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More "Gaudy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... manner. The only difference I can distinguish between the two ships is that yonder brig has a broad white ribbon round her, and a small figure-head painted white, whilst the pirate-craft was painted black down to her copper, and she carried a large black figure- head representing a negress with a gaudy scarf ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... fresh flowers, blew in all directions as if they had come there to sport with the trees. And the king saw that charming forest gifted with such beauties. And it was situated in a delta of the river, and the cluster of high trees standing together lent the place the look of a gaudy pole erected to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... the comic operas to ours is, they have no refinement or colours or subtleties to please the eye—all is gaudy and blatant. The "Merry Widow," for instance, could make one weep, it is so vulgar and changed, especially the end. But if the people prefer it like that the managers are quite right to let them have ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... murder eighteen. And, here, in this attention to the comfort of sick people, you will observe the usual effect of a fine art to soften and refine the feelings. The world in general, gentlemen, are very bloody-minded; and all they want in a murder is a copious effusion of blood; gaudy display in this point is enough for them. But the enlightened connoisseur is more refined in his taste; and from our art, as from all the other liberal arts when thoroughly cultivated, the result is—to improve and to humanize the heart; ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... yellow, convoying a brace of panthers, pacing as sedately as the brace of lions in the morning procession, drawing a light chariot in which sat a diademed, robed and garlanded image of Cybele, very gaudy and garish. Behind the chariot paced two priests of Cybele, not Phrygian Eunuchs, but Roman officials, in their pontifical robes, a pair of dignified old senators, ex-consuls both, Vitrasius Pollio and Flavius Aper, full of self-importance. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... season,—neither shivering in winter, nor perspiring in summer. They do not toil after a "fashionable appearance." They expend more on warm stockings than on gold rings; and prefer healthy, good bedding, to gaudy window-curtains. Their chairs are solid, not gimcrack. They will bear sitting upon, though ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... And given away his freedom, many a troth Been plight, which neither envy nor old time Could ever break, with many a chaste kiss given In hope of coming happiness. By this fresh fountain many a blushing maid Hath crown'd the head of her long-loved shepherd With gaudy flowers, whilst he happy sung Lays of his love and dear captivity. (I. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... frowned at him as she answered. "Can't you look at me, and see? Starving!" She eyed his gaudy watch and chain greedily. "Money don't seem to be scarce with you. Have you made your ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... woods of Mexico, Where screams the "painted paraquet," And mocking-birds flit to and fro, With borrowed notes they half forget; Where brilliant flowers and poisonous vines Are mingled in a firm embrace, And the same gaudy plant entwines Some reptile of a poisonous race; Where spreads the Itos' icy shade, Benumbing, even in summer's heat, The thoughtless traveler who hath laid Himself to noonday slumbers sweet;— Where skulks unseen ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... a national institution; It is wider than a Scotch plaid, and nearly as long, with a slit in the middle; and it is woven in the same gaudy Oriental patterns which are to be seen on the prayer-carpets of Turkey and Palestine to this day. It is worn as a cloak, with the end flung over the left shoulder, like the Spanish capa, and muffling up half the face when its owner is chilly or does not ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... was to have shone on Mhtoon Pah's feast rose in a yellow ring, and clouds came up, hazy, gaudy clouds that dimmed its light and made the shadows in the silent streets dense and heavy. Usually there was a police guard at the corner where Paradise Street met the Colonnade, but that night Hartley considered the police would be more necessary in the neighbourhood of the ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... temple was thirty cubits long, and twenty broad; built of red marble, highly polished. The inside of the spire was adorned with three compartments of fine paintings: and there was not a part in the whole edifice but what was embellished with paintings, or relievos, and gaudy idols from ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... the "Social Evil."—A vice that has become so great an evil, even in these enlightened times, as to defy the most skillful legislation, which openly displays its gaudy filthiness and mocks at virtue with a lecherous stare, must have its origin in causes too ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... that all living things, men and animals, wild or tame, and fish and gaudy fowl, rush to this flame of love." —Virgil, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... white sail fills and crackles, there are blown smells of pine and hemp and tar; you catch the home wind on your cheeks; and old shipmen, their eyeballs white in their bronzed faces, with silver rings and gaudy handkerchiefs, come in and tell you moving stories of the immemorial, incommunicable deep. He abides in a port; he goes down to the docks, and loiters among the galiots and brigantines, he hears the melancholy song of the chanty-men; he sees the chips flying under ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... figures of gods and heroes that he who looks up to those heights seem to gaze upon the living Olympus. And the floor of the palace is of glass, under which flow the cunningly lighted waters of the Narg, gay with gaudy fish not known beyond the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... pictures from worn-out books or advertisements, which Ethel was colouring—Aubrey volunteering aid that was received rather distrustfully, as his love of effect caused him to array the model school-children in colours gaudy enough, as Gertrude complained, 'to corrupt a saint.' Nor was his dilettante help more appreciated at a small stand, well provided with tiny drawers, and holding a shaded lamp, according to Gertrude, 'burning something horrible ending in gen, that would ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "See that old mansion mossed and fair, Poetic souls therein are they: And O that gaudy box! ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... their clever garment man at some restaurant, her back to the curious crowd, her face half concealed by a veil or a fur collar. Those people are like children; nothing that is true or probable interests them. They want the old, gaudy lies, told always in the same way. Siegmund Stein and Kitty Ayrshire—a story like that, once launched, is repeated unchallenged for years among New York factory sports. In St. Paul, St. Jo, Sioux City, Council Bluffs, there used ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... of one of the wine shops a little knot of men and soldiers had gathered. All were flushed with drink and talking loudly in their own tongue. One of them—a captain in a gaudy uniform—saw the Texan and made a laughing remark to ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... severity of treatment carefully avoided. As we pass from room to room, we are very gravely and formally introduced, as strangers in the country, to the inmates. Here we are introduced to a tall muscular old lady, who has her cap fantastically trimmed with bits of ribbon of various gaudy colours. With an air of assumed politeness and dignity, she asks me if I have been to Washington. On receiving a reply in the negative, she expresses great regret, and inquires if I have seen "Dan Webster," and, without waiting for an answer, ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... pretty certain that they would eventually strike some part of Hampstead Heath. Abruptly one bulging gas-lit window broke the blue twilight like a bull's-eye lantern; and Valentin stopped an instant before a little garish sweetstuff shop. After an instant's hesitation he went in; he stood amid the gaudy colours of the confectionery with entire gravity and bought thirteen chocolate cigars with a certain care. He was clearly preparing an opening; but he did ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... that the next twenty minutes wrought a decided change in the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. Felix Montgomery. The former was arrayed in a suit of canonical black, not of the latest cut. A white neckcloth was substituted for the more gaudy article worn by the jeweler from Syracuse, and a pair of silver-bowed spectacles, composed of plain glass, lent a scholarly air to his face. His hair was combed behind his ears, and, so far as appearance went, he quite looked the character of a clergyman ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... carriages were still rolling up in a long line to the entrance where the gorgeously-clad Indian Cavalry soldiers of the Governor's Bodyguard—tall and stately back-bearded men in long scarlet tunics, white breeches and high black boots, their heads swathed in gaudy loongies (turbans) with tails streaming down their backs, holding steel-headed bamboo lances with red and white pennons in their white-gauntleted right hands—lined the approach. Inside, the splendid ballroom, ablaze with electric lights, was crowded with ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... of the moment, and scarcely five minutes after the mad idea had entered Tommy's head the three boys stood in a dark corner of the drive with their booty, consisting of table silver, some valuable miniatures, and a collection of gold coins, securely tied up in a gaudy gold-embroidered Indian tablecloth that Tommy had taken from the drawing-room. The Colonel ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... ungainly attitude, and all the things that were about her in the darkness were of that commonest type with which ignorance with limited resource has essayed to imitate some false ideal of finery, and produced such articles as furniture daubed with painted flowers, jute carpets, and gowns beflounced and gaudy. Yet this soul, shut off from the world now by the curtain of sleep, was spoken to by an angel who blended his own being into recollections of the day, and treated with her concerning the life that is worthy and the life ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... clear but cloudy; a heavy thunderstorm during the night had cooled the air, and the whole plain was glistening with bright drops; the peacocks were shrieking from the tree-tops and spreading their gaudy plumage to the cool breeze; and the whole face of nature seemed refreshed. We felt the same invigorating spirit, and we took a long survey of the many herds of buffaloes upon the plain before we could determine which ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... river, and from the bridges and quays. This is a kind of grave radiance—a harmony of high tints—which I scarce know how to describe. There are yellow walls and green blinds and red roofs, there are intervals of brilliant brown and natural-looking blue; but the picture is not spotty nor gaudy, thanks to the distribution of the colours in large and comfortable masses, and to the washing-over of the scene by some happy softness of sunshine. The river-front of Florence is in short a delightful composition. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... advancing cavalcade to be a party of white men. In another moment they were in full view—a band of about thirty horsemen, clad in the leathern costume and armed with the long rifle of the far west. Some wore portions of the gaudy Indian dress, which gave to them a brilliant, dashing look. They came on straight for the block-house, and saluted the Varleys with a jovial cheer as they swept past at full speed. Dick returned the cheer with compound ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... I sink under gentleness like thine. Thy sight is death to me; and yet 'tis dear. The gaudy trappings of assumptive state Drop at the voice of nature to the earth, Before thy feet—I cannot force myself To hate thee, to renounce thee; yet—Covilla! Yet—oh distracting thought! 'tis hard to see, Hard to converse with, to admire, ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... their sentiments can be expressed, is, to me, truly surprising. For where, in the name of wonder, should the house acquire the necessary knowledge or intelligence? Is it by turning these musty old volumes, or by rummaging these gaudy boxes which lie on your table? No! they contain none of these mysteries. How then are they to be explored? Is there any virtue or inspiration in these benches or cushions, by which they are to be communicated, or does the echo of these walls whisper the secret in your ears? No! ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hasty breakfast of cocoa and biscuit, and then wended my way to the wharf, where the Krooboy, in light marching order, with three days' rations—which he proposed to supplement on the way, if necessary—tied up in a gaudy bandana handkerchief, awaited me in the dinghy. Scrambling down into the boat with some circumspection—for my broken arm, although knitting together again nicely, was still rather painful at times, and very liable to break again in the same place if ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... done. We do not know of any country in the world in which there are so many toy-shops or so many fairs for the sale of things which delight children. Not only are the streets of every city abundantly supplied with shops, filled as full as a Christmas stocking with gaudy toys, but in small towns and villages one or more children's bazaars may be found. The most gorgeous display of all things pleasing to the eye of a Japanese child is found in the courts or streets leading to celebrated ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... distance from the caravel, figure in the narrative as the queen and her maids. The Indian wardrobe had been taxed to its utmost to do the strangers honor,—copper bracelets, lynx-skins, raccoon-skins, and faces bedaubed with gaudy colors. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... myself of every means within my reach to render my visit agreeable to the rajah. I carry with me many presents which are reported to be to his liking; gaudy silks of Surat, scarlet cloth, stamped velvet, gunpowder, &c., beside a large quantity of confectionery and sweets, such as preserved ginger, jams, dates, syrups, and to wind up all, a huge box of China ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... lapsed again into thoughtful silence. Mrs. Klopton came in just as the clock struck one, and made preparation for the night by putting a large gaudy comfortable into an arm-chair in the dressing-room, with a smaller, stiff-backed chair for her feet. She was wonderfully attired in a dressing-gown that was reminiscent, in parts, of all the ones she had given ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the tropics, are insect-eating birds, generally having a grayish colored plumage, sometimes adorned with a slight crest or a coronal mark of orange, red, or yellow. Only two of the species found in North America are gaudy in plumage, the Vermilion, and the Derby Flycatchers. They all have the habit of sitting erect on a dead twig, and watching for passing insects, which they catch ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... a penny to a beggar? There is a chapter on Gluttony,—and who was ever more than a little exhilarated after dinner? There is a chapter on Church-goers,—and who ever went to church for respectability's sake, or to show off a gaudy dress, or a fine dog, or a new hawk? There is a chapter on Dancing,—and who ever danced except for the sake of exercise?... We sometimes wish that Brandt's satire had been a little more searching, and that, instead of his many allusions to classical fools, ... he had given ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... feeling than that of waking with the sun shining on objects quite new, and (although you have made the voyage a dozen times,) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you occupy a very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red "percale;" the windows are smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins; there are little mean strips of carpet about the tiled floor of the room, and yet all seems as gay and as comfortable as may be—the sun shines brighter than you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and what a cheery clatter of shrill ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... searing like a puff of flame, sounded as the boy remained for one moment with the flag in his hand looking down at the crowd below. His face was odd and elated and still. Then with the slightest gesture he threw the flag from him, and Aaron watched the gaudy remnant falling towards the many faces, whilst the noise of ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... cluster of wigwams, outside of which, leaning against trees, or seated on the fallen leaves, were a number of men, women, and children, dressed in all sorts of mats and blankets, some with tufts of feathers in their hair, others with bands and tassels of gaudy-colored wampum. One or two had a regal air, and might have stood for pictures of Arab chiefs or Carthaginian generals; but most of them looked squalid and dejected. None of them manifested any surprise at the entrance of the stranger. All were as grave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the income of thy office, and if it will afford thee to give liveries to thy servants, give them such as are decent and lasting, rather than gaudy and modish; and what thou shalt thus save in thy servants bestow on the poor; so shalt thou have attendants both in heaven and earth—a provision which our vain-glorious great ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... spreads itself over wide fields, and is more mischievous than a more noxious growth, such as the deadly nightshade, which only drops an occasional berry into the earth. So a common cheap chintz or carpet, with a poor, gaudy, motiveless design, carries a bad style into thousands of homes wherever our commerce extends; disgracing us, while it corrupts the ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... up his arms and looking down at himself, "I do think it be somewhat of a gay, gaudy, grasshopper dress; but it is a pretty thing for all that, and doth not ill befit the turn of my looks, albeit I wear it but for the nonce. But stay, Little John, here are two bags that I would have thee carry in thy pouch for the sake of safekeeping. I can ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... and every now and again collected by the shrill summons of the mother; and the mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall - Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nevertheless," said Durtal to himself, "that it is not like that of Notre Dame de Poitiers, where the interior is gaudy with childish colouring and raw tones; for there, instead of expressing regret and tranquillity, it rouses a suggestion of the childish glee of an old savage in his second childhood, who laughs when his tattoo marks are renewed, and his ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the atoning hour Of princes' downfall;—thus their bards awake The patriot strain, and thus from sire to son Rehearsed, the old traditionary tale Beguiles the winter's night. False is the world, My sons, and light are all the specious ties By fancy twined: friendship—deceitful name! Its gaudy flowers but deck our summer fortune, To wither at the first rude breath of autumn! So happy to whom heaven has given a brother; The friend by nature signed—the true and steadfast! Nature alone is honest—nature only— When ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... procession advances, forming a double column, composed of men and women side by side. The former are stamping and the latter tripping lightly, but all are keeping time. They certainly present a weird appearance, tricked out in their gaudy apparel and ornamented with flashy trinkets. The hair of the men is worn loose; tufts of green and yellow feathers flutter over the forehead, while around their necks and dangling over their naked chests are seen strings of porcupine ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... walls. Various wood-cuts reproducing modern pictures of Munich alternated with these decorations. Opposite the fireplace William II was displaying one of his innumerable uniforms, resplendent in gold and a gaudy frame. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... off on horseback with his hand on his hip and his pockets full of letters and orders, at the head of quite a procession of huge white cart-horses with pack-saddles, and big brown native men with nothing on but gaudy kilts. Mighty well he managed all his commissions; and those who saw him ordering and eating his single-handed luncheon in the queer little Chinese restaurant on the beach declare he looked as if the place, and the town, and the whole archipelago belonged to him. But I am not going ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ever consider the costumes in relation to the scenery? Sometimes we see frocks in tender hues against richly toned scenes that make them appear mere shades of dirty yellows, blues and pinks. At others a cool, tranquilly pleasing background is degraded to mere dulness in consequence of the gaudy gowns in front of it. Does the word repoussoir mean any thing to her? Perhaps she is unacquainted with the meaning of it although she possesses a jargon of French as staggering as that of a menu in ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... winged their flight above the tree-tops. Pelicans displayed their ungainly forms, as they snapped at the passing fish and neatly laid them away for future reference in their pouches. Strange birds of gaudy plumage flew from side to side, harshly screaming as they hid themselves in the dense foliage. Huge alligators sunned themselves along the shore, or showed their savage muzzles, as they slowly swam across our path. Frequently at some sharp bend, ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... If the best Imitator of Nature is not to be esteemed the best Painter, but he that makes the greatest Show and Glare of Colours; it will necessarily follow, that he who can array himself in the most gaudy Draperies is best drest, and he that can speak loudest the best Orator. Every Man when he looks on a Picture should examine it according to that share of Reason he is Master of, or he will be in Danger of making a wrong Judgment. If Men as they walk abroad would make more frequent ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... journeys in taxi-cabs, or in trains with my packed bag from big railway stations—what keeps me going, I sometimes ask myself; and I remember how, in his 'Masnavi I Ma'navi' or 'Spiritual Couplets,' Jalalu 'D-Din Muhammad Rumi says that our Desires, the swarm of gaudy Thoughts we pursue and follow, are short-lived like summer insects, and must all be killed before long by the ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... the influence of that cunning gentleman while they least suspect it. When a poor girl who owns but one jewel on earth—the priceless one that adorns and ennobles her lowliness—barters that treasure away for the cheap glitter of polished stones or the rustling sweep of gaudy silk, is not the basilisk gleam of the Mephistophelean eye visible in the sparkling of those gewgaws and the sheen of that stuff? When your friend Asmodeus, honest in his modest self-respect, is most ignominiously ignored by the stylish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... would? Here's the grandest little old song I bought downtown—" and she placed on the piano a gaudy thing with the modest title—"All Babies Need Daddies to Kiss 'Em." Its cover exposed a tender love scene wherein a gentleman in evening clothes was engaged in an act of violent osculation with a young lady whose dress was as short as her modesty. Carroll shrugged, ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... gives. It had become rich, and enervated by luxury and ease. Solomon had civilised the Jewish kingdom, till it had become one of the greatest nations of the East; but it had become also, like the other nations of the East, a vast and gaudy despotism, hollow and rotten to the core; ready to fall to pieces at Solomon's death, by selfishness, disloyalty, and civil war. Therefore it was that Solomon hated all his labour that he had wrought under the sun; for all was vanity ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... smoking suit for one's husband, or a sortie de bal for oneself. Here also you can buy izars to walk about the bazars incognita. They are mostly brilliantly hued and beautifully worked in gold. There was also the divan, where one bought beautiful stuffs, gaudy Persian rugs, and prayer-carpets for furnishing the house. There was the bazar where one bought henna, wherewith to stain the hands, the feet, and the finger- nails. And last, but by no means least, there was the pipe or ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... the exposure of the gigantic conspiracy now to be laid bare in all its hideous deformity, is an inhabitant of the town of Tattlesnivel—a lowly inhabitant, it may be, but one who, as an Englishman and a man, will ne'er abase his eye before the gaudy and the mocking throng. ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... his way to his room, stopped for a moment or two, to shout at them, "I say, the mater and Mary've come up from Devon. I got a wire this afternoon. I'm not grubbing with you to-night. They want to go to a theatre, and I've got to climb into gaudy garments and ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... and areas, and under carts; a few vendors are abroad with their wares, but the most of the traffic going on is of a different description. Along Water Street are women conspicuously dressed in gaudy colours. Their heavily-painted faces are bloated or pinched; they shiver in the raw night air. Liz speaks to one, who replies that she would like to talk, but dare not, and as she says this an old hag comes to the ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... the tinkling strings; 5 While in soft notes I tune to oaten reed Gay hopes, and amorous sorrows of the mead.— From giant Oaks, that wave their branches dark, To the dwarf Moss, that clings upon their bark, What Beaux and Beauties crowd the gaudy groves, 10 And woo and win their vegetable Loves. How Snowdrops cold, and blue-eyed Harebels blend Their tender tears, as o'er the stream they bend; The lovesick Violet, and the Primrose pale Bow their sweet heads, and whisper to ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... admired or felt at home in such magnificence if it had been materialized for him. He would have told you that a floor of last year's brown leaves, studded with myriad flower faces, big, bark-encased pillars of a thousand years, jewels on every bush, shrub, and tree, and tilting thrones on which gaudy birds almost burst themselves to voice the joy of life, while their bright-eyed little mates peered questioningly at him over nest rims——he would have told you that Medicine Woods on a damp, sunny May morning was Heaven. And he would have added that ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... his portly person in all, and by his favourite light-brown dress in three places. At his devotions he is standing all in white before the tutelary god of his house, Hardeo.[15] In various parts, Krishna is represented at his sports with the milkmaids. The colours are gaudy, and apparently as fresh as when first put on eighty years ago; but the paintings are all in the worst possible taste and style.[16] Inside the dome of Ranjit Singh's tomb the siege of Bharatpur is represented in the same rude taste and style. Lord Lake is dismounted, and standing ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... took place in 1690, the French artists degenerated greatly, their productions being decorated in a gaudy and theatrical way, without due regard to taste or decorum. Their school, some years ago, altered its principles, under the auspices of the spirited Count de Caylus, who possessed considerable merit as an artist. The count, by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... than forty, and was dressed suitably to her age, in a handsome suit of flowered silk; she had a profusion of trinkets and jewellery about her person, and many rings upon her fingers. But although very rich, her dress was not gaudy or in ill taste. But what was remarkable in the lady was, that although her features were handsome, and upon the whole pleasing, the pupil of each eye was dimmed with the whiteness of cataract, and she was evidently stone-blind. I was for some seconds so surprised ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Lieu. The gaudy blabbing and remorsefull day, Is crept into the bosome of the Sea: And now loud houling Wolues arouse the Iades That dragge the Tragicke melancholy night: Who with their drowsie, slow, and flagging wings ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich not gaudy; For the apparel ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... lofty from below; By him the Archer,[203] with his bended bow; Near him the Bird, with gaudy feathers spread; And the fierce Eagle[204] ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... that the pretentiousness of a newly carpentered Western American settlement can only be compared to the "side" of a nigger wench, weighted down under the gaudy burden of her Emancipation Day holiday gown. Although, in many cases, the analogy is not without aptness, yet, in frequent instances, it would be a distinct libel. At any rate, Barnriff boasted nothing of pretentiousness. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... was furniture belonging to many a different age. Carpets and chair-cushions worked in tent stitch and cross stitch and old-fashioned harpsichord; gaudy white and gold furniture of the Louis Quatorze time, mixed with the spindle-legged tables of the ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... different. The world is not his; he is the world's, and all his petty doings have its gaudy stencil blotched upon them. Yet haply even he has a heart, and somewhere in its fruitless fallows stands a poor ruin, that never was of much dignity at its best,—poor and broken, and half choked with weeds and briers; but even thus the weeds are fragrant ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... the editors. There was a market for the best, and the problem was to supply it. At first I bound my books in paper covers and simple boards. Men wrote to me wanting fine bindings. I said, "There is a market in America for the best—cheap boards, covered with cloth, stamped by machinery in gaudy tinsel and gilt, are not enough." I discovered that nearly all the bookbinders were dead. I found five hundred people in a book-factory in Chicago binding books, but not a bookbinder among them. They simply fed the books into hoppers and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... On the shrugging, simpering French wax figures they were at once very scant and very vivid ... strung with beads and shot through with gold thread or spangled with flashing sequins. She tried to imagine Mrs. Hilmer in one of these gaudy confections. Almost any of them would have looked well on Helen herself. But any woman who went in for dressing at all would need a trunkload, she concluded, if one were to decently last out a season. She found herself speculating ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... from their hooks and tried flies. But though their gaudy lures landed lightly on the water and danced in the rapids like real insects struggling for their lives, never a ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... man liberated from prison; but I have reason to believe that the people are in general amazingly disappointed in my pulpit exercises. They expected great things—things gaudy, stately, and speculative,—and I gave them the simplest and most practical things I can find in the Bible, and that in the plainest way. You would be amused at the sayings of some of the plain Methodist people; they think that it is the "real pure Gospel, but they did not expect it so, from ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... The streets themselves afforded a quaint and curious spectacle, for in promiscuous and gay confusion were seen the splendid apparel of the noble, and the modest garb of the peasant; the shining armour and waving plumes of the Christian warrior, and the gaudy fantastic habiliments of the Moslem. With them appeared the solemn and lugubrious vestments of the ecclesiastical dignitaries, and the coarse habit and shaven ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... that the fortification had one vulnerable part, a small low door on its flank. As for the main entrance, that was used to keep out thieves and customers, except once or twice in a year, when they entered together, i.e., when some duke or count arrived in pomp with his train of gaudy ruffians. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... through the archway, and very squalid and unrestful the little street looked when contrasted with the dignity and monastic quiet of the old garden. As to the surgery, with its oilcloth floor and walls made hideous with gaudy insurance show-cards in sham gilt frames, its aspect was so revolting that I flew to the day-book for distraction, and was still busily entering the morning's visits when the bottle-boy, Adolphus, entered stealthily to ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... two months to an end." We can have no idea by the present generation, of the folly in such respects, of these early ages. But these follies were not confined to the laiety. Affectation of parade, and gaudy cloathing, were admitted among many of the clergy, who incurred the severest invectives of the poets on that account. The ploughman, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, is full upon this point. He gives us the following description of ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... the children of France were indulging in their infantile hilarity in the alleys of the magnificent garden of Le Notre (from which Niblo's garden has been copied in our own Empire city of New York), and playing at leap-frog with their uncle, the Count of Provence; gaudy courtiers, emlazoned with orders, glittered in the groves, and murmured frivolous talk in the ears of ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... blither than roses in thine eyes, Shall I not rend this raiment of pangs and fears, This Colchian cloth white flames ensorcelise, This gaudy-veil distained with blood and tears?— What praise? "O marriage-beauty garlanded For festival, O sumptuous flowery stole For rites of adoration!"—See instead A cilice drenched with torment of my soul! Nevertheless the fibres implicate Proud ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... snow to chaps and chin; being toothless, he was an indifferent performer upon the onion. But his hearing was as keen as his eyesight. He caught Angioletto's vivacious heeltaps upon the flags, and peered from burly brows at the smart little gentleman, cloaked, feathered, and gaudy, who looked as suitable to his dusty surroundings as a red poppy to ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... reproductive organs, and it is with these that we are more especially concerned—such as the greater size, strength, and pugnacity of the male, his weapons of offence or means of defence against rivals, his gaudy colouring and various ornaments, his power of ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... November, after the now famous express robbery had taken place, a man, roughly dressed in a coarse suit of blue, wearing a woolen shirt open at the neck, and, knotted around his throat, a gaudy silk handkerchief, was strolling leisurely along the east bottoms near Kansas City. His face was tanned by exposure to the sun, and his shoes had the flattened and battered condition which is the natural consequence of a long and weary tramp. He walked as if he had no particular ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy: For the apparel oft proclaims the man. Hamlet, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... sudden I thought of what Serenus said about a woman twice my size dressed in gaudy red, forever takin' after folks—What would Josiah do if she took after him? And no doubt she would, for looked at through the magnifying lens of Absence and Anxiety he looked passingly beautiful. As I thought of her I knowed what I would do. Sez I, "I ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... Wisconsin, and Verona was our little village; but they both served the soul of youth as well as the real places would have done, and were as really Italian as anything else in the situation was really this or that. Heaven knows what gaudy sentimental parade we made in our borrowed plumes, but if the travesty had kept itself to the written word it would have been all well enough. My misfortune was to carry it into print when I began to write a story, in the Ik Marvel manner, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... endowed by Nature with the gift of song in connection with gaudy plumage is the American Goldfinch, or Hemp-bird, (Fringilla tristis,) one of the most interesting and delicate of the feathered tribe. Of all our birds this bears the closest resemblance to the Canary, both in his plumage and in the notes of his song. He cannot be ranked with the finest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... why so many stations should look as though they had been built hurriedly to serve the needs of a month, like a travelling show in a piece of waste ground. Not that the railway station has any of the gaudy detail of the travelling show. It resembles it only in its dusty and haphazard setting. It is more like a builder's or a tombstone-maker's yard. The very letters in which the name of the station is printed are often of a deliberate ugliness. No newspaper would tolerate letters of such ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... challenging blue ones that had darted coquettish glances through half-dropped lids, shot arrowy beams from under archly lifted brows, and said gravely, "Don't form yourself on her, Rebecca; clover blossoms that grow in the fields beside Sunnybrook mustn't be tied in the same bouquet with gaudy sunflowers; they are too ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... kindness, and the chance to be good. Perhaps you think she would not care for that. But you do not know her. Rosa Mundi was meant to be good. She hungered for goodness. She was tired—so tired of the gaudy vanities of life, so—so—what is the word—so nauseated with the cheap and the bad. Are you sorry for her, I wonder? Can you picture her, longing—oh, longing—for what she calls respectability? ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... drawings and publications of the Sixties. When J. and I now allowed ourselves an afternoon out, it was to wander from Holywell Street to Mile End Road, from Piccadilly to Holborn, searching the booksellers' barrows and shops for the unsightly, gaudy, badly-bound volumes that contained the illustrations of the Sixties—illustrations ranked amongst the finest ever made. Our bookshelves that are still filled with them represent one of the most animated phases of the Nineties. And we looked upon the "men of the Sixties" as masters, among them ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... kind of deerskin combinations made in one piece and trimmed at the neck and wrists with wolverine, a pair of enormous sealskin moccasins, which gives them an awkward waddling gait, completing their attire. The hair is worn in two long plaits, intertwined with gaudy beads, copper coins and even brass trouser buttons given them by whalemen. Unlike the men, all the women are tattooed—generally in two lines from the top of the brow to the tip of the nose, and six or seven ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... figure clad in light-coloured garments, so cut that they exaggerated her stoutness; a large, many-coloured shawl was thrown round her shoulders; on her head was a big round hat, tied with strings in a bow under her chin. This odd head-gear was topped with a bunch of gaudy feathers, ragged and out of curl. A veil of flowery design half hid this woman's features: though far from her first youth, she no doubt wished to appear young still. The skin of her face was covered ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower— Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... blows, of militarism and war. It unfurls over the living surges of humanity a sign of supremacy and command; it is a weapon. It is not the love of our countries, it is their sharp-edged difference, proud and aggressive, which we placard in the face of the others. It is the gaudy eagle which conquerors and their devotees see flying in their dreams from steeple to steeple in foreign lands. The sacred defense of the homeland—well and good. But if there was no offensive war there would ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... it advisedly; for book-hunters, are skilled Lavaters in their way, and books, like men, attract or repel at first sight. Thus it happens that I love a portly book, in a sober coat of calf, but hate a thin, smart volume, in a gaudy binding. The one promises to be philosophic, learnedly witty, or solidly instructive; the other is tolerably certain to be pert and shallow, and reminds me of a coxcombical lacquey in bullion and red plush. On the same principle, I ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... linger, without blame, over the shining meres, the golden reed-beds, the countless water-fowl, the strange and gaudy insects, the wild nature, the mystery, the majesty—for mystery and majesty there were—which haunted the deep fens for many a hundred years. Little thinks the Scotsman, whirled down by the Great Northern Railway ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... with a brocade coat and a pair of compasses. In his rear were to be seen a pillar and a red velvet curtain, and (distantly) a fine storm of clouds and lightning. Never was a respectable old sailorman so misrepresented; but all his descendants except one regarded this gaudy daub with almost religious veneration. Every family has its one great man; the admiral was ours. His was the distinction of being the only Pendarves who had ever managed to amass a fortune. It had dribbled through the fingers of succeeding generations; but there was a tradition that some ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... a stamped braiding pattern. As the white people put an exorbitant price on the flour and trinkets they give in exchange for the Indians' work, the latter ask, when selling for money, what seems more than its full value; but many who travel that way, provided with cheap trinkets and gaudy ribbons, get ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... dark corners of great churches; where there were winking lamps of gold and silver among pillars and arches, kneeling figures dotted about at confessionals and on the pavements; where there was the mist and scent of incense; where there were pictures, fantastic images, gaudy altars, great heights and distances, all softly lighted through stained glass, and the massive curtains that hung in the doorways. From these cities they would go on again, by the roads of vines and olives, through ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... an ape up in his crown And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat, And on the right hand of the sunlike throne 635 Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat The chatterings of the monkey.—Every one Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet Of their great Emperor, when the morning came, And kissed—alas, how ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... as anybody else's. This couple were people of consequence, and had landed estates. They sold every foot of ground they had and laid it out in fine clothes to be hung in. And the woman appeared on the scaffold in a white satin dress and slippers and fathoms of gaudy ribbon, and the man was arrayed in a gorgeous vest, blue claw-hammer coat and brass buttons, and white kid gloves. As the noose was adjusted around his neck, he blew his nose with a grand theatrical flourish, so as to show his embroidered white handkerchief. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... wish!' exclaimed the gaudy insect, who did not share his little friend's feeling of regard. 'Why, I should die if I were rooted to one place! I require a large sphere in which to move about; while as to you—I doubt if ever you will rise higher in the world than ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... view of him I can so speak. As a gentleman, few camps or courts ever produced his superior. But though a perfect Chesterfield at court, in camp he was certainly but a Paris. 'Tis true, at Saratoga he got his temples stuck round with laurels as thick as a May-day queen with gaudy flowers. And though the greater part of this was certainly the gallant workmanship of Arnold and Morgan, yet did it so hoist general Gates in the opinion of the nation, that many of his dear friends, with a prudent regard, no doubt, to their ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... glorious day. The luggage was piled on the hotel omnibus. We took an open cab and rattled through the narrow flag-paved streets of the harbour quarter of the town. As we emerged into a more spacious thoroughfare, suddenly from a gaudy column at the corner flared the name of Ras Fendihook. I caught the heading of the affiche: "Music-Hall-Eldorado." Part of the mystery was solved. Jaffery had been right in his deduction that he had left London on a professional engagement; but we had ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... they were good for?" But being corrected in this disrespect, and informed of their high value, he, like a good convert, gave up his reason to his faith; and becoming, like all converts, over-zealous, he now believed there was great worth in all gaudy appearances, and even respected the earrings of Lady Clementina almost as much as ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... from heaven against them, as it will at death or judgment; but I wish it might do it before. But alas! these excuses are but bare pretences, these proud ones love to have it so. I once talked with a maid by way of reproof for her fond and gaudy garment. But she told me, The tailor would make it so; when alas! poor proud girl, she gave order to the tailor so to make it. Many make parents, and husbands, and tailors, &c., the blind to others; but their naughty hearts, and their giving of way ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... together as young women of any color do, their black hair sleek with oil, their cheeks red with vermilion, their wrists heavy with brass or copper or pinchbeck circlets, their small moccasined feet peeping beneath gaudy calico given them by their white lords. Older squaws, envious but perforce resigned, muttered as their own stern-faced stolid red masters ordered them to keep close. Of the full-bloods, whether Sioux or Cheyennes, only those drunk were other than sullenly silent and resentful as they watched ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the wedding feast! The room is not large, but it is heavily crowded, filled with small tables, filled with many human bodies. About the walls are paintings and banners in sharp colors; above our heads hang innumerable gaudy lanterns of wood and paper. We sit in furs, shivering with the cold. The food passes endlessly, droll combinations in brown gravies—roses, sugar, and lard—duck and bamboo—lotus, chestnuts, and fish-eggs—an "eight-precious ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... until we started buying copies of everything there was on the news-stands, and then ransacking musty little stores for back issues and ones that had gone out of publication, until Paul's office was just full of teetery piles of gaudy magazines and everywhere you looked there were pictures of strange stars and eight-legged monsters ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant
... marked their religion, their institutions, their literature, and their art. Their virtues and their vices turned upon it. Hence the golden mean is eminently a Greek conception, a leading idea of the Hellenic race. The Greek hated a thing overdone, a gaudy ornament, a proud title, a fulsome compliment, a high-flown speech, a wordy peroration. Nothing too much was the inscription over the lintel of the national sanctuary at Delphi. It is the surpassing ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... wing, visible to your right, is purely modern, of the age of the First and Second Empire and the Third Republic. The meretricious character of the reliefs in its extreme west portion, erected under the Emperor Napoleon III., and restored after the Commune, is redolent of the spirit of that gaudy period. The south wing, to your left, forms part of the connecting gallery erected by Henri IV., but its architecture is largely obscured by considerable alterations under Napoleon III. Its west pavilion-known as the Pavilion de Flore—is well ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... spirit is not attuned to majestic harmonies, he will drift down to association with his own kind. If he cannot thrill with pleasure at the beauty and fragrance of the lily of the valley, he will seek out the gaudy sunflower. If his spirit cannot rise to the plane of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo, he will roam into fields that are less fruitful. The spirit that is rightly attuned lifts him away from the sordid into the realms of the chaste and the glorified; away from the coarse and ugly into the realm of things ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... his prayers to Almighty God. Then, rising again, and putting off his clothes unto the shirt, he went to the stake, and there suffered with a young man of twenty years of age, whose name was John Leaf, an apprentice to Mr. Humphry Gaudy, tallow-chandler, of Christ-church, London. Upon Friday before Palm Sunday, he was committed to the Compter in Bread-street, and afterward examined and condemned by ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... her eyes proudly following the hat as mother laid it on the pillow of the bed. "Mustn't git it mussed up, sir! er you'll have Dave in yer wool!" she continued warningly, as our childish interest drew us to a nearer view of the gaudy ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... Scanderbeg, which would introduce me to the man, the time, and the place. In the old and national history of Marinus Barletius, a priest of Scodra, (de Vita. Moribus, et Rebus gestis Georgii Castrioti, &c. libri xiii. p. 367. Argentorat. 1537, in fol.,) his gaudy and cumbersome robes are stuck with many false jewels. See likewise Chalcondyles, l vii. p. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the three was fantastically arrayed as a cannibal chief, in brown fleshings, with cuffs upon his ankles, gaudy decorations about his neck, and huge rings in nose ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... with calm discretion, and moving with the nice precision of a fine watchmaker, shed into the best decanter (softly as an angel's tears) liquid beauty, not too gaudy, not too sparkling with shallow light, not too ruddy with sullen glow, but vivid—like a noble gem, a brown cairngorm—with mellow depth of lustre. "That's your sort!" the tanner cried, after putting his tongue, while his wife looked shocked, to the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... woods as very near and intimate. Her mind had one of those moments of complete rest and feeding on beautiful things which come to those who have known great mental suffering in their lives, and to whom the world is not giving its gaudy preoccupations. So, walking amidst the glory of spring lit by a spiritual sunshine, Rose came round a little stunted yew-tree to find Molly kneeling on the ground ivy, and Edmund standing by her. Molly rose in one movement to her full height, as ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... regulated Anger. Their Mothers, as it is usual, engaged in the Quarrel, and supported the several Pretensions of the Daughters with all that ill-chosen Sort of Expence which is common with People of plentiful Fortunes and mean Taste. The Girls preceded their Parents like Queens of May, in all the gaudy Colours imaginable, on every Sunday to Church, and were exposed to the Examination of the Audience for ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... It whispered in low, soft zephyrs That breathed o'er the lake and fell. How it glowed in the mystic star-shine Of the clear blue Northern sky; How it crmison'd and flushed in grandeur In the sunset's sweet good-bye! And gaudy birds from the South-land Made brilliant the poplar grove, And plaintiff calls came sounding, From the ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... in sight, with a B. and A. boat landing concrete bags at the end of its wharf; and on beyond, the sparse roofs of the capital of the Free State blistered and buckled under the sun. The steamer, with hooting siren, ran up her gaudy ensign, and came to an anchor in the stream twenty fathoms off the State wharf. A yellow-faced Belgian, with white sun helmet and white umbrella, presently came off in the doctor's boat, and announced himself as the health officer of the port, and ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... the poet of nature, the daisy seems perfectly intelligible. Scattered throughout the lowly places, with meekness it seems to shed beauty over its surroundings, and compensate for gaudy vesture by cheerful contentment. Wordsworth calls the daisy "the poet's darling," "a nun demure," "a little Cyclops," "an unassuming commonplace of nature," and sums up its excellences in a verse which may fitly conclude ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... when a gray and misty shadow had settled down upon the half-seen landscape, the broad full moon came soaring up above the tree-tops, pouring her soft and silver radiance over the lovely valley, and investing its rare beauties with something of romance—a sentiment which belongs not to the gay, gaudy sunshine. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... was gaudy and extravagant, unsurpassed by that of French or British courtiers. Immense wigs, with their profusion of waves or curls, were in use by the gentry. Very tight knee-breeches were worn, with silk stockings, and shoes embellished with immense silver buckles, ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... carpenter; the weaver; the dyer; the tapestry-worker; the cook, to boil the chickens and the marrow-bones, and bake the pies and tarts,—mostly people from the middle and lower ranks of society, whose clothes are gaudy, manners rough, and language coarse. But all classes and trades and professions seem to be represented, except nobles, bishops, and abbots,—dignitaries whom, perhaps, Chaucer is reluctant to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... funny; they mean well but their tastes run to bright things. Any girl in a gaudy dress is beautiful ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... ridiculous wish!' exclaimed the gaudy insect, who did not share his little friend's feeling of regard. 'Why, I should die if I were rooted to one place! I require a large sphere in which to move about; while as to you—I doubt if ever you will rise higher in the world than you ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... green as a pistachio-nut, There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world— And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? —That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line— Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, 80 And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... painted green, and the other yellow; the cheeks were blue, the lips white, the teeth red, and there was a black list drawn down the middle of the forehead as far as the tip of the nose — a couple of gaudy parrot's feathers were stuck through the division of the nostrils — there was a blue stone set in the chin, her ear-rings consisted of two pieces of hickery, of the size and shape of drum-sticks — her arms and legs were adorned with bracelets ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... heaven that her battles, revolutions, executions, and pageants have held their august procession; the rain has wet many a May-day and many a harvesting, whose traditional color (through tender English verses) is gaudy with yellow sunshine. The revellers of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" would find a wet turf eight days out of ten to disport upon. We think of Bacon without an umbrella, and of Cromwell without a mackintosh; yet I suspect both of them carried these, or their equivalents, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... just come in and added their gaudy vermilions, blues, and emerald greens to the picture, the North Landing is worth seeing. The men in their blue jerseys and sea-boots coming almost to their hips, land their hauls of silvery cod and load the baskets pannier-wise on the backs of sturdy donkeys, whose work is to trudge up ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... the Metropolitan Grand Hotel in Buffalo, Professor Stillson Renmark stood and looked about him with the anxious manner of a person unused to the gaudy splendor of the modern American house of entertainment. The professor had paused halfway between the door and the marble counter, because he began to fear that he had arrived at an inopportune time, that something unusual was going on. The hurry and ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... during our acquaintance stooped to a slouch hat. This typical head gear of the West had no attraction for him. The formal black or brown derby for winter and the seasonable straw hat for summer seemed necessary to tone down the frivolity of his neckties, which were chosen with a cowboy's gaudy taste. To the day of his death Field delighted to present neckties, generally of the made-up variety, to his friends, which, it is needless to say, they never failed to accept and seldom wore. Often in the afternoon ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... time as he listened; the lad's sensitive frame thrilled with passionate envy at the narrative. At last he had met a hero face to face. What were those old Greek fellows—Ajax, or Hector or any of those gaudy warriors—compared with this ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... pipes, fishing-rods and flies, jars of sweets, sheets of foreign stamps, pictorial advertisements of innocuous beverages. A woman with black grizzling hair, fashionably dressed, flashing dark eyes, long gold ear-rings, gold beads and gaudy attire, came out to reclaim her property. A word or two passed about payment, during which Clement had a strange thrill of puzzled recollection. The bottles bore the labels of raspberry vinegar and lemonade, but he had seen ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vault and faced toward the breeze. The air up here would be delicious if only he could rid his nerves of the feeling that mortality was in it. He gazed restlessly at the crosses and the urns, the angels, the "immortelles," the flowers, gaudy or withering; and suddenly he noticed a spot which seemed so different from anything else up there that he was obliged to walk the few necessary yards and look at it. A sober corner, with a massive queer-shaped cross of grey rough-hewn ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... blanket or rug, of a kind not common, having much the appearance of an Oriental rug; it is made of shredded red flannel, with a few simple figures in yellow, dark blue, and green. Fig. 51 represents a gaudy blanket of smaller size (5 feet 4 inches by 3 feet 7 inches) worn by a woman. Its colors are yellow, green, dark blue, gray, and red, all but the latter color being in native yarn. Figs. 52 and 53 illustrate small or half-size blankets made for children's wear. Such articles are ...
— Navajo weavers • Washington Matthews
... spiritual life had been nourished in the solemn mysticism of the Middle Ages, suddenly turn to embrace a gaudy paganism? The common self-respect of humanity was outraged by apostate priests who, whether under the pressure of fear of Chaumette, or in a very superfluity of folly and ecstasy of degradation, hastened to proclaim the charlatanry ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... generally. They have excellent horses, or ponies, and are adepts at pig-sticking. Occasionally boar-hunts are organised on a large scale, which allow of a fine display of horsemanship, as well as of gaudy costumes. At the feasts given by the Sultan, the dishes, and even the plates, are all of mother-of-pearl shells, of the finest golden-lipped variety, each with one or more large pearls adhering to it. In some cases visitors have been tempted to pocket their plates, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... crudely coloured and gaudy. In the first, a red man was reposing serenely upon what appeared to be a range of mountains, with a musical instrument in his hand, a crown upon his head, and a smile upon his face. In the second, a similar man was screaming at the pitch of his lungs, ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all over durt, They did give him clean holland, this was no great hurt: On a bed of soft down, like a lord of renown, They did lay him to sleep the drink out of his crown. In the morning when day, then admiring[FN484] he lay, For to see the rich chamber both gaudy and gay. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... and easy water, but as the season advances, they draw into the great rough streams, taking up their stations where they are likely to be least observed. But there the wily wand of the practiced angler casts its gaudy lure, and "Kinmont Willie," "Michael Scott," or "The Lady of Mertoun," (three killing flies,) darting deceitfully within their view, a sudden lounge is made—sometimes scarcely visible by outward signs—as often accompanied by a watery heave, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... toilet was overthronged by Princes and Princesses, I fancied in the bustle that the omission proceeded from forgetfulness. Consequently, I sent the tirewoman, in the Queen's hearing, to order the jewels to be brought in. Smilingly, Her Majesty replied, 'No, no! I have not forgotten these gaudy things; but I do not intend that the lustre of my eyes should be outshone by the one, or the whiteness of my teeth by the other; however, as you wish art to eclipse nature, I'll wear them to satisfy ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the latest price of wheat, a somewhat astonishing attendance in the long room of the hotel at the railroad settlement one Saturday evening. A big stove in the midst of it diffused a stuffy and almost unnecessary heat, gaudy nickeled lamps an uncertain brilliancy, and the place was filled with the drifting smoke of indifferent tobacco. Oleographs, barbaric in color and drawing, hung about the roughly-boarded walls, and any critical stranger would have found the saloon ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... but faltered, staggered, and was obliged to lean against the mountain for support. Stains of travel were on her dress; lines of fatigue and pain, and traces of burning passionate tears, were on her face; her black hair flowed from beneath her gaudy bonnet; and, shamed out of his brutality, Rand placed his strong arm round her waist, and half carrying, half supporting her, began the ascent. Her head dropped wearily on his shoulder; her arm encircled his neck; her hair, as ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... These idols were three feet high, representing some approach to the human figure, each possessing many arms and hands. They were carved from solid blocks of wood, and very heavily gilded, presenting a most gaudy and toy-like appearance. While we stood within this temple some women came in, prostrated themselves before the glittering toys for a few moments, and then passed out, making room for others; but we saw no men at devotion in this temple of many ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... necessary to enter more at large than in my preceding volumes into the resources of Canada, and, for this end, Geology and other scientific subjects must be introduced; but, as I dislike exceedingly that heavy and gaudy veil of learning, that embroidered science, with which modern taste conceals those secrets of Nature which have been so partially unfolded, I shall not have frequent recourse to absurd Greek derivations, which are very commonly borrowed for the ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... not merely giving orders to my cook; it is an amusement to regale the object I dote on. In this light, a woman considers these necessary occupations, as more lively and affecting pleasures than those gaudy sights which amuse the greater part of the sex, who are incapable of ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... was furnished with the gaudy magnificence dear to Denver Dick's western ideas. Various well-patronized games were in progress. About fifty men who were in the room rushed upon the police in a grand break for personal liberty. The plain-clothes ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... day's pleasure. Most of the churches have services at all hours till noon, some of them with fine classical and military music. One could not but be struck with the devotional manner of the simple women, in their queer costumes, who walked into the gaudy edifices, were absorbed in their prayers for an hour, and then went away. I suppose they did not know how odd they looked in their high, round fur hats, or their fantastic old ornaments, nor that there was anything amiss in bringing ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Peacock's gaudy dress: If she prefers That gray of hers, I don't admire her taste, I must confess. 'And as for legs and feet—well, I declare, The pair she's got Are really not The kind that I'd be ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... resembles. Across the park lies the great highway from the capital to Versailles, over which so many joyous cavalcades were wont to amble or gallop in the days of gallantry. The pace is not more sober to-day, but gaily caparisoned horses and gaudy coaches have given way to red and yellow "Rois des Belges," the balance lying distinctly in favour of the former mode of conveyance, so ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... In the first place we are less cold. The wind has dropped and we have devised various schemes for mitigating the excessive ventilation. I have hung two gaudy Arab rugs over my window, with a layer of Times between them and the bars. Some genius had an inspiration, acting on which we have pitched an E.P. tent in the mess room. It just fits and is the greatest success. Finally, I sent my bearer to speculate ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... of his unsaintly hat. On the mantel stood a large, flat mahogany clock with floral decorations and a broad, white face with vivid black numerals and long black hands. The walls were covered with a gaudy but expensive paper, in which huge, indescribable red flowers mingled regularly with glaring green leaves. Two "mottoes," worked in red and blue worsted and framed with narrow cross-pieces of oak, hung suspended in the ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... when Bill stooped to add the gaudy-labeled cans to his pack that Daddy Dunnigan, of the twisted leg, volunteered the bit of advice that ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... shot of yours, Egyptian," he said, "when you sent an arrow through the lioness that dared to attack my Majesty. Yes, the King owes his life to you and he is grateful as you shall learn. This slave of yours," and he pointed to Bes in his gaudy attire, "has brought the whole matter to my mind whence it had fallen, and, Shabaka," here he hiccupped, "you may have noted how differently things look to the naked eye and when seen through a wine goblet. ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... in this attention to the comfort of sick people, you will observe the usual effect of a fine art to soften and refine the feelings. The world in general, gentlemen, are very bloody-minded; and all they want in a murder is a copious effusion of blood; gaudy display in this point is enough for them. But the enlightened connoisseur is more refined in his taste; and from our art, as from all the other liberal arts when thoroughly cultivated, the result is—to improve and to humanize the heart; ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... fine clothes, among fine folks. I am very glad of it, as it is time that you should begin to be formed to the manners of the world in higher life. Courts are the best schools for that sort of learning. You are beginning now with the outside of a court; and there is not a more gaudy one than that of Saxony. Attend to it, and make your observations upon the turn and manners of it, that you may hereafter compare it with other courts which you will see; And, though you are not yet able to be informed, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... with the beauteous damsels whose smiles they were ambitious to deserve. True it is, their merits would make but a very inconsiderable impression upon the heart of a modern fair; they neither drove their curricles nor sported their tandems, for as yet those gaudy vehicles were not even dreamt of; neither did they distinguish themselves by their brilliancy at the table, and their consequent rencontres with watchmen, for our forefathers were of too pacific a disposition to need those guardians of the night, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... not occupy that place in the history of the art of this period that she deserves, which may be partly owing to the rarity of her pictures, especially in public galleries. For although her flower pieces are weak in arrangement and often gaudy in the combination of color, she yet represents her flowers with the utmost truth of drawing, and with a depth, brilliancy, and juiciness of local coloring unattained by any other ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... in a wealth that he never dreamed was possible. The more he made the more he spent. He squandered his financial substance on fine cigars, expensive clothes, and excessive drinks, while his wife bedecked herself in gaudy finery and installed pianos or phonographs in her house. No ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... resources of recent art could not render more genuinely marine; fountains disclosed the most bewitching of Naiads; and Druidical oaks, expanding, surrendered the imprisoned Hamadryad to the air of heaven. Fairies and Elves, Satyrs and Forsters, Centaurs and Lapithae, played their parts in these gaudy spectacles with every conventional requirement of shape, costume, and behavior point-de-vice, and were supplied by the poet, to whom the letter-press of the show had been confided, with language ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... the old and the new style of fitting up shops, and carrying on business, as would be drawn at the present day by nine out of every ten common observers. The notion that the shops of the past age were plain, while those of the present are gaudy, and that the tradesmen of a past age carried on all their business in a quiet way and with little expense, is as strongly impressed on the minds of the present generation, as it is here seen to have been on those ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... chapel which interferes with the sombre beauty of the general effect; for though the walls are incrusted, from pavement to dome, with marbles of inestimable cost, and it is a Florentine mosaic on a grander scale than was ever executed elsewhere, the result is not gaudy, as in many of the Roman chapels, but a dark and melancholy richness. The architecture strikes me as extremely fine; each alternate side of the octagon being an arch, rising as high as the cornice of the lofty dome, and forming the frame of a vast niche. All the dead ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... comes to an end, and, to the sound of a merry peal of bells, the well-dressed local Cossacks file out of church, and distribute themselves in gaudy streams about the hamlet, no ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... other bad; and those who write about him generally describe one side or the other in superlatives. Thus one critic speaks of his "splendid and imperishable excellence of sincerity and strength"; another of his "gaudy charlatanry, blare of brass, and big bow-wowishness." As both critics are fundamentally right, we shall not here attempt to reconcile their differences, which arise from viewing one side of the man's nature and poetry to the exclusion of the other. Before his exile from England, in 1816, the general ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Critchley's Fancy produced no better result. A tiny double Silver Grey brought no response. Then he looked through his fly-box in despair, and picked out an old three-nought Prince of Orange—a huge, gaudy affair with battered feathers, which he had used two years before in flood-water on the Restigouche. At least it would astonish the salmon, for it looked like a last season's picture-hat, very much the worse for wear. It lit on the ripples with a splash, and floated ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... bright-colored leaves, painted with "autumnal hectic," strewed the bier of the declining year. Beulah sat down on a tuft of moss, and gathered clusters of golden-rod and purple and white asters. She loved these wild wood-flowers much more than gaudy exotics or rare hothouse plants. They linked her with the days of her childhood, and now each graceful spray of golden-rod seemed a wand of memory calling up bygone joys, griefs, and fancies. Ah, what a hallowing glory invests ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... eager and piercing. From a distance came answering cries, in men's voices, which blended into a wild, barbaric chant that sounded incredibly savage, smacking of blood and war. Then, through vistas of tropical foliage appeared a procession of savages, naked save for gaudy loin-cloths. They advanced slowly, uttering deep guttural cries of triumph and exaltation. Slung from young saplings carried on their shoulders were mysterious objects of considerable weight, hidden from view ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... Here's the grandest little old song I bought downtown—" and she placed on the piano a gaudy thing with the modest title—"All Babies Need Daddies to Kiss 'Em." Its cover exposed a tender love scene wherein a gentleman in evening clothes was engaged in an act of violent osculation with a young lady whose dress was as short as her modesty. Carroll shrugged, placed his long, ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... strike some part of Hampstead Heath. Abruptly one bulging gas-lit window broke the blue twilight like a bull's-eye lantern; and Valentin stopped an instant before a little garish sweetstuff shop. After an instant's hesitation he went in; he stood amid the gaudy colours of the confectionery with entire gravity and bought thirteen chocolate cigars with a certain care. He was clearly preparing an opening; but he did not ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... shows it. A more tender-hearted and perfect lover romance may show, but history cannot. He must have been the quintessence of refinement, a thoroughbred to his finger-tips; one for whom that purple mantle was too gaudy, and yet who bore it, as he bore everything else, in that self-abnegatory spirit which the ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... me with the elite if passion is what they respect," Beth said. "Passion at the best—honourable passion—is but the efflorescence of a mere animal function. The passion that has no honourable object is a gaudy, unwholesome weed, rapid of growth, swift and sure ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... in company with a missionary and a native, both of whom could talk both English and Chinese, and visited some 'flower-boats' on the river. Many of these boats are quite pretentious, with their rich wood-carving, fine furniture, and gaudy display of tinsel. There were whole streets of them,—floating houses moored together; we walked along the length of the street on one side, stepping from the bow of one boat to the next, the bows of the boats constituting ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... book, he called aloud, "Who speaks to me?" And as he spoke he saw, or thought he saw—but I give it to you as he gave it to me—to his amazement, how the painted image of the beautiful youth that stood above the fountain seemed slowly to quicken into being, and how all the gaudy colors and gilding of the figure seemed to soften to the exquisite and tender hues of a life that was more marvellous than life. The hair of the youth was radiantly sunny, his cheeks flamed and paled with a divine white and red, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... carved to-day in their masons' yards altogether the same in value to the hearts of the French people as that which the eyes of St. Louis saw lifted to its place? Would a loving daughter, in mere desire for gaudy dress, ask a jeweler for a bright fac-simile of the worn cross which her mother bequeathed to her on her deathbed?—would a thoughtful nation, in mere fondness for splendor of streets, ask its architects to provide for it fac-similes of the temples which for centuries had given ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... glad to see that you like birds, sir," said Beckendorff to Vivian; for our hero, good-naturedly humouring the tastes of his host, was impartially dividing the luxuries of a peach among a crowd of gaudy and greedy little sparrows. "You shall see my favourites," continued Beckendorff; and tapping rather loudly on the table, he held out the forefinger of each hand. Two bullfinches recognised the signal, and ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... imitation, for the poorest may thus turn their necessary expenses into virtuous actions. In this they excel others, as much as the bee does the common butterfly; they both feed on the same flowers, but while the butterfly only gains a transient subsistence and flies and flutters in all its gaudy pride, the bee lays up a precious store for its future well-being, and may brave all the rigours of winter. Man, indeed, often encroaches on the labours of the bee and disappoints it of its reasonable hope; but no one without our own concurrence ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... that you obey so quickly," said a man in gaudy costume as he stepped from the bushes followed by a half dozen others, evil looking fellows, all carrying guns and pistols. Ned noticed that two of the guns were rifles of long and slender ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in the Parisian suburbs, chiefly let for the summer: thin limp muslin curtains that decline to draw; stiff mahogany chairs covered with yellow Utrecht velvet; a tall secretaire in a dark corner; an oval buhl-table set in tawdry ormolu, islanded in the centre of a poor but gaudy Scotch carpet; and but one other table of dull walnut-wood, standing clothless before a sofa to match the chairs; the eternal ormolu clock flanked by the two eternal ormolu candelabra on the dreary mantelpiece. Some of this garniture had been removed, others softened into cheeriness ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thee to shorten his long suffering with thy good works. Florence,[15] while yet she was confined within the ancient boundary which still contains the bell that summons her to prayer, abided in peace, for she was chaste and sober. She had no trinkets of chains then, no head-tires, no gaudy sandals, no girdles more worth looking at than the wearers. Fathers were not then afraid of having daughters, for fear they should want dowries too great, and husbands before their time. Families were in no haste to separate; nor had chamberers arisen to shew what enormities they dared to ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... life, death, and resurrection—phases which its rising, setting, and return suggest—was the deity, the one really existing god. Nominally, figuratively, even concretely, there were others; a whole host, a hierarchy vaster than the Aryans knew; a great crowd of divinities less grandiose than gaudy, that swarmed in space, strolled through the dawns and dusk, thronged the temples, eyed the quick, confronted the dead. They were but appearances, mere masks, expressions, hypostases, ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... diplomacy, and doubtless also with the help of a dram or two of spirits or of the wine of Oporto, the treaty was soon concluded, and a very shrewd stroke of business accomplished for the King of Portugal; for it gave him the sole right of exchanging gaudy rubbish from Portugal for the precious gold of Ethiopia. When the contents of the two freight-ships had been unloaded they were beached and broken up by the orders of King John, who wished it to be thought that they had been destroyed in the whirlpools of that dangerous sea, and that the ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... might be over low to let it pass; and it was drawn by four right small little horses, with dark matted coats and bright, wilful eyes. A few hounds of choice breed ran behind it. From within the hangings came a sharp, shrill screaming as were of many gaudy parrots. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... extensive plain. On their right front, and at the distance of a mile, lay a town, composed of dark buildings of quaint and ancient architecture, surrounded by walls and a moat, and on the battlements of which sentries were stationed; whilst from the church tower the Spanish colours, the gaudy red and gold, flaunted their folds in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... shown to him, "trumpery," asking "what they were good for?" But being corrected in this disrespect, and informed of their high value, he, like a good convert, gave up his reason to his faith; and becoming, like all converts, over-zealous, he now believed there was great worth in all gaudy appearances, and even respected the earrings of Lady Clementina almost as much as ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... in which they now talked overlooked the neighboring Temple house, a dignified sentry at the point where the leisured street forsook the chaffer of the town to climb amidst arching elms and maples, above whose gaudy autumn masses rose the dome of the courthouse and the spires of many churches. It was an old-fashioned Georgian structure with white columns clear-cut against its weathered brick; at either side of the low steps a great hydrangea, its glory waning with the summer, lifted its ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... this fatal act, the condition of our trade was glorious and flourishing, though no way interfering with the English; we made no broad-cloths above 6s. per yard; coarse druggets, bays and shalloons, worsted damasks, strong draught works, slight half-works, and gaudy stuffs, were the only product of our looms: these were partly consumed by the meanest of our people, and partly sent to the northern nations, from which we had in exchange, timber, iron, hemp, flax, pitch, tar, and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... unhindered, Ben was considered a "character." He was a short, thick man of enormous physical strength, and he sported a beard like a quickset hedge, hence his nickname. He was clad in an entire suit of fur like an Eskimo, with a gaudy red worsted ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... of the Sunday papers announcing the birth of the Republic of Labour. The story was illustrated by a drawing showing McGregor leading a vast horde of men across an open plain toward a city whose tall chimneys belched forth clouds of smoke. Beside McGregor in the picture and arrayed in a gaudy uniform was Mosby the ex-army officer. In the article he was called the war lord of "The secret republic growing up within a ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... reply. The young officer looked eagerly at the approaching craft, upon the bow of which a dark-skinned man leaned carelessly against the wire-stays. He noticed that the man was tall and straight. Upon his head a gaudy red cap rested with a rakish air. His eyes were upon the Lang dock as he stood with folded arms and waited for the boat to nose ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... she's frizzin' up her bangs; Ma's got on her best alpacky, and she's askin' how it hangs; Pa has shaved as slick as can be, and I'm rigged way up in G,— And it's all because we're goin' ter have the minister ter tea. Oh! the table's fixed up gaudy, with the gilt-edged chiny set, And we'll use the silver tea-pot and the comp'ny spoons, you bet; And we're goin' ter have some fruitcake and some thimbleberry jam, And "riz biscuits," and some doughnuts, and some ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... breathe. Life is the exhalation, death the inhalation of deity. He breathes out, and the Universe flames forth with all her wings—her suns and clusters of suns—down to her mote-like earth, the butterfly of space, trimmed with its gaudy seasons, and nourishing on its back the parasitical ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... throats. There were festoons of rope-ladders—none so ingenious as ours—and then at last there was something that the clerk knew all about. It was a small tin cigarette-box, and the name upon the gaudy wrapper was not the name of Sullivan. Yet Raffles and I knew even more about ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... aloft—that is, to the realm of the clouds: on these do we set our gaudy puppets, and then call them ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... presence seemed like an intrusion into the sanctuary of genius. What had wealth to do there? Why should it crowd the dust of the great? That was no thoroughfare of business—no mart of gain! There were no costly banquets there; no silken garments, nor gaudy liveries, nor obsequious attendants! "What servants," says Jeremy Taylor, "shall we have to wait upon us in the grave? what friends to visit us? what officious people to cleanse away the moist and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... of the capital. There was the Metropolitan in his robes and with his great crucifix, Ministers of State in uniforms with decorations, Actual Privy Councillors and their wives, and dozens of underlings in their gaudy tinsel, prelates with crosses at their necks, and women of all classes, from the highest aristocracy to the painted sister of ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... In all this gaudy attempt at show, this restless dissatisfaction with what they are, and ceaseless endeavour to appear something they are not, our middle-class ladies are doing themselves and society infinite mischief. They set the tone to the world below ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... satire, which stands at the head of the later portion of Juvenal's work. In this, and in those of the subsequent satires which do not show traces of declining power, notably the eleventh and thirteenth, the rhetoric is less gaudy and the thought rises to a nobler tone. The fine passage at the end of the tenth satire, where he points out what it is permitted mankind to pray for, and that in the thirteenth, where he paints the torments of conscience in the unpunished sinner, ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... from the Forecourt, attractive by its terraces and colonnades, to the Triumphal Bridge, a noble portal, with four monumental piers surmounted by equestrian figures, "The Standard-bearers." This dignified entrance was in striking contrast with the gaudy and barbarous opening to the Paris Exposition. From the gate the whole panorama spread out before the eye. Down the long court with its fountains, gardens, and encircling buildings, you saw the Electric Tower soaring heavenward, fit expression of the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... springing in a dry ground would show but little beauty of foliage or flower. It would be starved and colourless beside the gaudy growths in fertile, well-watered gardens. But that unattractiveness is not absolute or real; it is only 'that we should desire Him.' We are but poor judges of true 'form or comeliness,' and what is lustrous with perfect beauty in God's eyes may be, and generally is, plain and dowdy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... velvet gown and white ruff of the old dame who rides off by night to the witch-revels in the forest, the group of Red Indians in their deer-skin robes and wampum belts of red and yellow ochre, the bronzed faces and gaudy attire of the Spanish pirates, all stand out in bold relief among the sober greys and browns of the Puritans. The tense, emotional atmosphere is heightened by the festive brightness ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... of nature, the daisy seems perfectly intelligible. Scattered throughout the lowly places, with meekness it seems to shed beauty over its surroundings, and compensate for gaudy vesture by cheerful contentment. Wordsworth calls the daisy "the poet's darling," "a nun demure," "a little Cyclops," "an unassuming commonplace of nature," and sums up its excellences in a verse which may fitly conclude our attempt to pluck ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... than man "taste the pure enjoyment that results from the mere growth and exercise of good feelings." Who so well as she knows how much more true pleasure there is in one peaceful moment of modest goodness than in all the excitement that waits on the gaudy game of ambition? She is never so happy, as when ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... partner! To be sure, it was a comely sight for to see as how the buxom country-lasses, fresh and fragrant and blushing like the rose, in their best apparel dight, their white hose, and clean short dimity petticoats, their gaudy gowns of printed cotton; their top-knots and stomachers, bedizened with bunches of ribbons of various colours, green, pink, and yellow; to see them crowned with garlands, and assembled on Mayday, to dance before Squire Launcelot, as he made his morning's progress through the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... for several Ages, had been successfully encouraged and was designedly introduced to make Way for Credulity, the Simplicity of the Gospel and the Doctrine of Christ were turn'd into Gaudy Foppery and vile Superstition. It was then, that the Church of Rome began openly to execute her deep-laid Plot for enslaving the Laity. Knowing, that no Power or Authority can be established or long maintain'd upon Earth without real Strength and Force of Arms, she very early coax'd the ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... influence of that cunning gentleman while they least suspect it. When a poor girl who owns but one jewel on earth—the priceless one that adorns and ennobles her lowliness—barters that treasure away for the cheap glitter of polished stones or the rustling sweep of gaudy silk, is not the basilisk gleam of the Mephistophelean eye visible in the sparkling of those gewgaws and the sheen of that stuff? When your friend Asmodeus, honest in his modest self-respect, is most ignominiously ignored by the stylish Mrs. Money,—her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... men wore trousers, or pantaloons, as they mostly called them, strapped under their varnished boots. Their coats were cut like our dress-coats, if you can fancy them with a wild amplitude of collar and lapel. They wore large cravats and gaudy waistcoats, and two or three of them who had been too much in England came with shawls or rugs ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... proceed in due time to Thucydides and Plato, not forgetting a thorough course also of pleasant Comedy and grave Tragedy. When you have culled the best that all these can show, you may reckon that you have a style. You have not realized it, but at present you are like the toymen's dolls, all gaudy colouring ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the yard completing the ricks. Kenelm stole away unobserved, bent on a round of visits. He called first at the village shop kept by Mrs. Bawtrey, which Jessie had pointed out to him, on pretence of buying a gaudy neckerchief; and soon, thanks to his habitual civility, made familiar acquaintance with the shopwoman. She was a little sickly old lady, her head shaking, as with palsy, somewhat deaf, but still shrewd and sharp, rendered mechanically so by long habits of shrewdness and sharpness. She became ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... themselves in washing and preening their feathers. The Jackdaw was there along with the rest, and realised that, with his ugly plumage, he would have no chance of being chosen as he was: so he waited till they were all gone, and then picked up the most gaudy of the feathers they had dropped, and fastened them about his own body, with the result that he looked gayer than any of them. When the appointed day came, the birds assembled before Jupiter's throne; and, after passing them in ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... was the Dreamer, they the Dream; I roamed 30 Delighted through the motley spectacle; Gowns, grave, or gaudy, doctors, students, streets, Courts, cloisters, flocks of churches, gateways, towers: Migration strange for a stripling of the hills, A northern villager. As if the change 35 Had waited on some Fairy's wand, at once Behold me rich in monies, and attired In splendid garb, with hose of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... dying will be the country boys and the like of us from the towns, while Mr. Polk sits planning at the White House how he can get elected again. I wish Tom were here, confound you! You listen to him because he always has the facts and I'm just an embroiderer, you think. What's become of the gaudy campaign cry you were all wearing your lungs out with a few months ago? 'Fifty-four-forty or fight!' Bah! Polk twisted the lion's tail with that until after election. Then he saw he had to make you forget it, or fight England and be ruined, ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... the bountiful dinner was ready, he had the pleasure of taking her downstairs, looking very beautiful in her handsome black silk, and the pink coral ornaments Aunt Barbara had given her. There was nothing gaudy about her dress; it was in perfect taste, and very plain too, as she thought, even if it was trimmed with lace and bugles. But she could not help feeling it was out of keeping when James, and John, and Eunice stared so at her, and Mrs. Markham asked her if she hadn't better tie on an apron ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... to the sandbank, some doing a little fishing round its rim, others bringing the washing there, all skylarking and singing. Few prettier sights have I ever seen than those on that sandbank— the merry brown forms dancing or lying stretched on it: the gaudy- coloured patchwork quilts and chintz mosquito-bars that have been washed, spread out drying, looking from Kangwe on the hill above, like beds of bright flowers. By night when it was moonlight there would be bands of dancers on it with bush-light torches, gyrating, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Inditos," Jacqueline mused aloud. Berthe struck her pony in a tremor of fright. The American was riding ahead. "Fire and sword," Jacqueline went on, and her voice lowered to intense scorn, "they make the final tableau, but—it's gaudy, it's cheap." ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... came to report a visit from one of the natives, and concluding others were at hand, hastened up to strengthen our party; they said their sable visitor came to them without any enticing, no offers of red or blue handkerchiefs, or some gaudy bauble that seldom fails to catch the eye of a savage—and without the slightest indication of fear. We hurried down to see this marvellously confiding native, who we found coming up the hill; he met us with all ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... their partners, as custom demanded, and had gone to the doors, energetically mopping their brows with handkerchiefs as various in colour as the women's dresses; red and yellow silk, blue and purple, and the eternal gaudy bandana. Thornton paused at the door, losing himself among the men who had come out to stand there smoking or to wander a little away in the darkness where earlier in the evening each had hidden his personal flask ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... anxious than when they had entered the court. Mr. Subtle requested Gammon, whose ability he had soon detected, to sit immediately beneath him; next to Gammon sat Quirk; then Snap; and beside him Mr. Titmouse, with a staring sky-blue flowered silk handkerchief round his neck, a gaudy waistcoat, a tight surtout, and white kid gloves. He looked exceedingly pale, and dared hardly interchange a word with even Snap, who was just as irritable and excited as his senior partners. It was quickly known all over the court which was Titmouse! Mr. Aubrey scarcely showed himself in court ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... sands so that the houses were ovens and the streets were furnaces; so it was little wonder that men died like rats in a hole. But little they appeared to care for that; so that everywhere you might behold a multitude of painted women and Jews and merchants and pirates, gaudy with red scarfs and gold braid and all sorts of odds and ends of foolish finery, all fighting and gambling and bartering for that ill-gotten treasure ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... gambling hells were a glare of light, and music, both vocal and instrumental, floated out upon the streets to tempt the miners to enter, while away an hour, and incidentally part with their well-earned dust. Some of these hells had "lady waitresses," poor, faded, blear-eyed creatures, in gaudy finery, and upon whose features was stamped the everlasting brand of God's outlawry. These dens of iniquity were only too frequently the scene of awful tragedies, and the sawdust floors drank up the blood of many a poor unfortunate. If ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... shaved, that gaudy deputy-lieutenant's coat exchanged for felon uniform, and your daily bottle of champagne for prison cocoa, my poor Rupilius, what a comfort it must be to have the business brought to an end! Champagne was the honorable gentleman's drink in the House of Commons dining-room, as I am informed. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the moss-pink, and the grape-hyacinth may sometimes be seen growing in country fields and byways. The homely and cheerful blossoms of the orange-tawny ephemeral lily, and the spotted tiger-lily, whose gaudy colors glow with the warmth of far Cathay—their early home—now make gay many of our roadsides and crowd upon the sweet cinnamon roses of our grandmothers, which ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... heaped upon your memories. If you, with united zeal and fortitude, oppose the torrent of oppression; if you feel the true fire of patriotism burning in your breasts; if you, from your souls, despise the most gaudy dress which slavery can wear; if you really prefer the lonely cottage, while blessed with liberty, to gilded palaces, surrounded with the ensigns of slavery you may have the fullest assurance that tyranny with her whole accursed ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... only this book is so stupid. I think novels are stupid nowadays; the heroes are so gaudy, and the heroines have not a spark of spirit. You may talk to me instead, if you like. What have you been doing ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... are endowed by Nature with the gift of song in connection with gaudy plumage is the American Goldfinch, or Hemp-bird, (Fringilla tristis,) one of the most interesting and delicate of the feathered tribe. Of all our birds this bears the closest resemblance to the Canary, both in his plumage and in the notes of his song. He cannot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... morning brought rich surprises to her, Johnnie, and Alf, and to Webb an increasing wonder that he had never before truly seen the world in which he lived. The pent-up forces of Nature, long restrained, seemed finding new expression every hour. Tulips opened their gaudy chalices to catch the morning dew. Massive spikes of hyacinths distilled a rich perfume that was none too sweet in the open air. Whenever Amy stepped from the door it seemed that some new flower had opened and some new development of greenery and beauty had been revealed. But the crowning glory ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... gorgeous in a suit of spangled white; and side by side bowed the dark Kings of Iron and Lead, the one mighty in black, the other sullen in blue; and after them were the Copper King, gleaming ruddy and brave, and the Tin King, strutting in his trimmings of gaudy tinsel which looked nearly as well as silver, but were more economical. And this fine troop of lackey kings most politely led Thor and Loki into the palace, and gave them of the best, for they never suspected who ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... to explain the transition from the kingdom to the republic on the theory of a revolution. Eliminate the revolution, suppose the change to have been a gradual and a constitutional one, and you may discard the proud Tarquin without losing anything but a lay-figure with its more or less gaudy trappings of later myths. But it is not so with Servius; his wall and his constitution are very real and defy all attempts to turn their maker into a legend. Yet on the other hand we must be on our guard, for much of the definiteness ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... butterflies imitate, as first described by Mr. Bates, other and quite distinct species. This excellent observer has shown that in some districts of South America, where, for instance, an Ithomia abounds in gaudy swarms, another butterfly, namely, a Leptalis, is often found mingled in the same flock; and the latter so closely resembles the Ithomia in every shade and stripe of colour, and even in the shape of ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... nostrils, then and there it puts to sleep A man afflicted with the falling sickness And foamings at the mouth. A woman, too, At the heavy castor drowses back in chair, And from her delicate fingers slips away Her gaudy handiwork, if haply she Hath got the whiff at menstruation-time. Once more, if thou delayest in hot baths, When thou art over-full, how readily From stool in middle of the steaming water Thou tumblest in a fit! How readily The ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... no one could have designed so delicate and intricate a pattern. If it was cloudy, still, glancing over the cornfields, just as you turned partly round to look, there seemed a brilliant streak of sunshine across them. This was a broad band of charlock: its light yellow is so gaudy and glaring in the mass that as it first catches the eye it seems as if the land were lit up by the sun. After it the buttercups appear of a quiet colour, like dead ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... no longer harrowed? Moralists and preachers do not deal after this tender fashion with moral, or even physical consequences, resulting from other evils. Why should they spare these? Why refuse to look their own effeminacy in the face,—their own gaudy and overweening encouragement of what they dare not contemplate in its results? Is a murder in the streets worth attending to,—a single wounded man worth carrying to the hospital,—and are all the murders, and massacres, and fields of wounded, and the madness, the conflagrations, the famines, ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... have to come back again, my dear Emperor Joseph," Bonaparte said, as he set out for Paris, "it will be for the purpose of giving you a new position, which you may not like so well as the neat and rather gaudy sinecure you now hold." ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... love of arms and rapine was still the ruling passion of the Picts; and their warriors, who stripped themselves for a day of battle, were distinguished, in the eyes of the Romans, by the strange fashion of painting their naked bodies with gaudy colors and fantastic figures. The western part of Caledonia irregularly rises into wild and barren hills, which scarcely repay the toil of the husbandman, and are most profitably used for the pasture of cattle. The highlanders were condemned to the occupations of shepherds ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... principles always prevail in my selections. For instance, as my particular friend, the Reverend George Herbert, remarked, as he looked about him on one of his visits to my castle: 'Sober handsomeness doth bear the bell.' I cannot admit anything gaudy, needlessly exotic, or impertinently obtruding the idea of dollars. Now a travelled lady, who had heard of my castle, once offered me for it a buhl cabinet, of angry and alarming redness and a huge idol of a gilded trough, standing on bandy legs, and gorged with artificial flowers. And ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fashion to roam. Here beauty's feet may stray, arrayed in the most showy colors or the stateliest attire, without fear of encountering nasty crossings or of being splashed over and soiled by teams upon muddy streets. Ladies attired in gaudy ball-room dresses with long trails, would scarcely present a contrast in dress with the average promenaders. All dress equally well, on Sundays, and on week-days, so that Paris presents to the foreigner, the appearance of a city celebrating an eternal ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... the Lakeview Inn, and cutting loose from the reception committee under cover of a headache, slipped away into the trees. The fringe of the wood was defaced with the litter of picnickers, and smelt of lunch; the din of the agents for new-fangled reapers and ploughs, whose gaudy paint was doubly garish against the sober background, had routed the squirrels and birds; but the remoter paths held only silent lovers, and the camp-ground, where the Widow Weatherwax had mouthed and played the prophet, stripped of its tents, its zealots, its wavering torchlights, was full ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... annoyance was equally felt. Whilst her husband was at work farther down the gully, she kept a sort of sly grog-shop, and passed the day in selling and drinking spirits, swearing, and smoking a short tobacco-pipe at the door of her tent. She was a most repulsive looking object. A dirty gaudy-coloured dress hung unfastened about her shoulders, coarse black hair unbrushed, uncombed, dangled about her face, over which her evil habits had spread a genuine bacchanalian glow, whilst in a loud masculine voice she uttered the most awful words that ever disgraced the mouth of man ten thousand ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... country, and quitted it, leaving behind him very beautiful studies strangely undervalued, and sold for little. The fact is, he was too true to the solemnity and sobriety of nature to please a public led away by gaudy display and meretricious colouring. Yet was he a man of more genius—in landscape—than any nine out of ten of our best artists that have, these last ten years, attempted to show nature or art upon our academical walls. Poor Fearnley! We have heard that elsewhere he was appreciated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... customary among many tribes of Indians to use as little clothing as possible when engaged in dancing, either of a social or ceremonial nature, the Ojibwa, on the contrary, vie with one another in the attempt to appear in the most costly and gaudy dress attainable. The Ojibwa Mid[-e] priests, take particular pride in their appearance when attending ceremonies of the Mid[-e] Society, and seldom fail to impress this fact upon visitors, as some of the Dakotan tribes, who have ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... appeal of the work. Mr. Baker read on steadily:—"Hansen—Campbell—Smith—Wamibo. Now, then, Wamibo. Why don't you answer? Always got to call your name twice." The Finn emitted at last an uncouth grunt, and, stepping out, passed through the patch of light, weird and gaudy, with the face of a man marching through a dream. The mate went on faster:—"Craik—Singleton—Donkin.... O Lord!" he involuntarily ejaculated as the incredibly dilapidated figure appeared in the light. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... herself—for those sirens of the green lanes have not all disappeared; and, but that saw the snowy cone of Pike's Peak rising over the crest of the cliff, I might have fancied myself in the Sierra Asturias, with a beautiful gitana standing before me. The soft fawn-skin tilma, with its gaudy broidering of beads and stained quills—the fringed skirt and buskined ankles—the striped Navajo blanket slung scarf-like over her shoulders— all presented a true gipsy appearance. The plumed circlet upon the head was more typical of Transatlantic costume; and the rifle carried by a female ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... farmhand who goes to the crossroads and barrels up on Saturday afternoon; hence the virulence of prohibition among the peasantry. The hard-working householder who, on some bitter evening, glances over the Saturday Evening Post for a square and honest look at his wife is envious of those gaudy drummers who go gallivanting about the country with scarlet girls; hence the Mann act. If these deviltries were equally open to all men, and all men were equally capable of appreciating them, their unpopularity would tend ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... leather to exclude the cold and guarded by two 'proud young porters' in severe cocked hats and formidable batons, into a broad hall,—threw off our furred boots and cloaks, ascended a carpeted marble staircase, in every angle of which stood a statuesque footman in gaudy coat and unblemished unmentionables, and reached a broad landing upon the top thronged as usual with servants. Thence we passed through an antechamber into a long, high, brilliantly lighted, saffron-papered room, in which a dozen ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... shining on objects quite new, and (although you have made the voyage a dozen times,) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you occupy a very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red "percale;" the windows are smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins; there are little mean strips of carpet about the tiled floor of the room, and yet all seems as gay and as comfortable as may be—the sun shines brighter than you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who had inconsequently decided to take the holiday in St. Marys. Hundreds of them were dressed in Sunday best and bent on an outing; big Slovaks and Poles whose horny fists gripped the platform rail while they smoked cheap cigars with gaudy labels and chattered volubly to each other. It was good to ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... all at once," said a large girl from Minneapolis, "nor yet all in the gaudy eye of heaven. We'll screen off a corner for our Professor—sort of confessional business. You sit there and we'll go to you one by one with ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... attend church, anyway. Walky Dexter appeared in an oilskin-covered cart, drawn by Josephus (who actually looked water-soaked and dripped from every angle), delivering the Sunday papers, which came up from the city. The family gave up most of their time all day to the gaudy magazine supplements and the so-called "funny sections" which were a ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... blending of forms and colors introduced by art. On the same principle we may explain the difficulty of reading with attention a whole volume on one subject, written in verse. We are soon weary of luxuries; and when we have been strolling in grounds laid out with gaudy flower-beds, the tired eye, when we go out into the fields, rests with serene delight upon rough pastures bounded by stone walls, and hills clothed with lichens ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... her work just as she did eight years ago. I have no interest in this, and try to check his talk of it; but such people have no sense of propriety, and he even speaks of the girl Jenny, who sent me lately a gaudy pair of worsted gloves worked by her own hand. The meanest advantage they took of my weakness, however, was in calling their baby after me. I have an uncomfortable suspicion, too, that William has given the other waiters his version of the affair, but I feel safe so long as it does ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... the city, assembled at early dawn in the great square to greet the rising of the Sun. They were dressed in their gayest apparel, and the Indian lords vied with each other in the display of costly ornaments and jewels on their persons, while canopies of gaudy feather-work and richly tinted stuffs, borne by the attendants over their heads, gave to the great square, and the streets that emptied into it, the appearance of being spread over with one vast and magnificent ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Gaudy decorations which had been torn away by the storm were cheerfully replaced; workmen refurbished the public stands and the Royal box in the Plaza; bands paraded the avenues or gave concerts in Regengetz Circus; troops of mounted soldiers and constabulary ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Sixties. And we collected the drawings and publications of the Sixties. When J. and I now allowed ourselves an afternoon out, it was to wander from Holywell Street to Mile End Road, from Piccadilly to Holborn, searching the booksellers' barrows and shops for the unsightly, gaudy, badly-bound volumes that contained the illustrations of the Sixties—illustrations ranked amongst the finest ever made. Our bookshelves that are still filled with them represent one of the most ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... and clouds and winds, All things well and proper; Trailer, red and white, Dark and wily dropper. Midges true to fling Made of plover hackle, With a gaudy wing, And ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and the dresses were bright, Such as never were known till that famous night; For the gems and the flowers that shone in the scene, O'ermatched the regalia of princess and queen. No gaudy slave to a fair one's brow Was the rose, or the ruby, or emerald now, But lighted with souls by the playful elves, The brilliants and blossoms ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... furniture is shipped tomorrow," he assured her; "and then I'll go on a still hunt for the gaudy glassware. I'm blessed if I don't give 'em a silver ice ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... dining-room, and a vast suite of reception-rooms, each of which opened into the next in such a manner that only the last was not necessarily a passage. In the huge hall was the dais and canopy with the family arms embroidered in colours once gaudy but now agreeably faded to a softer tone. Above this floor was another, occupied by the married sons, their wives and children; and high over all, above the cornice of the palace, were the endless servants' quarters ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... enemy, and to learn, perhaps, the reason for this sudden truce; and soon several members of the so-called general committee, whose organisation and duties I confess I do not clearly understand, came out from our lines and stood waving their handkerchiefs. But it was some time before the gaudy-coated enemy would pay any attention to these advances, and finally one of our committeemen, to show that he was a man of peace and really wished to speak with them, went slowly forward with his hands held high above his head. Then a thin, sallow Chinese, throwing a sword to ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... extended taste for scholarship; not attended, however, with many incentives to originality of production. The nobles were still the patrons of literature, and they fancied old things which were grand, in new and gaudy English dresses. The age was also marked by rapid and uniform progress in the English language. The sonorous, but cumbrous English of Milton had been greatly improved by Dryden; and we have seen, also, that the terse and somewhat crude diction of Dryden's earlier works had been polished ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... and from them impresses on his fancy the germ of many a future picture; the susceptible youth opens his heart to every elevating feeling; age becomes young again in recollection; even childhood sits with anxious expectation before the gaudy curtain, which is soon to be drawn up with its rustling sound, and to display to it so many unknown wonders: all alike are diverted, all exhilarated, and all feel themselves for a time raised above ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... "My dear Loudon," Pinkerton would cry, "you don't seem to catch on to business principles! The prime cost of the spirit is literally nothing. I couldn't find a cheaper advertisement if I tried." Against the side post of the cabinet there leaned a gaudy umbrella, preserved there as a relic. It appears that when Pinkerton was about to place Thirteen Star upon the market, the rainy season was at hand. He lay dark, almost in penury, awaiting the first shower, at which, as upon a signal, the main thoroughfares became ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... our childhood. This ballad, therefore, we read under such recollections of our own childish feelings, as would equally endear to us poems, which Mr. Wordsworth himself would regard as faulty in the opposite extreme of gaudy and technical ornament. Before the invention of printing, and in a still greater degree, before the introduction of writing, metre, especially alliterative metre (whether alliterative at the beginning of the words, as in Piers Plowman, or at the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... grew we up to Man, and still more fixt; And shall a gaudy Beauty, A thing which t'other day I never saw, Deprive my Heart of that kind Heat, And place a new and unknown Fire within? [Aside. Clarina, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... fictitious tragic woe Entertains the gaudy ring, Each the horror can forego, And instant mental ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... a number of unpretentious Hindu temples, and the Maharaja is said to be quite punctilious in his observance of religious forms. He was absent from the city, but several brothers of his were seen driving, clad in long garments of gaudy-colored striped calico, and wearing small turbans; the dress of the women was also peculiar, the skirt being so full that as they walked they resembled balloons; they are noted for wearing a profusion of jewelry,—necklaces by the half-dozen, bracelets sometimes nearly to the elbow, ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... death. It was one of his quieter interludes when he laid aside the ferocious and bombastic play-acting which made it hard to discover whether he was very cunning or half-mad. The immense beard flowed down his chest instead of being tricked out in gaudy ribbons. He was idly running a comb through it when his small, rum-reddened eyes took in the two lads in dripping clothes who were shoved toward him by the ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... alight and caldrons hanging over them. It was the first I had seen. Two or three low tents; a couple of dark, withered crones, veritable witches; a graceful girl standing behind, gazing after us; and men in odd-shaped hats, with gaudy waistcoats and bright-coloured neck-handkerchiefs and gaitered legs, stood lazily in front. They had all a wild tawdry display of colour; and a group of alders in the rear made a background of shade ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... content, and were summoned no more to the field before the dawn of the New Year. While in the rural districts the frolics and kindred pleasures were the chief pastimes, in the cities and towns the celebrations were more elaborate. In gaudy regalia the "Hog Eye" danced for the general amusement, and the Cooner in his rags "showed his motions." For many years before the war Uncle Guy was the star performer at these functions in Wilmington. With whip ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... traitor. He could not go back to England, having failed to win the day. The son built him a dwelling outside the fort; and there this famous courtier of two great nations, with his noble wife, retired to pass the end of his days in a wildwood wilderness far enough from the gaudy tinsel of courts. The fate of both husband and ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... constantly about her, helps her to lay on her rouge, and to place her patches. He attends her round the whole circle of amusements, chatters to her constantly, whistles and sings, and plays the fool with her. Whatever be his station, every thing gaudy and glittering within the sphere of it is called in to his assistance, particularly splendid carriages and tawdry liveries; but if, by the help of all these, he cannot make an impression on the fair one's heart, ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... young Max was a suffering victim. Did he sally forth to stick a wild boar or to kill a bear, the Master of the Hunt rode beside him in a gaudy, faded uniform. Fore-riders preceded him, and after-riders followed. He was almost compelled to hunt by proxy, and he considered himself lucky to be in at the death. The bear, of course, was officially killed by Maximilian, Count of Hapsburg, ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... why are caterpillars sometimes so beautifully and artistically coloured? Seeing that many are coloured to escape danger, I can hardly attribute their bright colour in other cases to mere physical conditions. Bates says the most gaudy caterpillar he ever saw in Amazonia (of a sphinx) was conspicuous at the distance of yards, from its black and red colours, whilst feeding on large green leaves. If any one objected to male butterflies having been made beautiful by sexual selection, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... opposite the Albert Hall, gaudy in the last touch of sunset, I saw him shudder. The spell of the ship and sea and the blazing Sicilian sunshine lay still upon us, Etna's cones towering beyond those gilded spikes of the tawdry Memorial. I stole a glance at my companion. His light blue eyes shone, but with the reflection ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... there is any religion left. For everywhere I find the temples and monasteries either deserted or turned into schools or barracks. This one is deserted. It is like a series of lumber-rooms, full of dusty idols. The idols were once gaudy, brightly painted "to look like life," with beards and whiskers of real hair. But now their splendour is dimmed. The demons scowl to no purpose. To no purpose the dragons coil. No trespasser threatens the god behind his dingy curtains. In one chamber only a priest kneels before ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... you delude yourself that you were a camel, horse, or bird of plumage; to Grace's thinking, there were no such animals in the religious world—her clear eye made nothing of hump, flowing mane, or gaudy feathers; that eye looked dispassionately for the wool upon your back—or the beard under ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... a background of desert mountains, and on the stage itself, before a group of temporary huts, stood huddling together the black Libyan prisoners, some fifty men, women, and children, bedizened with gaudy feathers and girdles of tasselled leather, brandishing their spears and targets, and glaring out with white eyes on the strange scene before them, in childish ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... magnifico, some prince or duke at least. He was dressed (contrary to all sumptuary laws of the time) in a suit of crimson velvet, a little the worse, perhaps, for wear; by his side were a long Spanish rapier and a brace of daggers, gaudy enough about the hilts; his fingers sparkled with rings; he had two or three gold chains about his neck, and large earrings in his ears, behind one of which a red rose was stuck jauntily enough among the glossy black curls; on his head was a broad velvet Spanish hat, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... surges of humanity a sign of supremacy and command; it is a weapon. It is not the love of our countries, it is their sharp-edged difference, proud and aggressive, which we placard in the face of the others. It is the gaudy eagle which conquerors and their devotees see flying in their dreams from steeple to steeple in foreign lands. The sacred defense of the homeland—well and good. But if there was no offensive war there would be defensive war. Defensive war has the same infamous ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... her bunch of flowers for admiration. He took a great gaudy blossom—if flowers can ever be called gaudy—and stuck its stalk in the pocket of his coat. Then he led the way ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... increase,) Britannia shares, The food of armies, and support of wars: With magazines of death, destructive balls, And cannons doomed to batter Landau's walls, The victor finds each hidden cavern stored, And turns their fury on their guilty lord. Deluded prince! how is thy greatness crossed, And all the gaudy dream of empire lost, That proudly set thee on a fancied throne, And made imaginary realms thy own! 210 Thy troops that now behind the Danube join, Shall shortly seek for shelter from the Rhine, Nor find it there: surrounded with alarms, Thou hopest the assistance of the Gallic arms; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the spot with eye-glass up and pistols pointed, as he saw himself now, not less than a quarter life-size, in a great gaudy frame. But while he stared Mrs. Melvin had been rummaging in a drawer, and when he turned she was staring in her turn with glassy eyes. In her hands was an empty mahogany case with velvet moulds which ought to have been filled by a brace ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... caravan route, which starts from Beni-Mora and ends, they say, at Tombouctou. For fourteen hours each day we were on the road, and each evening about nine o'clock we stopped at a Bordj, or Travellers' House, ate a hasty meal, threw ourselves down on our gaudy Arab rugs, and slept heavily till the hour before dawn, drugged by fatigue, and by the strong air of the desert. In the late afternoon of the third day of our journeying we drove into a sandstorm. A great ...
— "Fin Tireur" - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... women prefer gaudy colours, and keep their hair confined close to their head, by a large comb. They have also another delightful characteristic, which indeed the men share with them; I mean a beautiful voice, soft and tremulous among the women, rich, sonorous, and majestic among their ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... which was some time since announced by the great transatlantic trumpet, have duly arrived. My wife is properly grateful for her copy, which, indeed, impresses both of us with respect for the American skill in binding. Neither too gay to be gaudy, nor too grave, so as to affect the theological, it hits that happy medium which agrees with the tastes of most people and disgusts none. We should flatter ourselves that it is intended to represent the matter within, but that we are afraid ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... a mean little room, on one side a wide bed with a gaudy coverlet, on a pine table in the centre a bucket of water, a tin cup, and a candle-stick. Five rickety rush-covered ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... blue eyes looked about, contemptuous, amused and hard, like the eyes of a boy. A clumsy string of red, yellow, and green omnibuses rolled swaying, monstrous and gaudy; two shabby children ran across the road; a knot of dirty men with red neckerchiefs round their bare throats lurched along, discussing filthily; a ragged old man with a face of despair yelled horribly in the mud the name of a paper; while far off, amongst ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... came to the back of the great altar, and the curtain of damask silk being drawn up by a little string, we saw sitting in a metallic maguey plant a bright new Paris doll, dressed in the gaudy odds and ends of silk that make such a thing an attractive Christmas present for the nursery. Paste supplied the place of jewels, and a constellation of false pearls were at the back of her shoulders. The man kept his gravity, and did reverence to the poor doll, while I burned with indignation ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... group. Three men in cowboy hats, flannel shirts and "chaps," with revolver holsters dangling from their belts, and each with a pair of automatic revolvers in his hands, came along. Just behind this trio were two indians, painted and wearing gaudy blankets. The Indian were armed like the cowboys. It was evident that all the members of the ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... yet I love thee, Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout. Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air; But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau, Stripped of his gaudy hues and essences, And growing portly in his ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... person as his future wife, establishing her in the palace at Greenwich under the same roof with the queen, with reception rooms, and royal state, and a position openly acknowledged,[159] the gay court and courtiers forsaking the gloomy dignity of the actual wife for the gaudy splendour of her brilliant rival. Tamer blood than that which flowed in the veins of a princess of Castile would have boiled under these indignities; and we have little reason to be surprised if policy and prudence were alike ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... at the cosy village inn, where snow-white curtains fluttered gaily at every window in the warm western breeze, and innumerable geraniums made a gaudy blaze of scarlet against the wooden wall. He did not stop here to make any inquiries about those he had come to see. His heart was beating tumultuously in expectation of the meeting that seemed so near. He alighted from the fly, dismissed the driver, and walked rapidly across a field ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... of the American national guard—Cooper is here satirizing the pretensions and gaudy uniforms of civilians holding nominal commissions as "Colonels" of American ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... days, To turn a willing world from righteous ways! Well, Heydegger, dost thou thy master serve; Well has he seen his servant should not starve, Thou to his name hast splendid temples raised In various forms of worship seen him prais'd, Gaudy devotion, like a Roman, shown, And sung sweet anthems in a tongue unknown. Inferior offerings to thy god of vice Are duly paid, in fiddles, cards, and dice; Thy sacrifice supreme, an hundred maids! That solemn rite of ...
— English Satires • Various
... now complete, and presently a trumpeter in gaudy uniform arose by the editor, ready to blow the signal of commencement promptly at his order. Straightway the stir of the people and the hum of their conversation died away. Every face near-by, and every face in the lessening perspective, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... legend. Romance and mystery were in her smile; and yet what had life held for her, she mused now, except the frustrated hope, the blighted fruit, the painted lily? Her beauty had brought her nothing that was not tawdry, nothing that was not a gaudy imitation of happiness. She had given herself for what? For the shadow of reality, for the tinted shreds of a damaged illusion. The past, in spite of her many triumphs, had been worse than tragic; it had been comic—since it had left her beggared. Looking back upon it now she ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... the little mining settlement. Under his tuition, men began to understand that the resources of their native language were less limited than they had supposed, and that it was possible to convey their impressions with accuracy without the aid of a gaudy halo ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Jerry-Jo surlily and passionately came to the conclusion that he must in some way capture his prize. Other youths were wearing gaudy ties and imperilling their Sunday bests; he was letting precious time slip. Then, too, by Farwell's advice, old Jerry was growing rigid along financial lines, and at last the States took definite shape in Jerry-Jo's mind, but he meant to have Priscilla before he heeded the lure. ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... colors. Their dresses did not amount to much. They wore a short skirt and rebosa. Their head-dress covered their hair and came together in front under the chin and hung to the belt. What dress she wore must be very bright and gaudy and I have known a pretty Mexican girl with about $2.50 worth of dress on come in and purchase an $8.00 pair of shoes. If she wanted an extra nice pair of shoes she said she wanted a pair of shoes "made out of Spanish leather." Such a pair as would look nice ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... gaudy altar-cloth From his shoulders hanging down, Makes a proper sort of cloak, Hiding ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... which lurks I know not what,—something mysterious: dragons, emblems, symbolical figures The sky is too glaring; the light crude, implacable; never has this old town of Nagasaki appeared to me so old, so worm-eaten, so bald, notwithstanding all its veneer of new papers and gaudy paintings. These little wooden houses, of such marvelous cleanly whiteness inside, are black outside, time-worn, disjointed and grimacing. When one looks closely, this grimace is to be found everywhere: in the hideous masks laughing in the shop fronts of the innumerable ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... were seen driving about Plymouth, laden inside and out with seamen and their sweethearts, decked out in costumes of the most gaudy colours and extravagant fashion. Suppers and dancing closed the day. There was no great variety, perhaps, in the style of their amusements. The great object seemed to be to get rid of their ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... under than above the actual value. In fact, the greater portion of our cotton manufactures sold at Singapore is consumed in the less civilized parts of the Indian Archipelago, where the natives prefer cheap goods and gaudy patterns; while the people of Java, Celebes, etc. prefer their own or Indian manufactures, which, although dearer, are far more ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... shroud swatheth mortals each hour, Yet little we reck of what's hanging us o'er; O would on the world that ye laid not such stress, That its baubles ye lov'd not, so gaudy and poor; O where are the friends we were wont to caress, And where are the lov'd ones who dwelt on our floor? They have drank of the goblet of death's bitterness, And have gone to the deep, to return never more; ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... replies he, lifting his dingy straw hat with gaudy, stained band. He came down the broad plank to the shore. "Why, what's the matter?" ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... sometimes it is just that. The command of a wide vocabulary is in truth an accomplishment, and like any other accomplishment it may be used for show. But not necessarily. Just as a man may have money without "flashing" it, or an extensive wardrobe without sporting gaudy neckties or wearing a dress suit in the morning, so may he possess linguistic resources without making a caddish exhibition of them. Indeed the more distant he stands from verbal bankruptcy, the less likely he is to ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... complex; gaudy; verging on excessive. Said of hardware or (esp.) software designs, this has many of the connotations of {elephantine} or {monstrosity} but is less extreme and not pejorative in itself. "Metafont even has features to introduce random variations to ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... little out of place," Cornelia admitted, but she left the stiff little figure undisturbed. After the other woman had gone she sat down beside it on the sofa, and smoothed absently its gaudy little dress. Cornelia's face was gently pensive, she could scarcely have told why. Not the minister, but the trimly appointed house with its indefinable atmosphere of a home with little children ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... availed myself of every means within my reach to render my visit agreeable to the rajah. I carry with me many presents which are reported to be to his liking; gaudy silks of Surat, scarlet cloth, stamped velvet, gunpowder, &c., beside a large quantity of confectionery and sweets, such as preserved ginger, jams, dates, syrups, and to wind up all, a huge box of China toys for his children! I have likewise taken coarse ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... that there was a boat frae the Isle o' Man wi' herrin's for the great houses, though never a fin o' them like the halesome fish I carry here in my creel. Wad ye like to see them, to buy a dozen for the bonny lass that's waiting for ye? That were a present to recommend ye, indeed—far mair than your gaudy flowers, fule ballads, and sic ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... forbidding; repellant, repulsive, repugnant, grotesque, bizarre; grody [coll.], grody to the max [coll.]; horrid, horrible; shocking &c. (painful) 830. foul &c. (dirty) 653; dingy &c. (colorless) 429; gaudy &c. (color) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... the behoof of the ghost. But when the deceased was a chief or other person of importance, some of his property would be buried with him. And before burial his body would be propped up on a special chair in front of his house, adorned with necklaces, wreaths of flowers and feathers, and gaudy with war-paint. In one hand would be placed a large cooked yam, and in the other a spear, while a club would be put on his shoulder. The yam was to stay the pangs of hunger on his long journey, and the weapons were to enable him to fight the foes who might resist his entrance ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... attempts have not been recognized as art nor have they been preserved as such. I have never seen either statue or picture of a nude Japanese woman. Even the pictures of famous prostitutes are always faultlessly attired. The number and size of the conventional hairpins, and the gaudy coloring of the clothing, alone indicate the immoral ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... dressed farmers' lads, with red hands and rough hair, she quite as snobbishly ignored as she was ignored in her turn by the well-set-up, fashionably dressed young swells of the University, with their white hands, with their thin, gaudy socks tautly pulled over their ankle-bones, and their shining hair glistening like lacquer on their skulls (that being the desideratum in youthful masculine society of the place and time). Sylvia snubbed the masculine jays of college partly because ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... quickly in response to Saul's knocking a door to the left of the main entrance, and leading upstairs, opened. After a few words with the moon-faced attendant, the light was switched on and the three ascended to a small room, brilliant with gaudy Oriental colors and heavy with ebony furnishings. A group of three or four Chinamen sat at a small table soberly drinking their tea with the exaggerated innocence of those who have a deck of cards up their sleeves. The proprietor himself, fat as ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of Tamerlane. (See Conquest by the Mogols, &c., p. 175.) I have seen, among the Wyandots of Sandusky, heads which one might suppose had been the originals of the portraits given in his plate: turban made of gaudy-coloured silk, with two short thick feathers stuck upright in front; the one red, the other white tipped with blue, the great desideratum being to have them of different colours, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... colour. The hue of their faces ranged from the clear olive of the pure-blood Spaniards down through the yellow and brown shades of the Mestizos to the coal-black Carib and the Jamaica Negro. Scattered among them were little groups of Indians with faces like stone idols, wrapped in gaudy fibre-woven blankets—Indians down from the mountain states of Zamora and Los Andes and Miranda to trade their gold ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... justify his pretensions to the gout, or such other malady that for the time being is most in fashion or request. When he salutes a friend he pulls off his hat, as women do their vizard-masks. His ribbons are of the true complexion of his mind, a kind of painted cloud or gaudy rainbow, that has no colour of itself but what it borrows from reflection. He is as tender of his clothes as a coward is of his flesh, and as loth to have them disordered. His bravery is all his ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... unlike hemp, but the stalk is cleaner and semi-transparent. The flower also is so gaudy, that a field in blossom looks like a bed of florist's flowers, and its aromatic fragrance does not aid to dispel such delusion. It flourishes most upon land which is light and fertile. The fragrance of the oil is perceptibly ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... found that there was a masquerade at the house of a lady, with whom I had been intimately acquainted. The clamours of the mob, eager to see the dresses of those who were alighting from their carriages, the gaudy and fantastic figures which I beheld by the light of the flambeaux, the noise and the bustle, put me in mind of various similar nights of my past life, and it seemed to me like a dream, or reminiscence of some former state of existence. I passed on as soon as the crowd would permit, and took ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... dunnage bag near his bunk, he pulled its contents about until he found a bright red silk handkerchief and a red flannel shirt. Their colour was too gaudy for his taste. "These things are ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... John Wriothesley Blanchminster, D.D., Master of St. Hospital-by-Merton, sat in the oriel of his library revising his Trinity Gaudy Sermon. He took pains with these annual sermons, having a quick and fastidious sense of literary style. "It is," he would observe, "one of the few pleasurable capacities spared by old age." He had, moreover, a scholarly habit of verifying his references ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... places were plundered. This was endured for six hours and finally order was restored only by a grant of seven million francs to buy off the mob. The new political economy was beginning to bear, its fruits luxuriantly. A gaudy growth of it appeared at the City Hall of Paris when, in response to the complaints of the plundered merchants, Roux declared, in the midst of great applause, that "shopkeepers were only giving back to the people what they had ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... glad of it, as it is time that you should begin to be formed to the manners of the world in higher life. Courts are the best schools for that sort of learning. You are beginning now with the outside of a court; and there is not a more gaudy one than that of Saxony. Attend to it, and make your observations upon the turn and manners of it, that you may hereafter compare it with other courts which you will see; And, though you are not yet able to be informed, or to ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... that foe was met, he seemed to reel before the mailed hand that buffeted his front. All frippery and decoration had long been stripped from the army. The fingers of war—real war—had torn off the gaudy trappings; and the grim lips had muttered, "What I want is hard muscle, and the brave heart—not tinsel!" The bands were seldom heard—the musicians were tending the wounded. The drums had ceased their jovial rattle, and were chiefly used in the "long roll," ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... garments, so cut that they exaggerated her stoutness; a large, many-coloured shawl was thrown round her shoulders; on her head was a big round hat, tied with strings in a bow under her chin. This odd head-gear was topped with a bunch of gaudy feathers, ragged and out of curl. A veil of flowery design half hid this woman's features: though far from her first youth, she no doubt wished to appear young still. The skin of her face was covered with powder and paint, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... is the limit of the Beautiful, the other the limit of the Repulsive; one is synonymous with purity, truth and excellence, and the other with vice and diplomacy. The world is often imposed upon when the latter counterfeits the former. Men are dazzled by the glitter and gaudy show of the pretended, and pass by, unnoticed, the less flashy attractions of the real, but I pride myself that I have never been deceived in this way. The girl that I have brought to my home is as genuine a sample of noble, good, pure and honorable women, as could exist, if you had known ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... sinking Rome grows weak with luxury, To please her appetite cram'd peacocks die: Their gaudy plumes a modish ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... one of the wine shops a little knot of men and soldiers had gathered. All were flushed with drink and talking loudly in their own tongue. One of them—a captain in a gaudy uniform—saw the Texan and made a laughing ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... Home-made silks are the staple—silks in checks of pink and white, of yellow and orange, of indigo and dark red. Some are embroidered in silk, in silver, or in gold; some are plain. All are thick and rich, none are glazed, and none are gaudy. There will also be silks from Bangkok, which are of two colours—purple shot with red, and orange shot with red, both very beautiful. All the silks are woven the size of the dress: for men, about twenty-eight feet long and twenty inches broad; and for women, about ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... with dignities and hated trust, With flattering honours, and deceitful power! Invert th' eternal rules of right and justice; Let villains thrive, and outcast virtue perish; Let slaves be raised, and cowards have command. Take, take your gaudy trifles back, those baits Of vice, and virtue's bane. 'Tis clear, my queen, My royal mistress, casts me off; nay, joins With Cecil to destroy ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... wilderness in which everything else, from religion to beauty and from decent repose to human life, is sacrificed to profit. Italians cross the ocean in much the same spirit that our runaway school-boys used to go off to fight the Indians. Some, lucky, return home in a few years with fortunes and gaudy tales; others, succumbing to the natives, are butchered at their labour and buried beneath the cinders of hideous and God-forsaken mining towns. All carry the thought of escape from beginning to end; every Italian hopes to get away with his takings as soon as possible, to enjoy them on some ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... come to the place, fell flat on the ground, secretly making his prayers to Almighty God. Then, rising again, and putting off his clothes unto the shirt, he went to the stake, and there suffered with a young man of twenty years of age, whose name was John Leaf, an apprentice to Mr. Humphry Gaudy, tallow-chandler, of Christ-church, London. Upon Friday before Palm Sunday, he was committed to the Compter in Bread-street, and afterward examined and condemned ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... considered a "character." He was a short, thick man of enormous physical strength, and he sported a beard like a quickset hedge, hence his nickname. He was clad in an entire suit of fur like an Eskimo, with a gaudy red worsted sash about his ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... it, and he done the same. We struck the raft at the same time, and in less than two seconds we was gliding down stream, all dark and still, and edging towards the middle of the river, nobody saying a word. I reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience, but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the voyageur gave a broad grin as he replied in the affirmative, while Antoine looked a little confused. He did not care much, however, for jesting. So, after getting one or two more articles—not forgetting half-a-dozen clay pipes, and a few yards of gaudy calico, which called forth from Peter a second reference to Annette—he bundled up his goods, and made way for ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... spring days. If there is anything more beautiful in the West than their gaudy Indian summer, it is the half scared spring. The wind is a bit blustery and pretentious, but otherwise Nature seems doubtful as to whether she will paint her landscape or not. Each night a grand sunset crowns the close ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... perfect simplicity of heart, and utter ignorance of the true cause of his wife's care of his comfort in the present instance—"Jenny, but that is a bonny thing," he said, looking admiringly at the gaudy commodity, into which he had now thrust his hand and part of his arm, in order to give it all possible extension, and thus holding it up before him ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... people's peace maintain'd? Their swords are turn'd to scythes, to coulters spears, Some giant post their antique armour bears: Now, where the wounded knight his life did bleed, The wanton swain sits piping on a reed; And where the cannon did Jove's thunder scorn, The gaudy huntsman winds his shrill-tuned horn: Her green locks Ceres doth to yellow dye, The pilgrim safely in the shade doth lie, Both Pan and Pales careless keep their flocks, Seas have no dangers save the wind and rocks: Thou art ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of seats had been placed. These were covered over with tapestries and hangings of divers colors—some of figured and some of plain weaving—so that the green and level meadow-land was hung all about with these gay and gaudy colors. ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... ceiling with its strings of red peppers, onions and apples they fell on a stuffed grizzly bear, which stood at the entrance to the dance-hall, with a little green parasol in its paw and an old silk hat upon its head; from it they shifted to the gaudy bar with its paraphernalia of fancy glasses, show-cases of coloured liquors and its pair of scales for weighing the gold dust; and from that to a keg, the top of which could be withdrawn without ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... decorated with a large, bronze knocker of curious design. A tap of the falling hammer on its metallic plate, brought to the threshold a jet-black maid-servant wearing a gaudy turban. She ushered the visitors into a spacious drawing-room and took their cards and a note from Judge Brackenridge, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Holy Ghost is not sufficient, they have also called a lovely woman to their assistance, whose beauty and pure mysterious maidenhood is the finest, most piquant and intoxicating perfume of their gaudy religion. And what would the great painters have been without women—without their lovely, their bewitching sweethearts, whom they changed into holy maidens? From luxurious women were designed the modest, shrinking Magdalens, before whose mysterious charms the wise children of men bow the knee ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... mourning when contrasted with the delicate buff manilla so satisfying to the artistic eye as seen against the blue of a June sky at Southsea. Nor was the whole effect bettered by many signs of recent refitting. An impression of paint, varnish, and carpentry was in the air; a gaudy new burgee fluttered aloft; there seemed to be a new rope or two, especially round the diminutive mizzen-mast, which itself looked altogether new. But all this only emphasized the general plainness, reminding one of a respectable ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... looking up from his book, he called aloud, "Who speaks to me?" And as he spoke he saw, or thought he saw—but I give it to you as he gave it to me—to his amazement, how the painted image of the beautiful youth that stood above the fountain seemed slowly to quicken into being, and how all the gaudy colors and gilding of the figure seemed to soften to the exquisite and tender hues of a life that was more marvellous than life. The hair of the youth was radiantly sunny, his cheeks flamed and paled with a divine white ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... discrimination and without reflection, his main object being to while away an idle day or to gain a superficial reputation at the next dinner party at which he may be present; nor is he the collector of gaudy bindings; nor one who has never possessed nor desired to possess a library of his own, who has never read a book more than once, and has never committed to memory a single passage. He is not the man, in short, who fails to realize that 'the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... broad-brimmed hats, which in some instances cost more than all the rest of their suits, the leggings, flannel overshirts, and gaudy handkerchiefs tied loosely ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... chrysanthemums, auriculas, geraniums, and many others, to be exposed to the influence of cold, frosty nights, as when the "fell destroyer" commences to exert its power all plants touched by it rapidly decay. Gladioli will now be clothed in the full glory of their gaudy, but handsome dress; they are comparatively easy to manage in well-drained spots, and being such continuous bloomers, at least three or four or even half a dozen should be in every small garden. In winter ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... meddling elf delights to make, Which she with precious vialed liquors heals: For which the shepherds, at their festivals, Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream 850 Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils. And, as the old swain said, she can unlock The clasping charm, and thaw the numbing spell, If she be right invoked in warbled song; For maidenhood she loves, and will be swift To aid a virgin, such as was herself, In hard-besetting need. This will I try, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... in dark bangs and Bismarck brown;" one "in black and gold with angel sleeves, boutonniere and ear-drops;" another "in a basque polonaise and snake bracelets;" another "in black silk dress and bonnet, gold eye-glasses and black kid gloves." One lady wore "a small bonnet made of gaudy-colored birds' wings;" one "spoke with a pretty lisp, was attired in a box-pleated satin skirt, velvet newmarket basque polonaise, hollyhock corsage bouquet;" another "addressed the meeting in low tones and a poke bonnet;" still another "discussed ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... that the furniture is shipped tomorrow," he assured her; "and then I'll go on a still hunt for the gaudy glassware. I'm blessed if I don't give 'em ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... declared that no group of birds better deserves the epithet "pretty" than the Warblers. Tanagers are splendid, Humming Birds refulgent, others brilliant, gaudy, or magnificent, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... natural or artificial minnow; and the tackle should be mounted on gimp and fixed to a strong line, and plenty of it. We have read of a ferox rising to the fly, but never saw one so captured. There seems no reason why a gaudy fly should not attract him. After he is hooked the fun begins. A ferox of 10 to 12 lb. will give you amusement and excitement for an indefinite time; and you are never sure of him till he is in the boat. A friend of ours (a capital angler to boot) fishing with us on Loch Assynt ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... the cheer is good; And at that table—where the wise are few— Both sexes and all ages meet the view; The sturdy warrior with a thoughtful face— The am'rous youth, the maid replete with grace, The prattling infant, and the hoary hair Of second childhood's proselytes—are there;— And the most gaudy in that spacious hall, Are e'er the young, or oldest of them all Helmet and banner, ornament and crest, The lion rampant, and the jewelled vest, The silver star that glitters fair and white, The arms that tell of many a nation's might— Heraldic blazonry, ancestral ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... them. But here on the open hill-top we know fresher and more wholesome delights. Those feverish joys allure us not. O decadents of the town, we have seen your sham idyls, your tinsel Arcadias. We have tired of their stuffy atmosphere, their dazzling jets, their weary ways, their gaudy dresses; we shun the sunken cheeks, the lack-lustre eyes, the heart-sick souls of your painted goddesses. We love not the fetid air, thick and hot with human breath, and reeking with tobacco smoke, of your modern Parnassus—a ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... savage potentate who ruled some thirty villages around the lower St. John's and northward along the coast. With him came two stalwart sons, and behind trooped a host of tribesmen arrayed in smoke-tanned deerskins stained with wild devices in gaudy colors. They crowded around the voyagers with beaming visages and yelps of gratulation. The royal Satouriona could not contain the exuberance of his joy, since in the person of the French commander he recognized the brother of the Sun, descended from the skies to aid him against his great ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... "Neat, but not gaudy"?—Soon Despond (Too soon!) at flouted faith and fond, Soon tempests halcyon tides above Shall wreck this raw ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... too common illusion, simplicity and beauty are considered as rivals. But simple is not synonymous with ugly, any more than sumptuous, stylish and costly are synonymous with beautiful. Our eyes are wounded by the crying spectacle of gaudy ornament, venal art and senseless and graceless luxury. Wealth coupled with bad taste sometimes makes us regret that so much money is in circulation to provoke the creation of such a prodigality of horrors. Our contemporary art suffers as much from the want of simplicity as does our literature—too ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... holland, this was no great hurt: On a bed of soft down, like a lord of renown, They did lay him to sleep the drink out of his crown. In the morning when day, then admiring he lay, For to see the rich chamber both gaudy and gay. ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... really epic poems upon canvas, done with much blare of color and literary explanation in the title. His best work was in pure landscape, which he pictured with considerable accuracy in drawing, though it was faulty in lighting and gaudy in coloring. Brilliant autumn scenes were his favorite subjects. His work had the merit of originality and, moreover, it must be remembered that Cole was one of the beginners in American landscape art. Durand (1796-1886) ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... about Laramie, ogled the newcomers, laughing, giggling together as young women of any color do, their black hair sleek with oil, their cheeks red with vermilion, their wrists heavy with brass or copper or pinchbeck circlets, their small moccasined feet peeping beneath gaudy calico given them by their white lords. Older squaws, envious but perforce resigned, muttered as their own stern-faced stolid red masters ordered them to keep close. Of the full-bloods, whether Sioux or Cheyennes, only those ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... a dandy, fond of color, fond of display; yet in spite of all this he wore absolutely nothing for decoration alone, but every article of use about his person was ornamented to an oriental degree. Gaudy and rich as his costume was when viewed in detail, as a whole it harmonized not only with Pete, his hair, his complexion, his weapons, but with ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... window. There was a chariot painted in gay colors, and men in scarlet and gold uniforms, and such music! The new dress was forgotten, and she flew down stairs and out of the door. With a troop of children she followed the gaudy chariot and gayly caparisoned horses from ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... chaps and chin; being toothless, he was an indifferent performer upon the onion. But his hearing was as keen as his eyesight. He caught Angioletto's vivacious heeltaps upon the flags, and peered from burly brows at the smart little gentleman, cloaked, feathered, and gaudy, who looked as suitable to his dusty surroundings as a red poppy ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... You may be making these false coverings an apology for resisting the "putting on of the armour of light." One has no difficulty in persuading the tenant of a wretched hovel to consent to have his mud-hut taken down; but the man who has the walls of his dwelling hung with gaudy drapery, it is hard to persuade him that his house is worthless and his foundation insecure. Think not that privileges or creeds, or church-sect or church-membership, or the Shibboleth of party will save you. It is to the heart that God looks. If the inner spirit be right, the outer ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... not, O best beloved of my soul, afflict you farther. Why should I thus sadden all your gaudy prospects? I have said enough to such a heart as yours, if Divine grace touches it. And if not, all I can say will be of no avail!—I will leave you therefore to that, and to your own reflections. And after giving you ten thousand thanks for your ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... table's fixed up gaudy with the gilt-edged chiny set, And we'll use the silver tea-pot and the comp'ny spoons, you bet; And we're goin' ter have some fruit-cake and some thimbleberry jam, And "riz biscuits," and some doughnuts, ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to see that you like birds, sir," said Beckendorff to Vivian; for our hero, good-naturedly humouring the tastes of his host, was impartially dividing the luxuries of a peach among a crowd of gaudy and greedy little sparrows. "You shall see my favourites," continued Beckendorff; and tapping rather loudly on the table, he held out the forefinger of each hand. Two bullfinches recognised the signal, and ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... a bent, elderly man in a gray coat, threading his wavering way through the noisy buffet of the streets of the city where Athalia had elected to dwell. He found her in a gaudy hotel, full of the glare of pushing, hurrying life. He sat down at her bedside, a little breathless, and looked at ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... handkerchief," went on Andy. "Give us a whiff," and before the dude could stop him the younger Racer boy had snatched it from his pocket. "Whew! Yes, this is it!" he cried, holding his nose as he handed the gaudy linen back. "How did it happen, Chet? Did you drop it somewhere? It's awful!" and he pretended to stagger back. ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... Star, "is against my nature, Daddy. And you don't want me to do things that are against my nature, do you?" So whenever the squares of gay calico came out, and the golden head bent to and fro over them, like a paradise bird hovering over a bed of gaudy flowers, the story came out, too, between puffs of the pipe, while the fire crackled a cheery accompaniment, sputtering defiance to the wind that whistled outside. Some tale of the southern seas, and the wild tropic islands, of coral ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... the amusements of a Scotch tour nowadays is to watch the pipers playing and dancing on the quays where the steamers touch. Their gay tartan attire and quaint instruments, with their gaudy bags and fringes, make a bright note of colour, and, judging by the money collected, bagpiping must be ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... of the spreading palm; but this is not a desert, nor a gaudy caravan. This is a feast of all angels. This is the day when Nahoum the Nefarious is to be buckled up like a belt, and ridden in a ring. Where ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was fantastically arrayed as a cannibal chief, in brown fleshings, with cuffs upon his ankles, gaudy decorations about his neck, and huge ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... Bill stooped to add the gaudy-labeled cans to his pack that Daddy Dunnigan, of the twisted leg, volunteered the bit of advice that fell upon ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... seen him setting off on horseback with his hand on his hip and his pockets full of letters and orders, at the head of quite a procession of huge white cart-horses with pack-saddles, and big brown native men with nothing on but gaudy kilts. Mighty well he managed all his commissions; and those who saw him ordering and eating his single-handed luncheon in the queer little Chinese restaurant on the beach declare he looked as if the place, and the town, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a fantastic old man who came slowly up the street, hung about with drums and flutes and kites and coloured balls, and bearing over his shoulders a great sack. Children and servant-girls used to bolt up out of areas, and chaffer with this gaudy person, who would presently trudge on, always repeating ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... mutual Edification:—"Notwithstanding the gaudy superstition of some devoted still ignorantly to temples, we may be well assured that He who disdained not to be laid in a manger disdains not to be preached in a barn, and that by such meetings as these, being indeed most apostolical and primitive, they will in a short time advance more in ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... thus proving the scarcity of natural forests. The roofs of the houses were for the most part flat, and covered with tempered clay and chopped straw for the thickness of about ten inches. Some buildings of greater pretensions were gaudy in bright red tiles, but all were alike in the general waste of rain-water, which was simply allowed to pour into the narrow streets through innumerable wooden shoots projecting about six feet beyond the eaves. These gutters would be a serious obstacle to wheeled conveyances, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... every November was kept 'a great gaudy [feast] in the college, when the Master dined in publick, and the juniors (by an ancient custom they were obliged to comply with) went round the fire in the hall.' Philipps's Diary, Notes and Queries, 2nd S., x. 443. We can picture to ourselves among the juniors in November 1728, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... selfishness, or care, and offered up the homage of a tranquil mind, a trusting nature, and an overflowing heart; so that the smoke from this poor chimney has gone upward with a better fragrance than the richest incense that is burnt before the richest shrines in all the gaudy temples of this world!—Upon your own hearth; in its quiet sanctuary; surrounded by its gentle influences and associations; hear her! Hear me! Hear everything that speaks the language of ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... hues, there is the most delicate shading of pearly greys and nameless silver tints, such tints as might be imagined were the clouds like feathers, the art of which is to let the under hue shine through the upper layer of the plumage. Though not so gaudy or at first so striking, these pearl-greys, and silvers, and delicate interweaving of tints are really as wonderful, being graduated and laid on with a touch no camel's hair can approach. Sometimes, again, the sunset shows a burnished sky, like the surface of old copper burnt or oxidised—the ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... present education which was given them, and their diligence in learning, fitted them for such an employment. And as for the women, whenever they saw them adorned with their mother's clothes, they threatened, that instead of their present gaudy apparel, they should be clothed in sackcloth, and confined so closely that they should not see the light of the sun. These stories were presently carried by Salome to the king, who was troubled to hear them, and endeavored to make up ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... gravely as possible, thinking of the hundred gaudy promises old Jim had made concerning his undeveloped and so far worthless claim. "I hope you'll strike it good ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... have not all disappeared; and, but that saw the snowy cone of Pike's Peak rising over the crest of the cliff, I might have fancied myself in the Sierra Asturias, with a beautiful gitana standing before me. The soft fawn-skin tilma, with its gaudy broidering of beads and stained quills—the fringed skirt and buskined ankles—the striped Navajo blanket slung scarf-like over her shoulders— all presented a true gipsy appearance. The plumed circlet upon the head was more typical of Transatlantic ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the people was far more various and picturesque than nowadays. Both sexes dressed in gaudy colors and delighted in strange fashions, so that, {497} is Roger Ascham said, "he thought himself most brave that was most monstrous in misorder." For women the fashion of decollete was just coming in, as so many fashions ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... strewing the ground with a thick carpet of palm-leaves. Ere long, a cavalcade of between thirty and forty amazons - they all rode astride - came racing up the valley at full speed, their merry shouts proclaiming their approach. Gaudy strips of MARO were loosely folded around their legs for skirts. Their pretty little straw hats trimmed with ribbons, or their uncovered heads with their long hair streaming in the wind, confined only by a wreath of fresh orange flowers, added ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... of which is defective, but which contains superb rooms splendidly adorned, and is therefore very captivating to the simple and ignorant; while the Gerusalemme Liberata resembles a smaller palace, whose architecture is perfect, and whose rooms are suitable and elegant without being gaudy, delighting the true masters of art. This squib was published in Florence, and at once aroused the hostility of the Della Cruscans. They were already prejudiced against Tasso on account of his connection ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... matrimony as an emancipation from rules which she has rarely seen any one else observe, and has never honoured herself, and after a few years, she becomes one of that gaudy band of Society ladies who follow with respectful imitation the giddy vagaries of the Corinthians of a lower grade. She dines often without her husband at smart restaurants, where she has constant opportunities of studying the manners of her models. She adores the burlesques at the Gaiety and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower, —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... enormous catafalque, decorated with gold tinsel and costly embroideries. Peacocks and birds of paradise were depicted on its silken hangings. A dozen men, in elaborate robes of blue, carried this gaudy structure upon their shoulders, while other gorgeously attired attendants bore great ribbon-banners of satin, say twenty feet long by four feet wide and of the most brilliant colors, inscribed with Chinese characters and making known the virtues ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... paint my happiness As lying far remote from him and his. What has he done to thee that thus, among The seeds of reason, which he sowed unmixed, Pure in my soul, thou ever must be seeking To plant the weeds, or flowers, of thy own land. He wills not of these pranking gaudy blossoms Upon this soil. And I too must acknowledge I feel as if they had a sour-sweet odour, That makes me giddy—that half suffocates. Thy head is wont to bear it. I don't blame Those stronger nerves that can support it. Mine - Mine ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... after a while she left without giving any reason for so doing. The constant toil, day after day, was no doubt too heavy a yoke for one who is all independence and caprice. Then she set herself to look for mushrooms or for truffles, going over to Grenoble to sell them. But the gaudy trifles in the town were very tempting, the few small coins in her hand seemed to be great riches; she would forget her poverty and buy ribbons and finery, without a thought for tomorrow's bread. But if some other girl here in the town took a fancy to her brass crucifix, her agate heart or her ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... its stiff accompaniments at an hour when even the most civilised of Pashas still wears native dress. He heard of my desire to settle in his country with surprise and seeming pleasure, and made me sit beside him on a sofa in an upper chamber of magnificent proportions—spoilt, to my taste, by gaudy Frankish furniture and certain oleographs of the crowned heads of ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... and groping with her hands held out before her as if she were blind, was a woman. Her gown was the tawdry half-dress of the dance-halls, and the wrap over her bare shoulders was a gaudy imitation in colors of the Spanish mantilla. Her head was without covering, and her hair, which was luxuriant, hung in disorder over her face. One glance at the eyes, fixed and staring, assured Lidgerwood instantly ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... the presence of various Aymara secret societies, whose members, wearing repulsive masks, are clad in the most extraordinary costumes which can be invented by primitive imaginations. Each society has its own uniform, made up of tinsels and figured satins, tin-foil, gold and silver leaf, gaudy textiles, magnificent epaulets bearing large golden stars on a background of silver decorated with glittering gems of colored glass; tinted "ostrich" plumes of many colors sticking straight up eighteen inches above the heads of their wearers, gaudy ribbons, beruffled bodices, puffed sleeves, ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... then, and she had been forced to waste much already. While she was completing the transformation, the squaw went out and changed her saddle and bridle for an Indian blanket and surcingle with stirrups attached to it, and a plaited, gaudy rope bridle and ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... buying copies of everything there was on the news-stands, and then ransacking musty little stores for back issues and ones that had gone out of publication, until Paul's office was just full of teetery piles of gaudy magazines and everywhere you looked there were pictures of strange stars and eight-legged monsters and ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant
... a man of gigantic stature, dressed in coarse canvas breeches, and with a handkerchief of gaudy dye twisted about his head. His bold features wore the usual Indian expression of saturnine imperturbability, and he half sat, half reclined upon the log as motionless as a piece of carven bronze, staring at ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... crinkly blouses, and olive-drab (properly o. d.) knees not yet worn white (as I have seen on returning Plattsburgers) while our canvas leggings were still unshaped to our manly calves. Our hats were new and stiff, and their gaudy cords were bright. And we were inquisitive of the life that was ahead of us, readily making acquaintance in order to compare our scraps of information. Dismay ran here and there with the knowledge that the typhoid inoculation required three weekly doses. Thank goodness, that is over with for me. ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... Bare headed, and all bare, whilst at his scars They scoff, that ne'er durst view the face of wars. I set an Idiot's cap on virtue's head, Turn learning out of doors, clothe wit in rags And paint ten thousand images of loam In gaudy silken colours: on the backs Of mules and asses I make asses ride Only for sport, to see the apish world Worship such beasts with sound idolatry. This Fortune does, and when this is done, She sits and smiles to hear some curse her name, And ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... which they now talked overlooked the neighboring Temple house, a dignified sentry at the point where the leisured street forsook the chaffer of the town to climb amidst arching elms and maples, above whose gaudy autumn masses rose the dome of the courthouse and the spires of many churches. It was an old-fashioned Georgian structure with white columns clear-cut against its weathered brick; at either side of the low steps a great hydrangea, its glory waning ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... to do her a kindness, King Eyo had provided her with the Royal canoe, a hollow tree-trunk twenty feet long, and she lay in comfort under the cool cover of a framework of palm leaves, freshly lopped from the tree, and shut off from the crew by a gaudy curtain. Beneath was a piece of Brussels carpet, and about her were arranged no fewer than six pillows, for the well-to-do natives of Calabar made larger and more skilful use of ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... comes a big barge, with a house built on it, and spars towering over the roof; then canal boats, a lengthen'd, clustering train, fasten'd and link'd together—the one in the middle, with high staff, flaunting a broad and gaudy flag—others with the almost invariable lines of new-wash'd clothes, drying; two sloops and a schooner aside the tow—little wind, and that adverse—with three long, dark, empty barges bringing up the rear. People are on the boats: men lounging, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... GAUDY. In the University of Oxford, a feast or festival. The days on which they occur are called gaudies or gaudy days. "Blount, in his Glossographia," says Archdeacon Nares in his Glossary, "speaks of a foolish derivation of the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... birth, A diminutive I was born on earth: And then I came from a dark abode, Into a gay and gaudy world.'(51) ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... cream yellow and black larva of the Magpie Moth (Abraxas grossulariata), are very conspicuously adorned, and furnish examples of what is known as 'warning coloration,' on the supposition that the gaudy aspect of such insects serves as an advertisement that they are not fit to eat, and that birds and other possible devourers thus learn to leave them alone. On the other hand, smooth caterpillars which are readily eaten by birds are usually 'protectively' coloured, ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... a mere germ. The works of greatness, of goodness, will be the last things that he will see; for seldom indeed will they be presented to his sight. For the pure, the sweet, the graceful, the dignified, he will have thrust before his eyes gaudy, tawdry caricature and grimace; and, worse still, perhaps wholly vulgar obscenities. Were he in his boyhood given a present in the pictorial line, it would be of an Opera-dancer or a race-course, or an abomination of London low life. What "slang" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... their pitiful belongings with them—a few rags of bedding and clothes, some traps and snowshoes, and cooking utensils. The smaller girl bore a holy picture in a gaudy frame. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... travelled thirty leagues to do homage to me as the "son of the Sultan." There were 1,500 horsemen and their wives, who were carried by something like a hundred camels in a kind of palanquin, covered with gaudy stuffs, which they call "atatich." When they arrived, the excitement of the fantasia rose to madness. The horsemen from the south, in their splendid dresses, showed off all their skill, and whenever one of them performed any specially brilliant feat, the deafening "you-you" of the women rose from ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Nature always looks so natural to me! It awakens within me various emotions, but never surprise,—I mean that kind of surprise one has when seeing a lady dressed in colors that do not harmonize. To my eye, even in gaudy October, Nature appears to blend her effects so that there is nothing ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... pleasure in adorning the walls as she had formally taken in demolishing them. Fortunately the landlord had never heard the aesthetic principle that exposure of basic construction is more desirable than gaudy decoration. In course of time it was discovered that the old woman could speak Gaelic, and when one or two grave professors came to see her, the neighborhood was filled with pride that such a wonder lived in their ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... the wine shops a little knot of men and soldiers had gathered. All were flushed with drink and talking loudly in their own tongue. One of them—a captain in a gaudy uniform—saw the Texan and made a laughing remark ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... first thing that came in her youthful way Was a gold-featured Sunflower—gaudy and gay— Who dressed himself up in resplendent array, And gazed on the sun as an equal. "Look! look!" quoth the Vine: "He's a lover of mine: "And see how the gold round his face doth shine!" So at once she began round the stem to twine; But mark ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... Issue of a King, And by him made so wretched, scorn'd a Thing. How little cause has mankind to be proud Of Noble Birth, the Idol of the Crowd! Have I abroad in Battels Honour won To be at home dishonourably undone? Mark'd with a Star and Garter, and made fine With all those gaudy Trifles once call'd mine, Your Hobby-Horses [1] and your Joys of State, And now become the Object of your Hate; But, d———'ee, Sir, I'll be Legitimate. I was your Darling, but against your Will, And know ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... of spending the entire week's earnings is obvious, and to assist him in doing so seems to be the only visible means of support of half the people of the town. The dance-house and the gambling-saloon, flaunting their gaudy attractions, own him for the hour their king. His Midas touch is all-powerful. I must confess, with all my admiration for his character, that his tastes are low. I know that the civilization of the East would bore him immeasurably, and that he considers Colt, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... pageant Queen? you might from thence infer I'd fall in love with every little Actress, because She acts the Queen for half an hour, But then the gaudy Robe is laid aside. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... has been written concerning the fact that Wagner used to wear gaudy costumes of silk and satin while he was composing, and that he had colored glass in his windows, which gave every object a mysterious aspect. He was called an imitator of the eccentric King of ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... when they had entered the court. Mr. Subtle requested Gammon, whose ability he had soon detected, to sit immediately beneath him; next to Gammon sat Quirk; then Snap; and beside him Mr. Titmouse, with a staring sky-blue flowered silk handkerchief round his neck, a gaudy waistcoat, a tight surtout, and white kid gloves. He looked exceedingly pale, and dared hardly interchange a word with even Snap, who was just as irritable and excited as his senior partners. It was quickly known all over the court which was Titmouse! Mr. Aubrey scarcely ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... borrowed from certain heretics (bizocchi) who affected extreme austerity; afterwards the word passed into a proverb.—See the comments of Zerfirino Re, in 'Vita di Cola di Rienzi'.) the parade of humility, would better become thee, than this gaudy pomp, the parade of pride!" So saying, he touched the large loose sleeve fringed with gold, of ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... was a handbill of Uncle Obadiah's clock factory, upon which was broadly emblazoned a time-piece of modern fashion. Its effect was electric. No sooner was it displayed than the barbarian's eye glowed with anxiety; the gaudy picture carried his heart and soul captive to Uncle Sam. In his ecstacy he threw his arms about me, hugged me and fawned me, and in his joy was well nigh devouring me. Poor John stood outdone—dumfounded. The ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... roses in thine eyes, Shall I not rend this raiment of pangs and fears, This Colchian cloth white flames ensorcelise, This gaudy-veil distained with blood and tears?— What praise? "O marriage-beauty garlanded For festival, O sumptuous flowery stole For rites of adoration!"—See instead A cilice drenched with torment of my soul! Nevertheless the fibres ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... on Andy. "Give us a whiff," and before the dude could stop him the younger Racer boy had snatched it from his pocket. "Whew! Yes, this is it!" he cried, holding his nose as he handed the gaudy linen back. "How did it happen, Chet? Did you drop it somewhere? It's awful!" and he pretended to stagger back. "Better ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... of flame, sounded as the boy remained for one moment with the flag in his hand looking down at the crowd below. His face was odd and elated and still. Then with the slightest gesture he threw the flag from him, and Aaron watched the gaudy remnant falling towards the many faces, whilst the noise of yelling ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... writers that may be called mock-eloquent writers. They try at a superior style, but forget that true eloquence resides essentially in the thought, the feeling, the character, and that no words can make genuine eloquence out of that which is of no worth or interest. They mistake a gaudy verbosity for eloquence. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... side of the street, upstairs in his dusty real estate office, with tin placards of insurance companies on the wall, and gaudy calendars tacked everywhere, Silas Buckner stands at the window counting the liars and scoundrels, and double-dealers and villains, and thieves and swindlers who pass. Since Silas was defeated for Register of Deeds he has become a pessimist. He has soured on the town, and ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... salmon that has taken the gaudy fly, felt a check and recognised that a Power had her in hand, recognised in the light-going and fair-speaking Pinckney something of adamant, a will not to be ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... mortar. The woman enters into the work with intelligent zest, and when completed the whole array of blended colours is beyond the criticism of the tribe. The back of an Indian's war-bonnet and war-shirt is always more gaudy and sumptuous than the front view and this because when Indians pass each other their salutation is brief and formal. They ride right on. But after the meeting they turn in the saddle and look back to take an inventory. ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... garden-bed on which there grew, Low down amid gay grass, a violet, With flame of poppy flickering over it, And many gaudy spikes and blossoms new, Round which the wind with amorous whispers blew. There came a maid, gold-haired and lithe and strong, With limbs whereof the delicate perfumed flesh Was like a babe's. She broke the flowering mesh Of flaunting weeds, and plucked the modest bloom To wear it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... merely giving orders to my cook; it is an amusement to regale the object I dote on. In this light, a woman considers these necessary occupations, as more lively and affecting pleasures than those gaudy sights which amuse the greater part of the sex, who are incapable of ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... projecting shadow thus, he had come at last almost to the very side of the dumb slave just as a gaudy winged parrot lit upon the eve of the summer house on a large piece of the picket work that had been used as an ornament for its top, but which having been broken from its position, had slid down to the very ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... consciousness, and a feeling that helps us to look on our place in the world with more knowledge and less apprehension—a feeling blent with some wisdom, from the numberless things it has learned? When the hour for rest has sounded—as it must sound every night and at every moment of solitude—when the gaudy vestments of love, and glory, and power fall helplessly round us; what is it we can take with us as we seek refuge within ourselves, where the happiness of each day is measured by the knowledge the day has brought us, by the thoughts and the ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... ensign was faintly floating in the breeze. This he tore furiously away, and rending it into many pieces, cast the fragments into the silver element beneath him, on whose bosom they were seen to float among the canoes of the savages, many of whom possessed themselves, with eagerness, of the gaudy coloured trophies. The dark parcel was now unfolded by the active warrior, who, after having waved it several times round his head, commenced attaching it to the lines whence the English ensign had so recently been torn. It was a large ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... though the fields look rough with hoary dew. All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... to the people of our valley," I protested. "He says, 'in Black Log the girls don't understand how to dress. They deck themselves out in gaudy finery. Now Edith wears the simplest things. You never notice her gown. You only see ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... plainly the boatmen. It could be seen that they had decked themselves out for the occasion. Their heads were bound with bright-colored fillets, their necks with gay scarves. The paddles were adorned with gaudy woollen streamers. New leggings, of holiday pattern, were intermittently visible on the bowsmen and steersmen as they half rose to give added force to ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... himself. This was a polite way of begging for a contribution towards the expenses of some music in the Saint's honour, so we gave him whatever it may have been, and his messenger departed: well satisfied. At six o'clock in the evening we went to the church—close at hand—a very gaudy place, hung all over with festoons and bright draperies, and filled, from the altar to the main door, with women, all seated. They wear no bonnets here, simply a long white veil—the 'mezzero;' and it was the most gauzy, ethereal-looking ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... ingeniously arranged mirrors, were a pleasing surprise to the visitor. Luxuriant palms decorating the labyrinthian garden appeared to be endless in number—casting their shade over hundreds of life-like figures in gaudy costumes. Each of these groups in wax, was multiplied again and again in the perspective of mirrors. Entering the palace, the visitor was unable to shake off the feeling of perplexity caused by the extraordinary spectacles to be witnessed ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... indignant, and said: "Well, well, what's the matter? They are not about any dirty work; they are only amusing themselves in the fine evening; there is nothing to foul their clothes. Come, doesn't it all look very pretty? It isn't gaudy, you know." ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... my threat into execution, when my eye was attracted by the musicians. There was a coarse, stout, sun-burned Irish woman, with an immense straw hat flapping over her freckled face, tied with a gaudy ribbon under her three chins, singing, "I'd be a butterfly!" At her side, stood a little girl about six years old, holding an inverted tambourine, to catch windfalls in ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... celebrated. Never was there a brighter day: all seemed to be new, and the very quintessence of what was foreign—the gay houses of different heights and patterns were decked with streamers, their parti-coloured blinds, devices, and balconies running round the place, and furnishing gaudy detail. Here there used to be plenty of movement, when the Lafitte diligences went clattering by, starting for Paris, before the voracious railway marched victoriously in and swallowed diligence, horses, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... had meant to ask about the race Porter's horse Lauzanne was in, but had hesitated for fear he should say something which might give rise to a suspicion of his errand. He heard the rolling thunder of hoof beats in the air. From where he stood, over the heads of many people he could see gaudy colored silk jackets coming swiftly up the broad straight boulevard of the race course; even as he looked they passed by with a peculiar bobbing up-and-down motion. The effect was grotesque, for he could not see the horses, could not see the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... sheep. In vain might you delude yourself that you were a camel, horse, or bird of plumage; to Grace's thinking, there were no such animals in the religious world—her clear eye made nothing of hump, flowing mane, or gaudy feathers; that eye looked dispassionately for the wool upon your back—or ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... outside my own house,—and I am an attentive student of bookshop windows! And the French books are all so pleasant in the page, and so cheap—they are for a people that buys to read. One thinks of the English bookshop, with its gaudy reach-me-downs of gilded and embossed cover, its horribly printed novels still more horribly "illustrated," the exasperating pointless variety in the size and thickness of its books. The general effect of the English ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... trade goods and asked to select what I thought was a fair thing in exchange for the provisions I had given them. Heavens! Such a collection of utter, utter rubbish! second-hand musical boxes in piles, gaudy lithographs, iron bedsteads, "brown paper" boots and shoes eaten half away by cockroaches. Sets of cheap and nasty toilet ware, two huge cases of common and much damaged wax dolls, barrels of rotted dried apples, and decayed pork, an ice-making plant, bales ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... his eyes until she came within the range of their vision, first to her shoes, then to her stockings, her skirt, gaudy jacket and at last met her eyes, which were smiling at him saucily over the rosebud which she was holding to her lips. But he only sat glowering ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... such plants as chrysanthemums, auriculas, geraniums, and many others, to be exposed to the influence of cold, frosty nights, as when the "fell destroyer" commences to exert its power all plants touched by it rapidly decay. Gladioli will now be clothed in the full glory of their gaudy, but handsome dress; they are comparatively easy to manage in well-drained spots, and being such continuous bloomers, at least three or four or even half a dozen should be in every small garden. In winter they must be covered by about six inches ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... official strolled in from another department. He was a middle-aged, corpulent, and cheerful-looking man, dressed in gaudy coloured tissue, on which all manner of strange birds were depicted. He ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... clothing, much resented by the wearer, but accepted with philosophic submission, as harder things would be later on. Toys are few and simple. The palmyra rattle is exchanged for the stiff wooden doll, painted in gaudy colors, and the collection of tiny vessels in which sand and stones and seeds provide the equivalent of mud pies in repasts of imaginary rice and curry. Household duties begin also. Meenachi at the age of six grasps her ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... is quick with life. Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds, And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man, Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground, Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee, A more adventurous colonist than man, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... and she exchanges her brisk, elastic step, for a pace better suited to that of the toiling oxen. The beauty of this dusky belle consists of a smiling mouth, bright black eyes, and youth and health. Though fond of gaudy colors, she is not over dressed. A light handkerchief rather binds her raven hair than covers her head. Her bright blue petticoat, scanty in length, and her orange-colored spencer, open in front, both well worn, and showing here and there a rent, but half conceal the graces ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... dark interior of the temple with the altar at the farther end, and the great wooden figure of the god rising above it; a monstrous thing painted in gaudy colours, with a fierce, cruel grin on its ugly face; and the madman was riding his war-horse ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... conflict upon conflict, not one of which appeared decisive. Yet, gradually, it seemed to him who waited, the standard of intellect rose high and shining over the white, luminous lines; while that of the animal grew frayed and faded, beginning to betray the rottenness of its material beneath the gaudy ornaments. Victory was finally acknowledged when, upon a November day of his year of disgrace,—1862, Ivan, braving scorn, rejection, even deliberate non-recognition, entered the doors of the Conservatoire over the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... brig has a broad white ribbon round her, and a small figure-head painted white, whilst the pirate-craft was painted black down to her copper, and she carried a large black figure- head representing a negress with a gaudy scarf wrapped about ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... told tales to the little ones, but do thou this—' His old eyes fell on the gaudy paintings of the wall, the blue and red dome, and the flames of the poinsettias beyond. 'Tell them first of those things that thou hast seen and they have seen together. Thus their knowledge will piece out thy imperfections. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... Waldhauser and Mili[vc] of Krom[ve][vr]i[vz]e, who were causing such a stir. These two worthies were holding forth in the churches against the luxury and immorality of the time, with such effect that well-known, great and gaudy sinners were moved to acts of public repentance and women to cast off their jewellery and to dress themselves in sober fashion. All this was very beautiful and edifying, but it was not likely to last, and what with the ill-will of the Pope and the opposition of the monastic orders it took Charles ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... mean little room, on one side a wide bed with a gaudy coverlet, on a pine table in the centre a bucket of water, a tin cup, and a candle-stick. Five rickety rush-covered chairs completed ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... acquaintance stooped to a slouch hat. This typical head gear of the West had no attraction for him. The formal black or brown derby for winter and the seasonable straw hat for summer seemed necessary to tone down the frivolity of his neckties, which were chosen with a cowboy's gaudy taste. To the day of his death Field delighted to present neckties, generally of the made-up variety, to his friends, which, it is needless to say, they never failed to accept and seldom wore. Often in the afternoon as it neared ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... covered from top to toe, so that not one blot of his own inky feathers showed through the gorgeousness. A red vest he wore, and a swallow-tail, of course, and there was a crown of feathers on his head. Never was there seen a more extraordinary bird nor one more gaudy. Perhaps he was not in the best of taste, but at least he ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... bowers of orange trees, you suddenly perceive before you, tall and glittering gates rising from a noble range of marble steps. These you ascend, and entering, find yourself in a large quadrangular colonnade of white marble. It surrounds a small lake, studded by three or four gaudy barques fastened to the land by silken cords. The colonnade terminates towards the water by a very noble marble balustrade, the top of which is covered with groups of various kinds of fish in high relief. At each angle of the colonnade, the balustrade gives way to a flight of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... flank. As for the main entrance, that was used to keep out thieves and customers, except once or twice in a year, when they entered together, i.e., when some duke or count arrived in pomp with his train of gaudy ruffians. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... was the winter wild While the heaven-born child All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies— Nature, in awe to Him, Had doffed her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize; It was no season then for her To wanton with ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... To that gaudy tangle of what gardens, after all, are meant to produce, in the decay of time, as we may think at first sight, the systematic, logical gardener put his meddlesome hand, and straightway all ran to seed; to genus and ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... coveted delicacy in the way of food. Each day when at the Institute Mr. Washington would walk through the dining-hall during the noon meal and criticise these centrepieces, and things generally. He would point out that a certain decoration was too gaudy and profuse and had in it inharmonious colors. He would then remove the unnecessary parts and the discordant colors and point to the improved effect. He would next stop at a table with nothing in the way of decoration except a few scrawny flowers stuck carelessly ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... to the trouble of accomplishing. He had too little art to conceal his art: or did not even seem to know that there was any occasion for it. His art is as naked and undisguised as his nature; the one is as pure and genuine as the other is gross, gaudy, and meretricious.—All that is admirable in the Seasons, is the emanation of a fine natural genius, and sincere love of his subject, unforced, unstudied, that comes uncalled for, and departs unbidden. But he takes no pains, uses no self-correction; ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... through the gay, gaudy day, As, hopeless, I muse on thy charms: But welcome the dream o' sweet slumber, For then I am lockt in ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... taste. They have forgotten the Middle Ages and have not yet found modern art. To the peasant of the Black Forest, the splendid, baroque, dome-shaped church of St. Blasien is a much greater marvel of native art than the Freiburg cathedral. Gaudy, exaggeratedly fantastic Rococo saints are generally considered by Catholic country people very much more edifying than a picture in the severe style of the Middle Ages or of the modern school. In the ornamentation of utensils and houses of our peasants the Rococo style has quite ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... had appeared, coming toward them with a callow youth near her own age. Her dress was some soft, pale blue material that was neither gaudy nor fantastical. But it was far from modest. Lane had to echo Blair's eulogy of this young specimen of the new America. She simply verified and stabilized the assertion that physically the newer generations of girls were markedly more beautiful than ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... old house, and after floundering through a long, dark, ill-smelling passage way, entered a room in the basement. Anna Siebert lighted a lamp that had a red chimney. Gaudy garments of the soubrette hung on the wall. A big, grey cat lay on the table cover and purred. Anna Siebert took the cat in her arms and caressed it. Its name was Zephyr. It accompanied ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... flower, and doing something to the flower's advantage with a pair of scissors. As Bess hung over the leafy object of her solicitude, with her yellow wealth of hair coiled round and round, she herself looked not unlike a graceful, gaudy chrysanthemum. This poetic reflection, which would have been creditable to Mr. Fopling, never occurred to Richard; he was too full of Dorothy to have room for Bess. However, the good Bess found no fault with his loving preoccupation; she, too, was pensively thinking on ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... bar, roulette and faro tables, bright with varnish and gaudy with nickel trimmings, were waiting with invitations to feverish excitement. The room was a modern presentation of Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla, the bar, stimulated to the daring of Charybdis across the way, and Charybdis, the roulette, sent its winners to celebrate success, or its victims ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... the dumps.] Stay but a moment, you'll see through them. The clouds are apt to make reflection, [Footnote: Reflection of the sun.] And frequently produce infection: So Celia, with small provocation, Blasts every neighbor's reputation. The clouds delight in gaudy show, (For they, like ladies, have their bow;) The gravest matron* will confess, *[Footnote: Motherly woman.] That she herself is fond of dress. Observe the clouds in pomp array'd, What various colors are display'd; The pink, the rose, the violet's dye, In that ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... warmth by covering him completely beneath them. Perhaps, too, he will remain unseen by the driver when the fatal moment comes for harnessing-up. Not a bit of it. He lies ever so quiet under the snow, but the rounded hillock betrays his hiding place; and he is dragged forth to the gaudy gear of bells and moose-skin lying ready to receive him. Then comes the start. The pine or aspen bluff is left behind, and under the grey starlight we plod along through the snow. Day dawns, sun rises, morning ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... knew her royal brother. A man would receive quicker reward for inventing an amusement or a gaudy costume for the king than by winning him a battle. Later in life the high road to his favor was in ridding him of his wife and helping him to a new one—a dangerous way though, as Wolsey found to his sorrow when he sank his glory ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... then; when Shakespear dy'd Her Cowley rose, drest in her gaudy Pride. So from great Ruins a new Life she calls, And Builds an Ovid[3] when ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... faces gave faithful witness of their habitual intemperance; and men, whose threadbare and ragged garments betokened sloth and poverty; and men, whose vulgar and ostentatious display of showy clothing, and gaudy chains, and rings and breast-pins, which they did not know how to wear, indicated dishonest pursuits; and men, whose blue jackets and bluff, brown faces showed them to be sailors; and men, whose scowling brows and ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... along the coast line, on the lookout for smugglers with whom they were on the most friendly terms. They were a picturesque body of blackguards, in their hightopped boots and silver-tipped sombreros and heavy, gaudy saddles, but the shout that had gone up at their advance was due as much to the fear they inspired as to any great love for ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... is truth—how shall we live And bear the glare? Now rosily smiles the earth, And bold young couriers climb the slope of heaven, With gaudy flags aflare. The towered clouds, Lofty, impregnable, are captured now— Their turrets flame with banners. Who abides Under the smooth wide rim of the worn world That the high heavens should hail him like a king— Even like a lover? If it be the Truth, Ah, shall ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... much of this roughness departed. Soldiers from the garrison on pass, idle plainsmen, bull-whackers, adventurers of all kinds stranded here because of Indian activity, stray cowboys from the nearby valleys, thronged the numerous dives, seeking excitement. Women, gaudy of dress, shrill of voice, flitted from door to door through the jostling crowds. Lamps blazed over the motley assembly, loud-voiced barkers yelled, and a band added its discords to the din. The "Poodle Dog" glared in light, resounded with noise; lamps ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... poetry, one good, the other bad; and those who write about him generally describe one side or the other in superlatives. Thus one critic speaks of his "splendid and imperishable excellence of sincerity and strength"; another of his "gaudy charlatanry, blare of brass, and big bow-wowishness." As both critics are fundamentally right, we shall not here attempt to reconcile their differences, which arise from viewing one side of the man's nature and poetry to the exclusion of the other. Before his exile from England, in 1816, the general ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... vestment he detracts from the fineness of his linen. Without descending into more minute particulars, I believe I may assert it as an axiom of indubitable truth, that whoever shows you he is either in himself or his equipage as gaudy as he can, convinces you he is more so than he can afford. Now, whenever a man's expense exceeds his income, he is indifferent in the degree; we had therefore nothing more to do with such than to flatter them with their wealth and ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... A gaudy dress and gentle air May slightly touch the heart; But it's Innocence and Modesty That polishes ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... village of The Sheik. Her garmenture now reflected in miniature that of Meriem. A tiny bit of leopard skin covered her ratskin torso from shoulder to splinter knee. A band of braided grasses about her brow held in place a few gaudy feathers from the parakeet, while other bits of grass were fashioned into imitations of arm and leg ornaments of metal. Geeka was a perfect little savage; but at heart she was unchanged, being the same ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... collected by the shrill summons of the mother; and the mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall - Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly in a ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by Britons once were counted, Close to my side were monies lent and paid; If princes died—some gaudy herald mounted Upon my head, and proclamations read; Till Gresham rose; who used me very ill, He moved the place of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... anyone educate the heartless woman of fashion who is determined to wear aigrettes as long as her money can buy them. The best women of the world have already been educated on the bird-millinery subject, and they are already against the use of the gaudy badges of slaughter and extermination. But in the great cities of the world there are thousands of women who are at heart as cruel as Salome herself, and whose vicious tastes can be curbed only by the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... not stir. Seeing that I would not be permitted to approach her I halted, wondering what new scene of savage cruelty was about to be enacted. I was not long in doubt—from the gestures of the Indians, and the exhibition of some gaudy ornaments by one of the Apaches, I was convinced that a barter or trade of some sort was in progress, and a few moments sufficed to satisfy me that my surmise was correct, and to plunge ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... moment had slipped into the crowd from which she had come. It was midday, and old Israel, the fisherman, who had brought her and the Widow Constance's Barbara up the river in his boat, would be going back with the tide. She was not loath to leave: the green meadow, the gaudy Maypole, and the music were good, but the silence on the river, the shadow of the brooding forest, the darting of ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... caught their first glimpse of Omdurman. Already the gunboats were steaming up to the Mahdist capital to throw in their first shells. They speedily dismounted several guns, and one of the shells tore away a large portion of the gaudy cupola that covered the Mahdi's tomb. Apart from this portent, nothing of moment was done on that day; but it seems probable that the bombardment led the Khalifa to hazard an attack on the invaders in the desert ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... liberty upon the top. The only idea we have of the cap of liberty is, the bonnet rouge of the French; but the Americans will not copy the French, although they will the English; so they have a cap of their own, which (begging their pardon), with its gaudy colours and gilding, looks more like a fool's ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... living room were lamps, shabby chairs, an air-tight stove, shells, empty birds' nests, specimens of ore, blown eggs, snakeskins, moccasins, wampum, spongy dry bees' nests, Indian baskets and rugs, ropes and pottery, an enormous Spanish hat of yellow straw with a gaudy band, and everywhere, in disorderly cascades and tumbled heaps, were books ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... us fly, Fiesco! let us with scorn reject these gaudy nothings, and pass our future days only in the retreats of love! (She presses him to her breast with rapture.) Our souls, serene as the unclouded sky, shall never more be blackened by the poisonous breath of sorrow; our lives shall flow harmoniously as the music ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... border town was sleeping off its debauch, saloons and gambling dens silent, the streets almost deserted. To Keith, whose former acquaintance with the place had been entirely after nightfall, the view of it now was almost a shock—the miserable shacks, the gaudy saloon fronts, the littered streets, the dingy, unpainted hotel, the dirty flap of canvas, the unoccupied road, the dull prairie sweeping away to the horizon, all composed a hideous picture beneath the sun glare. He could scarcely find a man to attend his horse, and at the restaurant a drowsy ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... most eagerly courted among mankind? Which are the divinities by mortals most assiduously adored? This goodly universe was intended for the seat of pleasure, unmixed pleasure. But a sportive, malicious divinity sent among men a gaudy phantom, an empty bubble, and called the shadow Honour. In pursuit of a fancied distinction and a sounding name, the children of the earth have deserted all that is bland and all that is delicious. Labour, naked, deformed, and offensive, they ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... solidity, or find an establishment to give them perpetuity; that moral obliquities, can never be made rectilinear by the mere application of unintelligible terms, or by the inconsiderate jumble of discrepant properties, however gaudy the assemblage: in short, that the only criterion of truth is, that it is ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... fastened the bit of gaudy feather to the trout "fly" he was making, before he answered. "Surely to goodness, they'll nivver be that! Sibbald Hallam, my uncle, was a varry thick Churchman when he went to th' Carolinas—but he married a foreigner; ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... obstructions, afford a suitable promenade for gayety, wealth and fashion to roam. Here beauty's feet may stray, arrayed in the most showy colors or the stateliest attire, without fear of encountering nasty crossings or of being splashed over and soiled by teams upon muddy streets. Ladies attired in gaudy ball-room dresses with long trails, would scarcely present a contrast in dress with the average promenaders. All dress equally well, on Sundays, and on week-days, so that Paris presents to the foreigner, the appearance of a city celebrating an eternal Sabbath. Even when it rains, the pedestrian ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... it costs to clothe one of these gaudy creatures I cannot say; but the silks and finery worn by them are known to every shopkeeper as expensive articles. As I have never been able to indulge in such, I have been content to admire them as they flirted by me in the street, or swept up the aisles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... had ushered in the summer of St. Martin, as it was called by the habitans,—the Indian summer,—that brief time of glory and enchantment which visits us like a gaudy herald to announce the approach of the Winter King. It is Nature's last rejoicing in the sunshine and the open air, like the splendor and gaiety of a maiden devoted to the cloister, who for a few weeks ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... dash Octavius from the trophied car; Say, does thy secret soul repine to taste The big distress? Or wouldst thou then exchange Those heart-ennobling sorrows for the lot Of him who sits amid the gaudy herd 760 Of mute barbarians bending to his nod, And bears aloft his gold-invested front, And says within himself, I am a king, And wherefore should the clamorous voice of woe Intrude upon mine ear?—The baleful dregs ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... bordered by conical hills, covered to the very summit by mimosas and huge cactuses, alive with large hordes of antelopes (the agazin), which, bounding from rock to rock, scared by their frolics the countless host of huge baboons. The valley itself, graced by the presence of gaudy-feathered and sweet-singing birds, echoed to the shrill cry of the numerous guinea-fowls, so tame, that the repeated reports of our fire-arms did not disturb them in ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... are known as subscription books, as a rule, though some valid exceptions exist. Most of such books are profusely illustrated and in gaudy bindings, gotten up to dazzle the eye. If works of merit, it is better to wait for them, than to subscribe for an unfinished work, which perhaps ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... bright scarlet geraniums, and starlike sweet-scented jessamines, and the gorgeous belladonna lily, with its large blossoms of rose-colour and white; and there were not only plants in flower, but bushes, and even trees, covered with gaudy and sweetly-perfumed blossoms. There was the "sugar-bush" (Protea mellifera), the most beautiful of its family, with its large cup-shaped corollas of pink, white, and green; and there, too, was the "silver-tree" (Leucodendron ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... head a brocaded cap. He had made but little other preparation for his friend in the way of dressing. His long dishevelled hair came down over his neck, and his beard covered his face. Beneath his dressing-gown he had on a night-shirt and drawers, and was as dirty in appearance as he was gaudy in colours. "Sit down and let us two moralise," he said. "I spend my life here doing nothing,—nothing,—nothing; while you cudgel your brain from day to day to mislead the British public. Which of us two is taking the ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... walking over the town, which at that time presented a most bustling appearance, as an expedition was fitting out; the streets were crowded with officers of the army, navy, and marines, in their uniforms; soldiers and sailors, more or less tipsy; flaunting ribbons and gaudy colours, and every variety of noise was to be heard that could be well imagined, from the quacking of a duck, with its head out of the basket in which it was confined to be taken on board, to the martial music, the rolling of the drums, and the occasional ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... at Traverse made me feel at home at once and I gave them a friendly smile. The glances they returned were shy, but friendly. Their painted faces and breasts and gaudy clothes were different from our Indians. Their tepees stretched as far as the eye could see. It seemed that the squaws must have had instruction in embroidery from some civilized teacher. Their patterns were so intricate. ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... spirited rendering of the tenth satire, which stands at the head of the later portion of Juvenal's work. In this, and in those of the subsequent satires which do not show traces of declining power, notably the eleventh and thirteenth, the rhetoric is less gaudy and the thought rises to a nobler tone. The fine passage at the end of the tenth satire, where he points out what it is permitted mankind to pray for, and that in the thirteenth, where he paints the torments of conscience in the unpunished sinner, have something in them which combines the lofty ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... snowy peaks of the Abruzzi, recalling Albanian ranges. Here, as in Sicily, the old lava is overgrown with prickly pear and red valerian. Mesembrianthemums—I must be pardoned this word; for I cannot omit those fleshy-leaved creepers, with their wealth of gaudy blossoms, shaped like sea anemones, coloured like strawberry and pine-apple cream-ices—mesembrianthemums, then, tumble in torrents from the walls, and large-cupped white convolvuluses curl about the hedges. The Castle Rock, with Capri's refined sky-coloured ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... him clean holland, this was no great hurt: On a bed of soft down, like a lord of renown, They did lay him to sleep the drink out of his crown. In the morning when day, then admiring he lay, For to see the rich chamber both gaudy and gay. ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... it might very easily be devoted to worse: and if two or three faces can be rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband. There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over- dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those about ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... guilty, and as if I hadn't ort to be happy, and no knowin' where she'd drifted to in the cruel under world, and wuz like sea-weed driftin' in the ocean current. And when we wuz out evenin's, no matter where I wuz, I watched the faces of every painted, gaudy dressed creeter I see, flittin' down cross streets, hoping and dreading to see Aronette's little form. Arvilly and Miss Meechim openly and loudly, and Dorothy's pale face and sorrowful eyes, told the story that they too wuz on the watch and would always be. But never ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... magazines of death, destructive balls, And cannons doomed to batter Landau's walls, The victor finds each hidden cavern stored, And turns their fury on their guilty lord. Deluded prince! how is thy greatness crossed, And all the gaudy dream of empire lost, That proudly set thee on a fancied throne, And made imaginary realms thy own! 210 Thy troops that now behind the Danube join, Shall shortly seek for shelter from the Rhine, Nor find it there: ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... gracefully arranged. His pantaloons were strapped clown very tightly over his polished boots; a shining new silk hat was on one side of his head; and in his hand he was dangling an ebony cane. In spite, however, of all these gaudy trappings, he could not muster up an easy air; and, as he knocked, he had that look proverbially attributed to dogs who are ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... you that the great gaudy vans were loaded on a train of flat cars, and that a single horse working a rope and pulley-block trundled the vans from the train nearly as fast as their respective teamsters could hitch horses to them and drive away. These boys knew ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... by a politic and brilliant marriage, against the advantages of freedom, and the glory of unassisted success and advancement. For the lady herself—a bright, mirthful, pretty brunette, who in contrast with his frigid nature seemed a gaudy tropical bird fluttering around a stolid arctic auk—he had not even a shadow of affection; and looked quite beyond the graceful lay figure draped with his name to the lofty judicial eminence where her distinguished father held sway, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... thy fate, Since title deck'd my higher birth, Yet envy not this gaudy state, Thine is the pride of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... tints—which I scarce know how to describe. There are yellow walls and green blinds and red roofs, there are intervals of brilliant brown and natural-looking blue; but the picture is not spotty nor gaudy, thanks to the distribution of the colours in large and comfortable masses, and to the washing-over of the scene by some happy softness of sunshine. The river-front of Florence is in short a delightful composition. Part of its charm comes of course from the generous ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... When the gaudy ship left the gardens of the Paneum and turned into the Canopic way, the crowd pursued it in a dense mass, hallooing and shouting. Like a torrent suddenly swelled by a storm it rushed on, surging and growing at each moment, and carrying with it even those who tried to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Fly, Earth's gaudy, fading trifles; Empty joys, no longer stay: Stand aside, vain schemes of profit: Gay companions, speed away! I depart, the Bridegroom cometh; I dare sport with you no more, But would with the wise now ready Enter ere ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... holding up his arms and looking down at himself, "I do think it be somewhat of a gay, gaudy, grasshopper dress; but it is a pretty thing for all that, and doth not ill befit the turn of my looks, albeit I wear it but for the nonce. But stay, Little John, here are two bags that I would have thee carry in thy pouch for the sake of safekeeping. ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... the Morai. The natives loaded the white men's boats with provisions. In ten days the wan, gaunt {199} sailors were so sleek and fat that even the generous entertainers had to laugh at the transformation. Old King Terreeoboo came clothed in a cloak of gaudy feathers with spears and daggers at his belt and a train of priestly retainers at his heels to pay a visit of state to Cook; and a guard of mariners was drawn up at arms under the cocoanut grove to ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... never understand why artists and moralists paint Temptation invariably in gaudy scarlet and jewels, tinted cheeks, and laughing hair. If she were always like that, morality would be gloriously triumphant; for she would attract nobody. The true Temptation of this world and flesh wears grey rags, dishevelled ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... will use their endeavours to convince him he has not a correct knowledge of his own abilities. But if, like a well bred man at court, he enters the drawing-room of literature in good taste, neither too mean nor too gaudy, too bold or too formal, makes his bow with the air and finish of a scholar and a gentleman, and passes on to his place, unheedful of remark (because unconscious of offence), he is sure to command respect, if he does ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... at the termination of the Via Curlo; whence commences the road to Castellar, situated upon a hill on the opposite side of the river, and about hour's walk from Taggia. Castellar is visited on account of the gaudy sanctuary and the view from the hill. Taggia, though a poor dirty town, with steep, narrow, and slippery streets, has two very fair churches. At No. 1 Via Soleri—the principal street in the town—is the habitation ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... can contentedly live at the meanest rate, and think not myself above the lowest condition, that I am also above making an exchange of my honesty for all the riches of the Indies. When I come to be proud and vain of gaudy apparel, and outside finery, then (which I hope will never be) may I rest my principal good in such vain trinkets, and despise for them the more solid ornaments of a good fame, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... the scenery they offer is, on the whole, far less striking and beautiful than that of the bush of Northern New Zealand. The colouring is not so good; in the mass, it is not so lustrous, nor so varied. The rich flowers are hidden away, so that the fewer and less gaudy blossoms of our bush are more conspicuous, because severally more plentiful. But a woodland scene in England, the old home across the seas, even surpasses all in the glory of its ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... scarlet lychnis, and the most flaming flowers, border the edge of the walks, which extend till the perspective meets, and swarm with ladies and gentlemen in parti- coloured raiment. The Queen of Golconda's gardens in a French opera are scarcely more gaudy and artificial. Unluckily, too, the evening was fine, and the sun so powerful that we were half roasted before we could cross the great avenue and enter the thickets, which barely conceal a very splendid hermitage, where we joined Mr. and Mrs. ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... the gates was, "Vive le roi!" As soon as the last man had departed, the doors of the Palace were securely fastened, and then M. Belloc despatched me by a private way to discover what was happening in the city. In order to avoid undue attention I threw a plain cloak over my gaudy apparel, but there was no danger. A few hired agitators endeavoured to stir up the tumult afresh, but the men who had beheld the sleeping King would ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... evening. "The western sky was all aflame" with the gorgeous hues of the sunset; the air was like amber mist, and the shrill-voiced Canadian birds, with their gaudy plumage, sang their vesper laudates high in the green gloom of ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... this feast sat the wild, pastoral, gaudy company, speaking little over their food; and there at the other the pale padre, questioning his visitor about Rachel. The mere name of a street would bring memories crowding to his lips; and when his guest would tell him of a new play, he was ready with old quotations from the ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... materialized for him. He would have told you that a floor of last year's brown leaves, studded with myriad flower faces, big, bark-encased pillars of a thousand years, jewels on every bush, shrub, and tree, and tilting thrones on which gaudy birds almost burst themselves to voice the joy of life, while their bright-eyed little mates peered questioningly at him over nest rims——he would have told you that Medicine Woods on a damp, sunny May morning was Heaven. And he would have added that only one angel, tall and slender, with the ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... which support the clerestory. The roof, with its carving, gilding, and bright heraldic colors, is in thorough contrast with the rest of the architecture, and the eye gratefully relieves itself from the gloom below, by wandering over its quaint devices and gaudy hues. It is divided into three longitudinal departments, panelled with richly-carved oak; and at each intersection of the divisions of the compartments with the cross-beams, there is emblazoned a shield armorial, with ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... looked back at the stage, just as the queen was leading Florestein off, and he sees a frail-looking figure heaped in gaudy toggery, that looks as though it would drag her down with its weight; and, above it, is a pale flower-like face, with great dark, weary-looking eyes, and a heavy coronet of yellow hair ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... marble, highly polished. The inside of the spire was adorned with three compartments of fine paintings: and there was not a part in the whole edifice but what was embellished with paintings, or relievos, and gaudy idols from top ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... and thy fading leaf, I love thee, drear and gloomy as thou art; Not joyful Spring, like thee can soften grief, Nor gaudy Summer soothe the aching heart; But in thy cheerless, solitary bower, Beneath the varied shade, I love to lie, When dusky Evening's melancholy hour With boding clouds obscures the low'ring sky, And tuneless ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... it is the less requisite to enlarge on this topic, because it has been well discussed by many, who have unfolded the real nature of those fascinating qualities; who have well remarked, that though shewy and apt to catch the eye, they are of a flimsy and perishable fabric, not of that less gaudy but more substantial and durable texture, which, imparting permanent warmth and comfort, will long preserve its more sober honours, and stand the wear and tear of life, and the vicissitudes of seasons. It has been shewn, that these qualities often fail us when most we want their aid; that their ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... seeded grass begins to wave, And the high branches of the slender poplar Shiver aloft in air their rustling leaves. Cool breaths the rising breeze, and with it wakes The worn out spirit from its state of stupor. The lazy boy springs from his mossy bed, To chace the gaudy tempting butterfly, Who spreading on the grass its mealy wings, Oft lights within his reach, e'en at his seer, Yet still eludes his grasp, and o'er his head Light hov'ring round, or mounted high in air Temps his young eye, and wearies out his limbs. The drouzy ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... preachers do not deal after this tender fashion with moral, or even physical consequences, resulting from other evils. Why should they spare these? Why refuse to look their own effeminacy in the face,—their own gaudy and overweening encouragement of what they dare not contemplate in its results? Is a murder in the streets worth attending to,—a single wounded man worth carrying to the hospital,—and are all the ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... day. The luggage was piled on the hotel omnibus. We took an open cab and rattled through the narrow flag-paved streets of the harbour quarter of the town. As we emerged into a more spacious thoroughfare, suddenly from a gaudy column at the corner flared the name of Ras Fendihook. I caught the heading of the affiche: "Music-Hall-Eldorado." Part of the mystery was solved. Jaffery had been right in his deduction that he had left London on a professional engagement; ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... innocence. Laziness, liquor and loud asseverations of freedom and equality were its only blessings claimed; and the commission of overt acts, beyond those named, were rare enough to prove the rule of force of habit. Lured from old service for a time, most of them followed not far the gaudy and shining Will-o'-the-Wisp; and almost all—especially the household and personal servants—soon returned to "Ole Mas'r" once more, sadder and wiser for the futile chase after freedom's joys. But, even these were partly spoiled and rendered of far less practical use to themselves, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... he is dealing, not with really religious gods. For the old-fashioned faith of the country he entertains only the kindliest regard. The images that rise in his mind at the mention of religion pure and undefiled are not the gaudy spectacles to be seen in the marbled streets of the capital. They are images of incense rising in autumn from the ancient altar on the home-stead, of the feast of the Terminalia with its slain lamb, of libations of ruddy wine and offerings of bright ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... as was to have been expected. Japanese toys much brighter, the dolls relieved in gold and gaudy colors, absolutely saucy. The application of the natural and mechanical forces in their toys cannot fail to determine the taste of the ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... joy, of a truth, in remaining with, but whose behaviour wouldn't perhaps bring him under notice, nor otherwise compromise him, so long as he should stay to watch it. A young jibbering ape of one of the more formidable sorts, or an ominous infant panther, smuggled into the great gaudy hotel and whom it might yet be important he shouldn't advertise, couldn't have affected him as needing more domestic attention. The great gaudy hotel—The Pocahontas, but carried out largely on "Du Barry" lines—made all about him, ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... the troops habited in quilted armour were marched forward, having at a distance a somewhat fine appearance, as their helmets were ornamented with black and white ostrich feathers, while at the sides pieces of tin glittered in the sun, their long, quilted cloaks of gaudy colours reaching down to the horses' tails and hanging over their flanks. The riders were armed with large spears, and they had to be assisted to mount their horses. Their quilted cloaks were so heavy that it required two men to mount a cavalier. Six of these ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Naval Reserve round his cap, but he looked as if he ought to be wearing gold earrings and a gaudy handkerchief. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... and the gorge in front of them was filled with savages, a great mass of men with tufted scalp locks, some bare to the waist, others wrapped in gaudy blue or red or yellow blankets, a restless, shifting mass, upon which the sun poured brilliant rays, lighting up the savage faces as if they were shot with fire. It was a strange scene, buried in the green wood, one of the unknown battles that marked the march of the republic from sea to ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... by. Mr. Elihu Sanderson has kindly taught me to distinguish some of these nations, but at the time I did not know one from another, fancying them indeed all Indians, though at a loss to account for their diversity. Also the gaudy houses of red, blue, and yellow, the number of beautiful trees that grew in the very streets, and the swarms of birds that crowded every roof-top and ventured down quite fearlessly among the passers-by, all made me gasp with wonder. Nor was I less amazed to watch the habits of this marvellous ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the principal goddesses, were selected, and with them he continued to live idly, feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who paid him all the honors of a divinity. When at length the fatal day of sacrifice arrived, ... stripped of his gaudy apparel, one of the royal barges transported him across a lake to a temple which rose on its margin.... Hither the inhabitants of the capital flocked to witness the consummation of the ceremony. As the sad procession wound up the sides of the pyramid, the unhappy victim threw ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... overtook a party of strolling jugglers, travelling in a roofed-in waggon, with the younger children of the company running alongside in threadbare tights and trunkhose decked with tinsel; or whether they drove through a village market-place, where yellow earthen crocks and gaudy Indian cottons, brass pails and braziers and platters of bluish pewter, filled the stalls with a medley of colour—at every turn was something that excited the boy's wonder; but Donna Laura, who had fallen into a depression of spirits, lamenting the cold, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... pleased to see him. "Why, how d'ye do, Mr. Norman?" said she. And her friendliness and assurance of manner jarred upon him. There was not a suggestion of forwardness; but he, used to her old-time extreme reserve, felt precisely as if she were bold and gaudy, after the fashion of so many of the working girls who were popular with ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... of Mrs. Cunningham was but a few blocks away. Mrs. Cunningham did not live in a flat, but in the comparative gentility of "up-stairs rooms" over a gaudy undertaking establishment. She proved to be an Irish lady with a gin-laden breath. Her eyes were blue and bleared, and looked in kindly fashion through a pair of large-rimmed and much-mended spectacles, from ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the center table; on one end of this mantel was a blue glass vase containing a bouquet of paper roses, and on the other a plaster-of-Paris cat. Above the mantel hung a wreath of wax flowers in a glass case. In such houses were usually to be seen gaudy-colored carpets, imitation lace curtains, and a what-not in the corner that seemed ready to go into dissolution through the law ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... two stout packing-cases—measuring twenty feet long by three feet wide by two feet deep—containing long strips of gilt moulding, such as are used in house decoration. The moulding he carefully stowed away again—prudent man—not knowing whether in the future they might not, despite their gaudy appearance, come in useful for something. Then carefully taking the packing-cases apart, he shaped the bottom planking of each somewhat after the semblance of the bow and run of a ship—that is to say, he pointed the two square ends of each by sawing them to the required ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... am convinc'd;—of Lady Powis I have had only a transitory view.—Heaven forbid she should be like such people as from my heart I despise, whose regards are agueish! Appearances promise the reverse;—but what is appearance? For the generality a mere cheat, a gaudy curtain. ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... boyish jokes—and I saw nothing left of his former self, but the old tendency to vulgar smartness in his dress. The man was a wreck; but his clothes and his jewellery—in cruel mockery of the change in him—were as gay and as gaudy as ever. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... entrance to a quarrel, but being in, Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Are of a most select and generous choice in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... at a bunkhouse that night, and next morning I again made a call at the tent within which lay Berna. Again Madam, in a gaudy wrapper, answered my call, but this time, to my surprise, she was ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... supper, and I shall send this letter by them. There are no new books, no new Plays, no new novels; nay, no new fashions. They have dragged old Mademoiselle Le Maure out of a retreat of thirty years, to sing at the Colis'ee, which is a most gaudy Ranelagh, gilt, painted, and becupided like an Opera, but not calculated to last as long as Mother Coliseum, being composed of chalk and pasteboard. Round it are courts of treillage, that serve for nothing, and behind it a canal, very like a horsepond, on which there are fireworks and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... thus left between the mahogany and the floor, was hidden by a valance of white dimity, garnished with wide cotton fringe. Over this spacious place of repose, a patchwork quilt of the "rising sun" pattern displayed its gaudy rays, resembling some sprawling octopus, rather than the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... secret. I sacrificed a higher and a nobler duty than I have since been called upon to perform, to the dastardly fear of bearing the unmerited censure of a world from which I was about to retire. O Fashion! thou gaudy idol, whose feet are red with the blood of human sacrifice, would I had always felt towards thee as I ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... geraniums, and many others, to be exposed to the influence of cold, frosty nights, as when the "fell destroyer" commences to exert its power all plants touched by it rapidly decay. Gladioli will now be clothed in the full glory of their gaudy, but handsome dress; they are comparatively easy to manage in well-drained spots, and being such continuous bloomers, at least three or four or even half a dozen should be in every small garden. In ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... refreshing sight to one for a year accustomed to the general dowdiness which in this respect prevails in England. Most of the English girls seem to have no idea that their feet should be dressed. The Viennese lady is very tasteful. She is neither slipshod nor gaudy. I never beheld more dainty toilettes. Everything about them, as a sailor would say, is cut "by the lifts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... little miss, being a very pretty little miss, being a very much-admired little miss, being a very good little miss, who always minded her book, and had passed through her sampler-doctrine with high applause; had even stitched out, in gaudy propriety of colors, an Abraham offering up Isaac, a Sampson and the Philistines; and flowers, and knots, and trees, and the sun and the moon, and the seven stars, all hung up in frames with glasses before them, for the admiration of her future grand children: who likewise was entitled ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... toward them with a callow youth near her own age. Her dress was some soft, pale blue material that was neither gaudy nor fantastical. But it was far from modest. Lane had to echo Blair's eulogy of this young specimen of the new America. She simply verified and stabilized the assertion that physically the newer generations of girls were markedly more beautiful ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... see, far from faithful; he gives you not the scene, but the effect of the scene on his mind; and as Dickens started out to produce not a faithful picture, but a startling emotion, his scene is accordingly gaudy, theatrical, false. For observe, the wind is a respectable wind, and yet afflicted with pettiness of tyranny, and it wreaks vengeance; and this vengeance-wreaking wind does not come up flying, as you would expect of a wind, but it happens to come up leisurely, evidently taking an after-dinner ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... chair in black oak, by the side of a modern Florentine table of Mosaic marbles; all kinds of colours in the room, and all at war with each other; very bad copies of the best-known pictures in the world in the most gaudy frames, and impudently labelled by the names of their murdered originals,—"Raphael," "Corregio," "Titian," "Sebastian del Piombo." Nevertheless, there had been plenty of money spent, and there was plenty to show ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... peaceful process! She might not strike you as a happy touch set down in one of those formal gardens depicted in The House Beautiful or Country Life, but here beside the salty lane past Cap'n Bradley's door, gaudy in colour, with her load of homely flowers and her quaint little sailor man astride his spar above the bright geraniums, she is perfect. No boat could come to a better end. She's taking portulacas to the Islands of ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... and poured pell-mell from the doors. The people of Bullfrog caught only a fleeting glimpse of a huge monkey crouched man-wise on a gaily caparisoned pony, of Madame Marve in her fairy costume, and the gaudy caravan, as ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... to be found in the country. Still, I know of no reason why so many stations should look as though they had been built hurriedly to serve the needs of a month, like a travelling show in a piece of waste ground. Not that the railway station has any of the gaudy detail of the travelling show. It resembles it only in its dusty and haphazard setting. It is more like a builder's or a tombstone-maker's yard. The very letters in which the name of the station is printed are often of a deliberate ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... but there was no wavering in the bold black eyes, no cowardly shrinking from his fate, no moan of weakness from between his tightly pressed lips. Scarce could I think of him then as being the same gentle exquisite that rode on the westward trail in powdered hair and gaudy waistcoat, worrying lest a pinch of dust might soil his faultless linen,—this begrimed, blood-stained, torn figure, naked to the waist, his small-clothes clinging in rags from his thighs, his head bare and with long black locks streaming ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... to the flaunting doors of a great music-hall and passed through them, though to others this would have been impossible, for the place was filled from floor to roof. In its promenades men were drinking and smoking, while gaudy women, painted and low-robed, leered at them. On the stage girls danced, throwing their legs above their heads. Then they vanished amidst applause, and a woman in a yellow robe, who pretended to ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... and artist of our souls who wants trustworthy timepieces and keen blades, will not be deceived by these gaudy trinkets, and will reject them. Others may esteem you for this or that quality, admire this or that qualification you possess, be taken with their superficial gloss and accidental usefulness. The quality required by Him ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... builder of the trap was astounded. He laughed aloud at the absurdity. In silence he threw off the rock and lid and seated himself on the edge of the open trap. Captor and captive then gazed at each other with gravity. The errant infant's attire consisted of a calico shirt of gaudy hues, a pair of little moccasins, much frayed, and a red flannel string. This last was tied about his straggling hair, which fell over his forehead like the shaggy mane of a bronco colt and veiled, but could not obscure, the brightness ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... towards the expenses of some music in the Saint's honour, so we gave him whatever it may have been, and his messenger departed: well satisfied. At six o'clock in the evening we went to the church—close at hand—a very gaudy place, hung all over with festoons and bright draperies, and filled, from the altar to the main door, with women, all seated. They wear no bonnets here, simply a long white veil—the 'mezzero;' and it was the most gauzy, ethereal-looking audience I ever saw. The young women are not generally ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... appeared rent wilfully into holes; and the black, ragged, tangled locks that streamed from their confinement under a woollen cap, accorded but ill with other details which spoke of comparative wealth. The shirt, open at the throat, was fastened by a brooch of gaudy stones; and two pendent massive gold chains announced the foppery of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... gallantries. Beethoven was in Vienna. The Government placed the great Assembly-rooms at his disposal, and enabled the composer to gratify a harmless humour by sending invitations in his own name to each of the Sovereigns and grandees then in Vienna. Much personal homage, some substantial kindness from these gaudy creatures of the hour, made the period of the Congress a bright page in that wayward and afflicted life whose poverty has enriched mankind with ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... betting and yelling and running; the wild and plunging mustangs; the heat and dust and pounding of hoofs; the excited betting; the surprises and defeats and victories, the trial tests of the principals, jealously keeping off to themselves in the sage; the endless moving, colorful procession, gaudy and swift and thrilling—all these ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... imaginary crimes of the enemy—the wholesale slaughter or mutilation of prisoners of war, the deliberate burning down of Red Cross hospitals, the utilization of the corpses of the slain for soap-making. I amused myself, in those gaudy days, by collecting newspaper clippings to this general effect, and later on I shall probably publish a digest of them, as a contribution to the study of war hysteria. The thing went to unbelievable lengths. On the strength of the fact that I had published a book on Nietzsche in 1906, ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... a book she was reading. Not that the kitchen was the only room in the house. Mrs. Primkins had plenty of rooms, but they were too choice for every-day use. They were always tightly closed, with green paper shades down, lest the blessed sunshine should get a peep at her gaudy red and green carpets, and put the least mellowing touch an their crude and rasping colors. Nimpo thought of the best parlor with a sort of awe which she never felt toward any room in her ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... conferring together for a few minutes, during which I heard the sound of money, the turnkey retired, and came back speedily with a jacket and cap belonging to one of the drummers of the "Republican Guard"—a gaudy, tasteless affair enough, but, as a disguise, nothing could have ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the "senoras," now a word for the "senors." The dress of the men is as picturesque and gaudy as that of the ladies is not; in the particular, indeed, the sexes seem to have usurped the other's rights. Young Spanish swells, in colored velvet breeches and tastefully embroidered leggings, scarlet silk sash around ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... ascended a pair of stairs, which brought us into an old-fashioned room, where a gaudy crowd of odoriferous Tom-Essences were walking backwards and forwards, with their hats in their hands, not daring to convert them to their intended use lest it should put the foretops of their wigs into some disorder. We squeezed ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... filleth, And with Pearle embrouds each Meadow, We will make them like a widow, 250 And in all their Beauties dresse thee, And of all their spoiles possesse thee, With all the bounties Zephyre brings, Breathing on the yearely springs, The gaudy bloomes of euery Tree In their most beauty when they be, What is here that may delight thee, Or to pleasure may excite thee, Can there be a dainty thing That's not thine ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... the screen, and, lo and behold! her deft fingers put the tiny wreath into a graceful position; arranged the soft, light hair so as to produce the best possible effect; twisted a white sash round the gaudy green dress, to carry out the idea of the marguerites; and brought Sibyl back, charmed with her appearance, and looking for ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... public disaster. It resembled the advent of a fox in a fowl-run. For years the tradesmen of Wrykyn had jogged along in their comfortable way, each making his little profits, with no thought of competition or modern hustle. And now the enemy was at their doors. Many were the gloomy looks cast at the gaudy building as it grew like a mushroom. It was finished with incredible speed, and then advertisements began to flood the local papers. A special sheaf of bills was despatched ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Majesty's toilet was overthronged by Princes and Princesses, I fancied in the bustle that the omission proceeded from forgetfulness. Consequently, I sent the tirewoman, in the Queen's hearing, to order the jewels to be brought in. Smilingly, Her Majesty replied, 'No, no! I have not forgotten these gaudy things; but I do not intend that the lustre of my eyes should be outshone by the one, or the whiteness of my teeth by the other; however, as you wish art to eclipse nature, I'll wear them to satisfy ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the gaudy chestnut?' asked Caingey Thornton, who now appeared, wiping his fat lips after his second glass of eau ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Lathrop's half-assumed vexation. As a matter of fact he had been the butt of many jokes in school on account of his blazing red hair and in Africa the natives with their love for any gaudy color had already christened him Rwome Mogo or Red-Top. Of this, however, he was fortunately ignorant, as he might have been tempted to go out and dispatch half a dozen of them if he knew of their term ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... he put this question, and the voyageur gave a broad grin as he replied in the affirmative, while Antoine looked a little confused. He did not care much, however, for jesting. So, after getting one or two more articles—not forgetting half-a-dozen clay pipes, and a few yards of gaudy calico, which called forth from Peter a second reference to Annette—he bundled up his goods, and ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... with the elite if passion is what they respect," Beth said. "Passion at the best—honourable passion—is but the efflorescence of a mere animal function. The passion that has no honourable object is a gaudy, unwholesome weed, rapid of growth, swift ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... greenhorns. For all of us had nice fresh crinkly blouses, and olive-drab (properly o. d.) knees not yet worn white (as I have seen on returning Plattsburgers) while our canvas leggings were still unshaped to our manly calves. Our hats were new and stiff, and their gaudy cords were bright. And we were inquisitive of the life that was ahead of us, readily making acquaintance in order to compare our scraps of information. Dismay ran here and there with the knowledge that the ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... conveyed him with much dignity down the long Sharia Abdin and across the great open square to the palace entrance. As he entered he acknowledged the salute of the gaudy guard in just that off-hand manner befitting a bush-country shepherd. He was much bowed into a great room where there was an epidemic of liveried darkies, a grand chamberlain or so and a few Cabinet Ministers. In common with the rest, he was subjected to a thorough spring-cleaning with feather ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... the forest showed the advancing cavalcade to be a party of white men. In another moment they were in full view—a band of about thirty horsemen, clad in the leathern costume, and armed with the long rifle of the far west. Some wore portions of the gaudy Indian dress which gave to them a brilliant, dashing look. They came on straight for the block-house, and saluted the Varleys with a jovial cheer as they swept past at full speed. Dick returned the cheer with compound interest, and calling ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... votre depart de Christ Church [Oxford] le 17 nous avons eu le ou la 'Gaudy.' Ainsi que vous l'aviez prevu, j'ai du dire quelques mots a peine prepares. Comme il n'y avait pas de reporter, et que je n'avais aucune note, et comme l'auditoire, y compris nos Seigneurs les eveques, avait accueilli mon speech avec bienveillance, ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... servant, who is well acquainted with the rules of the place, appears little disposed to show any return of gratitude for recent obligations, though even her shoes, which she displays while tying up her garter, seem by their gaudy outside to have been a present from her mistress. The civil discipline of the stern keeper has all the severity of the old school. With the true spirit of tyranny, he sentences those who will not labour to the ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... ye be won? look stedfastly upon me, Look manly, take a mans affections to you; Young women, in the old world were not wont, Sir, To hang out gaudy bushes for their beauties, To talk themselves into young mens affections; How ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Both sexes and all ages meet the view; The sturdy warrior with a thoughtful face— The am'rous youth, the maid replete with grace, The prattling infant, and the hoary hair Of second childhood's proselytes—are there;— And the most gaudy in that spacious hall, Are e'er the young, or oldest of them all Helmet and banner, ornament and crest, The lion rampant, and the jewelled vest, The silver star that glitters fair and white, The arms that tell of many a nation's might— Heraldic ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... part, the Tilting and Tent-pegging, not occurring until nearly half-way down the programme. Noreen was awaiting it too anxiously to enjoy, as she otherwise would, the novel scene, the gaiety, the band in the enclosure, the well-dressed throngs of English folk, the gaudy colours of the crowds squatting round the polo-ground and wondering at the strange diversions of the sahib-logue. Charlesworth did well in the men's event, securing two first prizes and a third, ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... pleased the simple giant more, for he loved to dress up in gaudy clothes, a trait left over from his savage life before the young inventor ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... Caesar's due. 60 I might, she added, with like praise describe Your suffering sons, and so return your bribe: But incense from my hands is poorly prized; For gifts are scorn'd where givers are despised. I served a turn, and then was cast away; You, like the gaudy fly, your wings display, And sip the sweets, and bask in ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... light streamed through the windows from the garden, in which could be seen the leafless trees and bare soil. The room had almost a hot-house temperature; in the fireplace one large log was glowing with intense heat. After another glance Helene recognized that the gaudy colors had a happy effect. Madame Deberle's hair was inky-black, and her skin of a milky whiteness. She was short, plump, slow in her movements, and withal graceful. Amidst all the golden decorations, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... the Rock" (Rupicola) on the western side of the Andes (Esmeraldas) is of a richer, deeper color than the same species on the eastern slope (Napo). In keeping with Mr. Gould's theory is the statement by Mr. Bates, that the most gaudy butterflies (the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... it was, the raid on the Hep Sing joint had been carefully prepared by O'Connor. The house we were after was one of the oldest of the rookeries, with a gaudy restaurant on the second floor, a curio shop on the street level, while in the basement all that was visible was a view of a huge and orderly pile of tea chests. A moment before the windows of the dwellings above the restaurant ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... enduring heirloom for the whole Irish race, through the sad centuries which part the era of saints from the present time. We see the Irish women kneeling beside some well, whose waters were hallowed, ages since, by the fancied miracle of some mythic saint, and hanging gaudy rags (just as do the half savage Buddhists of the Himalayas) upon the bushes round. We see them upon holy days crawling on bare and bleeding knees around St. Patrick's cell, on the top of Croagh Patrick, the grandest mountain, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... of a sudden I thought of what Serenus said about a woman twice my size dressed in gaudy red, forever takin' after folks—What would Josiah do if she took after him? And no doubt she would, for looked at through the magnifying lens of Absence and Anxiety he looked passingly beautiful. As I thought of her I knowed what ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... their endeavours to convince him he has not a correct knowledge of his own abilities. But if, like a well bred man at court, he enters the drawing-room of literature in good taste, neither too mean nor too gaudy, too bold or too formal, makes his bow with the air and finish of a scholar and a gentleman, and passes on to his place, unheedful of remark (because unconscious of offence), he is sure to command respect, if he ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... fond of bright colors. Their dresses did not amount to much. They wore a short skirt and rebosa. Their head-dress covered their hair and came together in front under the chin and hung to the belt. What dress she wore must be very bright and gaudy and I have known a pretty Mexican girl with about $2.50 worth of dress on come in and purchase an $8.00 pair of shoes. If she wanted an extra nice pair of shoes she said she wanted a pair of shoes "made out of Spanish leather." Such a pair as would look nice on the ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... embroidered with silk, and his velvet cap, bought with the same price, are ensigns of the same disgrace. Some would think the rags which covered his nakedness when first he was committed hither well exchanged for these gaudy trappings; but in my eye no exchange can be profitable when dishonour is the condition. If, therefore, Newgate—" Here the only copy which we could procure of this speech breaks off abruptly; however, we can assure the reader, from very authentic information, that he concluded ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... to be gaudy. I should like to be encrusted with jewels. I want to wear bracelets to my elbow and diamond spangles on my arms; and jewelled belts, and jewels in my hair, and on my neck. I should like to flash from head to foot with ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... sort of muff, a couple of inches high. Bands of silk, supplied by the spinnerets, unite the pieces, so that the whole resembles a coarse fabric. Without being absolutely faultless, for there are always awkward pieces on the outside, which the worker could not handle, the gaudy building is not devoid of merit. The bird lining its nest would do no better. Whoso sees the curious, many-coloured productions in my pans takes them for an outcome of my industry, contrived with a view ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... glove, sweetheart," he cried, "and the rose you wear on your heart and—and all these rings that mar your sweet, white hand with their gaudy reds and blues. Leave only mine to prove that you ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... valley where ran a notable stream 'twixt reedy banks; here also bloomed flowers, a blaze of varied colours; and beyond these again were flowery thickets a very maze of green boskages besplashed with the vivid colour of flower or bird, for here were many such birds that flew hither and thither on gaudy wings, and filling the air with chatterings and whistlings ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... broad white ribbon round her, and a small figure-head painted white, whilst the pirate-craft was painted black down to her copper, and she carried a large black figure- head representing a negress with a gaudy scarf wrapped ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... much resented by the wearer, but accepted with philosophic submission, as harder things would be later on. Toys are few and simple. The palmyra rattle is exchanged for the stiff wooden doll, painted in gaudy colors, and the collection of tiny vessels in which sand and stones and seeds provide the equivalent of mud pies in repasts of imaginary rice and curry. Household duties begin also. Meenachi at the age of six grasps her small bundle ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... one end of this mantel was a blue glass vase containing a bouquet of paper roses, and on the other a plaster-of-Paris cat. Above the mantel hung a wreath of wax flowers in a glass case. In such houses were usually to be seen gaudy-colored carpets, imitation lace curtains, and a what-not in the corner that seemed ready to go into dissolution ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... out, these journeys in taxi-cabs, or in trains with my packed bag from big railway stations—what keeps me going, I sometimes ask myself; and I remember how, in his 'Masnavi I Ma'navi' or 'Spiritual Couplets,' Jalalu 'D-Din Muhammad Rumi says that our Desires, the swarm of gaudy Thoughts we pursue and follow, are short-lived like summer insects, and must all be killed before long by the winter ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... no woman could resist him. Senor Johnson at once took things for granted, sent on to Kansas a preposterous sum of "expense" money and a railroad ticket, and raided Goodrich's store at Willets, a hundred miles away, for all manner of gaudy carpets, silverware, fancy lamps, works of art, pianos, linen, and gimcracks for the adornment of the ranch house. Furthermore, he offered wages more than equal to a hundred miles of desert to a young Irish ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... the roseate hue of the mountain-peaks as they stood out against the cloudless orient, and the rich emerald shades of the woods sparkling with fruit. The fragrant rose and the chaste lily, the blushing peony and the gaudy tulip, and all the choicest flowers of that delicious clime, expanded into renewed loveliness to greet the sun: and the citron and the orange, the melon and the grape, the pomegranate and the date drank in the yellow light to nourish ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... their long necks and legs out into a straight line with their bodies winged their flight above the tree-tops. Pelicans displayed their ungainly forms, as they snapped at the passing fish and neatly laid them away for future reference in their pouches. Strange birds of gaudy plumage flew from side to side, harshly screaming as they hid themselves in the dense foliage. Huge alligators sunned themselves along the shore, or showed their savage muzzles, as they slowly swam across our ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... from afar at these and a hundred similar things, lo! there came by us a gaudy, strapping quean of arrogant mien, and after whom a hundred eyes were turned; some made obeisance, as if in worship of her, a few put something in her hand. I could not make out what she was, and so I enquired. ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... would dress an ape up in his crown And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat, And on the right hand of the sunlike throne 635 Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat The chatterings of the monkey.—Every one Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet Of their great Emperor, when the morning came, And kissed—alas, how many ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... is touched and taken; the woman is won. By that still small voice the devil's chains are broken, the rocky heart is rent. When the congregation dissolves, she steals away to her house alone. There her eye falls on some gaudy ornaments, the instruments of her sin, and the badges of her shame. Whence this sudden strong loathing? Perhaps she grasps them convulsively and flings them on the fire, shutting her eyes that she may not see her tormentors. She sits ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... by his clerk's absence, not to disguise himself—that would be saying too much—but to make some changes in his appearance. He had arrayed himself in a long overcoat, shiny with grease and wear, and falling below his knees; in place of his elegant satin cravat he had knotted a gaudy silk neckerchief about his throat; his boots were worn, and out of shape; and his hat would have been treated with contempt even by a dealer in old clothes. Of the prosperous Fortunat, so favorably known round about the Place de la Bourse, naught remained ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... came on a young man who was grinding some very feeling ballads upon a barrel organ. Near the man, on the footpath, was a young girl of about fifteen years of age, fashionably dressed, with crinoline, mantle, and gloves, and a straw hat trimmed with gaudy feathers, but all old and terribly worn out, who, in a loud and cracked though not altogether unpleasing voice, was singing before a shop in expectation of a couple of kopecks. Raskolnikoff stopped and joined one or two listeners, took out ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... a big spree; nothing gaudy or Swedelike; but them that should know, claimed it was a model of refinement. Yes, I have got many encomiums on its general proportions and artistic finish. One hundred dollars an hour for twenty-four hours, all in red licker, confined to and in me and my choicest sympathizers. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... boast of buildings infinitely superior to anything in Teheran; what trees there are in and about the city are nothing compared to what we are used to having about us; and although the gates with their short minars and their gaudy facings are certainly unique, they suffer greatly from a close investigation. Nevertheless, persons happening for the first time in the vicinity of one of these gates on a calm moonlight night, and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... out the gaudy handkerchief again and wiped the mud off the barrel and the grip. I had shoved the pistol barrel foremost into the bank so the muzzle was filled with clay. ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... assemblage—forming a circle around, and midway upon a hill of gradual ascent, had left an opening in the centre, concealed from the eye except when fairly penetrated by the spectator. Their branches, in most part meeting above, afforded a roof less regular and gaudy, indeed, but far more grand, majestic, and we may add, becoming, for purposes like the present, than the dim and decorated cathedral, the workmanship of human hands. Its application to this use, at this time, recalled ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... exaggerated toilettes of the actresses, their gait, even the spurious elegance of their speech, which seemed to her of the highest distinction, and with it all the tawdry magnificence of the gilding and the lights, the gaudy placard at the door, the long line of carriages, and all the somewhat unwholesome excitement that springs up about a popular play; that was what she loved, that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... brick pavement. The altar was veiled, but its covering was lifted to allow me to read, if I could, the inscription upon it. It stood close to the entrance, like the screen near the door of a New York bar-room. There were several pictures on the walls, a few idols, and some lanterns painted in gaudy colors. Outside there were paintings over the door, some representing Chinese landscapes. The windows were of lattice work, the roof had a dragon's head at each end of the ridge, and a mosaic pavement extended like a sidewalk around the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... and very squalid and unrestful the little street looked when contrasted with the dignity and monastic quiet of the old garden. As to the surgery, with its oilcloth floor and walls made hideous with gaudy insurance show-cards in sham gilt frames, its aspect was so revolting that I flew to the day-book for distraction, and was still busily entering the morning's visits when the bottle-boy, Adolphus, entered stealthily to ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... puff of flame, sounded as the boy remained for one moment with the flag in his hand looking down at the crowd below. His face was odd and elated and still. Then with the slightest gesture he threw the flag from him, and Aaron watched the gaudy remnant falling towards the many faces, whilst the noise of ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... John brought out another of his store of gaudy toy books and went into the parlor. His father, following a few moments later, looked down at the little figure on the carpet ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... was now kept in perfect order. The low fence around it had been repaired, and several leaning headstones straightened up. But, guided by a sense of fitness, and having before him the awful example for which Fetters was responsible, the colonel had added no gaudy monument nor made any alterations which would disturb the quiet beauty of the spot or its harmony with the surroundings. In the Northern cemetery where his young wife was buried, he had erected to her memory a stately mausoleum, ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... of an old peat-stack. In one of these echoing and sunless gullies we saw, clustered like sea-birds on a splashing ledge, shrill as sea-birds in their salutation to the passing boat, a group of fisherwomen, stripped to their gaudy under-clothes. (The clash of the surf and the thin female voices echo in my memory.) We had that day a native crew and steersman, Kauanui; it was our first experience of Polynesian seamanship, which consists in hugging every point of land. There is ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... treble-sinew'd, hearted, breath'd, And fight maliciously: for when mine hours Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives Of me for jests; but now I'll set my teeth, And send to darkness all that stop me.—Come, Let's have one other gaudy night: call to me All my sad captains; fill our bowls; once more Let's ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... be alone; she felt the presence of God in the woods as very near and intimate. Her mind had one of those moments of complete rest and feeding on beautiful things which come to those who have known great mental suffering in their lives, and to whom the world is not giving its gaudy preoccupations. So, walking amidst the glory of spring lit by a spiritual sunshine, Rose came round a little stunted yew-tree to find Molly kneeling on the ground ivy, and Edmund standing by her. Molly ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... and if two or three faces can be rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband. There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over- dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those about him, in preference ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... he was clothed in military garb. Though faded, yet entire. Companionless, No dog attending, by no staff sustained, He stood, and in his very dress appeared A desolation, a simplicity, To which the trappings of a gaudy world Make a strange back-ground. From his lips, ere long, Issued low muttered sounds, as if of pain Or some uneasy thought; yet still his form Kept the same awful steadiness—at his feet His shadow lay, and moved not. From self-blame Not wholly free, I watched him thus; ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... head shaved, that gaudy deputy-lieutenant's coat exchanged for felon uniform, and your daily bottle of champagne for prison cocoa, my poor Rupilius, what a comfort it must be to have the business brought to an end! Champagne was the honorable gentleman's drink in the House of Commons dining-room, as I am informed. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as payment, Gaudy flaars awr e'en beguile; Women may be loved for raiment, Show may blind us for ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... to her that whenever they went to dinner—Gus in his baggy pepper-and-salt sack suit, his loose, lay-down collar, and his wide-toed shoes, Ma in one of her giddy, gaudy dinner dresses—it seemed as if the entire assemblage was stricken dumb and as if every eye was turned upon them in mockery and amusement. Even the waiters, Allie felt sure, noted the difference between the Briskows and the other guests, and only ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... eighteen. And, here, in this attention to the comfort of sick people, you will observe the usual effect of a fine art to soften and refine the feelings. The world in general, gentlemen, are very bloody-minded; and all they want in a murder is a copious effusion of blood; gaudy display in this point is enough for them. But the enlightened connoisseur is more refined in his taste; and from our art, as from all the other liberal arts when thoroughly cultivated, the result is—to improve and to humanize the heart; so ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... solace of bottled beer. And all day over Comanche the heel-ground dust rose as from the trampling of ten thousand hoofs, and through its tent-set streets the numbers of a strong army passed and repassed, gazing upon its gaudy lures. They had come there to gamble in a big, free lottery, where the only stake was the time spent and the money expended in coming, in which the grand ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... the listener moved. Deftly, swiftly, he unrolled the gaudy blanket, spread it thin upon the ground, covered it completely with his body. In lieu of a pillow his arms crossed under his head, and, leaning back, the hat brim still shading his eyes, he lay gazing up into the sky, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... Macey gave it up. The gaudy, foolish trifle was worth about five thousand dollars. As the night wore on Mr. Macey began to have a pessimistic notion that perhaps some one had found the scarf but had been too "thrifty" to turn in such a precious article ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... he had said in soliloquy, the cotton prints of gaudy patterns satisfied the cupidity of his red-skinned companions, leaving to himself and his confidential friend the costlier fabrics of silken sheen. Among the traders' stock were knives of common ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... necessity of keeping the body clean if he would be a successful athlete, and of keeping his linen and clothes comely if he would be a successful gentleman. Taken altogether, the Twelve were exactly what could be called "neat but not gaudy." But presentable as all of them were, there was none that took so much pains and pride in the elegances of dress as the boy Pretty, who won his title from his fondness for being what the others sometimes called a dude. But he was such a whole-hearted, ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... least. He was dressed (contrary to all sumptuary laws of the time) in a suit of crimson velvet, a little the worse, perhaps, for wear; by his side were a long Spanish rapier and a brace of daggers, gaudy enough about the hilts; his fingers sparkled with rings; he had two or three gold chains about his neck, and large earrings in his ears, behind one of which a red rose was stuck jauntily enough among the glossy black curls; on his head was a broad velvet ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... condemned his own cowardice, and broke at once those bands of friendship, which were more agreeable to him than all other sweets of life. He describes the situation of his soul under this struggle, and says, "Those who saw me, judging by the gaudy show which surrounded me, and not knowing what passed within my soul, said, speaking of me: Oh, how well is it with him! how happy is he! But they knew not the anguish of my mind; for the deep wound in my heart gave me a thousand tortures, and I was not able to bear the intolerable ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... a plea for picturesque treatment of biography and of history; not by gaudy coloring and violent contrasts, striving after rhetorical effect, but in the observance of proportion, of grouping, of subordination to a central idea; not content with mere narration, however accurate in details. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... whole town boasting but one,—advertised as a wonderful rarity,—which was very badly situated. There were plenty of traktiri, or low-class eating-houses, some of which had "numbers for arrivers"—that is to say, rooms for guests—added to their gaudy signs. These were not to be thought of. But we had been told of an establishment which rejoiced in the proud title of gostinnitza, "hotel," in city fashion. It looked fairly good, and there we took up our abode, after due and inevitable ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Neenah and five or six other women who had been sold into the island made up the remainder of the little group of trembling females. Their faces were veiled; their persons were bedecked with all of the gaudy raiment and jewels that their charms had won from their liege lords. They were slaves, these Persians and Turks and Egyptians, but they came out of bondage with the trophies of queens stuck in their hair, in their ears, on their hands and ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... that art had become too sombre. The world was running overmuch after the subdued in color. He wanted to be able to paint things as they are, and was not to be deterred if his pictures were called gaudy. He obtained permission to set up his easel in the Church of Notre Dame, and in the dim light there, he endeavored to place on canvas some semblance of the splendor of color that came through the huge rose window high above him. He was discouraged to see how opaque the colors in the canvas ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... here, is erected a very high mast, with a cap of liberty upon the top. The only idea we have of the cap of liberty is, the bonnet rouge of the French; but the Americans will not copy the French, although they will the English; so they have a cap of their own, which (begging their pardon), with its gaudy colours and gilding, looks more like a fool's cap than ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... now, compared to the time when the cavalcade marched into Guilford, dazzling everyone with the gorgeous display! Then the horses pranced gayly under their gaudy decorations, the wagons were bright with glass, gilt, and flags, the lumbering elephants and awkward camels were covered with fancifully embroidered velvets, and even the drivers of the wagons were resplendent in their uniforms of scarlet and gold. Now, in the gray light of the early morning, ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... all, and by his favourite light-brown dress in three places. At his devotions he is standing all in white before the tutelary god of his house, Hardeo.[15] In various parts, Krishna is represented at his sports with the milkmaids. The colours are gaudy, and apparently as fresh as when first put on eighty years ago; but the paintings are all in the worst possible taste and style.[16] Inside the dome of Ranjit Singh's tomb the siege of Bharatpur is represented in the same rude taste and style. Lord Lake is dismounted, and standing before his ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... upon which gaudy peacocks strutted back and forth, but in front of the Hall was a small artificial lake in which some transplanted fish led the lives of prisoners. Lady Fernborough begged the Baronet to end their miserable existence, but, to him, innovation was folly and destruction ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... itself, as we have said, there is no history at all; it consists indeed only of a few petty streets streaming down the hill from the palace square. The palace, though spoilt by a gaudy modern restoration, is externally a fine specimen of Italian Renascence work, its court painted all over with arabesques of a rough Caravaggio order, while the State-rooms within have a thoroughly French air, as if to embody the double ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... best beloved of my soul, afflict you farther. Why should I thus sadden all your gaudy prospects? I have said enough to such a heart as yours, if Divine grace touches it. And if not, all I can say will be of no avail!—I will leave you therefore to that, and to your own reflections. And after giving you ten thousand thanks for your indulgent ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
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