"Prim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stopped, the Abbess observing, with a prim aspect, that she had read quite enough concerning such worldly vanities, and the Count of Crevecoeur, breaking out, "Aroint thee, deceitful witch!—Why, this device smells rank as the toasted cheese ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... something to tell us, she said, and as she opened the door a delicate pink flush spread over her face. I noted it, with surprise, but no inkling of the truth came to me—for nobody ever connected the idea of possible lovers or marriage with this prim little ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... canaries singing in the pretty little room in which George had slept, but the apartment was in the same prim order in which the laundress had arranged it after the departure of the two young men—not a chair displaced, or so much as the lid of a cigar-box lifted, to bespeak the presence of George Talboys. With a last, lingering hope, he searched upon the mantelpieces ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... but two months before and if perhaps then her younger sister had felt any pang of pity for the orphaned children, it did not enter her thoughts this morning. She plumped up the pillows on the prim horsehair sofa, painfully recalling the pillow fight she had once seen between her cousin's children. Children were a nuisance, and these two—Myra's dreadful boy and girl—were bound to be more ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... standing forth to demand vengeance."—Murray's Sequel, p. 114. "Alleging, that their decrial of the church of Rome, was a uniting with the Turks."—Barclay cor. "To which is added the Catechism by the Assembly of Divines."—N. E. Prim. cor. "This treachery was always present in the thoughts of both of them."— Robertson cor. "Thus far their words agree." Or: "Thus far the words of both agree."—W. Walker cor. "Aparithmesis is ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... always a man of his word, packed up his portmanteau, and paid his bill. He had just completed this heavy operation, when somebody wanted to speak to him, and a sort of half-clerical, half-legal sort of looking gentleman was introduced, who, with a starched face and prim air, said that he came to request in writing the name of the officer who was dressed as a devil in the masquerade of ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... two women disappear down the long, rubber-carpeted corridor, he began to pace the small, spotlessly neat office in which he had been asked to wait. It was a prim, barren room, heavy with the fumes of iodoform and ether. At intervals, the muffled tread of a doctor or nurse passing through the hall broke its stillness, but otherwise there was not a sound ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... Prim is dead. He was shot and killed at Madrid the day the king after his own heart, Amedeus, Duke of ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... strikingly differs from the typical New England village, where the charm comes of a prim uniformity, and individuality is made to give place to a general parking of lawns and shade-trees in rectangular blocks and avenues. A New England village suggests some large institution disposed in separate uniform buildings, placed on one level carpet of green, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... having his dramatic entertainment censored by a frail, prim little thing like Miss Beach tickled his burly sense of humor. "It would be a horrible thing if I should go to see anything vulgar, wouldn't it?" he observed. "But I think I'll take a chance. You go ahead ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... dress, paid due attention to it. She was never seen out of her chamber with papers in her hair, nor in that worst of dis-illusions,—a morning wrapper. At half-past eight every morning Mrs. Mervale was dressed for the day,—that is, till she re-dressed for dinner,—her stays well laced, her cap prim, her gowns, winter and summer, of a thick, handsome silk. Ladies at that time wore very short waists; so did Mrs. Mervale. Her morning ornaments were a thick, gold chain, to which was suspended a gold watch,—none ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... cursed shame that, when you feel a continual propensity to quarrel with a man, he should be such a prince Prim as never to give you an opportunity? And why have I this propensity?—I know not!—Confound the fellow, why does he make himself so great a favourite? Why does he not contrive to be hated a little? And then perhaps ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... reproved for whistling by Amy, the art-loving sister, says: "I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits! I'm not a young lady; and if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails till I'm twenty. I hate to think I've got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a china-aster! Its bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boy's games and ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... graui primus cecinit camoena Aureum vellus, procersque Grcos, quos sibi adiunxit comites Ianson Vectus in Argo Naue, qum primm secuisse fluctus prdicant salsos, sibi comparauit Inde non vnquam moritura magn prmia fam Tanta si merces calamum secuta Vnic nauis referentis acta, Quanta Rachardum manet Hakluytum gloria? cuius Penna descripsit freta mille, mille ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... visit to the scene of the crime—a high, dingy, narrow-chested house, prim, formal, and solid, like the century which gave it birth. Lestrade's bulldog features gazed out at us from the front window, and he greeted us warmly when a big constable had opened the door and let us in. The room ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not at all as you and I had imagined it to be. There is no high wall around it as there is at Fort Trumbull. It reminds one of a prim little village built around a square, in the center of which is a high flagstaff and a big cannon. The buildings are very low and broad and are made of adobe—a kind of clay and mud mixed together—and the walls are very thick. At every window are heavy wooden shutters, that can be closed during ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... prevented me from attempting the higher walks of our profession; but this object of my ambition was gained at last. I had taken a pocket-book from a worthy Quaker, and, unfortunately, was perceived by a man at a shop window, who came out, collared, and delivered me into the hands of the prim gentleman. Having first secured his property, he then walked with me and a police officer to Bow-street. My innocent face, and my tears, induced the old gentleman, who was a member of the Philanthropic Society, not only not to prefer the charge against me, but to ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... by its austere surroundings—crowed lustily from the cradle in which, after the fashion of the country, it was tightly strapped. It was a low, grimy room, with one square bit of a window, and far from clean. Dr. Gilly, the prim English biographer of Neff, quaintly says: "Cleanliness is not a virtue which distinguishes any of the people in these mountains; and, with such a nice sense of moral perception as they display, and with such strict attention to the duties of religion, it is astonishing that they have not yet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Bath with a curious kind of interest. I once knew one of those dear old English ladies whom one finds all the world over, with their prim little ways, and their gilt prayer-books, and lavender-scented handkerchiefs, and family recollections. She gave me the idea that Bath, a city where the great people often congregate, was more especially the paradise of decayed gentlewomen. There, ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... structure of the understanding rising out of the moral and spiritual nature. Then follows a section on Children, which explodes not a few educational fallacies, and propounds certain articles of faith and practice wholesome for these times, though it will probably wear a prim and quakerish aspect to the admirers of Jean Paul's famous tractate[10] on the same theme. The concluding paper in this series, entitled The Life Poetic, is the liveliest, if not the most valuable of the six: it has, however, been charged, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... me alone: I am not thine. Prim Creed, with categoric point, forbear To feature me my Lord by rule and line. Thou canst not measure Mistress Nature's hair, Not one sweet inch: nay, if thy sight is sharp, Would'st count the strings upon an angel's ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... I," said Rita. "But he's got the idea he would be doing me a favor in marrying me; and when a man gets that notion it's fatal. Also—He doesn't realize it himself, but I'm not prim enough to suit him. He imagines he's liberal—that's a common failing among men. But a woman who is natural shocks them, and they are taken in and pleased by one who poses as more innocent and impossible than any human being ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... not believe that in this age God has altered anyone. People love God nowadays as much as the temperaments they were born with tell them to. He has grown too old for miracles. After two thousand years he has no longer the force to turn water into wine. Ellen, I love your dear prim smile. But always, everywhere, I have found the love of men and women doing that. Sometimes the love of places does something very like it. A man may land on a strange island, and abandon the journey on ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... something to one of the girls. Then suddenly they all saw me, and that politely enduring look came over all three faces at once, though Mamie Sue's face is so jolly and round by nature that it is very hard to prim it down suddenly, and I don't believe she would always trouble to put it on for me, only Belle seems to demand it of her as an echo of her sentiments toward me. Some people can't seem to be sure of themselves unless they can get somebody else to echo them ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... reproducing, for I suppose he is essential to life. This sober Flemish interior expresses my mistress's character almost as well as her own apartment used to do. I always experienced a chill, a sense of formality, when the door was opened, and while I stood waiting for her in the prim drawing-room. Every chair was in its appointed place, large, gilt-edged, illustrated books lay upon the tables.... There was not much light in her rooms; heavy curtains clung about the windows, and tapestries covered the walls. In the passage there were oak chests, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Prim walks, bordered by high box hedges, intersected the carefully tended gardens, and along one of these Sara took her way, quickening her steps to a run as the booming summons of a gong suddenly ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Caverly Cutting. 14 female characters. 1 interior scene, plain or elaborate, as may be desired. Time, 1-1/2 hours. Particularly adapted for girls' high schools. The action of the play occurs in Boston. The cast, including as it does two Southern girls, a prim Boston matron, an old darkey mammy, an Irish maid, the "twinnies" and the other Boston residents, gives great scope for ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... laid aside her fan, lifted her mantilla from her head with both hands, and, drawing it around her shoulders and under her lifted chin, had crossed it over her bosom with a certain prim, automatic gesture, as if it had been the starched kerchief of some remote Puritan ancestress. With her arms still unconsciously crossed, she stooped rigidly, picked up her fan with three fingers, as if it had been a prayer-book, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... another ally who would be more subservient than Russia. One of the many revolutions which had harassed Spain during this century had broken out. Queen Isabella had lost the throne, and General Prim found himself obliged to look about for a new sovereign. He applied in vain to all the Catholic Courts; nobody was anxious to accept an honour coupled with such danger as ruling over the Spanish people. Among others he applied ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... the refusal to allow me to walk or hunt with Xenophon, and to saunter through his kitchen or his grounds. And all because I could not show the requisite grammatical ticket. Could anything be more fascinating than the tale of Xenophon's prim yet most lovable young wife, or the glorious picture of the boy and girl lovers with ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Nobody, republished from Mr. Punch's pages, but with considerable additions. The Diary is very funny, not a page of it but affords matter for a good laugh; and yet the story is not without a touch of pathos, as it is impossible not to pity the steady, prim, old-fashioned jog-trot NOBODY, whose son, but just one remove above a regular 'ARRY, treats him with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various
... column of the French coming on over that high ground where Commissary General Craigie [279] built his house, and headed by an Officer who was at some distance in advance of the column, he ask'd his servant if his fuzee was stil loaded? (The servant opened the pan, and found it is still prim'd). "Do you see," says Captain Hazen, "that fellow there, waving his sword to encourage those other fellows to come forward?"—Yes, says the servant, I do Sir;—Then, says the Captain again, "just place your back against mine for one moment, 'till I see if I can bring him down." ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... for it would make him feel so miserable. But I think, Red, when you looked down you did not look prim enough—you know papa said 'prim.' Now, you stand, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... before Bessie came down. She was a great invalid, although her prim and rigid countenance forbore any expression save of severity. She had no pathos about her, not a touch. Whatever her bodily sufferings may have been—and Bessie dimly hinted that they were severe to agony at times—they were resolutely shut within her chamber door; and when she came out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... save amusement. Miss Guile was watching through half-closed eyes. There was a noticeable stiffening of the prim ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... irresistible fascination—Bonaparte with his little band crossing the bridge at Arcola amid showers of bullets. And then our own generals, not to go further—Espartero at Luchana, O'Donnel in Africa, and, above all, Prim, that almost legendary leader, directing the battalion at Castillejos with his sword. 'I wish to be the same,' say these youths; 'where one man has arrived another may also succeed'; enthusiasm is taken for predestination, ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... feeling of pique with which they at first received such a rebuff to their curiosity, have been a very evanescent one in the minds of the villagers, had it not chanced that Aberdeen was blessed (?) with two prim sister-spinsters, (was it they or Aunt Nora, who formed the exception to the general rule? I leave it for thee, dear reader, to decide, since with that early-instilled reverence before mentioned, I cannot consider my humble opinion infallible,) ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... pier in the moonlight, leaving me bewildered. This was a queen of cannibals; she was tattooed from hand to foot, and perhaps the greatest masterpiece of that art now extant, so that a while ago, before she was grown prim, her leg was one of the sights of Tai-o- hae; she had been passed from chief to chief; she had been fought for and taken in war; perhaps, being so great a lady, she had sat on the high place, and throned it there, alone of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The prim and the precise, or the exact, the homogeneous, the single, the puritanic, the mathematic, the pure, the perfect. We can have illusion of this state—but only by disregarding its infinite denials. It's a drop of milk afloat in acid that's eating it. The positive swamped by the negative. So it ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... pretty, too stylish, to suit the prim Eudora, who felt keenly how she must suffer by comparison with her sister's waiting maid. Even unsuspicious Anna saw the point, and smiling archly asked "what she could do to make ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... father, like the one in which your worship took part. These charges are not, as one might say, greatly to the taste of the Moors, who, when they hear the call to the charge, to which we have given the name of General Prim's Polka, tremble and turn pale and fall back. [Note: It may properly be related here that this same division, with its leader, General Prim, reconnoitring at a few leagues distance from Tetuan, came upon a poor old Moorish woman, sick and abandoned by her people; and that putting her on a stretcher, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... rouse my audience?" She slowed her steps, and he slowed to keep by her side. She lifted her clear face proudly. "I tell you," she said, "the part I am to play to-night will move Europe to its core. Paris! Berlin! Vienna! Even cautious prim London! I have them under my hand; even to-morrow they will be asking an account, crying for the heads of the wrongdoers on a charger. And you ask me if that ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... 's nought but shy finesse, And mim and prim 'bout mess and dress, That scarce a hand a hand will press Wi' ought o' feeling free; A cauldrife pride aside has laid The hodden gray, and hame-spun plaid, And a' is changed since neebors said Just, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... stout and prim, a combination which was surely never intended by nature. Her gray dress and tight linen collar and cuffs gave the uncomfortable impression of being sewed on, while her rigid black water-waves seemed irrevocably painted upon her high forehead. ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... zone, Where vines and weeds and scrub-oaks intertwine Safe from the plough, whose rough, discordant stone 80 Is massed to one soft gray by lichens fine, The tangled blackberry, crossed and recrossed, weaves A prickly network of ensanguined leaves; Hard by, with coral beads, the prim black-alders shine. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... a number. Let me see: there's Neb (he's an old black fellow—Nebuchadnezzar), and Miss Snowflake, Aunt Chloe (after the one in Uncle Tom's Cabin), Fanny Elssler (because she jumps about so), and Mr. Prim—- he is the stillest ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... and we went on for a while, braying and laughing, until I began to grow a-weary of it, and, shouting a derisive farewell, turned to pursue my way. In so doing—it was like going suddenly into cold water—I found myself face to face with a prim little old maid. She was all in a flutter, the poor old dear! She had concluded beyond question that this must be a lunatic who stood laughing aloud at a white donkey in the placid beech-woods. I was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was only this mist which he now saw, terrifying and confusing him. He was a little man, and knew it. He was a poor man, and knew it. He was a weary man, and knew it. He hated his wife, and knew it. He hated his children—whom she had made like herself, prim, peeking and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with such ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the house with roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself hurrying from the Rue Richer, hailing ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... morning hours and are quickly passed. The forenoon is marked by lilacs, apple blooms and roses. The day's meridian is reached with lilies, red carnations, and the dusky splendor of pansies and passion flowers. Then come the languid poppy and the prim little 4 o'clock, the marigold, the sweet pea, and later the dahlia and the many-tinted chrysanthemum to mark the day's decline. Lastly the goldenrod, the aster and the gentian, tell us it is evening time, and night and frost are ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... singularly quaint-looking personage presented himself. He was very stiff and prim in his appearance; dressed in a blue coat and scarlet waistcoat, with a rich bandanna handkerchief tied very neatly round his neck, and a very new hat, to which his head ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... but a curious and rather pathetic thing is that, although it must be a hundred years since the place was deserted, there are still multitudes of flowers which must have come from those in the old garden. There are iris and narcissus and a little blue flower, with a neat, prim, clean smell that makes one feel as if it ought to be put with lavender into chests of fresh old linen. The narcissus in particular was growing around everywhere, together with real wild flowers like the painted columbine and star of Bethlehem. It was a lovely spot on a headland overlooking ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... had a sunny disposition and liked life in the nunnery, and had a natural aptitude for the pretty table manners which she learnt there, as well as for talking French, and though she was not at all prim and liked the gay clothes and pet dogs which she used to see at home in her mother's bower, still she had no hesitation at all about taking the veil when she was fifteen, and indeed she rather liked the fuss that was made of her, and being called Madame or Dame, which was the courtesy title ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... who returns to a New England homestead after long residence abroad, and endeavors to do her duty in the station to which Providence has called her. Prim, pale, pretty, and not youthful except in heart.—Annie Kilburn, by William ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the first bright days of April came a change. He was going back to England, he told her, one Saturday afternoon, as they sat, lover-like, side by side, in the prim salon. She gave a low cry at the words, and looked at him with wild, ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... high-featured matron, encased in the rigidity of her Sunday bombazine, gave a prim poke with her umbrella in the ribs of a sparrow-like little man, with a discoloured, scraggy beard, who nodded in one ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... sighed at the word. Comfortable! Was she to give her mind to making Fred and his children comfortable—such a creature as this? Involuntarily it occurred to Edward that, under such ministrations, sundry changes might come over the aspect of that prim apartment in which he had seen her first; the room with the bookcase and the red curtains, and the prints over the mantelpiece—a very tidy, comfortable room before any bewitching imp came to haunt it, and whisper suspicions of its imperfection—the doctor's ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the bedroom with the tray, on my arm is that badge of pride, the towel; and I approach with prim steps to inform Madam that breakfast is ready, and she puts on the society manner and addresses me as 'Sir,' and asks with cruel sarcasm for what purpose (except to boast) I carry the towel, and I say 'Is there anything more I can do for Madam?' and Madam replies that there ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... con cone slim slime froze cub cube glad glade these nod node snip snipe gaze met mete shot shote rise plat plate spin spine size flam flame plan plane wise shad shade strip stripe haze mop mope grim grime rose whit white twin twine daze sham shame prim prime those scrap scrape plum ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... desire and yet afraid to dare. No nicety of conscience held me now, rather apprehension. I had not lived my one and twenty years without learning that a young woman may be free of speech and yet discreet of action, that alluring eyes are oft mismated with prim maiden conscience. 'Tis in the blood of some of them to throw down the gauntlet to a man's courage and then to trample on him for daring ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... too funny; she turned around and said, very prim and stiff, 'No, indeed; I'm too old a woman.' Funny! If I think of that on my deathbed I ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... looked round, and her eyes fell upon the last of the photograph-albums—the one she had yawned over. She picked it up, propped it on her knees, and, lying back against the cushions, turned the pages over. These were all children, prim children with tidy hair and solemn faces. Mollie stopped at the picture of a girl dressed in a wide-skirted, sprigged-muslin frock. Her hair fell in plump curls from beneath a broad-brimmed hat with long ribbons floating over one shoulder. Her legs were very conspicuous ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... his knowledge of Italian literature is confined to a few of the most popular of Petrarch's sonnets, and an imperfect acquaintance with Ariosto, through the medium of Mr. Hoole. As to the French poets, he dismisses them in the mass as a set of prim, precise, unnatural pretenders. The truth is, he is in a state of happy ignorance about them and all that they have done. He has never read Zaire nor Phedre. To those great German poets who have illuminated the last fifty years with ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... and the daguerreotype of his father. These were his sacred relics, and with them was a bundle of cedar twigs to keep the fragrance ever there—to keep continually with them the power, through smell, to conjure up those days and thoughts of her love. Belle took them reverently and gazed at the prim old pictures; then she looked him squarely in the eyes, intensely for a moment, like one who looks through a veil for the first time and sees a hidden ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... part, intended his youngest daughter to be a model of prim propriety. He attributed to Flavia's frivolity of behaviour the difficulty he experienced in finding her a husband, and he had no intention of exposing himself to a second failure in the case of Faustina. She should marry in her first season, and if she chose to be gay ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... do compare our own age with that of Pericles, and congratulate themselves on the reawakening of the feeling of patriotism: I remember a parody on the funeral oration of Pericles by G. Freytag,[9] in which this prim and strait-laced "poet" depicted the happiness now experienced by sixty-year-old men.—All pure and simple caricature! So this is the result! And sorrow and irony and seclusion are all that remain for him who has seen ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... pauperism, and patriotism,—these and suchlike stupendous subjects for reflection, all branching more or less intricately from the single idea of the Castleton property, the young lord discussed and disposed of in half-a-dozen prim, poised sentences; evincing, I must say in justice, no inconsiderable information, and a mighty solemn turn of mind. The oddity was that the subjects so selected and treated should not come rather from some young barrister, or mature political ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Drew's maiden aunt, prim, proper and worldly-wise, was as much Aunt Sally to Filmer as she was to her niece and nephew. Jock jollied the aristocratic lady as freely as he did Drew, toward whom he held the tolerant admiration that he had given him from the ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... the last man in the world with whom you would have associated romance, and it was hard to see what there was in him to arouse love. In the clothes he wore now he looked podgier than ever, and his round spectacles gave his round face the look of a prim cherub. He suggested rather a curate who had gone to the dogs. His conversation was peppered with the quaintest Americanisms, and it is because I despair of reproducing these that, at whatever loss of vividness, I mean to narrate the story he told me a little later in my own words. ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... is complete without one? It gives a spicy flavor to the story. People of propriety like it. Prim ladies of an uncertain age always 'dote' on the gallant, gay Lothario, and wish that he wasn't ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a regular "character;" and, from the first, had been feared as our stumbling-block. He was a perfect martinet; a prim, precise, black-stock'd, military, Miss Nancy. He neither ate nor drank, neither talked nor smiled, but paraded the deck with a grim air of iron severity, as if resolved to preserve his own "discipline" if he could not ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... spoke with the prim decision of a teacher instructing a class, but that seemed to be only his way, and Helen May was growing used to it. "His evidencing a tendency toward sluggishness to-day, and his subsequent irritability, may or may not be significant ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... by nature, recorded his mind in some two thousand printed pages, and Roger Williams even to-day looms up with all the more power because we have become "rather fatigued by the monotony of so vast a throng of sages and saints, all quite immaculate, all equally prim and stiff in their Puritan starch and uniform, all equally automatic and freezing." It is most comfortable to find anyone defying the rigid and formal law of the time, whether spoken or implied, and we have positive ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... was about to cross the dewy band of grass which bordered the road, when he recollected that he had just put on clean boots, and the result of a scramble through and among brambles would be unsatisfactory for their appearance in the rector's prim study. So the berries hung in their place, left to ripen, and he went on till a great dragon-fly came sailing along the moist lane to pause in the sunny openings, and poise itself in the clear air where its wings vibrated so rapidly that they looked ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... York millionaires' sons who had been sent there to spend their college vacation and get toughened (the process was obviously succeeding); they made Nimrod apologise for keeping his coat on during dinner; the three brothers who owned the ranch, and the wife of one of them; several children; a prim and proper spinster from Washington—how she got there, who can tell?—and Miss Belle Hadley, the ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... has other hundreds of volumes waiting to be read. But somehow he has never thought of sending me back my shabby old Gibbon. And that was the way with my Montaigne—gone. And here were two editions of Gulliver. I lent one to a nephew of the Harringtons and the other to a rather prim young lady from Boston who impressed me as having had too much Emerson. My Shelley is gone. My 'Rousseau's Confessions' is also gone." And Cooper smiled at ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... "La vie d'une femme." They were painted rather in a remarkable style—flat, dead, pale, and formal. The first represented a "Jeune Fille," coming out of a church-door, a missal in her hand, her dress very prim, her eyes cast down, her mouth pursed up—the image of a most villanous little precocious she-hypocrite. The second, a "Mariee," with a long white veil, kneeling at a prie-dieu in her chamber, holding her hands plastered together, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... very home that had sprung up for me in the midst of these solitudes. My Arabs were busy with their bread; Mysseri rattling tea-cups; the little kettle, with her odd old-maidish looks, sat humming away old songs about England; and two or three yards from the fire my tent stood prim and tight, with open portal, and with welcoming look, like “the old arm-chair” of our lyrist’s “sweet ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... light under the sea, and there was little time to dress for dinner when I brought them to anchor for the night. The nice old hotel, with its Delft plates half covering the walls, its alcoves and unexpected stairways with green balusters, and its old dining-room looking on a prim garden, pleased the eyes which find all things in ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... grey passage in the dawn. The girls' door was open; for the girls were afraid of robbers, and left their bed-room door wide open at night, as a natural and obvious means of self-defence. The girls slept together; and the frill of the pale sister's prim little night-cap was buried in the ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... his composition. "If I were a young man going a-courting I'd scent my letters with rose or something nice, and I'd write 'em on pink paper—I would!" Susan reflected. But Lisle was wiser. There is no perfume for a young ladies' school like a whiff of cigar-smoke. To that prim, half convent-like seclusion, where manners are being formed and the proprieties are strictly observed, it comes as a pleasant suggestion of something worldly and masculine, just a little wicked and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... the moon and as beautiful as light. The rapid and constant motion of the foliage of the poplar and the aspen reminds him of some nervous and excitable person who is never quiet or easy for a moment. The prim spruce-tree suggests to him some person of formal habits and primness of dress. The symmetrical maple and pine remind him of some quiet and dignified character who is well balanced and rounded at every point. The patriarchal tree which has outlived all its companions ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... in her life Ann Veronica was utterly disgusted with herself; she was wrung with a passionate and belated desire to move gently, to speak softly and ambiguously—to be, in effect, prim. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... with a force of carabineers and troops of the line. On entering, he ordered the suspected depot of goods to be surrounded, and gave notice to the second alcalde of the town to attend to assist him in the search. In some time the second alcalde presented himself, and at the instance of M. Prim dispersed some groups of the inhabitants who had assumed a hostile attitude. In a few minutes after, and just as some shots were fired, the first alcalde of the town appeared, and stated that the whole population was in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... she was short. He was bulky, promising to be fat. She was thin, and, with a paring here and there, would have been skinny. His face was sternly resolute, solemn indeed, hers was prim, and primness is the most everlasting, indestructible trait of humanity. It can outface the Sphinx. It is destructible only by death. Whoever has married a prim woman must hand over his breeches and his purse, he will collect postage stamps in his old age, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... to do, Frank? What am I to do? Think how desolate I am, how unfriended, how much in want of some one whom I can call a protector! I cannot have you always with me. You care more for the little finger of that prim piece of propriety down at the old dowager's than you do for me and all my sorrows." This was true, but Frank did not say that it was true. "Lord Fawn is at any rate respectable. At least, I thought he was so when ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... no explanations. It stood as usual, large and prim and precise, the very acme of solid, sober wealth and assertive moral rectitude. He was strongly tempted to call and ask for Miss Brandt, but it was only ten o'clock in the morning, and the house looked so truly an embodiment ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... an advantage, for I became well acquainted with several young men fond of natural science. One of these was Ainsworth, who afterwards published his travels in Assyria; he was a Wernerian geologist, and knew a little about many subjects. Dr. Coldstream was a very different young man, prim, formal, highly religious, and most kind-hearted; he afterwards published some good zoological articles. A third young man was Hardie, who would, I think, have made a good botanist, but died early in India. Lastly, Dr. Grant, my senior by several years, but how I became acquainted with him I cannot ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... I quote because it is so absurd. The rooms I live in were owned by a prim old woman who for more than twenty years was my landlady. She and I were great friends, indeed she tended me like a mother, and when I was so ill nursed me as perhaps few mothers would have done. Yet while I was watching on ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... seated erect and prim on what had once been a hill of potatoes, her bonnet perched rakishly on one ear, and her grey toupee partially disarranged, hanging with its sustaining hairpins over her eyes, was Mrs. Mackintosh, ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... displease you, but I love you, old woman, I do indeed. And whatever I may have said in the past I 'take back' as we bushmen say, and I want you to give me some of your affection. I know you have tons of it concealed under that prim little manner of yours, but you are too proud to show it. And see, Lizzie, old girl, I'm not really the reckless scallawag you think me to be," and he stroked her hair, and looked so earnestly and pleadingly into her eyes, that her woman's heart triumphed, and she leant her head ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... a cousin to the Queen of England, himself a Coburg, finally declined the honour. And Spain could not wait. There was a certain picturesqueness in Prim, the usual ornamental General through whose hands Spain has passed and repassed during the last century. He was a hard man, and the men of Spain, unlike the French, understand a martinet. But Spain could not wait. She must have a king; for the regency was ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... look very neat and prim; they march well, and their muskets are polished very bright. I wonder how they would stand fire," said Higgins, after ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... that her power reached its full development, and she even took prizes in magazines and newspapers for some stories with what her friends called "prim heroes and pasteboard heroines," classifications which she good-naturedly accepted, as she readily acknowledged that she had no gift ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... the consent of her guardians. Now her guardians were four in number, and their characters so widely different that "they never agreed on any one thing." They were sir Philip Modelove, an old beau; Mr. Periwinkle, a silly virtuoso; Mr. Tradelove, a broker on 'Change; and Mr. Obadiah Prim, a hypocritical quaker. Colonel Feignwell contrived to flatter all the guardians to the top of their bent, and won the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... wouldn't leave one snap to meet its partner. Come on Judy," the feet were again on the rug, "we will be simply dead in the morning, and we have got to be very much alive. We do miss the Weatherbee. I don't see why we let her go. Dear, prim, prompt Weatherbee! Now we know we loved her. Her successor is too young to ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... big, prim old Howe house sits Madam Howe. She is called Madam to distinguish her from her daughter-in-law, Mrs. George Howe. She is a regal old lady of eighty-three and spends most of her time in her room up-stairs where are gathered the wonderful ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... the hall, Helen following her, feeling extremely old and prim. Grandma Armstrong's bedroom was at the back of the house overlooking the orchard and kitchen-garden. She was sitting up in bed, a very handsome little old lady in cap and ribbons. She gave the strange girl's hand ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... off and a few moments later a girl entered the office—if the prim little wisp that was Lucy Crane could be so ...
— The Big Tomorrow • Paul Lohrman
... Tredgold sat in the private office of Tredgold and Son, land and estate agents, gazing through the prim wire blinds at the peaceful High Street of Binchester. Tredgold senior, who believed in work for the young, had left early. Tredgold junior, glad at an opportunity of sharing his father's views, had passed most of the work on to ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Islands, and whom Ormond had never seen, was to accompany Dora on her return to Corny Castle: our young hero had settled it in his head that this aunt must be something like Aunt Ellenor in Sir Charles Grandison; a stiff-backed, prim, precise, old-fashioned looking aunt. Never was man's astonishment more visible in his countenance than was that of Harry Ormond on the first sight of Dora's aunt. His surprise was so great as to preclude ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... joined the league against him, have you, Miss Heritage?" said Edna. "But, of course, you would condemn anyone who failed to conform to your prim, governessy little notions of right and wrong. I might have known as much! I am only sorry I should have gone out of my way to offer you a privilege you are so incapable of appreciating. You ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... advance of the Right Wing with the First Division. He moved from camp at 6 A.M. on the Edmondson pike, on which he was ordered to move to Prim's blacksmith shop, from whence he was to march direct on a country road to Nolinsville. The Third Division under Sheridan moved on the Nolinsville pike, followed by the Second under Johnson. The advance of both these columns encountered ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... you talk," continued his instructor, "and I felt satisfied that Major Carter, if a spy, would hardly have wasted his efforts in such a prim presentation of his facts." He glanced at his watch. "He would have doubtless used cipher. Josef is due in just one minute now. There he comes," he said, as there was a low rap at the door. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... path round the world, and failed, though by no fault of their own. The man who pledges them better luck next time, is George Fenner, known to "the seven Portugals," Leicester's pet, and captain of the galleon which Elizabeth bought of him. That short prim man in the huge yellow ruff, with sharp chin, minute imperial, and self-satisfied smile, is Richard Hawkins, the Complete Seaman, Admiral John's hereafter famous and hapless son. The elder who is talking with him is his good uncle ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the coyne of Constantinople sometyme called Bizant{i}um; and because you shall not thinke this any fic{ti}one of myne owne, Iwill warrante the same with Williame of Malmesberye in the fourthe booke De Regibus, who hathe these wordes: Constantinopolis prim{u}m Bizantiu{m} dicta forma{m} antiqui vocabuli preferu{n}t imperatorii nu{m}mi Bizantiu{m} dicta; where one other coppye for nummi Bizantiu{m} hath Bizantini nu{m}mi, and the frenche hath yt besante or ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... But, of course, if you want a clean hearthstone and the logs roosting upon the andirons, and are devoid of all the camp-fire sentiment, have some asbestos gas-logs. There will be no dust or dirt, no covering up at night with ashes, no bill for cord-wood, and it will look as stiff and prim as any New England old maid and be as devoid of sentiment and art as a ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... was spotlessly clean, and its aspect was prim and sober, as was indeed that of the whole city. Men in wide-brimmed hats and wide-skirted coats of sombre hue walked the streets, and talked earnestly together at the corners; whilst the women, for the most part, passed on their way with lowered eyes, and hoods drawn ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... just in front of us." Mrs. Thesiger laughed and her head fell back upon her pillow. But during that movement her eyes had never left her daughter's face. "A middle-aged man with stiff gray hair, a stiff, prim face, and a figure like a ramrod. Oh, there never was anything so stiff." A noticeable bitterness began to sound in her voice and increased as she went on. "There was an old woman with him as precise and old-fashioned ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... of me," she said, with a little break in her voice. "Bert used to be the same. But he's different now. He knows I wasn't made prim ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... la Valliere," Saint-Aignan continued, "she was brought up under the care of the Dowager Madame, that is to say, in the greatest austerity and formality. This young engaged couple coldly exchanged their little vows in the prim presence of the moon and stars; and now, when they find they have to break those vows asunder, it plays the very deuce ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... architecture astonishing in sheer extravagance and variety. Gabled houses, red-tiled and gay with rough-cast and fresh paint; dull, sad-faced houses with sleepy windows like half-shut eyes; square, solid Georgian houses for doctors with white chokers and snuff-boxes, and prim old ladies with mittened wrists; low, little dolls'-houses, red brick neatly pointed; tall, slim houses graceful with slender casements and light shafts of wood; casements nobly elaborate in wood-carving and heavy with leaded panes; bay windows which should belong to nurseries and high, square-latticed ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... The prim, black-robed duenna had gained courage from her mistress's temerity. She had ceased trembling. Yet she was exercised about something. Jack could not understand why. Surely, she was no longer fearful of him. She leaned ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... wondering out loud, so that Georgina heard her, and wanted to say things back—shocking things, such as Rosa said to Joseph. But she never said them. There was always that old silver porringer, sitting prim and ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... fire came driving straight for it the fire with the wind behind. 'Which things are a parable,' he said, his ugly sunburnt face twitching curiously, his eyes quite handsome, nay, even splendid with honest scorn. He was shaking his fist towards the prim little dorp that we had left behind over the ridges. 'No doubt but ye are the people,' he said, 'ye that have made the freedom of England and the franchise of Jesus of no effect by your tradition your sacrosanct tradition. What's the good of the frowsy old stuff? It must be ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... Cope, and disparaged him as before—when he did not ignore him altogether. If Amy had but been rescued by him, George F. Pearson, instead of by this Bertram Cope, and if she had been snatched from a disorderly set of breakers at the foot of those disheveled sandhills instead of from the prim, prosy, domestic edge of Churchton—well, wouldn't the affair have been better set and better carried off? In such case it might have been picturesque and heroic, instead ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... a little smile in my hair early in the morning," replies quick, cheery Bel. "It never crimps decidedly, and it all gets straightened out prim enough as the day's work comes on. It's like the grass of the field, and a good many other things; in the morning it is fresh and springeth up; in the evening it giveth up, and is ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... only separated by a green hedge, with no gate, so that Cecy spent two-thirds of her time at Dr. Carr's, and was exactly like one of the family. She was a neat, dapper, pink-and-white-girl, modest and prim in manner, with light shiny hair, which always kept smooth, and slim hands, which never looked dirty. How different from my poor Katy! Katy's hair was forever in a snarl; her gowns were always catching on nails and tearing "themselves"; and, in spite of her ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... where we find them enrolled, for instance, in the service of the King of France, and having revenge on their oppressors on the field of Fontenoy. Elsewhere in every country of Europe do we discover them or their descendants in the front ranks, and at the helm of affairs—in Spain, O'Donnell and Prim; in France, Mac Mahon and Lally Tollendal; in Austria, O'Taafe ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... which has not escaped comment, in offering to the Commander-in-Chief his services as second in command of the army. He did right. Battalions and brigades could hardly have strengthened the hands of the general, and invigorated the spirits of the troops, so much as the active accession of Hardinge. Prim etiquette may pucker its thin lips, and solemn discretion knit its ponderous brows; but neither discipline nor prudence ran any risk of being injured or affronted by the veteran of the Peninsula. What the exigency required, he knew; what the exigency exacted, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... he kept up a desultory correspondence, had expressed her regret in a letter written in the stiff, carefully worded style of "sweet sixteen," and he had never guessed the passion of disappointment which the prim ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... nearest it,—a small, plainly furnished apartment, with an almost conventual simplicity in its cold, white walls and draperies, and the narrow, nun-like bed. It struck him that it might have belonged to some prim elder daughter or maiden aunt, who had acted as housekeeper, as it commanded the wing and servants' offices, with easy access to ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... Miss Mordaunt was hardly the woman to be intrusted with a girl's education. She was a gentle, shallow creature, with narrow views of life, very prim and puritanical—orthodox, she would have called it—and she brought up Fay in the old-fashioned way in which she herself had been brought up. Fay never mixed with young people; she had no companions of her own age; but people were beginning to talk of her in the neighborhood. Fay's youth, ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... appearance in the schoolhouse, to the delight of the scholars and the gentle satisfaction of Mrs. Martin, who, in addition to the rudimentary musical instruction of the younger girls, occasionally played upon it herself in a prim, refined, and conscientious fashion. To this, when she was alone after school hours, she sometimes added a faint, colorless voice of limited range and gentlewomanly expression. It was on one of these occasions that Twing, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... King and the Tories, and considered that the presumption of the colonists must be put down with a high hand. They little knew of what stuff the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers—the sturdy Puritans, the dashing Cavaliers, the prim Quakers, and of many other classes whom persecution, poverty, or their crimes, had driven from Europe—were made, as I had full many opportunities afterwards of discovering. A just and judicious policy which at once would ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... High Lords, deep Statesmen, Dutchesses, and Whores; All ranks and stations, Publicans and Peers, Grooms, Lawyers, Fiddlers, Bawds, and Auctioneers; Prudes and Coquettes, the Ugly and the Fair, The Pert, the Prim, the Dull, the Debonnair; The Weak, the Strong, the Humble and the Proud, All help'd to form the ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... piquancy just like Jacqueline's now. He even saw the pickaninnies in the shade of the porch outside, worshiping the real Missouri girl from the very whites of their eyes. How he had loved to tease her! He could not help it; she was so daintily prim. That he should thus think of his sister, the while gazing on the one-time gilded butterfly—to say the least, it was a pertinent comment on the transmuting magic that ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... a rustle of dresses down the stairs outside, and two thin little girls, looking excessively proper and prim, came in with an elderly gentlewoman who was their governess and wore a pince-nez to impart the necessary suggestion of a superior intellect. They were the Miss Mutlows, sisters of one of the day-boarders, and attended the course by special favour as friends ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... place is a suburb of the second city in Ireland, and one of the most beautiful spots about the town. What a prim, bustling, active, green-railinged, tea-gardened, gravel-walked place would it have been in the five-hundredth town in England!—but you see the people can be quite as happy in the rags and without the paint, and I hear a great deal more heartiness and affection from these children than ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... the room known as the library is on the ground floor in a wing of the main building. As rooms have a way of doing, it expresses unmistakably the character of its tenant. There is a book-case, with a few spick-and-span books standing in prim, cold rows behind the glass doors—which are always locked. The key is somewhere, no doubt. There are no pictures on the walls, save a fancy calendar—presented with the compliments of the Judge's banker, a crayon portrait of the Judge's ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... FEESH. He is deep, that FEESH. So deep I no can understand hims. They tella me much other peoples no can understand hims too. He makee much policee with his Foreign Relations. I ask a much people to tella me who are his Foreign Relations. They laugh great deal and tella me Spain and General PRIM. No knowee Spain countree in Japan. I no tink it much of a countree, no havee muchee—how you call—Commerce. One ting puzzle me great deal. Here much freedom. Sometimes I tink, too much. But that Island—how ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... vaccination and fresh air! or a reading of John Gilpin or the Pied Piper. Mamsey, you know a model parish stifles me. I can't stand your prim school-children, drilled in the Catechism, and your old women who get out the Bible and the clean apron when they see you a quarter of a mile off. Free air and open minds for me! No, I won't have you sighing, mother. You have returned to your native element, and you ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at his companions as if they had in some way betrayed him; while the fat clergyman stood with his umbrella up, staring stolidly with big, frightened eyes at the camel-men. Cecil Brown curled his small, prim moustache, and looked white, but contemptuous. The Colonel, Belmont, and the young Harvard graduate were the three most cool-headed and ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you both like it. I feel a little unusual in it—but I'll settle down. I have been a trifle prim ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... swear, have "raked in golden barley," Like the great Fleet Street "Cock." Their jealous jeremiads, sour and snarly, PARTLET'S prim feelings shock. "Luck! Not at all: but the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... Trott for the prettiest Master in Town, that no Man teaches a Jigg like him, that she has seen him rise six or seven Capers together with the greatest Ease imaginable, and that his Scholars twist themselves more ways than the Scholars of any Master in Town: besides there is Madam Prim, an Alderman's Lady, recommends a Master of her own Name, but she declares he is not of their Family, yet a very extraordinary Man in his way; for besides a very soft Air he has in Dancing, he gives them a particular Behaviour at a Tea-Table, and in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... In this connection may be mentioned a remark of General Prim, one of the leading spirits in the provisional government of 1868. When asked why at that time he did not establish a republic his reply was: "It would have been a republic without republicans." There was no less a dearth ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... trade) to the death; they will defend all, the golden legend itself, with all the lies and tales in it: as that of St. George, St. Christopher, St. Winifred, St. Denis, &c. It is a wonder to see how Nic. Harpsfield, that Pharisaical impostor, amongst the rest, Ecclesiast. Hist. cap. 22. saec prim, sex., puzzles himself to vindicate that ridiculous fable of St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins, as when they live, [6580]how they came to Cologne, by whom martyred, &c., though he can say nothing for it, yet he must and will approve ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... discussion under Miss Hatchard's roof. The incentive to the celebration had come rather from those who had left North Dormer than from those who had been obliged to stay there, and there was some difficulty in rousing the village to the proper state of enthusiasm. But Miss Hatchard's pale prim drawing-room was the centre of constant comings and goings from Hepburn, Nettleton, Springfield and even more distant cities; and whenever a visitor arrived he was led across the hall, and treated to a glimpse of the group of girls deep in ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... drive in the park, in hopes that she might see him. Her sister, the banker's lady, occasionally condescended to pay her old home and companion a visit in Russell Square. She brought a couple of sickly children attended by a prim nurse, and in a faint genteel giggling tone cackled to her sister about her fine acquaintance, and how her little Frederick was the image of Lord Claud Lollypop and her sweet Maria had been noticed by the Baroness as they were driving in their donkey-chaise at Roehampton. She urged her to make ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Fitzgerald, and to declare Lord Bathurst President of the Council and the Duke of Northumberland Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Previously the King received the address of the dissenting ministers, and then that of the Quakers, presented by William Allen; they were very prim and respectable persons; their hats were taken off by each other in the room before the Throne Room, and they did not bow, though they seemed half inclined to do so; they made a very loyal address, but without ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville |
