"Tidiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... squalor of the home. I often think of William Morris, the great craftsman and charming poet, who had much at heart the happiness of all people, especially the poor, and his exclamation, "My eye, how I do love tidiness!" To him, to the artist, it was, as it is, beautiful. George Eliot had to put even the pins in her cushion into some neat arrangement before she could sit down to write. Disorder wastes not only ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... schoolgirl. It is only like marrying a slightly more complicated barrel-organ. And, for another point, watch the young person you would honour with your hand for the slightest inkling of economy or tidiness. Young men are so full of poetry and emotion that it does not occur to them how widely the sordid vices are distributed in the other sex. If you are a hotel proprietor, or a school proprietor, or a day labourer, such weaknesses become a strength, of course, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... exquisite collection of taps and dies and screw-tackle, which he had made with the utmost care for his own service. They rested in a succession of drawers near to the bench where he worked. There was a place for every one, and every one was in its place. There was a look of tidiness about the collection which was very characteristic of the man. Order was one of the rules which he rigidly observed, and he endeavoured to enforce it upon all who were in ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... Parades, reviews and other ceremonies, with their martial music, the presence of spectators, etc., are intended to stimulate the interest and excite the military spirit of the command. Also, being occasions for which the soldiers dress up and appear spruce and trim, they inculcate habits of tidiness,—they teach a lesson in cleanliness ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... gown of hideous pattern and many colors, and a white apron. Her sleeves were short, her elbows always grazed, her cap anywhere but in the right place; but she was scrupulously clean, and "maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness." She carried in her pocket "a handkerchief, a piece of wax-candle, an apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp-bone, a padlock, a pair of scissors, a handful of loose beads, several balls of worsted and cotton, a needle-case, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... burn was of an extremely serious nature, and she hastened to approach him with a view to examine it. Pao-yue, however, screened his face, and, waving his hand, bade her leave the room; for knowing her usual knack for tidiness he did not feel inclined to let her get a glimpse of his face. Tai-yue then gave up the attempt, and confined herself to asking him: "whether ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... acting, Frances had seen that she was excited about something and she certainly had not the air of one coming to meet a lover. The day in the country had not been conducive to tidiness. Judy's hair was blown, her collar and shirtwaist were rumpled, her shoes dusty and the tears in the train had left ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... illumined Mr. Gunning's folly, and his bulging portmanteau, packed as brutally as only a man in a passion can pack; when he reached the hall, it also with equal inappropriateness irradiated the short figure and seedy tidiness of the dealer who had been his confederate in the ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... and most natural instinct had, of course, been one of dislike and mistrust of anyone who appeared to be in some way on guard over her. But when she took in every detail of the quaint figure of the old man, his scrupulous tidiness of apparel, the resigned stoop of his shoulders, and met in full the gaze of those moist eyes, she felt that the whole aspect of the man, as he sat there polishing his shoes, was infinitely pathetic and, in ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of such family arrangements, even in the more favored villages of the plain, on manners and morality, need not be told. It is equally evident that in such circumstances personal tidiness is impossible, though few in our favored land have any idea of the extent of such untidiness. If the truth must be told, vermin abound in most of these houses; the inmates are covered not only with fleas, but from head to foot they are infested with the third plague of Egypt. (Ex. ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... Fatima and I drew up in fine Roman characters, and which were to be kept as good resolutions had never been kept before. We borrowed the red ink, to make them the more impressive to the eye, and, unfortunately, spilt it. A bad beginning, as many of our rules had reference to tidiness. Neither will I give you the full account of how we packed. How our preparations began at once, and were only stopped by the necessity of setting off when the day arrived. How we emptied all our drawers and cupboards, and disarranged both our bookshelves; and, in making ready for the ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... which to attempt the fortification of certain vellum-bound volumes which were considerably the worse for age and use. I well remember how troublesome the parchment was for a long time; but at last I conquered it, and succeeded very fairly in my endeavours to restore to tidiness ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... and otherwise sensible persons, Clara was a snob, but a charming little snob. She ordered him to forget that he belonged to the people. She refused to listen when he talked in the dialect. She made him dress with opulence, and even with tidiness; she made him buy a fashionable house and fill it with fine furniture; she made him buy a brougham in which her gentility could pay calls and do shopping (she shopped in Oldcastle, where a decrepit aristocracy of tradesmen ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... a single chamber, which, with door and window open as at present, became a draughtway for what air there was. A curtain veiled one corner, where the beds were stowed in daytime, with whatever else was unpresentable through dirt or breakage: for the ladies of the Mission valued tidiness above all virtues, and claimed the right to inspect the abode of their washerwoman and pet proselyte. The mother of Iskender courted their inspection, being secured against complete surprise by the position of her house upon an eminence whence approaching visitors could ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... pays you back for all the trouble you take, so much I will say for her,' observed the matron in conclusion. 'Not as it hasn't been a little 'ard to teach her tidiness, but she's only a young thing still. I shouldn't wonder but she's felt her position a little now an' then; it's only natural in a growin' girl, do what you can to prevent it. Still, she's willin'; that nobody can deny, an' I'm sure I should never ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... which he led me was small, but disfigured with no offensive tidiness. Not a spot of wall was to be seen for books, and yet there were not many books after all. We sat for some minutes enjoying the fragrance of the western incense, without other communion than that of the clouds we were blowing, and what I gathered from ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... The boy who begins to learn house painting soon expresses the wish to paint his own home; if carpentry, he wishes to build a shed; if joinery, he wishes to make a table; and how often one notices a home where tidiness and order are due to the educated child, and where taste in furnishing is accounted for by the daughter's cultivated aesthetic taste. Children then, so trained as the Sloyd system provides, may contribute enormously to the happiness and brightness of the ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... for—an auction?" growled the Cap'n, groutily, his seaman's sense of tidiness offended. "Who do you expect will bid in a ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... Corney soon began to show a practical interest in the place—first in the look of it—its order and tidiness, and then in its yield, beginning to develop a faculty for looking after property. Next he took to measuring the land. Here the major could give him no end of help; and having thus found a point of common interest, they began to be drawn a little together, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... her attention to household matters, of a decorative and mundificatory character, are not pleasing to the sense of men trained in middle-class proprieties; but the taste to which these effects of household adornment and tidiness appeal is a taste which has been formed under the selective guidance of a canon of propriety that demands just these evidences of wasted effort. The effects are pleasing to us chiefly because we have been ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... till the golden moment for action was passed, and a violent exclamation from one of the chess-players called me back to a prosaic world. In a second the board was overturned and the players were locked in battle. My little sister, who had already the feminine craving for tidiness, crept out of her corner and meekly gathered the chessmen from under the feet of the combatants. I had seen it all before, and while I led my forces to the aid of the brother with whom at the moment I had some sort of alliance, ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... in the kitchen, and made coffee to a nicety. She had a knack of tidiness, with which she had infected the Doctor; everything was in its place; everything capable of polish shone gloriously; and dust was a thing banished from her empire. Aline, their single servant, had no other business in the world but to scour and burnish. So Doctor Desprez lived in ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... made on the necessity for tidiness and the quick disposal of all decaying refuse apply as forcibly to this month as to October. The leaves are falling, the atmosphere is moist, and there should be the utmost care taken not to make things worse by scatterings of vegetable ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... disgraceful never occurred to her. The zeal of the amateur detective was far too strong upon her to leave room for reflections of that sort. She opened the door of Margaret's bedroom and went in. The room was exquisitely neat, for not only had habits of tidiness been inculcated in Margaret since she was old enough to fold a garment, but the spacious bedroom allotted to her at The Cedars, with its big mahogany hanging wardrobes and its deep chest of drawers, contained so much more room than she needed that there ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... construction. Round the house was a garden newly laid out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps and a water cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were straight, the bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore an impress of tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre met, in reply to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a small newly built lodge close to the pond. Anton, a man who had looked after Prince Andrew in his boyhood, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... little old face and turned up his button of a nose, and gave a long whistle. You might not believe it, seeing he lived in a coal-cellar; but really he liked tidiness, and always played his pranks upon disorderly or ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... telling us beforehand!" I cry, earnestly. "I mean really: if you hold a vague threat of paying us a visit over our heads, you will keep us in a state of unnatural tidiness for days." ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Comets would have their hair brushed every morning. The Whirlwind would be adjured not to walk about when it was talking. The Oceans would be warmed with hot-water pipes. Not even the lowest forms of life would escape the crusade of tidiness: you would walk round and round the jellyfish, looking for a place to put ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... door and the young gentleman strolled to the counter. He cast an amused glance about the store; its display of stock was, thanks to Mary-'Gusta's recent efforts at tidiness, not quite the conglomerate mass it had been when the partners were solely responsible, but the ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his injured feet stretched out in front of him. A monkey in the giant tree above us shook down a little shower of twigs and dirt. A trumpet blared. There began much business of closing tents and reducing the camp to superhuman tidiness. ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... spires, its wooden galleries, its ancient well, with an elaborate superstructure of wrought iron, is one of those places into which a sketcher ought to be let loose. It looked Flemish or English rather than French, and a splendid tidiness pervaded it. The porter ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... the solitude he had sought out for himself. He disliked the litter of human dwellings: the broken food, the bits of broken china, the old wash-boilers and tea-kettles thrown into the sunflower patch. He preferred the cleanness and tidiness of the wild sod. He always said that the badgers had cleaner houses than people, and that when he took a housekeeper her name would be Mrs. Badger. He best expressed his preference for his wild homestead by saying that his Bible seemed truer to him ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... Quebec, he accompanied Boulanger and his wife to their cottage, which stood at some little distance from the road. Great was Bibi's anxiety to do honour to their noble guest, and not less great her delight at the commendations he bestowed, not only on the order and tidiness of her little menage, but also on her three chubby little children, who, notwithstanding divers and sundry private injunctions to the contrary, would occasionally come to the front and gaze open-mouthed and awestruck at so uncommon a visitor. At length Isidore rose ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... the fact that Mona Crozier was the most, spotless thing she had ever seen, at the end of a journey—and this, a journey across a continent. Orderliness and prim exactness, taste and fastidiousness, tireless tidiness were seen in every turn, in every fold of her dress, in the way everything she wore had been put on, in the decision of every step and gesture. Kitty noticed all this, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dear young lady," he said, "I was tidying the tree. You don't want last year's hats there, do you, any more than last year's leaves? The wind takes off the leaves, but it couldn't manage the hat; that wind, I suppose, has tidied whole forests to-day. Rum idea this is, that tidiness is a timid, quiet sort of thing; why, tidiness is a toil for giants. You can't tidy anything without untidying yourself; just look at my trousers. Don't you know that? Haven't you ever had ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... was necessary to keep up a semblance of routine. In some way the acres got plowed and reaped, in some way the meats were cured, in some way the animals were fed and the table was served and the rooms kept in a semi-tidiness, none too scrupulous. Always in Tallwoods there was something at hand ready to eat, and there was fuel whereby fires might be made. Such as it was, the hospitality of the place was ready. It was a rich, loose way of life, and went on lazily and ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... slept was a large one, perfectly dreary with tidiness. I did not know till afterwards that it was Laetitia's room, which she had given up to me rather than prepare another. The furniture, all but one article, was modern and commonplace. I could not help remarking ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... Watteau and the dynamite speeches of Danton. But we shall understand them all better if we once catch sight of the idea of tidying up which ran through the whole period, the quietest people being prouder of their tidiness, civilisation, and sound taste than of any of their virtues; and the wildest people having (and this is the most important point) no love of wildness for its own sake, like Nietzsche or the anarchic poets, but ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... shingle-step at a time; and by its thin toy-like boats, each with its head to sea, at regular intervals, looking like things that one would give a clever boy to play with in a pond, when first he got past petticoats; and the row of lath cots behind, all tidiness and telegraph, looking as if the whole business of the human race on earth was to know what o'clock it was, and when it would be high water,—only some slight weakness in favor of grog being indicated here and there by a hospitable-looking ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... inspections to undergo at periodical times. The inspections keep the boys in khaki on the alert; cleanliness becoming second nature. Nowhere can a vast body of men live bachelor-like as soldiers do and maintain the degree of tidiness and general sanitary healthfulness, as the thorough arm of camp inspection and discipline maintains ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... boiling while the rest slept, on many and many a dismal night, that they might have cooked rations for the morrow's journey; and Wales, the intelligent counsellor; and Stevens, spirited, attentive, generous, and a model of personal tidiness; and Hubbell, who hid beneath a mask of indifference a warm and generous heart; and Lockwood, the upright, trusty and solid soldier; and Palmer and Johnson and Burr—members of the regiment only during the ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... that she longed to try it for herself; but with Uncle Moses helpless, and Monty—so mean!—He might have taken her. He might have stayed and talked over their secret scheme, which Deacon Meakin was unconsciously furthering by his ultra tidiness. He might, at least, have promised to bring her some chestnuts. But he had done none of these thoughtful things. He had been just plain—boy! Girls? Were there any she might visit uninvited? Aunt Eunice ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... which black painted chains hung in loops; the apparent intention was to create the illusion of a village-green. Tabs entered instantly into the spirit of the game—the littleness and childishness of the attempt at quaintness. He liked the bijou privacy of the Court, its greenness and tidiness, and the absurdity of the narrow windows which glinted at him like spectacles. But there was something that ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... pretty room, with one window looking out upon the garden. The casement was two-leaved, and one leaf only was part open. The air consequently was close and hot. And if the room was neat, that applies only to its natural and normal condition; for if neatness includes tidiness, it could not be said at present to deserve that praise. There was an indescribable litter everywhere, such as is certain to accumulate in a sick-room if the watchers are not imbued with the spirit of order. Here were one or two spare ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... severely chide the lightkeepers for the disagreement that seems to subsist among them.' 'The families of the two lightkeepers here agree very ill. I have effected a reconciliation for the present.' 'Things are in a very HUMDRUM state here. There is no painting, and in and out of doors no taste or tidiness displayed. Robert's wife GREETS and M'Gregor's scolds; and Robert is so down-hearted that he says he is unfit for duty. I told him that if he was to mind wives' quarrels, and to take them up, the only way was for him and M'Gregor ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and one of Captain Evernden's Dragoons to heaven." It was the scene of a narrow escape for Charles II in his flight to Brighton. The poor remnants of the Castle are now an excuse for picnickers who are not always reverent, in point of tidiness, towards what was once a palace of the ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... in a house with tables and chairs and went to church and washed her children with soap. In her plain black cotton dress, the skirt cut very full to allow her to ride astride, her new moccasins and her black straw hat she made a figure of matronly tidiness if not of beauty. She was cooking when they arrived. Her inward astonishment, at beholding Stonor returning with the white girl who had created such a sensation at the post, can be guessed; but, true to her traditions, she betrayed ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... afford to make an example of you. You mean a hundred and fifty pounds a year. I am of no more account in her eyes than an artist's lay figure, which is put away in a dark closet when it isn't in use. She wanted to give you girls a lesson in tidiness, so she put me into her pillory. Fortunately I'm ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... hermit crabs scuttled and rustled away before him as he advanced up the beach, but under the palms no pigs rooted and grunted. The cocoanuts lay where they had fallen, and at the copra-sheds there were no signs of curing. Industry and tidiness had vanished. Grass house after grass house he found deserted. Once he came upon an old man, blind, toothless, prodigiously wrinkled, who sat in the shade and babbled with fear when he spoke to him. It was as if the place ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... mess!" He looked down on the wet tablecloth and the two halves of the vase lying in the bedabbled leaves with an expression of distaste so far out of proportion to its occasion that Ellen remembered uneasily how several times that day she had noticed in him traces of a desperate, nervous tidiness like Marion's. "If you ring for one of the maids she'll soon clear it up," she said soothingly, and moved towards the bell. But he took his bleeding finger away from his lips and waved it at her, crying: "No! no! I don't want either of the servants ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... water as if the harbor had been a great mirror lying upon its back in the sun. This made it a most attractive place to look at. Then there were crisp little dimity curtains hanging in the windows of the coffee-room and giving great promise of tidiness and comfort within, and this made it a most delightful place to think about. And then there was a certain suggestion of savory cooking in the swirl of the smoke that came out of the tall, old-fashioned chimneys, and this made it a most difficult place to stay away from. ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... though it was rarely to be met with in the place usually occupied in other subjects, by that article of dress; but, from head to foot she was scrupulously clean, and maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed, her laudable anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own conscience as well as in the public eye, gave rise to one of her most startling evolutions, which was to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... was almost frightful to an unpunctual mind! This again was another phase of his extreme tidiness; it was also the outcome of his excessive thoughtfulness and consideration for others. His sympathy, also, with all pain and suffering made him quite invaluable in a sick room. Quick, active, sensible, bright and cheery, and sympathetic to a degree, he would seize the ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... day will date a love of tidy walks and grass;—and what more is needed to make a pretty churchyard? The fuchsias, geraniums, and so forth, are of the nature of luxuries, and they will follow in due time: but grass and gravel are the foundation of rustic neatness and tidiness. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... still, and I'll clean house; it needs it badly. Such mud as that boy brings in I never saw, and I'm so lame, too!' Jerry responded, and Arthur recognized Mrs. Crawford, whose tidiness and cleanliness were proverbial, and for the next half hour he watched the little actress as she limped around the room exactly as Mrs. Crawford limped with her rheumatism, sweeping, dusting, and scolding a little, ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... somewhat humbler frame of mind. When his father returned in the evening, therefore, Charlie appeared so crest-fallen that even Caddy could scarcely help commiserating him, especially as his subdued state during the day had kept him from committing any of those offences against tidiness which so frequently exasperated her. Mr. Ellis, though very strict on what he thought points of duty, had much command of temper, and was an affectionate father. He listened, therefore, with attention ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... cautiously into the bedroom. It, too, was empty. The bed was made, and the flat generally had a superficial air of tidiness. Evidently the charwoman had been and departed; and doubtless Diaz had gone out, to return immediately. I sat down in the chair in which I had spent most of the night. I took off my hat and put it by the side of a tiny satchel ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... its lower slopes reverberate to the assault of the rollers while the summit is folded in the silence of the upper air. Close in-shore half a dozen cruisers were lying like rocks among the deep moving waters; the St. George's ensign floated from the shore flagstaffs, and an air of whiteness and tidiness proclaimed the ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... other, but the owners and the public generally took the keenest interest in these little touches of vanity and handiwork. Many a worthy fellow got a good berth because he and his belongings had the stamp of ingenuity and tidiness about them, and certainly many of them knew that this was a sure means of winning the affections of young girls whom they wished to make ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... He drank the poisonous liquors of those pot-houses which swarm about the docks; he drifted about in whatever company came in his way; he let heedlessness develop into a curious disregard of personal tidiness. In Paris, Les Halles took the place of the docks. At Dieppe, where I saw so much, of him one summer, he discovered strange, squalid haunts about the harbour, where he made friends with amazing innkeepers, and got into rows with the fishermen who came in to drink after midnight. ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... to the hearth and scattered around without any regard for tidiness may be seen the rice winnow, the bamboo water tube, the coconut-shell watercup, the rice paddles and ladles, leaves of banana and other plants, and the whetstone, while on the fireplace are seen a variety of earthen pots ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... said to him was never known, but he was always shy afterwards of mentioning her name, and when he did he was wont to declare that she was "a rum un." She was not particular, I have heard, about personal tidiness, and this I can well believe, for she was certainly not distinguished when I knew her for this virtue. She cared nothing for the linen-closet, the spotless bed-hangings, and the bright poker, which ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... a musty old place, without even as much tidiness as is usually found in barns, and there was a dank smell about it, as though generations of haymows had decayed there. There were holes in the floor, and in the dusk of early evening it was necessary for us to pick our way with the ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... upon it she marvelled at a hundred differences between it and her native Midlands. It was wilder—infinitely wilder—than Warwickshire, and at the same time less unkempt; far more savage in outline, yet in detail sober almost to tidiness. It seemed to acknowledge the hand of some great unknown gardener; and this gardener was, of course, the sea-breeze now filling her lungs and bracing her strength. The shaven, landward-bending thorns and hollies, ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... drawing me over to the window, through which—so thickly grimed it was—a very little light dribbled from the courtyard into the room. Yet the room itself was clean, almost spick and span, with a seaman-like tidiness in all its arrangements—a small room, crowded with foreign odds-and-ends, among which I remember a walking-stick even more singular than the one Captain Coffin carried on his walks abroad (it was white in colour, with ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Santa Maria has the name of being the neatest and tidiest city in Spain, and neatness and tidiness are such dear homely virtues, I thought I could not do better than hie me thither to see if the tale were true. With a wrench I tore myself from the soft capital of Andalusia, delightful but demoralizing. I was growing lazier every day I spent there; I felt energy oozing out of every pore of my ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... calico, with its plaited waist and cross-banded, machine-stitched double skirt, sitting by her shady window, beyond which, behind the garden angle, rose up the red brick wall of the bakehouse, whence came a warm, sweet smell of many new-drawn loaves,—looking around within, at the snug tidiness of the simple room, and even out at the street close by, with its stir and curious interest, yet seen from just as real a shelter as she had in her own chamber at home,—that it might really be nice to be a baker's daughter and live in the village,—"when ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... who were turned out three times a day in the ultimate state of good behaviour, tidiness, and cleanliness, and who lapsed three times a day into a state of original sin combined with tar and ship's grease. These three little boys pervaded the vessel with an innocent smile on their three little faces, their mother's winning smile. ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... he had gone away entirely, leaving a terrible quiet behind him. He had been the center of the little house, a big and cheery and not over-orderly center. Followed his going not only quiet, but a wretched tidiness. There was nothing for Sara Lee to do ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... better than the houses in Durham Yard. There is, in short, both at Versailles and Paris, a prodigious mixture of magnificence and negligence with every kind of elegance except that of cleanliness, and what we call tidiness." ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... unnaturally, considering how long it is since we had seen or heard of them, the Party of Order. It was they who were rallying valiantly at the Bourse round the new tricolour banner and a few gentlemen who wore tricolour brassards or pretty bunches of tricolour riband, and whose general tidiness and freshness contrasted strikingly with the grimy, business-like look of the real soldiers close by. These were streaming into the Place des Victoires, close by, receiving cheers and congratulations from the people about in the square or at the windows, who seemed delighted ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... he let himself be. His exterior oddities never seem to have toned down much; he could not be taught to introduce tidiness or method into his office; nor did he make himself an exact lawyer; a rough and ready familiarity with practice and a firm grasp of larger principles of law contented him without any great apparatus of learning. His method of study was as odd as anything else about him; he could ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... done. Neglect is transitive, negligence is intransitive; we speak of neglect of his books, friends, or duties, in which cases we could not use negligence; negligence in dress implies want of care as to its arrangement, tidiness, etc.; neglect of one's garments would imply leaving them exposed to defacement or injury, as by dust, moths, etc. Neglect has a passive sense which negligence has not; the child was suffering from neglect, i. e., from being neglected by others; the child was suffering ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... with enterprise? Will it make them dig, chop, fish, hammer? Will it make the factory hands regular day by day? Will it cause the women to wash themselves and cleanse their houses? Will it change their ingrained sluttishness to tidiness and neatness and decency? Father Mahony, of Cork, said that the Irish fisherman turned his back on the teeming treasures of the deep, because he groaned beneath the cruel English yoke. Since then I have seen him fishing, but I did not hear him ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... loved, to be for ever estimating his exact wealth, cataloguing his books, or scheduling his possessions. It is conceivable that this systematic recording of his deeds—even of his misdeeds—was in some sort analogous, sprung from a morbid tidiness of mind. It may be a weak explanation, but it is difficult ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Her an't learned tidiness," said Mam Widger. "Lookse! Her scarf on one chair, gloves flinged on another, coat slatted on the ground an' her hat on the dresser—now, since her's come in! Pick 'em up to once, else thee't hae my ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... here, sir," Sam assured his master as a further inducement; "everything clean and comfortable. Very good little dinner, sir, they can get ready in half an hour-pair of fowls, sir, and a weal cutlet; French beans, 'taters, tart and tidiness. You'd better stop vere you are, sir, if I might recommend." At this very moment the host appeared, and, having confirmed Sam's statement, Mr. Pickwick decided to take the "advice" of his trusted servant, which caused the landlord to smile ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... crossed; but it is far from being a fine town in the interior. The streets are, like all French streets, narrow, and the houses have a look of antiquity, and a want of all repair; nothing like comfort, neatness, or tidiness, in any one of them. This is a melancholy desideratum in France, a want for which nothing can compensate. The road this day conducted us through a finer district than we have observed on this side of Paris; ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... her account I shall be faithful to the end." And for a time she busied herself in that careful dusting of the ornaments of the chamber, which seemed mechanical, so habitual was it to her sense of order and tidiness. ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... litter as it is," he cried, mischievously. "Your tidiness won't bear much strain, after all, Watson. But I should be glad that you should add this case to your annals, for there are points in it which make it quite unique in the criminal records of this or, I believe, of any other country. A collection of my trifling achievements would certainly be incomplete ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... firm-featured, kindly countenance out of the window as if he greeted it. The country under the June sunshine was neat and bright as an old-world garden, with little fields of corn surrounded by dog-rose hedges, and woods and small rushy pastures of an infinite tidiness. He had seen a real deer park, it had rather tumbledown iron gates between its shield-surmounted pillars, and in the distance, beyond all question, was Bracebridge Hall nestling among great trees. He had seen thatched and timbered cottages, and half-a-dozen inns with creaking signs. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... we were referred to a gardener who was in charge. To speak with him, we walked round to the other side of the house, to an open space of grass, where the fowls picked merrily, and the old farm-lumber, broken coops, disused ploughs, lay comfortably about. "How I love tidiness!" wrote Morris once. Yet I did not feel that he would have done other than love all this natural and simple litter of ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fences; and in school his troubles were only increased, for his books always contained pictures, sometimes of horses, or dogs, or of his friends. This habit did not correspond with his teachers' ideas of tidiness, and punishment followed punishment. It did not help matters, though, and his drawing continued. In time he became quite apt and could make pictures that very closely resembled the objects he drew. His companions called ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... which had been sent on from London. They made me feel that I had taken leave of my division for good and all this time. Blenkiron had a private room, where we were to dine; and a more wonderful litter of books and cigar boxes I have never seen, for he hadn't a notion of tidiness. I could hear him grunting at his toilet in the adjacent bedroom, and I noticed that the table was laid for three. I went downstairs to get a paper, and on the way ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... crashed away through the evergreens, whose bared lower branches bore witness to their depredations. They were a sight hateful to Christian, who, in spite of her resignation to the methods of her groom, cherished a regard for tidiness that she had often found was more trouble ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... in part compensated by excellent beds, good food, good wine, and very moderate charges. The oddest part of these experiences is that the dirtier the inn the better the fare. Wherever we found a little smartness and tidiness, there we were sure to find also a decided falling-off in ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... people came in, Min would always, on the evening of my visit, make a rule of turning out her workbox, and arranging its contents over again—"in order," as she told me, although I had thought it the picture of neatness and tidiness in ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... that it was the absolute necessity of tidiness in the cramped space of the "Beagle" that helped 'to give him his methodical habits of working.' On the "Beagle", too, he would say, that he learned what he considered the golden rule for saving time; i.e., ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... cottage. It had certainly no great resemblance to a palace; but under these worn rafters—within these simple walls—by the side of that rustic chimney—poverty itself would be delightful, in its tidiness and simplicity, if shared with one you loved. Daphne was a little disconcerted at first by the rough uneven floor, and by the smell of the evening meal—the toasted cheese, and the little oven where the loaf ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... gipsy-looking, bonneted and gowned like her prototype, and almost as oracular. Here the resemblance ceases. Mrs. Adams is a perfectly honest, industrious, painstaking person, who earns a good deal of money by washing and charing, and spends it in other luxuries than tidiness,—in green tea, and gin, and snuff. Her husband lives in a great family, ten miles off. He is a capital gardener—or rather he would be so, if he were not too ambitious. He undertakes all things, and finishes none. But a smooth tongue, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... gunners to be neat and to have an eye for the comeliness of things. These men had a lawn and a garden, tables and chairs. If you are familiar with the tidiness of a retired New England sailor, who regards his porch as a quarter-deck and sallies forth to remove each descending autumn leaf from the grass, then you know how scrupulous they were ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... looked out on him from the mist of battle. This pretentious and windy institution even attempted the absurdity of a yearly prizegiving, when, instead of the Provost sitting in state and glaring before him with a Horace in his hands upside down, McIntyre's minister would hold forth on diligence and tidiness and courtesy and such like contemptible virtues. Had a Seminary boy been offered the painful choice, he would almost as soon have gone to the Pennies as to McIntyre, for in that case he had not been an ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... has innumerable opportunities to express the Christ in her—her spirituality—in the neatness of her apparel, and in the tidiness of her home and yard. She may take her religion—her Christ—into the kitchen and express Him and the 100 per cent spirituality in her cooking, sweeping, ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... for tidiness often forced me, against my nature, to a counteracting negligence. I intentionally disarranged the bookshelves in the library; but he would follow me five minutes afterwards and put everything in ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... could not afford to have a coat of new paint on her house, she had a bitter ambition, from motives of tidiness and pride, to at least remove all traces of the old. She felt that the chief sting of present deprivation lay in the evidence of its contrast with former plenty. She hated the image in her memory of her cottage glistening ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... warned him that he could not hope to be dressed and in Belgrave Square by a quarter past eight. The new Byron would achieve an effect, if he gained the reputation of always being ten minutes late for everything; but the pose offended Eric's sense of tidiness. Signing his letters, he ripped open half-a-dozen envelopes and glanced at the contents, pushed the news-cutting album neatly into its shelf and hurried into his bedroom with a glass ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... little drawing-room. Once more he passed his long fingers through his Struwel Peter hair and looked about the room for inspiration. Finding none, he mechanically gathered up the two parts of the newspaper, with a man's instinct for tidiness in printed matter, and smoothed out the crumples that Emmy's hand had made on the outer sheet. Whilst doing so, a paragraph met his eye, causing him to ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... skeletons of men have crumbled and become reabsorbed. I have seen them die like martyrs, when the inquisitor, with his bloody lash, stood over them in the closing pangs, and their last tremulous howl has almost moved to tears. Some of the dwellings seemed to be occupied, but the tidiness of old times was gone. The women seemed sunburnt and hardened by toil. They looked from their thresholds upon the flying train, with their hair unbraided and their garters ungyved,—not a negro left ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... not in the bare, half-lighted little room they entered. The tidiness and cleanliness of it, however, bore witness to her recent occupancy. On the neat bed ...
— Gloria and Treeless Street • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... had been left unchanged through the supervision of Mycroft Holmes and the immediate care of Mrs. Hudson. As I entered I saw, it is true, an unwonted tidiness, but the old landmarks were all in their place. There were the chemical corner and the acid-stained, deal-topped table. There upon a shelf was the row of formidable scrap-books and books of reference which many of our fellow-citizens ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Aunt Izzie, but Katy had run her fingers impatiently through it, till it stood out above her head like a frowsy bush. She wore a calico dressing-gown, which, though clean, was particularly ugly in pattern; and the room, for all its tidiness, had a dismal look, with the chairs set up against the wall, and a row of ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... responsible for keeping it in a perpetual state of litter, no matter how often it may be set right—his trousers here, his towels there, and his French novels everywhere. I say, who is responsible for untidying the tidiness of Mr. Franklin's ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... better?" she exulted. "We've won the record for tidiness three weeks running, so we're entitled to a special indulgence. I vote we ask to bring tea up here, and have a Valentine party. Don't you think it would be rather scrumptious? I've all sorts ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... and large stemmed poplars, at least a mile long. The effect, although formal, is pleasing. They were the loftiest poplars which I had ever beheld. The churches, public buildings, gardens, and streets (of which latter the principal is a mile long) have all an air of tidiness and comfort; although the very sight of them is sufficient to freeze the blood of an antiquary. There is nothing, apparently, more than ninety-nine years old! We dined at Karlsruhe, and slept at Schweiberdingen, one stage on this side of Stuttgart: but for two or three ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin |
