinary beings found breathing difficult. There facts seemed to dissolve into thin air instead of supplying ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... was ordered to be taken to the village square, where a dozen old men of the village were being held by the Germans under sentence of death on the flimsy charge of having resisted the Prussians. One by one these unhappy Frenchmen were being lined up before a firing squad and shot down. The sergeant, who, of course, was to share a like fate, was reserved for the last that he might have more ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... of the trunk; there were one or two little drizzly fountains, with the water dripping over the rock-work, of which the English are so fond; and the buildings for the animals and other purposes had a flimsy, pasteboard aspect of pretension. The garden was in its undress; few visitors, I suppose, coming hither at this time of day,—only here and there a lady and children, a young man and girl, or a couple of citizens, loitering about. I take pains to remember ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and horses, or mules, servants, etc.; our vehicles from the United States not having yet arrived,—nor is it difficult to foresee, even from once passing through the streets, that only the more solid-built English carriages will stand the wear and tear of a Mexican life, and that the comparatively flimsy coaches which roll over the well-paved streets of New York, will not endure ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... have disappointed all men's expectations by your old wives' fables, and the fire kindled by your accusations has burned itself away. I ask you, Maximus, have you ever seen fire spring up among the stubble, crackling sharply, blazing wide and spreading fast, but soon exhausting its flimsy fuel, dying fast away, leaving not a wrack behind? So they have kindled their accusation with abuse and fanned it with words, but it lacks the fuel of facts and, your verdict once given, is destined to leave not a wrack of calumny behind. The whole of Aemilianus' ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... to be, are as unlike as are the hastily constructed bulwarks of the savage tribes as compared with a solid British fortress; we soldiers know this, and that Major Delrose. should still entrench himself behind the flimsy seeming of days of yore, where he was safe through my careless good-nature (we shall call it), in allowing it to be supposed that I had robbed Colonel Clarmont of his wife, submitting to the stigma so that his act would not stand in the way of his promotion ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... had finally been appeased. The place was deserted and lay bare and ugly in the dull light. The gallant ship of the night before was seen to be a poor, flimsy make-shift. No wonder Mr. Rosenblatt had wished billows to engulf it and mist to shroud it. He sat on a beam lying at the ship end of the pool and stared moodily at the ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... disappeared. Pete heard a faint shuffling sound in the hall outside. Before he could turn the door crashed inward. He leapt to his feet. With the leap his hand flashed to his side. Unaccustomed to a coat, his thumb caught in the pocket just as the man who had shouldered the flimsy door down, reeled and sprawled on the floor. Pete jerked his hand free, but in that lost instant a gun roared in the doorway. He crumpled to the floor. The heavy-shouldered man, followed by two officers, stepped into the room ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... of the Society," he said, "and never perhaps in the history of astronomy, had an alleged discovery of such magnitude and consequence been promulgated on the strength of such flimsy evidence;" and after traversing in detail all the arguments of his opponent, he declared it his firm conviction that the effects which Professor Gazen had thought fit to advance as a "discovery," were neither more nor less than ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... away the bars at the window. When this was done, the prisoners helped him and his companions to throw over their bridges. The first man got out upon this flimsy bridge and when he was half way over, the inner end of the board was pushed out farther and farther until it touched the outer fence. Reaching the end, the man sprang to the ground, the inner part of the bridge was drawn ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... talent for arranging, for reckoning and recording, in brief for controlling finance, as more and more charmed the royal mind. [Mauvillon ("Elder Mauvillon," ANONYMOUS), Histoire de Frederic Guillaume I., par M. de M—(Amsterdam et Leipzig, 1741), i. 47. A vague flimsy compilation;—gives abundant "State-Papers" (to such as want them), and echoes of old Newspaper ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... suitable lads. Each case is strictly investigated when it arrives, with the result that about one-third of their number are restored to their parents, from whom often enough they have run away, sometimes upon the most flimsy pretexts. ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... I sombrely, and began to search my luggage thoroughly for my missing inheritance. But it was all to no purpose. The papers were not there. I could not have lost them. They had been stolen. I saw my always-flimsy inheritance melt away. I had been, I thought, on the edge of success, but I now had nothing but my name, a successful duel, and a few pieces of gold. I was ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... Hawkins, if you were to give out that you composed my speech, you know very well that people would say it was only your raillery, your fondness for putting a victim in the pillory and amusing the public at his expense. It is too flimsy, Miss Hawkins, for a person of your fine inventive talent—contrive an abler device than ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... would lie awake, hearing through the flimsy walls their passionate tones, now rising high, now fiercely forced into cold whispers; and then their words to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... thing which struck me was the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed by persons expecting to be complimented upon their sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed thoroughly to despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. 'God only made four Frenchmen poets,' he burst out with, 'and their names are, Corneille, Lafontaine, Beranger, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... is to it," he easily proceeded. "I knew Miss Challoner and I have already said how much and how little I had to do with her death. The other woman I did not know at all; I did not even know her name. A prosecution based on grounds so flimsy as those you advance would savour of persecution, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... had no pressing invitation to come back and has not been away long; after all, she and Lucy Foster are not great friends. Now she has only a flimsy excuse for the visit—I've seen her letter. Why should the woman force herself into Hazlehurst, unless it's to be within ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... her sounded a faint patter of crinoline coming down the hall stairs. And then there came into view from the porch, bending forward with caressing arms, a slim, lithe negress of about nineteen years. Her flimsy dress was torn by thorns, and her hands were pitifully scratched. Her skirt was gone, the petticoat bemired, and her naked feet ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
