"Dainty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... think Aunt Nan just the loveliest and sweetest body in the world. They send her flowers and bric-a-brac; they beg her to come here and there to receptions and charity bazaars, and reunions of all sorts. She is so small and dainty, and they are all growing ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... himself, she smiled upon her other guest with winning graciousness and forthwith began the dainty task of initiating him into the ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... is always a little shocking and grievous to a wife when she recognizes a rival in butchers'-meat and the vegetables of the season. With her slender relishes for pastry and confectionery and her dainty habits of lunching, she cannot reconcile with the idea (of) her husband's capacity for breakfasting, dining, supping, and hot meals at all hours of the day and night—as they write it on the sign-boards of barbaric eating-houses. But isabel would have only herself to blame ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... where he is. I heard he had gone to Montreal." And when she had said it she became as white as the dainty lawn blouse she wore. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... rich stream of brightness, fire and candle, meat, drink, and company, and gleaming like a jovial eye upon the bleak waste out of doors! Within, what carpet like its crunching sand, what music merry as its crackling logs, what perfume like its kitchen's dainty breath, what weather genial as its hearty warmth! Blessings on the old house, how sturdily it stood! How did the vexed wind chafe and roar about its stalwart roof; how did it pant and strive with its wide chimneys, which still poured forth from their hospitable throats, great clouds ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... "I simply told the dainty Mademoiselle, Raoul, Martin, and the rest of them, of my intention—to explain to the police the whole queer story. I knew quite well that Regnier had the jewels intact in a bag in his room at the Hermitage, ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... doubt familiar in a general way with the Musical Comedy type of dancing, which is really an exaggerated form of fancy dancing. It includes the now popular but simpler "soft-shoe" dances, dainty, soft, pretty movements with many effective attitudes of the body, all sorts of "kicking" and "fancy" steps. As a matter of fact, this type of dancing is perhaps the most difficult of all to define exactly, because often musical comedy dances include ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... dainty breakfast to which they presently sat down. There was plenty of bread and fresh butter just from the hands of the best butter-maker in the county; the eggs had been laid the day before, and the bacon ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... been glad to see me an advocate, a priest, or a councillor. If I had become a councillor, like Monsieur Andreas Van Berghem; if I had snuffled out long and weary sentences, caressing my lace bands with dainty finger-tips, with what esteem and veneration would not that worthy woman have regarded monsieur her nephew! She would have greeted Monsieur le Conseiller Caspar with profound respect; she would have set before me her best preserves, she would have poured ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... dainty negligee of ribboned silk, and as he watched she began slowly braiding her hair into two dusky ropes. After a little time she disappeared again ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... to a more pleasing one, we are struck with Leech's exceptional love of beauty. Never did Nature seem more delightful than in his cuts—in those dainty backgrounds in which the loveliest scenery is so skilfully reproduced. "What plump young beauties," cries Thackeray, "those are with which Mr. Punch's chief contributor supplies the old gentleman's pictorial harem!" It is true, they are nearly always ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... riding in a gayly bedecked two-wheeled cart, drawn by a prancing white horse. Dressed in white from head to foot, she looked the dainty creature that she was. ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... fumes that robbed them of scent. A fawn stopped within a few feet of me and stared about with luminous, innocent eyes. Its hair was singed and its feet burned. It lifted its left hind foot and stared at it perplexed; then I saw between its dainty, parted ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... mouth, with that slight upward curve of the corners which goes with a keen appreciation of fun, suggesting even in repose that a latent smile is ever lurking at the edges of the lips. She was modern to the soles of her dainty little high-heeled shoes, frankly fond of dress and of pleasure, devoted to tennis and to comic opera, delighted with a dance, which came her way only too seldom, longing ever for some new excitement, and yet behind all this lighter side of her character a thoroughly good, ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her small white hands all the time she was doing it. Neither of us had ever seen such before—the dainty skin, the ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... men to worship monkeys, is it not stranger still to worship snakes and serpents? Yet there is a temple in India where serpents crawl about at their pleasure, where they are waited upon by priests, and fed with fruits and every dainty. How much delighted must the old serpent be with ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... named Maud and Florence Stanton, Maud being about eighteen years of age and Florence perhaps fifteen. Maud's beauty was striking, as proved by Patsy's admiration at first sight; Florence was smaller and darker, yet very dainty and witching, like a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... hemlock-shaded falls in the gorge, and its long, still reaches in the "sugar-bottom," where the maple-trees grew as if in an orchard, and the superfluity of grasshoppers made the trout fat and dainty, was too wide to fit the boy. But nature keeps all sizes in her stock, and a smaller stream, called Rocky Run, came tumbling down opposite the inn, as if made to order for ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... curiously about the room. There seemed to be a marked touch of a woman's hand here and there; it was unmistakable. At last my eye rested on a careless heap of dainty wearing apparel on ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... their attire. Giselher, the youth, was aught but idle; he and Gernot and all their men received the friends and strangers. In truth, they gave the knights right courtly greetings. These brought into the land many a saddle of golden red, dainty shields and lordly armor to the feasting on the Rhine. Many a wounded man was seen full merry since. Even those who lay abed in stress of wounds, must needs forget the bitterness of death. Men ceased to mourn for the weak and sick and joyed in prospect of the festal ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... was positively with trepidation that he presented himself before her very soon after his arrival; and an undeniable blush "mantled" his cheek—if a blush can be said with any propriety to mantle the male cheek—- when he marched into the drawing-room, where she was doing a dainty bit of embroidery, and with much simplicity and directness said, "You said I might come, you know, and I have come; and I begged of Ethel to come too, but she could not leave my aunt," before he had so much as shaken hands. Of course no well-regulated and well-bred young woman—and Miss Bascombe ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... pale golden and filmy green, too sweet and fresh for the green of any other country save mine, in mid-July. Here and there a peasant in some striking costume, or a horse in a blue coat, made a spot of color in the pearl and primrose light, under clouds changeful as opal; and each separate, dainty picture of farmhouse, or lock, or group of flags and reeds had its double in the water, lying bright and clear as a painting under glass, until our vandal boat came ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... had been happy all that summer, never more so; yet happier than ever now as he stepped into the freshly furbished upper chamber which was his own, his very home. All the dear familiar books on the shelves, the snowy bed, the dainty neatness of the place that showed the motherly touch of old Griselda everywhere, even to the bunch of flowers ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... herself, started upon a rather restricted coon dance in order to prove to her opposite neighbor that the nickname belonged to her by good right. Oh, but it was fun for the Marchioness! She clapped her hands to show her approval and catching up the skirt of her dainty white frock, slowly raised one leg at a right angle to her body and stood so for a moment, to the intense admiration of the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... the castle, but one old man remained. He was never known by any other name than "Monsieur," and was beloved by every individual member of the household. A French emigre of the old school, with the dainty, gallant ways of the ancien regime, he still clung to the dress of his earlier days, and wore a veritable queue, silk stockings and buckled shoes. For some time he remained a welcome guest in the "red chamber," where the host's little children ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... back yards, smaller bands of boys and girls were busy rolling huge balls into a mighty snow man with a broom for a gun and bits of purloined coal for eyes and nose, and making mock assaults upon it and upon one another, just as the dainty little darlings in curls and leggings were doing in the up-town streets, but with ever so much more zest in their play. Their screams of delight rose to the many windows in the tenements, from which the mothers were exchanging views with next-door neighbors as to the probable duration of the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... we hate; we are the thing we hate. Ex-Quakers in Philadelphia, I am told, are very dressy people. But before a woman becomes a genuine admitted non-Quaker, the rough, gray woolen dress shades off by almost imperceptible degrees into a dainty silken lilac, whose generous folds have a most peculiar and seductive rustle; the bonnet becomes smaller, and pertly assumes a becoming ruche, from under which steal forth daring, winsome ringlets; while at the neck, purest of cream-white kerchiefs jealously conceal the charms that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... the huge batch of letters that greeted her daily across her dainty breakfast table was very much of a duty. It was not that she felt any keen interest in the numberless notes from admirers, both male and female, from Portland, Me., to Los Angeles, Cal., to say nothing ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... mine, Gude faith, I freely bought A wedding sark of Holland fine, Wi' dainty ruffles wrought; And he gied me a wedding-ring, Which I received wi' joy; Nae lad nor lassie e'er could sing Like me ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... is to have fewer courses and varieties at a meal, but just at first it may be as well to start on the basis of a three-course dinner. One or other of the dishes may be dispensed with now and then, and thus by degrees one might attain to that ideal of dainty simplicity from which this age of luxury and fuss and elaboration ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... pride by an act of magnanimity, but allowing me at the same time the felicity of munching the plums on my way back to the Old Market. But the next moment, to my surprise and indignation, she took a generous bite of the very dainty she had offered me, making, while she ate it, provoking faces of a ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... here, some there, and none too much anywheres, by reason of suspicion. I'm fifty, mark you; once back from this cruise I set up gentleman in earnest. Time enough, too, says you. Ah, but I've lived easy in the meantime; never denied myself o' nothing heart desires, and slept soft and ate dainty all my days, but when at sea. And how did I begin? Before the mast, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me the truth and right and heaven itself. All duties have become as shadows: all rules and restraints have snapped their bonds. O love, my love, I could set fire to all the world outside this land on which you have set your dainty feet, and dance in mad revel over the ashes ... These are mild men. These are good men. They would do good to all—as if this all were a reality! No, no! There is no reality in the world save this one real love of mine. I do you reverence. My devotion to you has made me cruel; my ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... an appalling artificiality of delightfulness. Fallerina, Alcina, Armida, Acrasia, all imitated from the original Calypso, are not strong and splendid god-women, living among the fields and orchards, but dainty ladies hidden in elaborate gardens, all bedizened with fashionable architecture: regular palaces, pleasaunces, with uncomfortable edifices, artificial waterfalls, labyrinths, rare and monstrous plants, parrots, apes, giraffes; childish splendours of gardening and engineering and menageries, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... had made an end of reciting his verses, he bore up his burden and was about to fare on, when there came forth to him from the gate a little foot-page, fair of face and shapely of shape and dainty of dress, who caught him by the hand, saying, "Come in and speak with my lord, for he calleth for thee." The Porter would have excused himself to the page, but the lad would take no refusal; so he left his load with the doorkeeper in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... my Christmas dolly; Her name is French—Celeste; And of my many children, She is the very best. This dress, you see, is finest silk, Her shoes are dainty kid, And underneath this cunning hat Her pretty curls are hid. And do I love my precious doll? Well, I just guess I do (hugging it)! I'll love her even when she's old As well as while ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... against such a waste. There was "enough to victual him a week," he said; "the brute never would know when he was full." But Charley was determined to give him a chance to know, and at last he poked over a dainty morsel with his cold nose, left it, went back to it, left it again, unable to clear ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May
... to be found, but there is an unkempt servant in the kitchen, who probably does not see any use in making her toilet more than once a week. To this fearful creature is intrusted the dainty duty of preparing breakfast. Her indifference is equal to her lack of information, and her ability to convey information is fettered by her use of Gaelic as her native speech. But she directs us to the stable. There we find a driver hitching his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had rung at the shaft. She ran to it, and returned with a great silver tray, laden with dainty dishes, which she set on a little side table. They sat down opposite each other, and ate, getting as much satisfaction from contemplation of each other's faces as from the excellent food. When they had finished, she carried the tray to ...
— The Cosmic Express • John Stewart Williamson
... nowadays the best is—with dirty ice, and flabby with arrested fermentation. In the pleasant dimity-parlour then, commanding a fair view of the lively sea and the stream that sparkled into it, were noble dinners of sole, and mackerel, and smelt that smelled of cucumber, and dainty dory, and pearl-buttoned turbot, and sometimes even the crisp sand-lance, happily for himself, unhappily for whitebait, still unknown in London. Then, after long rovings ashore or afloat, these diners came ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... men held him back and kept firm grasp upon him until he had fainted away and they could bear him like one dead to his home. And the serving-woman of Ko-Ngai, dizzy and speechless for pain, stood before the furnace, still holding in her hands a shoe, a tiny, dainty shoe, with embroidery of pearls and flowers,—the shoe of her beautiful mistress that was. For she had sought to grasp Ko-Ngai by the foot as she leaped, but had only been able to clutch the shoe, and the pretty shoe came off in her ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... a banker and his wife from some small town—the wife fussy and consequential, the husband coldly dignified. This group was composed of a doctor and his daughters. Behind them came a merchant from some Nebraska town—he rough of exterior, his children dainty of dress and very pretty. Occasionally a group of college-bred girls came up without escort—alert, self-helpful and serene. They saw Clement at once, and studied him carefully as they drank their beauty cup at the circular bench ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... city of London, who takes your glittering sword and transforms it into a policeman's baton of wood! You are destined to see within your walls—if any walls remain to you—your own wives and daughters clog their dainty tread with encumbrances of English leather, flatten their heads beneath mushroom-shaped hats, surround themselves with crinoline and flounces, and wear magenta, that abominable mixture of red and blue which always filled your soul with horror. Then, to increase the resemblance of ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... very pretty, small and fair and plump, with childish blue eyes, and an anything but childish mind behind them. She had dainty little feet, as well shaped as any he had ever seen, and she was perfectly dressed, her gown a diaphanous creation of melting colours and floating softness, which suggested more than it revealed of her person, like ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... played upon her white satin gown, upon her bare arms, and the ends of her lace scarf, upon her satin shoes and the bunch of snowdrops at her breast, but her face was in shadow and she did not look up at Clyffurde, whilst he—poor fool!—stood before her, absorbed in the contemplation of this dainty picture which mayhap after to-night would never gladden ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Germans say that merchant-ships ought not to carry weapons for defense; it is too dangerous for the dainty U-boat; every merchantman thus armed must be treated as a vessel of war. But the law of nations for more than two centuries has sanctioned the carrying of defensive armament by merchant-ships, and precisely because they might need it ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... apology when she saw Cecil's dainty equipment. "Dressed, you correct little thing! You put me to shame; but I had no notion which box my evening things are in, and it would have been serious to irritate ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... never see another sunset to begin with it this side of heaven. Venice? land, what a poor interest that is! This is the place to be. I have seen about 60 sunsets here; & a good 40 of them were away & beyond anything I had ever imagined before for dainty & exquisite & marvelous beauty & infinite change & variety. America? Italy? the tropics? They have no notion of what a sunset ought to be. And this one—this unspeakable wonder! It discounts all the rest. It brings the tears, it is ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... river just as they had come out of it at the beginning. The crevices were filled with ferns and in places clear water was dripping from these little green cliff gardens. As we ran along the foot of the left wall we saw a peculiar and beautiful spring which had carved out a dainty basin where a multitude of ferns and kindred plants were thriving, a silvery rill dropping down from them. We emerged from the canyon as abruptly as we had entered it, and saw a broad valley stretching before us. Running a quarter of a mile ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... which is slashed and laced, and rich with jewelry and precious stones; even his doublets are daintily worked and of golden tissue; his shirt is very fine, and it shows through an opening in the doublet, according to the fashion of France. This delicate and dainty way of living contributes to his health. In proportion as the king bears bodily fatigue well, and endures it without bending beneath the burden, in the same proportion do mental cares weigh heavily upon him, and he shifts them almost entirely on to Cardinal ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... even those grand old rocks fail to embody the glorious ideal of a Christus Judex, we must acknowledge the pleasure we have derived from the fanciful descriptions and pleasant associations offered us in this dainty little volume. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... life, would be a much more efficient force for purposes of discovery, than a thousand and more courtiers who have left the presence of the king and queen in the hope of personal advancement or of romantic adventure. Those dainty people, who would have been soldiers if there were no gunpowder, are not men to found states; and the men who have lived in the ante-chambers of courts are not people who co-operate sympathetically with an experienced man of affairs ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... its jar, Whose East the cupbearer and West my thirsty mouth I feign. I'm jealous of the very clothes she dights upon her side, For that upon her body soft and delicate they've lain; And eke I'm envious of the cups that touch her dainty lips, When to the kissing-place she sets them ever and again. Think not that I in anywise with sword am done to death; 'Tis by the arrows of a glance, alack! that I am slain. Whenas we met again, I found her fingers dyed with red, As 'twere the juice of tragacanth had steeped ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... and relief, everything went beautifully, and the guests departed, delighted with Lady Alice's "charming American cousin, so sweet, so dainty, so witty, so brilliant, and altogether lovely—really quite a dear, ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... took in the breakfast Jacqueline was waiting for me, looking very dainty and charming. She was hungry, ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... meneurs of the Gironde, your orators of set speech, glittering abstractions, and hair-splitting definitions; the Brissots, Vergniauds, Condorcets, and Rolands, who could degrade, dethrone, and condemn a king to perpetual imprisonment, but were just too dainty of conscience to go the whole hog of murder. As history, like an old almanack, does but repeat itself within a given cycle of years, so the same round, cast, and change of characters and characteristics, with all the other paraphernalia of the great drama, Reform ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... buyers of these pretty dainty toys are the Roman peasant women. America follows closely in their footsteps, Great Britain's turn comes next, then Germany puts in a modest claim, while the worst customers of all are the Scandinavians, to whose deep, earnest, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Her dainty Limbs tinsel her Silk soft Sheets, Her Rose-crown'd Cheeks eclipse my dazled sight. O Glass! with too much joy my thoughts thou greets, And yet thou shew'st me day but by twilight. Ile kiss thee for the kindness I have felt, Her Lips one Kiss would ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... later, massaged, bathed, and robed in a dainty morning gown, Mrs. Wellington stepped into her "office," than which no one of her husband's many offices was more business-like, and seated herself at a large mahogany desk. Miss Hatch, her secretary, arose from a smaller desk with typewriter attachment ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... a mechanic, he fought his way through difficulties to a liberal education, and was thirty years old before his very great abilities attracted general attention. A greedy gormandizer of books in many languages, he had little of the dainty scholarship so much prized at the neighboring university. But the results of his vast reading were stored in a quick and tenacious memory as ready rhetorical material wherewith to convince or astonish. Paradox was a passion with him, that was stimulated by complaints, and even by deprecations, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... first of all we must have a taste of those dainty lips; stand back, bl—t you," he vociferated with a volley of appalling oaths, that sent the disorderly men, who were again crowding behind him, back into the rear; "we would be alone, d—— ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... arranged a log of wood so as to serve instead of a pillow, and for the present seated myself upon my splendid couch. In the meanwhile, my hosts were preparing the monkey and the parrots, by sticking them on wooden spits, and roasting them before the fire. In order to render the meal a peculiarly dainty one, they also buried some Indian corn and roots in the cinders. They then gathered a few large fresh leaves off the trees, tore the roasted ape into several pieces with their hands, and placing a large portion of it, as ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... straight across the court, beyond the rich patchwork of the roofs and the picturesque outlines of the chimneys, a delicate piece of white stone-work rose into air—the spire of one of Wren's churches, as dainty, as perfect, and as fastidiously balanced as the hand of man could ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that frankly would have fed, Pleas'd with this dainty bit, thus goes to bed. [Sheathes his sword. Come, tie his body to my horse's tail; Along the field I will ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... including servants; but of course now our resources were limited, and I expected few presents; but in my spare time I had contrived a few surprises in the shape of work. A set of embroidered baby linen for Flurry's best doll, dainty enough for a fairy baby; a white fleecy shawl for mother, and another for Carrie, and a chair-back for Ruth; she was fond of pretty things, but I certainly did not ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... matter of fact, I believe I slept in one of the haunted rooms, but it looked cheerful enough when I entered from the gloom and darkness outside; and a dainty little dinner sent up by my kind friends below, and eaten when snugly tucked in between the sheets and resting on soft downy pillows, was enough to drive all thoughts of ghostly visitors from ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... to buy their goods in Southampton, or to sell the produce of their farms; she was intimate with their sturdy skippers, and she delighted in their airs of self-importance. She loved the fishing boats that went out in all weathers, and the neat yachts that fled across the bay with such a dainty grace. She loved the great barques and the brigantines that came in with a majestic ease, all their sails set to catch the remainder of the breeze; they were like wonderful, stately birds, and her soul rejoiced at the sight of them. But ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... she wrote a note, taking so much trouble over it that she destroyed, and rewrote, till her dainty waste-basket was half- full of torn sheets of notepaper. When quite satisfied, she copied out the last sheet afresh, and then carefully burned all the spoiled fragments. She put the copied note in an emblazoned envelope, and directed it to ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... and Crowell turned toward the boudoir—now Aunt Abby's bedroom. A small bed had been put up for her there, and the room was quite large enough to be comfortable. It was luxuriously furnished and the appointments were quite in keeping with the dainty tastes of the ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... May; on the other side sat Paul, with Mrs. Webster and May to talk to alternately. The very perfection of her surroundings engaged Sally's attention at first: the delicately shaded lights shining down on the dainty flowers, and silver and glass; the dinner, remarkable rather for elegance than profusion; the family portraits on the wall, bewigged and befrilled, which stood at ease, and glanced down on the company with a sort of haughty indifference; the heavy, handsome furniture combining ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... lady is walking in our streets a mantle is often flung suddenly in her way, and proud and happy is its owner if she deigns to set her dainty ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... materially elevated and improved thereby, and I can not believe that the rule would have an exception in the women of to-day. I do not say that to the idealized women so generally described by obstructionists—the dainty darlings whose prototypes are to be found in the heroines of Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper—immediate awakening would come; but to the toilers, the wage-workers and the women of affairs, the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... apiece, and offered for sale at an alarming sacrifice for a shilling. There were beads from Venice, and tiles from Holland, and fans from Spain, and a display of Venetian glass especially provided for the entrapment of county families. There was dainty English china (on sale or return), and flagons of Eau de Cologne, and white and blue Della Noblia plaques from Florence, and a dozen other dainty and ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... arrangements, came as an intense relief, for the others all turned toward the speaker, and, a moment later, the slaves passed around with silver basins and ewers, pouring scented water upon the hands of the guests and drying them with dainty flickings of filmy napkins. Vessels of gold and silver and fine earthenware burdened the tables, while at each end of the garden stood a butler in charge of several large amphorae. Those at the north end were half buried ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... solemn hunting is in hand; There will the lovely Roman ladies troop: The forest walks are wide and spacious; And many unfrequented plots there are Fitted by kind for rape and villainy: Single you thither, then, this dainty doe, And strike her home by force if not by words: This way, or not at all, stand you in hope. Come, come, our empress, with her sacred wit To villainy and vengeance consecrate, Will we acquaint with all what we intend; And she shall file our engines with advice ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... wept as they wrought her bidding and did on her goodliest gear; But she laughed mid the dainty linen, and the gold-rings fashioned fair: She arose from the bed of the Niblungs, and her face no more was wan; As a star in the dawn-tide heavens, mid the dusky house she shone: And they that stood about her, their hearts were raised aloft Amid their fear and wonder: ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... the garrison to-night receives a pint of horse essence hot. I tasted it in the cauldron, straight from the horse, and found it so sustaining that I haven't eaten anything since. The dainty Kaffirs and Colonial Volunteers refuse to eat horse in any form. But the sensible British soldier takes to it like a vulture, and begs for the lumps of stewed flesh from which the soup has been made. With the joke, "Mind that stuff; ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... music's soft report," which begins with a flying prelude, to which the lady of the tree "carves out her dainty voice" with ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... golden throne, hearing causes and dispensing justice to his subjects. The treasury and the various apartments were full of gold and silver, of costly robes and precious stones, of jewelled arms and dainty carpets. The glass vases of the spice magazine contained an abundance of musk, camphor, amber, gums, drugs, and delicious perfumes. In one apartment was found a carpet of white brocade, 450 feet long and 90 broad, with a border worked in precious stones of various hues, to represent a garden ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... far from bad, but the selection is not very much to our purpose. Three of the pieces, a singing match, a love complaint, and one of the Galatea poems, are more or less pastoral; but the rest—among which is the dainty conceit of Venus and the boar well rendered in a three-footed measure—do not belong to bucolic verse at all. Incidental mention may be also made of a 'dialogue betwixt two sea nymphs, Doris and Galatea, concerning ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... "Nordica" owned by Presson Miller, who apparently takes the greatest delight in hearing good vocal and instrumental music. Another well-educated musical cat belongs to a friend who plays a guitar. This cat delights in touching the strings with his dainty, soft paws, and springs with delight as the notes ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... greens, which are very appetizing. There is much ginger, and it is eaten green, pickled, and preserved. There are also quantities of cachumba [273] instead of saffron and other condiments. The ordinary dainty throughout these islands, and in many kingdoms of the mainland of those regions, is buyo [betel]. This is made from a tree, [274] whose leaf is shaped like that of the mulberry. The fruit resembles an oak acorn, and is white inside. [275] This fruit, which is called ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... the arbiter of dainty elegances in rhyme: he sings and celebrates a robust world where men struggle upward from the slime and discontent leaps from star to star. The evolutionary theme is a favourite with him: the grand pageant of humanity groping from Piltdown to ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... afterwards paid a superstitious respect to these animals; and supported them in this manner by public alms, which were very adequate to the purpose. Browne, in his History of Jamaica, tells us, "A cat is a very dainty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... girl, radiant and beautiful, shapely as a fairy and exquisitely dressed, was dancing gracefully in the middle of the lonely road, whirling slowly this way and that, her dainty feet twinkling in sprightly fashion. She was clad in flowing, fluffy robes of soft material that reminded Dorothy of woven cobwebs, only it was colored in soft tintings of violet, rose, topaz, olive, azure, and white, mingled together most harmoniously in stripes which melted ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... of my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in the face, and there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from time to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs about; till at length he grew more dainty still and played with his food, tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from his careless grasp and fell to the ground, when he would look over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the signal glasses, another sigh, and then she came, this girl of seventeen, in her dainty white frock, and plumped herself dejectedly down on the top step, with two very shapely, slender, slippered feet displayed on the second below, two dimpled elbows planted on her knees, two flushed, soft, rounded cheeks buried ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... they heard a most melodious sound Of all that mote delight a dainty ear; Such as at once might not on living ground, Save in this Paradise, be heard elsewhere: Right hard it was for wight which did it hear, To tell what manner musicke that mote be; For all that pleasing is to living eare Was there consorted in one ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... her gown of brocade, beautifully flowered in peach color, dainty, confident, challenging me to note one fault. Nor could I, from the gold hair-pegs in her hair to the tip of her slim, pompadour shoes peeping from the lace of her petticoat, which she lifted a trifle to show her ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... wretches of prisoners were forced into a cart by gendarmes in the sight of the multitude. A man sat awaiting them in the cart, curled, powdered, dressed; and perfumed with foppish elegance, and his every motion made with a dainty sense of distinction. He was the people's hero—the public executioner. He took in his hands the ends of the rope which hung from the necks of his victims. Another figure mounted the cart behind them. It was a priest, who knelt, bent his head, and ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... marry some day when life had quieted down. She was of the spirit, not the flesh. Yet she was beautiful to look upon. Her hair was a dark, curling brown, full of delicate waves even on the top of her head. Her hands were dainty. Her body was a slender poem in willowy, graceful lines. Her voice was the softest ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... attention on other men, wholly regardless of her slave. Now again he would scour the town, in scorching heat or drenching rain, frequently sacrificing the only moments he could snatch from business for his dinner, to procure a ribbon, a ring, or some dainty, which she desired, and which was difficult to obtain; and on his return she would receive him perhaps with coldness and toss the prize aside. Sometimes, when the proof became too evident that ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... have before observed, but the cheerful ring of their voices at the various tables betokened gaiety of intercourse. As they have no stimulant drinks, and are temperate in food, though so choice and dainty, the banquet itself did not last long. The tables sank through the floor, and then came musical entertainments for those who liked them. Many, however, wandered away:—some of the younger ascended in their wings, for the hall was roofless, forming aerial dances; others ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... scholars learned of my retreat than they began to flock thither from all sides, leaving their towns and castles to dwell in the wilderness. In place of their spacious houses they built themselves huts; instead of dainty fare they lived on the herbs of the field and coarse bread; their soft beds they exchanged for heaps of straw and rushes, and their tables were piles of turf. In very truth you may well believe that they were like those philosophers of old of whom Jerome tells ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... they were good for nothing there. You should have come to Sandwich to eat them. It is a shame for you that you did not. An epicure talk of danger when he is in search of a dainty! Did not Leander swim over the Hellespont in a tempest to get to his mistress? And what is a wench to a barrel of ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... known that she keeps a diary. Ah! if only that diary, in its dainty, morocco, gold-clasped volumes, could be abstracted from the wonderful mother-o'-pearl escritoire, carried out of the exquisite Renaissance boudoir, down the noble staircase and out of the massive hall-door, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... for the last time, it seemed in twilight, for the shadows of a midwinter afternoon were already long. He saw that she had set out a dainty little tea table and his heart gave a throb when he discerned in its center, in a cut glass bowl, the violets that he had brought her on the preceding day. They seemed to scent the room with a definite and yet elusive fragrance, quite like her personality that was so soon to be ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... exquisite little magazine. It is intended for the small boys and girls who do not read very long words; but, if we mistake not, 'children of a larger growth' will be fascinated by its charming pictures and its dainty execution.—N.Y. Liberal Christian. ...
— The Nursery, No. 169, January, 1881, Vol. XXIX - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... Picardy owed her name, not to the beauty of her streams merely, but to their burden. She was a worker, like the Adriatic princes, in gold and glass, in stone, wood, and ivory; she was skilled like an Egyptian in the weaving of fine linen; dainty as the maids of Judah in divers colours of needlework. And of these, the fruits of her hands, praising her in her own gates, she sent also portions to stranger nations, and her fame went ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... relieved his mind to a certain extent, but the episode left him shaken. He made up his mind to propose at once and get it over. When Mamie joined the garrison of No. 90 a year later the dashing feat was still unperformed. There was that about Mamie which unmanned Steve. She was so small and dainty that the ruggedness which had once been his pride seemed to him, when he thought of her, an insuperable defect. The conviction that he was a roughneck deepened in him and tied ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... these women? For she knew they were of the one breed, blood-sisters among men and the women of men. Her eyes roved wildly about the interior, taking in the soft draperies hanging around, the feminine garments, the oval mirror, and the dainty toilet accessories beneath. And the things haunted her, for she had seen like things before; and as she looked at them her lips involuntarily formed sounds which her throat trembled to utter. Then a thought flashed upon her, ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... fun, For they know their kind champion, and what she has done, And is ready to do for them all once again, If folks heed her appeal. Shall she make it in vain? Three weeks in the country for poor BOB and BESS! Do you know what that means, wealthy cit? Can you guess, Dainty lady of fashion, with "dots" of your own, Bright-eyed and trim-vestured, well-fed and well-grown? Well, BOBBY'S a cripple, and BESS has a cough, Which, untended, next winter may "carry her off," As her folks in their unrefined diction declare; They ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... lost his place in a large publishing firm because he was careless about shaving and brushing his teeth. The other day a lady remarked that she went into a store to buy some ribbons, but when she saw the salesgirl's hands she changed her mind and made her purchase elsewhere. "Dainty ribbons," she said, "could not be handled by such soiled fingers without losing some of their freshness." Of course, it will not be long until that girl's employer will discover that she is not advancing his business, and then,—well, the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... next Sunday I watched No. 15, till I beheld my lady-fair come forth, veiled, furred, dressed all in her dainty best, prayer-book in hand, going alone to St. Pancras Church—not the old, but the new—whither ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... Benden's personal eating; and next she went to the spicer's. A sugarloaf she must have, expensive as it was, for her tyrant required his dishes sweet, and demanded that the result should be effected by dainty sugar, not like common people by honey or treacle: nor did she dare to omit the currants, since he liked currant cake with his cheese and ale. Two pounds of prunes, and four of rice, she meant to add; but those were not especially for him, and must be left out if needful. When she had reached ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the stars is hers; The least of all her worshipers, The dust beneath her dainty heel, She knows not that I ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Isabel would come early, soon after breakfast, so as to have a longer day; but it was quite twelve o'clock before she made her appearance, all alone by herself in a huge barouche, which made her seem scarcely larger than a doll. She wore a fine frilled muslin frock over blue silk, a white hat, and dainty lemon-colored boots. When Lota, feeling shy at the spectacle of this magnificence, proposed going into the garden, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... on the knoll above us, had many a time sported richer and costlier toilets in its chambers than this before us. But on my lady the gay stuffs seemed painfully out of place—like her feather fan, and smelling-salts, and dainty netted purse. The mountains and girdling forests were real; the strong-faced, burly, handsome baronet, whose words spoken here in the back-woods were law to British king and Parliament, was real; we ourselves, suitably and decently clad, and knowing our ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... a very pretty wedding. Every one said that. The pink and green of the decorations, the soft lights (Kate had had her way about darkening the rooms), the pretty frocks and smiling faces of the guests all helped. Then there were the dainty flower girl, little Kate, the charming maid of honor, Billy, the stalwart, handsome best man, Bertram, to say nothing of the delicately beautiful bride, who looked like some fairy visitor from another world in the floating shimmer of her gossamer silk and tulle. There was, too, ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... hung over the foot-board of the bed—not even a fold had been disturbed—while the elegant sealskin cloak and the dainty hat and muff lay exactly as he had placed them, to display them ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... busied herself at the tea-table with its fine Queen Anne silver and dainty yellow cups. It was the custom at Harkings to serve tea in the winter without other illumination than the light of the great log-fire that spat and leaped in the open hearth. Beyond the semi-circle ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine |
