"Gossip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and personal. Howard knew none of the people of whom they were talking and all that they said was of the nature of gossip. But they talked in a sparkling way, using good English, speaking in agreeable voices with a correct accent, and indulging in a great deal of ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... fumble in search of a bell. The Hepworths lived chiefly in the room at the back. The light in the drawing-room may have been switched off for economy's sake. Jetson recounted the incident on reaching home, not as anything remarkable, but just as one mentions an item of gossip. The only one who appears to have attached any meaning to the affair was Jetson's youngest daughter, then a girl of eighteen. She asked one or two questions about the man, and, during the evening, slipped out by herself and ran round to the Hepworths. She found the house empty. At all events, she ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... you." The flesh-coloured coat was then Moiselet. I followed him into his room, and we began to drink with all our might. Two other bottles arrived; we only went on in couples. Moiselet, in his capacity of chorister, cooper, sexton, &c. &c. was no less a sot than gossip; he got tipsy with great good-will, and incessantly spoke to me in the jargon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... glowed under the approbation of Altiora Bailey, and was envied and discussed, praised and depreciated, in the House and in smoking-room gossip, you really have as much of a man as usually figures in a novel or an obituary notice. But I am tremendously impressed now in the retrospect by the realisation of how little that frontage represented me, and just how little such frontages do represent the complexities of the intelligent ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... had been living in a distant city. When he had met them he had found their company uninteresting and unprofitable. He had wondered how he had ever cared for that sort of thing, and where had been the pleasure of it. Was he going back now to the gossip of that window, to the heavy discussions of traps and horses, to late breakfasts and early suppers? Must he listen to their congratulations on his being one of them again, and must he guess at their whispered ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... other animals, but are always found in villages or large settlements. They are a wild, frolicksome set of fellows when undisturbed, restless, and ever on the move. They seem to take especial delight in chattering away the time, and visiting about, from hole to hole, to gossip and talk over one another's affairs; at least, so their actions would indicate. Old hunters say that when they find a good location for a village, and no water is handy, they dig a well to supply the wants ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... people's dinners, they had a full-sized croquet lawn and tennis beyond, and understood the art of bringing people together. And they never talked of anything at all, never discussed, never even encouraged gossip. They were ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... autumn day, to get a pattern for silk embroidery. Stamping-blocks and tracing-wheels were unknown quantities to Miss Chrissy. Her stumpy little pencil—and that, too, seemed always the same—had to do the transfering. She liked a bit of harmless gossip, dear soul; and the young girls of the town made a point of supplying the lack of a newspaper with their busy tongues. So she knew ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... certainly the gossip headquarters of the world. Some years ago the whole town was invaded by a mania for anonymous letter writing, and when the smoke had cleared away few were ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... about her throat. Many, too, had heard something of her story, and looked eagerly at the picture of the gate Nicanor blazoned upon her breast. But the greater part concerned themselves only with her delicate beauty, passing from mouth to mouth the gossip concerning Domitian, his quarrel with the Caesars, and the intention which he had announced of buying this captive at the public sale. Always it was the same talk; sometimes more brutal and open than others—that was the ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... is too much like the painted sparrows sold as canaries—the paint comes off and the real nature of the bird is revealed. For instance, how can you ornament the truth if, after testifying here, you go out to gossip and slander and injure your neighbour? The word lived out is more powerful than its mere repetition. The teaching may be good and powerful, the testimony still more so; but the evidence of the life and spirit is the ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... Auteuil, and the handsomest turnout on the road, which he presented to a banker's wife, without letting any one know his reason for doing so; all this was sufficient to make him the central point around which revolved the social gossip of the day. But, besides this, the handsome stranger makes his appearance at the theatres in the company of a lady in Grecian dress, whose transcendent beauty and countless diamonds awake alike admiration and cupidity. Like moths around the flame, society flutters ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... of blazing wood or bituminous coal—-which gives the human spirit so deep an insight into its fellows and melts all humanity into one cordial heart of hearts. Domestic life, if it may still be termed domestic, will seek its separate corners, and never gather itself into groups. The easy gossip; the merry yet unambitious Jest; the life-like, practical discussion of real matters in a casual way; the soul of truth which is so often incarnated in a simple fireside word,—will disappear from earth. Conversation will contract the air of debate, ...
— Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hitherward in the day time, when slatternly women gossip round the area gates, and the silence is broken by the hoarse, wailing cry of "Coals—any coals—three and sixpence a sack—co-o-o-als!" chanted in a tone that absence of response has stamped with chronic melancholy; but then the street knows me not, and my old friend ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... enough to be effectually reached by common notoriety alone that is to say, so long as the human environment to which the individual is required to adapt himself in respect of reputability is comprised within his sphere of personal acquaintance and neighborhood gossip—so long the one method is about as effective as the other. Each will therefore serve about equally well during the earlier stages of social growth. But when the differentiation has gone farther and it becomes necessary to reach ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the church without furtive glances of expectation to the right and left; he lost that constant feeling of apprehension and the necessity to nerve himself for resistance. He had never been one to gossip or concern himself with other people's matters, and Jane Sands had never brought the news of the place to amuse her master, as many in her place would have done; so now he had no way of knowing if his daughter's return had been known ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... not the least sympathy in the world for an old woman who had a very sharp chin, who stared at one through two pairs of spectacles, and whose conversation was about her own health and the dampness of the springtime, besides the dreariest gossip about Oakdale's least interesting people. Perhaps it might have occurred to the girl that it is very forlorn to have nothing else to talk about, and that even old Mrs. Woodward might have liked to hear about some ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... probably covered the whole of this. A note on the receipt speaks of a picture at the east end in 1800, a pulpit in 1806, and a new window in 1808; but whether all these were new or merely repaired does not appear. From Goodwin's "Ely Gossip" we learn that the upper part of the doorway of the galilee porch was "renewed in plaster." In a pamphlet published in 1827 it is said that "so much has been done to this cathedral of late as to afford a reasonable ground of hope, that ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... accepted it without hesitation but for the hanging for forging a frank. As that offence never was capital, and was made a felony punishable with transportation for seven years by 42 Geo. III. c. 63., I was impelled to compare the statement founded on gossip with more formal accounts; and I send the result in illustration of the small reliance which is to be placed on tradition in such matters. The arrival of Hatfield in a carriage is graphically described. He called himself the Hon. Augustus Hope, brother of the Earl ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... in the open air, on stone seats; and when not thus occupied, the top of the rock may well have been a convenient place of retirement for people who did not want to be disturbed by new acquaintances, and the constant eddies of new gossip in the market-place. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... without having a little chat with her. And her neighbor on the right, Mrs. Schneider, a widow like herself, who needed but to reach out in order to tap on her window, had not knocked at her door for days. What ailed them? She was not conscious of any unfriendliness, nor had she started any gossip. Could it be because of William? Mercy, the poor boy; what did they have against him? He had tended the cattle so carefully; he was fond of every cow, and if a little pig grew weary, he brought it home in his arms. They would not find another shepherd so good as ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... is there any impulse so strong as the love to talk. Therefore, when the morning's meal is ended, the pretty mother laces the boots around her shapely little ankles, puts her blanket about her, and sallies out to one of her friend's houses for the morning's gossip. In speaking of her dress, I neglected to state that although the Metis woman had for gown the costliest fabric ever woven in Cashmere, she would not be content, on the hottest summer day, in walking twenty paces to ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... young yet, my friend," replied my host, "but the time will arrive when you will learn to judge for yourself of what is going on in the world, without trusting to the gossip of others. Believe nothing you hear, and only one-half that you see. Now about our Maisons de Sante, it is clear that some ignoramus has misled you. After dinner, however, when you have sufficiently recovered from the fatigue of your ride, I will be happy to take you over the house, and introduce ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and greet each other, gossip, and the women inspect with critical eye the dresses of their neighbors, to see if they are ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... amid all this immorality, and, although she had learned suddenly to disseminate, although she received the comtesse with outstretched hand and smiling lips, she felt this consciousness of hollowness, this contempt for humanity increasing and enveloping her, and the petty gossip of the district gave her a still greater disgust, a still lower opinion of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... crop of 7,500,000 bales of cotton, worth $450,000,000, and its cash equivalent in grain, grasses and fruit. This enormous crop could not have come from the hands of sullen and discontented labor. It comes from peaceful fields, in which laughter and gossip rise above the hum of industry, and contentment runs with the singing plough. It is claimed that this ignorant labor is defrauded of its just hire, I present the tax books of Georgia, which show that the negro twenty-five years ago a slave, has in Georgia alone $10,000,000 of assessed ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Snowball hesitated. He did not like to gossip about family matters, but it was a friend of the family who ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... GUIDO That was idle gossip, I fancy. The Duke rarely rides abroad without my—(he stops)—without my lavish patron Eglamore, the friend ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... over the gate, Mrs Swadling caught sight of her, and, throwing her apron over her head, crossed the street, bent on gossip. Then Mrs Jones, who had been watching her through the window, dropped her ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... the comradeship which had been established between them, the faithful under-keeper resolved to maintain a strict watch over his gossip Tomkins, and be in readiness to give the alarm should occasion arise. True, he thought, he had reason to believe that his said friend, notwithstanding his drunken and enthusiastic rants, was as trustworthy as he was esteemed by Dr. Rochecliffe; ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... view to be a rather stout man with a shockingly bad hat and creases all over his linen coats; and when the maid who dwelt in the same house with this actual author testified, during the course of a gossip, that he was in no wise different from other men—which is to say, he made no end of a fuss if the toast was not to his liking and threw his burnt matches down anywhere, and shouted angrily if there was no soap in the bathroom—why then, when all these things were discovered, Anna simply walked up ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... crowd dispersed, and the baby, with its brace of mothers, gone to bed, the new friends sat cozily down and enjoyed an hour or two of feminine gossip, exchanged kisses, cards, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... the angry retort which rose to his lips. Little wonder the bank people were so indifferent to the old man's safety; little wonder no one had troubled to bring him news of the incident which formed the main item of gossip from end to end of the district. If this was the way he treated a visitor who paid, and paid dearly, for his board and bed, how, Durham asked himself, would he treat an ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... "Few men enjoy a convivial occasion with his gusto, or have the constitution to indulge as he does. Gossip charges him with living beyond his purse. Some ill-natured rumors assert that he allows the rites of Bacchus to interfere ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... careful management of Miss Bent the wife of John Powers soon became an expert in domestic science. But Powers, getting impatient for a meeting between his mother and wife, asked Mollie Bent to arrange it. So accordingly Miss Mollie visited at the home of her friends, the Fogels, and during the gossip Miss Bent casually remarked to Mrs. Fogel that she had a most charming friend, an Indian maid, over at the school whom she would like to introduce ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... have daunted the contemporary gladiators, Slack and Broughton. He shows his Christian humility not merely by familiarity with his poorest parishioners, but in sitting up whole nights in tavern kitchens, drinking unlimited beer, smoking inextinguishable pipes, and revelling in a ceaseless flow of gossip. We smile at the good man's intense delight in a love-story, at the simplicity which makes him see a good Samaritan in Parson Trulliber, at the absence of mind which makes him pitch his AEschylus into the fire, or walk a dozen miles in profound ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... as my spirit yearns for thine Thine yearns for mine, why thus delay? And yet, what answer might be mine If, pausing on her way, Some gossip bade me tell Whence the deep sighs that from my ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... cumpare are corruptions of the Spanish comadre and compadre, which have an origin analogous to the English "gossip" in its original meaning of "sponsor in baptism." In the Philippines these words are used among the simpler folk as familiar forms ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... presumed; for Lucretia is fond of gossip. She would gladly induce you to go into society, knowing that a woman of your beauty and extreme youth cannot appear in the world alone, and that she would naturally be the person to accompany you. Would you like to ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... they think to this day I went to Coney Island out of curosity and Pleasure Huntin', instead of the lofty motives that actuated me. I knowed Bildad's wife wuz most bed-rid so I would be free to conduct my search with no gossip ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... already been told about your father. I have promised that you shall go into your mother's room and take possession of it on your fifteenth birthday. That is enough. I am grieved that you should have listened to vulgar gossip about our affairs; but I may tell you that your mother left money to provide for you ten ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... him. Then he proceeded to catechise me in excellent English, with now and then a phrase of French, as to the doings in my own land. Admirably informed this Italian gentleman proved himself. I defy you to find in Almack's more intelligent gossip. He inquired as to the chances of my Lord North and the mind of my Lord Rockingham. He had my Lord Shelburne's foibles at his fingers' ends. The habits of the Prince, the aims of the their ladyships of Dorset and Buckingham, the extravagance of this noble Duke and that right honourable gentleman ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... fifteen, and partaking sufficiently of my uncle's nature to enjoy at least the fun of his benevolence. He had been for some time perfecting his information about a few of the families in the neighbourhood; for he was a bit of a gossip, and did not turn his landlady out of the room when she came in with a whisper of news, in the manner in which he had turned her out when she came to expostulate about the table. But she knew her lodger well enough never to dare to ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... conspiracy against the state. To any such movement my sympathies were early acquired, and I would not willingly let fall a word that might embarrass or retard the revolution. But to show that I speak of knowledge, and not as the reporter of mere gossip, I may mention that I have myself been present at a meeting where the details of a republican Constitution were minutely debated and arranged; and I may add that Gondremark was throughout referred to by the speakers as their captain in action ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trees you'll find a perfect drawing-room, carpeted, canopied, and dark as twilight; its verdant seats broidered with violets and forget-me-nots; and all untenanted it seems, nay, deserted rather, for the music wastes on the lonely air, as if the fairy that kept state there, in gossip mood had stolen down some neighboring aisle, and would be home anon. I would have bartered all the glory of this campaign for leave to stretch myself on its mossy bank, for a ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... stranger at Gloucester, I made but little progress; for every one I met appeared as shy of having any thing to say about the gaol, as if he were himself afraid of becoming an inmate in the horrid place. At length, I found a person of the name of Wittick, a hair-dresser, the genuine Dickey Gossip of the city, who was exactly what I wanted. Having told him my name and my business, he "let loose his tongue," and gave me such a history of some of the revolting scenes that occurred within the walls of their city bastile, as harrowed up my soul with ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... together, all are there at some time in the summer. Montbretia, Japanese sunflower, larkspur, columbine and gourds all have their time and place and opportunity in this San Francisco garden. And the hollyhocks, the bossy things, I've a mind to leave them out. Besides I know some gossip about them. When Zoe was away to Yosemite one morning they were all leaning over from too much moonshine or too much sunshine and—well, I won't repeat what the ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... represented in art. The love for pictures was by no means dead in Venice, and Longhi painted for the picture-loving Venetians their own lives in all their ordinary domestic and fashionable phases. In the hair-dressing scenes we hear the gossip of the periwigged barber; in the dressmaking scenes, the chatter of the maid; in the dancing-school, the pleasant music of the violin. There is no tragic note anywhere. Everybody dresses, dances, makes bows, takes coffee, as if there were nothing else ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... Pa isn't jealous, is he?" and the grocery man came around from behind the counter to get the latest gossip to retail to the hired girls who ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... same beams and rafters, and out upon the same cabbage patch. I have a queer humour of my own, too, and I might be jesting and scorning where I should be silent. Sir Arthur and I might not long agree. Besides, what would the country do for its gossip—the blithe clatter at e'en about the fire? Who would bring news from one farm-town to another—gingerbread to the lassies, mend fiddles for the lads, and make grenadier caps of rushes for the bairns, if old Edie were tied by the leg at his own ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... agreed afterward that it was the merriest dinner they had had since they left home. Mr. Agnew told stories about painters and painting, and was delightful. No less so was the nice gossip upstairs in Louisa's room which followed dinner, or the afternoon frolic with Daisy, or the long evening spent in looking over books and photographs. Altogether the day seemed only too short. As they ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... while here and there some public benefactor, with an outspread "Times" or "Chronicle," was retailing the narrative of our own exploits in the Peninsula or the more novel changes in the world of politics since we left England. A cross-fire of news and London gossip ringing on every side made up a perfect Babel most difficult to form an idea of. The jargon partook of every accent and intonation the empire boasts of; and from the sharp precision of the North Tweeder to the broad doric of Kerry, every portion, almost every county, of Great Britain ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... home, and that it had been given her by the then deceased companion of her days of beauty, were facts so generally admitted as to be, even as far back as that sixty years ago, no longer a subject of gossip. She was never pointed out by the denizens of the quarter as a character, nor her house as a "feature." It would have passed all Creole powers of guessing to divine what you could find worthy of inquiry concerning a retired quadroon woman; and not the least puzzled of all would have been ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... 'Gossip?' the old woman hiccoughed, 'I tell you, it's gospel truth, and I'll tell you more: the richer gospodarze are settling with Josel and Gryb to buy the whole estate and the whole village from the squire, so help ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... his recognized intrepidity, an attack upon their train was no doubt averted. Then there was "Bill," the stock herder, and "Texas Jim," the vaquero—the latter marvelous and unprecedented in horsemanship. Such were their companions, as appeared through the gossip of the train and their own inexperienced consciousness. To them, they were all astounding and important personages. But, either from boyish curiosity or some sense of being misunderstood, Clarence was more attracted ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... reply, and the manner in which it was delivered, to have furnished the station idlers, in the ordinary course of events, with matter for gossip and discussion for a week. Mr. Blount had not addressed a person as "sir" since he went to school. But no one thought of this; all were too much overcome by the ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Francis Bacon. Aubrey in his laboriously compiled Short Lives, in which he shows a friendly and admiring attitude toward Bacon, definitely states that he was a pederast. Aubrey was only a careful gleaner of frequently authentic gossip, but a similar statement is made by Sir Simonds D'Ewes in his Autobiography. D'Ewes, whose family belonged to the same part of Suffolk as Bacon's sprang from, was not friendly to Bacon, but that fact will not suffice to account for his statement. He was an upright and honorable man of scholarly ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... gentlemen? Truly, it would seem so; you laugh, and at what do you laugh? I, who have presented this idea to you—I have not laughed; see, my countenance is sad. Ah! perhaps it is because the gloomy prisoner has suddenly become a gossip, and talks rapidly. That is nothing! I might tell you other things, and render you some service, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... during the time allotted to her by the King, that is to say, three whole hours every evening. There you pose as sovereign arbiter; as oracle, uttering a thousand divers decisions; as supreme purveyor of news and gossip; the scourge of all who are absent; the complacent promoter of scandal; the soul and the leader ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... repugnance and disgust. Between people holding these diverse opinions discussions would sometimes arise, especially at meetings of the Dorcas Society, when neither Laura nor Mrs. Jaynes was present. But, just at this juncture, an event occurred which gave a new direction to the current of village gossip, setting every member of the Dorcas sisterhood all agape with wonder and surprise, and all agog with excitement and curiosity. Of this strange and memorable affair I will presently give a veritable account, and even show the reader how it came to pass. But in the mean time ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... did not want to be rash, to run into danger, or undertake something that would get them unpleasantly talked about, for in no place other than in a country town is there so much gossip. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... characterize M. Franklin and to serve as an inscription for his portrait." These Memoirs, as is well known, are the record of conversations and news gathered in the circle of that venerable Egeria of gossip;[30] and here is evidence of the publicity which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... take it, do you think?' inquired Colonel Madison, of the Life Guards, a man about town, and an inveterate gossip, who knew everybody, and everybody's family history, down to the peccadilloes of ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... week days, and setting silver plate before the meanest guest. The women of Polotzk were breathless over her wardrobe, counting up how many pairs of embroidered boots she had, at fifteen rubles a pair. And Hode's manners were as much a subject of gossip as her clothes, for she had picked up strange ways in her travels Although she was so pious that she was never tempted to eat trefah, no matter if she had to go hungry, her conduct in other respects was not strictly orthodox. For one ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... that she was, and, forgetting for a moment his great love, referred to her partiality for gossip in the most scathing terms he could muster. The mate, averse to such a tame ending to a promising ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... cried, drawing Blue Bonnet down beside her while Annabel stirred the fire. "Now, we'll have a regular old-fashioned gossip." The fire, after some coaxing, broke into a ruddy glow, and Annabel, dropping before it on the rug, took down her hair and began brushing it systematically. Annabel never, under any circumstances, neglected her hair. It was one of her chief attractions, ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... on. They talked of the dances and games, little gossip of the university, with now and then a telling personality, and a sweep of long lashes over pearly cheeks, or a lifting of great, innocent eyes of admiration to ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... go on with your work. You can sew while you are listening. I will go and see that the preparations for dinner are going on regularly, for the maids are apt to give way to talk and gossip, when they know ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... gifts for the bridal day; And the fair Wiwaste was happy-hearted, For Wakawa promised the brave Chaske. Birds of a feather will flock together. The robin sings to his ruddy mate, And the chattering jays, in the winter weather, To prate and gossip will congregate; And the cawing crows on the autumn heather, Like evil omens, will flock together, In common council for high debate; And the lass will slip from a doting mother To hang with her lad on the garden gate. Birds ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... but refused to look at him. He did not talk further of my supposed mental state, but proceeded to entertain me with gossip of the Royal Level, and later discussed ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... shown a very soft heart. She had actually said good-by to Kimika, and had gone away with somebody able to give her all the pretty dresses she could wish for,—somebody eager to give her social position also, and to silence gossip about her naughty past,—somebody willing to die for her ten times over, and already half-dead for love of her. Kimika said that a fool had tried to kill himself because of Kimiko, and that Kimiko had taken pity on him, and nursed ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... for no urging. Here was a chance for a few more moments of gossip. If Miss Flossie wished to take care of the baby, why not permit her to? Her Uncle Harry had given his permission, and as it was ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... not venture any advice, possibly because he feared it might not be safe to have too many guests at his house for the villagers to gossip about. ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... Thomas Aquinas, and hearing Talleyrand describe his ride over the field of Austerlitz. My father took a different view. He declined to take advantage of this opening into the upper world, because, as he said, I don't know from what experience, the conversation turned chiefly upon petty personal gossip. The feasts of the great were not to his taste. He was ascetic by temperament. He was, he said, one of the few people to whom it was the same thing to eat a dinner and to perform an act of self-denial. In ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Moffat, and among the visitors assembled there found Thomas Graham, afterwards Lord Lynedoch, then a boy of ten, and his tutor, James Macpherson, a young Highlander, shy and ambitious, who had been educated at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and had dabbled in verse. Home, full of the literary gossip of the hour, seized upon the opportunity to question Macpherson concerning the poems that were rumored to have survived among the Gaelic-speaking population of Scotland. In the light of what we now know it is not difficult to understand the genesis of this great European ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... that night I jotted down pages of such gossip in a little red note-book. I had names and dates. That bunch of piece-workers must have thought I was a bear for details, or else nutty in the head; but they was too polite to mention it so long as I insisted each time ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... recess for yourself one of two little sloping easy-chairs, which have been placed there by Mrs. and Miss Aubrey for their own sole use, considering that they are excellent judges of the period at which Mr. Aubrey has been long enough alone, and at which they should come in and gossip with him. We may as well draw the dusky green curtains across the window, through which the moon shines at present rather too brightly.—So now, after coaxing up the fire, I will proceed to tell you a little bit of pleasant ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... velvet cushion. What if she rode in Cinderella's coach, or had her prayer-book carried before her on the back of a Green River turtle? But to her sex she promises to be an invidious Christian. I am rather disturbed by the gossip regarding the elder daughter. But this is so conflicting that one impression is made only to be effaced ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... stranger's entrance and quarrelsomeness, and his interruptions of an old, old man's story of what he knows of Peg's life. The stranger listens while Parry Cam tells of the cause of her madness, but when he repeats what for years has been the gossip of the countryside about her supposed killing of her babe, the "traveling man" interrupts and declares he is the son whom it was rumored she had drowned. In the end he is turned out of the house, not altogether unkindly, but as much for decency's ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... with quivering lips, "prate not to me of thy vain legends and gossip's tales! think not to snatch from me my possession in another, when thine own life is in my hands. Unhand the maiden! throw down thy sword! return home without further parley, or, by my faith, and the blades of my followers—(look at ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... those without it is a tyrannical reality. The Law will not even allow a man outside to walk up and down in the gray mist enjoying his own dreams without looking upon him with suspicion. The Law is a shatterer of dreams. The Law is as eager as a gossip to misinterpret; and this puts one, however innocent, in an ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... and when the news went back that Tom had been made a sergeant for gallant conduct, there was a great sensation in Pinchbrook. The letters which reached him after the receipt of this gratifying announcement contained all the gossip of the place in regard to the important event. Of course, Tom was delighted by these letters, and was more than ever determined to be diligent and faithful in the discharge of his duties, and never to disgrace the ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... "You're a gossip, Auntie," laughed Lanier. "The colonel would cinch me quick as the next man if I happened to rub his fur the wrong way. One more swig now and I'm off. Tastes almost like ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... comparisons were drawn between the free and slave States. And although our presses do not teem with controversial pamphlets, nor our pulpits shake with excommunicating thunders, the daily walk of our religious communicants furnishes, apparently, as little food for gossip as is to be found in most other regions. It may be regarded as a mark of our want of excitability—though that is a quality accredited to us in an eminent degree—that few of the remarkable religious Isms of the present day have taken root among us. We have been so irreverent as to laugh at ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... in whom I began to recognize all the signs of an unmitigated gossip, "I know something of the importance of your mission. I speak amongst ourselves, is it not so, gentlemen? There were special orders about you from the Corps Command at Muenster. Your special has been waiting for ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... the Queen held, faster or looser, by her bed of sickness, as a main refuge in these emergencies: the last shift of oppressed womankind;—sanctioned by Female Parliament, in this instance. "Has had a miscarriage!" writes Dubourgay, from Berlin gossip, at the beginning of the business. Nay at one time she became really ill, to a dangerous length; and his Majesty did not at first believe it; and then was like to break his heart, poor Bear; aud pardoned Wilhelmina and even Fritz, at the Mother's request,—till ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... George Seton, in his pleasant "Gossip about Letters and Letter-writers," "as distinguished from looseness and slovenliness of statement, is of the utmost consequence—not only with the view of saving the time of one's correspondent, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... Hill—first of the Forsytes to desert the family grave at Highgate. That burial, coming a year after Swithin's entirely proper funeral, had occasioned a great deal of talk on Forsyte 'Change, the abode of Timothy Forsyte on the Bayswater Road, London, which still collected and radiated family gossip. Opinions ranged from the lamentation of Aunt Juley to the outspoken assertion of Francie that it was 'a jolly good thing to stop all that stuffy Highgate business.' Uncle Jolyon in his later years—indeed, ever since the strange and lamentable affair between his granddaughter June's lover, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... under the conditions constitute a legal marriage, with Mrs. Fitzherbert, a beautiful young woman of a little more than twenty-nine years of age, who had twice been widowed {243} and was a member of the Roman Catholic faith. The town soon rang with gossip, and what was gossip in the drawing-rooms threatened to become a matter for "delicate investigation" in the House of Commons. The denial given by Fox in Parliament on the authority of the Prince of Wales practically ended any attempt at public inquiry, and almost broke the heart ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to understand that you were tired of the park! Not being a fool or a cox-comb, Sydney put this and that together, and taking various trifles into the account, he had by this time come to the conclusion that Polly had heard the same bits of gossip that he had, which linked their names together, that she did n't like it, and tried to show she did n't in this way. He was quicker to take a hint than she had expected, and being both proud and generous, resolved to settle the matter at once, for Polly's sake as well as his own. So, when ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... entertainments more costly, expenses of every kind more considerable. Lower and lower became the tone of society, its good breeding, its delicacy. More and more were MONDE and DEMI-MONDE associated in newspaper accounts of fashionable doings, in scandalous gossip, on racecourses, in PREMIERES REPRESENTATIONS, in imitation of each ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... own surprise, that her fancy was teeming with lovely conceits, she did hope for a quiet evening. But mother wanted a bit of gossip, father must have his papers read to him, the boys had lessons and rips and grievances to be attended to, May's lullaby could not be forgotten, and the maids had to be looked after, lest burly ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... so curious. I can't face it," she said. "Mine is rather a curious story, too. It will only set them talking, and I do so hate gossip." ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... well how he used to describe the pleasure of returning to it from a Mission, the silence, the simplicity of the life, the liberty underlying the order and discipline. The tone of the house was admirably friendly and kindly, without gossip, bickering or bitterness, and Hugh found himself among cheerful and sympathetic companions, with the almost childlike mirthfulness which comes of a life, strict, ascetic, united, and free from worldly cares. He spent his first two years in study mainly, and extended his ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... chief engineer, Caretto, who next day sent a whole shower of balls and shells into the midst of a group of Frenchmen, whose curiosity had brought them to Tika, where Kursheed was forming a battery. "It is time," said Ali, "that these contemptible gossip-mongers should find listening at doors may become uncomfortable. I have furnished matter enough for them to talk about. Frangistan (Christendom) shall henceforth hear only of my triumph or my fall, which ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... When I visit people whom I like, such as Madame de Sallus and yourself, I do not expect to meet the Paris that flutters from house to house in the evening, gossiping and scandalizing. I have had my experience of gossip and tittle-tattle. It needs only one of these talkative dames or men to take away all the pleasure there is for me in visiting the lady on whom I happen to have called. Sometimes when I am anchored perforce upon my seat, I feel lost; I ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... the agents, as the assistants and apprentices of the resident factors were pleasantly termed, congregated here, each group at its own particular rough-hewn, wooden table, to indulge in strong drink and pleasant gossip. When the interests of the entire colony were to be discussed, the AElterleute ("seniors") from every grange would meet in the Schutting belonging to Bremen and called Zum Mantel. This assemblage was called the "Council of Eighteen," the representative of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... in the world. It was a strange thing to look upon the fragile form and features, which might be those of a dying man, and to hear such utterances as his—now the strangest comments and insignificant incidents; now pregnant remarks on great subjects, and then malignant gossip, virulent and base, but delivered with an air and a voice of philosophical calmness and intellectual commentary such as caused the disgust of the listener to be largely qualified with amusement ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... no one had recognised him. He had arrived the night before, and taken a room at the Pack-horse, nobody asking his name; had sat after supper in a corner of the smoking-room and listened to the gossip there, saying nothing. ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... The chevalier, without being a regular customer, went occasionally to the tavern of La Fillon. It was quite fashionable at that time to go and drink at her house. D'Harmental was to her neither her son, a name which she gave to all her "habitues," nor her gossip, a word which she reserved for the Abbe Dubois, but simply Monsieur le Chevalier; a mark of respect which would have been considered rather a humiliation by most of the young men of fashion. La Fillon was much astonished when D'Harmental asked ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... was not of this world alone. At the table of his hotel, and in the barroom of the same institution, and in the lobbies of the legislative hall, and in editorial sanctums and barbers' shops, and all other nooks of gossip, he trumpeted the claims of Fastburg as if that little city were the New Jerusalem and deserved to be the metropolis of the sidereal universe. All sorts of trickeries, too; he sent spurious telegrams and got fictitious items into the newspapers; he lied through every medium known to the ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... all the same. Don't the barristers' wives talk about Circuit? Don't the soldiers' ladies gossip about the Regiment? Don't the clergymen's ladies discourse about Sunday-schools and who takes whose duty? Don't the very greatest ladies of all talk about that small clique of persons to whom they belong? And why should our Indian friends not have their ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for her, and had taken her part with their accustomed warmth and goodwill. They were not at all afraid of her not turning up safe and sound. Cherry had many friends, and it was just as likely as not that she would stop and gossip all along the bridge as she came home. She took something of the privilege of a spoiled child, despite her aunt's rigid training. She knew her sisters never looked askance at her; that her father found it hard to scold severely, however grave he might try to look to please ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green |
