"Shabby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... met a girl coming down, with light springing steps, buttoning a pair of shabby dogskin gloves. Her dress was shabby too, and the little black straw hat had seen long service; but Miss Merivale only noticed her bonnie face. It brightened the dreary staircase like a ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... she thought to herself as she gazed at the roughly clad group about her, the shabby tent, the mining implements cast about carelessly here and there and the smoldering fire with the blackened cooking pots ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... to Oxford; and when the month of May had again come round, he went in for his Degree examination. He passed with flying colours, and was duly presented with that much-prized shabby piece of paper, on which was printed and written the following ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... had a silk coat and long girdle, and most of the Arabians were in tawny silk ornamented with white roses and wreaths of foliage. Some bindings are noticed as being in fine condition, and others as being shabby or faded. The clasps are minutely described. They would catch a visitor's eye as the books lay flat on the shelves: and we suppose that the librarian intended to show the best way of knowing the books ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... an eager scholar, and a great favorite in school, because she took the part of all the poor children. If a little boy or girl was a cripple, or wore shabby clothes, or had scanty dinners, or was ridiculed, he or she found an earnest friend and defender in ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... why you take a cruise without me?" said Mesty; "dat very shabby—by de power, but I wish I was there; you ab too much danger, Massa ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Peter, raising the spear he held; and poising it after the fashion he had learned from the Malays, he seemed about to hurl it at the little mahout, whose head and shoulders he could see plainly now just beyond Rajah's shabby little tail. "You dare to say another word, and I will pin you where you sit, like the miserable little beetle you are! Now then.—Here, steady, Rajah!—Hold tight, Mister Archie! I am coming to you; but just you make a ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... the Evening to this Morning at 8 a Clock I have been in continual Dread by reason of some Shabby Gent'n who staid on Board at Night and frequently seem'd to hint Concerning Money, of which I had indeed a large quantity but pleaded Poverty to them, but to my great Surprize at One in the Morning I found ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... clean; they are much better than the blue enamelled ware, as they do not burn so readily or chip so soon. Frying pans are nice, too, of the same ware. A set each of wire and metal dish-covers must not be forgotten; the latter should be of plain blocked tin, and as the fluted ones soon get shabby, these should be well washed inside and out with scouring soap and polished with Goddard's plate powder. A French fryer is invaluable; it will cost 7s. 6d. Three or four pounds of dripping clarified ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... down a side walk, and came face to face with Sibyl herself. Now, at that instant the little girl certainly did not look at her best. The holland frock, short and shabby, had a great rent above the knee, her soft cheek was scratched and bleeding slightly, and there was a smudge across ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... the shabby room, and found a poor old woman, lying on a miserable bed. The room was bare and cheerless except for the bright fire burning in the small stove, beside which lay a neat pile of wood. The doctor did what he could to ease the poor woman s sufferings, and then ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... girl must, a man may if he chooses." She surveyed him critically. "Your coat's a little shabby—but who cares? It doesn't keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they don't make success, ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... paying; yes; but I maintain that he was induced to do so by fraud. Well-informed in all things, the Devil must have known that my friend would gain nothing by his visit to futurity. The whole thing was a very shabby trick. The more I think of it, the more detestable the Devil seems ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... see, they was pullin' even them days and runnin' neck and neck. Even when Fred Farrell, her old beau, married a girl she knew and built a fine house all piazzas and bow-winders right in sight of their shabby little rented cottage, I don't think she minded it; even if Mis' Farrell didn't have anythin' to do from mornin' till night only set in a white dress on her piazza, and rock, and give parties, Betty didn't seem to mind. ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... soon for Lennox, who had sat in his shabby quarters thinking how wondrously quiet everything was, and whether after what the colonel had hinted it was the calm preceding ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... wanted. He kept his disguise wherever he went and no one knew that he had come. He heard of the festivities that were going on at the Thing and was curious to see them, so he put on some old clothes that were rather shabby and arrived just as they were going from the Logretta home to their booths. Some of the young men were talking about the weather, said it was good and fair, and that it would be a good thing to ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... Frenchwomen were not coquettes, he noted as he kept pace with his companion. She uttered a word now and then for politeness' sake, but she never looked at him and seemed not in the least to care that he was a well-favoured and well-dressed young man. She cared for nothing but the young artist in the shabby coat and the slouched hat, and for discovering where he had set ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... this it would be needless to report, and not only needless, but a vast deal worse—shabby, interloping, meddlesome and mean, undignified, unmanly, and disreputably low; for even the tanner and his wife (who must have had right to come forward, if anybody had) felt that their right was a shadow, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... certain indescribable resemblance to David Elginbrod that had so attracted him. The man was very tall. Six-foot. Hugh felt dwarfed beside him; for he had to look right up, as he passed, to see his face. He was dressed in loose, shabby black. He had high and otherwise very marked features, and a dark complexion. A general carelessness of demeanour was strangely combined with an expression of reposeful strength and quiet concentration of will. At how much of this conclusion ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... wore greatly upon her husband. Apprehension lurked in the back of his mind. In the mill, or out on the farm, or when he sat down among his shabby, old, calf-skin books, he was assailed by the memory of all her various fancies during their married life. Some of them were no more remarkable or unexpected than this interest in Shakerism. He began to be slowly frightened. Suppose she should ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... savage delight was exhibited in destroying the unborn fruit of the womb. Nor was any rank respected. Madame d'Yverny, the niece of Cardinal Briconnet, was recognized, as she fled, by the costly underclothing that appeared from beneath the shabby habit of a nun which she had assumed; and, after suffering every indignity, upon her refusal to go to mass, was thrown from a bridge into the Seine and drowned.[1019] Occasionally the women rivalled ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... anticipate the wits of Massachusetts by describing this trick as "henrymandering;" and that he thus narrowly escaped the ugly immortality of having his name handed down from age to age in the coinage of a base word which should designate a base thing,—one of the favorite, shabby manoeuvres of less scrupulous ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... the atmosphere the moment she entered. There were carelessly gowned women and men smart and shabby, but none of them were thinking of clothes nor even of one another. They had great deeds in mind; they were scanning the earth; they were toiling for men. The same grim excitement that sends smaller souls ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... to Hawk-Eye, "I believe I will stay in the cave to-day, it is such a lot of work to start a new fire every day, and I can keep this one burning. Besides, the Twins must have new skins pretty soon. Those fox-furs they are now wearing are getting shabby. I will cure the deer-skin we brought home last night ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Lawson for inspection. It was passed round the table until it reached Gillott, who carefully inspected it and said, "It's a very good one; but I think I have one that'll 'lick' it." Putting his hand into the breast pocket of his coat, he brought out two or three shabby-looking screwed-up bits of paper. Selecting one of these, he opened it, and produced therefrom an unmounted diamond, far surpassing in size and purity the one in the ring. Precious stones generally became at once the topic of ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... their shabby carriage and the dusty unfamiliar road were all dream-stuff—an illusion from which she was to wake directly and find herself once more in her room at Marinata, looking out on ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he would not see the women. Those in the bazaar were shabby people for the most part, whose black masks nobody would feel a curiosity to remove. You could see no more of their figures than if they had been stuffed in bolsters; and even their feet were brought to a general splay uniformity by the double ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of freedom we spent at the theater. We bought the best seats in the house, and we dressed for the occasion—being in the position of having nothing to wear between shabby ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... tribe," answered the Devil; "besides shapes are optional with me, and in England men go by appearances more than they do abroad; one is forced to look respectable and portly; the Devil himself could not cheat your countrymen with a shabby exterior. Doubtless you observe that all the swindlers, whose adventures enliven your journals, are dressed 'in the height of fashion,' and enjoy 'a mild prepossessing demeanour.' Even the Cholera does not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... is the peculiar hardship of our weddings to break us up by pairs, and carry off two instead of one. Did you ever see me with so shabby a row of tea-cups? When shall I have them come ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scene, though appearing only on its outskirts. A canal ran along at the rear of the dust-heap, and on the banks of its opposite side slowly wandered by—with hands clasped and hanging down in front of him, and eyes bent vacantly upon his hands—the forlorn figure of a man in a very shabby great-coat, which had evidently once belonged to one in the position of a gentleman. And to a gentleman it still belonged—but in what a position! A scholar, a man of wit, of high sentiment, of refinement, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... when she saw him appear on the shelf, For she thought of her shabby old frock. She said "Oh! I know he will scorn an old fan, As he comes of a very ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... as to the whole matter, which had left me rather bewildered, when I reached my shabby room I took out the envelope which Ballard had handed me and read the curious paper ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... she said. One of the children took the sickle, another the hat, the third a small shabby bundle of clothes, and all went toward ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... of the statement he takes out a shabby pocket-book, fat with official documents, and, unstrapping it, selects three, and hands them to Bingo. They are flimsy sheets of tissue-paper covered with spidery characters in violet ink, and Bingo, taking them, recognises the handwriting, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... at night that he talked openly, forgetting the exactions of his stage. In the daytime there were affairs to be discussed in state. There were at first between him and me his own splendour, my shabby suspicions, and the scenic landscape that intruded upon the reality of our lives by its motionless fantasy of outline and colour. His followers thronged round him; above his head the broad blades of their spears made a spiked halo of iron points, and ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... the sense of his own meanness, and somewhat alarmed at the idea of fighting three duels, to retrieve his credit, thought it best to submit, without struggle, in the first instance, to that public disgrace which he had merited. He wrote a shabby apology to Major O'Shannon and Sir Philip, concluding with saying, that rather than lose a friend he so much valued as Sir Philip Gosling, he was willing to forget all that had passed, and even to take back ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... they called her in those days, Paulette—wore unbecoming hats and shabby gowns, and shoes that were full of holes. None the less, she was sought out by several men of note, among them Freron, a commissioner of the Convention. He visited Pauline so often as to cause unfavorable comment; but he was in love with ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... days after this Keith, senior, came into the store. He was not arrayed in the white flannels but was wearing a rather shabby but very comfortable tweed jacket and trousers and a white canvas hat of the kind which Hamilton and Company sold for fifty cents. His shirt was of the soft-collared variety and his shoes were what ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... are so shabby, my appearance is against me. No one wants to employ a girl whose dress ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... Valmai, although she had received no serious harm from her watery adventure, still felt a little languor and indisposition, which kept her a prisoner in the house. As she lay on the old shabby sofa, her time was fully occupied by reading to her uncle, books of Welsh history or the effusions of the old bards, which interested him so much. Ever and anon, while he searched for a reference or took notes of some ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... tell him that I INVITE HIM SPECIALLY to stay with me on his return journey, and that I should think it very shabby of him if he played me the trick of flying past me under my ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... portion of his life, save the forty sketches, or thereabouts, included in these volumes. Much more, indeed, he wrote; and some very small part of it might yet be rummaged out (but it would not be worth the trouble) among the dingy pages of fifteen or twenty year old periodicals, or within the shabby morocco covers of faded Souvenirs. The remainder of the works alluded to had a very brief existence, but, on the score of brilliancy, enjoyed a fate vastly superior to that of their brotherhood, which succeeded in getting through the press. In a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... avenues and streets the taxicabs now turned. Then a distinctly shabby looking part of Paris was unfolded to the gaze ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... Chippewas camped in your dooryard, and came in to help themselves to coffee, which you made of roasted corn. The Old Doctor bucked northwest blizzards, read Dickens and Byron, pulled people through typhoid, and left to Milt his shabby old medicine case and thousands of dollars—in uncollectible accounts. Mrs. Daggett had long since folded her crinkly ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... sight of the shabby figure at the gate, but before she could finish her sentence, Peace, following the direction of her eyes, wheeled about on her perch, surveyed the man with big, almost somber, brown eyes, and poured forth an ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... strives to keep his attention fixed on his proofs. The same row of big, strong, healthy, good-natured policemen trying not to grin at times; and the police-court solicitors ("the place stinks with 'em," a sergeant told me) wrangling over some miserable case for a crust, and the "reporters," shabby some of them, eager to get a brutal joke for their papers out of the accumulated mass of misery before them, whether it be at the expense of the deaf, blind, or crippled ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... looked first at me, but my first sensation was of his keen eye swiftly falling on the shabby travelling-bag in my left hand, my right kept disengaged for any friendly overture ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... think of me, he will say to himself: 'There is the man who came very near making me lose my crown. Fortunately I was generous, great, full of presence of mind.' That will be said by the young gentleman in a shabby black doublet, who came to the chateau of Blois, hat in hand, to ask me if I would give him access to the king ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Shabby gentility has nothing so characteristic as its hat. There is always an unnatural calmness about its nap, and an unwholesome gloss, suggestive of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... dependence on each day's labor for each day's bread, that stood in the way. One by one—sick, disabled, discouraged, dead-beaten—they drifted into the poor-house, which, as the years went on, grew into a shabby, double pile of buildings, between which ran ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... stockings, and linen. He always had the luck of his carelessness; for, the first day he put on a new coat, he unfailingly matched it with the rest of his costume by staining it with incredible promptitude. The good man waited till his housekeeper told him that his hat was too shabby before buying a new one. His necktie was always crumpled and starchless, and he never set his dog-eared shirt collar straight after his judge's bands had disordered it. He took no care of his gray hair, and shaved but twice a week. He never wore gloves, and generally kept his hands ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... enquiry. But the next instant he relaxed again with impulsive confidence. "Well, it is more or less settled," he said. "But I'm wondering—you know, Charlie, she's rather young to be married, isn't she? She hasn't seen much of the world so far. You don't think it's shabby, do you, to marry her before she's had the same sort of chances as ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... proceedings. These are the persons who resort to the arts of the lowest tradesmen, such as under-working, touting for employment, sneaking, cringing, lying, and the like. These are the persons who, in such shabby or fraudulent cases as may succeed, share the fees with low attorneys, and who sign habitually, for the same pettifogging practitioners, half-guinea motions in the batch, for half-a-crown or eighteenpence apiece; and, in short, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... sped into the farm-lands. On either side was a wide stretch of harvest fields, heaving into gentle billows, with here and there a shabby cluster of buildings. If Kalora had only known, Morovenia was very much like the far-away America, except that Morovenia had not learned to decorate the ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... more to see her play. In his small, shabby room in a musty house on one of the old side streets he set to work on his new plan. He wrote now without fervor, without elation, plodding along hour after hour, erasing, interlining, destroying, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... woman answered: "You have been very kind, ma'am, in giving me a house, and now, if you please, ma'am, I would like some new furniture. For the furniture I had in the vinegar-bottle looks very shabby now that it is in the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... writing—the personal charm: apart from that there is little in it. A man may see a thing with hideous distinctness, but he may not be able to invest it with charm: and the danger of charm is that some people can invest very shallow, muddled, and shabby thinking with a sort of charm. It is like a cloak, if I may say so. If I wear an old cloak, it looks shabby and disgraceful, as it is. But if I lend it to a shapely and well-made friend, it gets a beauty from the wearer. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... They remarked that the stores seemed to disappear in a way truly marvellous, leaving the backwoods soldiers who were to have benefited by them "as ragged as ever." The petitioners complained that the undisciplined militia quartered among them, who on their arrival were "in the most shabby and wretched state," and who had "rioted in abundance and unaccustomed luxury" at the expense of the Creoles, had also maltreated and insulted them; as for instance they had at times wantonly shot the cattle merely to try their rifles. "Ours was the task of hewing and carting them firewood to the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... be guessed as to his parentage (the windmiller knew nothing), but there was scope for any amount of fancy; and if the child displayed any better manners or talents than the other children, Mrs. Lake would purse her lips, and say, with a somewhat shabby pride, - ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a very old man, with tremulous limbs and silvery locks, presented himself at the door for admission. The driver shouted through the sky-light, "Room for one more, there, inside;"—but the gentlemen looked at the old man and frowned, and the ladies spread out their ruffled skirts, for his hat was shabby, and his coat very threadbare. He saw how it was, and why there was "no room," and meekly turned about to go down the steps, when a fine-looking young man, who sat next to me, sprang to the door, and seizing him by the arm, said, "Take my place, sir; you are quite welcome to it. I am ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... three days, and then the General's behaviour strengthened her in her belief that he was not to blame for the shabby way in which he had ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... young Fellow that affects to dress and appear genteelly, might with artificial Management save ten Pound a Year; as instead of fine Holland he might mourn in Sackcloth, and in other Particulars be proportionably shabby: But of what great Service would this Sum be to avert any Misfortune, whilst it would leave him deserted by the little good Acquaintance he has, and prevent his gaining any other? As the Appearance of an easy Fortune is necessary towards making one, I dont ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... does not become shabby like paint; but the surfaces assume weather beaten grays, very soft and harmonious, and varying slightly according to the original hue. The Stain may be renewed at any time with little trouble or expense, as the natural hues which nature ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... favoured the voluntary sleuth. The station was well thronged, a circumstance which enabled him to keep inconspicuously close to his victim. Furthermore, Dupont was obviously looking for somebody, and so distracted. Presently a shabby, furtive little rat of a man nudged his elbow, and Dupont followed him to a corner, where they confabulated in undertones for many minutes; while Lanyard loitered just outside their normal range of ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... a captain in the army. Sherman gets licked at Wicksburg, an' I gets took brisoner; an' purty quick me an' anoder feller runs away. Here he is;" and, as the Dutchman spoke, a man wearing a shabby Confederate uniform appeared. ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... best crops are killed with blight, When at the plough his oxen drop down dead, Stung with his losses, up one night from bed He springs, and on a cart-horse makes his way, All wrath, to Philip's house, by break of day. "How's this?" cries Philip, seeing him unshorn And shabby. "Why, Vulteius, you look worn. You work, methinks, too long upon the stretch." "Oh, that's not it, my patron. Call me wretch! That is the only fitting name for me. Oh, by thy Genius, by the gods that be Thy hearth's protectors, I beseech, implore, Give me, oh, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... housewifery that Mrs. Brownlow kept up the somewhat handsome establishment she had started with at her marriage. Caroline felt that she neither could nor would have made herself such a slave to domestic details; yet this was life and duty and interest to Ellen. Where one sister would be unheeding of shabby externals, so that all her children might be free and on an equality, if they did not go beyond her, in all enjoyments, physical, artistic, or intellectual; the other toiled to keep up appearances, kept her children under restraint and in the background, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... resistance. Within him, a certain second self, another better McTeague rose with the brute; both were strong, with the huge crude strength of the man himself. The two were at grapples. There in that cheap and shabby "Dental Parlor" a dreaded struggle began. It was the old battle, old as the world, wide as the world—the sudden panther leap of the animal, lips drawn, fangs aflash, hideous, monstrous, not to be resisted, and the simultaneous arousing of the other man, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... was giving a party, the boundary between the favored and the slighted families would have been known pretty well beforehand, and there would have been no great amount of grumbling. But the Colonel, for all his title, had a forest of poor relations and a brushwood swamp of shabby friends, for he had scrambled up to fortune, and now the time was come when he must define his new ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... little astonished at the appearance of the man who had thus announced himself as the cura of Caracuaro. For one of the clerical calling his costume was altogether singular—to say nothing of its being rather shabby. A double-barrelled gun, with one barrel broken, hung from his saddle-bow, and an old rusty sabre in a common leathern scabbard dangled against ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... own cousin,—a great honor, many thought, for the Peacock was the most gorgeous of all the birds. But it was not altogether pleasant for the Pheasant, because at that time he wore such plain and shabby old garments that his proud relative was ashamed of him, and did not like to be reminded that they were of the same family. When the Peacock went strutting about with his wonderful tail spread fan-wise, and with his vain little eyes peering to see who might ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... verily,—I mean hear, O Prince, I beseech," she panted. The boy's merry eyes regarded the shabby small person in puzzled astonishment. He felt an impulse to laugh and run away, but his royal blood forbade either. So ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... It seemed to me that concealment was no longer possible. She staged at me in bewilderment. I had forgotten my beard, my spectacles and shabby clothes. She did not ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... but when he does choose to stir only a joyous elation in the heart he rings a peal of silver bells. Here all is glad thanksgiving. The Divine has come into a sick and sorry world; and, behold, all is changed! Nothing sordid, nothing shabby, consists with the meaning of this miracle. Therefore it is not here. All is transformed; all is a New Jerusalem—splendour, peace, ineffable ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... traitor. Of course one vows one will never write another line; but I do not suppose I shall keep the vow. I reply shortly, eating all the dirt I can collect; and I shall try to forget it too; though it is a shabby end of an ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... seen it. It was cold and also stuffy. It was ugly and shabby and stiff. Three tired girls sat there, two trying to read by a strangled gaslight overhead; one trying to entertain a caller in a social fiction of privacy at the other end ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... years after The Excursion. Byron called Crabbe "Nature's sternest painter, and her best." He was a minutely accurate delineator of the harsher aspects of rural life. He photographs a Gypsy camp; a common, with its geese and donkey; a salt marsh, a shabby village street, or tumble-down manse. But neither Crabbe nor Cowper has the imaginative lift ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... sacrament, he is certain to arouse the animosity, not only of orthodox church members, but of members of the community who are lax in their church duties. Goldsmith illustrates this kind of feeling when, in "She Stoops to Conquer," he makes one of the "several shabby fellows with punch and tobacco" in the alehouse say, "I loves to hear him, the squire sing, bekeays he never gives us nothing that's low," and another responds, "O, damn anything that's low." The AntiMormon feeling ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... each scar denotes, And of long miseries gone by, They feel beneath their shabby coats The heart of France ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... few rugs scattered about though extremely worn were very costly. There was also there a beautiful sofa upholstered in pink figured silk, an enormous divan with many cushions, some splendid arm-chairs of various shapes (but all very shabby), a round table, and in the midst of these fine things a small common iron stove. Somebody must have been attending it lately, for the fire roared and the warmth of the place was very grateful after the bone-searching cold blasts ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... question, in the manner of a man whose impetus on the track of self-pity drives him past the signal flags of relief, 'what would there be left to bury me? These clothes I have on might buy me a long box. For the cost of this shabby old suit, that hasn't lasted me a twelve-month, I could get one that I wouldn't wear out in a thousand ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... causes which Lord Grey represented, but it was a recognition—and it was enough. He was installed on the 27th of September, and on the day of his installation he wrote to a friend—"It puts me at my ease for life. I asked for nothing—never did anything shabby to procure ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... of it directly," I whispered, and indeed in a few minutes more Mr. Rowe turned up a shabby entry, and led us to one of several lower buildings round a small court. The house he stopped at was cleaner within than without, and the woman was ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... conscience feels compunction; I hold that that's the stomach's function, For of the sinner I have noted That when he's sinned he's somewhat bloated, Or ill some other ghastly fashion Within that bowel of compassion. True, I believe the only sinner Is he that eats a shabby dinner. You know how Adam with good reason, For eating apples out of season, Was "cursed." But that is all symbolic: The truth is, Adam had ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Miss Jamison had come into this shabby though eminently respectable neighborhood, and opened a small boarding-house in a neighboring street. She had come from some up-State country town, and her bureaus and bedsteads were barely enough to furnish the small, old-fashioned house which she took for a term of years. Miss Jamison ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... be hard to find one so free from prejudice as I am. I have many friends among the Protestants, and now that their system is tottering, they are all the dearer to me.' In spite of his scanty means, his shabby valet, his threadbare cloak, and the humbleness of his diplomatic position, the fire and honesty of his character combined with his known ability to place him high in the esteem of the society of St. Petersburg. His fidelity, devotion, and fortitude, mellowed by many years and by meditative ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... woman near at hand with a very fine deerskin coat on. It was all fancily trimmed with wolverine and other furs, making one of those beautiful coats any woman would love to possess. At the same time, looking down at her own shabby artege, she sighed and remarked to the stranger, "What a beautiful coat you have." The woman smilingly replied, "Yes, how would you like to have it?" Of course she was delighted with the proposition, and when the stranger offered to make the exchange, was only too ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... Scott, I'm awfully ashamed of the way that some of us, my family in particular, have treated you within the last day or two. It was confoundedly shabby, and I beg your pardon for ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... the eyes of the common people. It was said she had a home in the hills somewhere, to which she disappeared for days and weeks, and came back hung about the girdle with crosses; and it was also said that her red robe never became frayed, shabby, or disordered. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with the neck, and the top of the head and forehead, and sometimes nearly the whole body, are smeared with a species of white earth resembling chalk, moistened with water. The lodge, teepee, and all the family possessions except the few shabby articles of apparel worn by the mourners, are given away and the family left destitute. Thus far the custom is universal or nearly so. The wives, mother, and sisters of a deceased man, on the first, second, ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... difference is, that in New York we have more of them. By the time we have passed Fifth Street, which is about half a mile from the river, we have reached the end of the elegant and splendid part of the city; all beyond and around is shabby Philadelphia, begrimed with soot, and "blended in a common element" of smoke. The extensive and swarming German quarter is precisely like the German quarter of Philadelphia, (though the Cincinnati lager-bier is better,) and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... is, as yet, little sign of spring. Its bed is all choked with last year's reeds, trampled about like a manger. Yet its running seems to have caught a happier note, and here and there along its banks flash silvery wands of palm. Right down among the shabby burnt-out underwood moves the sordid figure of a man. He seems the very genius loci. His clothes are torn and soiled, as though he had slept on the ground. The white lining of one arm gleams out like the slashing in a doublet. His hat is battered, and he wears no collar. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... and quiet contentment of this good woman were very striking. She had beautiful white teeth, and was not prematurely aged, only very sun-burnt and shabby, her black stuff dress blue with age and mended in many places, her partially bare feet thrust in sabots. The women here wear toeless or footless stockings, the upper part of the foot being bare. I ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... there, standing one upon the other, so as to make more space in the small room, and on the rather shabby rug by the fireplace a woman was kneeling with ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... his office in this street—the office of the Mutual Loan Society, of which he was the managing director. The house, in spite of its grandiloquent title, was of excessively shabby exterior. The Mutual Loan Society was frequented by those who, having lost their credit, wished to obtain a fresh amount, and who, having no money, wanted to ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... "impressions." He seemed picturesque, fantastic, slightly unreal. Hovering there in this consecrated neighbourhood, he might have passed for the genius of aesthetic hospitality—if the genius of aesthetic hospitality were not commonly some shabby little custode, flourishing a calico pocket-handkerchief and openly resentful of the divided franc. This analogy was made none the less complete by the brilliant tirade with which he greeted ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... sitting down like one of the family, and making them all seem like a picture of some historical and aristocratic romance! And then they were actually "de Fontanges l'Hommadieu." How different he was from that shabby Methodist minister who used to come to see her father in a black cravat with a hideous bow! Really there was something to say for a religion that contained so much picturesque refinement; and for her part—but that will do. I beg to say that ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... never good for anything in the literary way till after the first autumnal frost, which has somewhat such an effect on my imagination that it does on the foliage here about me,—multiplying and brightening its hues; though they are likely to be sober and shabby ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... leave my machine. We had not taken a direct road back; so I was stuck in a lonesome, woody place, no houses about. I got chilly and made a fire, and was putting in the time comfortably enough, when this old party steps up. He was in shabby evening clothes and a top hat, and had on his usual white gloves. How he got there, at three o'clock in the morning, miles from any town or railway, I'll leave it to you to figure out. He surely had no car. When I saw him coming up to the fire, I disliked him. He ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... and nudged Tom about how shabby it would look to reneague the adventure. So he asked which way he was to go, and Redhead ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... angry with me! [With a change of tone.] As you did that evening, for instance, when I came with Nannette to your shabby little den in ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... an intern living at home with his widowed sister. Colorado? No, the widowed sister was positive he had never been there. The fourteenth was a handsome fellow of about thirty-five. He looked poor and threadbare, and I had a glimpse of a shabby bed behind a screen. Patients obviously did not often come his way, and his joy at seeing me was pitiful. I had meant to try a bluff and get in my Colorado question this time free of charge; but I hadn't the heart to do it. Slight pains in the head seemed ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... of the idea of wrong may be these. First, the thing is forbidden: then one gets punished for it. Punishment and prohibition enter in by eye and ear and other senses besides. Then the thing is offensive to those we love and revere. Then it is bad for us. Then it is shameful, shabby, unfair, unkind, selfish, hateful to God. All these points of the idea of wrong are grasped by the intellect, beginning with sensory presentations of what is seen and felt and heard said. Again with ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... I was more thirsty for music than for vin ordinaire or cordiale Medoc. Yet I did not expect very much round the corner of a restaurant frequented by shabby intellectuals... That ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... a shabby spectacle as he moved off with his little dog Dan slinking at his heels. It should be said in behalf of Dan, however, that his bristles were up, and that he looked back and growled. It may be that the dog had the advantage of insignificance, but it is difficult to conceive how a dog bold enough ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... weak &c 160; powerless &c 158; frivolous, petty, niggling; piddling, peddling; fribble^, inane, ridiculous, farcical; finical, finikin^; fiddle-faddle, fingle-fangle^, namby-pamby, wishy-washy, milk and water. poor, paltry, pitiful; contemptible &c (contempt) 930; sorry, mean, meager, shabby, miserable, wretched, vile, scrubby, scrannel^, weedy, niggardly, scurvy, putid^, beggarly, worthless, twopennyhalfpenny, cheap, trashy, catchpenny, gimcrack, trumpery; one- horse [U.S.]. not worth the pains, not worth while, not worth mentioning, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of the square, as he swung along toward the Academy Theatre that evening, he found himself suddenly confronted by a man who, lounging against the fence of a shabby dwelling, straightened dramatically at his approach and bent a sharp gaze upon him. He was a tall, shambling fellow with a white cloth swathed about the top of his head; and Varney, in the act of passing, suddenly recognized him as the dog ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... those rivers of the great plains, like the Platte and the Kansas and the Arkansas, are so wasteful of their supply in the spring that by July they are gasping for a shower. So, part of the year they revel in luxury, and during the rest they go shabby—like shiftless people. ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... much taken up. Bezobiedoff was a small, slight fellow, with a face pitted over with smallpox, freckled, effeminate hands, and a huge flaxen moustache much in need of the comb. He was invariably dirty, shabby, uncouth, and uninteresting. To me, Dimitri's relations with him were as unintelligible as his relations with Lubov Sergievna, and the only reason he could have had for choosing such a man for his associate was ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... so would memory have conjured up the pretty, bright little woman of whom he had once been proud. Flossy still looked pretty, but she was thin and pale, and there were dark rings round her eyes; also, her dress was worn, her hat curiously shabby. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... are in keeping; of the passengers in the street a sad proportion are dingy and shabby; but just when these are putting you off your guard, there will pass you a woman—more likely two or three—of ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... of my beautiful rosewood piano, he had put another, a little shabby thing with all the polish off, half-the notes wanting, and so old and worn that one could hardly hear it. I began to think: "Good gracious! is an artist then, really a little mad? Does he only care for useless things, and despise ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... that Mien-yaun's poem was a versified narration of his own experiences. There was the romantic youth, the beautiful maiden, the obdurate papa, the villanous mother-in-law, and the shabby public. This discovery augmented its popularity, and ten editions were disposed of in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... real beauty of spirits. It is our firm faith that bright solemn angels in celestial watchings were frequent guests in the homely room of the two sisters, and that passing by all accidents of age and poverty, withered skins, bony features, and grotesque movements and shabby clothing, they saw more real beauty there than in many a scented boudoir where seeming angels smile ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the shabby, gloomy post-office, holding a stubby pencil that was chained by a cable to the wall, he stood over a blank telegraph-form, hesitating how to word the message. Behind the counter an instrument was ticking unheeded, and far within could be discerned the vague bodies of men dealing ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... to be witnessed on that sad, chill, autumn night, was the small boy in a threadbare gray sweater and shabby cap who stood gazing wistfully into the seductive windows of Pfiffel's Home Bakery. The sight of him standing there with his small nose plastered against the glass, looking with silent yearning upon the jelly rolls and icing cakes, was enough to arouse pity ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... mind,—that criticism of our contemporaries is not criticism, it is only conversation. Yet there is sufficient self-revelation in the fact that those who have been ready enough to praise the 'Lady of Lyons,' with its tawdry rhetoric and its shabby morality, have not seen the superiority of Mr. Pinero over Lord Lytton even as a stylist, as a master of English, tense, nervous, and flexible, adjusting itself to the thought, never protruding itself ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... in the next few days. Hartley had unearthed a somewhat shabby adventurer who swore to having seen the Irishman O'Hara in Paris within a month, but it was by no means certain that this being did not merely affirm what he believed to be desired of him, and in any case the information was of no especial value, since it was O'Hara's ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... stirred, stretched himself and finally sat up. Then he started, sprang to his feet, and strode easily across the vestibule to the reception desk. An officer was standing there in a worn uniform, a very shabby kit-bag by his side, a dirty old Burberry ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... two o'clock came,—three, four, five o'clock,—and no Vavasor. Hour after hour she listened to the chime of the gaudy timepiece decorating their shabby apartment; and while the night advanced, in all its chilly, lonely, comfortless protraction, shivered as she added new logs to the dying embers, and as she hoped or despaired of his return, alternately replaced the veilleuse by candles, the candles by a veilleuse. She had already assumed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... majority of 50 out of 250. The division was very extraordinary, Brougham, Sadler, and O'Connell voting together. It is pretty clear, however, that they are in no danger of being turned out, but that they are wretchedly off for speakers. Huskisson made a shabby speech enough, O'Connell his debut, and a successful one, heard with profound attention; his manner good and his arguments attended and replied to. In the Lords there was nothing particular, but nothing ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... last into a shabby street, recognizable even in the twilight of the scattered lamps as being a place for cheap lodging-houses. There was a light burning in the second-floor windows of No. 19; but all the rest of the front was in darkness. I paid Simmons and dismissed him, saying I would walk home. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... "bloods" of those days. But this took most of my available cash, and left me little to expend in treating my fellow students at the tavern or in enjoying the more substantial culinary delights of the Boston hotels. Thus though I made no shabby friends I acquired few genteel ones, and I began to feel keenly the disadvantages of a lean purse. I was elected into none of the clubs, nor did I receive any invitations to the numerous balls given in Boston or even to those in Cambridge. This piqued my pride, to be sure, but only intensified ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... after the visit to Cadurcis, when Lady Annabel was sitting alone, a postchaise drove up to the hall, whence issued a short and stout woman with a rubicund countenance, and dressed in a style which remarkably blended the shabby with the tawdry. She was accompanied by a boy between eleven and twelve years of age, whose appearance, however, much contrasted with that of his mother, for he was pale and slender, with long curling black hair and large black eyes, which occasionally, by their transient flashes, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... flourishing town where I discovered nothing but wilderness, they will commission a second-rate sculptor to make a fancy statue of me. And I shall stand in front of the Stock Exchange, a convenient perch for birds, to look eternally upon the shabby deeds ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... lately, and found even the suburbs of that city immeasurably safer than any part of London is now, to judge from the police-reports. Yet I am accused of inhumanity and selfishness if I decline to write a check for every shabby fellow who calls upon me pretending to be a clergyman, and to represent this or that ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... I suffered. One of the most awful situations in life is to have one of your friends be the sort of girl that has a town named after her and wonderful family portraits and such dainty hands and feet that shabby shoes don't even count, and then to know that she is hungry most of the time from being too poor to get enough food. For two days I have had to keep my mind off Roxanne Byrd to make myself swallow one single morsel of anything to eat. I suspected ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in the dance, nor tuneful in her song. She had broad cheeks, thick lips and a flat nose. She had very red cheeks, very dark hair. She was exuberant in figure, moving with vigor and life. Her clothes were shabby but bright in color. Red bands edged the striped skirt and bright colored worsted fringes outlined the seams of her bodice. Other young maidens resemble roses and lilies, but she was like the heather, strong, gay ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... king has ordered me to shoot you.' The prince started at this, and said, 'Let me live, and I will change dresses with you; you shall take my royal coat to show to my father, and do you give me your shabby one.' 'With all my heart,' said the huntsman; 'I am sure I shall be glad to save you, for I could not have shot you.' Then he took the prince's coat, and gave him the shabby one, and went away ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... a prospector and a company promoter all the working years of his rather shabby life. He had organized some dubious concerns; but his new offices on Broadway were fitted so unostentatiously that anyone could see the Northern Exploitation Company was not trying to glitter for the ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... headlong drove his rival round the Ring; Nor stops nor stays, nor rest, nor breath allows. Thereon the Corner raised redoubled rows, Yelled false alarms of "Rescue!" heaved half-bricks, And murderous missiles and unmanly kicks Poured on ENTELLUS, whilst fat DARES slunk Between his bullies, like a shabby skunk. ("Bah!" growled SAYERIUS. "Fancy CRIBBS or GULLIES Backing down under guard of blackguard bullies!") But now the Ref., who saw the row increase, Declared a "draw," and bade the combat cease. ("A draw?" SAYERIUS shouted. "Was he drunk? Or had he, like the rest, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... endowment fund for the Pope and his court so big that his Holiness and every official in the place might get salaries all round out of the interest that would enable them to live like—well, I was going to say like princes, but there's a lot of princes in Rome that live so shabby that the comparison ain't ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... to him. It was on the third day that there came a little personage, without horse or carriage, walking quite merrily up to the castle. His eyes sparkled like yours; he had fine long hair, but his clothes were shabby." ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the passing years to the starting-point of those strange events, lands me in a shabby little ground-floor room in a house near the Walworth end of Lower Kennington Lane. A couple of framed diplomas on the wall, a card of Snellen's test-types and a stethoscope lying on the writing-table, proclaim it a doctor's ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... acquainted with so few dragoons that I do not know their general characteristics. Few of them, I imagine, would have gone about with the slouch which characterized his method of locomotion, nor would many of them have dined in a hat so shabby that it was picked off the peg and passed ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... were made each year for the family clothing. The child had always really preferred that the others should have "new things" rather than herself—until Miss Margaret came; and now, before Miss Margaret's daintiness, she felt ashamed of her own shabby appearance and longed unspeakably for fresh, pretty clothes. Tillie knew perfectly well that her father had plenty of money to buy them for her if he would. But she never thought of asking him or her stepmother for anything more than what they saw ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... with sudden sunshine; both hands were put out to receive the shabby driving glove, and the voice was full of that affectionate alacrity which makes ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... shabby outcast, a tavern hanger-on, a genial wayfarer who tarries longest where the inn is most hospitable, yet with that suavity, that distinctive politeness and that saving grace of humor peculiar to the American man. He has his own code of morals—very exalted ones—but honors them in the breach ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... imagined him ever to be in need of small ones. It was the same young fellow at George's who, whenever he wanted credit for a new suit from his tailor, used to dress himself in laced clothes in which to give the order, for he had found that to appear shabby on such occasions defeated the purpose ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... knocking out his shabby heels against the box in an agony of confusion. Then he grew emboldened by the other's dejected mien. "No, I'd never throw no race," he said ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... figure entered the room just as Miriam finished speaking. But Jessica was too late with her warning. The young girl had, without doubt, heard the cruel speech and her face flushed painfully as she pinned on a shabby old hat, slipped her arms into a thin black jacket and stepped out again without looking at the crowd of schoolmates who ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... he withdrew, it became my business to step forward; but cautiously and gently, so as not to alarm the lady, and yet firmly, so as to convince her of the hopelessness of her design of uniting herself with her shabby lover, the sub-lieutenant. The Princess Olivia was good enough to perform this necessary part of the plan in my favour, and solemnly to warn the Countess Ida, that, though Monsieur de Magny had retired from paying ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old childish way, the big Highlander lifted his master up in his arms, and carried him, flight after flight, to the summit of the long dark stair. It narrowed up to a small door, very mean and shabby-looking, from the keyhole of which, when Malcolm hid his lantern, a ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... City, Samuel declares, were setting up his arms; merchant-ships—more important in those days—were hanging out his colours. He hears, too, how the Mercers' Company were making a statue of his gracious Majesty to set up in the Exchange. Ah! Pepys's heart is merry: he has forty shillings (some shabby perquisite) given him by Captain Cowes of the 'Paragon;' and 'my lord' in the evening 'falls to singing' a song upon the Rump to the tune ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... and taking possession of places he had no right to. It is delightful to see the great, generous poet going upon grounds of reason and justice in the teeth of the trumped-up rights of the "pious AEneas," that shabby deserter of Dido, and canting prototype of Augustus. He turns the tables, also, with brave candour, upon the tyrannical claims of the stronger sex to privileges which they deny the other; and says, that there ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... simple society had its own social habits. If he did not take this well-meant advice, he must justify himself by his own method. He made up his mind to go to the next meeting of the medical society. His clothes were a trifle shabby, but as the meeting was in the evening, he could go in his evening dress—drop in casually, as it were, from an evening entertainment. That silly bit of pride, however, angered him with himself. He went in his shabby everyday suit. The experience ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a week of travel, the party went into camp near a shabby village which was caving, house by house, into the hungry Mississippi. The river astonished the children beyond measure. Its mile-breadth of water seemed an ocean to them, in the shadowy twilight, and the vague riband of ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... she could not love her any longer! It was Fanny, after all, who was a noble girl. Fanny wanted to get to the bottom of things. Fanny herself could not do what an unimportant little girl like Sibyl could do. After all, there was nothing shabby in it. If it were shabby, Fanny Crawford, the last girl in the school to do wrong, would not have asked her to attend to ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... Should I return it? Should I communicate with Mr. Semitopolis at once?" he wondered. "No," he concluded finally, "nothing without Mr. Finsbury's advice." And he arose and produced a shabby leathern desk. It opened without the formality of unlocking, and displayed the thick cream-coloured note-paper on which Mr. Pitman was in the habit of communicating with the proprietors of schools and the parents of his pupils. He placed the desk on the table by the window, and taking a saucer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ought to be able to look things straight in the face. What can I get on that threadbare coat of yours? Perhaps three francs at the outside. How many days will that last us? We will say three. And then, what then? Besides, can you not understand that your dress is too shabby for you to make an impression on the people you go to see? Well-dressed applicants only have attention, and to obtain money, you must appear not to need it; and, pray, what will people think of you if you have no overcoat? Without one you will look ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... accordingly did so, and found her seated on her throne, surrounded by the lords and ladies of her court, glittering in jewels and dressed in magnificent apparel. Hans felt rather shy as he marched up the splendid room, amongst all these grandly dressed people, in his shabby old clothes; but he put as good a face on it as he could, and when he stopped before the throne and looked into the Princess's eyes, all his shyness vanished. He was conscious of nothing but a strong determination to win her for himself, or ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... see that he had pretty shabby clothes and a peaked cap and I guess he was startled to hear us coming. In just a few seconds he was gone in the woods and we all stood gaping there while the boat bobbed up and down, on account ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... she raged, in the depths of the comfortable shabby arm-chair that had been her father's. "I don't care! Aunt Trudy always cries and it isn't fair. I suppose Hugh will be furious, but let him. I'm so tired and so hot and so miserable—" and Rosemary gave herself up to ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... and rickety houses, where the character and peculiarities of the humbler classes of Parisians are best to be studied. Returning, after dark, from an expedition of this kind, I was surprised by a violent shower in a shabby street of the Faubourg St Antoine, and took refuge under a doorway. Immediately opposite to me was the wretched shop of a traiteur, in whose dingy window a cloudy white bowl of mashed spinach, a plate of bouilli, dry as a deal plank, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various |
