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Starched   Listen
adjective
Starched  adj.  
1.
Stiffened with starch.
2.
Stiff; precise; formal.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Starched" Quotes from Famous Books



... remark, about dyspepsia and love, Mrs. Brewster took her chair at the table. Immediately after giving thanks, the host stood up to carve the roast. Then, to the surprise of all present, it was seen that the rancher had donned his second-best black coat and had taken the trouble to wear cuffs and a starched collar. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... ward was exceedingly annoying, since it interfered with plans which he had very much at heart. He had an only son, Orton Campbell, now a young man of twenty-eight. He was young in years only, being a stiff, grave, wooden-faced man, who in his starched manners was a close copy of his father. Both father and son were excessively fond of money, and the large amount of the fortune of the young lady, who stood to the father in the relation of ward, had excited the covetousness ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... the girlish figure, and made it look all the more slender as it seemed to rise out of the outstanding billows of numberless starched petticoats. Necklace and earrings made of beads of solid gold—a present from Bela to his fiancee—gave a touch of barbaric splendour to this dainty apparition, whilst her bare shoulders and breast, her sturdy young arms and shapely, if toil-worn, hands made her look as luscious a morsel of fresh ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... the faded cylindrical hats, yellow with age, family heirlooms, constantly worn. [The dandies.] The native dandies wear patent leather shoes on their naked feet, tight-fitting trousers of some material striped with black and white or with some other glaringly-contrasted colors, a starched plaited shirt of European make, a chimney-pot silk hat, and carry a cane in their hands. [The servants.] The servants waiting at dinner in their white starched shirts and trousers are by no means an agreeable spectacle, and I never realised the full ludicrousness of European male ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... their unhealthful mode of dress, and was strongly recommended in the "water cure" journals. When women began to go into public work, they could not fail to recognize the disadvantages of the unyielding corsets, heavy, quilted and stiffly-starched petticoats, five or six worn at one time to hold out the long, voluminous dress skirts; and to feel that to be consistent they must give freedom to the body. The proprietors of the "water cures" were, for the most part, in touch ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... starched scholastic life at Palgrave must have been the smiling world, and the land flowing with oil and wine, in which they found themselves basking! The vintage was so abundant that year that the country people could not find vessels to contain ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... of the day. They are wrong. A cloudless sky gets hotter and hotter all the afternoon, and reaches its very hottest at five. I am sure you must all have noticed this when you are going out to tea anywhere in your best clothes, especially if your clothes are starched and you happen to have a ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit

... forge close to them, they had not heard a commotion in the court outside. Dennet had been standing on the steps cleaning her tame starling's cage, when Mistress Headley had suddenly come out on the gallery behind her, hotly scolding her laundress, and waving her cap to show how ill- starched it was. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Johnny bobbed swiftly across the floor to a bin truck that stood empty. Into this he dived out of sight, crutch and all. The superintendent of the mill was coming along, accompanied by a young man. He was well dressed and wore a starched shirt—a gentleman, in Johnny's classification of men, and ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... she not been pretty and clever. His hectic letters to his mamma; his Byronic struttings and mouthings over the grave of his schoolgirl lady-love; his eighteenth-century comedy-scene with Caroline Lamb; his starched-frill participation in the Fred Villiers duel at Boulogne,—how silly and artificial is all this! There is no genuine feeling in it: he attires himself in tawdry sentiment as in a flowered waistcoat. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... one of those bronzes," he said bluntly, "and should never wear that cursed abomination, a starched linen collar." ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... living on homesteads and who, in their own way, played so vital a part in developing the West. One of our nearest neighbors—by straining our eyes we could see her little shack perched up against the horizon—put on her starched calico dress and gingham apron and came right over to call. The Widow Fergus, ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... at her door, gazing drearily down the long, empty corridor in which the breakfast gong echoed mournfully. All the usual brisk scenes of that hour, groups of girls in Peter Thomson suits or starched shirt-waists, or a pair of energetic ones, red-cheeked and shining-eyed from a run in the snow, had vanished as by the hand of some evil magician. Silent ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... the altar, and showering azure and rose patterns through the ancient stained glass which filled the side lancet windows. The stillness became for the moment intense and almost oppressive,—Sir Morton Pippitt fidgeted uneasily, pulled at his high starched collar and became red in the face,—the Reverend 'Putty' forgot himself so far as to pinch one of his own legs and hum a little tune, while the rest of the party waited for the individual whom their host had so frequently called 'the damned parson' to speak. The tension was relieved by ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... all observers. Applause long and hearty rewarded his efforts, and also brought Maggie to the rescue. As she pounced upon him and knocked the sputtering candle to the ground, Peter and Perdita, splendid in starched white linen, appeared in the doorway behind "the party" and invited every one to come and ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett

... Ted Malkin in his starched white shirt-sleeves and white apron and black waistcoat and tie, among his cheeses and flitches, every one of which he had personally selected and judged, weighing a piece of cheddar in his honourable copper-and-brass scales. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... giving orders in a high key to a yard-boy whenever she got inside the house, and directions in an equally high voice to a dining-room servant whenever she got outside. She was a fresh, pretty woman, clad always in white with elbow sleeves. Her starched skirts crinkled as she came and went. Farther down, before one of the cottages, a lady in black was walking demurely up and down, telling her beads. A good many persons of the pension had gone over to the Cheniere Caminada in Beaudelet's lugger to hear mass. Some young people were ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... this curious statement there entered the club a young Hollander immaculate in pipe-clayed topee and freshly starched ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... cried the duke. "Hei! that thundered and rolled, and struck fire! It does me good to hear such vigorous words from an able rare genius in the midst of this miserable, starched elegance. The powerful Germans are healthy fellows. Something of the Promethean fire blazes forth in them. They were forced to come, those jolly, uproarious boys, after the affected cue period; they were ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... so the iron wouldn't stick to the starched dress," explained Janet. "I should think anybody would know that! Wouldn't you, Lola?" she asked in a rather "snippy" manner and with an upward turn of her ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis

... hostess-ship was definite: A volley of questions—was his train on time? He had found the house all right? Of course! Any one could direct him, she should hope. And he hadn't seen Dwight? She must telephone him. But then she arrested herself with a sharp, curved fling of her starched skirts. No! They would surprise him at tea—she stood taut, lips compressed. Oh, the Plows were coming to tea. How unfortunate, she thought. How ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale

... speechless, a party of the Admiral's placers came strolling by, their heads half hidden in their huge starched ruffs, and with prodigious swords that would have dragged along the ground had they not been cocked up behind so fiercely in the air. Seeing Master Carew and the boy, they stopped in passing to greet ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... of religious integrity. So that he refused in his own mind to believe in the venality of a man who lived in such surroundings. Ushered into the advocate's waiting-room, a large parlor with curtains of starched muslin as fine as that of which surplices are made, its only ornament a large and beautiful copy of Tintoret's Dead Christ over the door, his uncertainty and anxiety changed to indignant conviction. It was not possible. He had been misled touching Le Merquier. Surely ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... Its rise was taken from the licence of arms, which permit, and almost authorize, the greatest disorders in a conquered country. The pleasures of Asia, and the commerce of infidels, aided not a little to debauch the Portuguese, as starched and regular as they naturally are. The want of spiritual directors contributed largely to this growing mischief. There were not four preachers, in all the Indies, nor any one priest without the walls of Goa; insomuch, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... old lady, more starched and prim than ever, "I believed myself to have intimated that our ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray

... Congo was aware of his power and of the impression he made on the humbler residents of Santiago. Every now and then he heightened his superiority to common clay by appearing in public in a starched collar, looking over the top of it with an assumption of pride and ease, as of one born to such luxury, but in reality chafing his neck against its ragged edges and longing to be in the fields, where he would not need to be spectacular. One year the day of the kings dawned without ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... confident in the omnipotence of his own methods and the uselessness of all others, with such a ready invention, and such an inundation of animal spirits that he could flood any company, no matter how starched or listless, with an unbounded appetite for ball-games and bean-games. How long it will last in the hands of others than the projector remains to be seen, especially as some of his feats are more exhausting than average gymnastics; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... huge black cap resembling the cowl of a friar, while at Pont l'Abbe and along the Bay of Audierne the cap or bigouden is formed of two pieces, the first a species of skull-cap fitting closely over the head and ears, the second a small circular piece of starched linen, shaped into a three-cornered peak, the centre point being embroidered and kept in position by a white tape tie which fastens under the chin. Over the skull-cap the hair is dressed en chignon. The dress accompanying ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... biggest, roundest tears I ever saw. They ran down her cheeks, formed a stream in the first groove of her double chin, overflowed it, and dripped drop, drop, a drop at a time, on the breast of her stiffly starched calico dress, and from there ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... made two beautiful frocks. The calico made another frock and two nice pinafores, the black alpaca some small aprons. Mary trimmed the two worst hats with the ribbon. Last of all, she cut and stitched five narrow bands of the linen, which mother washed and starched, and behold, the class had collars! I don't know which was most pleased at this last decoration, Mary or ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... genius. But tell me, is that the love of our women? No, no, it must be admitted. Love, for them, is another thing; it is to go out veiled, to write in secret, to make trembling advances, to heave chaste sighs under a starched and unnatural robe, then to draw bolts and throw it aside, to humiliate a rival, to deceive a husband, to render a lover desolate; to love, for our women, is to play at lying, as children play at hide and seek, the hideous debauchee of a heart, worse than all the lubricity of ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... of our bailiff, Fyodor Petrovna, was coming towards us. She was carrying a starched white petticoat and a long ironing-board. As she passed us she looked shyly at the visitor through ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... monuments with marble figures recumbent upon them, representing the Earls in their knightly armor, and their dames in the ruffs and court-finery of their day, looking hardly stiffer in stone than they must needs have been in their starched linen and embroidery. The renowned Earl of Leicester of Queen Elizabeth's time, the benefactor of the hospital, reclines at full length on the tablet of one of these tombs, side by side with his Countess,—not Amy Robsart, but a lady who (unless I have confused the story with ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Miss Hassiebrock took place, as if mere verbiage had suddenly flung a fang. From beneath the sternly and too starched white shirtwaist and the unwilted linen cravat wound high about her throat and sustained there with a rhinestone horseshoe, it was as if a wave of color had started deep down, rushing up under milky flesh into ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... myself," thought the minister, "to the fiend whom, if men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag has chosen ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... village on the coast of Brittany was tucked away there in the golden sands of the seashore. Its houses had walls of white stucco and gabled roofs of red tile. In the small rolling hills behind it were green orchards and fields of yellow wheat. The villagers, old women in their starched white head-dresses and old men wearing faded blue smocks and wooden shoes, were unmindful of the great event for which history had destined ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... flooded with indubitable and undoubted sunshine. To be sure, it was not the sharp, hard sunshine we have in America, which scours and bleaches all it touches, until the whole world has the look of having just been clear-starched and hot-ironed. It was a softened, smoke-edged, pastel-shaded sunshine; nevertheless it was plainly ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... little note first of all. And if you only knew how my wristbands are plaguing me you'd be very sorry. They're too much starched, and would come down like mittens; and now I've turned them up, they're just like two horrid china cups upside down, inside my coat, and I'm afraid to write for fear of breaking them. And I've a week's work on the table, to be done before one o'clock, on pain ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin

... hadn't been downstairs for three nights. I might have been dead for all anybody cared. Then I was determined they should care—and I got hold of the matches. I thought the clothes would burn first—and then my starched frock would catch fire—and then—everybody would be sorry for me at last. But unfortunately I got frightened, and ran up the passage screaming—silly little fool! That might have made an end of it—once ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Thursday afternoons when the cook was out—unbent from its sober household duties and joined him as an equal. But chiefly on this sill the child read his books on summer days. His cousins sat inside on chairs, starched for company, and read safe and dimpled authors, but his were of a vagrant kind. There was one book, especially, in which a lad not much bigger than himself ran from home and joined a circus. A scolding aunt was his excuse. And the child on the sill chafed at his own happy circumstance which ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... cannot understand his strange devotion. I cannot understand it," said William Leadbury, the while opening the page's vest, tearing away his collar, and straining at his shirt, that the stunned lungs might have play and get to work again. The stiffly starched shirt resisted his efforts and he reached in under it to detach the fastenings of the studs that held the bosom together. Back came his hand as if it had encountered a serpent beneath ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... gold. This was almost the only appearance of finery about the dress, except a row of gold buttons down the jerkin. Attached to his girdle he wore a large pouch, with the mouth drawn together by silken cords, and a small silver bugle was suspended from his neck by a baldric of green silk. Stiffly-starched bands, edged with lace, and slightly turned down on either side of the face, completed his attire. There was nothing majestic, but the very reverse, in the King's deportment, and he seemed only kept ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... true, and beautiful. What matter, if years sweeping on have swept them all away or merged them into higher duties and closer ties? Perhaps, if you met your beautiful idol of fifteen, you would see a starched old maid of fifty, or a grandame presiding over the third generation; or perchance, in seeking thus, you would find only a green hillock, or a stone inscribed with the well-known name. But what of that? To you the girlish image is still the same—it never can grow old, or ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... the clock next afternoon and there was the sound o' wheels ootside the wee hoose. Jamie started and looked at Annie, and the tears sprang to their een as they turned to the wean. In came the doctor, and wi' him a nurse, all starched and clean. ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder

... great pains to know the tradesmen in his neighbourhood; and, what with his jokes, his appearance of easy circumstances, and the fluency with which he spoke the language, he became a universal favourite. Many persons who were uncommonly starched in general, and who professed to ridicule the bureau, saw nothing improper in dining at the table d'hote. To those who wished for secrecy he was said to be wonderfully discreet; but there were others who did not affect ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... The congregation of the faithful was greater than on other days, but even so the Cathedral seemed deserted. In the crossways, kneeling between the choir and the high altar, were several nuns in starched linen bibs and pointed hoods, in charge of sundry groups of children dressed in black, with red or blue stripes according to the colleges to which they belonged; a few officials from the academy, fat and bald, listened to the mass standing, bending their heads over their cuirass. In this ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... for Norah had been ironing. She was a thrifty soul, and when she had a big fire to heat her irons she liked to bake good things to eat in the oven at the same time. A basket full of beautifully ironed and starched clothes sat on the table, ready to be carried upstairs, and a bowl of crisp sugar ...
— Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun • Mabel C. Hawley

... customers at Bogle's was a young man named Seeders, who worked in a laundry office. Mr. Seeders was thin and had light hair, and appeared to have been recently rough-dried and starched. He was too diffident to aspire to Aileen's notice; so he usually sat at one of Tildy's tables, where he devoted himself to silence and ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... would have thought that Nelly Carnegie in the white brocade which was her grandmother's the day that made her sib to Rothes—Nelly Carnegie who flouted at love and lovers, and sported a free, light, brave heart, would have made so dowie a bride? The company consisted only of Lady Carnegie's starched cousins, with their husbands and their daughters, who yet hoped to outrival Nelly with her ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... proceeded, "and the one time I saw you, that starched governess of yours had you ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... the humblest and poorest of clothes, her skimpy shawl round her shoulders could scarce protect her against the cold of this cruel winter's morning; her hair was entirely hidden beneath a frilled and starched cap, and her feet were encased in coarse worsted stockings and sabots, but her hands were delicate and fine, and her face had that nobility of feature and look of patient resignation in the midst of overwhelming sorrow which proclaimed a ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... for Easter. We worked diligently for three hours every morning. The jackets were made of the Irish gingham I brought from home. This week is holiday, and Julia and I have had a fine wash, and have clear-starched the Bishop's sleeves and ruffles—such a business! My hand aches to-day with lifting the heavy smoothing-iron, which is not iron, but a large brass box, hollow and filled with hot charcoal. We shall get more used to it in time. Mrs. Stahl used to do it. Now she is gone it is quite impossible ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... burdens. He was now very pale and his heart beat painfully as he endeavoured instinctively to smooth his long frock-coat, from which a button had been torn out by the roots in a very apparent place, and to settle his starched collar, which at the best of times owed its stability to the secret virtues of a pin, and which at present had made a quarter of a revolution upon itself, so that the stiffly-starched corners, the Count's chief coquetry and pride, had established themselves in an unseemly manner immediately ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... Jehan, on the Place de Greve, where, as everyone knows, the fashionable world was accustomed to meet; and while saying her paternosters to God she feasted her eyes upon all these gallants, curled, adorned, and starched, young, comely, and flitting about like true butterflies, and finished by picking out from among the lot a good gentleman, lover of the queen-mother, and a handsome Italian, with whom she was smitten because he was in the May of his age, nobly dressed, a ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... potatoes, 'Kohl-slaw,' pickled cucumbers and red beets, apple butter and preserved peaches, pumpkin and apple pie, sponge cake and coffee. After dinner came our next neighbours, 'the maids,' Susy and Katy Groff, who live in single blessedness and great neatness. They wore pretty, clear-starched Mennonist caps, very plain. Katy is a sweet-looking woman and, although she is more than sixty years old, her forehead is almost unwrinkled, and her fine hair is still brown. It was late when the farmer's wife came—three o'clock; for she had been to Lancaster. ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster

... herb tea did not cure him, nor did the stuff the doctor gave him. Nor did the starched crackling nurse, who turned Joanna out of the room and exasperatingly spoke of Martin as ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... street by the river, shaded almost to a twilight by the thick foliage, with the old houses all about us, seemed to invite reminiscence, or dreams of the stern and respectable old burghers and burgesses in sombre clothing, wide brimmed hats, and stiffly starched linen ruffs about their necks as rendered by Rembrandt, Hals, Rubens and Jordaens. They must have been veritable domestic despots, magnates of the household, but certainly there must have been something fine about them too, for they are ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards

... yet, dear," replied mother, "because this is wash morning and I have a new laundress to look after. Didn't you see her come around the house when we were at breakfast? I have to go downstairs and show her how we like our clothes washed and starched. Don't you want ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson

... missed, they would have jumped with joy and envy. Cannot you imagine with what unwilling feelings the former belles of the house of Rushworth did many a time repair to this chapel? The young Mrs. Eleanors and Mrs. Bridgets—starched up into seeming piety, but with heads full of something very different—especially if the poor chaplain were not worth looking at—and, in those days, I fancy parsons were very inferior even to what ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... birthplace is given a cheerful little lecture on the various relics and curiosities as they are shown. The young ladies who perform this office are clever women with pleasant voices and big, starched, white aprons. I was at Stratford four days and went just four times to the old curiosity-shop. Each day the same bright British damsel conducted me through, and told her tale, but it was always with animation, and a certain sweet satisfaction in her mission and starched ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... I be civil to them or to you? In this Palace of Lies a truth or two will not hurt you. Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... a florid man of large proportions, dressed in the height of the fashion and with scrupulous neatness. He was a jeweller. Another, a lawyer with a keen and anxious face, wore a tightly-buttoned frock coat and a black tie. Immense starched cuffs covered his bony hands and part of his fingers. He was supping on a salad, into which he from time to time poured an additional dose of vinegar. A third man, with a round hat on one side of his head, and who wore a very light-coloured ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... own way; and so Mrs. Crawford, after skimming her milk and attending to the cream, went to her rocking-chair and her cushion, and sat there quietly, while Jerrie in the woodshed pounded and rubbed, and boiled and rinsed, and wrung and starched and blued, and hung upon the line article after article, until there remained only a few towels and aprons and stockings and socks, and a pair of colored overalls which Harold had worn at his work. As these last were rather soiled and had no them patches of paint, ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... she was not what is called a lovable person. A certain hardness in her disposition, even as a child, had prevented her winding into the hearts of those around her. Deprived of her mother's care—having little or no intercourse with children of her own age—brought up with a starched governess, or female relations, poor and proud—she never had contracted the softness of manner which the reciprocation of household affections usually produces. With a haughty consciousness of her powers, her birth, her position, advantages always dinned into her ear, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... were always dressed alike in elaborately simple clothes, with frilly, starched underpinnies, silk stockings, high boots buttoned up slim legs; and across their shoulders, from beneath wonderful lingerie hats, hung shining curls. The latter were not natural, but had each day to be elaborately constructed. They made a dainty ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... eyes, Jo?" exclaimed Jim, "to see a real room, with a bed and a white spread, with those starched things where the pillows ought ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt

... satisfy the most jaded voluptuary. At shore, a sight awaited them calculated to stir every instinct of patriotism in their noble bosoms. On a richly chased ebon throne sat the viceroy in person, clad in all the panoply of power. A delicate edge of starched white linen, a sight which had not met their eyes for many a weary week, peeped from beneath his gaudier accoutrements; the vice-regal diadem, blazing with the recovered Kimberley diamond, encircled his brow, while ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... sooner saw him than she knew that he had come braced to try the conclusion with her. He sat himself before her in silence. His waistcoat was white, his neck-cloth white, his collar starched and high; his thick light hair was carefully oiled according to the fashion of the day, and brushed with curling locks upon the sides of the brow. At this critical hour Susannah observed him more narrowly than ever before. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... from your gold frame, Between that starched old Bishop and the dame In awe-inspiring ruff. We'll brave their ire And trip a minuet. You will not?—Fie! Those mocking lips half make me wish that I, Her grandson, might have been ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles

... scarcely have been conceived a stronger contrast in nature than that which existed between the starched, proud, and portly uncle, and the tall, handsome, and hearty young nephew, whose age ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... without raising her head from her task. Hazel observed that Tommy was pulling a daisy apart. A heap of daisies that she had pulled up by the roots, lay in her lap, regardless of the dirt that was accumulating on her stiffly starched white dress. One by one Tommy pulled the daisy petals from the flower, muttering rhythmically ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge

... do not witness the arrival of these visitors with much pleasure,—the dandies more especially, who shod in varnished leather, always over-dressed, musked, and starched, attract, so they think, too much the attention of the young girls. Fathers, mothers, and, above all, lovers, are at once on the look out. They mistrust these fine gentlemen, whom they always designate by the appellation of ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... eyes were fastened, Vronsky walked up to his mare in that state of nervous tension in which he usually became deliberate and composed in his movements. Cord, in honor of the races, had put on his best clothes, a black coat buttoned up, a stiffly starched collar, which propped up his cheeks, a round black hat, and top boots. He was calm and dignified as ever, and was with his own hands holding Frou-Frou by both reins, standing straight in front of her. Frou-Frou was still trembling as though in a fever. Her eye, full of fire, glanced ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... brick building set in grounds that seemed freshly starched and ironed, had a discoloured door that would have frowned and threatened of its own accord, even without the printed warnings pasted to its panels stating that no application for admission, with or without permits, would be honoured upon any day save Thursday. ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... was dressing in another room, and I heard some one bring him his blue frockcoat and under-linen. Then at the door leading downstairs I heard a maid-servant's voice, and went to see what she wanted. In her hand she held a well-starched shirt which she said she had been sitting up all night to get ready. I took it, and asked if Grandmamma was ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy

... his blue cloth coat, white neckcloth, nankeen trousers, patent leather boots, and stiffly starched shirt-frill, was supposed to be a guest, though a late arrival, by the janitor of this new Eden. His alacrity of manner and quick step justified ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... between lavender-scented sheets. On her breast stood a tall silver candlestick which supported a well-worn volume of "The Mysteries of Udolpho," held open by a pair of silver snuffers. The old lady's face was sharp and wizened, and beneath her starched white nightcap rose the knots of her red flannel curlers. Her eyes, which were very small and black, held a flickering brightness like that ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... shining model of the clown both in method and makeup. His stiffly starched bulging trousers disappeared under the stiff ruffles of a three-quarter waist. A broad turnover collar of the nurse style was set off with a large bow of bright red ribbon, and a baker's cap, perched jauntily on one side of the head, completed his merry makeup. This too describes ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... though just beginning to coagulate; it was dabbled over his brown serge suit, splotching the neatly starched white cuffs of his shirt. His wife always did them up so nicely with the peasant's love for ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton

... and solemn place where the natural outburst of childish spirits was frowned upon, or one had to sit "stiff and starched" upon ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... changing radically, it may be done by blocking over a wire frame made for the purpose. The wire frame should have six sticks instead of four, and circles not more than one inch apart, shaped as desired. Old or new buckram, neteen, or any coarse material which has been heavily starched, may be used. Wet the ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin

... be taken freely, as it is well to remember that the native washerman—the well-abused "Dobie"—has a marvellous skill in producing a saw-like rim to the starched collar and cuff of the newest shirt; while the elegant and delicate lace and embroidery, with which the fair are wont to embellish their underwear, take strange and unforeseen patterns at the hands of the skilled workmen. It is surprising what an effect can ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... tragedies they hid beneath their grey coats and bodices; their dirty linen they never washed in public, save in the scandal such as this where the Society must intervene. Then the linen was not only washed, but duly starched, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... it's true. I can't deny it. I was a washerwoman for a whole year. I washed all Granger's shirts and starched them and ironed them, and put them away and got them out and washed them again for months and months. Every one went through the mill pretty often, too; there weren't ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... native state the black fellow is nearer the ideal than the white alien in his body clothes, starched shirt, high collar, cloth suit, and felt hat. The needs and means of the black are non-existent. His dress corresponds, whereas the white usurper of his territory—servile to the malignant impositions of custom and fashion—suffers ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... kitchen, she went to her own room. There she arranged her hair, put a fresh, beautifully-starched ruff around her neck and carefully-plaited lace in the open bosom of her dress, but wore her every-day gown, for her husband did not wish to give the assembly at his house ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... loose girdle with quite a Henry V air. Jeff looked more like—well, like a Huguenot Lover; and I don't know what I looked like, only that I felt very comfortable. When I got back to our own padded armor and its starched borders I realized with acute regret how ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... practise of that virtue becomes a habit. And I for one quite refuse to excuse myself from further exercise of it on coming back to Europe. The General feels with me; and we have laid ourselves out to be civil to our compatriots here at St. Augustin this winter. A few people were vexatiously stiff and starched at first; but each one of them has given in, in turn. They really do, I believe, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... as to the older love of his youth, of which she was, perhaps, only an incident. It was therefore with an odd boyish thrill again that, coming suddenly upon a little hollow, like a deserted nest, where the lost trail made him hesitate, he heard the crackle of a starched skirt behind him, was conscious of the subtle odor of freshly ironed and scented muslin, and felt the gentle pressure of ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... by playing for the dances the young people of Olney sometimes got up. He was anticipating quite a windfall from the infair it was confidently expected would be given by Mrs. Markham in honor of her son's marriage; and Eunice herself had washed and starched and ironed the white waist she intended to wear on the same occasion. Of course she knew she would have to wait and tend and do the running, she said to Melinda, to whom she confided her thoughts, but after the supper was over she ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... his love of ease, liberty, and pleasure, was regarded as the highest enormity. Though artful in the practice of courtly dissimulation, the sanctified style was utterly unknown to him; and he never could mould his deportment into that starched grimace which the Covenanters required as an infallible mark of conversion. The duke of Buckingham was the only English courtier allowed to attend him; and by his ingenious talent for ridicule, he had rendered himself extremely agreeable to his master. While so many objects of derision ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... o' lace at your throat, ain't fluffy ruffles. An' stiff, starched things don't kinder become you, Miss Claire. They ain't your style. You don't wanter look like you been dressed by your worst enemy, do you? You're so little an' dainty, you got to have delicate things to go with you. Say, just try that butterfly on you now. ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann

... broad, shallow stream dividing its meadows; scattered farmhouses, orderly, prosperous, commanded their shorn acres. A mailbag was detached and left at a crossroad in charge of two little girls, primly important, smothered in identical, starched pink sunbonnets. The Greenstream stage splashed through the shallow, shining ford; the ascent on the far side of ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... starched and creaking garments which had been made for a slightly smaller child, Ardelia was transported to the station, and for the first time introduced to a railroad car. She sat stiffly on the red plush seat while the young lady talked reassuringly of daisies ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... Piccadilly, he leant forward over the wooden apron and lazily surveyed the crowd. Every second cab he passed contained an immaculate man going out to dinner, sitting bolt upright, with a severe expression of countenance, and surveying the world with steady eyes over an unyielding rampart of starched collar. Reggie exchanged nods with various acquaintances. Presently he passed an elderly gentleman with a red face and small side whiskers. The elderly gentleman stared him in the ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... I began to dress at dawn, I found my left arm very stiff and sore. I must have been much distracted overnight not to have felt it, and not to have seen that I was seriously bruised; my breeches were starched stiff with blood from a bayonet-prick. Jack's quarters were on the extreme right, and as soon as the lines broke after morning drill I ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... partner was fat and had not so much to carry as the poor mother of the bride. He took two or three steps alone, kicking out his long legs like a jumping-jack, and then he made a sudden resolve. Coming over to Judy, he took off his hat, pressed it to his starched shirt bosom, made a low bow and asked her to take pity on a poor old man who would have to dance alone, as dance he must, unless she would ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... Brother (1696), Act V, the last scene, old Lady Youthly anxiously asks her maid, 'is not this Tour too brown?' During the reign of Mary II and particularly in the time of Anne a Tower meant almost exclusively the high starched head-dress in vogue at ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... fresh, he seemed so touched and happy, he beamed all over with such joyful gratitude, that I too felt moved and joyful.... His face was completely transformed.... Boys of twelve have faces like that on Easter Sundays, after the communion, when, thickly pomaded, in new jacket and starched collars, they come to exchange Easter greetings with their parents. Misha was continually—with a sort of cautious incredulity—feeling himself and repeating: 'What does it mean? ... Am I in heaven?' The next day he announced ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... bed, her Bible and spectacles on the stand beside her, her starched pillows, her soft and highbred voice? Or another Miss Emily, panting and terror-stricken, carrying down her armfuls of forbidden books, her slight figure bent under their weight, her ears open for sounds from the silent house? Or that third Miss Emily, Martin Sprague's, ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... realize, Theo, that we shall not be having many more of these talks?" observed Mr. Croyden one evening as they sat cozily ensconced before a roaring blaze. "The last of the week we shall be starting back to civilization—to starched collars and cuffs, and the rush and hubbub of city life. For you I suppose it will mean school again; and for me it will be a matter of wading through a mountain of business correspondence that has been accumulating while I have been ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... servant entered with a large tray. James had never seen such a servant, a servant so entirely new. She was wearing a black frock and various parts of the frock, and the top of her head, were covered with stiffly-starched white linen—or was it cotton? Her apron, which had two pockets, was more elaborate than an antimacassar. Helen coolly instructed her to place the tray on his desk; which she did, brushing irreverently aside ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... a perfect vision of myself and sisters, as we stood up in the classes, with our toes at the cracks in the floor, all dressed alike in bright red flannel, black alpaca aprons, and, around the neck, a starched ruffle that, through a lack of skill on the part of either the laundress or the nurse who sewed them in, proved a constant source of discomfort to us. I have since seen full-grown men, under slighter provocation than we endured, jerk off a collar, tear it in two, and throw it to the winds, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... outside. Dennet had been standing on the steps cleaning her tame starling's cage, when Mistress Headley had suddenly come out on the gallery behind her, hotly scolding her laundress, and waving her cap to show how ill-starched ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... time to compose themselves before Paulett came in, looking, as they all thought, grimmer and more starched than ever, and not well pleased to find Humfrey there, but the Queen ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in starched ruffled muslin and black, who admitted them to the somber luxury of the rectory, ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the company assembled remain speechless, and no sounds are heard in the silent evening but the swaying of the rocking-chairs and the creaking of the gentlemen's stiffly-starched trousers. Presently someone produces a neat home-made cigarette case, and before selecting a cigar or a cigarette for his own consumption offers it to all the males present, who accept of his generosity. ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... name of Antonio Perez, whose family—having lost his wife—consisted of a lovely daughter, named Magdalena, and a less beautiful but still charming niece, Juanita. The housekeeping and the care of the girls were committed to a starched old duenna, Donna Margarita, whose vinegar aspect and sharp tongue might well keep at a distance the boldest gallants of the court and camp. For the rest, some half dozen workmen and servitors, and a couple of stout Asturian serving wenches made up the establishment of the wealthy artisan. ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... sense, But did not know it worked thus promptly. Well— At last each understands the other, then? Each drops disguise, then? So, at supper-time These masquerading people doff their gear, Grand Turk his pompous turban, Quakeress Her stiff-starched bib and tucker,—make-believe That only bothers when, ball-business done, Nature demands champagne and mayonnaise. Just so has each of us sage three abjured His and her moral pet particular Pretension to superiority, And, cheek by jowl, we henceforth ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... negroes with conical heads and brown Barbados negroes with Cockney accents; English engineers in lordly pugrees, and tourists from New England who seem servants of their own tortoise-shell spectacles; comfortable ebon mammies with silver bangles and kerchiefs of stabbing scarlet, dressed in starched pink-and-blue gingham, vending guavas and green Toboga Island pineapples. Carl gapes at Panamanian nuns and Chilean consuls, French peasant laborers and indignant Irish foremen and German concessionaries with dueling ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... of great enjoyment to her, and many happy hours she spent within the enclosure, which old Donald had built so securely that not even a chick could trespass to harm the sprouting seeds. Early spring saw her with tucked-up skirt, a starched sun-bonnet on her head, and hoe or rake in her hand, availing herself of every quiet hour in the day to plant and mark out the beds. Then followed a ceaseless watchfulness, throughout the hot summer, to regulate the watering and weeding, interspersed ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer

... in the works of Inigo Jones and Wren. The Commonwealth was prudish in art as in manners, and the Restoration was a reign of revel and wild license. The social worlds of William and Mary and of Queen Anne, stiff, starched, and formal, left their impress upon the buildings of their day, which were mostly of a domestic character. The Free Classic of the Georgian reigns followed,—more refined in sentiment, delicate but severe in outline, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... squawked and the auto halted by the porch steps. Young Ed Bailey slung one leg over another disproportionate limb, glanced at the windows, rolled a cigarette and lit it. His aunt, tall, gaunt, clad in starched dress and starched sunbonnet, with a rigidity of spine and feature that helped the fancy that these also had been starched, descended, strode across the porch and entered the living-room, her bright eyes darting all about, needling Molly, taking in ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... he meets anyone in a narrow passage he is always the first to stop and make way, and to say, not in a bass, as one would expect, but in a high, soft tenor: "I beg your pardon!" He has a little swelling on his neck which prevents him from wearing stiff starched collars, and so he always goes about in soft linen or cotton shirts. Altogether he does not dress like a doctor. He wears the same suit for ten years, and the new clothes, which he usually buys at ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... who likewise could "always be engineers." There were peasant-lads who had crammed themselves through their Intermediate at a spurt, and now wore the College cap above their rough grey homespun, and dreamed of getting through in no time, and turning into great men with starched cuffs and pince-nez. There were pale young enthusiasts, too, who would probably end as actors; and there were also quondam actors, killed by the critics, but still sufficiently alive, it seemed, "to be engineers." And as the young fellows hurried on their ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer

... desire to go back to the land of derby hats and starched collars?" I asked him. "You seem to be a handy man and a man of action," I continued, "and I am sure I could find you a comfortable job ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... opinion as to that said "right man;" one portion of "the church" wanting a smart, well-starched, polished individual, and the other desiring a plain, straightforward "gospel preacher"—a man of the Gadsby kidney, capable of hitting people hard, and telling the truth without any fear. This was in 1848, and about this ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... in any case don't fall in love with a French girl.' Miller swore he wouldn't, but you never can tell about those fascinating foreign hussies. Anyhow, the last sight he had of me I was smiling to my limit. Gee, all the rest of the day my face felt as if it had been starched ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... perceived him to be of middle height and age, stout, dressed in a loose holland jacket, a very white, starched shirt, and blue silk sash; that he looked particularly clean, had an air of belonging to Society, and exhaled a really fine aroma of excellent cigars and the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... was a tall, stern-looking person in a shirtwaist and a high, starched collar. You just couldn't imagine her holding a baby, or one cuddling up against her neck. She said No. 31 was nobody's child. She had been left in an old basket on the steps six years ago. You see, she isn't one of those children you read about with beautifully embroidered clothes ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase

... biggest Hand of any one at the Exercises. After denouncing the predaceous Interests he relapsed into an attitude of Meditation, with the Chin on the starched Front, very much like a ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... mention one more interesting particular. Mr. Horne was rather inclined to dandyism, in an innocent way. His clerical starched neckcloth was always of the whitest, his cambric handkerchief of the finest, his bands adorned with the broadest border; his sable suit never degenerated to a rusty brown; it not only gave on all occasions glossy evidence of freshness, but also of the talent which the artisan ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope

... his head down, out near the barn, and she ran to him and threw her arms about him and kissed him, and when she led Lycurgus Mason, who was all washed and dressed, back through the kitchen to her husband, John saw that the man's eyelids were red, and that on the starched cuffs were the marks of tears. For to him she was only his little girl, and John afterward knew that she was the only friend he had in the world. "Oh, father, why didn't you come in?" cried the daughter. "I missed you so!" The man blinked a moment at the lights and looked toward his wife, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... chasm to the left—the short pendants which she wore in either auricle continually bobbing into the aperture. She made, however, every exertion to keep her mouth closed and look dignified, in a dress consisting of a newly starched and ironed shroud coming up close under her chin, with a crimpled ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... waltz that would admit of his crossing the room, when his attention was attracted by the same little girl he had seen that morning in the garden. She was still dressed in the shabby old frock and pinafore, and as she came creeping in, threading her way deftly amongst the young ladies in starched muslins and gay ribbons who were fluttering about, she made the effect of a little brown moth who had strayed into the midst of a swarm of brilliant butterflies. No one took any notice of her, and she made her way up to the large round table ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... Governor Frampton started, and as he cast his eye over it, he first got as red as a carrot, then he turned as pale as a turnip, and bolted off into the library like a lamplighter, where he sits looking as if he had been to the wash, and come back again only half-starched." ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... of lavender, and my hair of oil of thyme—my waistcoat of bergamot, and my inexpressibles of musk. I was a perfect civet for perfumery. My coat, cut in the jemmy fashion, I buttoned to suffocation; but 'pon honour, believe me, sir, no stays, and my shirt neck had been starched per order, to the consistence of tin. In short, to be brief, I found, or fancied myself ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various

... over the snowy starched heap. "You have six white skirts, Olive, and three of them trimmed. I'd feel terribly fixed up, ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... railroads, telegraphs. The United Grain Growers were to be but a helpless giant in the hands of Jack Proletariat. Parliament was to be superseded by Direct Action. The A.F.L. was to become obsolete. Trades Unions were to be taken over and painted red. Citizens in starched collars were to become comrades in shirt sleeves, or enemies. Political parties would be reconstructed. The "workers" would own the country. The British Empire would be shaken into Soviets. The Army and the Navy would be internationalized. The real Capital of Canada outside of Winnipeg ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... spotlessly clean, her furniture of the golden oak type was polished, and the table cover and sideboard scarfs were beautifully laundered. Margaret is a small, trim little figure dressed in a grey print dress with a full gathered skirt and a clean, starched apron with strings tied in a big bow. She has twinkling eyes, a kindly smile and a ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... high for guest and hired help and family melted away in a manner to delight the hearts of Mrs. Woodruff and Jennie. The colonel, in stiff starched shirt, black tie and frock coat, carved with much empressement, and Jim felt almost for the first time a sense of the ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... these model lodging-houses had always been a favourite scheme of Amherst's, and the Dillons, incapacitated for factory work, had shown themselves admirably adapted to their new duties. In Mrs. Dillon's small hot sitting-room, among the starched sofa-tidies and pink shells that testified to the family prosperity, Justine shone with enjoyment and sympathy. She had always taken an interest in the lives and thoughts of working-people: not so much the constructive interest of the sociological mind ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... ox-wagons. Still, I felt no uneasiness. What is a cotton gown made for if not to be washed? Away it goes to the wash! What is this limp, discolored rag which returns to me iron-moulded, blued until it is nearly black, rough-dried, starched in patches, with the fringe of red earth only more firmly fixed than before? Behold my favorite ivory cotton! My white gowns are even in a worse plight, for there are no two yards of them the same, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... been made to do their best, for his lordship likes to move fast even in his old age. He is a tall thin man, bent much with age, and apparently too weak for much walking; he is dressed from head to foot in a sportsman's garb, with a broad stiffly starched coloured handkerchief tied rigidly round his neck. One would say that old as he is he has sacrificed in no way to comfort. It is with difficulty that he gets into his saddle, his servant holding his rein and stirrup ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... hadn't arrived with the railway. They would have been a relief. There was the monotonous aldermanic row, and the worse than hopeless little herd of aldermen, the weird agricultural portion of whom came in on council days in white starched and ironed coats, as we had always remembered them. They were aggressively barren of ideas; but on this occasion they had risen above themselves, for one of them had remembered something his grandfather (old time English alderman) ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... "You wears buckskins an' flannels an' a frontier hat; you goes about with your shirt-sleeves rolled up an' a scarf 'stead of a stiff starched collar; but you takes care that thar's allus elegant underclothin' nex' yer skin. You've gotten surprisin' clean habits, too: washes yourself three or four times a day, allus shaves yerself mornin's an' oils an' brushes yer hair. You don't go ter bed wi' yer boots and breeches ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... a large, heavy man with a nose burned very red, a travelling cap upon his head, and wearing a stiffly starched shirt which had once been white, no collar, and a waistcoat cut very straight in front, now opened, but intended to be buttoned up very high, "I believe Mr. Litchfield has voiced the sentiments of us all. As he was speaking, I looked from one brother to another, ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton

... belt. "But then there is that damned question of the skirts! I admire the novelists who can get a virgin unharnessed from her corsets and deflowered in the winking of an eye—as if it were possible! How annoying to have to fight one's way through all those starched entanglements! I do hope Mme. Chantelouve will be considerate and avoid those ridiculous difficulties as much ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... pantalets, beautifully starched and ironed, that came nearly to the tops of our village-ties, as we called them. We had very fancy ones for Sundays, and plainer ones for every day, but we were very particular about them. Phoebe sat with her feet crossed and actually sticking out in front of her—which was ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... induced me to take up such a hobby. The German Professor, as usual. Ah, Mr. Koken, Mr. Koken—those light words of yours have borne a heavy fruit. I possess four hundred implements now, and they will double the weight of my luggage and ruin my starched shirts, especially those formidable "praechellean" skull-cleavers. And I know exactly what the customs officer at Marseilles will say, when ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... "It has been starched and ironed out of it, apparently. Saratoga is still trying to do the good old American act, with its big hotels and its heterogeneous hops, and I don't suppose there's ever such a thing as a society person ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... to thee our good Queen Bess, 1558-1603 Garbed in the puffed and padded dress, Farthingale and starched up frills, Meaning heavy laundry bills. Od's Bodikins; what monstrous ruffs, What gowns of rich embroidered stuffs Piped and scolloped, trimmed with furs, And shaped like huge gasometers. Now we've warfare of the Creeds, For their thoughts all Europe ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison

... till I don't know my own handwriting by the time I find it! Oh, yes! you're going to revolutionize things here; you're going to introduce promptness, and system, and order. See you've even filled the wash-pitcher and tucked two starched towels through the handle. Haven't got any tin towels, have you? I rather like this new soap, too! So solid and durable, you know; warranted not to raise a lather. Might as well wash one's hands with a door-knob!" And as John's voice grumbled away into the sullen ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley

... of outraging the perspective, she could not possibly hit. A door now opened in the corner of the room, and admitted a lady of some forty years, tall and thin, and excessively upright, having apparently been more starched in her mind and carriage than in her dress. Pandora ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... you needn't look so starched. The little beggar's been starving himself for the occasion, and overdone it. He'll pull round with a little feeding up. Tell me what you thought of the race! Splendid chap, that animal of ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... cheeks were brilliantly rosy, and whose black eyes were so vividly lustrous, that one might have fancied the delicate cap-border near them, in danger from their fire. Over her full-formed bust, she wore a clear, and stiffly-starched muslin habit-shirt of purest white, a beautiful lace-edged ruff around her throat, over her ample shoulders was thrown a fawn-coloured shawl, and she wore also, a silver gray gown of the material called Norwich crape, with an apron rivalling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various

... and mother and I would stand and listen to him and try not to laugh. 'Lost, stolen, or strayed, a little witch-girl in a clean white frock, rather too much starched; a frilled cape that crackles when she moves, and a pretty broad-brimmed hat.' Well, Fluffy, what does that mysterious look mean? you are very rude to interrupt the old crier," and Fern tried to frown, while ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... courteous and dignified. He was dressed in light gray trowsers of perfect cut, patent-leather boots and a red-and-black spotted shirt, which displayed in its front a set of superb diamond studs. From under a Byron collar, parfaitement starched, peeped the ends of a pale lilac scarf. A magnificent seal-ring decorated the third finger of his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... was the indefinable, unmistakable picnic odor—the odor of crushed grasses and damp leaf-mould stirred by the passing of many feet, the mingling of cheap perfumes and starched muslin and iced lemonade and sandwiches; in his ears the jumble of laughter and of holiday speech, the squealing of children in a mob around the swing, the protesting squeak of the ropes as they swung high, the snorting of horses tied just outside the enchanted ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... have to do more disagreeable things than that yet. I am going away for a rest as soon as the woman comes and gets used to the house, and she will not be able to see after everything without some help. Those starched clothes that you put into the wash every week with so little thought of the extra work they make—she will not be able to do them, if she has to see about everything else. There is a whole basketful there now, waiting for ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth



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