"Untidy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... English and German, because I'm going to learn German that way among other ways while I'm here, and I think it's a very good way, and it immensely impressed Frau Bornsted to see me take two Bibles out for a walk,—when I got back about five, untidy and hot and able to say off a whole psalm in perfect Lutheran German, I found several high yellow carriages, like the one I was fetched in on Saturday, in front of the paling, with nosebags and rugs on the horses, and indoors in ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... a rapidity that gave the impression that they had been watched, but it was by a very untidy-looking small maid, and the parlour into which they were turned had most manifestly been lately used as the family dining-room, and was redolent of a mixture of onion, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Randall had proffered and remained standing, his hands deep in his trousers' pockets, a look new to his friend—one restless, akin to reckless—on his usually good-humored face. Contrary again to precedent his dress was noticeably untidy, an impression accentuated by a two-days' growth of beard and by neglected linen. That something far from normal was about to transpire Randall knew at a glance, but courteously seemed not to notice. Instead, with a familiar wave, he indicated the cigar-jar he kept on purpose ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... I shall comfort myself with the thought that it's a pleasure to you...Grisha, don't pull my hair. It's untidy enough without that," she said, putting up a straying lock, which Grisha had ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... and they stood waiting in the twilight of a half-closed vestibule until presently shuffling steps were heard within; the door was cautiously opened, not more than a foot, but enough to reveal a woman in a loose wrapper, with an untidy mass of bleached hair and a puffy face like a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... colorless woman, of about thirty, wearing the ordinary dress of her class. She is dirty and untidy. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... sanitary is what is known in the British Army as "spit and polish." Directly we pull out for a rest, we start to work burnishing and washing. The chaps may have shown the most brilliant courage and self-sacrificing endurance, it counts for nothing if they're untidy. The first morning, no matter what are the weather conditions, we hold an inspection; every man has to show up with his chin shaved, hair cut, leather polished and buttons shining. If he doesn't he ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... and lively, though ageing fast. The face was thin, rather wrinkled, dark and weather-beaten, with light untidy wisps of hair round the mouth. I was immediately struck by a curious twitching in his features, perhaps a relic of former bouts of drinking. Otherwise his expression was harsh and melancholy. His hands were red, swollen and calloused as if by years ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... both sides. They entered the room in rapid but irregular succession, as if they were jerked forward by a hurried and inefficient machine. About half of them were women, with broken straw hats, pallid faces, and untidy hair. All were dazed and bewildered, having been snatched away in carriages or motors from the making of match-boxes, or button-holes, or cheap furniture, or from the public house, or, since it was Saturday ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... prefer charges against him, she does not have to find him lazy, careless, incompetent, untidy, ill-mannered, unholy, dishonest, she does not have to discover a fault of any kind in him, she does not have to tell him nor his congregation why she dismisses and disgraces him and insults his meek flock, she does not have to explain to his family why she takes the bread out of their mouths and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... pretty, thrifty little woman, with a mass of rather untidy fair hair. She was still in the tea-gown which, apparently, she had been wearing all the day, whilst her foot-gear consisted of a pair of Japanese slippers; and yet the whole effect was charming, possibly because she was entirely unaffected and obviously happy. ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... Royal Highness is sitting in," said she sharply. "Such a heap of untidy books; and what's this rubbish?" knocking a little bundle that ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... which one of the shop sconces extended across the room, and lifted the violin to his neck. He was so large that all his gestures had a ponderous quality. His dress was disarranged by riding, and his blond skin was pricked through by the untidy growth of a three-days' beard, ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... notice it, I tell you. And the poor thing has been living on charity. Just imagine whether you are not quite as able to feed him as Gigi is!" So she persuaded me. But at first I did it to please her, for I told her our proverb, which says there can be nothing so untidy about a house as children and chickens. He was such a dirty little boy, with only one shoe and a battered hat, and he was always singing at the top of his voice, and throwing things into the well in ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... The untidy bookshelf reminded me of the logbook, and when Davies had retired with the crockery to the forecastle, I pulled the ledger down and turned over the leaves. It was a mass of short entries, with cryptic abbreviations, winds, tides, weather, and courses appearing to predominate. The voyage ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... and took her place at the table; she looked a little pale and untidy, and her eyes were red as if she had been secretly crying. More than one girl glanced at her and wondered what was the matter. When breakfast was over Kitty went up to Florence, slipped her hand through her arm, and pulled her ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... chair in the untidy office he had occupied for nearly thirty years, sat Asa Culkin, popularly known as "Judge" Culkin. Justice of the peace, sheriff, attorney-at-law, and three times Mayor of Laketon, he was still a controlling factor in local politics and government. And many a knotty legal problem ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... and peace-bringing, but so, also, are neatness and order. Orderliness helps to fit one for work. There is undoubtedly some connection between surroundings and one's mental state. In themselves disorder and confusion are irritating. The sight of a dirty child crying in the doorway of an untidy house suggests some connection between the wretchedness of the child and the 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, ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... drawing-room, where Charmion and I were lolling over our tea. There was fruit on the table, besides a selection of cakes from town, and as we had been gardening in the earlier part of the afternoon, and got thoroughly grubby and untidy, we had changed into the tea-gowns which we wear in the evening when we are too lazy to put on more elaborate clothes. They are very nice tea-gowns, and, though I say so who shouldn't, we look exceedingly nice in them, but to the eye of a hard-working country clergyman ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... not think I ever saw you untidy, Lizzie,' said Anne, 'except after a day's nutting in the ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... arrival, Sophy sees, at the other end of the shop, a young man in his shirt sleeves, with his hair all untidy, so hard at work that he does not see her; she makes a sign to her mother. Emile, a chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other, is just finishing a mortise; then he saws a piece of wood and places it in the vice in order to polish it. The sight of this ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... should I keep them for? I should be overrun with pigeons but for putting them in pies; they make the garden very untidy as it is. I have given up keeping ducks, but I have a tame gull for the slugs. Who is this at the gate? Oh! Miss Wort with her inexhaustible physic-bottle. Everybody seems to have heard that you ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... reader—there are but two—there is a little cottage on your left, and beyond, under a group of trees, mostly fir, which almost hide it from view, a home of a rather superior character, in a very dilapidated condition, with everything around it more or less untidy—that was where George Borrow lived and worked in his way for many a long day. The step-daughter and her husband reside there now—very ancient people, who are to be seen driving about Lowestoft in a little wicker car, drawn by an amiable and active donkey, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... my mother. "The place is a little untidy because I haven't finished the spring cleaning yet. But there's a nice fire burning ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... from whom he hoped to raise these new regiments of his Guard. It was a small packet of papers which I drew out, tied up with silk, and addressed to the Prince of Saxe-Felstein. In the corner, in a sprawling, untidy hand, which I knew to be the Emperor's own, was written: 'Pressing and most important.' It was an order to me, those four words—an order as clear as if it had come straight from the firm lips with the cold grey eyes looking into mine. My troopers might wait for their horses, ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cried that youth, "have you come to initiate us into the Sacred Order of Hullabalooloo? Dump those books off the chair and be seated. March is such a beastly untidy chap," he sighed; "he will leave his books around that way ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... housekeeping knowledge. She told Peter that he ought to keep his champagne on ice. "That champagne will spoil if it isn't kept on ice." She complained because some bottles of Burgundy had dust on them. "That's not merely untidy," she said, "but it's bad for the wine. It ought to be stood on end, so that the sediment can settle." She criticised the fact that a brace of canvas-backs were on ice. "All your game should be hung," she said. She put ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... himself standing in front of the untidy writing desk, littered like a recent battlefield. The photograph of the American girl drew his eyes. What had happened? Was there not perhaps some word for her? He turned about as if to enquire of the dying man and found Sir Richmond's eyes open and regarding him. In them he saw an expression he ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... me and so did all that my eyes lighted upon, strange though it was. The bare room, not clean; the board partition, with swinging doors, behind which, Preston said, were the cook and the baker! the untidy waiting girls that came and went, with scant gowns and coarse shoes, and no thread of white collar to relieve the dusky throat and head rising out of the dark gown, and no apron at all. Preston did what he could. He sent away the girls ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... which is my favourite annimal— The pig is a quadruped—Sometimes he is male in which case he is called a hog. Sometimes he is female in which case he is called a sow. Pigs were rings in their noses and are fond of apple-peal. Their young are called litter and are very untidy in their habbits. Pig's cheek is nice to eat and pork in season is a treat." (The writer was very proud of ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... bedroom is untidy. And then, too, he uses too many shirt-collars, and he doesn't know how to blow his nose. He stuffs handkerchiefs into his pockets, and you find them again ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... he drew the ramrod from his musket; then, rushing up to Terence, who was the nearest to him, administered to him a shower of blows that changed the color of his shirt from an untidy white to the darker ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... glance did Pollyanna give about her; then, with a confused vision in her eyes of crimson draperies, book-lined walls, a littered floor, an untidy desk, innumerable closed doors (any one of which might conceal a skeleton), and everywhere dust, dust, dust, she fled back through the hall to the great carved door, still half open ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... Mrs. Pill herself, with her arms bare and a large coarse apron protecting her dress. She was dusty and untidy and cross. Nor did her temper grow better when she saw the detective, whom she recognized as having been present ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... since his first day at school, and Miss Bailey was full of uneasiness. Nathan Spiderwitz, Morris's friend and ally, was also missing, but at half-past nine he arrived entirely breathless and shockingly untidy. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... you that I am, mein lieber," said Helfen, composedly. "If any one had the enterprise to offer a prize to the most extravagant, untidy fellow in Europe, the palm would be yours—by ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... came up from the lower kitchen at the summons. She was young, rather pretty, and with a pleasant countenance, but unwashed, uncombed, untidy, no wonder Margery's nicety had shrunk from introducing her into her spotless upper kitchen. The unfailing Irish cloak was drawn about her, the hood brought over her head, and on the head and shoulders the snow lay ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 1916 will probably be a record breaker. This brings up the question of how to market this crop to the best advantage. Let me state at once that the greatest obstacle to free and easy selling of honey is the careless, untidy, sometimes unsanitary way some bee-keepers put up their honey for the market—spoiling the appetite of the public for this most delicious of nature's foods not only for themselves but also for progressive and up-to-date bee-keepers. The ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... more about Potts. It will have been inferred that he was objectionable. For the fact, he was objectionable in every way: as a human being, a man, a citizen, a member of the Slocum County bar, and a veteran of our late civil conflict. He was shiftless, untidy, a borrower, a pompous braggart, a trouble-maker, forever driving some poor devil into senseless litigation. Moreover, he was blithely unscrupulous in his dealings with the Court, his clients, his brother-attorneys, and his fellow-men at large. When I add that ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... standard of neatness, cleanness, and correctness which an examiner might expect the school to reach. At any rate, the experiment is much too risky to be tried. In the lower classes the results produced would certainly be rough, imperfect, untidy. Therefore self-expression must not be permitted in that part of the school. And if not there, it must not be permitted anywhere, for the longer it is delayed the greater will be the difficulty of starting ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... who have seen the pleasing contrast afforded by Syrian females when adorned after the Apostolic recommendation by good works and a "meek and quiet spirit," with those who cover empty heads with pearls and enrobe untidy persons in costly array,—who have rejoiced to see one and another family altar set up, where both heads of the family and the hearts of both unite in acknowledging God,—this branch of our labors need offer no further arguments ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... them. A mean little room it was on the north side of the house. Piles of clothes to be mended, laundry to be put away, a mop and a carpet sweeper greeted me as I went in. The floor was untidy with scraps of cloth pushed into a corner behind the sewing machine. The mantel was decorated with spools of thread, cards of hooks and eyes, and a pin-cushion with threaded needles stuck in it. The bed was uncomfortable. I crawled into it, and lay very still. My heart was filled ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... with the devil's help accomplished his fatal destiny by hanging himself to one of the trees of the wood, and as his wicked soul came out of his mouth the devil greedily snatched it away and carried it down to be eternally tormented in hell. It was like an untidy black hen. ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... of the house, and singularly ill-adapted for eavesdroppers. The windows looked upon a wide stretch of lawn upon which even a bird could scarcely have lingered unnoticed. The light that filtered in through green sun-blinds was cool and restful. An untidy writing-table and a sofa strewn with cushions in disorderly attitudes testified to the fact that Nick had appropriated this room for his own particular den. There was also a sun-bonnet tossed upon a chair which seemed to indicate ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... taste for keeping his churchyard in becoming order is just like a taste for keeping his garden and shrubbery in order: only let him begin the work, and the taste will grow. There is latent in the mind of every man, unless he be the most untidy and unobservant of the species, a love for well-mown grass and for sharply outlined gravel-walks. My brethren, credite experto. I did not know that in my soul there was a chord that vibrated responsive to trim gravel and grass, till I tried, and lo! ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... down to the edge of the sea in untidy fashion, its cob-walled cottages in some places huddling together as though for company, in others standing far apart, with spaces of waste land between them where you might often see the women sitting mending the fishing nets and ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... hungry—I don't know whether I am or not, I don't know what I can do well," etc. This is quite characteristic. When asked whether she was worried, she said: "I don't know, am I worried?—yes, a little sometimes, I am to-day—I am so untidy—don't know what is the matter with me." Again: "Sometimes I lose my speech—I can't say what I feel, I don't know what it was." Later, half to herself: "I don't know what is the matter with me—I ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... a neighbouring county called Lewis Rand from home, and kept him an April week in the court room or in a small town's untidy tavern. It was his habit, known and deferred to, never to accept at such times the hospitality sure to be pressed upon him. The prominent men of his party urged him home with them, but accepted his refusal with a nod of understanding, and rode on strong in the conviction that a man so absorbed, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... No sound came from him and he hung limp and still in the little man's hold. Just in the centre of the strip of light the little man relaxed his grip, and let him fall. He dropped to the floor in a limp, untidy looking heap, and lay still there, with the light full on his face, closed eyes and grinning mouth. The man was Colonel Everard, the man who stood over him was ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... on his errand, and I found myself alone in the room, I am fain to confess that I fell very low in my spirits. M. d'Agen's travelling equipment lay about the apartment, but failed to give any but an untidy air to its roomy bareness. The light was beginning to wane, the sun was gone. Outside, the ringing of bells and the distant muttering of guns, with the tumult of sounds which rose from the crowded street, seemed to tell of joyous life and freedom, and all the hopes ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... proceeding. "Showing nails," as I afterwards found out, was a very old- established rule at Stonebridge House, and one under which every generation of "backward and troublesome boys" who resided there had groaned. If any boy's hands or nails were, in the opinion of Miss Henniker, unclean or untidy, he received a bad mark, and was at once dismissed to the dormitory ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... weeds. I don't think lime does much, nor soot. Wet soon slakes them. Thick slices of turnip are attractive. Slugs really do seem to like them, even better than one's favorite seedlings. Little heaps of bran also, and young lettuces. My slugs do not care for cabbage leaves, and they are very untidy. Put thick slices of turnip near your auriculas, favorite primroses and polyanthuses, and Christmas roses, and near anything tender and not well established, and overhaul them early in the morning. "You ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty dressing-gown of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair and a bristling mustache, keen blue eyes, and a brown skin; who wears a short beard or rarely shaves—I don't know which. I left him striding about among the thousand and one curiosities of that incredible room, picking his way through his ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... mill-and town-site, and he founded a settlement on the eastern edge of Port Agnew, but quite distinct from it, and called it Darrow, after himself. It was not a community that Hector McKaye approved of, for it was squalid and unsanitary, and its untidy, unpainted shacks of rough lumber harbored southern European labor, of which Hector McKaye would have none. In Darrow, also, there were three groggeries and a gambling-house, with the usual concomitant of ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... nature is by no means insensible to the charms of a holiday—reads and writes in his quiet room, with a concentrated air, until it is two hours past noon. He then sets himself to clearing his table, to arranging his books, and to tearing up and burning his stray papers. He makes a clean sweep of all untidy accumulations, puts all his drawers in order, and leaves no note or scrap of paper undestroyed, save such memoranda as bear directly on his studies. This done, he turns to his wardrobe, selects a few articles of ordinary wear—among ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... of Dexter's favourite hunting-grounds. Here he could be quite alone, and do pretty well as he liked. Peter the groom never noticed his goings-out and comings-in, and there was no one to find fault with him for being untidy. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... mountains guard Riouperoux, - Small untidy village where the river drives a mill: Frail as wood anemones, white and frail were you, And drooping a little, like ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... walked into the spacious, low-ceilinged, bright place, presences long past seemed to fill it intolerably. Brock and Hugh, little chaps, roared in untidy and tumultuous from football, or came, decorous and groomed, handsome, smart little lads, to be presented to guests. Her own Hugh, her husband, proud of the beautiful new house, smiled from the hearth ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... sounds the most fearful snobbery to even mention class distinctions in these wilds, where the only aristocracy that counts is nobility of endeavour. But I could not reckon myself that woman's superior, Father, because under the same circumstances I might have been even more untidy and down-at-heel ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... morning, it must be confessed, things looked differently to her from what they had on the previous night. It was such a luxury to have a whole room to herself; to throw her things about "only a little," but that little enough to make it look untidy. She did not exactly wish she had waited until she knew more of Marion, and she tried to excuse her reluctance to herself by the doubt whether she ought not to have consulted her cousins, as their parlor was a room common to them all; but it was too late now, and when she received ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... essayed, under the auspices of good Queen Charlotte, to render the round hat, with the straight-projecting brim, less ugly; but their invention carried them no further than to surround it, at one time, with a deep ruff of ribands, or they crushed it into an untidy rumble-tumble shape; at another, they let copious streamers float from the crown down their backs; or again, they gave it a monstrous pitch up behind. There is this to be said in their excuse—they hardly knew what parasols ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... others, since how an engineer dresses has no relation to his skill as a mathematician, and when a doctor mumbles it doesn't suggest that he would be clumsy with a scalpel. But when they meet an uncivil or unkempt officer, or see an untidy soldier or bluejacket on the street, they worry that the national defense is going to pot. One reason for the great prestige of the Marine Corps is that the public seldom, if ever, sees a sloppy marine, though its members do sometimes look a little gruesome ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... little man with the twisted face, who sat across from her, gnawing a peach stone clean, was the notorious "Doctor" Harris Devine, alias Vanderburg, her accomplice, and worth more now to society in his present untidy state than ever before at any one moment of his whole discreditable life, since for his capture the people of the state of New York stood willing to pay the sum of one thousand dollars, which tidy reward one of the afternoon papers had ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... differed as much in appearance as in mind. The outer seeming of each is almost as familiar as the forms and faces of contemporaries. Fox was massively {213} corpulent, furiously untidy, a heroic sloven, his bull throat and cheeks too often black with a three days' beard, infinitely lovable, exquisitely cultured, capable of the noblest tenderness, yet with a kind of grossness sometimes that was but a part, and perhaps ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... appeared. She wore the same frock she had worn all day, and Patty looked at her in amazement. Apparently she had been working hard at something. Her hair was rumpled, her collar awry, and her whole appearance untidy and unpresentable. ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... there were consisted merely of a few acres of land, separated from the forest by rude "snake-fences." Stumps of trees blackened by fire stood up among the oat-crops; but though they look extremely untidy, they are an unavoidable evil for two or three years, till ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... early—before ten—but he was tipsy already. Though the prince was not in an observant condition, yet he could not avoid seeing that for at least three days—ever since General Ivolgin had left the house Lebedeff had been behaving very badly. He looked untidy and dirty at all times of the day, and it was said that he had begun to rage about in his own house, and that his temper was very bad. As soon as he arrived this morning, he began to hold forth, beating his breast and apparently blaming ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to bed that night he put his watch on half an hour, wound it up, and placed it on a chair at his bedside. Then he seized his rug and all the blankets except one, and tore them off. Then he piled them in an untidy heap in the most distant corner of the room. He meant to put temptation out of his reach. There should be no genial ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... never ordinary. The most treasured of these tales is the story of the swallows; and it goes on to tell, as you would expect, how the Colonel died that year, before the swallows came flying north and home again. He was buried, while little Rupert and Rupert's mother looked on, in that untidy corner of the Boulogne Cemetery, where many another English half-pay officer had been laid ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... his straw hat in his hand. He was very warm, his hair was untidy on his moist brow, his boots were white with dust, his trousers were turned up from them and displayed an inch or so of thin ankle encased in oatmeal-coloured socks. His tie—Helen noted the one salient detail among the many dull ones that ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... a single-minded fidelity in thought, word and deed that looks (and, I am assured by equally innocent victims, is) positively deadly. The friend "frits and flutters" about in a distinctly casual, not to say polygamous, mood, but has one sacred place in his untidy heart in which the wife is enshrined. He can manage to sustain life so long as he may come to triangular tea on Thursdays. But the faithful husband puts his foot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... dined at six o'clock, then smoked a cigar and had a cup of black coffee brought to him in the untidy little sanctum where he generally did his work. With the coffee came the black kitten, which sidled up to him on the table, purring, and rubbing her head against his arm as if she knew him for a friend. He stroked it occasionally as he read his evening papers, and stroked it in the caressing way ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... way he trudged on foot, the rest he went by boat, and after nearly a week of most uncomfortable traveling he arrived one Sunday morning at Philadelphia. He was soaked to the skin, dirty and untidy, hungry and tired. His pockets bulged out with shirts and stockings, but save for one Dutch dollar they were ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... generation of grown people have read with delight the beautiful novels of J. Fenimore Cooper, Esq., but they have been disappointed in not finding any living examples of his noble heroes. As a general thing, the Indian of our day is an untidy lord of the soil, over which he roams unfettered by any laws of society, and often—in his wild state—not controlled by its decencies or in possession of its privileges. But I think this is the fault of Christians more interested in foreign pagans, while neglecting these heathen ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... shrubs. Follow the East Lyn up to Watersmeet, which is about two miles from Lynmouth through one of the most beautiful wooded gorges in England. Past the hotels you go, and a little straggle of small modern houses, past the untidy little patch which would be the suburb of a larger community, with upturned boats and washing drying in the sun, and within five minutes a turn of the road hides Lynmouth and the sea from your backward look, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... garments, seemed as alien to the scene as any fine lady visiting among the slums. She was struggling, too, between disgust of her sister-in-law's slovenly house and untidy dress, and the good humor, tender sentiment and innate motherliness of her nature. There was charm in her voice and in her big gray eyes. Irish to the core, she could storm at one child and coo with another an instant later. She was like Mart, ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... It is very important that you should remember that. Then there's another thing—(An untidy looking servant comes in. Can it be—can it possibly be AUNT JANE? Horrors!) He dislikes—Oh, there you are, Jane. You've been a very long time ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... the beauty of dawn could lend mystery to the hideous, littered yard, untidy as the yards of frontier towns invariably are, to the board fence, to the trampled half-acre of dirt, known as "The Square," and to the ugly frame buildings straggled about it; but it could and did give an unearthly look of blessedness to the bare, gray-brown ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... that the whole room was very elegant, but, at the same time, very untidy, the young chief turned to the merchant and said, with somewhat more reserve and less amenity, "You have, through a misunderstanding, been exposed to some rudeness, as is indeed often unavoidable ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... my chin slightly when shaving," he explained, "and the wound persists in bleeding. It has an untidy appearance, and a drop of blood ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... window with a sigh of pity for the miserable creatures below. His glance strayed over the untidy kitchen which bore all the marks of the most extreme poverty and he gave another sigh of pity for the man who had been brought so low in the last days of his life, the man whom he had known in the time ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... who steps into the little house made untidy by the vigorous efforts of her hostess, the washerwoman, is no longer sure of her superiority to the latter; she recognizes that her hostess after all represents social value and industrial use, as over against her own parasitic cleanliness and a social standing ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... in him the calm and cheerful Tom Gates they had visited in the county jail; for his face was drawn with care and anxiety, eyes were bloodshot, and his former neat appearance was changed to one careless and untidy. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... the scribe, reluctantly pitching his untidy epistle into a very disorderly desk. "He only comes here to show off. Just because he's in a lawyer's office, he thinks he's a big pot, and all he does is to write copies like a kid in ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... single ones best: double-carnations are so untidy, all bursting out of the calyx as if the petals had quarrelled ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... Edith's narrow bed, two slim young figures delicately flushed with sleep. As pathetic, had they known it, as those other sleepers in their untidy billets across the channel. Almost as hopeless too. Dwellers in the ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and with a farewell pat of the hand Hunterleys left her and opened a door on the left-hand side of the hall. The young man who had met him coming out of the Opera was standing with his hands in his pockets, upon the hearth-rug of an exceedingly untidy-looking apartment. There was a table covered with papers, another piled with newspapers. There were books upon the floor, pipes and tobacco laid about haphazard. A space had been swept clear upon the larger table for a typewriter, a telephone instrument stood against the wall. A man whose ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... been nearly mad with wrath, and Bessie had fled upstairs from him, with her baby, and bolted the bedroom door in bodily terror. Otherwise, he was a most docile husband—in the neighbours' opinion, docile to absurdity. He complained of nothing, and took notice of little. Bessie's untidy ways left him indifferent; his main interest was in a kind of religious dreaming, and in an Independent paper to which he occasionally wrote a letter. He was a gardener at a small house on the hill, ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... faded rose, that seemed to have blown too soon. Her breasts were sunken, her hair untidy like that of a neglected ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... at last! Deacon, I can't ask you to come in, we are so untidy; but I couldn't pack as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... speck of difference, Jo, and you know it," commented Jane with a wicked twinkle. "You know you say you were made untidy, and untidy ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... now, for they made use of each other's lodgings alternately, and there was a battered and rather out-of-tune piano. Sometimes, after the evening performance, there would be a gathering of the conspirators, all more or less morose, unshaven and untidy; and while Emile played for her, Arithelli would stand in the middle of the room, her green eyes blazing out of her pale face, her arms folded, singing with a fervour which surprised even her teacher, the lovely impassioned ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... was served in their room. Pilar was nervous and put out. The chambermaid's assistance had not been all that she could have wished. The slow waiting at lunch vexed her. Whatever trifle she might require she was obliged to go into the untidy bedroom herself and search in her boxes. Her head was full of schemes and plans, to none of which, however, she gave expression. Never had she had such an ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Oxford Road and the Edgeware Road, and between the latter and Bayswater open fields traversed by the canal, with here and there an isolated cottage dotted about them, stretched on one side of the high-road; and on the other, the untidy, shaggy, ravelled-looking selvage of Hyde Park; not trimmed with shady walks and flower borders and smooth grass and bright iron railing as now, but as forbidding in its neglected aspect as the desolate stretch of uninclosed waste ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... and would tumble about in his unnecessary hurry, barking his shins, bruising his knuckles, and breaking most things that were breakable,—but caring nothing for his sufferings either in body or in purse so that he was not reminded of his awkwardness by his wife. An untidy man he was, who spilt his soup on his waistcoat and slobbered with his tea, whose fingers were apt to be ink-stained, and who had a grievous habit of mislaying papers that were most material to him. He would bellow to the servants to have his things found for him, and would then scold them for looking. ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... as it was possible for him to show when at last she stood with outstretched hand before him. He had only an imperfect recollection of an ill-clad, untidy-looking child, with pale tear-stained cheeks, and dark unhappy eyes. The march of the years had been a thing whose effects he had altogether underestimated. The girl who stood now facing him was slight, and there was something of the child left in her bright eager face, but ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Maybe you collect yourself, sir; here's 'British Birds,' and 'Catullus,' and 'The Holy War'—a bargain every one of them. With five volumes you could just fill that gap on that second shelf. It looks untidy, does ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... certainly nurse to the Ubdugs, that is to say he was the least untidy, but then of course he was the smallest. In this cubicle the most voluminous of diaries were kept, and at least two books have been published therefrom. Gran kept his diary mostly in Norwegian, but there were many words coined in our Expedition which had no Scandinavian equivalent, ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... George Hewlett's two girls with their hair fastened up in womanly guise, and their cousins becurled as before; but there was nothing particularly untidy, and Mary held ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an overhead light, and Jack caught a clearer view of the man. What he saw sent a shiver through him. A great change had come over his friend. His untidy dress,—always so neat and well kept; his haggard eyes and shambling, unsteady walk, so different from his springy, debonair manner, all showed that he had been and still was under some terrible mental strain. That he had not been ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... worlds not recognised. She was slim and small, fair-haired, honey-coloured, her eyes wells of blue. I used to see her standing at the door of the shop, amid baskets of green stuff, crimsoned rhubarb, pyramided dates, and what not. I never saw her dirty or untidy, nor heard her speak, nor saw her laugh. She stood or leaned at the lintel, watching I know not what, but certainly not anything really there, as we say. She appeared to be looking through objects rather than at them. I can describe it no otherwise than that I, or another, crossed her field of ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... look funny," Anna acknowledged soberly. Her own flannel dress had dried, and, except for her bare feet, she looked about as usual; but Melvina's white petticoat was still wet and draggled, her hair untidy, and it was doubtful if her own father would have recognized her ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... undertone, I tell you that my little Jennie, as she is zealously and systematically arranging the fire, and trimly whisking every untidy particle of ashes from the hearth, shows in every movement of her little hands, in the cock of her head, in the knowing, observing glance of her eye, and in all her energetic movements, that her small person is endued and made up of the very expressed essence of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the house door quietly and shut it after them. There was no garden; the neighbourhood of Mr. Piperson's was all scratched up by fowls. They slipped away hand in hand across an untidy field ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... have preferred that the pavilion and the decapitated Troll King had vanished with a peal of thunder and an earthquake and such other phenomena as are customary. Instead, nothing is changed except that the woman who was talking to me a moment since now lies at my feet in a very untidy condition. You conceive, madame, I used to tease her about that twisted little-finger, in the days before we began to squabble: and it annoys me that Thragnar should not have omitted even Lisa's crooked little-finger on her left hand. Yes, such painstaking carefulness ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... abroad and saw young girls going about in the streets with their hair falling loose over their shoulders, I was a little shocked. I thought how careless their parents must be to allow their girls to go out in that untidy state. Later, finding that it was the fashion, I changed my mind, until by degrees I came to think that it looked quite nice; thus do conventionality and custom change one's opinions. But it should be remembered that no custom or conventionality ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... untidy hole! No more order than when you were an undergrad!" exclaimed Thornton, looking about him in ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... gaps and vacancies in the middle of the streets, patches of gravely ground, parcels of meadow land, and large vacant spaces—which will all, no doubt, be covered with buildings in good time, for it is growing daily and hourly—but which at present give it an untidy, unfinished, straggling appearance. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... pleasure as a long, loosely-built man, much younger than himself, stepped from the car and mounted the veranda, flinging his hat on a chair. His high-boned Quixotic face wore a pleasant smile, his rough tweed clothes, his hair and short mustache were tolerably untidy. ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... a good library stored with books of reference, and adorned with presentation copies from authors of the day, very beautifully bound. Though the room served for the study of the professed man of letters, it had none of the untidy litter which generally characterizes the study of one whose vocation it is to deal with books and papers. Even the implements for writing were not apparent, except when required. They lay concealed in a vast cylinder bureau, French made, and French ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... little time, a girl, dirty, ragged, and untidy, came into the room, and taking Duncan up in her arms, carried him upstairs, Elsie following with ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... lovely romp, and enjoy themselves in a far, far greater degree than we do. It was more like a tenants' ball or a children's party, they seemed so happy; and towards the end lots of the girls' hair became untidy and their dresses torn, and the young men's faces damp and ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... the fort, built by the Portuguese, below which is an open space to the peach, and beyond this the native town extends for about a mile to the north-east. About the centre of it is the palace of the Sultan, now a large untidy, half-ruinous building of stone. This chief is pensioned by the Dutch Government, but retains the sovereignty over the native population of the island, and of the northern part of Gilolo. The sultans ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the untidy room at the Callow, fed her pets and had supper in a dream of coming peace for them all. She would not have been peaceful if she had seen the meeting of the two men in the dusk, both wanting her with a passion equal ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... bread there too to keep them company. But this was probably a libel. Madame Jequier, at any rate, never saw it done. She looked the other way. 'We all must live,' was her invariable answer to such foolish stories. 'One cannot sleep if one's supper is too light.' Like her body, her soul was a bit untidy—careless, that is, with loose ends. Who would have guessed, for instance, the anxiety that just now gnawed her very entrails? She was a mixture of shameless egotism, and of burning zeal for others. There was a ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... and rubbed the ball in the dirt until his father sharply reprimanded him, saying, "You untidy boy; that ball will not be fit to play with!" Then Rollo looked about him over the surrounding country as though admiring the pleasant view, and with the same startling abruptness as before, faced his father and shot the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... No untidy church, home, or school expresses Christ—for Christ represents perfection in cleanliness and order. "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" we are told. Cleanliness shows the spiritual, the God, but dirt in any form is an expression of the opposite. Dirt under a bed and a prayer beside it are not compatible, ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... tramping to him across this untidy carpeting and directed his attention to the broken windows in the town house and in other buildings that ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... be untidy; hanging probably in straight, black locks over her forehead, and her frock will look as if it had been pitchforked on to her, and requires only the insubordination of one pin to ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... thin and meagre, and wholly untidy. The wind lashed her dirty cotton skirt around her, disclosing a dirtier petticoat and men's shoes. The skin of her worn, blond face had a look as if the soil of life had fairly been rubbed into it. All the lines of this face were lax, displaying utter lassitude and no energy. She, however, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... who seemed to exhale a positive hostility towards him, and entered his cousin's sitting-room. He would wait. He waited. He glanced through a pile of illustrated newspapers that lay about. And still he waited. The room looked different somehow; almost untidy. There were no rouses about. An hour passed. And still no sign ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... that she is a working girl. She is never idle. She is studying or sewing or helping about the home part of the day. She is romping or playing or swinging out of doors the other part. She is never frowsy or untidy or lazy. She is never rude or slangy or bold. And yet she is always full of fun and ready for frolic. She does not depend upon a servant to do what she can do for herself. She is considerate toward all who serve her. She is reverent to the old and thoughtful ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... the goddess is found hanging upside down. One morning when the head of the family comes out of his bed-room and the youngsters go in to make the room tidy, as they call it, (though they generally make the room more untidy and finally leave it to the servants) they find the famous family picture hanging literally topsyturvy (that is with head downwards) and they at once sound the alarm. Then they all know that the head of the family is doomed and will die within ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... you fire her, Sally?" her husband asked, as he had asked of almost every maid they had ever had—of lazy Annies, and untidy Selmas, and ignorant Katies. And, as always, ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... wrinkled from gazing on iron roofs set against the hard blue overhead; on dirty weatherboards innocent of paint; on higgledy-piggledy backyards and ramshackle fences; on the straggling landscape with its untidy trees—all the unrelieved ugliness, in short, of ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... all-absorbing attention. He then orders the people to direct me to a certain inn. This inn blossoms forth upon my as yet unaccustomed vision as a peculiarly vile and dingy little hovel, smoke-blackened and untidy as a village smithy. Half a dozen rude benches covered with reed mats and provided with uncomfortable wooden pillows represent what sleeping accommodations the place affords. The place is so forbidding ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... not answer this question it had to go unanswered, and instead he waited in silence while the Irishwoman took her key from a nail in the wall, and set off across her garden, which was only one degree less untidy than the doctor's, to open the door ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... had been presented. "You see we must be good and informal friends since the—" she shrugged her slim shoulders and quite unconsciously fell into French idiom as she continued—"since the so great impatience of my big brother compels me to meet you like this—all untidy and unprepared." She made a little gesture with both hands and her rippling laugh seemed to envelop the young secretary with a deep sense of obligation for her graciousness. "I have been so long from America, and I have not yet come back to the American ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... what else—when he's so clever and beautiful and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he ill-natured? He's exquisite—so it can be only THAT; and that would open up the whole thing. After all," I said, "it's their uncle's fault. If he left here ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... only thought was for Faye whose mother might find cause to pity him for the delinquencies of his wife! First impressions are indelible, and it would be difficult to convince Mrs. Rae ever that the house was not always dusty and untidy. How could she know that with pride I had ever seen that our house, however rough it might have been, was clean and cheerful. And of what use would it be to arrange things attractively now? She would be justified in supposing that it was only ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... more tender to eyes that falter only because they are faint with joy. In the short interval the moving finger of Mrs. Nesbit goes up, and then comes a rattling of the great front door. A moment later it is opened and the flushed face of Grant Adams is seen. He is collarless, and untidy; he rushes into the room crying, "O, doctor—doctor, come—our baby—he is choking." The youth sees Margaret, and with passion cries: "Kenyon—Kenyon—the baby, he is dying; for God's sake—Mag, where is ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... differences are original, or inborn, and not acquired, may be readily seen by observing children of different sex. Even from their earliest years boys are more active, restless, energetic, destructive, untidy, and disobedient, while little girls are quieter, less restless, less destructive, neater, more orderly, and more obedient. These different innate qualities fit the sexes naturally for different functions in human society, and there is, therefore, a natural division of labor between them from ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... of the teachers are away. Although the children are at play for the greater part of the day in term time, and all day in the holidays, the headmaster told us that they gave no trouble. There was not a dirty or untidy child to be seen, nor one with rough manners. They are allowed to play in the light, sandy soil of the forest, much as English children play at the seaside, and we saw the beginning of an elaborate chain of fortresses defended by toy ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... knowledge of the renowned Cujacius) that his usual manner of study was to spread himself on his belly on the floor. He did not sit down, he lay down; and the "Biographie Universelle" has (for so grave a work) an amusing pic- ture of the short, fat, untidy scholar dragging himself a plat ventre across his room, from one pile of books to the other. The house in which these singular gym- nastics took place, and which is now the headquarters of the gendarmerie, is one of the most picturesque ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... wall above a large autotype of the chief figure in Titian's Virgin of the Assumption, is very inviting. Altogether the room is the room of a good housekeeper, vanquished, as far as the table is concerned, by an untidy man, but elsewhere mistress of the situation. The furniture, in its ornamental aspect, betrays the style of the advertised "drawing-room suite" of the pushing suburban furniture dealer; but there is nothing useless or pretentious in the room. The paper and panelling are dark, throwing ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... made him aware, as he stood bowing upon her threshold, clasping with both hands his soft felt hat to his breast, that Mrs. Sand was not displeased to see him. She hastened, indeed, to give him a chair; she said she was very glad he'd dropped in, if he didn't mind the room being so untidy—where there were children you could spend the whole day picking up. They were out at present, with Captain Sand, in the perambulator—not having more servants than they could help. A sweeper and a cook they did with; it would surprise the people in this country, who couldn't get along with ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... whole world's property. But he could scarcely fit his neighbour into even his haziest picture of war. The young man was tall and a little round-shouldered; he had short-sighted, rather prominent brown eyes, untidy black hair and dark eyebrows which came near to meeting. He wore a knickerbocker suit of bluish-grey tweed, a pale blue shirt, a pale blue collar, and a dark blue tie—a symphony of colour which seemed too elaborately considered ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... Monday noon whistle blows I follow the hundreds down into the dining-room. Each wears her cap in a way that speaks for her temperament. There is the indifferent, the untidy, the prim, the vain, the coquettish; and the faces under them, which all looked alike at first, are becoming familiar. I have begun to make friends. I speak bad English, but do not attempt to change my voice and inflection nor to adopt the twang. No allusion ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst |
