|
|
|
More "Genteel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pleased at this praise. Grandmother spoke feelingly. 'When she first came to this country, Frances, and had that genteel old man to watch over her, she was as pretty a girl as ever I saw. But, dear me, what a life she's led, out in the fields with those rough threshers! Things would have been very different with poor Antonia if her father ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... gently folded his hands together, with that genteel applause that may even be indulged in in a box at the opera itself. "Bravo. I like to see young persons enthusiastic; it looks as if they had some of the real fire of genius in their ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... thrown away: Leonella assured her at parting that nothing could make her forget the perfidious Don Christoval. In this point She was fortunately mistaken. An honest Youth of Cordova, Journeyman to an Apothecary, found that her fortune would be sufficient to set him up in a genteel Shop of his own: In consequence of this reflection He avowed himself her Admirer. Leonella was not inflexible. The ardour of his sighs melted her heart, and She soon consented to make him the happiest of Mankind. ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... her put in a pauper Asylum. A Private Establishment, if you please. I have my feelings as a mother, and my character to preserve in the town, and I will submit to nothing but a Private Establishment, of the sort which my genteel neighbours would choose for afflicted relatives of their own." Those were my words. It is gratifying to me to reflect that I did my duty. Though never overfond of my late daughter, I had a proper pride about her. No pauper stain—thanks to my firmness and ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... provided that he is a virtuous man. It is not an affair solely of gentle blood. It has no pedigree of birth or richness. "In this sense the true lover need not be a gentleman but he must be a gentle man, loving not by genteel code of caste but by gentle code of character." (J.B. ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... your wonder seems to me another wonder: for I can think of no profession better suited to a retired poet. Why, there is the variety of company! for high and low and even the genteel are pressed sometimes for money: then the plowman slouches into my shop, and the duke sends for me privately. So the people I know, and the bits of their lives I pop into, give me ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Muggs! Somebody's stocking feet! Monkey's. Steps that aren't honest. All on my ceiling. Monkey never ought to have rented a room in a respectable house like Mrs. Granady's. Nobody but genteel young fellows holding down genteel jobs ever had that room before. Monkey passing himself off as Mr. James Pollard, or whatever it is he calls himself, just for the cover of a respectable house—or of me, for all I know. You could have ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... her stealthy trips abroad, undertaken on the rare occasions when she could trump up a pretext for leaving the shop; since, as a rule, it was Evelina who took the bundles to the dyer's, and delivered the purchases of those among their customers who were too genteel to be seen carrying home a bonnet or a bundle of pinking—so that, had it not been for the excuse of having to see Mrs. Hawkins's teething baby, Ann Eliza would hardly have known what motive to allege for deserting her ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... I do not make much use of this privilege, to their great astonishment. It is the fashion for the greatest ladies to walk the streets, which are admirably paved; and a mask, price sixpence, with a little cloak, and the head of a domino, the genteel dress to carry you everywhere. The greatest equipage is a gondola, that holds eight persons, and is the price of an English chair. And it is so much the established fashion for everybody to live their own way, that nothing is more ridiculous than censuring the actions ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... and plain. Its window looked over the back garden at other back gardens, some of them old and very nice, some of them littered with packing-cases, then at the backs of the houses whose fronts were the shops in High Street, or the genteel homes of the under-manager or the chief cashier, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... accident at London. Here he at first took up his abode in a handsome house which the king had ordered to be provided and furnished for him. This house was in a genteel part of the town, where the noblemen and other persons belonging to the court resided. It was very pleasantly situated near the river, and the grounds pertaining to it extended down to the water side. Still it was far away from the part of the city ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... some twenty minutes, and Fairholme amused himself by glancing over the copies of the day's London newspapers which had recently arrived. Suddenly the door of Brett's bedroom opened, and a decrepit elderly man appeared, a shabby-genteel individual, disfigured by drink ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... my own way; but, to please Lily, I learned to sit patiently watching the most tempting buttered crust on the ground under my nose, when she said, "Trust, Captain!" never dreaming of touching it till she gave the word of command, "Now it is paid for;" when I ate it in a genteel and deliberate manner. Having achieved such a conquest over myself, I thought my education was complete; but Lily had further refinements in store. She made me hold the piece of toast on my very nose while she counted ten, ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... You should leave those to your Betters. —What! and my pretty Jenny Diver too! As prim and demure as ever! There is not any Prude, though ever so high bred, hath a more sanctify'd Look, with a more mischievous Heart. Ah! thou art a dear artful Hypocrite. —Mrs. Slammekin! as careless and genteel as ever! all you fine Ladies, who know your own Beauty, affect an Undress. —But see, here's Suky Tawdry come to contradict what I was saying. Every thing she gets one way she lays out upon her Back. Why, Suky, you must keep at ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... a married sister with a scapegrace husband and six daughters whom, in fact, he did support. Mrs. Carroll, with the kindest intentions in the world, had come and lived near him. She had taken a genteel house in Bolsover Terrace,—a genteel new house on the Fulham Road, about a quarter of a mile from her brother. Mr. Grey lived in the old Manor-house, a small, uncomfortable place, which had a nook of its own, close upon the water, and with a lovely little lawn. It was certainly ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... of swearing, he gives the words and imprecations then commonly in use; but which, happily for us, we never hear, except among the most degraded classes of society. Swearing was formerly considered to be a habit of gentility; but now it betrays the blackguard, even when disguised in genteel attire. Those dangerous diseases which are so surely engendered by filth and uncleanness, he calls not by Latin but by their plain English names. In every case, the Editor has not ventured to make the slightest alteration; but has reprinted the whole in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was in the Rue—say the Rue Millevoye, so that we may not interfere with possible vested interests. Was it respectable? Was it genteel? Did good country families frequent it? Were all the comforts of an English home to be had? Had Mrs. Grundy cast an approving eye into every nook and corner? Of course there were Bibles in the bedrooms; and you were not made to pay a franc for every cake of soap. Mrs. Rowe had ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... Ne parlez pas du people!" cried the Countess Zamoiska, with a gesture of disgust. "A set of beastly peasants, no better than their own cattle, or a band of genteel robbers, who have made it unsafe to live anywhere on Polish soil, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... was a rather delicate one, for the Hudson's Bay Company was a thorn in the side of French Canada. However, in this year—1754—the two nations were not actually at war, and the two Frenchmen in charge of the fort received him "in a very genteel manner", and invited him into their home, where he readily accepted their hospitality. At first they spoke of detaining him till the commandant of the fort returned, but abandoned this idea after reflection, ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... for the masses of the people below them. Long after the nobility has lost every other social function connected with its vocation the ideals of the nobility have survived in our conception of the gentleman, genteel manners and bearing—gentility. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... duelling was at this period as much in vogue in genteel circles as it was in England; yet the victor in an affair beyond the water, had no difficulty in slipping away from the scene of his offence, and in passing across the Channel. Here he remained for a decent season; and when he returned, the law in deference to its toleration of the code of honour, ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... than an Arawbian—and had very little peace or comfort either, and I thought it was nae use takin' a wife until something better might cast up. But this wasna the only reason. There wasna a woman on earth that I thought I could live happy wi' but Miss Murray, and she belanged to a genteel family: whether she had ony siller or no, I declare, as I'm to be judged hereafter, I never did inquire. But I saw plainly it wadna do for a rough country drover, jauped up to the very elbows, and sportin' a handfu' o' pound-notes the day, and no' worth a penny the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... eliminated many of the old words and phrases formerly in general use in Worcestershire, and is still striving to substitute a more "genteel," but not always more correct, and a much less picturesque, form of speech. When I first went to Aldington I found it difficult to understand the dialect, but I soon got accustomed to it, and used it myself in speaking to the villagers. Farrar used to ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... he said eagerly, 'you'd on'y have to sit in the back parlour and look through the glass partition when I was away sometimes—just to keep an eye on things. The lameness wouldn't hinder that . . . I'd keep you as genteel as ever I could, dear Sophy—if I might ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... same intelligence, it also appears, that Sir George was, in his person, a fair[1], slender, genteel man, but spoiled his countenance with drinking, and other habits of intemperance. In his deportment he was very affable and courteous, of a generous disposition, which, with his free, lively, and natural vein of writing, acquired ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... death of the mother, deprived the youthful orphan of her remaining parent. Her father was a merchant, just commencing the foundations of what would, in time, have been a large estate; and as both Miss Emmerson and her sister were possessed of genteel independencies, and the aunt had long declared her intention of remaining single, the fortune of Julia, if not brilliant, was thought rather large than otherwise. Miss Emmerson had been educated immediately ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... young officer named Ivan Ivanovitch Kruz, who was forest-master at the first station called Maitah, fifty-four versts off. Such a companion was not less unexpected than agreeable, in so remote a corner of the world. He was a very good botanist, and understood French and Latin; a modest, sensible, genteel young man, and what must appear a little singular, perfectly happy and satisfied with his situation. Even in those wild regions he filled up his leisure hours with study and the chase, and said that he never found the time hang heavy ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... there was nothing ironical in this politeness. She had a sudden apprehension of an unusual quality called "the genteel," for no storekeeper in Chaudiere ever opened or shut a shop-door for anybody. She smiled a vacuous smile; she played "the lady" terribly, as, with a curious conception of dignity, she held her body stiff as a ramrod, and with a prim ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that he was not comfortable in his new arrangements; but he supposed it was his own fault. He had fallen into rusty, old-fashioned, bachelor ways; and, like other things that are not agreeable to the natural man, he supposed his trim, resplendent, genteel house was good for him, and that he ought to like it, and by grace should attain to liking it, if he ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the best. Would Miss Kathleen O'Hara take so much notice of me if I was not a very nice, lady-like sort of a girl? I am sure no one could look sweeter than I do in my pale-blue blouse. Even Tom says so. He said I looked very genteel, and that he'd like his great friend, Walter Amber, to see me. I don't want to have anything to do with Tom's friends. Poor Tom! if mother can apprentice him to somebody, that is the most that can be expected. ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... aider and abettor, and at the same time her principal victim and object of wrath, was her single domestic servant, one Miss Miggs; or as she was called, in conformity with those prejudices of society which lop and top from poor hand-maidens all such genteel excrescences—Miggs. This Miggs was a tall young lady, very much addicted to pattens in private life; slender and shrewish, of a rather uncomfortable figure, and though not absolutely ill-looking, of a sharp and acid visage. As a general principle and abstract proposition, Miggs ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... means absolute gentility. But in America what good can be said of those who, living upon the fortunes of fathers or grandfathers, amassed in honest trade,—residents of a particular street which is thereby rendered pluperfectly genteel,—with no recommendation but that derived from fashion and idleness,—draw the lines of social demarcation more closely than they are drawn in Europe, intellect and accomplishments being systematically snubbed where the possessors cannot show their family passes? Is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of porches and pilasters. Most of their time is necessarily passed at home, but they undergo all manner of house discomfort resulting from this preference of cheap finery over solid structure, rather than forego their "genteel locality" and stereotyped ornamentation. A family of daughters on the one side, diligent over the "Battle of Prague;" a nursery full of crying babies on the other; more Battles of Prague opposite, diversified by a future Lind practicing her scales unweariedly; ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... terribly chagrined to think that the act of genteel petty larceny, by which he had lowered himself more in his own eyes than he would have cared to acknowledge, had been so absolutely barren of results. That portion of his moral anatomy which he would have called his ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... excellent idea," broke in Mrs. Brimmer, with genteel precision. "You see these people evidently recognize the fact of Mr. Brimmer's previous ownership of the Excelsior, and the respect that is due to him. I, for one, shall accept the offer, and insist upon Miss ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... rested. There was little difficulty in finding him, for he inhabited one of those villas which I have mentioned. His name, it appears, was Fitzroy Simpson. He was a man of excellent birth and education, who had squandered a fortune upon the turf, and who lived now by doing a little quiet and genteel book-making in the sporting clubs of London. An examination of his betting-book shows that bets to the amount of five thousand pounds had been registered by him against the favorite. On being arrested he ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... to me, about this time, that if I moved into a more genteel locality I might get a better class of patients, and yet keep the best of those I now had. To do this it was necessary to pay my rent, and the more so because I was in a fair way to have no house at all over my head. But here fortune interposed. I was caught ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... my Maid of Honour; she was genteel and gay, but not pretty nor of a good figure. This son was called the Chevalier d'Orleans. The other, who is now a lad of eighteen years, is the Abbe de Saint Albin; he had this child by Florence, an opera dancer, of a very neat figure, but a fool; although to look at her pretty face ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... others, for the most part women not of the working class, who support with apparent earnestness the purveyors of popular fiction and biography, and even patronise poetry and genteel social philosophy. Amongst them are to be found those to whom the sterner actualities of life are unfamiliar and repugnant, for whom the practice of trifling with books is rather an ornament than an occupation, a mode of killing ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... conceivable ignorance on the part of the London tradesman's niece, who had attended Chapel with her aunt and uncle on Sunday evenings as cheerfully as she joined in the more attractive service in the Church which the genteel Fanny generally patronized on ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... one another: if there were the concert among them which there is among foreign mendicants, a man who admitted one to a conference would be plagued to death. I once gave something to a very genteel French applicant, who overtook me in the street, at my own door, saying he had picked up my handkerchief: whether he picked it up in my pocket for an introduction, I know not. {9} But that day week came another Frenchman to my house, and that ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... long lorded it in Boston society. Indeed, so far had the rival contingents progressed that there was a serious searching of the pretensions of any new-comer whose origin had to do with other enterprises. "Coppers" were respectable, were genteel, and, above all, were not "trade," for the average old-time Bostonian affects the Anglo-Saxon contempt for the traffickings ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... hostess by admiring tourists. It covers the walls of her sitting-room and fills half a dozen big albums which you look at while breakfast is being prepared, just as if you were awaiting dinner in genteel society. Most Frenchmen of the day whom one has heard of appear to have called at St. Jouin, and to have left their homages. Each of them has turned a compliment with pen or pencil, and you may see in a glass case on ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... time, as its inhabitants asserted, the most genteel town in the midland counties, a distinction it owed in some measure to the noble palace, built by the Duke of Newcastle as his family residence, on the site of the old fortified castle that had been identified with nearly all the chief periods of English history, ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... deserve his confidence and love, and a conduct, in general, devoid of the least art and founded on my sincere regard and esteem for him, won and attached him so firmly to me, that, after having generously trusted me with a genteel, independent settlement, proceeding to heap marks of affection on me, he appointed me, by an authentic will, his sole heiress and executrix: a disposition which he did not outlive two months, being taken from me ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... prosecutrix, Mary Walthow, being unable to prove "that the goods charged to have been stolen (a counterpane, a silver spoon, two napkins, etc.) were her property. Bet does not appear to have lived at that time in a very genteel style; for she paid for her ready- furnished room in Meard's-court, Dean-street, Soho, from which these articles were alleged to be stolen, only five ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... after the visit to the post-office there was a tea-party. Mrs. Harrop, Mrs. Cobb, Mrs. Sweeting, the grocer's wife, and Miss Tarrant, an elderly lady, living on a small annuity, but most genteel, were invited to Mrs. Bingham's. They began to talk of Mrs. Fairfax directly they had tasted the hot buttered toast. They had before them the following facts: the carrier's deposition that the goods came from Great ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... which is, uh, the way they figure percentage of profit—well, make it, say, seven hundred per cent.! 'Course just estimating roughly like. Now can you beat that? And tea-rooms is a safe, sound, interesting, genteel business if there ever was one. What have you got to say ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... this "relic of old dacincy," the shabby genteel of the earth from Rome—even if the passing is a temporary social phenomenon, has a curious symbolic timeliness, coming when the working class is rising. It leaves Rome almost as middle class as Kansas City and Los Angeles! ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... boots are getting what might be called shabby genteel now, and no wonder. If they could speak they would tell you many a strange episode in the life of an Association football player, and how he kept his place in a leading club for nearly a dozen years. They have been old and dear ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... necessary for the purposes enumerated in your letter, and the cook is not competent to prepare the dessert, make cake, etc., I do not see of what use Hyde will be, more than William, without her. Fraunces, besides being an excellent cook, knowing how to provide genteel dinners, and giving aid in dressing them, prepared the dessert, made the cake, and did everything that is done by Hyde and his wife together; consequently the services of Hyde alone are not to be compared with those of Fraunces; and if his accounts exceed those of Fraunces, in ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... fail to interest me—there were stones, rocks and furze in abundance. Turning round the corner of a hill, I observed through the mists of evening, which began to gather about me, what seemed to be rather a genteel house on the roadside; on my left, and a little way behind it a strange kind of monticle, on which I thought I observed tall upright stones. Quickening my pace, I soon came parallel with the house, which ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... over and looked straight down with an expression at once pleased and perplexed. As coming troubles cast their shadows before, this little memento, coming on ahead of a gay and giddy throng, raised visions of troublous and erratic times. The dog, a genteel, white-ruffed collie, sat down and viewed the infant with a fine look of high-browed intelligence, as if he were the physician in the case. The lamb was an old friend of his—just back from nature's ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... He had taken one prize at college and sundry at school; had the reputation of being almost a beau, and, at least in Westbourne society, half a wit; and was a tall, fair-faced, lathy young man, dressing well, and looking rather genteel, in spite of an overgrown boyishness which hung about him and kept the Master fastened to his name, though he had left twenty-five behind him. Master Harry had made attempts on law, physic, and divinity, without ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... metropolis had not created a very extensive acquaintance among solid folks; in fact, New York society fluctuates, ebbs and flows at such a rate, that society—such as domestic people might recognize as unequivocally genteel—is hard to fasten to or find. But one of the Miss Jipsons possessed an acquaintance with a Miss Somebody else, whose brother was a young gentleman of very distingue air, and who knew the entire "ropes" of fashionable life, and people who enjoyed that ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... father was reduced to half-pay; with which we retired to a village in the country, which the acquaintance of some genteel families who resided in it, and the cheapness of living, particularly recommended. My father rented a small house, with a piece of ground sufficient to keep a horse for him, and a cow for the benefit of his family. An old ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... your governors; I should like nothing better than to have the driving of you: and then there will be a grand meeting of the two families, and after a few reproaches, the old people will agree to do something handsome for the poor thoughtless things; so you will have a genteel house taken for you, and an annuity allowed you. You won't get much the first year, five hundred at the most, in order that the old folks may let you feel that they are not altogether satisfied with you, and that you are yet entirely in their power; but the second, if ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... entering more freely into conversation, and saying the parlor was at my service when company called. 'Now these are not large, but comfortable rooms,' she continued, showing me into a little ten by twelve nook; 'I have six lodgers similarly situated, and they are all genteel men, doing a large business.' She then began giving me an account of their various business pursuits, which was so confused and indefinite as to render it impossible clearly to understand whether they were ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... 1913). At any rate, we have ample evidence of the turbulence of the early Roman audience. (Ter. Prol. Hec. 39-42, and citations immediately following). Note the description of Mommsen:[46] "The audience was anything but genteel.... The body of spectators cannot have differed much from what one sees in the present day at public fireworks and gratis exhibitions. Naturally, therefore, the proceedings were not too orderly; children cried,[47] women talked and shrieked, now and then a wench prepared ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... was more popular than Simmy Dodge, and no one more deservedly so, for his bad qualities were never so bad that one need hesitate about calling him a good fellow. His habits were easy but genteel. When intoxicated he never smashed things, and when sober,—which was his common condition,—he took extremely good care of other people's reputations. Women liked him, which should not be surprising; and men liked him because he was not ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... will avail you naught, Mordaunt Merrilac," she quavered. "In spite of all you can do, some day, my hero, Jack Harkness, will find this den and rescue me!" Prolonged handclapping came from the more genteel portion of the audience, mingled with cheers and cat-calls from ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... began to mistrust that she would somehow find her folks. I guess my rathers was that she should, considerin'; but I did wish it had been Anne, for she ain't got nothin' better in her than just to live genteel." ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... so nicely. Seems almost as though it was done a-purpose! Reminds me of piece day at school. There was a mighty pretty piece I learned called the 'Wreck of the Asperus.'" And she subsided into a genteel melancholy. ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... Holmes was not yet return'd, and had not written about me. My unexpected appearance surpriz'd the family; all were, however, very glad to see me, and made me welcome, except my brother. I went to see him at his printing-house. I was better dress'd than ever while in his service, having a genteel new suit from head to foot, a watch, and my pockets lin'd with near five pounds sterling in silver. He receiv'd me not very frankly, look'd me all over, and turn'd to his ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... at it—in it, in fact; my house is in the warehouse. It's not a very genteel locality, nor a fine house, it is good enough for me; but I warn you not to expect anything great, and I can't alter my ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... man to assist him in any scheme of the sort. They were equally villains as regarded women; but Vizcarra's metier was of a lighter sort—more of the genteel-comedy kind. His forte lay in the seductive process. He made love a la Don Giovanni, and carried hearts in what he deemed a legitimate manner; whereas Roblado resorted to any means that would lead most directly to the object—force, if necessary and safe. Of the two Roblado was ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... was more popular than it showed itself twenty years later. Every country town of any pretensions, in addition to its assembly rooms had its theatre, which reared good actors, to which provincial tours brought London stars. Genteel comedy was not past its perfection. Adaptations of the Waverley novels, with musical dramas and melodramas, drew great houses. Miss O'Neill had just retired, but Ellen Tree was making a success, and Macready was already distinguished in his profession. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... again took the cars for Kehl, about four miles from Strasburg, a distance of nearly ninety miles. The first-class cars are very luxurious and reasonable; second class, excellent, and very genteel-looking persons using them. Lord Cowley, father of Lady Bulwer, wife of the minister from England at Washington, was in the cars with us, and two of his children—one a beautiful little girl. They were going to Baden, and were accompanied ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... cars for Newbern," shouted the porter. "Well, good-bye!" said the genteel man, rising and making a bolt for the door. As the train slowly clanged its way through the old town the remaining passenger settled himself back in the ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... no-good—you're a human Not—and a darn scalawag into the bargain. So what's the use? Will you go, or won't you?' Then if he'd begin to hem and haw and try to put it off with one thing or another, why, just hint in a roundabout way—perfectly genteel, you understand—that there'd be doings with a kittle of tar and feathers that same night at eight-thirty sharp, rain or shine, with a free ride right afterward to the town line and mebbe a bit beyond, without no cushions. Up about the Narrows would be a good ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... nourished; into such a world that illustrious shepherd, Carlo Innocenze Frugoni, was born. He was the younger son of a noble family of Genoa, and in youth was sent into a cloister as a genteel means of existence rather than from regard to his own wishes or fitness. He was, in fact, of a very gay and mundane temper, and escaped from his monastery as soon as ever he could, and spent his long life thereafter ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... of fact all three lads in their clean, trim aviation uniforms presented both a manly, martial and genteel appearance. At the last moment in came Captain Byers just in from the front; and with him was Stanley, pale and rather thin, yet surprisingly strong, considering his severe experiences. Miss Daskam was not there, ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... come and gone: two of the plays were read to him. My father gave him a sketch of each, and desired him to choose: he chose the genteel comedy, "The Two Guardians," and I read it; and those who sat by told me afterwards that Mr. Knox's countenance showed he was much amused, and that he had great sympathy. For my part, I had a glaze before my eyes, ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... "'Tis harder for her to wait than it is for me to go. 'Tis mere selfishness. What can I do in the world? I have no interest in the game outside of her. No, Mart, the consumptive is right, 'tis up to you to slip away, genteel and quiet, so that your widow will not be ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... with a case of pistols, and to attack the count in his way home, promising to plant himself near with the same arms, as a corps de reserve, and to come up on occasion. This was accordingly executed, and the count obliged to surrender to savage force what he had in so genteel and civil a manner taken ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... of course, quote these lines as typical of Tennyson's genius. I think, however, they may be fairly quoted as lines suggesting the mid-Victorian atmosphere that clings round all but his greatest work. They bring before our minds the genteel magazine illustrations of other days. They conjure up a world of charming, vapid faces, where there is little life apart from sentiment and rhetoric. Contrast such a poem as Locksley Hall with The Flight of the Duchess. Each contains at once a dramatization of human relations, and the statement ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... in cap and apron brings a lamp, and proceeds to draw blinds and close curtains. To do this she passes the fire-place, where before a pleasantly bright hearth sits, comfortably sedate, an elderly lady whose countenance and attitude suggest the very acme of genteel repose. She is a handsome woman, very conscious of herself, but carrying the burden of her importance with an ease which, in her own mind, leaves nothing to be desired. The once-striking outline of her features has been rounded by good feeding to a softness which is merely physical; ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... woman alive will not?) does so more by slighting than by outraging it, as, with their labored descriptions of all sorts of imaginable wickedness, some of his brethren of the press have done. M. de Bernard's characters are men and women of genteel society—rascals enough, but living in no state of convulsive crimes; and we follow him in his lively, malicious account of their manners, without risk of lighting upon any such horrors as Balzac or Dumas ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... miss some of the wonderful sinuosity, some of the musical curvatures of the similar "Horses in a Hurry Motive" in "Die Walku're," I can only suggest that the Brothers' mounts were not as the fleet steeds of the gods. Fatima's people were living in genteel poverty, and the family horses were doubtless some-what emaciated; therefore the musical realist could not in honesty depict them other than in an angular rather ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... whether daughters of the upper-ten-dom, the mediocrity, the cottage, or the kennel, aim at one standard of dress and deportment, seldom accomplishing a perfectly triumphant hit or an utterly absurd failure. Those words, "genteel" and "ladylike," are terrible ones and do us infinite mischief, but it is because (at least, I hope so) we are in a transition state, and shall emerge into a higher mode of simplicity than has ever been known ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... them in his closet. Mr. James Melvil being first in the commission, told the king his errand, upon which he appeared angry, and charged them with sedition, &c. Mr. James being a man of cool passion and genteel behaviour, began to answer the king with great reverence and respect; but Mr. Andrew, interrupting him, said, "This is not a time to flatter, but to speak plainly, for our commission is from the living God, to whom ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... The man at his left laughed at his genteel use of the knife and fork and the dainty handling of the bacon. Sugar and cream were not served. He was hungry. The coarse but well-cooked food pleased his palate more than he could have believed. He ate his fill of the ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... passed our window again on their way to their customary walk. They were arm in arm. Jane looked exquisitely proud, happy, and uncomfortable, with new white cotton gloves, and William, in the silk hat, singularly genteel! ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Versailles, shows what an innovator he was. He allowed the Louvre to be filled up with all sorts of riffraff, who were often given a lodging there in place of a money payment for some service rendered. The Louvre thus became a sort of genteel poor-house, while king and court spent their time in the more ample country-house behind the ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... said he—'welcome kindly! Sure it's delighted I am to see you—and you are just in time for dinner.' With that a sarvent began sounding a big conch-shell, a great door was flung open, and the next thing, I found myself in an ilegant room, sitting down to dinner with a mighty genteel looking company." ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... time between a set at twenty-four dollars a dozen and these; but the style being so much more attractive, we let our taste govern in the selection. The price of our sofa was eighteen dollars, and I thought it a really genteel affair, though my wife was not in raptures about it. A pair of card tables for fifteen dollars, and a marble-top centre table for fourteen, gave our parlors ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... found two footmen and a butler all waiting to receive her, with a French governess and a lady's maid, the moment she got out of the cradle; and I say again she's nothing but roast fowl and blamange, or perhaps a breast slice of pheasant, for she's uncommon genteel. How different from our boiled veals, and parsley and butters! I shall give warning if we don't ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... every few months, generally after a quarrel, wherein Mrs. Leach put forth, for an invalid, very surprising energy. Mr. Leach, a solicitor, had no function in life but to toil without pause for the support of his family in genteel leisure; he was a mild man, dreading discord, and subservient to his wife. For many years he had made an income of about L2000, every penny of which, excepting a small insurance premium, had been absorbed by expenses of the house. At the age of fifty, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... and such of them as have generally been excluded from the dwelling of their owners, look to the house servant as a pattern of politeness and gentility. And indeed, it is often the only method of obtaining any knowledge of the manners of what is called "genteel society;" hence, they are ever regarded as a privileged class; and are sometimes greatly envied, while others are bitterly hated. And too often justly, for many of them are the most despicable tale-bearers ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... at all; for I am no Cantab, and the wit of the London Stock Exchange is subtle enough for me. His father did not joke. Indeed he was full of useful information, and only too fond of imparting it, and he always made use of the choicest language in doing so; and Mrs. Scatcherd was immensely genteel. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... did not. At noon walking in the Hall I found Mr. Swan and got him and Captain Stone together, and there advised about Mr. Downing's business. So to Will's, and sat there till three o'clock and then to Mr. Swan's, where I found his wife in very genteel mourning for her father, and took him out by water to the Counsellor at the Temple, Mr. Stephens, and from thence to Gray's Inn, thinking to speak with Sotherton Ellis, but found him not, so we met with an acquaintance of his in the walks, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... favorite of moderate sentimentalists, in what were called "genteel" circles, was William Cowper. He presented little or nothing that could affright the gentle emotions, and much that pleasurably stimulated them. He enriched the poetry of the domestic affections, and had a vein of sadness which occasionally, as in To ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... herself, no flesh and blood as is in livery could stand—for throw a plate of toast at Mr. Thomas, hisself, he did, not more than two days since, and if it weren't for other things being agreeable and the society below stairs most genteel, warning would have been gave ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... become boarding-houses too genteel for signs, but many were franker, some offering "board by the day, week or meal," and some, more laconic, contenting themselves with the label: "Rooms." One, having torn out part of an old stone-trimmed bay window for purposes of commercial ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... is safer in every respect, "way-wise," seasoned, steady, and reliable. He and his owner are old friends and companions and can not part but with a pang of regret. A good horse, well cared for, should work cheerfully until he is thirty years of age; yet how few are able to perform genteel service after fifteen! It is a sad sight that of the high-mettled, noble animal, once the petted darling of wealth, caressed by ladies and children, and guarded so that even the winds of heaven might not visit him too roughly, fallen through the successive grades of equine degradation, ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... bought a blue lute string. Shall I not also have a new gown? The gauzes are very sweet and genteel, and I think Mrs. Jay will not forget to ask me to her dance next week. Mr. Jefferson is sure to be there, and I wish to ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... even the preceding half century. Who can deny, e.g, that the odious vice of drunkenness is much more disreputable now than formerly, throughout the whole of Europe? It may be said to be almost unknown in genteel circles; and there seems not the least reason to doubt, that as improvements in arts and sciences advance, and as education extends to the lower classes, so as to supply sources of mental enjoyment and exercise, it will be almost altogether extirpated from society. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Birmingham, except one, were truly evangelical. Mr. Ryland told me that Rev. J. A. James had expressed his conviction that there is decidedly more piety amongst the mass of the Established Clergy than among the Dissenting Clergy. It was altogether the most unaffectedly genteel, and truly religious party I have met with ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... German pianist and conductor, was born at Dresden, on the 8th of January 1830. At the age of nine he began to study music under Friedrich Wieck as part of a genteel education. It was only after an illness while studying law at Leipzig University in 1848 that he determined upon music as a career. At this time he was a pupil of Moritz Hauptmann. In 1849 revolutionary politics took possession of him. In the Berlin Abendpost, a democratic journal, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... I done wunst? He, he! Went to th' Young Men's Chrissen Soshiashen. Ole lady, you know, coaxed. He! he! You bet! Prayer meetin', Bible class, or somethin'. All slick young fellers 'th side whiskers. Talked pious, an' so genteel, you know. I went there fer comp'ny! Didn' go no more. Druther git drunk at the 'free-and-easy' ever' night, by George, 'n to be a slick kind 'f feller 'th side whiskers a lis'nin' t' myself make purty speeches 'n a prayer Bible class meetin' ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... Blimy! It amooses 'em, all but the genteel ones. Cheer oh! Press! Yer can always myke somefin' out o' nufun'? It's not the fust thing as 'as existed in yer ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had mentally used the word "adventuress" in thinking of herself, as being more genteel and mentally aristocratic than the cruder words by which Barney and Old Jimmie and their kind designated a woman accomplice—this young super-adventuress, who had schemed all this so adroitly, and worked toward it with the best of her brain and her conscious charm, was seized ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... for its purity. The church is of great antiquity: and its tower is a very handsome specimen of Gothic architecture, proudly relieving itself from the surrounding trees and habitations. There are several genteel residences, and a few good lodging-houses in the village, whose neatly dressed gardens, interspersed with lofty trees, and environed by the most agreeable scenery, give to the place altogether an uncommon ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... cringing in the antechambers of Ministers, he obtained at last the Cross of St. Louis as a kind of indemnity. About the same time he also bought with his Indian wealth the place of an officer in the Swiss Guard of Monsieur, the present Louis XVIII. Being refused admittance into any genteel societies, he resorted with Barras and other disgraced nobles to gambling-houses, and he even kept to himself when the Revolution took place. He had at the same time, and for a certain interest, advanced Madame d'Estainville money to establish her famous, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... in Kurt Fawzi's office a few times, always with his father, and he remembered it as a dim, quiet place of genteel conviviality and rambling conversations, with deep, comfortable chairs and many ashtrays. Fawzi's warehouse and brokerage business, and the airline agency, and the government, such as it was, of Litchfield, combined, made few demands on his time and did not prevent the office from being a ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... a medium town, between a manufacturing and a genteel one. This, in variety, is an advantage, for while the manufacturers are improved in manners, gentility is more substantial. It is neither wholly vulgar, like some places, nor poor and proud, like others. For its size, it is a rich town. I was told, there are five or six ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... thing that was French and in fact all that she encountered until the moment that she witnessed the imposing spectacle. She was then standing within the church with the Captain amongst the crowd, but some officers perceiving an English lady of genteel appearance, invited her to join the circle composed of the Duchesses of Angouleme, of Berri, and the ladies of the court, which she gladly accepted; and several fine looking young men in their brilliant uniforms paying her the greatest attentions, and taking the utmost pains ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... square front, standing right upon the street, and a small enclosed porch, containing the main entrance, affording a glimpse up and down the street through an oval window on each side, its characteristic was decent respectability, not sinking below the boundary of the genteel. It has often perplexed my mind to conjecture what sort of man he could have been who, having the means to build a pretty, spacious, and comfortable residence, should have chosen to lay its foundation on ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... eclipse the "Fables for the Holy Alliance" in virulence and plain speaking? Or are the members of the "Fudge Family" to secure a monopoly for the abuse of the Bourbons and the doctrine of Divine Right? Because he is genteel and sarcastic, may not others be paradoxical and argumentative? Or must no one bark at a Minister or General, unless they have been first dandled, like a little French pug-dog, in the lap of a lady of quality? Does Mr. Moore insist on the double claim of birth and genius ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... engage her, should she consider her a suitable person. Accordingly, when Mrs. O'Flaherty called, two or three days after, Mrs. Leighton questioned her in regard to her capability as a servant. She replied that she had had considerable experience as a servant in genteel families, previous to her marriage in the old country. Mrs. Leighton requested her to call again shortly, saying that she hoped to be able to find her a situation. Mrs. Leighton further informed her that, if ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... told of one boy that his gentility was so great that he would not wipe his hands like the others, but waved them about in the air until they were dry! I think this must have made them red and rough, which would not be very genteel. ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... record Tenby existed as a poor fishing-village and mourned its departed glories. That it would ever again be a place of interest to anybody but people of fishy pursuits was an idea Tenby did not entertain concerning itself; but, lo! in the present century there arose a custom among genteel folk of going down to the sea in bathing-machines. It was discovered that Tenby was a spot favored of Neptune (or whatever god or goddess regulates the matter of surf-bathing), and Tenby was taken down from the shelf, as it were, dusted, mended ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... "The office is very genteel, 10s. a day, perquisites, and no expenses;" and, to another, he speculates on the chance of procuring a company in an American regiment. "But this I build not on, nor indeed am I very fond of it," ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... WILL READ IT IN THE PAPERS,' replied the dear little fashionable rogue of seven years old. She knew already her importance, and how all the world of England, how all the would-be-genteel people, how all the silver-fork worshippers, how all the tattle-mongers, how all the grocers' ladies, the tailors' ladies, the attorneys' and merchants' ladies, and the people living at Clapham and Brunswick Square,—who have no more chance of ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... countenance. Should you ever go to the great city, among the grand folks, you would make a sensation, madam. I have made one myself, who am dark; the chi she is kauley, which last word signifies black, which I am not, though rather dark. There's no colour like white, madam; it's so lasting, so genteel. Gentility will carry the day, madam, even with the young rye. He will ask words of the black lass, but beg the word ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... on her hills and valleys, and fertilize the land, the sons of that great State must devote their time to selecting and grooming the most lusty sires and the most fruitful wenches, to supply the slave barracoons of the South! And the learned gentleman pathetically laments that the profits of this genteel traffic will be greatly lessened by the circumscription of slavery! This is his picture, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... room that Loring entered still retained some of the features of its more genteel beginnings, but the huge blaring teleceiver screen was filled with the pouting face of a popular singer. He advanced to the bar ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... however, were not always the only persons of loose morals. Many women of color were also prostituted to the purposes of young white men[483] and overseers.[484] Goodell reports a well-authenticated account of a respectable Christian lady at the South who kept a handsome mulatto female for the use of her genteel son, as a method of deterring him, as she said, "from indiscriminate and vulgar indulgences."[485] Harriet Martineau discovered a young white man who on visiting a southern lady became insanely enamored ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... Theobald Hackett, who offered to instruct in "all sorts of fashionable English and French dances, after the newest and politest manner practiced in London, Dublin, and Paris, and to give to young ladies, gentlemen, and children, the most graceful carriage in dancing and genteel behaviour in company that can possibly be given ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... Portuguese duck: "your mode of expression is not exactly genteel; a fact to which I must ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... clumsy and awkward limp was exchanged for a sort of shuffle, which, as it might be the consequence of a wound in those perilous times, had rather an interesting than an ungainly effect. At least it was as genteel an expression that the party had been overhard travelled, as the most polite ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... me. And I absolutely don't need that," she thought sadly. "It's possible to live just so. There are others, now, living on maintenance. And, they say, far better than if they had twirled around an altar. What's so bad about that? Peaceful, quiet, genteel ... I'd darn socks for him, wash floors, cook ... the plainer dishes. Of course, he'll be in line to get married to a rich girl some time. Well, now, to be sure, he wouldn't throw me out in the street just so, mother-naked. Although he's a little simpleton, and chatters a lot, still ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... know if I should be glad or sorry that he failed to keep favour; but on 6th January 1682 (rather a cheerless New Year's present) his pension was expunged.[3] There need be no doubt, at least, of my exultation at the fact that he was knighted and recorded arms. Not quite so genteel, but still in public life, Hugh was Under-Clerk to the Privy Council, and liked being so extremely. I gather this from his conduct in September 1681, when, with all the lords and their servants, he took the woful and soul-destroying Test, swearing it "word by word upon his knees." And, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this principle, Captain Bonnet arrayed himself in a fine suit of clothes, and without arms, excepting a genteel sword, and carrying a cane, he landed with Ben Greenway and Dickory, and proceeded to indulge himself in a promenade up the main ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... came to town, and set his eye on the son-in-law of the rich Reb Yossel, peace be unto him. The name of the young man was Avremel Hourvitz—a fine, genteel young man. He had run away from his home in Poland and come to our town, and was spending his time at the Klaus studying the Torah. And Reb Yossel, may he rest in peace, had to spend a pile of money before he got Avremel for his daughter. From the ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... little Clara Fisher? Are there no French Pieces with a Child in them? By Pieces I mean here dramas, to prevent male-constructions. Did not the Blue Girl remind you of some of Congreve's women? Angelica or Millamant? To me she was a vision of Genteel Comedy realized. Those kind of people never come to see one. N'import—havn't I Miss Many Things coming? Will you ask Horace Smith to——[The remainder of this letter has ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... not of such matters. They were surrounded by the county. On every side the fields and moors of Staffordshire, intersected by roads and lanes, railways, watercourses and telegraph-lines, patterned by hedges, ornamented and made respectable by halls and genteel parks, enlivened by villages at the intersections, and warmly surveyed by the sun, spread out undulating. And trains were rushing round curves in deep cuttings, and carts and waggons trotting and jingling on the yellow ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... reply to me!' repeated the pitiless sailor. 'You are thirty! I have already passed another barrier, but not long since. We are of suitable age for each other. The man should always have traversed the road before his companion. You are active and genteel; that does very well for women. You have always been an honest girl, that is better still. As for me, my skin is not so white as yours, but it is the fault of a tropic sun. It is possible that I may be a little disfigured by the scar on my cheek; but of this scar ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... look about among the guests of the hotel gathered on the piazza, in order to ascertain if there was any person there whom he had ever met before. Very few of them were what could be classed as genteel people, and some of them were such people as one would not expect to see at a first-class hotel. They were dressed in seaman's garments for the most part, though not as common sailors; and doubtless many of them were commanders or officers of the ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... time contracted to me in the kitchen, where it was understood, quite upon his own agency, that his wages included board. At other times, he called for money too late in the evening to work it out that day, and it has happened that a new second girl, deceived by his genteel appearance in the uncertain light, has shown him into the parlor, where I have found him to his and my own great amusement, as the gentleman who wanted to see me. Nothing else seemed to raise his ordinarily dejected spirits so much. We all know how ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... an authority on country matters. Master Phillip's 'governor' was likewise in a large way of business, and possessed of wealth, and thought it the correct thing for one of his sons to 'go in' for agriculture—a highly genteel occupation, if rightly followed, with capital and intelligence. Phillip liked to ride his bicycle in the cool of the evening, and was supposed in these excursions to be taking a survey of the soil and the crops, and to be comparing the style of agriculture in the district ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... sojourned from 1860 till 1873. The cause of his leaving them is only half told in Mr Aldis Wright's edition of the Letters (p. 365, footnote). Mr Berry, a small man, had taken to himself a second wife, a buxom widow weighing fourteen stone; and she, being very genteel, could not brook the idea of keeping a lodger. So one day—I have heard FitzGerald tell the story—came a timid rap at the door of his sitting-room, a deep "Now, Berry, be firm," and a mild "Yes, my dear;" and Berry appeared on the threshold. Hesitatingly he explained that "Mrs Berry, ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... genteel, not to say ladylike, elocution of the Highland chief and the indescribable rising inflection and emphasis ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... boat. All of 'em collectively don't amount to a pinch of snuff. This thing that they call business is mostly gambling with what somebody else has sweated to produce. They're a soft-handed, soft-bodied lot of incompetent egotists, if you ask me. Any of 'em would lick your boots in a genteel sort of way if there was money in it; and they'd just as cheerfully chisel their best friend out of his last dollar, if it could be done in a business way. They haven't even the saving grace of ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... that I've kept on my shoes and my collar," said Ribsy. "It isn't genteel to go barefoot, and nothing makes a fellow look so untidy as going about without a collar. The truth is," he continued, sitting down in the road on his hind legs,—"the truth is, I'm not an ordinary horse, by any means. I have a history, and ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... tumble, My poor ones have nothing to chew; And even if themselves do not grumble Their stomachs undoubtedly do. But coolly to fast en famille, Is as good for the soul as to pray; And famine itself is genteel, When one starves in ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... said quietly. 'I'm glad the young lady's well again, but genteel formal ain't much in ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... he couldn't approve; and therefore he hadn't the honour of knowing the gentleman.' Mrs Norris the mother added another reason of her own, the same in effect, but varying in words; to wit, that she believed the people were well enough in their way, but they were not genteel. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... make with a captious and querulous manner. She did not trust herself to look towards the Place, although the hum of the assembled crowd must have drawn her attention in that direction. The fourth person of the group was a handsome and genteel young man, who seemed to share Miss Bertram's anxiety, and her solicitude to soothe and ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... to think himself too fine a gentleman to live over the shop as his father had done, and so asked Sir John Snipe where he might go that was more genteel; for he still had too much sense to ask any of those other outlandish fellows' advice in such a matter. At last, on Snipe's bespeaking, he went to Wimbledon, which is a vastly smart suburb, and there, God knows, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... and I reckon your friends has had the best of it; and here they are ashore in the old stockade, as was made years and years ago by Flint. Ah, he was the man to have a headpiece, was Flint! Barring rum, his match were never seen. He were afraid of none, not he; on'y Silver—Silver was that genteel." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... guess from the abysses, full of fog on either side, and the veiled lights of red brown and old gold glowing through them now and again, we were on the top of one of those long, consecutive, and genteel rows of houses which are still to be found lifting their heads above poorer districts, the remains of some rage of optimism in earlier speculative builders. Probably enough, they were entirely untenanted, or tenanted only by such small clans of the poor as gather ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... the Englishman at home for he had never set foot outside of the colonies except to visit Barbados with an invalid half-brother. Even then he noted that the "gentleman inhabitants" whose "hospitality and genteel behaviour" he admired were discontented with the tone of the officials sent out from England. From early life Washington had seen much of British officers in America. Some of them had been men of high birth and station who treated the ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... of cant in this matter in Great Britain. Genteel English people with relations in the Indian Civil Service and habits of self-delusion, believe that Indians are "grateful" for British rule. The sort of "patriotic" self-flattery that prevailed in the Victorian age, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... we won't have dinner till late; that will be real genteel and give us plenty of time," added Tilly, suddenly realizing the novelty of the task she ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... seats of instruction to the limited views of one or two learned professions. To the praise of this age be it spoken, a more open and generous way of thinking begins now universally to prevail. The attainment of liberal and genteel accomplishments, though not of the intellectual sort, has been thought by our wisest and most affectionate patrons[c], and very lately by the whole university[d], no small improvement of our antient plan of education; and therefore I may safely affirm that nothing (how unusual soever) ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... through dirty, dusty, nasty-smelling, unromantic Germany, along the banks of that shabby—genteel river known as the Rhine, watching at every railway station the wondrously bulky haus-fraus who stir such deep emotions in the sentimental German heart; noting how the disease of militarism has eaten so deeply into German life ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... down a passage if I were about to halve the pavement with them. There was the spruce young bookseller would play the same tricks; the butcher's daughters; the upholsterer's young men. Hand in glove when doing business out of sight with you; but caring nothing for a' old woman when playing the genteel away from all signs ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... which mars all the literature of the century fermented without let or hindrance in those coarse souls. An immature civilization had overstimulated imaginations and senses without abating the brutality of the primitive passions. In Prussia people lacked the delicate taste, the genteel habits, the light wit, which in France qualified the depravity of the age. A heavy dissoluteness was paraded in Prussia. Officials, the gentry, women, all fed their minds on d'Holbach and La Mettrie, taking their doctrines seriously and ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... it also appears, that Sir George was, in his person, a fair[1], slender, genteel man, but spoiled his countenance with drinking, and other habits of intemperance. In his deportment he was very affable and courteous, of a generous disposition, which, with his free, lively, and natural vein of writing, acquired him the general character ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... recollect, courteously beckon an offender to approach him, doffing his hat the while as if speaking to the quarter-deck; and then, begging the trembling youngster's pardon for detaining him, would proceed to inform him in the "politest and most genteel manner in the world" that he was "the d—-d son of a sea cook,"—subsequently rattaning him furiously, amidst a plethora of expletives before which the worst Billingsgate faded ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... docility, my attention to deserve his confidence and love, and a conduct, in general, devoid of the least art and founded on my sincere regard and esteem for him, won and attached him so firmly to me, that, after having generously trusted me with a genteel, independent settlement, proceeding to heap marks of affection on me, he appointed me, by an authentic will, his sole heiress and executrix: a disposition which he did not outlive two months, being taken from me by a violent cold that he contracted, as he unadvisedly ran to the window, on an alarm ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... existence of much more than the primary and initiating nucleus of engineers and skilled mechanics. If it is an educated class, its existence implies a class of educators, and just as far as it does get educated the schoolmasters will be skilled and educated men. The shabby-genteel middle-class schoolmaster of the England of to-day, in—or a little way out of—orders, with his smattering of Greek, his Latin that leads nowhere, his fatuous mathematics, his gross ignorance of pedagogics, and his incomparable snobbishness, certainly does ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... THE PRESS] Blimy! It amooses 'em, all but the genteel ones. Cheer oh! Press! Yer can always myke somefin' out o' nufun'? It's not the fust thing as 'as existed in yer ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "all sorts of fashionable English and French dances, after the newest and politest manner practiced in London, Dublin, and Paris, and to give to young ladies, gentlemen, and children, the most graceful carriage in dancing and genteel behaviour in company that can possibly be given by any ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... that, it is difficult to make a nice, genteel sitting-room out of an apartment of which the principal features are a sink and a big gas stove. The gas stove, of an obsolete pattern, was fed by a tiresome, shilling-in-the-slot arrangement. It had ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... in a tone of the most insolent indignation, "wot ever do you mean by runnin' agin my 'ead like that? Hain't you got no genteel boys in the West-end to butt agin, that you come all the way to Vitechapel to butt agin me? I've a good mind to 'and you over to the p'leece. Come, you owes me a ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... "A what? That is a genteel expression for a young girl to apply to herself! That High School does ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... parlours did not open upon the main street, it being far from her desire to attract promiscuous trade. The parlours, indeed, were situated upon one of the "nicest" streets in Coombe and occupied a corner lot, so that a splendid view down two of the most genteel residential streets was obtainable from their windows. The only sign of business anywhere was a board of chaste design over the doorway, bearing the simple legend, "A. MILLIGAN." Even the word "Dressmaker" was considered superfluous. Also there was one window, near the door, which from time to ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... supper, I don't believe in that kind of nonsense. And I—I want nothing. Of course I know my father and mother are poor, and that they have kept up a sort of position which ranks them among the 'shabby genteel,'—and I suppose if I don't marry quickly I shall have to ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... what is known as the Club House are in perhaps the best condition of any in that portion of the town, but it is certainly damaged beyond possibility of repair. On the upper floor five bodies are lying unidentified. One of them, a woman of genteel birth, judging by her dress, is locked in one of the small rooms to prevent a possibility of spoliation by wreckers, who are flocking to the spot from all directions and taking possession of everything ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Mrs. Jenny, I know you, and I know Mrs. Flauntit; but 'tis not Beauty or Wit that takes now-a-days; the Age is altered since I took upon me this genteel Occupation: but 'tis a fine Petticoat, right Points, and clean Garnitures, that does me Credit, and takes the Gallant, though on a stale Woman. And again, Mrs. Jenny, she's kept, and Men love as much for Malice, as for Lechery, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... was made by Madame Duval, who said, "It's quite a shocking thing to see ladies come to so genteel a place as Ranelagh with hats on; it has a monstrous vulgar look: I can't think what they wear them for. There is no such a thing to be ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... twin monsters Bread and Cheese forced him to write novels the scene of which was laid in the one milieu he had thoroughly observed, that of either utterly hideous or shabby genteel squalor in London. He gradually obtained a rare mastery in the delineation of his unlovely mise en scene. He gradually created a small public who read eagerly everything that came from his pen, despite his economy of material (even ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Jones knew better. He, who never spared him self when the cause was good, he knew that the neck had been made for the collar—it was at any rate evident that such was the case with his own. Little can be said of his head, except that it was small, narrow, and genteel; but his hat might be spoken of, and perhaps with advantage. Of the loose but studied tie of his inch-wide cravat a paragraph might be made; but we would fain ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... nobility frequently means absolute gentility. But in America what good can be said of those who, living upon the fortunes of fathers or grandfathers, amassed in honest trade,—residents of a particular street which is thereby rendered pluperfectly genteel,—with no recommendation but that derived from fashion and idleness,—draw the lines of social demarcation more closely than they are drawn in Europe, intellect and accomplishments being systematically snubbed where the possessors cannot show their family passes? Is not this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the music of the piano and harp were the order of the evening for a time; then games were proposed, and "Consequences," "How do you like it?" and "Genteel lady, always genteel," afforded much amusement. Herbert could join in these, and did with much spirit. But dancing was a favorite pastime with the young people of the neighborhood, and the clock had hardly struck nine when Cadmus and his fiddle were summoned to their aid, chairs and tables were ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... upon the public in this manner; but for that I did not care—I determined to impose upon them too, as soon as I got a chance. Soon after, a school-mate encased me in a remarkably tight pair, during an afternoon's visit; and having, as she said, 'made me look quite genteel,' I departed for home with the delightful consciousness of being 'something of a figure.' Before bed-time I had a romp in the garden with my wild brother and Charles Tracy; I experienced a feeling of suffocation, ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... personal, and do not belong to general literature. They should be chronicled in detail only in advertisements of iron tonics and in the secret by-laws of the Woman's Auxiliary of the Ancient Order of the Rat Trap. But genteel writing may contain a description of certain stages of its progress without intruding upon the province of the X-ray or ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... live in Lilliput Street, that neat little street which runs at right angles with the Park and Brobdingnag Gardens. It is a very genteel neighborhood, and I need not say they are ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... military air of his appearance. He displays a native gravity, but devoid of all appearance of ostentation." In this same year a friend wrote, "General Washington is now in the forty-seventh year of his age; he is a well-made man, rather large boned, and has a tolerably genteel address; his features are manly and bold, his eyes of a bluish cast and very lively; his hair a deep brown, his face rather long and marked with the small-pox; his complexion sunburnt and without much color, and his countenance sensible, ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... Arnold in the most polite manner, conducted to the Chateau de Ramezay, the headquarters of the Continental Army, where a "genteel" company of ladies and gentlemen had assembled to welcome them, after which they supped with Arnold, probably in the dining-room adjoining ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... filled in a way that has not been seen for many a long year; and the intelligent Mr. Mole, the gardener (who has been impressed as an odd man for the occasion, and is served up in a pseudo-livery to make him more presentable), sees more "genteel" people than have, for a long time, been visible to his naked eye. The intelligent Mr. Mole, when he has afterwards been restored to the bosom of Mrs. Mole and his family, confides to his equally intelligent helpmate that, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... We have heard that once a club of ladies in high society tried to high-pressure the publishers of Mr. Webster's dictionary to change the old spelling in their favor. Yet there is a lot to be said for this more genteel and appetizing rendering of the word, for the Welsh masterpiece is, after all, a very rare bit of cheesemongery, male ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... world—is situated in one of the northern, southern, eastern, or western suburbs—we have reasons for not being particular—at the distance of two miles and three-quarters from the black dome of St Paul's. It consists of thirty genteel-looking second-rate houses, standing upon a veritable terrace, at least three feet above the level of the carriage-way, and having small gardens enclosed in iron palisades in front of them. The garden gates open upon a pavement of nine feet in width; the carriage-road ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... idea," broke in Mrs. Brimmer, with genteel precision. "You see these people evidently recognize the fact of Mr. Brimmer's previous ownership of the Excelsior, and the respect that is due to him. I, for one, shall accept the offer, and insist upon Miss ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... advertiser may be Queen Victoria, fired with the desire to make a duke of you. I put it to yourself if that's probable; and yet it's not against the laws of nature. But we sit here to consider probabilities; and with your genteel permission, I eliminate her Majesty and Uncle Tim on the threshold. To proceed, we have your second idea, that this has some connection with the statue. Possible; but in that case who is the advertiser? Not Ricardi, for he knows your address; not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... says to Bob: "Dearie boy: is it a bargain about the squiffer if I make Joe sprint for you?" "Anything you like, darling," says he: "I love you." I put on my best company manners and stepped up to the copper. "If you please, sir," says I, "can you direct me to Carrickmines Square?" I was so genteel, and talked so sweet, that he fell to it like a bird. "I never heard of any such Square in these parts," he says. "Then," says I, "what a very silly little officer you must be!"; and I gave his helmet a chuck behind that knocked it over his eyes, ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... was he because while other faithfuls were making their loyalty earn big money off the government this genteel pair reminding him, that they might yet have to risk themselves inside the gray lines again to extricate Charlie, had kept their loyalty as gracefully hidden as of old except from a general or two. Preoccupied Greenleaf, amiable generals, not to see that a loyalist in New Orleans stood socially ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... its solid membership, were a motley crew. Every negro type was there, from the genteel butler to the clodhopper from the cotton and rice fields. Some had on second-hand seedy frock-coats their old master had given them before the war, glossy and threadbare. Old stovepipe hats, of every style in vogue since Noah came out of ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... or by what instruction, is this wonderful character to be formed? Is it found in the nurseries of affectation, pertness, and vanity, from which fashion is propagated, and the genteel is announced? In great and opulent cities, where men vie with each other in equipage, dress, and the reputation of fortune? Is it within the admired precincts of a court, where we may learn to smile without being ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... dogs in the street drew him to the window, out of which he looked by jumping on a chair, just as a troop of "curs of low degree" tore past after a rather genteel-looking dog with a kettle tied to his tail. They whirled rapidly by in a turmoil of dust, and clink, and cur-dog yelp, but not so rapidly as to prevent Sam from perceiving the terrible degradation to which a gentleman-dog had been subjected. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... "That's the genteel thing to do nowadays, it seems!" said Lasse. "If only she'll stay away! Things are much better as ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and the jaw hangs with a certain slackness. The whole visage looks as if it had been cast in a tolerably good mould and had somehow run out of shape a little. Your man is fluent and communicative; he mouths his sentences with a genteel roll in his voice, and he punctuates his talk with a stealthy, insincere laugh which hardly rises above the dignity of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... a sense of regret at having my hideous anticipations thus disappointed. I felt in some sort like a 'prentice boy who, going to the play in the expectation of being delighted with a cut-and-thrust tragedy, is almost moved to tears of disappointment at the exhibition of a genteel comedy. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... surprising how those words rhyme so nicely. Seems almost as though it was done a-purpose! Reminds me of piece day at school. There was a mighty pretty piece I learned called the 'Wreck of the Asperus.'" And she subsided into a genteel melancholy. ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... be in a minority—you never find it in an unrespectable minority,—it wants company, and that of a respectable, genteel kind. Its possessors are always sticklers for the traditions of the elders; their horizon is bounded very largely by the opinions of men and the attitude of the rulers. They are always asking, "Have any of ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... lovely ferns and wax-plants and, whenever anyone came to visit her, she always gave the visitor one or two slips from her conservatory. There was one thing she didn't like and that was the tracts on the walks; but the matron was such a nice person to deal with, so genteel. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... lived just one month in their new house, and were happy, although at times somewhat lonely from missing the society of Townsend Centre, when the trouble began. The Townsends, although they lived in a fine house in a genteel, almost fashionable, part of the city, were true to their antecedents and kept, as they had been accustomed, only one maid. She was the daughter of a farmer on the outskirts of their native village, was middle-aged, and had lived with them for the last ten years. One pleasant Monday morning ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... seem to have been an extraordinarily gifted woman from an artistic or intellectual point of view, it is quite evident that she possessed a refinement that must have appealed forcibly to a man brought up in such genteel surroundings and as sensitive as Mendelssohn. Such a woman must have been, after all, better suited to his delicate genius than a wife of unusual gifts would have been. For it is a helpmeet, not another genius, that a man of genius really needs most. The ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... nether mind than a new one, definite and harassing, grew in its place, so that I was turning from side to side in a torture-rack of reflection when I should be lost in the slumber my travel and weariness so well had earned me. Something of an eeriness at our position in that genteel but lonely house lay heavy on me too: it had no memories of friendship in any room for me; it was haunted, if haunted at all, with the ghosts of people whose names we only breathed with bitterness in the shire of ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... brogue decaying into a common would-be genteel accent with an unexpected strain of Glasgow in it]. I must be going. Ivnmportnt engeegement in the ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... comprehend, I knew her only hope was, to live long enough to see her boys educated, and her daughters in homes of their own. It was the old story, Doctor Blecker,"—with a shivering laugh more pitiful than a cry. "I've noticed it since in a thousand other houses. Young girls like me in these poor-genteel families,—there are none of God's creatures more helpless or goaded, starving at their souls. I couldn't teach. I had no talent; but if I had, a woman's a woman: she wants something else in her life than dog-eared school-books and her wages year ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... virile type. Even gentle Aunt Eleanor received the irrepressible with unmistakable welcome. She had heard much of his history from Collie. Overland was as irresistible as the morning sun. While endeavoring earnestly to "do the genteel," as he had assured Winthrop he would when he left him to make this visit, Overland had ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... have known intimately and loved the genteel old man of the city when the once famous domestic drama of "Grandfather Whitehead" was conceived. In the play the old man—a once prosperous merchant—finds a happy home in the household of his son-in-law. And here it is ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... he produced The School for Scandal, a caustic satire on London society, which has no superior in genteel comedy. It has been said that the characters of Charles and Joseph Surface were suggested by the Tom Jones and Blifil of Fielding; but, if this be true, the handling is so original and natural, that they are in no ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... mother. "No pauper Asylum," I said, "I won't have her put in a pauper Asylum. A Private Establishment, if you please. I have my feelings as a mother, and my character to preserve in the town, and I will submit to nothing but a Private Establishment, of the sort which my genteel neighbours would choose for afflicted relatives of their own." Those were my words. It is gratifying to me to reflect that I did my duty. Though never overfond of my late daughter, I had a proper pride about her. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... dissipated this transient cloud upon his spirits. Mrs Bosenna (who had discarded her apron, and looked mighty genteel with a gold locket dependent from her throat) avowed, appealing to his sympathy, that it mightn't be sentimental, but she, for her part, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... or to give up the seats in the trolley cars, merely served to ridicule the representatives of Russian officialdom, giving frequent rise to tragi-comic conflicts in public and to utterances of indignation in the press. The public pronouncements of these genteel chinovniks who were anxious to train the Jewish masses in the fear of Russian bureaucracy and inculcate in them polite manners aroused the attention both of the Russian and the foreign press. It was universally ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... inexpressible honor and the delightful joy of aiding me in any way: if so, command him to do it," or words to that effect. I can't put down his smiles, and genteel looks, and don't want ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... cheating. As if a Guide ever cheated under any circumstances whatsoever! After each girl in turn had thrown down her mallet and declared that she wouldn't play, Dick swiftly defeated Jerry, the party recovered its tempers, and they were sitting down to play "I met a One-horned Lady always Genteel" when the garden-gate ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... not a genteel man," Pope quaintly said to Spence, speaking of the manner and habits of the famous old patriarch of Will's. With regard to Pope's own manners, we have the best contemporary authority that they were singularly refined and polished. With his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was in order and as it ought to be. After this was done she invited, in the prince's name, all the ladies in the country to come to the feast. And on the day appointed for the marriage, meanly clad as she was, she received them in the most genteel and cheerful manner imaginable. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... the public taste; bearing in mind, meanwhile, that great and practical truths are more essential than the garb in which they appear. We should be more careful of our health of body and purity of morals than of the costume we put on. Many genteel coats wrap up corrupt hearts, and fine hats cover silly heads. What is the chaff ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... which did not fail to interest me—there were stones, rocks and furze in abundance. Turning round the corner of a hill, I observed through the mists of evening, which began to gather about me, what seemed to be rather a genteel house on the roadside; on my left, and a little way behind it a strange kind of monticle, on which I thought I observed tall upright stones. Quickening my pace, I soon came parallel with the house, which as I ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... generally considered to be daft; Birdie evidently had been treated badly in his youth and remained distrustful and suspicious to the end; Kid was the most indefatigable worker in the team; Wolf's character possessed no redeeming point of any kind, while Brownie though a little too genteel for very hard work was charming as a pet, and it may also be said of him that he never lost an opportunity of using his pleasant appearance and delightful ways to lighten his afflictions. The load for ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... long, drooping mustache upon his lip, but aged him about the eyes, and appeared to reduce his stature and his width of shoulders. With a pair of shabby gloves on his hands, and a book beneath his arms, he had suddenly become a genteel if poor old book-agent, whose appearance ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... in Writing" is a delightful enforcement of the "ordinary criticism" that "my Lord Shaftesbury, and Sir William Temple, are models of the genteel style in writing," though Elia prefers to differentiate them as "the lordly and the gentlemanly." The essay is, for the most part, a plea, with illustrations, for a consideration of Sir William Temple as an easy and engaging writer. "Barbara ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... mentally used the word "adventuress" in thinking of herself, as being more genteel and mentally aristocratic than the cruder words by which Barney and Old Jimmie and their kind designated a woman accomplice—this young super-adventuress, who had schemed all this so adroitly, and worked toward it with the best of her brain and her conscious charm, was seized with new panic ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... a youth desolate and strange indeed lay before them. A spinster who was a poor relation was the only person of respectable breeding who ever came near them. To save herself from genteel starvation, she had offered herself for the place of governess to them, though she was fitted for the position neither by education nor character. Mistress Margery Wimpole was a poor, dull creature, having no wilful harm in her, ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... low creatures ought not to be allowed to go round to genteel families," said Miss Jane. "What do you think, Mr. St. Clare?" she said, coquettishly ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Cicero, Scaliger, Rapin, Andre Dacier, the Abbe D'Aubignac, and Dryden. Having set the Ancients against the Moderns, Echard is able to attack the looseness of English double plots by pointing to Terence's success within a similar structure. He is also able to praise Terence's genteel style. Against this, Echard admits, along with his precursors, Plautus' superiority in point of vis comica, which he defines, interestingly, as "Liveliness of Intreague" (sig. a8). Echard is thus able ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... have you to let?" when, scuttling to the top of the kitchen stairs, she will call over the banisters: "A gentleman to see the rooms." There comes up, panting, a harassed-looking, elderly female, but genteel in black. She crushes past the little "slavey," ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... referee, who shall hear the testimony in the case, and submit a copy thereof, together with his decision thereon, to the Court for confirmation. Then, before the referee—who is to be properly feed for his officiation—go the divorce-lawyer and two or three shabby-genteel-looking 'witnesses,' who from thenceforth shall never be findable by mortal man again. The 'witnesses' swear to any thing and every thing—that they have seen and recognized defendant in highly improper houses with improper persons; that they know plaintiff to be pure, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... another: if there were the concert among them which there is among foreign mendicants, a man who admitted one to a conference would be plagued to death. I once gave something to a very genteel French applicant, who overtook me in the street, at my own door, saying he had picked up my handkerchief: whether he picked it up in my pocket for an introduction, I know not. {9} But that day week came another Frenchman ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Tching-whang, and recognized him immediately. It is astonishing how like lightning unpleasant facts do fly. In less than two minutes, every soul in the gardens knew that Mien-yaun, the noble, the princely, the loftily-descended, the genteel, was going to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... busy." The old man threw back his shoulders. "Carrying a caucus the way we've probably got to carry this one at the last gasp isn't going to be a genteel entertainment." He tapped a stubby finger on the honorable chairman's shirt-front. "I'm going to raise some very particular hell." He turned to his lieutenant. "The boys right in the village, here, our own bunch, are all ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... Caroline, it is genteel. Bank boys get into such nice society. And they can always—you ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... highly improbable. He has got to that point that he cannot work. He is too unhealthy and his influence is corrupting. Nobody will give him employment, so he must keep on to the end of the chapter. An even more disgusting specimen is the idler who develops into a sneakthief and the more genteel sort of gentry— gamblers and workers of chances. These are, perhaps, to be included in the list of those who live by their wits and not ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... the repeal of the Stamp Act with much festivity and joyful noises in the streets, and with "genteel entertainments" in taverns, where innumerable toasts were drunk to Liberty and to its English defenders. Before his house on Beacon Hill, Mr. John Hancock, on occasion a generous man, erected a platform and placed ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... man, he is disinterested, generous, candid, and panting after glory: in every circumstance meriting your good opinion. He will have need to see you much while he shall have the honor of being with you; which you can the more freely admit, as his eminence and merit give him admission into genteel societies here. He will need an interpreter. I suppose you could procure some person from Alexandria, who might be agreeable to yourself, to perform this office. He brings with him one or two subordinate workmen, who of course will associate with ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... public gymnasium; the latter athletae, and were trained fighters, whose school was the palaestra. At first frequenting the same, they afterwards became divided between two institutions. Some of the harsher sports of the prize-fighters were not thought genteel for well-nurtured youths to indulge in. Among the simpler games were the ball, played in various ways, and the top, which was as popular with juveniles then as now. The sport called skaperda can be seen in any gymnasium of to-day, and consisted in two boys drawing each other up and down by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... penitence—whipped out and homesick. Here were miners in red-flannel shirts, sailors, soldiers in uniform and soldiers of fortune. The preacher looked at the motley mass in a vain attempt to pick out his old friends from New England. The genteel, slightly blase quality of culture that leans back in its cushioned pew and courteously waits to be instructed, was not there. These people did not lean back: they leaned forward, and with parted lips they listened for every word. There was no choir, and when "an old ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... corner would suddenly double himself up with beckoning to a knot of chums; these would hasten up; recruits would come in from two or three other directions; as they reached the corner their countenances would quickly assume a genteel severity, and presently, with her mother, 'Tite Poulette would pass—tall, straight, lithe, her great black eyes made tender by their sweeping lashes, the faintest tint of color in her Southern cheek, her form all grace, her carriage ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... Tau. Even the palms are peculiar. Their tall, upright crests of lively green fronds, their dead-brown hangings, and their trunks charred black by the careless Bedawi, form a quaint contrast with the genteel, nattily dressed, and cockneyfied brooms of Egypt and the Hejaz. And that grandeur may not be wanting to the view, on the east rise the peak and pinnacles of the Almond Mountain (Jebel el-Lauz), whilst northwards the Jebel el-Za'nah, a huge dome, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Hunsdon, he was quite delightful, genteel, altogether the gentleman. Thank heaven I never heard all those naughty stories, so I can admire without stint. Did you notice, Mary, how pleased he was when ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... engaging Raymond's attention. I suppose he was adventuring, rather vaguely, among the "liberal arts," though he probably saw, by this time, that a full professional exercise of any of them was beyond his reach. He was heard of as writing short essays and reviews for one or two genteel publications, as making water-color tours through the none too alluring suburbs, as composing minor pieces for a little musical society which he had joined and which he wished to advance, and so on. Acquaintances reported him at architectural exhibits and at book-auctions—occasions ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... was vice-president of the Bank of Manhadoes, the new business relations brought her invitations from beyond the little planetary system that revolved around the Reverend Dr. North. It became a question of making her way in the general society of Brooklyn, which had long drawn its members from the genteel quarters of the Heights, the Hill, and the remoter South Brooklyn, and, in later days, also from Prospect Park Slope. But at the houses of the officers of the bank she had caught somewhat bewildering vistas of those involved and undefined circles of people that ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... heavily on the narrow-mindedness of the manufacturing class—anticipating, in some degree, Dickens's "Hard Times." "One Fault," a satire upon romantic exaggeration; and the coarse, but clever "Widow Barnaby," a racy history of the troubles of a vulgar-genteel bourgeoise in search of a second husband, were published in 1839; and in the following year appeared its sequel, "The Widow Married," which is quite as coarse as its predecessor, but not so amusing. ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... fault. Mr Ernest bought the tickets like a gentleman should (it says in the etiquette book), and I couldn't fight with him there and then,—you're always telling me to be more genteel." ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... melancholy adventurers who have begun to doubt the authenticity of the inspiration which sent them on a mysterious quest. Such was travel on the Thames in the years immediately before Londoners came to a final decision that the Thames was meet to be ignored by the genteel town which ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... in the city was more popular than Simmy Dodge, and no one more deservedly so, for his bad qualities were never so bad that one need hesitate about calling him a good fellow. His habits were easy but genteel. When intoxicated he never smashed things, and when sober,—which was his common condition,—he took extremely good care of other people's reputations. Women liked him, which should not be surprising; and men liked ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... maiden took it, and twirled it about rather superciliously. 'What business had my young Lord,' she thought, 'to fancy she cared for that poor fellow? Very likely he was improved, and she was glad of it, but she knew what was genteel now. Yes, she would read it at once; there was no fear that it would make her soft and foolish—she had ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... That's worse! I can see the s'rimps blushin' for yer inside their paper bags! Now see Me do it. (Bones executes a caricature of a curtsey, which the little Girl copies with terrible fidelity.) That's ladylike—that's genteel. Now sing out! (The Child sings the first verse of a popular Music-hall song, in a squeaky little voice.) Talk about nightingales! Come 'ere, and receive the reward for extinguished incapacity. On your knees! (The little Girl kneels before ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... with a square front, standing right upon the street, and a small enclosed porch, containing the main entrance, affording a glimpse up and down the street through an oval window on each side, its characteristic was decent respectability, not sinking below the boundary of the genteel. It has often perplexed my mind to conjecture what sort of man he could have been who, having the means to build a pretty, spacious, and comfortable residence, should have chosen to lay its foundation on the brink of so many graves; each tenant of these narrow houses crying out, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that the abolition of primogeniture had put an end to hereditary idleness, and that although his sons would be rich enough to do nothing if they pleased, yet his grandchildren would probably have to choose between work and genteel poverty, if it pleased the fates to multiply the race. He could indeed leave one half of his wealth intact to Orsino, but the law required that the other half should be equally divided among all; and as the same thing would take place in the second generation, unless ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... lady,' said Mr. Grewgious, 'wish to find a genteel lodging for a month or so. Have you ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... success if he were put in some other career. One of their greatest services will probably be to put a lot of boys into skilled trades, for which they are adapted and where they will succeed, and thus prevent them from yielding to the desire for a more genteel clerical occupation, in which they will not do more than earn a bare living. This will assist in bringing about the high correlation between merit and income which is so much to ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... attend at the table take a long time walking round it. I picture to myself two persons of ordinary size sitting in that great room at that great table, far apart, in neat evening costume, sipping a little sherry, silent, genteel, and glum; and think the great and wealthy are not always to be envied, and that there may be more comfort and happiness in a snug parlour, where you are served by a brisk little maid, than in a great dark, dreary dining-hall, where a funereal major-domo and a couple of stealthy ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sight of these spectres of soldiers, these unhappy men broken down with hunger and fatigue, the genteel National Guards, warmly clad and wrapped up for the winter, commenced to utter foolish speeches and big hopes which had been their daily food for several months: "Break the iron circle;" "not one inch, not a stone;" "war to the knife;" "one grand effort," etc. But the very best talkers ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... shrill voice cried; "for God's love, man, get on!" Mr. Pope had risen. This pallid shaken wisp was not in appearance the great Mr. Pope whose ingenuity had enabled Homeric warriors to excel in the genteel. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Everything was done in a genteel and ordinary way, but on the other hand, there was no lingering. Anna found herself next Sydney Courtlaw, with his friend close at hand. Opposite to her was a sallow-visaged young man, whose small tie seemed ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 1745. The description given of her in Bishop Forbes's Jacobite Memoirs destroys much of the romance of the story commonly related of her. "She is a widow," he declares, "nearer fifty than forty years of age. She is a genteel, well-looking, handsome woman, with a pair of pretty eyes, and hair black as jet. She is of a very sprightly genius, and is very agreeable in conversation. She was so far from accompanying the Prince's army, that she ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... Nursery Blarney-Stone has been made over, to have and to hold, to the writers of the Children's Astor-Place Library. We yawn over poetical justice in novels, and only tolerate it as an amusing absurdity in genteel comedy, for the sake of getting the curtain rapidly down over the benedictory guardian and the virtue-rewarded fair, who are impatient themselves to be off to a very different distribution of cakes and ale. We know that the hero and the heroine walk complacently away in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Grace of Leinster, and he lived very privately, and saw no company. Maynooth was stupid and dull—there were neither belles nor balls; Fermoy (to use the doctor's well remembered words) had "great feeding," and "very genteel young ladies, that carried their handkerchiefs in bags, and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... with comfort instead of stucco, and moderately thick walls instead of porches and pilasters. Most of their time is necessarily passed at home, but they undergo all manner of house discomfort resulting from this preference of cheap finery over solid structure, rather than forego their "genteel locality" and stereotyped ornamentation. A family of daughters on the one side, diligent over the "Battle of Prague;" a nursery full of crying babies on the other; more Battles of Prague opposite, diversified by a future Lind practicing her scales unweariedly; water-pipes bursting in ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... marsh, perhaps, standing with unequalled grace upon the longest legs known in this world, is a troop of giant birds as wonderful as the pelican, but how opposite! The beautiful flamingo is a bird of feeble intellect, delicate appetite, and genteel tastes. It cannot eat fish, for its slender throat would scarcely admit a pea. Besides, the idea of catching anything, or even picking up food from the ground, does not occur to its simple mind. Its diet consists of certain small crustaceans, classed by naturalists with ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... at her—it did seem a particular kind of question, so to speak, an' she took a fit of coughin'" (here Mrs. Domeny simulated a genteel and hesitating attack of the infirmity in question), "an' at last, says she, very earnest, 'Bain't there one of them at all as ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... much over two days old when they had the funeral, I can't add anything more about maw. And the history I could write of dad would make a mighty slim book. Running roller skating rinks was the most genteel business he ever got into, I guess. His regular profession was faro. It's an unhealthy game, especially in those gold camps where they shoot so impetuous. He got over the effects of two .38's dealt him ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... writing to his friend, the Rev. William Mason, on the 28th of May, 1780, says: "Lady Craven's comedy, called 'The Miniature Picture,' which she acted herself with a genteel set at her own house in the country, has been played at Drury Lane. The chief singularity was that she went to it herself, the second night, in form; sat in the middle of the front row of the stage box, much dressed, with a profusion of white bugles ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... thing," said Tony Lumpkin's friend, "is the genteel thing at any time, if so be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation according-ly." That is it. The fur-lined coat is a genteel thing; but you have to be "in a concatenation according-ly." And there's ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... returns to Ispahan, and applies himself to learn the language of the country, in order to be able to transact business directly and without any intermediary agent. He has the good fortune to please the Shah, Abbas II. From that time his fortune is made, for it is at once genteel and also the part of a prudent courtier to employ the same purveyor as his sovereign. But Chardin had another merit besides that of making a fortune. He was able to collect so considerable a mass of information concerning ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... of body, inclined to stoutness, and florid of complexion. He is said to have had "a sleepy eye," but was handsome and of a manly carriage. He "was not a very genteel man, he was intimate with none but poetical men.[95] He was said to be a very good man by all that knew him: he was as plump as Mr. Pitt, of a fresh color and a down look, and not very conversible." So Pope described him to Spence. He still reigns in literary tradition, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... success? It was easier to propound this momentous question than to answer it. My father, as I have already said, disapproved of public entertainments, and his prejudices were tolerably inveterate. But then, what could be more genteel than the programme, or more select than the prices? How different was an entertainment given in the large room of the Red Lion Hotel to a three-penny wax-work, or a strolling circus on Barnard's Green! I had ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... out of harmony, was still not inappropriate. The only thing jarring was a pretentious modern town-hall, in the style of one of our own vestry buildings, 'erected out of the rates,' and which must have cost a huge sum. It was of a genteel Italian aspect, so it is plain that French local administrators are, in matters of taste, pretty much as such folk are with us. One could have lingered long here, looking at this charming and graceful work, which its surroundings ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... a-talking it all over last night while Bob and Louisa Helen were down at the gate counting lightning-bugs, they said. They just ain't no use thinking of separating Rose Mary and Mr. Tucker and the rest of 'em, and they must have Sweetbriar shelter, good and tight and genteel, offered outen the love Sweetbriar has got for 'em all. Now if I was to marry Mr. Crabtree I could all good and proper move him over to my house and that would leave his little three-room cottage hitched on to the store to move 'em into comfortable. They have got a heap of things, but most of 'em ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... two or three turns in the Park under the great trees, and no doubt that this gallant is come away a little too soon, having lost never a mast nor sail. And then we did begin to discourse of the young genteel captains, which he was very free with me in speaking his mind of the unruliness of them; and what a loss the King hath of his old men, and now of this Hannam, of the Resolution, if he be dead. He told me how he is disturbed to hear the commanders ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... a village so genteel and comely that the Urchin and I would like to have some pictures of it for future generations, particularly as we see it on an autumn morning when, as I say, the motors are kenneled and the landscape has ceased to vibrate. In the douce benignance of equinoctial sunshine we gaze about us with ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
