"Decorously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rendezvous. Oddly enough, the more formal attitude seemed to be reserved for the young people, who, in the suggestive atmosphere of this spiritual flirtation, alone appeared to preserve the proprieties and, to some extent, decorously chaperon their elders. Herbert gravely turned the leaves of Cherry's music while she played and sang one or two discreet but depressing songs expressive of her unalterable but proper devotion to her mother's clock, her father's arm-chair, and her aunt's Bible; and Herbert joined somewhat ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... supply of suckers. After this part of the ceremony is over the cooked suckers are handed to the presiding officer in a newly carved dish, and a small portion is given to each person present, who reverently and decorously eats it. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... competition engendered by them grew fiercer, it became increasingly difficult to attract attention by mere academic merit. So the painters began to search for sensationalism of subject, and the typical salon picture, no longer decorously pompous, began to deal in blood and horror and sensuality. It was Regnault who began this sensation hunt, but it has been carried much further since his day than he can have dreamed of, and the modern salon picture is ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... thereby; and on the other hand there are persons who urge that the engineers concerned in the making of the reservoir should be tarred and feathered to a man. Both these views are distorted and intemperate. Let us endeavour to straighten up our opinions, to walk them soberly and decorously before us ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... laboriously cemented. Without great dishonour and without great imprudence, Athens could not forego the control with which she had been invested; if it were hers to provide the means, it was hers to punish the defaulters; and her duty to Greece thus decorously and justly sustained her ambition ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a woman such a trial to sustain as this! By no possible supposition could Miriam explain the identity of the dead Capuchin, quietly and decorously laid out in the nave of his convent church, with that of her murdered persecutor, flung heedlessly at the foot of the precipice. The effect upon her imagination was as if a strange and unknown corpse had miraculously, while she was gazing at it, assumed the likeness of that face, so terrible ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mahogany table at which Bonbright Foote II had worked; the same chairs, the same fittings, the same pictures hung on the walls, that had been the property of the first crown prince of the Foote dynasty. It was not a bright place, suggestive of liveliness or gayety, but it was decorously inviting—a place in which one could work ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... if not all, countries; and when in the summer-time there is music in the Wood at The Hague on Sunday afternoons or Wednesday evenings, the walks round about the 'Tent' are alive with servants and their lovers, parading decorously arm-in-arm. Happy fathers, too, with their wives and children in Sunday best, perambulate the grounds or rest on the seats amongst the trees and listen to the 'Bosch-muziek.' People of the better ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... in quite another direction. He no longer indulged in hand-springs, but walked decorously on his legs, had always much ado to pull down and straighten his collar and cuffs, and was in continual anxiety as to his clothes. He was now apprentice to a painter, but had a parting in his hair ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... time this family was united and happy, and amid their sorrow felt a pure joy in the prospect of a comfortable and prosperous future. The old man, who resolved to amend after the example of his son, and to pass the remainder of his life more decorously, agreed, even without any persuasion, to make over the uncontrouled management of the property legally to his son, who was now of age. It was settled that the mother and son should go first to their new estate, to arrange every thing, and that ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... settling matters by the sword, for making forcible entries and detainers, and ousting the tenants in possession, whereby he would render himself liable to arrest, fine, ransom, and forfeiture; instead of proceeding cautiously and decorously as the law directs, and as I advise, Sir Ralph, by writ of ejectione firmae or action of trespass, the which would assuredly establish his title, and restore him the house and lands. Or he may proceed by writ of right, which perhaps, in his case, considering the long absence of possession, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and one of the windows. To the left of the door were two shelves—one of them the children's (that is to say, ours), and the other one Karl's own. Upon ours were heaped all sorts of books—lesson books and play books—some standing up and some lying down. The only two standing decorously against the wall were two large volumes of a Histoire des Voyages, in red binding. On that shelf could be seen books thick and thin and books large and small, as well as covers without books and books without covers, since everything ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... the footpath beside the canal, to dance in the village outside the Zyl-Gate. They walked quietly forward with eyes discreetly downcast, but many a cheek flushed and many an ill-suppressed smile hovered around rosy lips, when the youths, who followed the girls moving so decorously along, as gaily and swiftly as sea-gulls flutter around a ship, uttered teasing jests, or whispered into their ears words that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mayor had already left to fulfil an early appointment down-town. Old Nixon waited on me. As he, like every other member of the family, with the possible exception of the mayor, was still an unknown quantity in the problem given me to solve, I allowed a few stray glances to follow him as he moved decorously about the board anticipating my wants and showing himself an adept in his appointed task. Once I caught his eye and I half expected him to speak, but he was too well-trained for that, and the meal proceeded in the same silence in which it had begun. But this short interchange ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... of the wall, and speedily lifted the ladder to our side, where it leaned comfortably against the stout branches of the draper's peach vine. Willie ran nimbly up the ladder and bestrode the wall. I followed, first standing, and then decorously sitting down on the top of it. Mr. Anstruther pulled up the ladder, and replaced it on the side of liberty; then he descended, then Willie, and I last of all, amidst the acclamations of the on-lookers, a select company ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... craving your pardon, but we are accustomed to have grace before meat," said Robin decorously. "And as our own chaplain is not with us to-day, will you be good enough to say ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... sister of the county clerk: she was a woman of the most appreciative character, the clearest sense, and—she was the faithful echo of the baroness. The second was a pretty girl. She represented the other pretty girls. Then the baroness spoke. She said it was of the first importance to do this thing decorously and in order. When men had suppers they never invited women. They wanted to have a good time, and women spoiled it. She was not in favor of an "invitation entertainment." She supposed that what they wanted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the only one," resumed Gringoire, "who has listened to the piece decorously. What do ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... occupied by two ministers in Geneva bands and gowns, while other ministers, similarly attired, stood holding on to it, almost as if they were giving support instead of receiving it. Grace Hickson and her son sat decorously in their own pew, thereby showing that they had arrived early from the execution. You might almost have traced out the number of those who had been at the hanging of the Indian witch, by the expression of their countenances. They were awestricken into terrible repose; ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to Doctor Strong's excellent school at Canterbury. It was decorously ordered on a sound system, with an appeal in everything to the honour and good faith of the boys. We all felt that we had a part in the management of the place, and learnt with a good will, desiring to do it credit. We had noble games out of hours, and ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... friends walked on in silence side by side, but were impatient to part as soon as they could decorously. When they had nearly reached the place where their homeward paths would separate, the professor ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... Foh-Kyung was talking. Dong-Yung turned back from all the greenness around her to listen. He sat very still, with his hands hid in his sleeves. The wave-ridged hem of his robe—blue and green and purple and red and yellow—was spread out decorously above his feet. Dong-Yung looked and looked at him, so still and motionless and so gorgeously arrayed. She looked from his feet, long, slim, in black satin slippers, and close-fitting white muslin socks, to the feet of the foreign priest. His feet were huge, ugly ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... righted up and composed. His wig, which had covered his left eye, was arranged decorously in its proper place, and the gold-rimmed spectacles pressed back so that the good man could beam mildly and gratefully upon his supposed preserver. The clerical hat, however, had lost its character beyond recovery, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... not cupid's; in the same way the torch was that of the ancients, and when a medallion showed a pastoral subject, its frame of straight lines linked it to the period. Even if Cupid appeared, he was decorously ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... which a portion of the provisions for its inmates is prepared. There was a savoury smell of soup, which we could not help inhaling while we gazed on death. The cooks too were in attendance, and though they, as became them, did all in their power to look decorously dismal, well as they managed their faces, they could not so divest themselves of their professional peculiarities, as not to awaken thoughts which involuntarily turned to ludicrous or festive scenes. Their very costume was at variance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... may be shocked to hear that the service was speedily, although decorously closed; but Captain M—- was aware from the fidgeting of the ship's company, upon the capstan bars, on which they were seated, that it would be impossible to regain their attention to the service, even if he had felt inclined to proceed: and he well knew, that any worship of God in which the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Dryburgh; and the, company, having quitted their carriages, pressed eagerly towards it, Not one word was spoken; but, as if all had been under the influence of some simultaneous instinct, they decently and decorously formed themselves into two lines. The servants of the deceased, resolved that no hireling should lay hands on the coffin of their master, approached the hearse. Amongst these, the figure of the old coachman who had driven Sir Walter for so many years was peculiarly remarkable, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... obscurely—and, if he attempted to speak fast, so erroneously—that in his second sentence, when conversing with a German lady of rank, he contrived to assure her that in his humble opinion she was a ——. Hard it is to fill up the hiatus decorously; but, in fact, the word very coarsely expressed that she was no better than she should be. Which reminds us of a parallel misadventure to a German, whose colloquial English had been equally neglected. Having obtained an interview with an ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... took possession of him, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he restrained himself from bursting into a shout of laughter. As it was, he recovered himself with a mighty gulp and finished the service decorously enough. ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... and a clear conscience on his handsome face, though he was no longer young. His abundant hair, steel-grey, slightly crisped under his hat, not curling exactly, but with a becoming twist in it—clerical, yet not too clerical, a man given to no extremes, decorously churchmanlike, yet liberal and tolerant of the world. Though she was too wise to compromise her own comfort by marrying him, Mrs. Hurst felt that there was a great pleasure in making his daughters anxious about her "intentions," ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... his often pale face—he worked so hard and so far into the night; when at length they became friends, Priscilla gravely, and without any hesitation, volunteered to help him. She could copy well and clearly, and he could come into her aunt's room—it would save fires. So she helped him calmly and decorously, bending her almost austerely-handsome young head over his papers for hours on the long winter nights. It is easy to guess how the matter terminated. If ever he won success he determined to give it to ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... moment, Eeny ran up the steps, and favoured this vision of youthful bloom with a kiss, while Kate followed more decorously. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... Father Jose beheld him gravely draw his pocket-handkerchief from the basket-hilt of his rapier and apply it decorously to his eyes. "Pardon this weakness, Sir Priest," said the cavalier apologetically; "but these worthy gentlemen were ancient friends of mine, and have done me many a delicate service,—much more, perchance, than these poor sables may signify," he added, with a grim ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... threshed the matter out in a dismal conference—they had digested the bad news that they were not in for the series. If they weren't useful to me even for the Cheapside their function seemed difficult to determine, and I could only judge at first that they had come, forgivingly, decorously, to take a last leave. This made me rejoice in secret that I had little leisure for a scene; for I had placed both my other models in position together and I was pegging away at a drawing from which I ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... Castle, for the hunting season was over. A goodly company gathered from neighbouring shires, and Mistress Pen wick was the mark of all eyes in a sweeping robe of fawn that shimmered somewhat of its brocadings of blue and pink and broiderings of silver. She had decorously plaited a flounce of old and rare lace and brought it close about her shoulders and twined her mother's string of pearls about her white throat, the longer strands reaching below her waistband and caught low again upon the shoulder ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... infinitely kind, infinitely apologetic, a little tearful, never for an instant wavering in her acceptance of the future. Varvilliers took leave of me with great friendliness; there was in his air now just a hint of amusement, most decorously suppressed; he was charmingly unconscious of any possible seriousness in the position. My mother went to visit Styrian relatives. Victoria and William Adolphus had taken a villa by the seaside. I was quite alone at Artenberg, save for my faithful Vohrenlorf, and Vohrenlorf was bored to death. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... United States lit with a subdued secondary glimmer the Van Riper silver on the breakfast-table—the squat teapot and slop-bowl, the milk-pitcher, that held a quart, and the apostle-spoon in the broken loaf-sugar on the Delft plate. Abram Van Riper was decorously happy, as a New York merchant should be. In all other respects, he was pleased to think, he was what a New York merchant should be, and the word of the law and the prophets was fulfilled with him ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... respectability. My mother read the Bible to us in the morning before breakfast; Mrs. Trimmer's and Mrs. Barbauld's Scripture histories and paraphrases were taught to us; we learnt our catechism and collects, and went to church on Sunday, duly and decorously, as a matter of course. Grace was always said before and after meals by the youngest member of the family present; and I remember a quaint, old-fashioned benediction which, when my father happened to be at home at our ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... waves his hand, and every door and window, in the spacious edifice is thrown open. With a kind word for every one, a merry joke with one fair maiden, and a laughing glance at another, a cheerful nod to the young men, and a hearty shake of the hand to the old, and as he decorously salutes each old matron on the cheek, he fairly rushes into the arms of his quondam aunt, who nearly goes into hysterics with joy, (which would have been awkward, as she is stout, and has laced some,) so she thinks better of it, and cries over him, ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... in them an access of interest (we dare not say excitement), of whatever kind. Expression with them was pitched to so low a key that its changes might be compared to the slight variations in the drabs and grays in which they were clothed. Yet that there was a moderate, decorously subdued curiosity present in the minds of many of them on one of the First-days of the Ninth-month, in the year 1815, was as clearly apparent to a resident of the neighborhood as are the indications of a fire or a riot to the member of ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... irritating to Laura Wing. Important—gracious goodness, no! She might have to live with her, to hold her tongue about her; but at least she was not bound to exaggerate her significance. The young man forbore decorously to make use of the expression, but she could see that he supposed Selina to be a professional beauty and she guessed that as this product had not yet been domesticated in the western world the desire to behold it, after having read so much about it, had ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... sir, it's some one at the door," calmly announced Sims, raising his voice decorously, to be heard over the noise. "Shall I see who it is, or shall I let them ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... eighties, his wife having been by that time decorously interred in one of the first great mausoleums west of the mountains, Anthony Cardew found himself already wealthy. He owned oil wells and coal mines. His mines supplied his coke ovens with coal, and his own river boats, as well as railroads in which he was a director, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... encircled by a red band which indicated the rank of its owner. A venerable eunuch, the head of the palace servants, preceded it as an outrider, and assisted me in mounting and dismounting, while the driver in red-tasselled hat walked decorously by the side. ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... but with a purpose. For, absurd as may seem the fictions we have sported with, are they not types of many other far more serious ones which we cram down the throats of our rising generation, long after we ourselves have begun to disbelieve them? There is a conventional teaching which we decorously administer, and leave our pupils to disavow it when they can. History is still taught in our public and private schools, seasoned with all the exploded blunders of the past. Men grow up to full manhood with ideas of foreign lands as ridiculous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... shall not enjoy the spice of the denouement. In the meantime I read aloud to her, talk, work wonders in Berlin wool, and play or sing when she asks me, which is not often. In the morning we drive out, in the afternoon she enjoys her nap, and in the evening I sit decorously intent upon the Berlin wonders, but thinking all the time of you and the parlor in Bloomsbury Place, where Tod disports himself in triumphant indifference to consequences, and where the girls discuss the lingering possibilities of their ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... poor," stroking the soft delicate cheek, but the Countess interfered, still wrathful. "Master Richard, I marvel that you should let her Grace be beset by a child, who, if she cannot demean herself decorously, should have been left at home. Susan Hardwicke, I thought I had ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Dinkey and Jenny took the opportunity to push ahead. From time to time we would catch sight of them traveling earnestly on, following the trail accurately, stopping at stated intervals to rest, doing their work, conducting themselves as decorously as though drivers had stood over them with blacksnake whips. We tried a little ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... Polly, as they all filed decorously out of the "Model Farm," "how I do wish you and I could ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... except to a measure and cadence. So Queen Medea slew her children to a slow music: and King Agamemnon perished in a dying fall (to use Mr. Dryden's words): the Chorus standing by in a set attitude, and rhythmically and decorously bewailing the fates of those great crowned persons. The Muse of History hath encumbered herself with ceremony as well as her Sister of the Theatre. She too wears the mask and the cothurnus, and speaks to measure. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... Floretta leaned forward as soon as she was seated and gazed at her with astonishment, and that deepening of amiability and general sweetness which one can imagine in the face of a doll after persistent scrutiny. Ellen smiled decorously, for she was not sure how much smiling was permissible in school. When she smiled guardedly at Floretta, she was conscious of another face regarding her, twisted slightly over a shabby little shoulder covered with an ignominious blue stuff, spotted and faded. This ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... spoke indignantly, but the landlord appeared not to regard the retort. Turning to the troop, which had been decorously attentive, he ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... hale old gentleman briskly walking on, the merry child frolicking hither and thither round him, and the sturdy body-servant Ralph, without whom he never stirred, plodding after, while Keeper, the only dog allowed to follow to the sheepfolds, marched decorously along, proud of the distinction. Then she went up to Lady Archfield, who could not be perfectly easy as to the precious grandchild being left to his own devices in the cold, while Sir Philip was sure to run into a discussion with ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chamber could not be heard amidst the music and the revelry of the Louvre and the Tuileries. On the 5th of January, 1666, Philip, the Duke of Orleans, gave a magnificent ball in the palace of St. Cloud. Louis XIV. was then in deep mourning for his father-in-law. Decorously he wore the mourning dress of violet-colored velvet adopted by the court; he, however, took care so effectually to cover his mourning garments with glittering and costly gems that the color of the material ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... were happy in a boy and girl fashion, eating heartily, and, I fear, not always decorously; scrambling somewhat for the strawberries, and smacking their lips over the Sally Lunn. Meantime, it was arranged that Mr. Hamlin should inform Miss Mix that Sophy would leave school at the end of the term, only a few days hence, and then transfer herself to lodgings with some old ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... abandoned farm-houses on the hillsides; the still green dooryards on the village street where no children were playing, and the quiet little brick school-house at the turn of the road, from which a dozen half-grown boys and girls issued decorously, looking at us like ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the table, the fat fellow moved decorously from diner to diner, announcing each port of call by the subdued pop of a champagne cork muffled in his napkin. Madden shook his head when the solemn fellow bent solicitously over him. "Make mine water, Gaskin," he requested in an undertone, ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... of dignity, which was shown in his wearing stockings "footed up with another color;" that is, knit stockings in which the feet were colored differently from the legs. He also was found guilty of having jumped over the fence instead of decorously and clerically walking through the gate when going to call on one of his parishioners. Rev. Joseph Metcalf of the Old Colony was complained of in 1720 for wearing too worldly a wig. He mildly reproved and shamed the meddlesome women of ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... much troubled by the extravagances of fashion in dress and adornments; and, although conforming to some extent to prevailing modes in order to avoid singularity, which she abhorred, she always dressed neatly and decorously, and never, through the whole of her life, wore an article of jewellery simply ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... her, and all laughed without restraint, as they passed the abashed amateur of cheese making. But she, to speak Homerically, wished in that hour that the earth might gape and cover her confusion. Lord Westport and I were about the age of mademoiselle, and not much more decorously engaged, when a turn brought us full in view of a royal party coming along one of the walks at Frogmore. We were, in fact, theorizing and practically commenting on the art of throwing stones. Boys have a peculiar ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... like a shadow when he was not in attendance on his sister. He persuaded her to sit for a picture, but it was quite impossible to catch her elusive beauty. She would turn her head, change the curve of her pretty lips, allow her eyes to rove about and then let the lids drop decorously in a fashion he called a nun's face; but ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the popular fiat is announced, the Sovereign will depart from Windsor, the Life Guards will present arms to the President of the Republic, and in the twinkling of an eye, as the result of a contested election, the Monarchy of England is to be decorously carried to the tomb. This is the doctrine which Tory lords and squires are asked to proclaim with sound of trumpet as the corner-stone of their political creed. "Only so far as the people take this view of its ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... called the audience to order with some difficulty, and the rest of the performance went on quite decorously. And when the last notes of the pipes died away in the hills, Marmaduke and Trooper crawled from their hiding place and sat on the hall steps till the programme was ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... most decorously. If it were a funeral, indeed, it could hardly be less given to anything approaching hilarity. There is now and then a little conversation, but the gaps are frightful—yawning chasms of silence of the sort in which you are moved to wild thoughts of running away, for fear you may suddenly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... dignity to cast an inquiring eye on his appearance. His features are not distinguished, but he has a strong jaw and green eyes, in which a yellow light burns that we have not seen before. His dark hair, hitherto so decorously sleek, has been ruffled this way and that by wind and weather, as if they were part of the cataclysm and wanted to help his chance. His muscles must be soft and flabby still, but though they shriek aloud to him to desist, he rains lusty blows with his ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... ethics may be less strict than those which obtain about Plymouth Rock, but experience with them will prove that, however loose their own code, they carefully conform to the custom of others; that if they have any scars across their morals, they have also the tact and good taste to keep them decorously ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... movement in the pupils of the valley man's eyes. It was an expression closely correlated to laughter, but the muscles of his face were still, and he remained decorously grave. ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the sounding stairs and, while the doctor was still considering the words of his ultimatum, appeared again at the door, this time decorously on duty. ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... to my thoughts on the relations of imaginative art in all its forms with science. The subject which in the hands of the scientific student is handled decorously,—reverently, we might almost say,—becomes repulsive, shameful, and debasing in the unscrupulous manipulations of the ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to her temples. Truly the Grandmother's arrival seemed to be a catastrophe for everybody! For my own part, I stood looking from the Grandmother to the company, and back again, while Mr. Astley, as usual, remained in the background, and gazed calmly and decorously at the scene. ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... (hashamahretinue; hishmahreverence, bashfulness) which may also mean "decorously and respectfully," according ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... time, if it be true, what a witty Bostonian said, that good Americans go to Paris when they die. With all this, the book has a strange charm, so that it takes possession of you in spite of yourself. It is as though it drew away the curtain, for one slight moment, from the mysteries which "society" decorously hides,—as though he who drew the curtain stood beside it, pointing with solemn finger and silent indignation to the baseness of which he gives you a glimpse. Yet even here the good carries the day, and that in no maudlin way, but because the true ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... playing her part as hostess with grace, and alleviating with kindness the bitterness of her compulsory guests. On the evening of Ferdinand's arrival a handsome dinner was given at the chateau where the court was lodged, and the visiting prince was most decorously treated. His train grew more joyous and hopeful as the hours passed, although they noted that the Emperor did not address his guest as king. Still, that was a slight matter, and they returned in gaiety to their poor lodgings—all but one: Canon Escoiquiz had ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... That leaned against a Druid oak, his pipe Pendent beneath his chin—a double one— (Meaning the pipe); reluctant was his breath, For he had mingled in the Morris dance And rested blown; but damsels in their teens, All decorous and decorously clad, Their very ankles hardly visible, Recalled his motions; while, for chaperon, Good Mrs. Grundy up ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... the gentlemen of the party he has deserted never take umbrage in the same way as the vulgar dogs below the gangway; so it is in the world. The people who must meet, must dine together, sit side by side at flower-shows and garden-parties, always manage to do their hatreds decorously, and only pay off their dislikes by instalments. If Lady Maude were to receive my wife at all, it would be with a most winning politeness. All her malevolence would limit itself to making the supposed underbred woman commit ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Kyrkegrim. His duty is to keep the church clean, and to scatter the marsh-marigold flowers on the floor before service. He also keeps order in the congregation, pinches those who fall asleep, cuffs irreverent boys, and hustles mothers with crying children out of church as quickly and decorously as possible. ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the door was decorously closed, and no one visible but a young man, who snatched something out of the road, and marched away again, whistling with more vigor of tone than accuracy of tune, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Norma, to that troubled brain that was struggling among closing shadows, nearer and nearer every slow clocktick to the end. How loathsome it must be to the prisoned spirit, this handsome, stifling room, this army of maids and nurses and doctors so decorously resigned to facing the last scene of all. Why, the poorest child in the city to-night, healthily asleep in some unspeakable makeshift for a bed, possessed what all the Melrose money could not buy for this ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... accustomed first to tolerate philosophy at least as a necessary evil, and ere long to seek for the Roman religion, which in its simplicity was no longer tenable, a support in foreign philosophy—a support which no doubt ruined it as faith, but in return at any rate allowed the man of culture decorously to retain in some measure the names and forms of the popular creed. But this support could neither be Euhemerism, nor the system of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... twinges of conscience that his life was misspent? He thought his life a most lucky and reputable one. He had a share in a good business, and felt that he could increase it. Some day he would marry a good match, with a good fortune; meanwhile he could take his pleasure decorously, and sow his wild oats as some of the young Londoners sow them, not broadcast after the fashion of careless scatter-brained youth, but trimly and neatly, in quiet places, where the crop can come up unobserved, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so much accurate anticipation were at last arranged and the children sat decorously attentive, their faces turned curiously toward the strange lady with the fascinating plumes in ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... consideration and respect. Nan makes the most of her vacations, while the neighbors are all glad to see her come back, and some of them are much amused because in summer she still clings to her childish impatience at wearing any head covering, and no matter how much Marilla admires the hat which is decorously worn to church every Sunday morning, it is hardly seen again, except by chance, during the week, and the brown hair is sure to be faded a little before the summer sunshine is past. Nan goes about visiting when she feels inclined, and seems surprisingly unchanged as she seats ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... as you see." Here the old lady displayed a small foot in a black silk stocking and delicate slipper, with the artless pride a woman feels, at any age, in one of her best points. The girls gratified her by a murmur of admiration, and, decorously readjusting the folds of her gown, she went on with the most romantic episode of ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... listener than when she talked to her husband. As she now whisked about her room in her bed-gown with an activity not predicable of her age and shape, and finally plunged under the covering and drew it up to her chin with one hand while she pressed it out decorously over her person with the other, she kept up a rapid flow of lamentation and conjecture. "I do suppose he'll be right back with her before I'm half ready; and what the man was thinkin' of to do such a thing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Galloways were genial and casual enough. So long as Lady Margaret did not take the arm of that adventurer O'Brien, her father was quite satisfied; and she had not done so, she had decorously gone in with Dr. Simon. Nevertheless, old Lord Galloway was restless and almost rude. He was diplomatic enough during dinner, but when, over the cigars, three of the younger men—Simon the doctor, Brown the priest, and the detrimental O'Brien, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... his command. But he was hospitable, charitable, and by no means of himself disposed to proceed with severity against any one. In short, he would in other times have slumbered out his term of preferment with as much credit as any other "purple Abbot," who lived easily, but at the same time decorously—slept soundly, and did not ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... flashed through the mind of every Democratic member that that death in the Chesapeake had brought a crisis in the war between Bassett and Thatcher. In due course the assembly, convened in joint session, would mourn decorously the death of a statesman who had long and honorably represented the old Hoosier State in the greatest tribunal on earth; and his passing would be feelingly referred to in sonorous phrases as an untoward event, a ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... and decorously (there can be no harm in repeating this precept), masticate your food thoroughly, and beware ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... the government while it was loading him with favours. He now supported it, though it requited his support with contumely. He perfectly understood his own interest; he had perfect command of his temper; he endured decorously the hardships of his present situation, and contented himself by looking forward to a reversion which would amply repay him for a few years of patience. He did not indeed cease to correspond with the Court of Saint Germains; but the correspondence gradually became more and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and leaned the right shoulder, instead of the left, against the gable. It was a tremendous expenditure of energy; and I am quite sure it demanded a drink. And I, feeling from these indications that something unusual was at hand, drew back my window curtains, and stared decorously at the passing wonder. It was a long van, drawn by two horses, which sweated and panted under the whip of their driver. It was painted a dark green; and in gold letters that glittered on the green, I read ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... at length by the footsteps of the mourners returning. They went down the hill almost as decorously as they had gone up. Flo stepped ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... general knew what was their real interest, if they could guess with what a charm even the appearance of modesty invests its possessor, they would dress decorously from mere self-love, if not from principle. The designing would assume modesty as an artifice; the coquette would adopt it as an allurement; the pure as her appropriate attraction; and the voluptuous as the most infallible ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... it may be admitted that our government was more decorously administered one hundred years ago, if our national housekeeping of to-day is further removed from honest business principles, and therefore is more costly, both morally and financially, than that of any other Christian nation, it is no less true that the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... that, just when Maxfield was preparing in a quiet way to celebrate the coming of age of the heir; just as the gloom which had followed on Captain Oliphant's tragic death was beginning to lift a little and allow Tom and Jill decorously to think of football; just as Rosalind was beginning to make up her mind that she was not destined for ever to teach the elements of art and science to the Vicarage children; just when everything seemed to be settling down for the last scene of the drama, Roger and his ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... added, showing by cumulative evidence that among the ancient people whose religion was good enough for us to adopt and improve, dancing was a polite and proper accomplishment, although not always decorously executed on ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... attack; all the shields of the line glittered with their high polish, and mingled their splendour with the dark red of the purple mantles, which were meant both to adorn the combatant, and to conceal the blood of the wounded; to fall well and decorously being an incentive the more to the most heroic valour. The conduct of the Spartans in battle denotes a high and noble disposition, which rejected all the extremes of brutal rage. The pursuit of the enemy ceased when the victory was completed; and after the signal ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... in Tom's eye, in Tom's tone, that somehow over-awed Mr. Pierce; and he walked sheepishly to his own place. There was no mistaking that Channing would make a firm senior. The boys proceeded, two and two, decorously through the cloisters, snatching off their trenchers as they entered the college gates. Tom and Huntley walked last, Tom bearing the keys. The choir gained, the two branched off right and left, Huntley placing himself at the head of the boys ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... went decorously down in prayer-time, but the tail-feathers ran up perker than ever, from the posture; Leslie saw this, because she had lifted her own head and unclosed her eyes in a self-indignant honesty, when she found on what ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Gazette, which the author playfully reclaims in a note from their vagabond and precarious existence in the corners of newspapers —gathering his children from wanderings in lanes and alleys, and introducing them decorously to the world. A few later poems were added, and these, with the Hyperion, showed a new and distinctive literary talent. In both of these volumes there is the purity of spirit, the elegance of form, the romantic tone, the airy grace, which were already associated with Longfellow's name. But there ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... face was a study—astonishment, indignation and fun each struggling for the mastery. At last his face broadened, and his eyes twinkled, and he leaned back in his seat and indulged in a long, loud, hearty laugh. Tode's eyes twinkled, but he waited decorously ...
— Three People • Pansy
... tied with blue ribbons. But the little ones do not look as if they needed a rod much. They are cheerful, tidy little people, although many of them come from poor homes. In the middle of the morning they have a slice of rye bread, which they eat decorously at table on wooden platters. They can buy milk to drink with the bread for 5 pf., and they dine in school for 10 pf. They play the usual Kindergarten games in the usual systematised mechanical fashion, and they study Nature in ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... find out anything about them except by devoting years to the most exhausting first-hand study, involving once more an endless number of the most unpleasant contacts? No, give me the past. It doesn't change; it's all there in black and white, and you can get to know about it comfortably and decorously and, above all, privately—by reading. By reading I know a great deal of Caesar Borgia, of St. Francis, of Dr. Johnson; a few weeks have made me thoroughly acquainted with these interesting characters, and I have ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... this we shall duly come to expect: but we shall at the same time consider the treatise thus prepared as something to which it is our duty to listen without restlessness for half an hour or three quarters, but which, when that duty has been decorously performed, we may dismiss from our minds in happy confidence of being provided with another when next it shall be necessary. But if once we begin to regard the preacher, whatever his faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... intervals, he was seen to be in the charge of a very dark and very silent little man, with intensely black eyes and mustache, clad in raven hues from his head to the delicate feet on which he wore patent-leather shoes. With him the amigo walked gravely up and down the deck, and behaved decorously at table; and we could not reconcile the apparent affection between the two with a theory we had that the amigo had been found impossible in his own country, and had been sent out of Ecuador by a decree of ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... and some one made a signal to Thayer. Simply as a boy, and with a boyish tenderness, he sang the little hymn they had chosen for him. Each man and woman who listened, felt gentler and nobler for his song; but only Beatrix, shut decorously in the room upstairs, away from her dead, realized that, for the passing hour, Thayer had annulled the passion and the pain of those last weeks, and had gone back again to the old, pitiful, protecting love which for years had ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... below, the heart of Charming Billy Boyle beat unsteadily under the left pocket of his soft, cream-colored silk shirt, and the cheeks of him glowed red under the coppery tan. Dill was not the sort of man who loves fast riding and they ambled along quite decorously—"like we was headed for prayer-meeting with a singing-book under each elbow," thought Billy, secretly resentful ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... them from her bedroom window as they walked down the path where she had gone the evening before, decorously side by side, Kate holding her light muslin frock back from the dew on the hedges. She wondered if it was because Kate had more respect for David than for Captain Leavenworth that she never seemed to treat him ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... The stranger cats always decorously departed after dinner was over, leaving their hospitable entertainer, no doubt, with such grateful demonstrations as might be dictated by ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... and poise of well born gentlemen (the Harry manner, in fact) completely without self consciousness. I suppose they get drunk sometimes, and probably there are riotous scenes here, but I can only tell you of what we saw, and that was people happy, and behaving as decorously ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... health and amity to each other. This request having been foreseen was immediately complied with, and a great silver loving-cup with two handles and filled with a compound of Holland gin, sugar, and spice, with a moderate amount of water, was brought and presented to the governor who tasted decorously, and then passed it to the sachem, who seizing both handles carried it to his mouth and drank with an air of stern determination, as one who would not allow personal distaste to interfere with public obligations. The cup was then passed to the other guests, and replenished more ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... him, the whole thing was a lie and an impossibility.' The upper-class audiences who listened to Lucian's readings, taking his points with quiet smiles instead of the loud applause given to the rhetorician, must have been something like that which listens decorously to an Extension lecturer. When Lucian bids us mark 'how many there are who once were but cyphers, but whom words have raised to fame and opulence, ay, and to noble lineage too,' we remember not only Gibbon's remark about the very Herodes Atticus of whom ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... well up from the ground.' A well-dressed man, a well-dressed woman, is a beautiful sight. Not over- dressed; not dressed so as to call everybody's attention to their dress; but dressed decorously, becomingly, tastefully. Each several piece well fitted on, and all of a piece, till it all looks as if it had grown by nature itself upon the well-dressed wearer. Be like him—be like her—so runs the third head of the etiquette-card. Be not slovenly and disorderly and unseemly in your livery. ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... the bullying and insolence of the democratic party in 1831, when the dying lion made his last dash at what he regarded as the foes of the Constitution. Doubtless he held that the mob, or, as we more decorously say, the residuum, were in some sense the enemies of true freedom. "I cannot read in history," he writes once to Mr. Laidlaw, "of any free State which has been brought to slavery till the rascal and ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... jacket, and one squire lumbered off the platform.) But he held on, warming with a theme that hitherto had hardly interested him. His speeches were above the heads of his peasant audiences; but they were a more sensitive harp to play on than the average Anglo-Saxon audience. Many women wept, only decorously, as he outlined their influence in a reformed village, a purified Principality. The men applauded frantically because, despite some prudent reserves, there seemed to be a promise of revolt in his suggestions. David felt the electric thrill of the orator in harmony with his audience; who ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... temporary booths, fills its corners with shows, sells confetti until the pedestrian swims in it—and then whoops it up for a week. All around, north, south, east, west, every other street is jet-black, sleeping decorously, ignoring utterly that blare of color, that blaze of light, that boom of noise around the corner. They should worry—they're going to have a carnival themselves next week. Apropos, a San Francisco paper opened its story of one of these affairs with ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... pew was the second in front of the Baxters in the same wing, and Patty, seated decorously but unwillingly beside her father, was impatiently awaiting the entrance of the family, knowing that Mark would be with them if he had returned from Boston. Timothy Grant, the parish clerk, had the pew in between, and afforded a most edifying spectacle to the community, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... irreverently from one grave to another; until, coming to the broad, flat, armorial tombstone of a departed worthy,—perhaps of Isaac Johnson himself,—she began to dance upon it. In reply to her mother's command and entreaty that she would behave more decorously, little Pearl paused to gather the prickly burrs from a tall burdock which grew beside the tomb. Taking a handful of these, she arranged them along the lines of the scarlet letter that decorated the maternal bosom, to which the burrs, as ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there were more. Names occur to all of us, each of which stands in our mind for someone who, as we put it, was a man of himself. All Churches have had such men; our own was rich in them. To-day, they tell us, we are all in real danger of becoming decorously, decently, conventionally alike. We have conceived a typical preacher and we try to approximate to our conception; a typical sermon, and we try to preach it. "He is a typical curate," "a typical Presbyterian minister," "a typical ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... the shape of brother, spouse, or courier, ordered their outgoings and incomings; but liberty the most entire was theirs, and they enjoyed it heartily. Wisely and well too; for, though off the grand route, they behaved themselves in public as decorously as if the eyes of all prim Boston were upon them, and proved by their triumphant success, that the unprotected might go where they liked, if they conducted themselves with the courtesy and ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... said, "will you bring me such ill winded pirns to ravel out? How often must I tell you, and especially both you, Ludovic Lesly, and you, Archie Cunningham, that the foreign soldier should bear himself modestly and decorously towards the people of the country if you would not have the whole dogs of the town at your heels? However, if you must have a bargain [a quarrel, videlicet. S.], I would rather it were with that loon ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Italians there. We came to Portchester along a lovely, shady road, and it's really an old place, though it looks new. We had a river to cross named after an Indian village jokingly called "Bay Rum," but they've decorously altered it to Byram; and on its other side we were in Connecticut, which Jack pronounces precisely as ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... the sleeping new baby on her comfortable lap, she was thinking of this and feeling glad that poor Jem's widow and children were so well provided for. It would be highly respectable and proper. The ardour of Mr. Jenkinson would not interfere with his waiting until Henrietta's weeds could be decorously laid aside and then the family would be joyfully established in his well-furnished and decent house. During his probation he would visit Henrietta and bring presents to the children and unostentatiously protect them all and "do" ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... said King, with such an angelic expression on his face that Mrs. Maynard felt sure he was in a specially roguish mood; and though she thought her children were the dearest in the world, yet she knew they had a propensity for getting into mischief just when she wanted them to act most decorously. ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... peaceful yard of graves. The men had all donned their coats and exchanged field hats for stiff, uncomfortable, straight-brimmed straw, and their wives still wore the Sewing Circle gala attire. The older children walked decorously along, each group in wake of the heads of their own family, though Buck Peavey had managed to annex himself to the ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... sat down and read the brotherly tribute in the new issue of The Hornet, and Xoa's eyes glistened behind her spectacles, though she decorously deplored the heat of the sting dealt by Usial. Frank, watching her efforts to hide mirth and display womanly concern at this distressing affair between brothers, forgot some of his own troubles in his ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... Goodchum. did not execute his threat; instead we walked along decorously in the direction of the nearest ferns, while Harold and aunt Helen followed, the latter carrying a sunbonnet ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... had a specimen of the precocious colonist of 1845. The table of the captain of the boat, like that of his respected father, was good and decorously conducted, and there were several ladies and some most respectable travelled Americans at dinner. A very young gentleman, who boasted how much he had lost at the races, how much they had gambled, and how much they drank of champagne the night before—champagne, by the by, is thought a very ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... slight tremor in her voice, and, Roger could almost have sworn, tears in her eyes. The officers averted their eyes decorously, while Roger gazed at her with aloof impersonality, simply curious. He watched her score her point and wondered just how far she intended to pursue the advantage. What was her plan? Was she, after all, technically ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Linkinwater, the horse, whose self-will had increased with his years, soon made the discovery that he for the nonce held the reins of power; and when they reached Roaring Brook, instead of proceeding decorously across the bridge, he persisted in descending a somewhat steep bank and fording the stream. Half-way across, he found the coolness of the water so agreeable that he decided to enjoy it ad libitum. No expostulations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... those things, you know; there 's no need of it, and I don't think they 'd cure my worrying," said Fanny, languidly feeding Ashputtel, who sat decorously beside her, at the table, winking at ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... were against him, perhaps afraid of him, and on them the Medici relied. For a year he was forbidden to leave Florentine territory, and for a while was excluded from the Palazzo. Later his name was found in a list of Anti-Medicean conspirators. He was arrested and decorously tortured with six turns of the rack, and then liberated ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... been asked what his real inmost feelings about his niece were at the moment, he would have been at some difficulty to express them decorously. She was back at fifteen—a particularly exasperating child of fifteen. Her great eyes, with their mock gravity, were fixed on his irritated face. He would have agreed absolutely with Mr Cholderton's estimate of the evil in her, and ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... was made, not on a tempestuous evening in the winter time, but on a quiet Sunday afternoon toward the end of September. The day was sunny and the streets were full of strollers moving along decorously beneath the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... Father Jose beheld him gravely draw his pocket-handkerchief from the basket-hilt of his rapier, and apply it decorously to ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... the Incarnation. Hilda was convinced that a decent and orderly life rested on certain agreements and conclusions in respect to marriage and class and conduct, and that these agreements and conclusions were admirably stated in the Book of Common Prayer, and most ably and decorously advocated from the pulpit of St. John's. She would have said that she believed the agreements and conclusions because of the Prayer Book, but in fact she had primarily given in her allegiance to a social system, and supported the Prayer ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... looked forward to it and urged the author to finish it. The work gradually grew into the most voluminous of Erasmus's original writings: a forest of a work, operis sylvam, he calls it himself. In four books he treated his subject, the art of preaching well and decorously, with an inexhaustible abundance of examples, illustrations, schemes, etc. But was it possible that a work, conceived already by the Erasmus of 1519, and upon which he had been so long engaged, while he himself had gradually ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... morning, Dutch House was decorously dull to the street; the doors to the bar closed, the lights within low and drowsy; even the side door, giving access to the "restaurant," was closed much of the time—when, that is to say, it wasn't swinging to admit an intermittent ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... narrow spars that were lashed on each side of the hatchway, he could see a group of men squatting in a circle around a wooden tray piled up with rice, which stood on the just swept deck. The dark-faced, soft-eyed silent men, squatting on their hams, fed decorously with an earnestness that ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... rough simplicity is gone, and instead of it there is a tone of sentiment which is almost mawkish. Giants, dragons, and angelic champions carry us into a spurious fairy land, where the knight-errant is a preacher in disguise. Fair ladies and love matches, however decorously chastened, suit ill with the sternness of the mortal conflict between the soul and sin. Christiana and her children are tolerated for the pilgrim's sake to whom they belong. Had they appealed to our interest ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... Thornton and Lawyer Ed having leaped into a cab, and driven furiously across the town, were now thundering down Main Street. They headed off the truant Old Boys, and drove them back to the wharf to be received decorously and listen to the welcoming address. As they had dashed past the Presbyterian church at a mad gallop, every one became alarmed and the news spread that a dreadful disaster had happened to the Inverness. But ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... had been ravaged, all the Chautauqua lecturers were hoarse, industry was at a standstill, misery and despair were widespread. Even the indomitable Chuff himself was a little nonplussed. Better (he thought) one man indubitably, decorously, publicly, and legally drunk, than millions of citizens privily attempting to cajole raisins and ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... man with a prophetic instinct, who, while others passed blindly by, picked up things because they might come in useful some day—and they always did. Finally, the Q.-B. was companionable. He could tell a good story, and make merry decorously, as befitted ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... Hades, to have commenced regular contributor to your journal; so great was his admiration of you, and also of the terms which you offer to the literary world. As a learned Orientalist, you could not decorously have rejected him; and yet, once admitted, he would have beggared you before any means could have been discovered by the learned for putting a stop to him. [Greek Text: Aperantologia] was his forte; upon this ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... was keenly but decorously contested. The newly-appointed Colonial Secretary was personally popular, while the Government to which he adhered was distinctly unpopular, and there was some expectancy that the majority of four hundred, obtained at the last election, would be altogether wiped ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... puzzling over this when they turned through a gateway, imposing with its tangle of wrought iron and gilt, and at a decorously reduced speed crinkled up a wide drive to the vast pile of gray stone ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... well-known undertaker's, and, stepping in, felt more than ever the borderland-sense. In this silent house of sadness men stepped quietly, gravely, decorously, and served you with courteous sympathy. What was the name of the man who rowed his boat on the River Styx? Yes! Charon! These wise-eyed grave men who continually plied their oars between two worlds! How did they look on life? Were they hardened to their task? Was their gentle gravity all acting? ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the officers been more confiding in their records, an intimate view of the camp life might have been disclosed to posterity. For example, judging from McKendry's journal alone, Sunday, August 1, was decorously uneventful. He has ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... explained the girl, "to be loved decorously. I do not care to be pawed or clawed or crumpled. After we have been married for fifteen or twenty years and are really ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Araminta Vining, as he had previously settled with her father, and found her to his vast relief a very personable girl. She had in consequence a host of admirers, pre-eminent among whom was young Robert Minifie of Milanor. Mr. Wycherley, a noted stickler for etiquette, decorously made bold to question Mr. Minifie's taste in a dispute concerning waistcoats. A duel was decorously arranged and these two met upon the narrow ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... not so with the pines. They change gowns so decorously and the new one is so like the old in its simple lines and perfect good taste that we are unaware of the transition. There is a perfection of dignity and serenity about a free-grown pasture pine that I find equalled in no other tree. These ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... was Sunday. And as he listened to the bells ringing, and watched the townspeople, great and small, going decorously up the street in their best clothes to church—most of them he recognised, and among them Elizabeth's old aunt going up by herself, with her psalm-book and her white folded handkerchief in her hand—an indescribable feeling came over ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... has become at once an instinct, a principle and a fashion. Richardson in his "Pamela" did a revolutionary thing in making a kitchen wench his heroine; English fiction had previously assumed that for its polite audience only the fortunes of Algernon and Angelina could be followed decorously and give fit pleasure. His innovation, symptomatic of the time, by no means pleased an aristocratic on-looker like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who wrote to a friend: "The confounding of all ranks and making a jest of order has long been growing in England; and I perceive by ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... the shaded candlelight, in the death chamber of the old clergyman. Natural connections he had none. But there was the decorously grave, though unmoved physician, seeking only to mitigate the last pangs of the patient whom he could not save. There were the deacons, and other eminently pious members of his church. There, also, was the Reverend Mr. Clark, of Westbury, a young and zealous divine, who had ridden ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... things—silly jokes, sentiments as though I were proposing a toast, snatches of ballads, personal abuse even against some member of my class. And then in a moment my brain would clear again, and my lecture would proceed decorously to the end. No wonder that my conduct has been the talk of the colleges. No wonder that the University Senate has been compelled to take official notice of such a scandal. Oh, that ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... their selection from the middle class, as a security of the soundness and disinterestedness of their judgments. Perhaps Gracchus himself was the victim of this hope, and believed that the scourge of the nobility which he had placed in the hands of the knights, might at least be decorously wielded. The judgment of the after-world varied as to the mode in which they exercised their power. Cicero, in advocating the claims of the order to a renewed tenure of authority, could urge that during their possession of the courts for nearly fifty years, their ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Hugh. Then openly, yet decorously, "Ahem!" she said as they lapsed into waiting attitudes. But the mate was not to be ahemmed, and while he hearkened on to the critic she could do no better than hammer the small of her back and smooth into it ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... immediately before him; a party at whist; two cream-faced, giddy, unpolished youths, the one in a red cravat, the other in a green, opposed to two bland, grave, handsome, self-possessed men of middle age, decorously dressed in a sort of professional black, and apparently doctors of some eminence in ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... and cheered and cheered, and waved their little pans and cups and napkins. And all went by as decorously and in as orderly a fashion as many thousands of happy cheering children could be expected to, until suddenly from the grass an astonished rabbit leaped out and started down the track. And then five thousand of these children broke from the ranks and ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... as though he had dropped in from across the way for a cigarette and a cup of tea. And I played up to that pose by having Struthers wheel the tea-wagon out into the patio, where we gathered about it in a semicircle, as decorously as though we were sitting in a curate's garden to talk over the program for the next meeting ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer |
