"Mincing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dowdy girl, And the rowdy girl, And the girl that's always late; There's the girl of style, And the girl of wile, And the girl with the mincing gaits ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... as if such persons had not life long enough to serve them to acquire a complete knowledge of one single subject, such as the human body; and then they want to comprehend the mind of God in which the universe is included, weighing it minutely and mincing it into infinite parts, as if they had to ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... back! Enough your play Till next sun-shine holiday. Here be, without duck or nod, Other trippings to be trod Of lighter toes, and such court guise As Mercury did first devise With the mincing Dryades On the lawns and on ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... younger woman was making her mincing descent, Fanny and Barbara came toward them in ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... medieval colour has been cast. Unhappily many of these beautiful old legends have been greatly marred by the absurd sentimentality of the German writers of the early nineteenth century, and their dramatis personae, instead of exhibiting the characteristics of sturdy medieval German folk, possess the mincing and lackadaisical manners which mark the Franco-German novel of a century ago. This contrasts most ludicrously in many cases with the simple, almost childlike, honesty which is typical of all early Teutonic literature. Had a Charles ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... a conversation between a mincing and lackadaisical young lady and a bouncing one who talked noisily; and she changed her attitudes, her accent, the expressions of her face in such droll ways, and altogether contrasted the two characters so well, that a round of applause and laughter greeted and encouraged ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... the second place. So curious did this blindness seem in a man of jealous temper, that his greatest friends used to draw him out on the topic for the amusement of others who did not know of the mystery. M. du Hautoy was a finical dandy whose minute care of himself had degenerated into mincing affectation and childishness. He took an interest in his cough, his appetite, his digestion, his night's rest. Zephirine had succeeded in making a valetudinarian of her factotum; she coddled him and doctored him; she ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... like people who have these tender places," said Aunt Rachel. "I never get hurt at what is said to me. No—never! To be ever picking and mincing, and chopping off your words—to be afraid to say this or that—for fear somebody will be offended! I can't ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... old"; and the solemn, dirge-like chant of MacPherson's sentences, with the peculiar manner of his narrative, its repetitions, its want of transitions, suited well with his matter. "Men had been talking under their breath, and in a mincing dialect so long," says Leslie Stephen, "that they were easily gratified and easily imposed upon by an affectation of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... most effective blow, the ram stepped back a pace or two, mincing on his slender feet, and prepared to repeat it. The lynx was struggling frantically among the branches, which stuck into him and tore his fine fur. Just in time to escape the second assault he got free,—but free not for fight but for flight. One ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Miss ANN TREVOR'S age, but she looked to me a little old for the part of this child, however precocious. Miss MARJORIE GORDON played with intelligence as the elder sister, but never for a moment suggested a New York atmosphere. Indeed she adopted just the mincing kind of speech which out there is held to bewray the "Britisher." The only performance that made any real pretence of being American was that of Mr. TURNBULL as the manager of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... in appearance, many of them remarkably so, and had the manners and deportment of young women: not of degraded brutes of burden. If I had seen in one of those mills (but I did not, though I looked for something of this kind with a sharp eye), the most lisping, mincing, affected, and ridiculous young creature that my imagination could suggest, I should have thought of the careless, moping, slatternly, degraded, dull reverse (I HAVE seen that), and should have been still well pleased to look ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... another word till they reached the top of Mincing Lane; there the carriage stopped and Bertie got out, but in spite of all the kind things the old gentleman had said, in spite of the consciousness of having done quite right from one point of view, in spite of his real pleasure on the clerk's ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... which Egyptians call after their mincing fashion "Irminiyeh" hence "Ermine" (Mus Ponticus). Armaniyah was much more extensive than our Armenia, now degraded to a mere province of Turkey, and the term is understood to include the whole of the old ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... mouth of Lady Alice, who manifestly did mightily pride herself thereon, did quite exhauste ye quene's endurance, who listened till ye gaudy speeche was done, then lifted up her brows, and with vaste irony, mincing saith 'O shit!' Whereat they alle did laffe, but not ye Lady ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... unconditionally refused to trade, and here, when a heaven-sent alternative was delivered into their hands, they found themselves hampered by the coils of a cast-off lie. No shade, however, of hesitancy appeared on the open countenance of the friend. He approached Miss Fitzroy with a mincing step, a deprecating wave of the hand, and a deeply respectful ogle. He was going to adopt the desperate resource of telling the truth, but to tell the truth profitably was a part that required rather ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... set eyes on them again—not on her, anyway!" thought Judith as she toiled. "What did she want to speak to me for, in her nice little mincing voice! She belongs to hotels and I belong to the—sea. Blossom and I—what has she got ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... a cup of tea. I'm sure it will do your head good," she said, advancing with mincing steps and affecting profound sympathy in ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... idol; a proud mincing peat, and as perverse as he is officious. She dotes as perfectly upon the courtier, as her husband doth on her, and only wants the face to ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... English are like this." Giuseppe took a bottle out of the cruet-stand and set it on the table in front of him. He went on, "When an Englishman an Englishwoman argue, they say"—here he took the bottle up very slowly and gingerly and altered his voice to a mincing and conventional tone—"Is it oil or is it vinegare? Did you not say that it was vinegare? I thought that it was oil Oh! Now I see that it ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... calf. Preposterously large roses covered his shoes; his ruff was a "treble-quadruple-dedalion;" his gloves richly embroidered; a large crimson satin purse hung from his girdle; and he was scented with powders and pulvilios. This withered coxcomb affected the mincing gait of a young man; and though rather an object of derision than admiration with the fair sex, persuaded himself they were all captivated by him. The vast sums he so unjustly acquired did not long remain in his possession, but were dispersed in ministering ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... Dagonet mincing with his feet, "Knight, an ye fling those rubies round my neck In lieu of hers, I'll hold thou hast some touch Of music, since I care not for thy pearls. Swine? I have wallow'd, I have wash'd—the world Is flesh and shadow—I have had my day. The dirty nurse, Experience, in her kind ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... fortunes of the party on the dice-box, and events were to decide the issue. When the blow came Mr. Disraeli's reputation for sagacity fell to zero. At last the hollowness of his pretensions was detected, and there was no mincing of epithets for the man who had befooled and destroyed a great party. The Dukes left him to himself, and, according to our present informant, their flight was the harbinger of reviving fortunes. The heart of provincial conservatism warmed to ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... of them. But an artist, for instance, to whom my kindlier judgment has made permanent concessions is that charming Andrea del Sarto. When I first knew him, in my cold youth, I used to say without mincing that I didn't like him. Cet age est sans pitie. The fine sympathetic, melancholy, pleasing painter! He has a dozen faults, and if you insist pedantically on your rights the conclusive word you use about him will be the word weak. But if you are a generous soul you will utter it ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... girls, with their hand luggage, trooped down the long dock to the Lanawaxa's boarding-plank. Heavy Stone turned suddenly in the hot sunshine (for it was a glowing noon) to find two of the smaller girls mincing along in her ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... eastern part of Coorg in what is known as the Bamboo district (because the jungle lands there consist very largely of forest trees interspersed with clumps of bamboos), they persisted in carrying their fatal Ceylon system with them, and Mr. Donald Stewart, called the Coffee King in Mincing Lane, who was a warm supporter of planting in the open, even issued, it is said, an order to his managers saying that if he found a single forest tree standing (the coffee around even a single tree would have ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... it rises in Paradise? Are you sleeping or drinking that you will not lend us the staff of Friar John wherewith he slaughtered and bashed the invaders of the vineyards, who are but a parable for the mincing pedants and bloodless thin-faced rogues ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... was Aunt Betsey, you fool! Aunt Nancy used to—she has been dead these eighty years, so there is no use in mincing matters—she used to keep a bottle and a stick, and when she had been tasting a drop out of the bottle the stick used to come off the shelf and I had to taste that. And here she is made a saint of, and poor Aunt Betsey, that did everything ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in with the Fair Maid in ballast to look for a freight in the Sofala's port of registry, and her letter met him there. Its tenor was that it was no use mincing matters. Her only resource was in opening a boarding-house, for which the prospects, she judged, were good. Good enough, at any rate, to make her tell him frankly that with two hundred pounds she could make a start. He had torn the envelope open, hastily, on deck, where it ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... scene and its familiarity had no power to soothe that aching, distracted heart. Had she been a man, she thought, she might have sought her refuge in ceaseless work, in great ambitions, in achievements. This eternal tea-pouring and word-mincing, this business of forced laughter and garlanded conversation was more than she could endure. A low cry of impatience, too long and also too loosely imprisoned, escaped ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... she flaunts the ivory fan, And tries to step as stately as she can, Mincing fine words to her own shadow, "Dear! How very ungenteel the ...
— Pictures and Stories from Uncle Tom's Cabin • Unknown
... last saw her coming; and what d'ye think she'd gone back for? By the powers, for her doll, which she held in her hand! And just as she came to the chaise, who should come round the corner but her father, who had walked from Mincing Lane. He caught my mincing Miss by the arm, with her doll and her bundle, and bundled her home, leaving me and the postchaise, looking like two fools. I never could see her again, or ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... once he set about the first lesson, scolding and growling about the child setting his teeth like a dog, and mincing his words like a fine lady, till poor Gottlieb's hopes more than once sank ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... patiently, and mark what the other monkeys do: and then follow suit. And by so doing, you will gain a vast reputation as an accomplished ape. Above all things, follow not the silly example of the young spark Karkeke, of whom Mohi was telling me. Dying, and entering the other world with a mincing gait, and there finding certain customs quite strange and new; such as friendly shades passing through each other by way of a salutation;— Karkeke, nevertheless, resolved to show no sign of embarrassment. Accosted by a ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... cold. Yours, cordially, Ingredients for one dozen: One-quarter pound macaroni; one pound filet of veal; one ounce butter; one ounce flour; one gill of white stock or milk; three eggs; pepper; salt, and a little cayenne to taste. Chop the veal and then pass it twice through a sausage cutter or mincing machine. Cook the butter and flour together for about ten minutes; then add the milk or stock; then turn on a plate to cool; then add the minced veal; then add the seasoning; break the eggs in one by one; stir well. Boil the macaroni in salt and water until soft; ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... all for mincing words with his important confreres, when it came to vital issues. He preferred, in his grandiloquent way, to call a spade ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... the subject of Soames' communication as they left the Board Room together, and went out into the noise and hurry of Cheapside. They walked together a good minute without speaking, Soames with his mousing, mincing step, and old Jolyon upright and using his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... he would take little mincing steps, and toss his head from side to side, and pretend to be fanning ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... foundations of their country's freedom and greatness. They were women of soul, character, and stamina; who grappled with the realities of life, in their labors; and enjoyed its pleasures with truth and honesty. This over-nice, mincing delicacy, and sentimentality, in which their grand-daughters indulge, is but the off-throw of the boarding-school, the novelist, and the prude—mere "leather and prunella." Such remarks may be thought to lie beyond the line of our immediate ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... at a supper-party last night at which an actress was present. And a more charming, sensible girl I never wish to meet. Not one of your silly, brainless chits who don't know the difference between lobster Newburg and canvas-back duck, and who prefer sweet champagne to dry. No, sir! Not one of your mincing, affected kind who pretend they never touch anything except a spoonful of cold consomme. No, sir! Good, healthy appetite. Enjoyed her food, and knew why she was enjoying it. I give you my word, my boy, until I met her I didn't know a woman existed who could talk ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... not prolong his stay at Loughlinter, though he was asked to do so both by Violet and his sister, and though, as he confessed himself, he had no special business elsewhere. "It is no use mincing the matter. I don't like Kennedy, and I don't like being in his house," he said to Violet. And then he promised that there should be a party got up at Saulsby before the winter was over. His plan was to stop that night at Carlisle, and write to his father from thence. "Your blood, perhaps, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... English one and then I must stop to-day. I flatter myself I can tell this with a nice mincing ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... money up in her handkerchief, put it away, and pursing up her face into a sweet, mincing, even coquettish ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... legs, scraping her wooden-soled slippers along the pavement with a noise that sets your teeth on edge. "Girls are like flowers," say the Chinese, "like the willow. It is very important that their feet should be bound short so that they can walk beautifully with mincing steps, swaying gracefully, and thus showing to all that they are persons of respectability." Apart from the Manchus, the dominant race, whose women do not bind their feet, all chaste Chinese girls have small feet. Those who have large feet are ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... things behind, no reference to herself or to the past between them. His passion, it seemed, was for his comrades; his indifference for her. What had he to do with her any more? He had been among the realities of battle and death, while she had been mincing and ambling along the usual feminine path. That was the utterance, it seemed, of the man's whole manner and personality, and nothing could have more effectually recalled Kitty's wild nature to ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... aside the chamber of the Paulownia for their use. These performers, whatever their origin, received the treatment of samurai, and their dainty posturing in the dance became a model for the lords of the Bakufu Court, so that the simple demeanour of military canons was replaced by a mincing and meretricious mien. Another favourite dance in Yedo Castle was the furyu. A book of the period describes the latter performance in these terms: "Sixteen youths made their appearance; they all wore wide-sleeved robes and purple figured silk with embroidery of oak leaves in ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the detective gently. "I've seen lots worse than you—you notice I'm not mincing words—I've seen lots worse than you start over again. All I'll say is that I'll give you the chance if you want it. There's nothing in this life you're leading. You know the end and the answer as well as I do. You've ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... late, of civic glory vain, The Lord Mayor drove down Mincing-lane, The progress of the baimer'd train ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... on the one hand: on the other hand, nothing but wretched Sieur Motiers, treasonous Riquetti Mirabeaus; traitors, or else shadows, and simulacra of Quacks, to be seen in high places, look where you will! Men that go mincing, grimacing, with plausible speech and brushed raiment; hollow within: Quacks Political; Quacks scientific, Academical; all with a fellow-feeling for each other, and kind of Quack public-spirit! Not great Lavoisier himself, or any of the Forty ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... a smoke,' says he—here Pat assumed an aristocratic air and spoke in refined and mincing tones—'before I go to bed. William,' says he to one of the futmen, 'bring me me slippers.' Well, the gentleman sat down in a grand soft armchair, an' the futman brought his slippers—an' if the Gout didn't take the opportunity an' ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... What it was all about he had entirely forgotten; but he remembered her little flushed face and her angry words: "Well, I'm a sport and you ain't!" He remembered also rebuking her priggishly for unintelligible language and mincing away. He read the letter again in the light of this flash of memory. The only difference between it and the childish speech lay in the fact that instead of a declaration of contrasts, she now uttered ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... to go to College, without light French kids and a gold-headed cane; and his stock of enamelled chains, opal studs, diamond pins, and the like vanities, would nearly have fitted up a bride's corbeille. To see him fully got up—polished boots, palm-leaf waistcoat, gorgeous cravat, and all—mincing over the gutter, you would take him for a regular man-milliner, and say that the greatest exertion he was capable of, would be holding a trotter, and that only with the aid of a pair of pulleys. But scrutinize him more closely, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... has flirted and attitudinized on my garden-fence; the House-Wren stopped a moment between the showers, and indulged in a short, but spirited, rehearsal under a large leaf in the grape-arbor; the King-Bird advised me of his proximity, as he went by on his mincing flight; and the Chimney-Swallows have been crying the child's riddle of "Chippy, chippy, cherryo," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... ye fair! so much your sex we prize, We hate those arts that take you from our eyes. In Albucinda's native grace is seen What you, who labour at perfection, mean. Short is the rule, and to be learnt with ease, Retain your gentle selves, and you must please. Here might I sing of Memmia's mincing mien, And all the movements of the soft machine: How two red lips affected zephyrs blow, To cool the Bohea, and inflame the beau: While one white finger, and a thumb, conspire To lift the cup, and make the world admire. Tea! how I tremble at thy fatal stream! As Lethe, dreadful to the love of ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... add, without mincing the matter, what I really believe, of this Book.—-It will live on, through Posterity, with such unbounded Extent of Good Consequences, that Twenty Ages to come may be the Better and Wiser, for its Influence. It will steal first, imperceptibly, into the Hearts of the Young and the Tender: ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... ventured Josie in a mincing tone quite in keeping with her henna wig and lace ruffle. "My, you ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... unmanly in my sight That he, whose spirit was so strong To lead the blind world to the light, Should look so like the mincing throng Who advertise the tailor's art. It angered me—I did him wrong— I grudged my groat and ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... darker hue than the lord of the wallow, and of much slimmer build,—altogether less formidable in appearance. But he looked very fit and fearless as, after a moment's supercilious survey of his rival's ooze-dripping form, he came mincing forward to the attack. The two, probably, had never seen each other before; but in rutting season all caribou bulls are ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... left; but in the view from the right-hand window how sombre a difference. A bare yard separated the two. Through the window to the left was colour, courtesy, splendour; there was Death at least disguising himself, well cloaked, taking mincing steps, bowing, wearing a plume in his hat and a decent mask. In the right-hand window all the colours were fading, war after war they grew dimmer; and as the colours paled Death's sole purpose showed clearer. Through the beautiful ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... when the julep appeared on a silver tray, he left the room and went upstairs to where Betty was waiting. "He's awful, there's no use mincing words, he's simply awful," he remarked in ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... into his blood and made it gritty and dirty. Then Winifred so ready to serve the soldier, when she repudiated the man. And this made the grit worse between his teeth. And the children running around playing and calling in the rather mincing fashion of children who have nurses and governesses and literature in the family. And Joyce so lame! It had all become unreal to him, after the camp. It only set his soul on edge. He left at dawn on the Monday morning, glad to get back to the realness and ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... are heard—Hers among them—and the clear tinkling of a little bell; then the door opens and a very diminutive toy terrier enters, alone. She's black and tan, seems in love with herself, and comes forward with a mincing step.) ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... consonants are either dropped or amalgamated with one another. Yet, while amendment in these matters is to be striven for, there is nothing that the teacher who wishes to establish habits of orthoepy has to be more watchful in guarding against, than bestowing upon his pupils an affected or mincing utterance, all the more ludicrous and objectionable, it may be, in that a certain set of words are pronounced with over-nicety, while almost all others are left in a ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the Lord saith: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... It was a lackey's tenor and a lackey's song. Another voice, a woman's, suddenly asked insinuatingly and bashfully, though with mincing affectation: ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... affectation pure and simple, which is the mere affectation of manner, such as is shown in the drawling voice, the mincing gait, the extreme gracefulness of attitude that by consciousness ceases to be grace, and the thousand little minauderies and coquetries of the sex known to us all. And there is the affectation which people of a higher social sphere show when they condescend to those of low estate, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... expostulation (there was jealousy of the Duke of Newcastle's favour already under the coals): in short the nephew earl called the favourite earl such gross names, that it was well they were ministers! otherwise, as Mincing says, "I vow, I believe they must have fit." The public, that is half-a-dozen toad-eaters, have great hopes that the present unfavourable posture of affairs in America will tend to cement this breach, and that we shall all unite hand and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... direct young woman who was not in the habit of mincing matters with herself, or of dodging an issue, and she bluntly called herself a fool many times that evening, because she had not said plainly that she would like to talk with Grant "and taken him off to one side—by the ear, if necessary—and ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... theirs," he remarked presently, as they reached Piccadilly, brilliant with muslin-clad women and flower-hung windows. "It isn't often I dare trust myself up here. Makes me feel as though I'd like to go amongst those sauntering swells and mincing ladies in their muslins and laces, and parasols, and run amuck amongst them—send them down like a pack of ninepins. Aye, I'd send them into hell if ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Graham said. "There's no evidence we know anything about that your grandfather's heart didn't simply give out, but the detective is absolutely certain, and—there's no use mincing matters, Bobby—he believes he has the proof to convict you. He won't tell me what. He simply smiles and refuses ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... fashionable town garments, with a huge hat covered in feathers, a tight modern skirt that forced her to walk with mincing steps, high-heeled shoes, open-work stockings and gloves reaching to the elbow—was indeed a curious apparition in amongst these peasant girls, with their bare heads and high red-leather boots and petticoats standing round ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... girlhood, she had been to Albany, Its splendour and the reckless conduct of one Alma Haskins, companion of her travels, had been ever since a day-long perennial topic of her conversation. Miss Letitia was more amiable. She had a playful, cheery heart in her, a mincing and precise manner, and a sweet voice. What with the cleaning, dusting, and preserving, they were ever busy. A fly, driven hither and thither, fell of exhaustion if not disabled with a broom. They were ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... young gentleman, with a bow, the pink of courtesy, offered a hand to lead her out, nor could she refuse, though, to use her own expression, she hated the absurdity of mincing down the aisle with a fine young spark looking like her grandson; while her poor father had to put up with Harriet's arm. Outside came the greetings, the flourish of the hat, the "I may venture to introduce myself, and to beg ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... interval the cowboy appeared, mincing in on his high-heeled boots, his silver spurs jingling, the fringe of his chaps impacting softly on the leather. He stood at ease, his broad hat in both hands, his dark, level brows ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... any wager, When we are both accoutred like young men, I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two, And wear my dagger with the braver grace; And speak between the change of man and boy With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps Into a manly stride; and speak of frays, Like a fine-bragging youth; and tell quaint lies, How honourable ladies sought my love, Which I denying, they fell sick and died,— I could not do withal;—then I'll repent, And wish, for all that, that I had not kill'd them: ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... which shall form a distinctive school, as clearly so as the literature of Greece!" Under this head he says, "Very much would I prefer that our literature should appear even in the guise of the awkward, speculating, guessing, but still original, strong-minded American Yankee, than to see it mincing in the costume of a London dandy. I would rather see it, if need be, showing the wild rough strength, the naturalness and fervour of the extreme West, equally prepared to liquor with a stranger or to fight with him, ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... mincing, piping little voice, "Orlando, dear, the train is coming. Let me out. I'm not afraid of that bad man. I want to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... were brought in, and Derues was ordered to put them on, which he did readily, affecting much amusement. As he was assisted to disguise himself, he laughed, stroked his chin and assumed mincing airs, carrying effrontery so far as ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... formidable influence. She sat alone, by prearrangement, to one end of the high-ceiled and radiant apartment; midway in the hall her lords and divers ladies were gathered about a saltatrice and a jongleur, who were diverting the courtiers, to the mincing accompaniment of a lute; but Jehane sat apart from these, frail, and splendid with many jewels, and ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... Mrs. Taylor flushed faintly. She realized that their relations had reached a critical point, and that the next step might be fatal. She put down her teacup, and leaning forward, said with smiling confidential eagerness, "I don't. I wouldn't admit it to anyone else. But what's the use of mincing matters with an intelligent woman like you? I might put you off now, and declare that Benham is well enough. But you would soon divine what I really think, and that would be the end of confidence between us. I like honesty and frankness, and I can see that you do. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... place of the new one, and as they parted he presented the fellow with the gloves and stick I had purchased for him that very morning. As I stared aghast at this faux pas the navvy, with his new hat at an angle and twirling the stick, proceeded down the street with mincing steps and exaggerated airs of gentility, to the applause of the entire ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... your cause, the cause of us all. See here, M. Sarpy, this is no time for mincing words. We must stand up and take a part in this war. We did not provoke it, but it has come and we must join it. You may prefer to remain neutral. I do not say you are wrong. Your health is poor, you have a young daughter, you have large estates. But for me and hundreds ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... the Styx! Make way for stately '76, Who comes with mincing, minuet pace, Well-powdered hair and patch-deckt face— An antiquated kerchief on: White-capped, like Martha Washington; Clock-hosed and high-heeled slipper-shod, To give no Nineteenth Century nod; Nay, but a courtesy profound, Whose look demure consults the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... nothing of the sort," he said. "She believes herself to be serving her country." He was speaking very slowly, almost mincing his words. "She has—has come into ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... length," and no one could see me better than I now saw myself. Once more I attempted to make expressive eyes, but the result was not favourable to vanity. Then I drew back to the door, and, advancing upon the mirror with mincing steps, I threw all the grace and graciousness of which I was conscious into my manner, and holding out my hand, said, in a "company voice," "Charmed to see you, ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... fires hears and sees her tormentors chiefly as the probable owner, of the cake which is standing on that tray.) So awkward, I gave my sandwiches to a poor girl and her father whom I met in the wood, and now ... isn't it a nuisance—I am quite hungry. (So far with a mincing ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... Milly could persuade her mother to sail for England. I longed to scream at them, "Oh, you hard, unfeeling wretches!" But instead I stood outwardly patient, a good, well-behaved young girl with a little mincing smile on my face. Only the smile was frozen so hard you could have knocked it ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in order to melt down some lard, began to prepare the black-puddings. Auguste assisted him. At one corner of the square table Lisa and Augustine sat mending linen, whilst opposite to them, on the other side, with his face turned towards the fireplace, was Florent. Leon was mincing some sausage-meat on the oak block in a slow, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... of the morning he filled in with tales of cattle-musters tales of stampedes and of cattle rushing over camps and "mincing chaps into saw-dust" until I was secretly pleased that the coming muster was ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... but awful, as Pope says—approach "with mincing steps and bow profound;" we are about to introduce you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... at having to leave Brighton. The weather was so glorious, the sea all rippling and dancing in the morning sunshine, the streets so full of merry pleasure-seekers, that going back to the office in Mincing Lane was dull enough. They Were very sorry to lose him, too: there could be no mistake about that; ever since he had so promptly declined for them all Mr. Murray's invitation, they felt a sort of respectful admiration for him, though from very different reasons. Uncle ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Worldly-Wisdom, not mincing words, and back came Youth and Romance, passionately. "Aunt Frances, a woman hasn't any right to marry just because she thinks it is her best chance. She hasn't any right to make a man feel that he's won her when she's just little and mean ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... we're late," said Mistress Margaret playfully in my ear. "Not because dad worries whether he eats or not, but because he's so strong on mil-it-ary dis-cip-line." I write the words so, as a poor, paper imitation of the mincing gait she could put into her speech, which was ever one of her delightfulnesses. "You'd have been the better," she went on, "for a bringing-up on a troop-sergeant's switch. See what ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... intervals. One may also see such a stationary camp at Richborough, near Sandwich; and at Pevensey, in Sussex; and at Silchester, near Reading, but the two latter are not rectangular. One end of this fort was on the top of the Walbrook bank and the other, if you look in your map, on the site of Mincing Lane. This gives a length of about 700 yards by a breadth of 350, which means an enclosure of about 50 acres. This is a large area: it was at once the barrack, the arsenal, and the treasury of the station; it contained the ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... fond of music, Mr. Elsmere?' asked Mrs. Leyburn in her little mincing voice, making room for his chair beside them. 'If you are, I am sure my youngest daughter's ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... put me to the trouble of calling you a liar if you did," he said, in a shaking voice. "I have no more intention than you have of mincing matters. As to listening to me, you shall do that in any case. I am going to tell you the truth, and I mean ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... playground in talk. There he could take the curb off his prejudices, give the rein to his whimsical fancy, and better his expression as he talked. But where men must talk, as well as write, upon oath, paralysis is not easily avoided. In the little mincing societies addicted to intellectual and moral culture the creative zest is lost. The painful inhibition of a continual rigorous choice, if it is never relaxed, cripples the activity of the mind. Those who can talk the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... a number of industries related to the carrying trade. Every trade, market, or exchange is a centre of attraction. So the broking, banking, and the general financing businesses are grouped closely round the Royal Exchange. Mark Lane and Mincing Lane are centres of the corn and tea trades. In all town industries not directly engaged in retail distribution there are certain obvious economies and conveniences in this gregariousness. Agents, travellers, collectors, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... itself which lies to the westward of the White Tower is held by some to be within this ward. The principal streets and places contained in it are Great Tower Street, part of Little Tower Street and Tower Hill, part of Thames Street, Mark Lane, Mincing Lane, Seething Lane, St. Olave Hart Street, Idle Lane, St. Dunstan's Hill, Harp Lane, Water Lane, and Bear Lane, with the courts and alleys that ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... friends, we've all three kinds right with us all the time. Though I don't go much on mincing words, I won't specify the priest nor the Levite right here in Cedar Mountain; but I will make mention of ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Cope (Nicholas Harpsfield) for his inaccuracy, Foxe replied: "I hear what you will say: I should have taken more leisure and done it better. I grant and confess my fault, such is my vice, I cannot sit all the day (Moister Cope) fining and mincing my letters, and combing my head, and smoothing myself all the day at the glass of Cicero. Yet, notwithstanding, doing what I can, and doing my good will, methinks I should not be reprehended, at least not so much be railed of at M. ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... with a hundred eyes. Never sprouts in less than ninety-eight places. Should be put through the mincing-machine before planting. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... made the mincing steps of Mr. Thoroughgood and so mimicked his thin, piping voice that all laughed, then she nodded at Mrs. ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... and dragged it over one hundred miles. All the fight, naturally, was gone out of the little creature. It was whimpering like a woman when Francois came up with it—poor little tortured broken-hearted thing! And some empty-headed heiress goes mincing into the Metropolitan, on a Caruso night, very proud and peacocky over her new ermine coat, without ever dreaming it's a patchwork of animal sufferings that is keeping her fat body warm, and that she's ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... all the modernity of medium they are simple and sober. Moreover, in those of his compositions that approach banality most closely, there is a certain saving hardness and virility and honesty. Unlike his neighbor, Grieg, he is never mincing and meretricious. We never find him languishing in a pretty boudoir. He is always out under the sky. It is only that he is not always free and resourceful and deeply self-critical. Even through the bold and rugged and splendid Violin Concerto there flit ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... to stop some place, and I really can't stand that mincing Miss Mitchin and her half-baked yearners and that odious creature with the beard and ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... so fragile that a collie might have knocked her over with his tail, and she had a beautiful white-and-pink face, the white ending of a sudden in the middle of her neck, where it met skin of a duller color. As she tripped along with mincing gait, she was speaking confidentially to herself, but when she saw Dite grinning, she seemed, first, afraid, and then sorry for herself, and then she tried to carry it off with a giggle, cocking her head impudently at him. ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... with me down the hall of Christ Church, pointed to the portrait of an extremely bloated and sensual-looking prelate on the wall, and said, with that peculiar kind of mincing precision which added so much to the point of his sarcasms, "How singular, dear friend, to reflect that that person was chosen, in the providential order, to connect Mr. Keble with the Apostles!" And certainly ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... bold, even coquettish, and appeared to be incapable of a reasonable attachment? However, to-day, you tell me, she has become a serious melancholic; pre-occupied, timid, affected; sentiment has taken the place of mincing airs; at least she appears to so fit in with the character she assumes to-day, that you imagine it to be her true one, and her former one, borrowed. All my philosophy would be at fault in such a case, if I did not recognize in this metamorphosis the effects of love. I am very much mistaken if ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... nature, but made me somewhat cynical. My sewing-machine had fits and gave me a back-ache, so I've locked it up until some one invents a motive-power that can be applied to house-work, washing, churning, mincing meat and vegetables, driving sewing-machines, and—if it only could—kneading bread, sweeping floors, washing dishes, ironing clothes, and making beds. My book agency was undertaken for the sake of travel,—of learning something, not ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... fuller and his voice to lose for the time its tricks of mincing affectation. Here, indeed, there can be no question of insincerity. Pope's scorn of folly is to be condemned only so far as it was connected with too bitter a hatred of fools. He has suffered, as Swift foretold, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... castanet-players and dancers, in every variety of laughable, grotesque, and most frequently tatterdemalion costume, beating drums, and so on—making a horrible din. Sometimes, in the midst of all this wild confusion, a kind of French courtier would come mincing along, in old-fashioned costume, leading a lady, also in antique attire, and, gazing on the right hand and the left through an immense opera-glass, making, in the meantime, the most polite bows. However much he might be ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... sentiment—fair passions and bountiful pities and loves without stain—or for the expression of his fiery passions and hatreds in some flagrant obscenity or venomous insult, it is alike straight and reckless, with no scruple and no mincing of words; in Mr. Swinburne's curiously true and vivid phrase, he "makes mouths at our speech" when we try to ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... which hung over the farther end of the square advanced a procession of tall, dust-coloured animals, with long, delicately poised necks and a mincing gait. Even Mrs. Rapkin could not succeed in making anything of ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... a keener appreciator of the tendencies to a rise or fall in colonial produce—sugars more especially—than John Linden, of Mincing Lane, it would have been difficult to point out in the wide city of London. He was not so immensely rich as many others engaged in the same merchant-traffic as himself; nothing at all like it, indeed, for I doubt that he ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... see Traits so diverse meet and agree: Can the affected mincing trip, Exalted brow, and pride-pressed lip, In strange incongruous union meet, With all that stamps the hypocrite? We see they do: but let us scan Those secret springs ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... There was Mr. Bentley—that was mild. And there never was a hold-up of a western express that could compare to the Consolidated Tractions. Some of these big fellows have the same kind of brain as the professional thieves. Well, they are professional thieves —what's the use of mincing matters! They never try the same game twice. Mr. Parr's getting ready to make another big haul right now. I know, because Plimpton said as much, although he didn't confide in me what this particular piece of rascality is. He knows better." Phil ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as afterwards. Pulled in pieces by the fingers, called teezing No. 36. This is done now with flesh of turkeys, and thought better than mincing. ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... quaver of Miss Bessy Dicky's voice over the club report; but he saw and heard nothing, and now he was seated in the midst of the feminine throng, and Miss Bessy Dicky's voice quavered more, and she assumed a slightly mincing attitude. Her thin hands trembled more, the hot, red spots on her thin cheeks deepened. Reading the club reports before the minister was an epoch in an epochless life, but Karl von Rosen was oblivious of her except as a disturbing element rather more insistent than the others in ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was within the house I found my deare and sweet love Fotis mincing of meat and making pottage for her master and mistresse, the Cupboord was all set with wines, and I thought I smelled the savor of some dainty meats: she had about her middle a white and clean apron, ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... heedless of love's mysteries as not to have admired, over and over again, the light, mincing, even bewitching gait of a woman who flies on her way to keep an assignation? She glides through the crowd, like a snake through the grass. The costumes and stuffs of the latest fashion spread out ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... nippers, ma'am, I beg; or your large work-box, or the mincing machine! Quite useless on a long journey; and your best cap you ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... back—they do pay something in return; a full measure. They pay by the beauty of their presence, and they are surely very beautiful, with their dainty mincing pink feet and the sheen on the proudly arched breast coverts of the cock birds; and they pay by giving you their trust and their friendship. To gobble the gifts of dried peas, which you buy in little cornucopias from convenient venders for distribution ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... difficult to believe one was not mad, that one was not a figure in the hall of kings in some Egyptian tomb, where the dead all sat immemorial and tremendous. How utterly he knew Joshua Mattheson, who was talking in his harsh, yet rather mincing voice, endlessly, endlessly, always with a strong mentality working, always interesting, and yet always known, everything he said known beforehand, however novel it was, and clever. Alexander the up-to-date ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... to; we understand that. But tell me! Bluntly, without mincing matters, if necessary. You know that I have no objection to that sort of thing, so go on. Do not keep me in suspense like this. I am burning with curiosity. What does ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Dudley Stewart's last night; a party; saw a vulgar-looking, fat man with spectacles, and a mincing, rather pretty pink and white woman, his wife. The man was Napoleon's nephew, the woman Washington's granddaughter. What a host of associations, all confused and degraded! He is a son of Murat, the King of Naples, who was said to be 'le dieu Mars jusqu'a six heures du soir.' He was heir to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... her nest, and each dancer comes forward at a mincing trot, in his hands a few twigs and leaves, which he deposits in front of the "orchestra," and, having built his nest, retires. And so they go on mimicking with laughable accuracy the more common ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... And he was even more prone to the fault which in this speech seems to me the more marked, a use of metaphors which sound to our ears 'conceited' or grotesque. To me at any rate the metaphors in 'now is he total gules' and 'mincing with his sword her husband's limbs' are more disturbing than any of the bombast. But, as regards this second defect, there are many places in Shakespeare worse than the speech of Aeneas; and, as regards the first, though in his undoubtedly ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Richard Plantagenet!" retorted the archbishop, dropping the mincing and affected tone, which he, in common with the coxcombs of that day, usually assumed, "who that heard thee when thou talkest of humility and devotion, would recognize the sternest heart and the most daring ambition God ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... retreats. What more alluring to the man who pursues than the woman who flees? What more inflaming than the pose of white, idiotic innocence? You did not know. You did not understand—" fiercely, in a mincing voice, she mimicked a supposed exculpation. "You are so young, so ignorant of life—so immer kindlich! Ah!" she laughed, half strangled, "until the man seizes you in his arms you are quite unaware—but ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... worse again; She seems to be living, at present, on that widow Hardyng. How are those two to get through the winter, I should like to know? As for the child, it will have to be bound out to somebody who will make it work, and then there will be an end of all these mincing lady airs. One thing I know, it's out of our power to help them. She must have some relations somewhere, I should think. I wonder what her antecedents really are, any way. I could never quite make the ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... capable of inspiring. This deference and tenderness were the more conspicuous by contrast with his opinions. These would fill with wrath unspeakable the advocates of women's rights. Nor was he at all particular about mincing their expression. He sometimes gave utterance to them in the most extreme form. He even made his sentiments more emphatic by putting them into the mouths of his female characters. "There is," says the governess in "The ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... attention that will fall to you as a consequence of this adventure. Life in the court of His Most Christian Majesty is one of the most artificial possible. The women hide their faces with powder and patches, lace themselves until they are ready to faint, walk with a mincing air, and live chiefly upon scandal; but they are women, after all, and every woman has a spice of romance in her nature, and such an adventure as yours is the very thing ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... It's a high honour," said old Grumpus, who had joined us just before we sailed, and did duty as mate of the lower deck. "Look out, youngster, that you don't get treated with greater indignity before long. I took the skipper's measure the day I first set eyes on him. With all his mincing manners and fine talk, depend upon it he'll prove a Tartar ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... with vain disport—a silly poor shift to shun their irksome idleness. The Sybaritical puppies the smaller they be (and thereto if they have a hole in the fore parts of their heads) the better they are accepted, the more pleasure also they provoke, as meet playfellows for mincing mistresses to bear in their bosoms, to keep company withal in their chambers, to succour with sleep in bed, and nourish with meat at board, to lie in their laps, and lick their lips as they lie (like young Dianas) in their waggons and coaches. And good reason it should ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... school for gentlemen.") "Honestly," said Sylvia, "he was the queerest little mannikin—like the tiny waiter's assistants you see in hotels on the Continent. He wore his Eton suit, you understand—grown-up evening clothes minus the coat-tails, and a top hat. He sat at tea and chatted with the mincing graces of a cotillion-leader; you expected to find some of his hair gone when he took off his hat! He spoke of his brother, the duke, who had gone off shooting seals somewhere. 'The jolly rotter has nothing to do but spend his money; but ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... is the prompter of ingenuity, and the suggestion came from that source. There is no use in going further into detail. I convinced the landlord and secured another secretary of the treasury to look after the income, and we got out of town next morning as happy as clams at high water. Well, without mincing matters, I must say we had as rough a road to travel any band of poor strolling ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... church-record, dated "Sab: 30 March, 1690." He was "called forth to give satisfaction to the offended church, as also the last sabbath he was called forth for the same purpose; but then he failed in giving satisfaction, by reason of somewhat mincing in the latter part of his confession, which, in the former, he had more ingenuously acknowledged: but this day, the church received satisfaction, as was testified by their holding-up of their hands; and, after the whole, a word of caution by the pastor was dropped upon the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... said my grandfather scornfully. "I am not apt at mincing words. I told him one thing many years ago which I should have thought he would remember, and which I now repeat to you. I told him that a gentleman ceased to be a gentleman when once ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... arm to make him go. The Marquis said he was very insolent to wish to hinder him from seeing the King, and perform his duties. The Cardinal, stronger than his adversary, turned the Marquis round, hurried him towards the door, both talking the while, the Cardinal with measure, the Marquis in no way mincing his words. Tired of being hauled out in this manner, the Marquis struggled, called Alberoni a "little scoundrel," to whom he would teach manners; and in this heat and dust the Marquis, who was weak, fortunately fell into an armchair hard by. Angry at his fall, he raised his little stick ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... to turn furiously upon the boy, under the impression that he was the nigger in question; but at the same moment he caught sight of a full-blooded, woolly-headed West Coast African leading a very large camel by a rope, the great ungainly beast mincing and blinking as it gently put down, one after the other, its soft, spongy feet, which seemed to spread out on the gravelled road, while their high-shouldered owner kept on turning its bird-like head from side to side, muttering and whining ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... shot out at her. "And you're the gal I took from your mammy and promised I'd bring up a decent woman. You've got none o' her blood in you—not a drop. You're the brat of that damned, mincing brother of mine, that was always riding horseback and showing off in town while I was weeding ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... certain Monday evening late in January, 1881, Paul Bultitude, Esq. (of Mincing Lane, Colonial Produce Merchant), was sitting alone in his dining-room at Westbourne Terrace ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... "fools rush in where angels fear to tread;" nor have we words to express our disgust and horror at the sight of fools, not rushing in among those awful sanctities before which angels vail their faces with their wings, but mincing in, with red slippers and flowered dressing-gowns—would-be fashionables, with crow-quills in hands like those of milliners, and rings on their fingers—afterwards extending their notes into Sacred Poems for the use of the public—penny-a-liners, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... arms, to go in public procession, to present petitions openly, instead of having them made a humbug of by being laid on the table unopened by some careless member—they're our rights, and we'll have them. There's no use mincing the matter: it's just like the old fable of the farmer and his wheat—if we want it reaped, we must reap it ourselves. Public opinion, and the pressure from without, are the only things which have carried any measure in England for ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... garden where through the russet mist of clustered trees and strewn November leaves, they crunch with vainglorious heels of ancient vermilion the dry dead of spent summer's greens, and stalk with mincing sceptic steps, and sound of snuffboxes snapping to the capping of an epigram, in fluffy attar-scented wigs ... ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... ironical form of respect that you offer to the prey you have been hotly chasing and have caught. Weisspriess conceived that he had good reasons for addressing her in the tone best suited to his character: he spoke with a ridiculous mincing suavity: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... heraldry, based on genealogy. A circlet of black ostrich feathers in some branches surrounds the face and stands high above the head. In the southern districts the warriors wear two single black ostrich plumes tied one either side the head, and slanting a little backwards. They walk with a mincing step, so that the two feathers bob gently up and down like the waving of the circus ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... to," continued Kate. "Now, such a girl oughtn't to be on the foundation at all. If you only knew the snubbing she gave me yesterday. I quite hate her, with all her pretty face and her mincing ways." ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... use mincing matters. At this very moment Reginald might be standing defenceless within, with his last chance of liberty slipping from ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... minion here, this mincing[337] trull,[338] Doth please me more a thousandfold, Than all the earth that is so full Of precious stones, silver and gold; Wherefore let my father spite and spurn, My fantasy will ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... that a boy of the name of Dale, whom he had never particularly observed before, was a good deal teased by some boys who kept crossing their hands before them, and curtseying like girls, talking in a mincing way, and calling one another Amelia, with great affectation. Dale tried to get away, but he was ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... of wheat; and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock in one of them. From Rood Lane to Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was sometimes a subtle flavour of wine; sometimes of tea. One church, near Mincing Lane, smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument, the service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little further down the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... child's spirit, but tend to make him dishonest. Ask a child now what he thinks, and, ten to one, he mentally refers to some eminent exemplar of all the virtues for instructions, and, instead of telling you what he does think, quotes listlessly what he ought to think. So that his mincing affectation is not merely ungraceful, but is a sign of an inward taint, which may prove fatal to the whole character. It is very easy to make a child disingenuous; if he be at all timid, the work ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... he said. All art must suggest something. Mere verbal description is not literature: it is only words, words, words; a picture must be charged with soul, otherwise a photograph would outrank "The Angelus." Music must be more than jingling tunes and mincing sounds. And thus we find Wagner at thirty years of age boldly putting forth "The Flying Dutchman," with music not written for the text, nor text written for the music, but words and music created at the same time—the melody mirroring forth ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... he was obviously struggling with another word, which threatened to choke him. With an expression of horror and despair, he clutched his bald head; and then the word came—the single word "Blimey!" It was uttered in the same soft, mincing, judicial accents. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... what bread was, which is not true of many readers; and so he had bread or nothing. His mind was a voracious eater, much more of an eater than his body. It demanded substantial food, too, the bread, meat, and potato of literature and science. It did not crave cake and confectionery. There was no mincing and nibbling when it went to a meal. It just laid in as if to shame starvation; it almost gobbled up what was on the table. It devoured naturally and largely. It was fortunate for him that his mind was so hungry all ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... with hems and haws and sidelong steps and nervous caws, the crows came mincing forth to mail gay valentines, you know. The post box was a hollow tree. They did not know, unluckily, that squirrels had gnawed the floor away, ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... "then you have never met my father, the Prince. He is terribly particular. You must go so" (she imitated the mincing walk of a court chamberlain), "you must hold your tails thus" (wagging her white nightrail and twisting about her head to watch the effect), "and you must retire—so!" With that she came bowing backward towards the well of the staircase, so far that I was ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... also we constantly find u for o; showing, together with much other incontestable evidence of the same kind, how full and deep the old pronunciation of Latin always remained, and how ridiculous our English mincing of the vowels would have sounded to a ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... said he, mysteriously, "I've seen enough lately to frighten any quiet gentleman out of his senses. I'll not get a wink of sleep, I fear, for a week to come. There must have been something dreadful upon Sir Piers's mind; sure—nay, there's no use in mincing the matter with you—in a word, then, some crime too deep ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... says he, in his mincing way (for Londoners are mostly all tongue-tied, and can't say their a's and i's properly, 'and it's our business to keep you from molesting the ladies and gentlemen going ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of repudiation is sounding in my ears; and although you say nothing, I know you must be repudiating me, all the same. Write I cannot—there's no good mincing matters, a letter frightens me worse than the devil; and I am just as unfit for correspondence as if I had never learned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the boy a glance to cast Swept careless by the gorgeous Queen of Gain. More scornful still, the Queen of Fashion passed, With mincing gait and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... any mincing of words. The Gayety is a mere adjunct to the Poodle-Dog saloon and the gambling hell up-stairs. They are so closely connected that on the stage last evening I could easily hear the click of ivory chips and the clatter of drinking glasses. One man owns and controls ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish |
