"Dainty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and carried it with them to the house of a man named Chaperon where they had engaged lodgings. Here, says Dr. Henry, the sensation of being clean and comfortable in their host's "pleasant parlour" was delicious. The tea, the toast, the dainty prints of fresh butter were all exquisite "after rancid pork and garlic," and he declares that they ate for two hours and consumed "some half gallon of thick cream and half a bushel of new laid eggs." ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... that the good Lord had made days as fine as that day, but the Doctor could not remember them. His roses so filled the air with fragrance, the grass in the front yard was so fresh and clean, the flowers along the walk so bright and dainty, and the great maples, that make a green arch of the street, so cool and mysterious in their leafy depths, that his old heart fairly ached with the beauty of it. The Doctor was all poet ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... through the back gate of the Milford place and took their stealthy way out into the dunes. No fierce mustachios or hoop ear-rings marked them on this occasion as the Dread Destroyer or the Menace of the Main. The time did not seem favorable for donning their real costumes. So one went disguised as a dainty maiden in a short pink frock and long brown curls, and the other as a sturdy boy in a grass-stained linen suit with a hole in the knee of his stocking. But their speech would have betrayed their evil business had anyone been in earshot of it. One ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... verandah with its crimson Mount Washington rockers, luxurious hammocks, and low table covered with freshly-cut magazines, the pleasant-faced man who was her nearest of kin, and his graceful wife in a tea-gown of soft summer silk with rich lace about her throat and wrists, her cousins in their dainty muslins, and Russell in his fresh summer suit. Here, at least, were people who knew what ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... out, her eyes I met, I wished the moment had been hours; I took her in my arms, and set Her dainty feet among ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... personal and critical section we pass to half-a-dozen lyrics: Fears and Scruples, a covert and startling poem, a doctrine embodied in a character; then two beautiful little Pisgah-Sights, a dainty experiment in metre, and in substance the expression of Browning's favourite lesson, the worth of earth and the need of the mystery of life; Appearances, a couple of stanzas whose telling simplicity ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... every tone of her soft voice, every movement of her superb form, half queen-like dignity, half fawn-like grace—seemed to place an insurmountable barrier between herself and me. It was not that I thought more humbly of myself—not that I did not even consider myself her equal—but her dainty blandishments were a delicate frost-work, that almost made me shiver and when, she touched her cool lips to mine, and said 'Good-night, dear,' I felt as if even then separated from her real, living self, by a ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... blame him, when you draw from me Your dainty robes aside, If he with gilded baits should claim Your fairest as ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper
... sky grew dark, and heavy drops began to fall. Then Thistle hastened to the lily, for her cup was deep, and the white leaves fell like curtains over the fragrant bed; he was a dainty little Elf, and could not sleep among the clovers and bright buttercups. But when he asked the flower to unfold her leaves and take him in, she turned her pale, soft face away, and answered sadly, "I must shield my little drooping sisters whom you have harmed, ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... over the greatest of tyrants; for what is it but too great a smatch of wisdom that makes men so tawny and thick-skinned, so rough and prickly-bearded, like an emblem of winter or old age, while women have such dainty, smooth cheeks, such a low, gentle voice, and so pure a complexion, as if Nature had drawn them for a standing pattern of all symmetry and comeliness? Besides, what greater or juster aim and ambition have they than to please their husbands? In ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... She stood beside him, and laid her hand upon his arm with a caressing gesture. No other living creature durst have taken that liberty with him; but to Crawford his daughter Helen was a being apart from common humanity. She was small, but very lovely, with something almost Puritanical in her dainty, precise dress and carefully snooded ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Age," Laura Hawkins at twelve is pictured "with her dainty hands propped into the ribbon-bordered pockets of her apron . . . a vision to warm the coldest heart and bless and cheer the saddest." That was the real Laura, though her story in that book in ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... soldiers, being merry among themselves, is somewhat bold with th'English, and sayes th'are dainty Hennes. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... before him, hot and smoking from the embers, hoping that this might win him over and tempt him into a more sociable and gracious humor. But his dogship had been too deeply offended to be so easily appeased; and let the savory fumes of the smoking dainty curl round and round his watering chops as temptingly as they might, he would not deign to stoop and taste. Seeing that he still stood upon the reserve—sat on his tail—Burl at length began to have some misgivings as to whether he had dealt altogether fairly by his right-hand ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Even like the forehead-cloth that, in the night, Or when they sorrow, ladies use to wear: Their wings, blue, red, and yellow, mix'd appear; Colours that, as we construe colours, paint Their states to life;—the yellow shows their saint, The dainty Venus, left them; blue, their truth; The red and black, ensigns of death and ruth. And this true honour from their love-death sprung,— They were the ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... pried into the most sacred intimacies of the fair body that was to his morbid fancy at the same moment a living and a dead woman's, and that, gloating over voluptuous and ghoulish imaginings he may have found an atrocious pleasure in giving over to the headsman those dainty, desirable limbs,—this is perhaps a thing better left unsaid, but one which no one can deem impossible who knows what men are. Evariste Gamelin, cold and pedantic in his artistic creed, could see no beauty but in the Antique; he admired beauty, but it hardly stirred his senses. ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... later a little knot of friends stood together one morning on the down-platform of the Tecumseh station, waiting for the train to come in. Professor Roberts was the centre of the group, and by his side stood dainty May Hutchings, the violet eyes intense with courage that held the sweet lips to a smile. Around them were some ten or a dozen students and Krazinski, all in the highest spirits. They were talking about Roberts' new appointment at Yale, which he attributed ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... first, for their unparalleled beauty, by the charm whereof they tyrannize over the greatest tyrants; for what is it but too great a smatch of wisdom that makes men so tawny and thick-skinned, so rough and prickly-bearded, like an emblem of winter or old age, while women have such dainty smooth cheeks, such a low gende voice, and so pure a complexion, as if nature had drawn them for a standing pattern of all symmetry and comeliness? Beside, what live, but to be wound up as it were in a winding-sheet before ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... that awe which the immediate presence of absolute womanhood creates in us. The plain, practical woman, with the outspoken throat and the eternal eyes. Oh, mince me, madam, mince me your pretty mincings! Deliberate your dainty reticences! Balbutient loveliness, avaunt! Here is a woman that talks like a bugle, and, in everything, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... nature and so superstitious that they would aim their deadly dart at whatever stranger ventured to approach them, believing him to be the messenger of some Evil Spirit and that afterwards they would make of him a dainty meal to comfort their ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... very well informed as to John Saltram's progress, and that impetuous little woman had sent a ponderous retainer of the footman species to the Temple daily, laden now with hothouse grapes, and anon with dainty jellies, clear turtle-soups, or delicate preparations of chicken, blancmanges and iced drinks; the conveyance whereof was a sore grievance to the ponderous domestic, in spite of all the aid to be derived from a ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... Cinderella's dress The magic wand was laid, And straight the dingy gown became A glistening gold brocade. The gems that shone upon her fingers Nothing could surpass; And on her dainty little feet Were ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... of joy. A ray of sunlight came through the trees, dazzling her eyes so that she had to close them for a moment. When she opened them again the frog had gone, and nothing was to be seen but the dainty rose-petals floating on the surface of ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... of it; such as one is never very far from in New England. Here there were no dandelions, but Esther eagerly sought for something more ornamental. And she found it. With exclamations of deep delight she endeavoured to dig up a root of bloodroot which lifted its most delicate and dainty blossom a few inches above the dead leaves and moss with which the ground under the trees was thickly covered. Christopher came ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... with which the girdle was to be worn, the merits and beauties of a green one and a lavender one were discussed and comparisons made with the blue one over and over, all from very love of the indecision and, more truly, the joy that looking at the dainty, pretty colors gave them. ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... had convinced him that dainty laces and shining silver were to be used for his daily fare and not merely as "company fixings," and being adaptable, the good-natured man obediently fell ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... it is not fitting that you should present yourself to Madonna Romola with a rusty chin and a tangled zazzera. Nothing that is not dainty ought to approach the Florentine lily; though I see her constantly going about like a sunbeam amongst the rags that line our corners—if indeed she is not more like a moonbeam now, for I thought yesterday, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... toward West Higgins, however, he had thought about his daughter and he had revised his conception of her. She was older now, of course, and he had finally settled the matter by deciding that she would be a dainty slip of a girl—probably a tight-rope walker or one of the toe-dancers in the Grand Spectacle, or perhaps even engaged as the Ten-Thousand-Dollar Beauty. But a Fat Lady! Mr. Medderbrook walked toward Syrilla. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... the clasp of her hand-bag, as she spoke, and before she had finished speaking she had torn it open and emptied its contents on the table in front of Crewe—a dainty ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... introduced me to her in a way that made me risk a guess that Hector liked her more than common. Her name was Laura Rainey, and she'd come to Greenville, a year before, to teach in the high-school. She was young, not quite twenty, I reckoned, and as pretty and dainty a girl as ever I saw; thin and delicate-looking, though not in the sense of poor health; and she struck me as being very sweet and thoughtful. Joe Lane told me, with his little chuckle, that she'd had a good deal of trouble ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... which afterwards stood us in great stead, viz., that the flesh of their goats, and their beef also, but especially the former, when we had dried and cured it, looked red, and ate hard and firm, as dried beef in Holland; they were so pleased with it, and it was such a dainty to them, that at any time after they would trade with us for it, not knowing, or so much as imagining what it was; so that for ten or twelve pounds' weight of smoke-dried beef, they would give us a whole bullock, or cow, or anything ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... broad-eaved verandah, but the freshness of the evening breeze steals into the twilight of the pretty drawing-room, the simple but refined appointments of a restful home intensely refreshing after weeks of ship and hotel existence. The fragrant tea, with dainty cups and saucers, and the home-made cakes, seem almost forgotten luxuries, for the amenities of British civilisation stop short at Singapore. A cheery party assembles round the table, and these exiles on a foreign shore extend the warmest of welcomes to the stray bird of passage, who will ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... Dane lingered awhile in the red room, surveying its pretty tokens of pretty life, where among other things the two little Catskill sketches in dainty wooden frames hung upon the walls; but he refused an invitation to stay ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... executioner acts only as a secondary agent. And we, O good Brahmana, are only such agents in regard to our karma. Those animals that are slain by me and whose meat I sell, also acquire karma, because (with their meat), gods and guests and servants are regaled with dainty food and the manes are propitiated. It is said authoritatively that herbs and vegetables, deer, birds and wild animals constitute the food of all creatures. And, O Brahmana, king Sivi, the son of Usinara, of great forbearance attained to heaven, which is hard to reach, giving away ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... peregrines by day, provision-merchants for the dispensing of dainty scraps to tickle the ears, to arm the tongues, to explode reputations, those great ladies, the Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry, fateful three of their period, avenged and scourged both innocence and naughtiness; innocence, on the whole, the least, when their withering suspicion ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... women, and the dull-witted one followed the sack in which I was buried—for who would have paid for a coffin? The last two nuts I divided with the old women. Each one of us had a half, and how gladly we ate the little morsel, for even a taste of any dainty seemed good to us, after we had lived on nothing but bread and potatoes. From here I watched the other nuts grow to be trees. All four had straight stems and thick crowns. Under one of them that stood near a spring, which is now called the Fresh Spring, an old carpenter who ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... woman had done there, and come back and see the little men who squeak and shout on platforms in behalf of Kansas, and then turn to deride and despise women, without a feeling of disgust. He would like to place some of these parlor orators and dainty platform speakers where the women of Kansas had stood, and suffered, and acted. He saw, while in Kansas, a New York woman[151]—whose story they might remember in the newspapers—how she hospitably prepared, in one day, three dinners ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... for overcoming the world. A vest pocket volume, in dainty, flexible covers, printed in sepia. Bound in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... floundering and flopping down on ye table, scattering gravy, sauce and divers things upon our garments and in our faces. But this did not well please some, yet with most it was a happening that made great merryment. Dainty meats were on ye table in great plenty, bear-stake, deer-meat, rabbit, and fowle, both wild and from ye barnyard. Luscious puddings we likewise had in abundance, mostly apple and berry, but some of corn meal with small bits of sewet baked therein; ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... shadows and darkness of the wilderness. They put a hatchet in his hand, and stick a feather in his cap, and call him 'Nitche Nawba.' If I recollect right, in Yamoyden a soup was made of some white children. Indians have not been over dainty at times, and no doubt have done worse things; but on such occasions their modus operandi was not likely to be so much in accordance with ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... picture. It is a cozy sitting-room, papered with taste and furnished in harmony. Everything looks neat, from the snowy bed-spread to the pretty clock on the mantel, and the dainty bunch of pansies on the wall above. Open doors give glimpses of other rooms as well ordered as this, while intelligence and kindness beam in the dark faces of gentle mother and cheery bright-eyed daughters. When people ask us how we can bear to teach "niggers," ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... by that time we'll have reached the army," answered Larry, and took the portion of meat handed to him. It was not a dainty thing to carry, but he had to shoulder it, since Boxer and Leroy were carrying ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... hither, Ariel,' said Prospero: 'if you, who are but a spirit, feel for their distress, shall not I, who am a human being like themselves, have compassion on them? Bring them, quickly, my dainty Ariel.' ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Peyton out to the house that afternoon I kind of hands it to myself that I've filled Vee's order. And there standing on the front veranda admirin' the lilacs is Lucy Lee in one of her plain little frocks—a pink and white check—lookin' as fresh and dainty and inexpensive as a prize exhibit from ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... we at them; and we pass on to see a herd of doe koodoos, with a magnificently horned buck or two, hurrying off to the dry hill-sides. We have ceased shooting antelopes, as our men have been so often gorged with meat that they have become fat and dainty. They say that they do not want more venison, it is so dry and tasteless, and ask why we do not give them shot to ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... feeling more averse than ever to taking part in the matter, the doctor, after a hasty survey of her person, withdrew into the background, and sat where he could not be seen. This brought the short dress into full view, together with the dainty little foot, nervously ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... the poet, who received, in reward for the skill with which he wrote occasional poems at the royal request, the abbey of Tiron and four other valuable benefices. A good example of the light and dainty verse in which Desportes excelled is furnished by the well-known villanelle with the refrain "Qui premier s'en repentira," which was on the lips of Henry, duke of Guise, just before his tragic death. Desportes was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... exquisite? I've heard she is a dainty dresser in real life, quite removed from the kind of thing she wears on the stage. I wish she were not so seclusive. I'd ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... peep through the signal glasses, another sigh, and then she came, this girl of seventeen, in her dainty white frock, and plumped herself dejectedly down on the top step, with two very shapely, slender, slippered feet displayed on the second below, two dimpled elbows planted on her knees, two flushed, soft, rounded cheeks buried in two long and slender hands. Away over at the stables she ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... however, peace quite strangely fell upon him, and though he could not move, the agony of his hands and lacerated waist vanished entirely; such perfect peace that he leant back against the wall and idly tried to count the myriad tiny dainty hoof marks in the dust between the doorway facing him, and the ruined archway ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... being dismissed as impracticable,—first, by reason of the notorious unwillingness of the turtles to be caught, and, waiving that objection, because of the length of time it would take to achieve any passable imitation of the aldermanic dainty,—I was moved to an aside-declaration to the effect that my slight observation of the tastes of British tourists in the Federal States led to the suggestion of oysters as delicacies not wholly unlikely to find favor with their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... 8vo, dainty Cloth covers, with 8 Illustrations, 1s. net each, or in limp leather, with Photogravure Frontispiece, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... Elizabethan time was utterly unknown. The faith which demanded absolute purity of life, included the beginning of that cleanliness which is "next to godliness," if not an inherent part of godliness itself, and fine linen on bed and table had become more and more a necessity. The dainty, exquisite neatness that in the past has been inseparable from the idea of New England, began with these Puritan dames, who set their floating home in such order as they could, and who seized the last opportunity at Yarmouth of going on shore, not only for refreshment, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... to think of Peggy and her unswerving loyalty. Of her weekly parcel of dainty food, which had arrived that morning. Of the joy of Phineas and the disappointment of the unsophisticated Mo over the pate de foie gras. But his mind wandered back to his Doggie self and its humiliations and its needs and its yearnings. He welcomed enemy flares and star-shells and excursions ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... white things they are, too, if that is a sample," said Martha, noting with feminine interest a dainty garment in Charlotte's hands. "You're lucky ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... charming old-fashioned silhouette portrait in our family of a lovely young creature with a dainty profile and curls gathered in a knot. It is "sweet Kitty Weaver," who married John Cook Keen, son of the Revolutionary hero, and became the grandmother of Fanny Stevenson. Little Fanny, when on a visit to Philadelphia in her childhood days, was shown a pair of red satin slippers worn ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... years after the discovery, potatoes were carried to Spain at first as sweetmeats and delicacies. Oviedo says that "they were a dainty dish to set before the king," Labat describes potatoes a hundred years ago, as cultivated in Western Africa, and says of them, "Il y en a en Irlande, et en Angleterre," and that he had seen very good ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... one of the guerilleros, laughing, "he must have been a snake of good taste, to be caught toying around that dainty daughter of the old Spaniard! It reminds me of what the Book tells about Mother Eve and the old serpent. Now, ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... the door-way in her cool white dress looking so fresh and dainty and fair to see; her dark eyes had lighted with pleasure at sight of her friend, and the flush was still on her soft and rounded cheek. She was noting how his few days of marching and campaigning had improved him, even at the expense of a sensitive complexion. Mr. Davies's ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... advantage, isn't it?" She slipped a flower into his hand—frowned him into obedience, and smiled to reward him for obeying, at the same moment—lifted her dress again above the impurities of the road—and went on her way with a dainty and indolent deliberation, as a cat goes on her way when she has exhausted the enjoyment of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... of Virginia, saw the strange spectacle of her own white children gathered, for the first time, into free public schools which were supported by Northern charity, and taught by noble women with whom her high-bred Christian dames and dainty maidens would not deign to associate. The civilization of the North in the very hour of victory threw aside the cartridge-box, and appealed at once to the contribution-box to heal the ravages of war. At the door of every ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... voices, had been especially fashioned by nature for the making of daisy-chains. Martin challenged them to prove this, and they plucked lapfuls of the small white daisies with big yellow eyes, and threaded chains of great length, and hung them about each other's necks. And so deft and dainty was their touch that the chains never broke in the making or, what is still more delicate a matter, in the hanging. But Martin's chains always broke before he had joined the last daisy to the first, and the girls jeered at him for having no necklace to match ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... Mine, laced with rum, by a camp-fire under the stars; And not too dainty to mind the ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... recounting the story of his evil days the faces of his hearers expressed curiosity. Some appeared shocked, Monpavon especially. For him, this exposure of rags was in execrable taste, an absolute breach of good manners. Cardailhac, sceptical and dainty, an enemy to scenes of emotion, with face set as if it were hypnotized, sliced a fruit on the end of his fork into wafers as thin ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... mainly for catching small game, such as the beautiful little gazelles (Ncheri) with dark gray skins on the upper part of the body, white underneath, and satin-like in sleekness all over. Their form is very dainty, the little legs being no thicker than a man's finger, the neck long and the head ornamented with little pointed horns and broad round ears. The nets are tied on to trees in two long lines, which converge ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... they spread their dainty fare, For us they scent the midnight air; For us their glow-worm lamps they light, For us their music ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... spits Of certain gormandizing cits. With merry heart the fellow went Direct to Mr. Centpercent, Who loved, as well was understood, Whatever game was nice and good. This gentleman, with knowing air, Survey'd the dainty lot with care, Pronounced it racy, rich, and rare, And call'd his wife, to know her wishes About its purchase for their dishes. The lady thought the creatures prime, And for their dinner just in time; So sweet ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Follet found that he had had nothing to eat since the day before, so she prepared him a dainty meal which filled the mountain boy with wonder. There was a poached egg, a bit of toast and a cup of hot milk, none of which had he ever tasted or seen prepared before. But it all was very, very good, ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... She gave the incident a tighter twist by languishing at them in turns. She smiled, she sighed, she drove them mad by taking crescent bites out of a slice of bread and exhibiting the havoc of her little, white teeth with a delectably dainty gluttony. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... moment as they stood there talking of him, Mrs. Stannard's door opened and he came forth, the three ladies following. He did look well,—more than well, as he turned with extended hand to say good-by. "Dandy," his lithe-limbed sorrel, pricked up his dainty, pointed ears and whinnied eagerly as he heard his step on the piazza, giving himself a shake that threatened the dislocation of his burden of blankets, canteen, and saddle-bags. The ladies surrounded him at ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... In the third-floor-back of my skull I feel a light, airy, prurient, menacing tickling, Dainty as the pattering toes of nautch girls On a polished cabaret floor. Suddenly, With a crescendo like an approaching express train, The fury bursts upon me.... My brain explodes. Pinwheels of violet fire Whirl and spin before my bloodshot eyes— Violet, puce, ochre, nacre, euchre ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... of the west windows, there rose a little old lady at the sight of whom Buck's eyes widened in astonishment. Just what he had expected Mrs. Archer to be he hardly knew, but certainly it wasn't this dainty, delicate, Dresden-China person who came forward to greet him. Tiny she was, from her old-fashioned lace cap to the tips of her small, trim shoes. Her gown, of some soft gray stuff, with touches of old lace here and there, was modishly cut yet without any ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Then steed and rider gasped their lives away Slain by one spear. Now from her head he plucked The helmet splendour-flashing like the beams Of the great sun, or Zeus' own glory-light. Then, there as fallen in dust and blood she lay, Rose, like the breaking of the dawn, to view 'Neath dainty-pencilled brows a lovely face, Lovely in death. The Argives thronged around, And all they saw and marvelled, for she seemed Like an Immortal. In her armour there Upon the earth she lay, and seemed the Child Of Zeus, the tireless Huntress Artemis Sleeping, what ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... It was the sort of weather which on the opposite side of the continent arrives when spring is melting into summer and fortunate woman arrays herself in thin and dainty fabrics. But women everywhere with a proper regard for fashion rush the season, and autumn is the time to display the first smart habiliments of winter. No San Francisco woman of fashion would be guilty of comfortable garments in the glorious spring weather ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... interesting. A dainty head, delicate features, yellow hair, blue eyes, and a gentle sadness of mien that touched my heart. Had she been ugly what a ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... pursuit, though interested only in catching a glimpse of the widow and the shy eldest daughter. It must have been worth many experiments to gently succeed in putting their skill in hiding to naught. She slaps a dainty fishing-line through ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... should cost ten thousand ses-tertia, or three hundred thousand dollars. This he would not believe, and laid her a wager that she would fail in her promise. When the day came the dinner was as grand and dainty as those of the former days; but when Antony called upon her to count up the cost of the meats and wines, she said that she did not reckon them, but that she should herself soon eat and drink the ten thousand sestertia. She wore in her ears two ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... it heats and warms the body, remaining always the same beverage and not changing its substance. They swallow it hot as it comes from the fire and they drink it in long draughts, not at dinner time, but as a kind of dainty and sipped slowly while talking with one's friends. One cannot find any meetings among them where they drink it not.... With this drink, which they call cahue, they divert themselves in their conversations.... It is made ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... gentlemen, with fair smiling faces, powdered ear-locks, laced ruffles, and pink and blue silk coats and breeches; not forgetting the conquests of the lovely shepherdesses, with hoop petticoats and waists no thicker than an hour glass, who appeared ruling over their sheep and their swains with dainty crooks ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... at all. You see a little Pinturicchio. Note the gay bands of variegated patterns, the arabesques and fruits. Their hues have vanished, but their forms and certain mannerisms of the master are unmistakable. These dainty decorations were the sign manual of such quattrocento painters as Gozzoli and Pinturicchio; and to these men he, for whom these works of art were created, assigned the painting and adornment of the Vatican. We will come to him directly. It was for Michelangelo to make the creations of ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... to the absent lift-boy. "I'm sure he's only playing pitch-and-toss round the corner." She toiled up the three long flights of stairs—her dainty soul revolting at their unswept dinginess. Stella Hunt had been brought up in a big house on a wind-swept Cumberland fell, and there was no day in crowded Bloomsbury when she did not long for the clean open ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... England would have agreed with that verdict had they seen her lightly poised on the threshold of the old inn, the gray plumes of her high crowned riding hat nodding somewhat familiarly to the motes in the sunshine. Her gray velvet riding skirt was lifted high enough to reveal her dainty riding boots; her hair, bright and burnished as a fox's coat, fell in curls about her shoulders, and mischief gleamed from her tawny eyes, even as mischief parted her red lips over teeth as white as pearl. It almost seemed ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... Her dainty Limbs tinsel her Silk soft Sheets, Her Rose-crown'd Cheeks eclipse my dazled sight. O Glass! with too much joy my thoughts thou greets, And yet thou shew'st me day but by twilight. Ile kiss thee for the kindness I have felt, Her Lips one Kiss would ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... was bewitching, indeed, but by no means witch-like,—a frank, open smile with just a touch of natural feminine triumph in it. "No, not witchcraft," she answered, helping herself with her dainty fingers to a burnt almond from the Venetian glass dish,—"not witchcraft,—memory; aided, perhaps, by some native quickness of perception. Though I say it myself, I never met anyone, I think, whose memory goes quite ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... winning ways, amenity, amiability; winsomeness. loveliness &c (beauty) 845; sunny side, bright side; sweets &c (sugar) 396; goodness &c 648; manna in the wilderness, land flowing with milk and honey; bittersweet; fair weather. treat; regale &c (physical pleasure) 377; dainty; titbit^, tidbit; nuts, sauce piquante [Fr.]. V. cause pleasure, produce pleasure, create pleasure, give pleasure, afford pleasure, procure pleasure, offer pleasure, present pleasure, yield pleasure &c 827. please, charm, delight, becharm^, imparadise^; gladden ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the family were already in the room, and the table was laid for breakfast. Ruth greeted each one with a smile, but she did not speak, and began to move quietly about the table, giving those dainty little finishing touches which no true woman ever leaves to a servant. She put some of the roses in a vase, and rearranged this and that, moving lightly and softly about. Her footsteps were as soundless as the fall of tender leaves, and her garments made ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... week Rivers drove out with supplies. These were the eventful days of the week, and it was significant to observe with what tasteful care the young women thought it proper to dress on this day. Hats, dainty and fresh, cool muslins, spotless cuffs, ribbons. They came out of their cabins with all the little airs and graces of their Eastern homes. Bailey shared their good opinion, but he was always silent and a little timid in their presence, and usually disappeared as soon as Rivers came. "The social ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... of Italy and Italian art and Italian hopelessness extended. Again, on the one side, La Tribe's example went for something with his comrade in misfortune; but in the other scale hung relief from discomfort, with the prospect of a woman's smiles and a woman's flatteries, of dainty dishes, luxury, and passion. If he went now, he went to her from the jaws of death, with the glamour of adventure and peril about him; and the very going into her presence was a lure. Moreover, if he had been willing while ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... "Dainty well may't be," Quoth Pandora—"curious Vulcan Framed it cunningly; Jove bestowed it in my dowry: Like bright Phoebus' ray It shines without; within, what wealth I know not ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... which we have seen at Torcello. The apse itself, to-day (12th September, 1851), is not to be described; for just in front of it, behind the altar, is a magnificent curtain of new red velvet with a gilt edge and two golden tassels, held up in a dainty manner by two angels in the upholsterer's service; and above all, for concentration of effect, a star or sun, some five feet broad, the spikes of which conceal the whole of the figure of the Madonna except the head ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... were seated in front of a bright fire in a dainty little salon, she on a couch, I on cushions almost at her feet, looking up into her face. The street was silent. The lamp shed a soft light. It was one of those evenings which delight the soul, one of those moments which are never forgotten, one of those hours passed in peace and longing, ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a salver—two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect! And here the same lady, or another—for likeness is identity on tea-cups—is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead—a furlong off on the other side of the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Telimena looked up; Thaddeus with one hand pointed out a cloud to them, while with the other he squeezed Telimena's dainty fingers. The quiet scene lasted for several minutes; the Count spread a sheet of paper on his hat and took out his pencil; then, unwelcome to their ears, the house bell resounded, and straightway the quiet wood was ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... discomfort of the casual ghari. The scene was unbelievably brilliant. Amber felt like rubbing his eyes. Here were sidewalks, pavements, throbbing electric arcs, Englishmen in evening dress, fair Englishwomen in dainty gowns and pretty wraps, the hum of English voices, the very smell of civilisation. And back there, just across the border he had so recently crossed, still reigned the midnight of the Orient, glamorous with the glamour of the Arabian Nights, dreadful with its dumb menace, its ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... were a woman it seems to me I should take, on the contrary, a confessor who was pliable and caressible and who would not violently pillory my dainty little sins. I would have him indulgent, oiling the hinges of confession, enticing forth with beguiling gestures the misdeeds that hung back. It is true there would be risk of seducing a confessor who ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... ladies, who invited the possessor to innumerable afternoon tea-parties, where they drew heavy drafts on his unflagging patience, and kept him steadily engaged with patterns and designs for embroidery, leather flowers, and other dainty knickknacks. And in return for all his exertions they called him "sweet" and "beautiful," and applied to him many other enthusiastic adjectives seldom heard in connection with masculine names. In the university, talents of this ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... forward, a smile for us both, looking dainty and sweet, although the heavy mass of brown hair appeared somewhat ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... simple and natural, and its tender little melodies fell pleasantly upon ears too well accustomed to the pomposities of Rameau and his school. At first lovers of opera comique in Paris had to subsist chiefly upon translations from the Italian; but in 1755 'Ninette a la Cour,' a dainty little work written by a Neapolitan composer, Duni, to a French libretto, gained a great success. Soon afterwards, Monsigny, a composer who may well be called the father of opera comique, produced his first work, and ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... The father's prayer was simple and sincere and some of its sentences were remembered for many a day. After prayers the girl attended to the flowers. This was her work for the summer. I saw her gather from their lovely garden dainty blossoms and sprays of green, making them with unusual skill into bouquets for the Flower Mission in the city. Then three small baskets were filled with pansies. These went to three old ladies in the factory section of the village. She told me they were "the sweetest old ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... expression, the face was one to strike a casual observer as lovely—as childishly sweet, perhaps. Yet there was something more than childishness in the broad brow, and firm chin. The little white hands were shapely and strong, and the dainty feet pressed down the daisies softly yet firmly, with quiet ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... near but there were other smells in the night. Once the air near the ground was rank with fox. He knew that smell, but he did not know the fainter scent of wildcat. Neither could he tell that the dainty-footed killer had slipped up within half a dozen yards of his back and crouched a long moment yearning towards the mountain of warm meat but knowing that it was beyond its powers to make ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... shop clerks, sober citizens, and frisky, flirtatious little ouvrieres, these last being all hatless, as is characteristic of the workgirl class, but singularly attractive in their neat black dresses and dainty low-cut shoes. There was also much in evidence another type of female whose extravagance of costume and boldness of manner loudly proclaimed ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... home life in England. All this is in danger of becoming a shell-fretted wilderness now. "Long Tom" once having turned his attention in this direction continued to pound away until two shots struck the house itself, and, bursting inside, shattered the dainty contents ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... on the terrace step, close to the marble vases where heliotropes swung their dainty lilac chalices against her shoulder, and the scarlet geraniums stared unabashed, Beryl's gaze wandered from the lovely park and ancient trees, to the unbroken facade of the gray old house; and as, in painful contrast she recalled the bare ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... through the door, but was stopped by some one coming out. Sylvia! Never more beautiful than now! Echochee put up both arms to stop her and I noticed—for in tense moments one's eyes retain some of the most insignificant details—how incongruously her brown old bony fingers sank into the dainty folds of her lady's morning gown. But Sylvia would not be stopped. She placed a hand on the woman's shoulder and spoke a few hurried words, then raised her head and looked imperiously at the ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... for the time being in the limelight of public attention. It was the observed of all observers. Teas were given in honor of its various members, and bevies of young girls in dainty summer apparel brightened the streets of Oakdale, during the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... that which is above stated, I see in Thorpe's sale-catalogue a set of the Bannatyne books, lacking five, priced L25. Had a dry walk from the Court by way of dainty, and made it a long one. Anne went at ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... your hand could alone save me from it, I would scorn your aid. Aid! The very thought fires my blood and nerves my hand. Aid! Will a Beaufort give me back my birthright— restore my dead mother's fair name? Minion!—sleek, dainty, luxurious minion!—out of my path! You have my fortune, my station, my rights; I have but poverty, and hate, and disdain. I swear, again and again, that you shall ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... him before, with a good-for-nothing young spendthrift taken at the last moment "because he wrote a good hand," and a mixed crew, Hudson crossed the wide Atlantic for the last time. He sailed by way of Iceland, where "fresh fish and dainty fowl, partridges, curlew, plover, teale, and goose" much refreshed the already discontented crews, and the hot baths of Iceland delighted them. The men wanted to return to the pleasant land discovered in the last expedition, but the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... Transcendentalism. And these were foolishly accepted by many as its chief and only signs. It was supposed that the folly was complete at Brook Farm, and it was indescribably ludicrous to observe reverend Doctors and other Dons coming out to gaze upon the extraordinary spectacle, and going about as dainty ladies hold their skirts and daintily step from stone to stone in a muddy street, lest they be soiled. The Dons seemed to doubt whether the mere contact had not smirched them. But droll in itself, it was a thousandfold ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... been for the charity of a poor woman, who gave him a piece of black bread, he might have starved. Refreshed, however, with this dainty, he prosecuted his rambles. Among other wonderful sights, he saw the splendid equipages of many of the nobility, drawn up in the street before the mansion of the minister, who was holding a levee. Fortune seemed to have directed his steps thither, for he saw a familiar face among the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... characteristic speed in walking. So Diana doubtless moved. The spring sunshine had found Chris and the clear, soft brown of her cheek was the most beautiful thing in nature to the antiquary. He knew her face so well now: the dainty poise of her head, the light of her eyes, the dark curls that always clustered in the same places, the little updrawing at the corner of her mouth as she smiled, the sudden gleam of her teeth when she laughed, and the abrupt transitions ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... stories must stand condemned. But such a view is surely too narrow. Much as I admire that lady's writings, I never can think of a world from which everything was eliminated that did not commend itself to the dainty taste of herself and her friends, without a feeling of impatience and suffocation. It takes a huge variety of men and things to make a good world. And ranches and CANONS, veldts and prairies, tropical forests and coral islands, and all that goes to ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... supporting some sick person. He repeated some mocking reply of double meaning, which he himself had given to some one who made inquiry. He enjoyed the play upon words, softly applauding his own wit. And all the time the poor helpless outstretched arms of the dead lay close to his dainty boot! Then another stooped (my heart stopped beating), and picked up a letter lying on the ground—a letter that had dropped out of M. de Poissy's pocket—a letter from his wife, full of tender words of endearment and pretty babblings of love. This was read aloud, with coarse ribald comments ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... putting my packet of the fragrant leaves into the bushmen's kettle, and drinking it afterwards out of one of their pannikins. He tried to bribe me to this latter piece of simplicity by promising to wash the tin pannikin out for me first. Now I was not dainty or over particular; I could not have enjoyed my New Zealand life so thoroughly if I had been either; but I did not like the idea of using the bushmen's tea equipage. In the first place, the tea never tastes the same when made in their way, and allowed to boil for a moment or two ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... hard. The ground was made up of broken stone, and all that grew was a dry and stunted brush not more than six inches high, of which the poor animals took an occasional dainty bite, and seemed hardly able ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... black dress in which she had escaped from Nick the previous night, the somber hue of which was relieved only by occasional flashes of her dainty white lace underskirts, as she swept quickly from place to place, with her lithe figure crouching at times, and her every movement as swift and impulsive as ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... a fascinating woman. Parasang was doubtless himself a striking person when he was young. I have already said what he was like in his old age. Both the man and woman had retained the personal regard for themselves which is so pleasant in old people, and Mrs. Blood was still as dainty as could be, in her trim gowns, generally of some fluffy black or silvery gray material, and Parasang was as strong and wholesome looking as an ox. I shall always regret that I was not present when they met. A study of their faces then ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... without being caught, come down a slippery path without falling. He can look into sunny eyes and not be dazzled. He listens to the siren voices, yet sails on with unveered helm. He clasps white hands in his, but no electric "Lulu"-like force holds him bound in their dainty pressure. ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... dressed like any country gentleman, but, when he dismounted to take the oath, tethered his horse with his own hands. More really significant was the presence of the populace that elected him—the great heaving, unwashed crowd elbowing the dainty politicians in the very presence chamber. The President's inaugural address was full of a generous spirit of reconciliation. "We are all Republicans," he said, "we are all Federalists." Every difference of opinion was not a difference of principle, nor need such differences ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... no desire to control his proceedings, to know what he was about. When she spoke of Miss Schley she spoke kindly, sympathetically, but with a dainty, delicate pity, as one who secretly murmurs, "If she had only had a chance!" Lord Holme began to think it a sad thing that she had not had a chance. The mere thought sent the American a step down from her throne. She stood below him now, as he stood below Viola. ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... so opposite to the coldness of the great world without—something so serene and elevated in his youth, that even the most inveterate criminal awaited his coming with emotions of joy, and gave a ready ear to his kindly advice. Indeed, the prisoners called him their child; and he seemed not dainty of their approach, but took them each by the hand, sat at their side, addressed them as should one brother address another;—yea, he made them to feel that what was their interest it was his joy ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... excite the cupidity of both bird and child. There was no cruelty in the nature of Patience, and she made prisoners of neither birds nor squirrels, but cunning cages here and there held most lifelike counterfeits of their willing captives. There was nothing in the room that was alive, except the dainty owner, but it seemed to be a museum of natural history. The rugs on the floor were of her own devising and sewing together, and rivaled in color and ingenuity ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a similar result in himself to the one I had experienced or pretended I had experienced. I was much pleased with the way in which Minna had arranged our new little flat in Zurich. She had bought a large and luxurious divan, several carpets for the floor and various dainty little luxuries, and in the back room my writing-table of common deal was covered with a green tablecloth and draped with soft green silk curtains, all of which my friends admired immensely. This table, at ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... out her pocket scissors, and snipped with ardour, then drew off the cover. It was a doll's bedstead, of polished mahogany, with four pineapple-topped posts, exactly like the great one in which Hildegarde herself slept; and in it, under dainty frilled sheets, blankets and coverlid, lay two of the prettiest dolls that ever were seen. Their nightgowns were of fine linen; the nightcaps, tied under their dimpled chins, were sheer lawn, exquisitely embroidered. One tiny waxen hand lay outside the coverlid, ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... better that you should throw your vice and your graver and your burnisher, and all that heap of dainty tools, into the sea, and carve an Atlas such as we have heard you talk about ever since we could first speak Greek. Come, set to work on a colossus! You have but to speak the word, and the finest clay shall be ready on your modeling-table by to-morrow, either here or in Glaukias's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... better than the serious industry of castles and canals. Deliverance from shoes and stockings, the first thrill of pleasure and surprise at the cool touch of the water, the wild rush along the brim, the dainty advance till the sea covers the little ankles, the tremulous waiting with an air of defiance as the wave deepens round till it touches the knee, the firm line with which the dabblers grasp hand in hand and face the advancing tide, the sudden panic, the break, ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Point to Old Windsor Lock is a delightful bit of the river. A shady road, dotted here and there with dainty little cottages, runs by the bank up to the "Bells of Ouseley," a picturesque inn, as most up- river inns are, and a place where a very good glass of ale may be drunk - so Harris says; and on a matter of this kind you can take Harris's ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... has never gone out. Words, looks—these are the weapons of romance now. They are sheathed in their scabbards of velvet politesse, but just as easy of drawing, just as light to flash out and tingle in the air as ever were the dainty little Toledo blades of some odd two ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... to make an imaginary leaf on an old stick beautiful. I'm sorry you don't care for the position of women; I should have liked us to be friends; and it is the only thing about which I think much or feel much—if, indeed, I have any feeling about anything," she added, flippantly, readjusting her dainty little arms. "When I was a baby, I fancy my parents left me out in the frost one night, and I ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... show you a photograph of a young mother holding her baby in her arms, and the baby, if it is young enough, will probably be in its bag. But unless you look closely you will take the bag for a long robe, it hangs so softly and seems so little in the mother's way. It will be as dainty as a robe too, and when people have the means as costly; for you can deck out your bag with ribbons and laces as easily as your robe. The objection to foster-mothers has reality behind it, but the evils of the system are well understood, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... Pepys had finished reading, and no one in that crowded court had thought of uttering a sound; the magistrate's eyes were fixed upon the handsome lady in the magnificent gown, who was mopping her eyes with a dainty ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... hills. At the hills? Or did he see instead a pair of blue eyes swimming in tears through which divinest pity shone? Did he see a saucy, piquant face framed in ringlets that escaped in bewitching wilfulness from under the dainty cap of a Quakeress? Did he see—— Harriet's voice, tremulous from a mist of tears in its laughter, ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... serve the poor player almost as it stands. It is not too late to think about the comedy. In the meanwhile the novel does very well, and if he had made his story a book for the play, we should have missed many dainty descriptions of scenery. Nothing is so good as his description of the Lake District in Autumn, unless it be his pictures of the surroundings of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... fair men, the courteous men, The delicate men with delicate feet, that went Curling their small beards Agag-fashion, yea Pruning their mouths to nibble words behind With pecking at God's skirts-small broken oaths Fretted to shreds between most dainty lips, And underbreath some ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... all its appointments should correspond, and so they did, for the table—which we afterwards found to be made of solid walnut, polished to the brilliance of a mirror—was covered with an immaculate tablecloth of snowy damask, upon which glittered a table equipage of solid silver, cut glass, and dainty porcelain, with a handsome silver centrepiece filled with recently cut flowers, apparently gathered no later than the previous day in the flower-clad forest on the margin of the river which we had ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... made reply that a good many men had taken more trouble than he without being rewarded in the end with such a dainty dish. So saying, he showed him the pasty, which he was carrying under his cloak, and which was big enough to feed an army. The secretary was so glad to see it that, although he had a very large and ugly mouth, he mincingly made it so small ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... to propitiate this mild and miniature Cerberus with a dainty piece of ham, but was rewarded only by a disdainful sniff and angrier snarl. The politic cat, however, with wary glances at the dog and the stranger, stole noiselessly to the meat, seized it, and retreated ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... centre of this pole the porcupine was suspended by a string, so that it hung low and near enough to the fire to roast nicely, while it was twirled around on the string. It was soon sending out a delicious odour, and in an hour was quite done, and ready to be served. A dainty morsel it was to the hungry voyageurs, resembling in some respects roast pig, and every scrap of it ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... much more then a friend! Go, Benjamin Jeremiah, and tell your aunt that Mr. Pelham will dine with us; and order, furthermore, that the barrel of oysters sent unto us as a present, by my worthy friend Dr. Swallow'em, be dressed in the fashion that seemeth best; they are a classic dainty, and we shall think of our great masters the ancients whilst we devour them. And—stop, Benjamin Jeremiah, see that we have the wine with the black ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... When lo! from out the wooden tub A beauteous little sprite, Emerging kissed her tiny hands, The household flower that night. Then 'round a caldron on a grate To spoil the broth appeared, Five little dainty fairy cooks Whom tout le monde now cheered. Next came the awful family squalls, Which Granny vainly tried To stay with Winslow's stuff for which Full many a babe has cried; The stuff and rod were all in vain, The squallers loudly ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... brass knocker burnished to the colour of fine gold. The railings of iron round the area were also coloured green, and the appearance of the whole exterior was as spotless and neat as Miss Whichello herself. It was an ideal house for a dainty old spinster such as she was, and rested in the very shadow of the Bishop Gandolf's cathedral like the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Mrs. Sheldon's dressing-room, while that lady was preparing for rest, with considerable elaboration of detail in the way of hair-brushing, and putting away of neck-ribbons and collars and trinkets in smart little boxes and handy little drawers, all more or less odorous from the presence of dainty satin-covered sachets. The sachets, and the drawers, and boxes, and trinkets were Mrs. Sheldon's best anchorage in this world. Such things as these were the things that made life worth endurance ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... her a wrist-watch, a dainty French affair of gold and enamel; and a contrite note excusing himself for the summer delinquencies and renewing his promise to ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... stops a minute to laugh at it himself, then begins anew with fresh vigour; for all the spirits he is driving before him seem to him as Fata Morganas, ugly masks, in fact, if he can but make them turn about; but he laughs that they seem to others such dainty Ariels. His talk, like his books, is full of pictures; his critical strokes masterly. Allow for his point of view, and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject. I cannot speak more or wiselier of him ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... name was of Tommy's choosing—was ready for occupation, and they had just finished a tour of it. There was nothing in it that was not fresh and bright and dainty—like Tommy herself. The rooms were small, but they had good windows, where the crisp, short curtains were not allowed to obscure the view. There were fresh mattings and linoleums on the floors, and the home-made furniture ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... would have been no interesting conversation, no glowing bit of color in the centre of the table like this bowl of autumn leaves and berries. At home there would have been no attempt at any pleasing effect in the dainty serving of courses. There ham was ham and eggs were eggs, and it made no difference how they were slapped on to the table, so long as they were well cooked. There, meal-time was merely a time to satisfy one's appetite as quickly as possible and hurry away from the ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... closer; but the walking is not very good, is it?" She glanced down at her dainty French shoes, then at Cherry's hunting-boots. "Do ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... 'they' was not very precisely visualised. He saw Sheila, and Harry, and dainty pale-blue Bettie Lovat, and cautious old Wedderburn, and Danton, and Craik, and cheery, gossipy Dr Sutherland, and the verger, Mr Dutton, and Critchett, and the gardener, and Ada, and the whole vague populous host that keep one as definitely in one's place in the world's ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... that a scruple of conscience or of pride, not without its nobleness, had made him refuse the importunities of Gawtrey for less sordid raiment; the same feeling made it his custom to avoid sharing the luxurious and dainty food with which Gawtrey was wont to regale himself. For that strange man, whose wonderful felicity of temperament and constitution rendered him, in all circumstances, keenly alive to the hearty ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... pointing to the rusty weapon in Mr. Whitney's hands, "is an old Colt's revolver, a 38. On the morning of the murder, after you and the coroner had gone, I found the bullet for which we had searched unsuccessfully, and from that hour to this I have known, what before I had suspected, that this dainty little weapon of Mr. Mainwaring's played no part in the shooting. Here is the bullet, you can see ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... the newspaper in your handbag and carry it off with you," said Isabella Marne as her sister entered the dining room. The sun shone in upon a window full of blooming plants, a bowl of daffodils glowed upon the table and the whole room looked as cheerful and buoyant, as dainty and pleasing as did the little lady in a pink and white muslin gown who was putting the last touches to the breakfast table. "Mother is coming down this morning," she went on, "and I don't want her ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... encouraged by People of Rank and Figure) it was not, like other Ladies, to hear those poor Animals bray, nor to see Fellows run naked, or to hear Country Squires in bob Wigs and white Girdles make love at the side of a Coach, and cry, Madam, this is dainty Weather. Thus she described the Diversion; for she went only to pray heartily that no body might be hurt in the Crowd, and to see if the poor Fellows Face, which was distorted with grinning, might any way be brought ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Hartley, with a sigh, "that I have sort of spoiled you, letting you have your own way. And maybe Mammy Lindy and I, in our anxiety that you should be well and strong, and sit the saddle like a Texas daughter should, haven't taught you always just the dainty little lady ways—that you ought to ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... its broad branches so far and so wide, Their shadows are dancing in midst of the tide. "Who wakens my nestlings," the raven he said, "My beak shall ere morn in his blood be red. For a blue swoln corpse is a dainty meal. And I'll have my share with ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... ground, a number of bees were flying in and out a great hole, with all the bustle and buzzing usual to those busy people. Now, it is well known that bears are mightily fond of honey, and will run great risks in order to obtain this dainty, and Bruin was very far from being an exception to his tribe. He was too ignorant to reflect that it was a great deal too early in the season to hope for any store, but, consulting only his own inclinations, he lost no time in climbing up the tree; and when he had reached ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... star! it irks me whilst I write! As erst the bard by Mulla's silver stream, Oft, as he told of deadly dolorous plight, Sighed as he sung, and did in tears indite. For brandishing the rod, she doth begin To loose the brogues, the stripling's late delight! And down they drop; appears his dainty skin, Fair as the furry coat ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Road—East Street—which is as perfect as any nightscape ever conceived by any artist. At day or dark it is incomparably subtle. By day it is a lane of crazy meat and vegetable stalls and tumbling houses, whose colours chime softly with their background. By night it is a dainty riot of flame and tousled stone, the gentle dusk of the near distance deepening imperceptibly to purple, and finally to haunting chaos. And—it is a beautiful thought—there are thousands and thousands of streets ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... went to bed, he heard her in the next room turning out the drawer where the old baby-clothes had been stored away ever since little Edith had discarded them for clothes of a larger size. And next morning she was up betimes, starching and ironing and goffering dainty little frills with such a look of love and satisfaction on her face, that he had not the heart to hint that she had availed herself somewhat liberally of his permission, and that less dainty care and crispness ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... her, anyway. Seemed like everything in me turned to words and poured out without my having to keep it going. I just stood there and watched myself say things. You see, Annabel is so dainty and pretty, and naturally so sweet—and Mr. Gledware—well, he ISN'T. The more I thought of that, and the better I remembered poor Wilfred pining away for her in the desert, and not coming back to see me because he couldn't get HER out of his brain, and how she changed from him to his brother, and ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... but the Boss was always kind. His habits were simple. He shared camp life with his gangs. The only visible signs of wealth consisted of a big, shimmering diamond stone of ice and fire that glittered and burned on one of his fingers, and the dainty, beautiful thoroughbred mare he rode between camps and across the country ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... narrative was broken short. He was writing the last chapter on a pair of ladies' dainty cuffs, when he stopped and listened. He arose to his feet. "Do you know," he said, "I thought a moment ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... ripple of the water to the plash of passing gondolas took on the note of distance and soothed her like a lullaby, as the charming maid yielded herself to the golden daydream—the soft breezes lifting the bright rings of hair that clustered about her dainty head, while the wonderful light of the skies of Venice smiled down upon her like a caress. The strangeness slipped away from the new facts she had been repeating to herself, for she had already begun to take pride ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... improving effect upon the quality of that animal's fleece, which nowhere reaches greater perfection than in New South Wales. Cattle also thrive and increase very much in the Australian settlements, and animals of all kinds in New South Wales are exceedingly dainty: if shut up in a field of good grass they will starve themselves with fretting rather than eat it, they are so anxious to get out upon the sweet natural pastures. Although it is to be hoped and expected that, under judicious management, these colonies will always be able to supply their inhabitants ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... my feet, you'll see how I do it," said she; and lifting her skirt above her dainty ankles, glided across the floor on tiptoe, as lightly as a fawn at play. But Sidney Trove was not a graceful creature. The muscles on his lithe form, developed in the school of work or in feats of strength at which he had met no equal, ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the "castle" with its refined ways, between her in her dainty girlhood and me sitting there, numbed with the cold that was slowly stealing away my senses with my courage. There was warmth and cheer where she was. Here—— An overpowering sense of desolation came upon me. I hitched a little nearer the edge. What if——? ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... had set in. The sky was still clear and glittering: the whitened fields sparkled in the chilly sunlight: here and there, on high, distant peaks, gleamed dainty caps of snow. All the week Anthony was to be busy at the fell-foot, wall-building against the coming of the winter storms: the work was heavy, for he was single-handed, and the stone had to be fetched from off the fell-side. Two or three times a day he led his rickety, lumbering cart along ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... seemed withdrawn from them, not they from her. A woman passed with a baby in her arms. The light from a kiosk fell on it as she passed. What a pretty, sweet face it had. Why did it not have a pretty, delicate Breton cap? As she went on, that kept beating in her brain—why did not the child wear a dainty Breton cap—a white Breton cap? The face kept peeping from behind the lights—without the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... would not venture at the "Mitre" with Boswell alone. At Boswell's last "Mitre" evening with Johnson, May, 1778, Johnson would not leave Mrs. Williams, the blind old lady who lived with him, till he had promised to send her over some little dainty from the tavern. This was very kindly and worthy of the man who had the coat but not the heart of a bear. From 1728 to 1753 the Society of Antiquaries met at the "Mitre," and discussed subjects then wrongly considered frivolous. The Royal Society had also conclaves at the same celebrated tavern; ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury |
