"Rustic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... example, the samurai continued to farm down to the present era: the best of the Kyushu samurai were nearly all farmers; and their superior stature and strength were commonly attributed to their rustic occupations. In other parts of the country, as in Izumo, farming was forbidden to samurai: [245] they were not even allowed to hold rice-land, though they might own forest-land. But in various provinces they were permitted to farm, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... by a gust of wind, a caressing of the flower by the wind; the resistance of the flower, the stormy struggle of the wind; the entreaty of the flower, which at last lies there broken; and paraphrased—the field flower a rustic maiden, the wind ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... among dives and warehouses, towards the City Front and the region of the water-rats. In this last stage of its career, where it was both grimy and solitary, and alternately quiet and roaring to the wheels of drays, we found a certain house of some pretension to neatness, and furnished with a rustic outside stair. On the pillar of the stair a black plate bore in gilded lettering this device: "Harry D. Bellairs, Attorney-at-law. Consultations, 9 to 6." On ascending the stairs, a door was found to stand open on the balcony, with this ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... rifles. They told him that since he had money to pay judges and lawyers he must have some also for the outcasts and the hunted. They therefore demanded a ransom of five hundred pesos through the medium of a rustic, with the warning that if anything happened to their messenger, the captive would pay for it with his life. Two days of ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... hand, away they strode to the northward edge of the plateau and went speedily along toward a point at the back of the hospital where there stood a little platform, railed about with untrimmed pine, a rustic lookout much affected by the men in the long evenings, but seldom visited when the sun was up. It took no time at all for half the remaining garrison to turn out and, at respectful distance, stand curiously watching them, and little more for the other half to come flocking out of doors. ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... and of panegyrical compositions, covered the walls. Foremost in getting up these popular celebrations was Angelo Brunetti, afterward so well known by his nickname of "Ciceruacchio." "He was a person of single mind, rustic in manners, proud and at the same time generous, as is common with Romans of the lower class." By his industry he had acquired considerable property, and by his liberal use of it had become a leader of the populace, whom ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... half rustic mansion that stood on a rising ground in a rough, lonely part of the country, overlooking a low tract occasionally flooded by the river Inny. In this house Goldsmith was born, and it was a birthplace worthy of a poet; for, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... of fun of this service, and we concluded to have him at any cost. Accordingly we located his women and worked on them. Mexican beauty is always over-rated, but one of his conquests in that line came as near being the ideal for a rustic beauty as that nationality produces. This girl was about twenty, and lived with a questionable mother at a ranchito back from the river about thirty miles. In form and feature there was nothing lacking, while ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... strawberries and cream, a loaf of brown bread, and a jug of milk, (together with a Stilton cheese and a bottle of port for his own private refreshment,) ready for Margaret on her coming down stairs; and after this rustic luncheon they set out to walk, hardly knowing in what direction to turn, so many old familiar inducements were ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... form of the rudely-carved stake set in a garden or on a lonely beach where the sea-gulls hover; and with their more sumptuous worship the houses of great gods, all marble and gold, stand overlooking the broad valley or the shining spaces of sea.[8] Even the wild thicket has its rustic Pan, to whom the hunter and fowler pray for success in their day's work, and the image of Demeter stands by the farmer's threshing- floor.[9] And yet close as the gods come in their daily dealings with men, scorning no offering, however small, that is made with clean hands, ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... have entered college with a more homely appearance than Garfield. His rustic manners and still more rustic dress invited criticism among the smart young men of his college, yet because he was by nature a gentleman, he was treated from the first as such, by ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... strips of wood, making a framework suitable for a roost. In designing the roost, the lath can be arranged to make it quite attractive, or the braces may be of twigs and branches of a tree to make a rustic effect. —Contributed by William F. Stecher, ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... his complexion dark, and his appearance that of a rustic. He was modest, retiring, loyal to his friends. The liberality of Maecenas and Augustus had enriched him, and he left a considerable property and a house on the Esquiline Hill. He had troops of friends, all the accomplished men of the day; he was quite free from jealousy and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... "but Bradley is confident that this was a young gentleman; he wore a round jacket, with a white collar, and stiff white cuffs with studs in them, for he felt them when he tried to grasp his wrists. No young rustic would be dressed in that fashion, and, taken together with the cap, I fear that it must have ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... neared the lake she moved more slowly, and reaching a rustic seat beneath a cedar that shadowed the entrance to the gardens she sat down, her grey eyes fixed upon the water that ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... a rustic or a clown, madam, that it is not possible for the sharpest-sighted wit in the world to discern any sparks of the gentleman in him, when ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... accept it, any more than her intellect really weighed it; but she succumbed to it; and did not even write again, nor question the man further. Had she done this she might perhaps have found out the truth, that the man, a stupid rustic with enough shrewdness to lie, but not enough to lie cleverly, had had his foolish head turned by the buzz of London town and the splendour of Lambeth stables and the friendliness of the grooms there, and had ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... hour of repose—the hour when, for the most part, every cottage window brightens to the joyous crackling of the rustic hearth, and shines afar through shade and foliage, whilst clouds of smoke issue from the chimneys, and curl up slowly towards the sky. But now, strange to say, every hearth in the country seems cold and deserted. Stranger and more fatal still, every steeple ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... great Rachel on the stage for the first time cried in ecstasy, 'I wouldn't exchange Rachel for a peasant! 'I am prepared to go further. I would'; give all the peasants in Russia for one Rachel. It's high time to look things in the face more soberly, and not to mix up our national rustic pitch with bouquet ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... boundaries of the churchyard, that they were part of the ruins of an ancient palace of King John's, when the carriage arrived, and we all went into church. It looked smaller still within than without, but its rude architecture had something religious as well as rustic about it, and the simple singing of the morning hymn by the school children seemed in accordance with it. As usual my mind wandered during the whole of the service, and though I knelt when others knelt, and stood when they stood, and though my lips ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... leading down the mountain-sides I saw long processions of squealing and grunting swine, black, white and gray, all active and self-willed, fighting each other for the right of way. Before each procession marched a swineherd playing on a rustic pipe, the sounds from which primitive instrument seemed to exercise Circean enchantment upon the rude flocks. It was inexpressibly comical to watch the masses of swine after they had been enclosed in the "folds"—huge tracts fenced in and provided with shelters at the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... haven't felt like being candid with me in a matter where I'd naturally be vitally interested, I can hardly expect you to pour out your heart about a dead-and-gone love-affair with a rustic up in these parts. I understood from the chatter of your old friends that it is dead and gone. I can congratulate you on that proof of your newer wisdom, Lana. It shows that my counsels haven't been entirely wasted ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... music of thy rustic flute Kept not for long its happy, country tone; Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note Of men contention-tost, of men who groan, Which task'd thy pipe too sore, and tired thy throat— It failed, and thou wast mute! Yet hadst thou always ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... words, to make me sell at a better price. Upon this imagination he put several other questions to me, and still received rational answers, no otherwise defective than by a foreign accent, and an imperfect knowledge in the language, with some rustic phrases, which I had learned at the farmer's house, and did not suit the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... sank within him as this splendid being shone upon him. But with his rustic directness he walked to meet the laughing couple at the gate, and said, "Tudie, I come to see you. Shall I go in and talk to your mother twell you ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... applied to unbeliever illustrates this progress of the Church, being derived from the Latin paganus, meaning countryman, villager, rustic. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... began, with The Devil's Pool, a series of rustic pictures which I proposed to collect under the title of The Hemp-Beater's Tales, I had no theory, no purpose to effect a revolution in literature. No one can bring about a revolution by himself alone, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... sensation in an audience when the pastor of the log church brought in his wife, for naught so fair and sweet had ever gladdened their rustic eyes before. The singing that day was mostly solo, or at least, duets. Her pure, birdlike voice filled the church, and what could they do but listen, wondering meanwhile whether it might not be a lark, or an angel come ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... passed several cottages, and entered some. The inhabitants seemed happy, and to possess some substantial comforts. The greater part of these cottages had a walnut or chestnut tree before them, around which was a rustic seat, and which, as overshadowed by the broad branches and luxuriant foliage, composed a very pleasing image. The manner in which the sod was partially worn under most of them, explained their nightly purpose; or ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... in the bucolic school of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, except that Theocritus has an idea of the value of coyness and jealousy as stimulants of passion, as Idyl VI. shows. Crude coyness and rude jealousy no doubt were known also to the rustic folk he sings about; but when he makes that ugly, clumsy, one-eyed monster, the Cyclops Polyphemus, fall in love with the sea-nymph Galatea (Idyl XI.) and lament that he was not born with fins that he might dive and kiss her hand if his lips she refused, he applies Alexandrian ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the power entrusted thee, And how great function is given thee, The joyful thanks of Roman citizens prove, To whom thou grantest their petitions. Among them, O glory of Christ, Hear also a rustic poet, Confessing the crimes of his heart And publishing his doings. Hear bountifully the ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... day, and with a light heart Grace started for the links with her golf bag strapped across her shoulder. The senior whose name was Ethel Post, sat waiting for her on one of the rustic benches set under a tree at one side of the starting place. She greeted Grace cordially and the two girls set to work without delay to demonstrate their prowess as golfers. The caddies, two small boys of Oakdale, who could be hired at the links by anyone desiring their ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... after her. Madam!-My eyes sparkle at such a girl as that! No indeed! She may be your favourite as a waiting-maid; but I see nothing but clumsy curtseys and awkward airs about her. A little rustic affectation of innocence, that to such as cannot see into ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... around that magnificent grove of evergreens, passes the old mill, and turning to the east again for a short distance, threads its way along a grassy lane, and you arrive before a neat, commodious frame building, prettily white-washed in front, and hedged in by a rustic fence, with a little gate opening next the road. This was the dwelling of our schoolmistress, the remembrance of whom will ever be an oasis upon the deserts of memory—for to her I owe some of the most pleasurable moments of my boyhood existence. A more ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... scene she is something worse. If her writing "Gilliatt" in the snow had been a sort of rustic challenge of the "malo me petit, et fugit ad salices" kind, there might have been something (not much) to say for her. But she did not know Gilliatt; she did not want to know him; and the proceeding was either mere silly childishness, or else one ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the painting. When the magistrates had heard the arguments, which were much better advanced on Giotto's side, they adjudged that the man should take away his buckler, and give six lire to Giotto, because he was in the right. Accordingly the rustic took his buckler, paid the money, and was allowed to go. Thus this man, who did not know his place, had it pointed out to him, and may this befall all such fellows who wish to have arms and found houses, and whose antecedents ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... in the world could keep her from.... But then, what could there be to keep her from it last Summer? In that rustic retreat of yours, where you didn't see anybody ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... cabin was a comfortable straw mattress for Mrs. Morse in the wide bunk, a small table on which her typewriter case already stood, a rocker made in rustic fashion, a painted dressing case with mirror of good size, and ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... streets, then through the thinning suburbs, and finally, with the lights all behind them, the open country ahead, the long, low car came out upon the straight highway which leads a hundred miles before it comes again to any but insignificant hamlets and small, rustic inns. ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... or girls hatless and in working smocks stroll across Sixth Avenue from one square to another with as little self-consciousness as though they were meandering down Main Street to a game of tennis or the village store! Sixth Avenue, indeed, has come to mean nothing more to them than a rustic bridge or a barbed-wire fence,—something to be gotten over speedily and forgotten. They even, by some alchemy of view point, seem to give it a rural air from Jefferson Market down to Fourth Street—these cool-looking, hatless young people who make ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... district assembled for some rustic feast, I and my friends would be there among the first; if there were marriages, more blessed than those of towns, celebrated near my home, every one would know how I love to see people happy, and I should be invited. I would take these ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... house on to the road, briefly telling them that it was the road of progress. They did literally force them into factories and the modern wage-slavery, assuring them all the time that this was the only way to wealth and civilization. Just as they had dragged the rustic from the convent food and ale by saying that the streets of heaven were paved with gold, so now they dragged him from the village food and ale by telling him that the streets of London were paved with gold. As he entered the gloomy porch of ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... widow by mischance as it were, with her child on her arm—whose child?—and a scoundrelly black-mailing lawyer to work up her case for her. Her claim was clear enough—the right of dower, a third of his estate. But if he had never meant to marry her? If he had been trapped as patently as a rustic fleeced in a gambling-hell? Arthur, in his last hours, had confessed to the marriage, but had also acknowledged its folly. And after his death, when Denis came to look about him and make inquiries, he found that the witnesses, if there had been any, were dispersed ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... To the rustic it is seldom more than a convenient water-tank, or, at most, as affording some sport to boys in fishing. To its picturesque beauties his eyes are blind, and to him the brook is, like Peter Bell's primrose, a ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... volume to "Household Elegancies." It contains 300 pages, and is illustrated with over 350 fine engravings. It gives full instructions for making feather work, paper flowers, fire screens, shrines, rustic pictures, a charming series of designs for Easter crosses, straw ornaments, shell flowers and shell work, bead mosaic, designs in embroidery, and an immense number of designs of other fancy work to delight all lovers of household ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... concentrated in the court, about the person of the king. Scarcely could the most important duties bring them to absent themselves for any time. They returned quickly, with alacrity, with ardor; only poverty or a certain rustic pride kept gentlemen in their provinces. "The court does not make one happy," says La Bruyere, "it prevents one ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... doctor, curtly; "although even if you told her so she would not think any the less of you—nor of herself. If she spoke rustic Greek instead of bad English, and wore a cestus in place of an ill-fitting corset, you'd swear she was a goddess. There's your ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... step and air than before marriage, saunters along a path through the trees, some distance from the house. She is clad in loose-flowing drapery, and has thrown a white shawl over her head and shoulders. Reaching a bench of rustic woodwork, she drops weariedly down ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... classic theme, the war of Theseus with the Amazons, is in verse; and was followed by the 'Ameto,' or 'Florentine Nymphs,' a story of the loves of Ameto, a rustic swain, with one of the nymphs of the valley of the Affrico, a stream which flows into the Arno not far from where the poet was born, or where at least he passed his youth; and to which valley he seems always greatly attached, putting there the scene ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Latin early began to creep into his plays. The parade of erudition (which is also a satire on pedants) at the beginning of the Auto da Mofina Mendes is, however, that of a comparatively uneducated man in a library, of rustic Gil Vicente in the palace. Rather we would believe that he spent his early life in peasant surroundings, perhaps actually keeping goats in the scented hills like his Prince of Wales, Dom Duardos: De mozo ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... perceived the Hermit he stayed his playing, for he bethought him, Is not this the saintly man of whose strange penance and miracles of healing the folk talk in rustic huts and hamlets far scattered? But when they drew nigh to each other, the Hermit bowed low to the Gooseherd, and addressed him: "Give me leave to speak a little with thee, good brother; for an Angel of heaven hath told me ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... the while, and had crossed the lawn and entered one of the many paths which it had been Robert's pastime to cut through the woods. And at length they came out at a rustic summer-house set over the wooded valley. Honora, with one foot on the ground, sat on the railing gazing over the tree-tops; the Vicomte was on the bench beside her. His eyes sparkled and snapped, and suddenly ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... peculiarly exalted mood, and came home feeling at peace with the world. After dinner she took a book and went out into a little vine-covered pagoda built at one end of the lawn, which was fitted with rustic seats and a small table. Here it was that she and her captain had planned to spend many of the long summer afternoons reading and sewing, and it was here that ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... crust of primeval simplicity (which is quite polished away from the Northern black man), that they seemed a kind of creature by themselves, not altogether human, but perhaps quite as good, and akin to the fauns and rustic deities of olden times. I wonder if I shall excite ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... as the nest itself. Lifting a low-hanging branch of maple at the entrance to the woods, we took leave of the world and all its affairs, and stepped at once into a secluded path. Though so near the house, the woods were solitary, for they were private and very carefully protected. Passing up the rustic foot-path, under interlacing boughs of maple and beech, we came at length to a sunny open spot, where all winter grain is kept for partridges, squirrels, and other pensioners who may choose to come. From this ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... The Bois de Vincennes, on the edge of which the castle stands, is scarcely inferior to the Bois de Boulogne in charm. We used to go out there, not infrequently, for luncheon, which we ate in a rustic summerhouse close to the edge of the lake, with many sociable ducks and swans bearing us company and clamoring for ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... which is widely diffused wherever the Anglo-Saxon race has wandered. Perhaps Snow-Bound lacks a certain universality of suggestiveness which belongs to a still more famous poem, The Cotter's Saturday Night of Burns, but both of these portrayals of rustic simplicity and peace owe their celebrity to their truly representative character. They are evidence furnished by a single art, as to a certain mode and coloring of human existence; but every corroboration of that evidence heightens our admiration ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Ascending the rustic staircase which leads from the garden, WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE takes you past the library into the drawing-room, in the upper parts of the leaded windows of which are inserted panels of rare old glass, cunningly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... to sing this day the downfall of New France, the North American Babylon, New England's rival," cries Eli Forbes to his congregation of sober farmers and staid matrons at the rustic village of Brookfield. Like many of his flock, he had been to the war, having served two years as chaplain of Ruggles's Massachusetts regiment; and something of a martial spirit breathes through his discourse. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... of songs in the 16th century, and is one of the most important to be found in Shakespeare. Autolycus sells ballads 'of all sizes' among his wares; the country folk, Mopsa, Dorcas, and the Clown, buy them, and afterwards sing them; and the rustic servant distinctly prefers the pedlar's vocalisation to their accustomed 'tabor and pipe,' or ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... saw nothing of the kind, save in the workings of his own disordered imagination. What he did see was Ram's frank-looking rustic face close up, and a hand was ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... benches and settles are unknown. But, my lord Media, as your liege and loving subject I can not sufficiently deplore the deprivation of your royal tail. That stiff and vertebrated member, as we find it in those rustic kinsmen we have disowned, would have been useful as a supplement to your royal legs; and whereas my good lord is now fain to totter on two stanchions, were he only a kangaroo, like the monarchs of old, the majesty of Odo would be dignified, by standing ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... sleep many a Homer and Virgil—legitimate heirs of their genius, though possessors of decayed estates. BUNYAN is the Spenser of the people. The fire burned towards Heaven, although the altar was rude and rustic. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Gryll, Mr. Niphet, Lord Curryfin, and Mr. Falconer; and a large party at the lower end of the hall, composed of fathers, mothers, and sisters of the bridegrooms of the seven Vestals. None of the bridegrooms had brothers, and Harry had neither mother nor sister; but his father was there in rustic portliness, looking, as Harry had anticipated, as if he were ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... that they discover portraits in these pages I desire to say that all the characters—save only Silas Wright and President Van Buren and Barton Baynes—are purely imaginary. However, there were Grimshaws and Purvises and Binkses and Aunt Deels and Uncle Peabodys in almost every rustic neighborhood those days, and I regret to add that Roving Kate was on many roads. The case of Amos Grimshaw bears a striking resemblance to that of young Bickford, executed long ago in Malone, for ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... he had burnt his wings, and was fairly scorched by the flame of love. In spite of the remonstrances of his more conscientious cousin, he daily spent hours in leaning over her garden gate, enacting the lover to this rustic Flora. It was to such a scene as this that Anthony had alluded, and respecting which Godfrey had given such ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... strong, blunt-bowed affair, awakening the ideas of primitive solidity, like the wooden plough of our forefathers. And there were, about her, other suggestions of a rustic and homely nature. The extraordinary timber projections which I have seen in no other vessel made her square stern resemble the tail end of a miller's waggon. But the four stern ports of her cabin, glazed with six little greenish ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... vain he'll bid me fly, I shall serve him till I die. Never could my plumes sustain Ruffling winds and chilling rain, O'er the plains, or in the dell, On the mountain's savage swell, Seeking in the desert wood Gloomy shelter, rustic food. Now I lead a life of ease, Far from rugged haunts like these. From Anacreon's hand I eat Food delicious, viands sweet; Flutter o'er his goblet's brim, Sip the foamy wine with him. Then, when I have wantoned round To his lyre's beguiling sound; Or with gently moving-wings Fanned the minstrel ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... "bits"—bryony, tangles of grasses, berries, boughs half-tinted and boughs green, hung as it were with pictures like the wall of a room. Standing as near as I could without disturbing him, I found that the subject of his canvas was none of these. It was that old stale and dull device of a rustic bridge spanning a shallow stream crossing a lane. Some figure stood on the bridge—the old, old trick. He was filling up the hedge of the lane with trees from the hedge, and they were cleverly executed. But why drag them into this fusty scheme, which has appeared in every child's sketch-book ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... now, thanks to the slowly-working influence of Wordsworth and the other Lake poets, prepared for a renaissance of nature and simplicity in prose. Miss Mitford's exquisite work had given them a distaste for the 'jewelled turf,' the 'silver streams,' and 'smiling valleys' which constituted the rustic stock-in-trade of the average novelist; and they eagerly welcomed a book that treated with accuracy and observation of the real country. William Howitt's straightforward, undistinguished style was acceptable enough in ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... studies of the later painters, and were multiplied and varied to infinitude from the beginning of the seventeenth century. From these every trace of the mystical and solemn conception of antiquity gradually disappeared; till, for the majestic ideal of womanhood, we have merely inane prettiness, or rustic, or even meretricious grace, the borrowed charms ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... gown aside, and made room for him on the carved rustic settee, which was exceedingly uncomfortable to sit in, but which was in perfect harmony with the background of gigantic palmettos. He nodded gratefully and took the place, and the manner of his sitting down was that of a man who wears ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... here, as upon the towing-tugs and steam ferries of broader waters—and now and then we have, by contrast, "Xerxes," "Achilles," "Hercules." Sometimes the skiff is named after its owner's wife or sweetheart, as "Maggie G.," "Polly H.," or from the rustic goddesses, "Pomona," "Flora," "Ceres;" on the Kentucky shore, we have noted "Stonewall Jackson," and "Robert E. Lee," and one Ohio boat was labeled "Little Phil." Literature we found represented to-day, by "Octave Thanet"—the only case on record, for the Ohio-River ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... do? The prospect that I opened before him was a better one than he could get anywhere else: he had no opening at Court, in spite of his bragging; and the Protestants round about were too wise, in their rustic way, to engage themselves with a Papist at such a time. So there ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... was such an exciting sight to see the cars come in, to see the long rows of strange faces, and to catch glimpses of the new fashions at their open windows. Besides, at rare intervals, a real city lady would actually alight at the rustic station of Hilltop, followed by an avalanche of trunks, "larger than hen-houses," the girls would afterwards affirm to their astonished mothers, when it was discovered that the city-lady, in her languishing necessity for country-air, had really condescended ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... and we looked up to find a queer little old man, jerking and twitching in the doorway. He was dressed in rusty black, with a very broad-brimmed top-hat and a loose white necktie—the whole effect being that of a very rustic parson or of an undertaker's mute. Yet, in spite of his shabby and even absurd appearance, his voice had a sharp crackle, and his manner a quick ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Descending this, we traversed a short passage at its foot, and finally emerged through a door into the garden at the rear. A path closely bordered with mulberry-trees led down through the centre of this garden, passing down which we eventually reached a rustic, building ordinarily used as a tool-house. Entering this, Francesca turned to ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... to be seen. West Horsley itself is a fascinating collection of old cottages, vine-bowered and fronted with clipped yews. One such yew, standing by the door of what the picture postcards vaguely designate "old cottage, West Horsley," is an extraordinarily elaborate piece of rustic topiary. Another feature of the village is the now disused workhouse, a solid old brick building overlooking a horsepond: another, the bole of a superb elm, quite rightly stationed in the carpenter's sawyard. Of West Horsley church ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Eclogue, Virgil represents a rustic maid, Thestylis, preparing for the reapers a salad called moretum. He wrote, also, a poem bearing this title, in which he describes the composition and preparation of ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... endowed you with much! Though not adjusted with nicety, at least you are strongly built. I wonder whether you were born a bear or whether you have come to it through your rustic life, with its tilling of crops and its trading with peasants? Yet no; I believe that, even if you had received a fashionable education, and had mixed with society, and had lived in St. Petersburg, you would still have been just ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... appear in the magazines, and may be studied for suggestions. Sometimes the alteration is of the exterior only. The repainting in a proper color, or the simple creosote staining of a weather-beaten house, with the addition of a rustic porch or the breaking of a corner bedroom into a balcony, will sometimes so transform an old house that it looks as if it ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... Lucina gleams, And gaily dances o'er the azure streams; On silent ether when a trembling sound Reverberates, and wildly floats around, Breaking through trackless space upon the ear, Conclude the Bacchanalian rustic near: O'er hills and vales the jovial savage reels, Fire in his head and frenzy at his heels; From paths direct the bending hero swerves, And shapes his way in ill-proportioned curves. Now safe arrived, his sleeping rib he calls, And madly thunders on the muddy walls; ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... human sympathy almost Shakspearian, who could step from the musings of Windsor and the beautiful heroine, all romance and ethereal splendour, to the lasses in their gay kirtles, and Hob and Raaf with their rustic "daffing," as true to the life as the Ayrshire clowns of Burns, and all the clumsy yet genial gambols of the village festival. It is one of the most curious and least to be expected transformations of poetic versatility—for it is even amazing how he could ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the rustic entertainment of gathering wild raspberries. We found some at length, and regaled ourselves. I wished for more, and Phoebus, with his usual gallantry, wandered dreamily away into the forest on the quest. He ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... connexion she had always been moved, by the admitted grossness of her avidity, the way the hospitality of the Ververs met her convenience and ministered to her ease, destitute as the Colonel had kept her, from the first, of any rustic retreat, any leafy bower of her own, any fixed base for the stale season now at hand. She had explained at home, she had repeatedly reexplained, the terms of her dilemma, the real difficulty of her, or—as she now put it—of their position. When the pair could do nothing else, in Cadogan Place, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Crossways" I liked better, and had I had absolutely nothing to do I might have read it to the end. I remember a scene with a rustic—a rustic who could eat hog a solid hour—that amused me. I remember the sloppy road in the Weald, and the vague outlines of the South Downs seen in starlight and mist. But to come to the great question, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... as much as anything else, the rolling, beautiful downs of a first-class country club, and the illusion is enhanced by the Commissioner's house among some trees atop a hill. Well-kept roadways railed with rustic fences lead from the house to the native quarters lying in the hollow and to the Government offices atop another hill. Then also there are the quarters of the Nubian troops; round low houses with conical ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Did people of position live yet in logs in America? demanded the girl's secret astonishment as the motor whirled across the rustic bridge and stopped before the wide steps of ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... of Faltonius Bambilio, Pontifex of Vesta, the busiest and most anxious of them all. In consultation with the august College of Pontiffs, hastily assembled at the Regia, a splendid building occupying the site of Numa's rustic palace, near the great Forum and close to the Temple of Vesta, he arranged for the necessary ceremonial ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... to be sure, but one that is arranged with a degree of taste and a display of fancy that betokens the gardener a genius. Among roses and mignonette, heliotrope, clematis and wallflower, chrysanthemums, verbenas and sweet-peas are intertwined, on rustic trellis-work, the rich green leaves of the ivy and the graceful Virginia creeper in such a manner that the surroundings of the miniature garden are completely hidden from view, and nothing but the bright blue ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... certain peasant, whose face was familiar to my eyes, came up, accompanied by a young woman, and began to examine the garment very closely. Ascyltos, in turn, cast a glance at the shoulders of our rustic customer, and was instantly struck dumb with astonishment. Nor could I myself look upon this man without some emotion, for he seemed to be the identical person who had picked up the ragged tunic in the lonely wood, and, as ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Every now and then through an opening in the trees we had a pretty view over the plains. As we got near the pavilion we heard shots not very far off—evidently the shooters were getting hungry and coming our way. It was a pretty rustic scene as we arrived. The pavilion, a log house, standing in a clearing, alleys branching off in every direction, a horse and cart which had brought the provisions from the chateau tied to one of the trees. It was shut in on three sides, wide open in front, ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... cloudless, in passing a herder he was warned to ride fast or the shower would wet him. Sir Isaac looked upon the man as demented, and rode on, not, however, without being caught in a drenching shower. Not being able to account for the source of information through which the rustic had gained his knowledge, he rode back, wet as he was, to learn something. "My cow," answered the man, "always twists her tail in a certain way just before a rain, your Worship, and she so twisted it ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... alight behind the blind, an effect was produced which was doubtless much admired. He also displayed in his window a model coffin, a work of art. It was about a foot long, varnished, studded with little brass nails, and on the lid was fastened a rustic cross stretching from end to end. The desire to decorate existence in some way or other with more or less care is nearly universal. The most sensual and the meanest almost always manifest an indisposition to be content with mere material satisfaction. I have ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... she caught the crunch of footsteps on the stone path that led to the arbor and crouched low behind it. Two men, talking idly, entered the spot of shade and sank down on the rustic bench. ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... zeal, my rustic Muse Feels fluttering fain to tell her news, And paint her simple, lowly views With all her art, And, though in genius but obtuse, ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... leaves, and heaped on the fagots to boil the stew-pot. Hanging from the blackened beams was a rusty side of bacon. Philemon cut off a rasher to roast, and, while his guests refreshed themselves with a wash at the rustic trough, he gathered pot-herbs from his patch of garden. Then the old woman, her hands trembling with age, laid the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... and better—"the whole capable of the greatest improvement."—Come, that seems true however—I shall have plenty to do, that's one comfort—I have such contrivances! I'll have a canal run through my kitchen.—I must give this rustic some idea of my consequence. [Aside.] You must know, Farmer, you have the honour of conversing with a man, who has obtained patents for tweezers, tooth-picks, and tinder boxes—to a philosopher, who has been ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... me with my brother. He has always spent his life in ease {and} gayety; mild, gentle, offensive to no one, having a smile for all, he has lived for himself, {and} has spent his money for himself; all men speak well of him, {all} love him. I, {again}, a rustic, a rigid, cross, self-denying, morose and thrifty person, married a wife; what misery I entailed in consequence! Sons were born— a fresh care. And just look, while I have been studying to do as much as possible for them, I have worn out my life and years in saving; now, ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... not be convenient for thee to know at all times and in all places, see thou cultivate those two excellent defects of both sight and hearing which will enable thee to pass one thou wouldst not meet, without seeing him or hearing his salutation. If thou hast a cousin or schoolfellow who is somewhat rustic or uncouth in his manner but nevertheless hath an excellent heart, know him in private in thine individual capacity, but when thou art abroad or in the company of other powers shun him as if he were a venomous thing and deadly. Again, if ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... is good authority for this derivation, but I think the name may have been given for other reasons. "Boy's Love" is one of the most favourite cottage-garden plants, and it enters largely into the rustic language of flowers. No posy presented by a young man to his lass is complete without Boy's Love; and it is an emblem of fidelity, at least it was so once. It is, in fact, a Forget-me-Not, from its strong abiding smell; so St. Francis de Sales applied it: "To love in the midst of sweets, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe |
