"Shiny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... business Mr Verloc left behind him on his way westward at the hour of half-past ten in the morning. It was unusually early for him; his whole person exhaled the charm of almost dewy freshness; he wore his blue cloth overcoat unbuttoned; his boots were shiny; his cheeks, freshly shaven, had a sort of gloss; and even his heavy-lidded eyes, refreshed by a night of peaceful slumber, sent out glances of comparative alertness. Through the park railings these glances beheld men and women ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Day cut her out and out, for she came in a tiffany suit, all white and gold, like a queen on a frost-cake—all royal, glittering, and Epiphanous. The rest came—some in green, some in white—but old Lent and his family were not yet out of mourning. Rainy Days came in, dripping; and sun-shiny Days helped them to change their stockings. Wedding Day was there in his marriage finery, a little the worse for wear. Pay Day came late, as he always does; and Doomsday sent ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... dialect changed, the people changed, faces got sharper, manner got shorter, eyes got shrewder and harder; yet all so quickly, that the spruce guard in the London uniform and silver lace, had not yet rumpled his shirt-collar, delivered half the dispatches in his shiny little pouch, ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... wearing plain shiny leather chaps with a gun in an open holster tied at the bottom to facilitate quick action. He drew out the revolver, tested it noiselessly, and restored it carefully to its place. If he needed the six-shooter at all, he would need ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... is over the fireplace. You are tempted to make a mental inventory. Polished steel fender, very unaesthetic; curious shovel—his design, he will stop to remark, and forged by the village smith. Red mahogany furniture, with startling shiny emerald leather chair-cushions; red carpet and green curtains. Most of the room crowded with bookcases and cabinets for minerals. Scales in a glass case; heaps of mineral specimens; books on the floor; rolls of diagrams; early Greek pots from Cyprus; a great litter ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... me." He tugged at his pocket, whence emerged a cheap and shiny weapon. Hal shuddered, recognizing it. It was the revolver ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... nights in the Atlantic. And it was nothing. The flash of a pinch of gunpowder in your face may be a bigger matter. Yet somehow it's pleasant as we stumble in the dark to think of our Senora in that long room with a shiny floor and all that lot of glass at the end, sitting on that divan, you call it, covered with carpets as if expecting a king indeed. And ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... spectacle. Even in their native Piccadilly it had been unpleasant to run into Mr. Carmyle. To find him here now was nothing short of nauseating. Only one thing could have brought him to this place. Obviously, he must have come to see Sally; and with a sudden sinking of the heart Ginger remembered the shiny, expensive automobile which he had seen waiting at the door. He, it was clear, was not the only person to whom the idea had occurred of taking Sally for a ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... he wishes to (no one ever "sent" a Grind to college). He has a sallow skin, a watery eye, a shambling gait, but he has the facts. His clothes are outgrown, his coat shiny, his linen a dull ecru, his hands clammy. He reads a book as he walks, and when he bumps into you, he always exculpates himself ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... a day or two before Godwin was brought face to face with Mr. Cusse, who answered too well to the idea Charlotte's brother had formed of him. He had a very smooth and shiny forehead, crowned by sleek chestnut hair; his chin was deferential; the bend of his body signified a modest hope that he did his duty in the station to which Providence had summoned him. Godwin he sought to flatter with looks of admiring interest; also, by entering upon ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... experiments in a fishermen's model reached in then and her coming started a chorus. They were always trying new models in Gloucester, everybody was so anxious to have a winner. This one's sails were still white and pretty and her hull still shiny in fresh black paint. The red stripe along her rail and the gold stripe along her run set off her lines; her gear didn't have a speck on it, her spars were yellow as could be and to leeward we thought we could still smell the patent varnish. For that matter ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... was exceedingly feeble, and her daughter appeared as a very old-fashioned girl in a stylish habit—an old daguerreotype sort of face, smooth, shiny and expressionless. ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... thing!" cried Miss Prue, snatching up the cage and rushing indoors, where she set it down with a thump on the hall-table; and, dragging off her black silk wrap, proceeded to muffle the profane creature in its shiny folds; then, turning to Sara with ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... over to that other sky way back there behind everything, I mean. And I think THAT (here he pointed toward what probably was a photographer's roof-light)—that place where it's so shiny, is ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... shoe-buckles and gold necklaces to prove they had donned their finery in honor of the fete. The men wore their blue and purple blouses over their holiday suits; but almost all had pinned a sprig of bright geranium or honeysuckle to brighten up the shiny cotton of the preservative blouse. Even the children carried bouquets; and thus many of the farm wagons were as gay ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... resolutions which he formed as he stood in front of his toilet-table and arranged his tie and his shirt front to his satisfaction. Von Baumser, who was arrayed in a dress coat of antiquated shape, and very shiny about the joints, sat on the side of the bed, eyeing his companion's irreproachable get-up with ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fat, coarse-looking man with little pig-like eyes and scanty tufts of black beard and whiskers growing in irregular patches on his cheeks and chin, like clumps of gorse on clayey banks. He was dressed—in a manner—in an ill-fitting black cloth suit imported from Sydney. His hair was very black and shiny, plastered down over his temples and beautifully parted at the back of his bullet head. Altogether he was an unpleasantly sleek, oleaginous creature, and as he stood bowing and smirking with a catlike grin, the Admiral felt an almost irresistible impulse to kick him out of the cabin. ...
— Officer And Man - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the Major, a military and distinguished-looking gentleman, who came on board, accompanied by a couple of shiny new trunks, at Plymouth. He himself threw out the suggestion that the raising of a colonial volunteer army was the grand object of his mission. Anyhow, he had the manners of a gentleman. And he had seen service, having lost his right arm in the Crimea and gone all through the ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... fustian! Workmen's "bags" Are very "polished" where the "sags" From salient joints protuberant, Grow shiny with continual friction; But "polished knees" in poet's diction Strike one as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... like you the best of all, because you're my whole family rolled into one. Leonora and I and two Sophomores have walked 'cross country every pleasant day and explored the whole neighbourhood, dressed in short skirts and knit jackets and caps, and carrying shiny sticks to whack things with. Once we walked into town—four miles—and stopped at a restaurant where the college girls go for dinner. Broiled lobster (35 cents), and for dessert, buckwheat cakes and maple syrup ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... the black ooze of the bog. Little bubbles of iridescent air appeared from the mud; the bones were slowly engulfed, and, as the last fragments sank out of sight, up from the depths and along the bank crept a creature, shiny, shivering, quivering ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... used to take a good deal of hair off some of the horses' legs; but in the case of the camels, although it did not seem to excoriate them, it took every hair off their legs up to three feet from the ground, and their limbs turned black, and were as bright and shiny as a newly polished boot. The camels' hair was much finer than that of the horses', but their skin was much thicker, and while the horses' legs were punctured and suppurating, the camels' were all as hard as steel and bright ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... she would then be no longer in the shiny garden of the flowers of wealth; and how little does beauty weigh as all aid to an active worker in the serious fighting world! She would be a kind of potted rose-tree under his arm, of which he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lithe limbs, denoting herculean strength, a massive head poised on a well shaped neck, two cold blue eyes, and a face covered by a bushy brown beard; dressed in well fitting clothes, trousers tucked in the tops of shiny black boots, long Prince Albert coat and a broad sombrero set rakishly on one side of his head. Such was the man who hit me in ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... dear democrat, At such a shiny-trousered Tory Because he doffs his poor old hat To what ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... the bargain," declared Tim. "I love shiny stuff like that to wear and dress in. It fits ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... had clung to the beautiful thought that Miss Dorothy would be sick, that she had missed her train—but no! There she was, with her shiny high-heeled slippers, her pink skirt that puffed out like a fan, and her silver whistle on a chain. The little clicking castanets that rang out so sharply were in her hand beyond ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... the shiny sag-suits spread through the city. There were the huge stockpiles of precious metals, brought in readiness to be surrendered and carried away. Some men set to work to load these into the holds of the ships of Weald. Some went ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... ole Henry Hargrove place. My ole missus was named Elizabeth and mammy called me Lizzie for her. But the Hargroves called me 'Wink' since I was a chile, 'cause I was so black and shiny. Massa Hargrove had four girls and four boys and I helped tend them till I was big enough to cook and keep house. I wagged ole Marse Dr. Hargrove, dat lives in Marshall, round when ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... came—even the chaplain was here during the supper. The officers Were in full-dress uniform, and the only man in plain evening dress was Mr. Dunn, the post trader, and in comparison to the gay uniforms of the officers he did look so sleek, from his shiny black hair down to the toes of his shiny black pumps! Mrs. Barker and I received, of course, and she was very pretty in a pink silk gown entirely covered with white net, that was caught up at many places by artificial pink roses. ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... returned, pulling between them the limp space suit, both men were pale, the shiny sheen of sweat on their foreheads, their hands shaking. Lupe sat down on the ground ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... middle of the group there was a withered little man, bent with age, with a long ragged beard and a nose like the beak of a hawk. He wore a great black coat that was very shiny and reached almost down to his ankles; and in his skinny fingers he held what I soon recognized as the large red stone that Tom Kinlay had found at Skaill. Tom himself was standing near the old Jew, and bargaining ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... ran along one side, and men muffled in wet coats stood behind a loopholed parapet. Along the trench was a series of tiny shelters scooped out of the bank, built up with sand-bags, covered ineffectually with wet, shiny, waterproof ground-sheets. In these, men were crouched over scantily filled braziers, or huddled, curled up like homeless dogs on a doorstep. At intervals along the parapet men watched through periscopes hoisted over the top edge, and every now and then one fired ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... always wonder whether her treatment of the agent, or his assurance of her dependence on his cordiality, represents more nearly the truth. She looks such a good sort. Some day, when the War is over, I must acquire a shiny tall hat and a glossy shirt front and a youthful manner and get someone to introduce me, and then, bit by ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... the check away in a battered leather pocket-book, shiny on the sides and ragged about the corners, and overflowing with odds and ends of memoranda and newspaper clippings; a row of fish-hooks was fastened into the flap, and he stopped to adjust these before he went into the house to answer ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... roughness than he felt, as a man's way is. He will always dictate rather than ask. At his words a shiny veil seemed to withdraw from her eyes, whereby he learned that she had heard him. He put the cup to her lips again. Some was spilt, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... you a new book thought you'd like it. I don't mind your old storms!" replied the boy, wrestling his way out of his coat and presenting a face as round and red and shiny as a ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... big touring car and its bright brass lights and trimmings were all shiny on account of the sun setting and shining right on them. It came rolling along, about fifty miles an hour, out from the woods, and then even faster as it hit it up along the straight road. Oh, boy, didn't it just eat up ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... up to them, when they were landed, with pleasure and confidence shining in his dusky eyes. Save for tiny buckskin breeches, he was naked, and his shiny skin gleamed gold-bronze in the sunlight. He was a ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... his eyes and turned around. A large man, decorated with a shiny silk hat, shinier patent leather shoes of extreme breadth of beam, a flamboyant waistcoat, and a gold chain from which dangled a large diamond charm, swaggered into the room, mopping his red ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... worker and a neat one, when she didn't have to chop ice, and she soon had a shiny white enamel pail half filled with delicious cold lemonade. She poured out two generous glasses for her mother and Winnie and carried them in with her compliments and then set off expeditiously, carrying pail, dipper and three cups, a feat ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... white soul, dear friend. On the surface she has her girlish petulances, her youthful prejudices. But these? Why, I had a thousand of them, Anthony. How I snubbed those poor students whom you brought with you one afternoon to tea because their elbows were shiny and their shoes rusty. I was such a little snob, Anthony. How I should welcome them now—those great doctors, who have done ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... where they were, fighting for my self-control. So many terrifying thoughts were trying to penetrate my consciousness. I tried to shut out everything but my realization of what I was looking at. I kept my eyes glued on the officer's boots; shiny black boots they were, that fitted him without a crease, with spurs fastened to the heels. I shall never forget the stiff, red striped trouser-legs and those shiny black boots that didn't seem to belong on ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... the rock, clad in a white linen suit, the blouse, with its wide-flowing sleeves, being cut in native Chinese fashion The queue, which Ping had declined to part was tucked into a side pocket, being all braided up and shiny, like a snake. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... drove away at last, a row of shiny black faces was lined up each side of the avenue. All the Gibbs children were there, and Aunt Cindy's other grandchildren, with ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... time the boy had begun to take Latin, and his education was being looked after by a worthy governess, who daily drilled his mental processes and took him walking, leading him by the hand. On Sundays he wore a wide, white collar, shiny boots and a stiff hat. The governess cautioned him not to soil his collar, nor to get ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... it is an ugly-looking monster! It is something like a snake, but more like a giant lizard. It has scales all over its body and it has a long, shiny tail. It walks clumsily, because its legs are too small for it, and writhes and wriggles itself along, raising its head now and then to look about, and breathing out red fire and black smoke like a blast from a furnace. When its poisonous breath has blown this smoke away for an instant, it shows ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... father was fat and dark, with unpleasant black eyes that seemed to roll a great deal. Yet he was kind to the babies and his wife seemed to like him. She wondered what kind of a home they had, and what relation the young fellow with the shiny dark curls bore to them. He seemed to take as much care of the babies as ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... was a sturdy, middle-sized fellow, some thirty years of age, clean shaven, and sallow-skinned, with a bland, insinuating manner, and a pair of wonderfully sharp and penetrating gray eyes. He shot a questioning glance at each of us, placed his shiny top hat upon the sideboard, and, with a slight bow, sidled ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... an extremely long barrel was fastened by the stock to his stirrup, while the muzzle stuck up into the air behind him. At each holster was a large dangling black bag, and a gaily coloured red-slashed blanket was rolled up at the back of his saddle. His horse, a strong-limbed dapple-gray, all shiny with sweat above, and all caked with mud beneath, bent its fore knees as it stood, as though it were overspent. The rider, however, having satisfied himself as to the house, sprang lightly out of his saddle, and disengaging his gun, his blanket, and his bags, pushed his way ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... himself, when all at once Perez the Mouse sprang on his shoulder and put the tip of his tail into His Majesty's nose. * Then a wonderful thing happened, the King sneezed very hard and turned into the most darling little mouse you ever saw. He was all soft and shiny, and had wee green eyes like emeralds. * Perez the Mouse took him by the paw and disappeared with him down a tiny hole under the bed, which had ...
— Perez the Mouse • Luis Coloma
... cleared away and the trapezes slung up again in the roof, we had a musical ride, performed by six men and six women mounted on very shiny horses. Mrs. Ascher, of course, objected strongly to the music. I could see her squirming in her seat. Ascher did not find the thing interesting and began to fidget. It was, indeed, much less suggestive than either the learned horse ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... and as they tread they sing some weird native chant. Somewhat impressed, I remarked to the planter that it had all the appearance of an incantation. He replied that the process cost 2d. per cwt. Dancing makes the beans look smooth, shiny, and even, and it separates any beans that may be stuck together in clusters. It may make the beans rounder, and it is said to improve their keeping properties, but this remains to be proved. On the whole, if it is considered ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... the other fingers were dwarfed. The elephantiasis in this case slowly and gradually increased in size until the hand weighed 3 1/2 pounds. The skin of the affected finger, contrary to the general appearance of a part affected with elephantiasis, was of normal color, smooth, shiny, showed no sensibility, and the muscles had undergone fatty degeneration. It was successfully amputated in August, 1894. The accompanying illustration shows a dorsal view ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... my ears, listening for "clues," and when one came, I played up to it with all my skill, agreeing with him, soothing him, hanging on his words. He looked almost as tired as his wife; there were shiny patches on his coat; his hair was turning white above the ears; he had the look of a man driven beyond his strength. I made him a cup of coffee, good coffee! over which he sighed appreciatively. I told him I liked the smell of smoke. I offered him the Spectator in ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fine-ladyish; and you ought to let your hair stream down your back instead of having it tied behind with that ribbon. And you ought to have a hole in your hat instead of that grand black feather. And—oh, good gracious!—what funny boots! I never saw anything like them—all shiny, and with such pointed toes. How can you walk in them? I as often as not go barefoot all day long; but then I am a wild thing, a changeling, and I suppose, after all, you ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... doorways were embellished with shiny brass knockers of good form, and outside one shop was a tempting array of cool green earthenware bowls of such beautiful shape that I passed them ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... tailor, what confiding tradesman was it, trustful as Don Juan's famous Monsieur Dimanche, who upon the faith of my fantastic promises, decided one fine morning on bringing it to me, brand new, and artistically pinned up in a square of shiny green calico? It would be difficult for me to tell. Of the honest tailor, I can indeed recall nothing—so many tailors have since then crossed my path—save perhaps a vision, as in a luminous mist, of a thoughtful brow and a large mustache. The coat indeed is there, before my eyes. Its ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... the Stock Exchange. I know, of course, that stockbrokers wear very shiny top-hats, which they remove when they sing "God Save the King," as they invariably do in a crisis. When they go out to lunch, the younger ones leave their top-hats behind them, and take the air with plastered polls; and after lunch is over, young and ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... of Ambition; and that Modesty allays all those Passions and Inquietudes to which that Vice exposes us. He that is moderate in his Wishes from Reason and Choice, and not resigned from Sourness, Distaste, or Disappointment, doubles all the Pleasures of his Life. The Air, the Season, a [Sun-shiny [1]] Day, or a fair Prospect, are Instances of Happiness, and that which he enjoys in common with all the World, (by his Exemption from the Enchantments by which all the World are bewitched) are to him uncommon Benefits and new Acquisitions. Health is not eaten up with Care, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the little crisp brown balls. They are, it seems, a favourite dainty at a Bavarian Kirchweih, and must be provided in large quantities. On the fair field itself the food offered by the stall-keepers seemed to be chiefly enormous slabs of shiny gingerbread made in fanciful shapes, such as hearts, lyres, and garlands, cheap sweetmeats, and the small boiled sausages the artless German eats in public without ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... is found in batteries that have been charged with the acid below the tops of the plates. The part of the plate above the acid is continually being heated by the charging current. It becomes hard and shiny, and has cracks running through it. The peroxide becomes orange or brick colored, and the grid deteriorates. The part of the plate below the electrolyte suffers also, as explained more fully on page 71. Such plates should be discarded if any considerable portion ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... and with his handkerchief carefully, wiped the last speck of Dry Lake dust from his shiny toes. "Yuh won't crawfish on me, if I tell yuh?" he inquired anxiously, standing up ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... el-Maka'dah and other "winter-brooks," the red porphyritic trap, heat-altered argil, easily distinguished by its fracture from the syenites of the same hue, appeared to be iron-clad, coated with a thin crust of shiny black or brown peroxide (?). This peculiarity was noticed by Tuckey in the Congo, by Humboldt in the Orinoco, and by myself in the So Francisco river; I also saw it upon the sandstones of the wild mountains east of Jerusalem, where, as here, air and not water must affect the oxide ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... mottled with pink and black in blotches. The adults were almost invariably all dark, though a few of them retained still a small pink spot or so-a sort of persistence in mature years of the eternal boy-, I suppose. All were very sleek and shiny with the wet; and they had a fashion of suddenly and violently wiggling one or the other or both of their little ears in ridiculous contrast to the fixed stare of their bung eyes. Generally they had nothing to say as to the situation, though occasionally ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... coin in each outstretched hand, and, without waiting for thanks, strode briskly down the street. We gazed after him, knocked speechless by this great beaker of bounty that had rolled in upon the flat expanse of our afternoon. Mr. Pegg, in his shiny top hat and neat Prince Albert moved away in the ruddy November sunlight as in a halo of opulence. Never before had we appreciated the princely turn of his toes beneath their drab spats, the flash of his twirled walking-stick. We resolved ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... ladies, verily, I think, the comeliest ladies I have ever seen on the Coast. Very black they are, blacker than many of their neighbours, always blacker than the Fans, and although their skin lacks that velvety pile of the true negro, it is not too shiny, but it is fine and usually unblemished, and their figures are charmingly rounded, their hands and feet small, almost as small as a high-class Calabar woman's, and their eyes large, lustrous, soft and brown, and their teeth as white as the sea surf ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... afternoon she came to the Lehntmans', much dressed up in her new, brick red, silk waist trimmed with broad black beaded braid, a dark cloth skirt and a new stiff, shiny, black straw hat, trimmed with colored ribbons and a bird. She had on new gloves, and a feather ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... ever seen a piano before and June must play the "shiny contraption" and sing a song. It was only curiosity and astonishment that she evoked when her swift fingers began running over the keys from one end of the board to the other, astonishment at the gymnastic quality of the performance, and only astonishment ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... him; for, Excellenza, a liberal may have his virtues. Oho! Here comes a journalist," said Giardini, as a man came in dressed in the absurd way which used to be attributed to a poet in a garret; his coat was threadbare, his boots split, his hat shiny, and his overcoat deplorably ancient. "Excellenza, that poor man is full of talent, and incorruptibly honest. He was born into the wrong times, for he tells the truth to everybody; no one can endure him. He writes theatrical articles for two small papers, though he is clever enough ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... swift movement of her fingers she flashed on the hall light. Her gaze searched the brown, shiny face of the little chap. She read there an affidavit of the truth of his mother's tale. The boy had his father's trick of squinting a slant look at anything he found interesting. It was impossible to see him and ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... he refused to pay his respects to European officials. To all such reproaches Nilratan would reply: "No, thank you,—if they are not polite enough to return my call, then the politeness I offer them is a loss that can never be made up for. The sands of the desert may be very white and shiny, but I would much rather sow my seeds in black soil, where I can expect ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... in side whiskers, white necktie, flannel shirt and carefully considered trousers tucked in shiny boots. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... lost the little shiny rifle that shoots with air?" But Johnny dispelled this horrible suspicion by drawing the formidable weapon out of ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... commenced to bargain, and in the end the person of Meriem passed from the possession of the black chieftain into that of the two Swedes in consideration of six yards of Amerikan, three empty brass cartridge shells and a shiny, new jack knife from New Jersey. And all but Meriem were more than pleased ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Konrad that a chamois skin isn't half as objectionable as a shiny one. Come here and let me dust this over your nose and chin, while I breathe a prayer of thanks that I have no overzealous husband near to forbid me the use of a bit of powder. There! If I sez it mesilf as shouldn't, yez ar-r-re a credit ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... a small black case from his pocket, unsnapped a hinge, and a small, shiny instrument fell out in his hand. "The files," ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... swimming by means of its long thin legs and toes, coming right into the opening, looking of a dark shiny brownish green, all but its stunted tail, the under part of which was pure white, with a ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... they built the railroad down here in this ditch where people have to sit and swelter and look at their old shiny rails and scraggly green bushes and dirt walls, while up there only a half a mile away the great rolling plains stretch away to the mountains that seem so near you could walk to ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... at her brother's worn garments, shiny at elbow and knee, and as she looked, her eyes were ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... more transitory aroma. I don't think it necessary to go into any further particulars, because this atmospheric character has the effect of making the dining-rooms of all boarding-houses seem very much alike; and the accident of a hair-cloth sofa, cold, shiny, slippery, prickly,—or a veneered sideboard, with a scale off here and there, and a knob or two missing,—or a portrait, with one hand half under its coat, the other resting on a pious-looking book, —these accidents, and such as these, make ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... and shiny, occupied with great dignity the back seat beside his master, while Alwyn, in a silent but dreamy content, as if he only half understood where he was, rested against his sister's bosom with his hands in ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... around her,—to study their characters, to hear their stories, their grievances, and to relieve their wants. "These little black imps," she says, patting them on the head as they toddle around her, "They're just as full of interest as their shiny black skins are full of mischief;" and one after another, with hand extended, they seek a recognition; and she takes them in her arms, fondling them with ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... a shiny gold piece and tested it with his teeth. "The Bolsheviks murdered the old goat and all his ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... would probably have kept his discovery to himself. As it is, he is likely to have Tom Connor interfering with him again—that is to say, if this sand is what I think it is. I don't think it is the 'black sand' of the prospectors—it is too shiny, and it has a bluish tinge besides—I think it is something of far more value. We'll soon find out. Give me that piece of an iron pot, Phil; it will do to melt the ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... in vain, they would not return to me in this strange, far-off world. Through the transparent blue gauze appeared my little Japanese, as she lay in her sombre night-robe with all the fantastic grace of her country, the nape of her neck resting on its wooden block, and her hair arranged in large, shiny bows. Her amber-tinted arms, pretty and delicate, emerged, bare up to the shoulders, from ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... he did not exactly remember now, caused him to spit out indistinct words which one could not always understand. He was bald only on the top of his head, like a tonsured monk, with a crop of short, curly hair, golden and shiny, around this circle ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... looking like a young clergyman, dressed in a complete suit of black, a long frock coat, fitting him up to the neck and very nearly down to the heels. He had the appearance of a very tame curate. His hair, instead of being short and stumpy, as when the young policeman saw him, was now long, shiny, and carefully brushed over both sides of his forehead, which gave him the appearance so fashionable amongst the saints of ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... most prominent characteristics of Russian society. In a few days he learns to distinguish the various classes by their outward appearance. He easily recognises the French-speaking nobles in West-European costume; the burly, bearded merchant in black cloth cap and long, shiny, double-breasted coat; the priest with his uncut hair and flowing robes; the peasant with his full, fair beard and unsavoury, greasy sheepskin. Meeting everywhere those well-marked types, he naturally assumes ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... a funny old figure, stooped and so one-sided that the tail of the long and shabby coat he wore dragged on the ground. The face was black and shrewd, and little patches of snow-white hair fringed the shiny pate. ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... she passed was bordered on either side by walls of gray stone covered with shiny-leaved ivy and flanked by a checkerboard of pastures roughly dotted with clumps of hardback and boles of protruding rock. Great brakes grew in the shady hollows, and from the woods beyond came the cool, moist perfume ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... pleasant cottage it was, with a shiny clean stone floor, and curious old prints on the walls, and an old black oak sideboard full of bright pewter and brass dishes, and a cuckoo clock in the corner, which began shouting as soon as Tom appeared; not that it was frightened at Tom, but that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... hit, Mr. Burns?" she said at last. "With the hills all so soft an'—an' dreamy-like, an' them clouds a-floatin' 'way up there over the top of Table Mountain; with the moon makin' 'em all silvery an' shiny 'round the edges, an' them trees on yon side the river lookin' like they was made er smoke er fog er somethin' like that; an' the old river hitself a-layin' there in The Bend like—like a long strip of shinin' gold,—hit sure ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... moment Eloquent thought it might perhaps be Mary with some message for his aunt, but the card disillusioned him. It was a very shiny card, and on it was written in ink in ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... to work on the Sabbath will make a pretence, That taxes are high, and they can't pay their rents; But my rents and my taxes I'll still hope to pay, Though on sun-shiny Sundays ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... at the hand which had fondled him. It was of a strange dead pallor, with a yellow shiny web betwixt the fingers. All over it was a white fluffy dust, like the flour of a new-baked loaf. It lay thick on Sharkey's neck and cheek. With a cry of disgust he flung the woman from his lap; but in ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... always will be. His outside has growed big enough in all conscience, but his inside has stayed the size of a pin-point, same as it was born. And Deacon Meakin, that's always had the reputation of common sense, a-insistin' that a gold mow has been found in our woods; or if not that, then a box—a shiny box of—My ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... was held by a young man who seemed to share with Miss M'Gann the social leadership of the Keystone. He was with the Baking Powder Trust, he told Sommers. He was tall and fair, with reddish hair that massed itself above his forehead in a shiny curl, and was supplemented by a waving auburn mustache. His scrupulous dress, in the fashion of the foppish clerk, gave an air of distinction to the circle on the steps. Most of this circle were so average as scarcely to make an impression at first sight,—a few young women who earned ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... dressed in a maroon satin shirt and white whipcord breeches tucked into shiny new boots. But instead of his usual sombrero, a chef's cap was ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... the people in the room, my father alone retained his self-possession. My uncle's cheeks had sagged, and perspiration made them moist and shiny, and Mr. Lawton seemed bent and as wrinkled as though he ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... appeared in the almost forgotten glory of his court suit,—a coat of crimson velvet, a flowered waistcoat, satin knee-breeches, and a sword at his side. The mistress wore an equally memorable brocade, enormous bouquets thrown upon a silvery ground, so stiff and shiny that it seemed a texture of ice and frozen flowers. Her hair was cushioned and powdered; she looked comely and stately, and wore her lustres well. The pretty Bessie was attired in maidenly white muslin, an India fabric of marvellous fineness, with a sash and streamers of blue, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... with the blue uniforms and the shiny brass buttons had descended from the North on Athens—descended in spite of the double-barrelled cannon that the little master and the little master's men had tried on them. The blue clad invaders had come in ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... that triumphant display of her wedding finery he had caught a glimpse of her (iniquitously) as he passed her room on his way to Spinks's. She was standing, a jubilant little figure, in the line of the half-open door, shaking out and trailing before her some white, shiny, frilly thing, the sight of which made him shudder for the terror, and sigh for the pity of it. And the girls' laughter and the banging of the door as he went by, what was it but a reminder of the proprieties and decencies that bound him? A hint that he had pledged himself thrice ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... pear-shaped head, shaven to the skin, his white cheeks, protruding chin and long heavy white hands he resembled nothing so much as a large fish hanging on a nail at a fishmonger's. He worked always in a kind of cold desperate despair, his pince-nez slipping off his shiny nose, his mouth set grimly. "What is the use?" he seemed to say, "of helping these poor wounded soldiers when Russia is in such a desperate condition? Tell ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... of my roosters comb whitch was frose last winter when i was sick has come of and his comb is all smooth and shiny and hasent got ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... live frog and rubbed it on my hand over an area marked out with lead pencil; at first the place was wet, but in a few seconds dry and rather shiny. I held up my hand till 50 mosquitoes had alighted on it and begun to bore; of these, 4 alighted on the froggy place, 3 at once tumbled off in haste, but one, No. 32, did sting me there. I put my tongue to the frog's back; it was ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... stretch his legs. Queer sights Pasha saw on these trips. Sometimes he would pass many men on horses riding close together in a pack, as the hounds run when they have the scent. They wore strange clothing, did these men, and they carried, instead of riding-crops, big shiny knives that swung at their sides. The sight of them set Pasha's nerves tingling. He would sniff curiously after them and then prick forward his ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the interior of the building. The light gave birth to dancing leaf-shadows, stem-shadows, lustrous streaks, dots, sparkles, and threads of silver sheen of all imaginable variety and transience. It awakened gnats, which flew towards it, revealed shiny gossamer threads, disturbed earthworms. Stephen gave but little attention to these phenomena, and less time. He saw in the ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... be indicated by that right cuff so very shiny for five inches, and the left one with the smooth patch near the elbow where you rest it upon ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... scarcely reached to his wrists. It was buttoned closely up to his chin, at the imminent hazard of splitting the back; and an old stock, without a vestige of shirt collar, ornamented his neck. His scanty black trousers displayed here and there those shiny patches which bespeak long service, and were strapped very tightly over a pair of patched and mended shoes, as if to conceal the dirty white stockings, which were nevertheless distinctly visible. His long, black ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... last style of elegance. His hair was arranged in a faultless manner—unless perhaps it had a little too much of the tallow-candle; for when he had sat for a while before the fire it had somewhat the look of being excessively wet with perspiration. His boots were as shiny as his hair; his waistcoat was of a startling pattern; his pantaloons were very tightly strapped down; and at the end of a showy ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Sous les Bois was disposed of for educational purposes. The flourishing Jesus Marie Academy, with its shiny dome and lofty walls, looms out in the very centre of the demesne The Lindsay manor, at present, is the hospitable lodge of the devoted and talented almoner of the Convent, Rev. Abbe ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... to mass this morning in the little plaster church of a village near the castle. The acolytes were small peasant boys, and whenever they knelt down they turned toward the congregation prodigious boot-soles studded with a surprising array of shiny hobnails. ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... his cap a very knowing affair, but confessed that he had a hat in his hat-box; which was accordingly at once extracted from the hind-boot, and Tom equipped in his go-to-meeting roof, as his new friend called it. But this didn't quite suit his fastidious taste in another minute, being too shiny; so, as they walk up the town, they dive into Nixon's the hatter's, and Tom is arrayed, to his utter astonishment, and without paying for it, in a regulation cat-skin at seven-and-sixpence, Nixon undertaking to send the best hat up to the matron's room, School-house, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... with gold lace. They wore also ear-rings of brass, and moon-shaped, with heavy necklaces of white and black beads. On their arms were numbers of rings made of brass or white shells, while over their shoulders hung their long black shiny hair, which set off to advantage their pure brown skin. Some of them held knife-headed spears in their hands, while to a belt round the waist hung a long slender knife and a pouch with materials for betel-chewing. One man, who seemed to be the chief, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... like some fantastic pagan temple. Against it stand four colossal Nubians, as black as night, dressed in white marble garments. The black legs are bare, and through rents in sleeves and breeches, the skin, of shiny black marble, shows. The artist was as ingenious as his funeral designs were absurd. There are two bronze skeletons bearing scrolls, and two great dragons uphold the sarcophagus. On high, amid all this grotesqueness, sits the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to saddle hawses, there's a difference in steeds: There is fancy-gaited critters that will suit some feller's needs; There is nags high-bred an' tony, with a smooth an' shiny skin, That will capture all the races that you want to run 'em in. But fer one that never tires; one that's faithful, tried and true; One that allus is a "stayer" when you want to slam him through, There is but one breed o' critters ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... the dinner Brown considered his attire carefully. He could not venture to wear anything calculated to outshine the apparel of his guests, and yet to don the elbow-worn, shiny-backed blue serge of his everyday apparel seemed not to do them quite honour enough. He had not many clothes with him, but he had brought one suit of rough homespun, smart indeed from the viewpoint of the expensive tailor who had made it, but deceivingly unconventional to the eye ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... for she never had a sight of the Major after dinner. 'Can I see him for a moment? I'll not come farther than the hall, for the cart's waiting, and I am not fit to enter a room.' So with that he comes in, six foot two, if he's an inch, and covered from head to foot in a shiny white mackintosh, with his head peeping out on top, and I've seen uglier men than him before this. I was coming down the stairs after shedding me sheets, and Molly was asking me where the Major might be, so I told her to send ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Nat's candid commentary when the story ended, and he emerged red and shiny from the pillows where he had burrowed with boyish explosions ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... with a fat, cleanly-shaven, cherubic countenance, an aspect of candor, and keen, solemn eyes. His manner was impressive and slightly pontificial; his voice resonant and engaging. He knew when to joke and when to be grave as an owl. He wore in every-day life a shiny, black frock-coat, a standing collar, which yawned at the throat, and a narrow, black tie. His general effect was that of a cross between a parson and a shrewd Yankee—a happy suggestion of righteous, plain, serious-mindedness, protected against the wiles of human society—and ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... under the big table when it was not being used. Over a chair her grandmother's present, three nice gingham aprons, with sleeves and ruffled bibs. On the little table the presents of the aunties, shiny new tins and saucepans, and cups to measure with, and spoons, and a toasting-fork, and ever so many things; and then on one corner of the table, all by itself, was her mother's present, her own little cook-book, with her own name on it, and that was ...
— A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl • Caroline French Benton
... though still to those wild flutes of Dionysus; porpoises rolled beneath the surface of the transparent waves, diving below the vessel's sides but just in time to save their shiny noses; and all day long, ignoring the chart upon the stairway walls, the tourists turned their glasses eastwards, searching for a ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... irradiating, intellectual light. It had often the effect of an actual physical illumination cast upon the topic. He was magnificent as a dinner-table companion. He was rather a short, thick-shouldered man, with a big head on a short neck, a broad, projecting forehead, prominent eyes, defended by shiny spectacles, and bushy whiskers. He is not remembered now, probably because he never produced any organic work commensurate with his huge talent. Analyses of the work of others, however just, useful, and creative, do not endure unless they ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... of listeners and few talkers. Those who had been ill all along, got well now, and those who had been well, got better. An American gentleman in the after-cabin, who had been wrapped up in fur and oilskin the whole passage, unexpectedly appeared in a very shiny, tall, black hat, and constantly overhauled a very little valise of pale leather, which contained his clothes, linen, brushes, shaving apparatus, books, trinkets, and other baggage. He likewise stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as already ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... hear a splendid concert in my garden every day, When the breezes find by grove and lawn some instrument to play; They shake the shiny laurel with the clatter of the 'bones,' And from the lofty sycamore draw deeper 'cello tones, And giving thus the signal that the concert should begin, The brook beside the pebbled path strikes ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... greeted his two visitors without enthusiasm. He was a small, worried-looking man, with pale face, hooked nose and shiny black hair. He had recently changed his name from Jonas to Joyce, without materially affecting the impression which he made ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... supplemented by heavy draperies drawn back to either side. The embrasure was occupied by a small table, over which seemed to flutter a beautiful marble Psyche. A rubber plant, then as now the mark of the city and suburban dweller, sent aloft its spare, shiny leaves alongside a closed square piano. The lack of ornaments atop the latter bespoke the musician. Through the filtered gloom of the demi-light Orde surveyed with interest the excellent reproductions of the Old World masterpieces framed on the walls—"Madonnas" by Raphael, Murillo, and ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... I'd love to see her and her pretty clothes, even if she didn't buy anything." Barbara threw back a golden braid impatiently, wishing it were copper-coloured and had smooth, shiny waves in it, instead of fluffing out like ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... only four. By the time he was fourteen, he took himself more seriously. He still played "Grandpa Wheeler" in imagination; but he no longer called it play, but plans. Already, he was looking forward to the hour when, in creaking Sunday shoes and shiny Sunday broadcloth, he should mount the stairs of the old-fashioned pulpit in the village church, gather the hearts of the waiting congregation within the welcoming and graceful gesture which would prelude his opening prayer, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... dressed in brown—one of these smooth, half-shiny, silky-looking affairs with lace collar and cuffs, and what I believe they call an accordion-plaited skirt. She wore a thick brown veil down to her nose, and a broad-brimmed straw hat with some kind of feathers adorning it. The man wore plain, dark clothes, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... somewhat, but talked also, keeping Uncle Henry and Aunt Mollie shiny with smiles. They both have polished white teeth of the most amazing regularity. I ate almost exclusively, affecting to be preoccupied about something. The time was urgent. I formed an entangling alliance with the pork tenderloin, which endured to a point where but ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... wondering a little why no naked biscuit-beggars or gin swallowers had swum out to bother me that day, I found the trader of Taai sitting on his veranda, blowing puffs of smoke from those fine Manila Club perfectos out into the sunshine. Beside him leaned a shiny, twelve-gauge pump gun which he jostled with an elbow as he bade me by word and gesture to make myself ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... about three years old in front of me and then we waited with the rest of the school children. Soon the procession came, first a body of horse in plain khaki uniforms, then one very Japanese-looking man alone on the back seat in one of the light victorias, very clean and shiny, with the Chrysanthemums on the door. He was dressed in a khaki wool uniform just like the rest of the army with a cap on his head. Then came some other shiny, light little victorias with two horses, all just alike. I rubbered my best and I had a very ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... There seemed no end to it at all; and it moved horribly, without feet, holding on by its own frost to the slippery side of the frozen hill. Now all the lower part of the black hill was covered with the horrid white thing coiled about it in smooth, flat shiny coils; and still the head was higher than the rest; and still the icy cold came nearer ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... voice behind us. I looked round. There was a fat, red-faced villainous-looking creature covering us with a shiny revolver. It was an awkward situation. Both the Professor and I were lying full length on the ground. We ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... hundred thousand pound a mile, paid in adwance afore the coach was on the road? And as to the ingein, - a nasty, wheezin', creakin', gaspin', puffin', bustin' monster, alvays out o' breath, vith a shiny green-and-gold back, like a unpleasant beetle in that 'ere gas magnifier, - as to the ingein as is alvays a pourin' out red-hot coals at night, and black smoke in the day, the sensiblest thing it does, in my opinion, is, ven there's somethin' in the ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... one of those cases designed for the preservation of mummies. The same shiny wood, the same bright decorations, the only difference being that here Tifinar writing replaced the hieroglyphics. The form, narrow at the base, broader above, ought to have been enough ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... pleasant-faced square little trudges with shiny black hair and round myopic eyes. This near-sightedness when they approached the unclassified, resulted in their simultaneously making up the most horrible faces, the mere effort of focusing. Mary Nellen—for family affection, recognising their complete twin-ship, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... a macintosh, and a pair of shiny goloshes; he took his rod and basket, and set off with enormous hops to the place where he ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... setting things straight the gentleman had repaired to the common parlour. The appearance of common parlours of the kind is known to every one who travels. Always they have varnished walls which, grown black in their upper portions with tobacco smoke, are, in their lower, grown shiny with the friction of customers' backs—more especially with that of the backs of such local tradesmen as, on market-days, make it their regular practice to resort to the local hostelry for a glass of tea. Also, parlours of this kind invariably contain smutty ceilings, an equally smutty chandelier, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... desk. At last he was forced to give up lunch and get along as best he could on two scanty meals a day; he grew thin and haggard, his Adam's apple projected redly above a frayed collar, his trousers grew wrinkled and shiny, and he looked ready to take his place in the "bread line." Finally he spent his last cent on a pretzel and made ready to ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... Tipping, I'd rather come upstairs with you. I love the smell of the leather and the sight of all those sharp little knives, and the black, shiny 'dubbin,' do you call it? And we can have a talk about books ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... delicate sparkle, in the soft heavens,—Aldebaran, leading the V-shaped Hyades—and overhead Capella and her kids. Most majestic of all, in full display in the high south, Orion, vast-spread, roomy, chief historian of the stage, with his shiny yellow rosette on his shoulder, and his three kings—and a little to the east, Sirius, calmly arrogant, most wondrous single star. Going late ashore, (I couldn't give up the beauty, and soothingness of the night,) ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... sorrows of the years had left a not too heavy impress. She still enjoyed life, oven though a good part of it was spent at the wash-tub, washing other people's fine clothes. She had some fine ones of her own up-stairs in her clothes-press; and, when she went out, it was in shiny satin, with a bonnet bobbing with jet and a red rose, though of late years, strictly speaking, the bonnet had become a hat again, and Mrs. Brady was in style with the ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... sixteen. An ancient easy chair and a queer old sofa still had the original, slippery, black horsehair off which Petro and Ena had slid as children. Petro had named the sofa "the whale," and the squat chair "the seal." Both shiny, slippery, black things really did resemble sea monsters, and had never lost ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... think about anything, and so he sat down at the foot of a tree, and in five minutes was fast asleep. He was soon awakened, however, by a rough shake, and, on opening his eyes, he saw two cocked hats of shiny leather bending over him, and the two gendarmes of the morning, who were holding ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... what the Topham shapes of bonnets were like, as their mother had advised them; but everything was exciting and confusing, and they could arrive at no decision. When Mr. Hilton came out with a hat in his hand to be seen in a better light, Katy whispered that she wished he would buy a shiny one like Judge Masterson's; but her father only smiled and shook his head, and said that they were plain folks, he and Katy. There were dry-goods for sale in the same shop, and a young clerk who was measuring linen kindly ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Negrete had extricated their patient from the envelope of furs in which he had been wrapped by Servadac and the lieutenant, they found themselves face to face with a shrivelled little man, about five feet two inches high, with a round bald head, smooth and shiny as an ostrich's egg, no beard unless the unshorn growth of a week could be so described, and a long hooked nose that supported a huge pair of spectacles such as with many near-sighted people seems to have become ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... done, and the new, shiny tin pail made a very funny hat for Charlie. He liked it better than the red ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... couldn't know that we have dreams as grand, As any SHE could have. We wonder where Th' rivets that we make are goin' to, An' if th' engine wheels we turn, will go Through tropic heat, or if they'll plow through snow; An' as we watch, we sorter grow to care About th' steel. Why it's as shiny blue As j'ew'ls! An' every bit is, well, a part Of life to us. Sometimes my very heart Thanks God that I've ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... face shot out between the starched lace curtains of an upstairs window. It was a perfectly circular face, framed in thin, fair hair, which was parted in the middle, and brushed down so smooth and shiny that it looked like a coat of dull yellow paint. The face had the same good-humored, benevolent expression as the man's, mingled with the same strained air of desperate resolve. "'Most ready, Jake!" she mumbled through a mouthful of pins, "'most ready! Arabella! Arabella! ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... wouldn't wear shoes in de winter time or any time. It was 'ginst de law to bring them over here when they did, I learn since. But what is de law now and what was de law then, when bright shiny money was in sight? Money make de automobile go. Money make de train go. Money make de mare go, and at dat time I 'spect money make de ships go. Yes sir, they, my pappy and mammy, was just smuggled in dis part of de world, I ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... my father and I took ours in the large parlour, where the stiff, high-backed chairs eyed one another in opposite rows across the wide oaken floor, shiny and hard as marble, and slippery as glass. Except the table, the sideboard and the cuckoo clock, there ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... was frayed and dirty. The coat was thin and shiny. A half-length figure of a man drew out of the massed shadows between the window and sideboard. The red beard caught the light, and the wavy brown hair brightened. Then a look of weariness, of distress, passed over the face, and the man laid down the pen, and, taking some tobacco from ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... slipped out of her mind as she surveyed the group of cowboys on the links. By actual count there were sixteen, not including Stillwell. And the same number of splendid horses, all shiny and clean, grazed on the rim in the care of Mexican lads. The cowboys were on dress-parade, looking very different in Madeline's eyes, at least, from the way cowboys usually appeared. But they were real and natural to her guests; and they were ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey |
