"Gossip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... parties came into camp with reports of forays as far as the suburbs of Philadelphia, twenty miles away. Spies, disguised as farmers, returned with stories of visits into the heart of the capital city held by the enemy. This gossip and information, Which the young sentinel picked up bit by bit, he pieced together to make a picture of an invincible, veteran British army, waiting to fall upon the huddled mob of "rebels" at Valley Forge, and sweep them away like chaff. He heard it over and over again, that the Hessians, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... gossip headquarters of the world. Some years ago the whole town was invaded by a mania for anonymous letter writing, and when the smoke had cleared away few ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... are to conclude—as seems reasonable—that there was no gossip current in Rome of the courtesans' supper and the rest, we may assume that there was no knowledge in Rome of such matters; for with knowledge silence would have been impossible. So much being admitted, ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... What mean'st thou Aron? Wherefore did'st thou this? Aron. O Lord sir, 'tis a deed of pollicie? Shall she liue to betray this guilt of our's: A long tongu'd babling Gossip? No Lords no: And now be it knowne to you my full intent. Not farre, one Muliteus my Country-man His wife but yesternight was brought to bed, His childe is like to her, faire as you are: Goe packe with them, and giue the mother gold, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... [Laughing.] Ha, ha! you bluster well. Upon my life, You have the tilt-yard jargon to a breath. Pepe, if I should smite you on the cheek— Thus, gossip, thus—[Strikes him.] what ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... very fact of living in isolated little communities of their own, are somewhat prone to gossip over purely garrison and regimental affairs. So some of the story would always have clung about Sergeant Overton's reputation among his ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... pleasant and agreeable to-day for the things that will prove best for us in the end. There is always temptation to sacrifice future good for present pleasure; to put off reading to a more convenient season, while we enjoy idle amusements or waste the time in gossip or ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... simple. When I visit people whom I like, such as Madame de Sallus and yourself, I do not expect to meet the Paris that flutters from house to house in the evening, gossiping and scandalizing. I have had my experience of gossip and tittle-tattle. It needs only one of these talkative dames or men to take away all the pleasure there is for me in visiting the lady on whom I happen to have called. Sometimes when I am anchored perforce upon my seat, I feel lost; I do not know how to get away. I have to ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... into Anne's ears—swinging her parasol to and fro, and looking as if the merest gossip was dropping from her lips—with the dexterity which rarely fails a woman when she is called on to assist a deception in which her own interests are concerned. Cleverly as it had been done, however, Geoffrey's inveterate distrust was stirred into action by it. Blanche ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... gossip that even Mademoiselle d'Ogeron, the Governor's daughter, had been caught in the snare of his wild attractiveness, and that Levasseur had gone the length of audacity of asking her hand in marriage of her father. M. d'Ogeron had made him ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... and retired, bewildered by such gossip. When he awoke, the agony of his thoughts about Maria had become still more painful. When should he see Louise again? Would her reply be favorable? In spite of the fine autumn morning his heart was troubled, and he felt that he had no courage. His administrative work had never seemed more ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... bit of gossip, to the effect that the old gentleman had moved to another tree nearer to Farmer Green's cornfield. So Dickie wanted to lose no time. He was afraid that if he waited, some brisk member of the Squirrel family would settle himself in Mr. ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... a volley at the unsuspecting workmen he crossed the canyon to where a cub engineer was peering through a transit. The superintendent had overheard a scrap of gossip among the staff one evening before Weir's arrival when they were discussing the advent of the ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... that the Prince had given several striking reasons for the Lady Sara's interest in Robert Orange. His Excellency, in so acting, may not have been aware that he was pouring such confidences into the ear of a jealous man, but he wished to divert gossip from himself, and he was becoming afraid lest his intimacy with the brilliant, dangerous girl might give rise to criticism. "She talks and writes incessantly about Orange," he had said; "what a marriage it would be! I hope it may be ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... has recently been made a Baron. Parliament being over, the Count has left for the southern Island to inform the ancestors of his first wife, who are buried there, of the important item of family gossip. The oldest liberal statesman of aristocratic descent, who was quite intimate with the late Emperor, won't go to the annual meeting to celebrate the granting of the Constitution by the late Emperor because he is so disgusted that no more progress has been made in constitutionalism, ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... freethinking, expressed in 'Jane Eyre' are likely to suit a model governess or schoolmistress; and it amuses me to consider them in that particular relation. Your account falls like dew upon the parched curiosity of some of our friends here, to whom (as mere gossip, which did not leave you responsible) I couldn't resist the temptation of communicating it. People are so curious—even here among the Raffaels—about this particular authorship, yet nobody seems to have read 'Shirley'; we are too slow in getting new ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... positive stipulation that France and England were not to be alluded to in the event of the compliance of the Confederate Govt.[354]," he wrote Lyons on August 16. But he failed to take account either of the penetrating power of mouth-to-mouth gossip or of the efficacy of Seward's secret agents. On this same day, August 16, Lyons reported the arrest in New York, on the fourteenth, of one Robert Mure, just as he was about to take passage for Liverpool carrying a sealed bag from the Charleston consulate to ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... just touch upon two other persons whom I have mentioned, and then bring this long letter to a close. These are Mrs. Wilson and her daughter. The former was the widow of a substantial farmer, a narrow-minded, tattling old gossip, whose character is not worth describing. She had two sons, Robert, a rough countrified farmer, and Richard, a retiring, studious young man, who was studying the classics with the vicar's assistance, preparing for college, with a ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... spirit it was a full life without joy or recompense. A Letter from Charley Hines, a classmate who lived at Stillwater, which arrived after Peter had endured six weeks of Constantinople, released him from boredom and gave life a real interest. It was a letter full of gossip intended to amuse. One paragraph failed of its purpose. It read: "Old man Gilman has got the sack. The chancellor offered him up as a sacrifice to your father, and because he was unwise enough to flunk ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... household was so demoralized by the grim gossip of the occasion that Jem and I were accused of being unable to amuse ourselves, and of listening to our elders. It was perhaps fortunate for us that a favourite puppy died the day before the funeral, and gave us the opportunity ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... "An upright man is a magnificent thing, I grant you; but, on the other hand, you must admit that virtue is a divinity who may indulge in a scrap of gossip now and then in ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... wife, he writes: "Nothing but miserable trifles do these people trouble themselves about. They strike me as infinitely more ridiculous with their important ponderosity concerning the gathered rags of gossip, than even a member of the Second Chamber of Berlin in the full consciousness of his dignity.... The men of the minor States are mostly mere caricatures of periwig diplomatists, who at once put on their official visage if I merely beg of them a light ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... used to stand on the bridge and point at the shrunken rapids, and stop their ears to exclude that horrible emptiness. Till a violent thunderstorm broke up the drought, and the river came down roaring; and the next day all Aber-Aydyr was able to gossip again ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... Himself. Therefore, for love of His will, even if I had no sympathy with you, Mrs. Faber, I should feel bound to help you. As you can not believe me interested in yourself, I must tell you that to betray your secret for the satisfaction of a love of gossip, would be to sin against my highest joy, against my own hope, against the heart of God, from which your being and mine draws the life of its ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... at Munich, was more diffused. Here she was assured that she could gratify her insatiable appetite at any moment. She saw that the manners excused her; the laws guaranteed the unfaithful wife, and religion screened her; that the social atmosphere, despite slander and gossip, enveloped and preserved her; in short, it was clear that to a creature in whom wickedness developed like a plant in a hot-house, the freedom society accorded her was as delicious as that given by her husband in his trust and ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... bad headache. I told them that I had asked the young theologian to supper, and invited the girls and the syndic to come too; but, as I had foreseen, the latter would not hear of their going as it would give rise to gossip. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... glasses drained; "But ah! in luckless hour, this last December, "I wrote a book,[4] and Colburn dubbed me 'Member'— "'Member of Brooks's!'—oh Promethean puff, "To what wilt thou exalt even kitchen-stuff! "With crumbs of gossip, caught from dining wits, "And half-heard jokes, bequeathed, like half-chewed bits, "To be, each night, the waiter's perquisites;— "With such ingredients served up oft before, "But with fresh fudge and fiction garnisht o'er, "I managed for some weeks to dose the town, "Till fresh ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... are not known to us; Crown-Prince's we have in part seen. He has decided to accept his fate without a murmur farther. Against his poor Bride or her qualities not a word more. In the Schloss of Berlin, amid such tempests of female gossip (Mamma still secretly corresponding with England), he has to be very reserved, on this head especially. It is understood he did not, in his heart, nearly so much dislike the insipid Princess as he wished Papa ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... twenty-four hours after you," said Cornish, as he bade Joan good-bye at the station. "And you need believe no rumours and fear no gossip. If people ask impertinent questions, refer ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... mentions an occurrence, we may too surely rely on the truth of it; he is not a man to spread mischief. Are you unaware that he met Captain Beauchamp at the chateau of the marquise? The whole story was acted under his eyes. He had only to take up his pen. Generally he favours me with his French gossip. I suppose there were circumstances in this affair more suitable to Palmet than to me. He wrote a description of Madame de Rouaillout that set Palmet strutting about for an hour. I have no doubt she must be a very beautiful ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wharf, and is an extensive cotton-broker, factors, we call them here—and he owns a large plantation of niggers on Pee-Dee; you must visit our plantation. Captain, certain! before you leave the city. But you mustn't pay much attention to the gossip you'll hear about the city. I pledge you my honor, sir, it don't amount to any thing, nor has it any ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... announced—"whoso discovers that grief comes from affection, will retire into the jungles and there remain." Tiberius had made the discovery. The jungles he selected were the gardens by the sea. And in those gardens, gossip represented him devising new forms of old vice. On the subject every doubt is permissible, and even otherwise, morality then existed in but one form, one which the entire nation observed, wholly, absolutely; that form was patriotism. Chastity was expected of the vestal, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... corruptions of the Spanish comadre and compadre, which have an origin analogous to the English "gossip" in its original meaning of "sponsor in baptism." In the Philippines these words are used among the simpler folk as familiar forms ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... is there to continue the chronicle?—save to assure the modern reader of this old-time story that everything happily came about as foreshadowed in the gossip we have just related, and that the after-fortunes of the four happy people who took that early wedding journey on the St. Lawrence were as bright as those of the happiest Canadian bride and bridegroom that have ever ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... Robert and Arthur did devour the ill-printed provincial news-sheet issuing from the obscure Irish country town, and burning all through with political partisanship! Luckily Argent had the last received copy in his pocket, which detailed all the gossip of the election, with the familiar names, and ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... contrasted very favourably in English opinion to that of the English minister. Earl Clarendon and Lord Palmerston held back from the British parliament and public a correct knowledge of the facts, until it transpired, through Parisian gossip, that the French, English, and Austrian ministers were willing to accept peace on the condition of Russia and the allies keeping an equal naval armament in the Black Sea. The way in which Austria had hoodwinked the Western negotiators, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... introductory question of the poet. And the answer of the ladies makes us aware that they are fresh from larking in Ireland, and in France. A glorious spree they had; lots of fun; and laughter a discretion. At all times gratus puell risus ab angulo; so that we listen to their little gossip with interest. They had been setting men, it seems, by the ears; and the drollest little atrocities they do certainly report. Not but we have seen better in the Nenagh paper, so far as Ireland is concerned. But the pet little joke was in La Vendee. Miss Famine, who is the girl for our money, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Majesty as mortal seldom was. Need he fear their new Hotham, then? Does not fear Hotham, not he him, being a man so careful of truth in his news. Dare not, however, now send any intelligence about the Royal Family here; Prussian Majesty having ordered him not to write gossip like a spiteful woman: What is he to do? Instruct him, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... canopy reserved for the spoiled darlings of fortune,—that helplessness might have become querulous. I thought of poor Ellen Bolding and her silken shoes. Fanny Trevanion seemed to have come into the world with silk shoes,—not to walk where there was a stone or a brier. I heard something, in the gossip of those around, that confirmed this view of Lady Castleton's character, while it deepened my admiration of her lord, and showed me how wise had been her choice, and how resolutely he had prepared himself to vindicate his own. One evening, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... place in the day of a woman of fashion, the common love of toilet makes, for the moment at least, the grande dame or the aristocrat the equal of the modest employee, and, while the jupiere is turning round and round madame la baronne, there often takes place a lively interchange of gossip and a review of the plastic qualities of the friends and rivals in beauty of madame la baronne who are also customers of the house. The grand couturier himself is a treasure-house of queer stories and scandals, and naturally his employees ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... them; but she could not get to them without exposing herself to much that was unpleasant, for the governor's free retainers and their friends, not to mention the guard of soldiers who, now that the gates were closed, were still sitting in parties to gossip; they would certainly not break up for some time yet, since the slaves were only now bringing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that separated me from my husband became still greater. If I could have entertained him with any kind of gossip we might have got on better. But I had no conversation that interested him, and he had little or none that I could pretend to understand. He loved the town; I loved the country; he loved the night and the blaze of electric lights; I loved the morning ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... at the beginning of the century, when Brighton was being built, fragments of architectural gossip were flying about Sussex, and one of these had found its way to, and had rested in, the heart of the grandfather of the present owner: in a simple and bucolic way he had been seized by a desire for taste and style, and the present building was the result. Therefore it will be well ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... and who might, presumably, be supposed to know anything which was likely to throw light on the obscure motive for the crime. It was for that reason he directed his footsteps towards the fountain head of gossip in an English village—the inn. He flattered himself he would be able to extract more local information from the patrons of the place than any other detective could hope to do. To begin with, he was a Sussex man and a native of the village, ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... damaging—and thereby showed the remainder of a set of teeth which, like the remnants of the Old Guard, were few in number, and very much the worse for wear. 'But,' he continued, 'Mrs. Farquhar talked the most about Mr. Bridmain and the Countess. She has taken up all the gossip about them, and wanted to convert me to her opinion, but I told her ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... from Mademoiselle Helbrun. She was staying at the Savoy Hotel, and had just returned from Munich. Evelyn felt she would like to hear about her success as Frika, and how So-and-So had sung Brunnhilde, and the rest of the little gossip about the profession. She would like to lunch with Louise in the restaurant, at a table by the window. She would like to see the Thames, and hear things that she might never hear again. But was it possible that she was never going to join again in the tumult of the Valkyrie? She remembered ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... and noise, and gossip above all things, and she was not quite at her ease. The news that Orsino was to come to dinner had taken her breath away. Ugo had advised her to be natural, and she was doing her ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... traded his dearly beloved Punnie for Tockoleegeetais' wife for an indefinite period, while Sebeucktelee had taken to his bosom Netchuk, the discarded wife of Shockpenark. But life is altogether too short to allow of a complete and reliable record being made of the social gossip of an Esquimau village. Intermarriages are common, and everybody is related to every one else in the most intricate and astonishing manner. I once read of a man who married a widow, and his father, subsequently marrying the daughter of this same widow, was driven insane ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... Prince broke thy head for likening his father to a singing man of Windsor; thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then, and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us, she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some; whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound? And didst thou not, when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with such ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of the professional life is that in the artistic sense you are not considered an "actress" until you have shown some merit, have done some good, honest work; but for the purposes of gossip or scandal, ballet girls, chorus girls, or figurantes become actresses full fledged. Mammas and aunties of would-be young artists seem to have made a veritable bogy-man of this would-be lady-killer. What nonsense! Any well-brought-up young woman, ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... did she, at the daily milking in the dairyman's yard on Lodge's outlying second farm, ever speak on the subject of the recent marriage. The dairyman, who rented the cows of Lodge, and knew perfectly the tall milkmaid's history, with manly kindliness always kept the gossip in the cow-barton from annoying Rhoda. But the atmosphere thereabout was full of the subject during the first days of Mrs. Lodge's arrival; and from her boy's description and the casual words of the other milkers, Rhoda ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... absolutely clear in his mind. The letter writer must realize what a point this is with the average farmer. What a city man does he can keep to himself; if he buys a gold brick he gets rid of it and forgets the transaction just as quickly as possible. But what the farmer does is neighborhood gossip. If one of those "slick city fellers" sells him something he can't ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... separated her from the small community of interest that bound the others together, and she wondered, listening to them in her sitting room later, what they would all talk about when they had exchanged their bits of gossip, their news of this man and that. It would all be said ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Indeed, it would perhaps not be extravagant to suppose that his care to identify himself with Aminta's confidant may have been an unusual but not untimely piece of caution on his part, to prevent poisoned gossip connecting him too ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... MEPHISTOPHELES: Gossip, you know little of these times. 310 What has been, has been; what is done, is past, They shape themselves into the innovations They breed, and innovation drags us with it. The torrent of the crowd sweeps over us: You think to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... hunt, when the fox is out, stopping up the earths of the cover we mean to draw, and all the rest for four miles round. Next morning we assemble at the cover's side, and the huntsman throws in the hounds. The gossip here is no small part of the entertainment; but as soon as we hear ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... the young people been going to keep house, she would have been more reconciled, for in that case much of what they consumed would have been the product of the farm; but to board, to take rooms at the Stafford House where Ethelyn would have nothing in the world to do but to dress and gossip, was abominable. Then when she heard of the price she opposed the plan with so much energy that, but for Aunt Barbara and Melinda Jones, Richard might have succumbed; but the majority ruled, and Ethelyn's eyes grew brighter, and her thin cheeks ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... to do so. You will excuse me if my occupations do not permit me to accompany you. You may perhaps hear people say that I am rich,—Monsieur Grandet this, Monsieur Grandet that. I let them talk; their gossip does not hurt my credit. But I have not a penny; I work in my old age like an apprentice whose worldly goods are a bad plane and two good arms. Perhaps you'll soon know yourself what a franc costs when you have got to sweat for it. Nanon, where ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... She may merely have been removed by her father, to part her from yourself. And suppose the marquis was no party to her flight? You would make her ridiculous—nay, more; you would sully her name, so that every gossip in Paris would fall upon your Laura's reputation, and leave not a shred of it wherewith to protect her ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... deplorable. Her statesmen seemed bemused with the intoxication of Bulgarian military victories, and unable to forget the glowing calculations of the future Bulgarian Empire which they had made during the course of the war. Those calculations I gathered from gossip with all classes in Bulgaria at different times, speaking not only with politicians but with bankers, trading people, and others. They concluded that the Turk was going to be driven out of Europe, at any rate, as far as Constantinople. They considered ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... home all this while. She had gone to church, and after devotions, called on her way back on one or two friends for a little gossip, so that it wanted only about a quarter to seven when she reappeared. Of course the lamentable story had to be told over again, with all its dismal accompaniments of tears, sighs, and plaintive ejaculations; and it was curious to observe, as the narrative proceeded, how the widow's charming eyes ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... Falsehood thrust itself forward and played the hypocrite; the bells on the fool's cap jingled, and declared they were church-bells, and the noise became so bad for the Hearer that he thrust his fingers into his ears. Still, he could hear false notes and bad singing, gossip and idle words, scandal and slander, groaning and moaning, without and within. "Heaven help us!" He thrust his fingers farther and farther into his ears, till at last the drums burst. And now he could hear nothing more of the true, the beautiful, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... reconcile his engagements as a Carbonaro with his policy as the French emperor belongs less to the historical gossip of France than to that of Italy. So too the history of the Crimean War seems to belong par excellence to that of Russia. It was undertaken by England and France as allies, joined afterwards by a Sardinian ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... Berlin, and to reach it in a few months. And, painfully aware of the certainty of this consummation, Austria was dejected and Hungary secretly making ready to secede from the Habsburg Monarchy. To this soothing gossip even serious statesmen lent a willing ear. The writer of these remarks was several times asked by leading personages of the allied Governments whether internal upheavals were not impending in Germany and Austria, and his assurance that no such diversion ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... to keep her children in great order,' said Mary. 'Alice was telling me about it the other day. She had been talking to Mrs. Parker's servant. I listened to her without any remark, as I don't think it right to encourage servants' gossip; they always exaggerate everything. And I dare say children ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... soon saw, too, that the spies were not working overtime on their job; they just brought in a little gossip once in a while—just enough to save their faces and secure a ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... owing to the lack of fuel, were all in our favour, for such folk as were abroad were hardly of the sort whose gossip would carry weight; nevertheless, we hadn't been in the hotel twenty minutes before an agent of the bank put in his appearance, speaking French volubly. Seeing my name on the register, he made the mistake ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... the memories of that distant time when everything was so fresh, so surprising, so venturesome, so interesting; bits of strange coasts under the stars, shadows of hills in the sunshine, men's passions in the dusk, gossip half-forgotten, faces grown dim. . . . Perhaps, perhaps, there still was in the world something to write about. Yet I did not see anything at first in the mere story. A rascal steals a large parcel of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... half-past ten o'clock and got up at five in the morning. Moreover, being perfectly sure of Latournelle's and Butscha's discretion, he could talk over difficult business matters, obtain the advice of the notary gratis, and get an inkling of the real truth of the gossip of the street. This stolid gold-glutton (the epithet is Butscha's) belonged by nature to the class of substances which chemistry terms absorbents. Ever since the catastrophe of the house of Mignon, where the Kellers had placed him to learn the principles of maritime ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... winters pass by. Whether their original purpose was temple, astronomical observatory, or both is one of the riddles of antiquarian research, for neolithic man left no record of his doings beyond the weapons buried with him in his barrow. Legend, however, like a busy gossip, had stepped in and supplied points upon which history was silent. Traditions of the neighborhood explained the menhirs as twelve giants turned into stone by the magic powers of good King Arthur, who, in defiance ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... give him a military command, but always employed him in a civil capacity. He did not like to speak of the accident that occasioned his deformity, and would, if asked, always give an evasive answer. Pietro, the Italian, was a great gossip, and his stories could not always be relied upon. His account of the broken leg was that when Samuel went to Shoa, some Englishman there gave him a kick which sent him rolling down some small ravine, and in the fall the leg was broken. It was on account of that blow ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... of that. The vile taste for satire and personal gossip will not be eradicated, I suppose, while the elements of curiosity and malice remain in human nature; but as a fashion of literature, I think it is passing away;—at all events it is not my forte. Long experience of what is called ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... stones. Flemild cried a little too, but not like Aunt Isel. As to Anania, nothing comes amiss to her that can be sown to come up talk. If an earthquake were to swallow one of her children, I do believe she'd only think what a fine thing it was for a gossip." ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... Some of the gossip I retailed to Jasper, oil-streaked and greasy, in the Baileys' garage where he was working ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in early spring to this latitude. Its form was unique and exaggerated, with flaming eyes, and mouth of huge proportions, with long, pointed teeth, white and sharp. For weeks, this gorgon of my imagination constituted the theme of neighborhood gossip. Several negroes had seen it, and fled its fierce pursuit, barely escaping its voracious mouth and attenuated claws, through the fleetness of fear. The old hardshell Baptist preacher, of the vicinage, had proclaimed him from the pulpit as Satan unchained, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... historical, and has coloured the whole modern judgment of Godwin. It would be no exaggeration to say that Godwin formed Shelley's mind, and that Prometheus Unbound and Hellas were the greatest of Godwin's works. That debt is too often forgotten, while literary gossip loves to remind us that it was repaid in cheques and post-obits. The intellectual relationship will be discussed in a later chapter; the bare facts of the personal connection must be told here. Political Justice took Shelley's mind captive while he was still at Eton, much as it had obsessed ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... Reichstag a member of the Socialist Minority Party has denounced the KAISER as the originator of the War. The denunciation made little impression on the House, as it was generally felt that he must have been listening to some idle street-corner gossip. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... I'll keep the secret. You need not be afraid that I shall gossip about you," I told her. She wears no ring on her engagement finger, but always, always—morning, noon and night—there is a little diamond anchor pinned in the front of her dress. I suppose he has given her that instead, as a symbol of hope—hope that in ten or a dozen years, when she ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... gossip about the moral condition of the adjacent colonies of New York and New England is leading me from the narrative, and does not promise much for the connection and interest of the remainder of ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl In very likeness of a roasted Crab; And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her wither'd dewlap pour ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... close her eyes and, after an instant, she would open them on this candle-lighted room, the lovely figure of Aunt Rose, the silks and laces and ornaments of Aunt Caroline and Aunt Sophia; and between the courses one of these two would repeat the gossip of a caller or criticize the ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... been thinking over what you said last night. I confess I had not thought about the native gossip. I have decided to give up the expedition to Jezzin. And it has occurred to me that, as you are not going, I could ride your horse. It would save the trouble and expense of hiring one, if you ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... Carnly. It seems another stenographer overheard the conversation between Berne and Miss—Miss Brace. It got out that way. It was very circumstantial; I couldn't help believing it, some of it; Lucy wouldn't have brought me idle gossip—I thought." ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... outside of a small circle of relatives, his body was committed to the earth with as little notice and ceremony as that of an unknown beggar on its way to the potter's field. Yet the Spanish court was in the town at the time. Peter Martyr was there, writing long letters of news and gossip; and in five that are still extant there is no mention of the sickness and death of Columbus. Four weeks later an official document had the brief mention that "the Admiral is dead." Two Italian authors, making, one and two years later, some corrections pertaining to his early ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... sigh. Prince Hugo was undeniably fat and very slow to catch a joke, but there was certainly a different flavor in this talk of dukes and ancestral seats to the gossip about the Whites ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... or the School of Compliments;" a silly play, only Miss [Davis's] dancing in a shepherd's clothes did please us mightily. Thence without much pleasure home and to my Office, so home, to supper, and to bed. My wife mighty angry with Nell, who is turned a very gossip, and gads abroad as soon as our backs are turned, and will put her away tomorrow, which I am ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... be presently aware of. I do not know how many hundred feet deep the precipice descends, but you may form a judgment when you are at the bottom, for certainty is certainty. And hark ye! when come you to take a game at bowls?' And this gossip is to serve instead of any friendly attempt to save the poor wight's neck! When I think of this, I could go mad, seize my hammer, and break and destroy all around me. But I will be calm; and if this Highland kite, who calls himself a falcon, should stoop at my turtle ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... as she might, the conversation presented no clue. Boris and Mrs. Vandemeyer talked on purely indifferent subjects: plays they had seen, new dances, and the latest society gossip. After dinner they repaired to the small boudoir where Mrs. Vandemeyer, stretched on the divan, looked more wickedly beautiful than ever. Tuppence brought in the coffee and liqueurs and unwillingly retired. As she did so, ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... leave their own abode early in the morning, and to reach that of Mr Prentiss before sunset. There was the house of a new settler about half-way, and several huts where refreshment could be obtained, so that their visits became still more frequent and expected. Even in the bush gossip is not impossible, and it became pretty generally reported that the two Mr Gilpins were about to marry the two ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... I would she were as lying a gossip in that, as euer knapt Ginger, or made her neighbours beleeue she wept for the death of a third husband: but it is true, without any slips of prolixity, or crossing the plaine high-way of talke, that the good Anthonio, the honest ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Lazaroni. The True Venus. Love and Devotion. The Mortality of Pompeii. Procession of the Host. The Ascent of Vesuvius. The Mountain Emetic. The Human Projectile. The City of the Soul. The Coup de Main. Night in the Coliseum! Catholicity Considered. Power Passing Away! Byron Among the Ruins. A Gossip with the Artists. Speaking Gems. "Weep for Adonis!" The Lady and the God. The Science of Psalmistry. "Sour Grapes." A Ramble about Tivoli. Illumination of St. Peter's. The "Niobe of Nations." A Ghostly Scene! "Honi soit qui mal y pense." A "Ball" without Music. Abelard and Heloise. Scenes on ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... and that one, and now and then from her herself, I had heard something of Calliope's love story. Indeed, all Friendship knew it and spoke of it with no possibility of gossip or speculation, but with a kind of genius for consideration. I did not know, however, that it was of this that Liddy meant to speak, for she began her story far afield, with some talk of Oldmoxon house, in which I lived, ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... returning from their boating, she found 'la mere Bricolin,' as she was called, sitting with Mrs. Wright. Madame Bricolin was housekeeper to M. le Cure, and held herself a little above the fisher-folk, rarely stopping to gossip with them. But Mrs. Wright was different—as different as Jack was from the men with whom he went ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... Gannion; I am not doing this for love of gossip. Miss Dane is nothing to me, and I like Lorimer immensely. But there is a good deal at stake, and I am not sure how much I ought to leave to chance. Lorimer is one of the most lovable fellows in the world, generous ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... doctor say, and then, his back being towards me, I lost the rest of his speech till the words, "She is no gossip," came to salute me and make me ask myself if there was a secret skeleton in this house, that they feared so much the eyes ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... said, as if she were keeping a private mad-house. It was not quite so private as it might have been, for Mrs. Carlyle found in her grievances abundant food for her sarcastic tongue. Whatever she talked about she made interesting, and her relations with her husband became a common subject of gossip. It was said that the marriage had never been a real one, that they were only companions, and so forth. Froude was content to enjoy the society of the most gifted couple in London without troubling himself to solve mysteries ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... this change? That is precisely the point on which, after all the gossip there has been, we are still ignorant. At times Coleridge's opium excesses were great; but what led to those excesses must not be left out of account. From boyhood he had a tendency to low fever, betrayed by his constant appetite for bathing and swimming, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... bit of pasteboard, Steele was stopped as he was about to enter. A thunder of applause from within, indicating that the first act had come to an end, was followed by the usual egress of black and white figures, impatient for cigarettes and light lobby gossip. ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... they be punished at all? nothing is proved against them, nothing is found about them that indicates guilty intentions," for, notwithstanding her indisposition, she had learned all the facts of the case from her gossip, Juanita, and the officers that had called in the course of the forenoon, "I have heard all the particulars, and confess that I see no reason why ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... peculiarities of Africa yet to be explained is the almost supernatural rapidity with which rumour travels. Across the whole breadth of this darkest continent a mere bit of gossip has made its way in a month. A man may divulge a secret, say, at St. Paul de Loanda, take ship to Zanzibar, and there his own secret ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... when coffee and liqueurs were handed, he grew livelier and began telling her various bits of literary gossip. He spoke with eloquence and inspiration, and was carried away by his own stories; and she listened to him and thought every time that for such enjoyment it was worth paying not only twelve thousand, but three times that sum, and ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... failing hearts, and cheered their unremitting labors. They called me their friend. The pretty girls smiled upon me, as, under pretence of levying contributions on my treasures, they chatted with young men who gathered at my side. Then came a sterner period. I heard no more love tales—no more idle gossip. Men stood here, and spoke of deep wrong, of tyranny, of trampled rights, of resistance, of liberty! That was a word I had not heard since the red man drank of my unfettered tide. One night, there was a great ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... Anderson, "I'll go, Tom; but, to be plain with you, I do not think that I can be of much use there. I have been several times: she will gossip as long as you please; but if you would talk seriously, she turns a deaf ear. You see, Tom, there's little to be gained when you have to contend with such a besetting sin as avarice. It is so powerful, especially in old age, that it absorbs all other feelings. ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... on the morrow, a disclosure which did not come. She did not dare to confess her curiosity; but continued to feign ignorance, though enraged at the foolish distrust of her husband, who, doubtless, considered her a gossip, and weak like other women. Pierre, with that marital pride which inspires a man with the belief in his own superiority at home, had ended by attributing all their past ill-luck to his wife. From the time that he fancied he had been ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... gossip in a village is the corner grocery store; in a small city, what goes on about the public square; in the medium-sized city, what transpires in the leading cafe; in New York, Fifth Avenue and Central Park are ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... a leaping heart he chanced on some newspaper gossip concerning the sibyl, for it was so that he first stumbled across her mission. Ironical, indeed, that the so impossible 'key' to the mystery should come by the hand of 'our own correspondent'; but so it was, and that paragraph sold no small quantity of 'occult' ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... ride over the field of Austerlitz. My father took a different view. He declined to take advantage of this opening into the upper world, because, as he said, I don't know from what experience, the conversation turned chiefly upon petty personal gossip. The feasts of the great were not to his taste. He was ascetic by temperament. He was, he said, one of the few people to whom it was the same thing to eat a dinner and to perform an act of self-denial. In fact, for many years he ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... busy ants. The women, with clothes tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken—garnering the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over. Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor, dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a yawn, then off again to the field for another load. It is no use leaving ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... college buildings which are set in the midst of beautiful surroundings, unused during the two months of the year when hundreds of people, able to pay only a moderate price for lodgings in the country, can find nothing comfortable and no mental food more satisfying than piazza gossip. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Desthruction?' she says. 'I think ye'er wrong, mum,' says he. 'It's Pilsener,' he says. 'Soon or late,' she says, 'th' Demon Rum will desthroy ye,' she says. 'Not me,' says th' vethran iv a thousand enlistments. 'I don't care f'r rum. A pleasant companyon, but a gossip. It tells on ye. Th' Demon Rum with a little iv th' Demon Hot Water an' th' Demon Sugar is very enticin', but it has a perfume to it that is dangerous to a married man like mesilf. Rum, madam, is an informer. Don't niver take it. I agree with ye that ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... I, notwithstanding our fatigue, devoted the evening entirely to literary pursuits; searching diligently with tallow candles over the wall and ceiling for consecutive numbers of the Illustrated London News, reading court gossip from a birch plank in the corner, and obituaries of distinguished Englishmen from the back of a door. By dint of industry and perseverance we finished one whole side of the house before bedtime, and having gained a vast amount of valuable information with regard to the war in New ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... just about to walk down to the police station to make some inquiries," responded Colwyn. "It is impossible to tell from that man's story how much is truth and how much mere gossip." ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... keep him company—so many that they could never be counted. The eagle at the top of the tree and the serpent at its foot were enemies, always saying hard things of each other. Between the two skipped up and down a little squirrel, a tale bearer and a gossip, who repeated each unkind remark and, like the malicious neighbour that he was, kept their quarrel ever ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... busy with the wife of the Richest Trustee—as the widow she did not relax her hold. What the trustees said that day they only repeated from gossip: the little gray wisp of a woman was a nonentity—nothing more—with the spirit of a mouse. She held no position in society, and what she did with her time or her money no one knew. The trustees smiled inwardly ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... Oldfield people were highly gregarious and hospitable; in spite of a few peculiarities, they had their good points; a great deal of gossip prevailed, but it was in the main harmless and good-natured. There was a wonderful simplicity of dress, too, which in these days might be termed a cardinal virtue. The girls wore their fresh cambrics and ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... encounter cold looks, averted eyes and peculiar nods and gestures which perplexed her beyond measure; but presently the pervading gossip found its way to her, and she understood them—then. Her pride was stung. She was astonished, and at first incredulous. She was about to ask her mother if there was any truth in these reports, but upon second thought held ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... the town. He had a parish in Lynn, and was afterwards settled in Brooklyn; but his habits became irregular, he remained but a short time in any place, and he separated from his wife in 1838. There was much gossip about her, owing to her beauty and her fondness for the society ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... made her the pity and the wonder of the people, it did not keep her sacred from the reach of gossip. Observing the frequency with which Bondo Emmins visited Old Briton's cabin, it was profanely said by some that the pale girl would ere long avert her eyes from the dead and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... Place de la Rvolution. The men had paused at the various drinking booths, crowding the women out. It would be the turn of these Amazons next, at the brandy bars; for the moment they were left to gossip, and ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... afraid,' she says, 'of the gossip and scandal which may be set on foot about me behind my back, for there are some very ill- natured people in the town, and some low fellow, if he met us, might say, 'Who is this fine-looking stranger who is going about with Nausicaa? Where did she pick him up? I suppose she ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... which cannot be denied they call him a "swipe," and say he did it to gain promotion, or to curry favor with the General. Of course, it may be different in armies officered by gentlemen; but men are pretty much alike all the world over, and I know that those in our Legion were as given to gossip and slander as the inmates of any Old Woman's Home. I used to say to myself that so long as I had the approval of Laguerre and of my own men and of my conscience I could afford not to mind what the little souls said; but as a matter of fact I did mind it, and it angered me exceedingly. Just ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... not tell him about my meeting with Lady Mary, because I knew, if occasion arose, he would spread the news over half London. No consideration would have been great enough to bridle the tongue of the little gossip from use of the first bit of news which he had ever received warm from the fire. Besides, after his behaviour in front of the enemy, I was quite certain that an imparting of my news could do nothing in the way of impairing his inefficiency. ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... repeat a word of what she had told her, Mrs. Grimes bade this lady, upon whom she had called, good morning, and went on her way. Ten minutes after, she was in the parlor of an acquaintance, named Mrs. Florence, entertaining her with the gossip she had picked up since their last meeting. She had not been there long, before, lowering her voice, she said in ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... servants, querulous, sensitive, and lodged for a day in a sphere they resent, can hardly comprehend the friendliness and sympathy that existed between the master and the slave. He cannot understand how the negro stood in slavery days, open-hearted and sympathetic, full of gossip and comradeship, the companion of the hunt, frolic, furrow, and home, contented in the kindly dependence that had been a habit of his blood, and never lifting his eyes beyond the narrow horizon that shut him in with his neighbors and friends. But this relation did exist ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... read newspaper gossip about heiresses. Thank heaven, I've something better to do with my time. But the others wanted to meet her, or pretended to, perhaps to chaff Dennis, rather a cocky youth, though I oughtn't to say so, as he was nice to me, according to his lights. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... receiving her friends,—mirthful, she looked forward to a long night of downright sport,—coquettish, she would have good opportunity of letting Tom Durfy see how attractive she was to the men,—while from the women her love of gossip and scandal (was there ever a lady in her position without it?) would have ample gratification in the accumulated news of the county of twenty miles round. She had but one large room at her command, and that was given ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... tangible corroboration of this story. It might have been the merest gossip or the invention of an enemy. But it fitted Carron so perfectly, that from the day I heard it I could never, somehow, question its substantial truth. If I had questioned it, I should have repeated the story to him, to give him an opportunity to answer. But something warned ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... on the spot. It was unworthy of me, I determined, to quarrel with society for not being impressed by my merits, and I gave myself up to the simple pleasure of dancing, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I heard a great deal of inept gossip about people of whom I know nothing; but perhaps it is my ignorance on many subjects which prevents me from appreciating it, as I saw that most men and women took a lively pleasure in certain remarks, whether falling from their own lips or those of others. Society bristles with enigmas ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... little green glade they met Miss Fantail darting round and round the glade after flies. Now, Miss Fantail is a friendly and harmless little bird, but she's the most inquisitive creature in the bush, and a regular little gossip. ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... suppose they are in bed," he said. "They always have a good long gossip; and, as long as they are down in good time I don't like to be too strict. But, my dear Lee. You don't think ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... He went to church once on Sunday because the bank expected him to go, but only once, and had nothing to do with any of its dependent institutions. He was a great botanist, very fond of walking, and in the evening, when Fenmarket generally gathered itself into groups for gossip, either in the street or in back parlours, or in the 'Crown and Sceptre,' Mr Hopgood, tall, lean and stately, might be seen wandering along the solitary roads searching for flowers, which, in that part of the world, were rather scarce. He was also a great reader of the ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... spent the day at the Point, thoroughly enjoying a long gossip, and, after an early dinner, proposed a walk around the grounds and a look at the river ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... the public it might perhaps be contended that there is an effect of a rather similar sort. They are in some cases tempted away from serious discussion of the matter, into frivolous curiosity and gossip about the man. All this criticism of the principle of which the Fortnightly Review was the earliest English adherent, will not be taken as the result in the present writer of Chamfort's maladie des desabuses; that would ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... liabilities and disabilities contingent thereto, I am yet sound in mind and body, (except for the toothache,) and a very amusing person to know, with no quarrel against life in general or anybody in particular. Indeed, I find one advantage in the very credulous and inquisitive gossip against which I memorialize; for I think I may expect fact to be believed, when fiction is swallowed whole; and I feel sure of seeing, directly on the publication of this document, a notice in the "Snapdragon," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... things that are in the world," he was amazed, and could not swallow that hard saying. There was one, green- eyed and envious, who turned back when he read: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." There was a gossip and a slanderer who became dazed on reading: "Thou shalt not bear false witness." When he read, "Thou shalt not kill," "This is not the place for me" quoth the physician. In short, everybody saw something which troubled him, and so they all returned together ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... his fiftieth when some cause which remains obscure drew them together with a tie which death alone, after seventeen wonderful years of almost unbroken association, was to sever. There was no scandal about it, even in that scandal-mongering age. The astute Mile de Scudery, writing to her gossip Bussy Rabutin (December 6, 1675), says, "Nothing could be happier for her, or more dignified for him; the fear of God on either side, and perhaps prudence as well, have clipped the wings of love." Twelve years before, when Menage had repeated to her some critical remarks ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... toting the thing, the boys got their venison to camp without very much trouble. While jerking it they were very glad to lie around camp and rest, and gossip. But their talk always came around to one subject—what to do with their captive. Ned wanted to send him North to some aquarium, but didn't quite see how to do it. Dick offered to swim him down the rivers to the Gulf of Mexico ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... "Just gossip and lies!" broke in his spouse; and Helen, who apparently had lapsed into a disdainful indifference, asked no further questions. Mrs. Savine, however, made many inquiries, and Musker, who became unusually communicative, presently offered to show ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... with sympathy." Raimbaut, however, did not reciprocate these feelings: in a tenso with the countess he shows his real sentiments while excusing his conduct. He assures her that he has avoided her only because he did not wish to provide slanderers with matter for gossip; to which the Countess replies that his care for her reputation is excessive. Peire Rogier whose poetical career lies between the years 1160 and 1180, also spent some time at Raimbaut's court. He belonged to Auvergne by birth and was attached to the court of Ermengarde ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... the gossip that was going on in society, this conversation, carried on in broken sentences, under the porch of St. Clothilda, made it quite clear that public opinion was decidedly in favor of Miss Brandon. It would have been surprising if it should have been otherwise. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... nightfall, so that those who had lived thus far did not die of hunger. Women brought the food on their heads in earthen crocks—splendid, good-looking women with fearless eyes, who bore the heavy loads as easily as their mountain men-folk carried rifles. They did not stay to gossip, for we had no news but the stale old story of murder and plunder; and their news was ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... was all fresh that night I jotted down pages of such gossip in a little red note-book. I had names and dates. That bunch of piece-workers must have thought I was a bear for details, or else nutty in the head; but they was too polite to mention it so long as I insisted each time that ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... an episode in the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor; except that the monsters which Sindbad met with in the course of his travels were not of such a kindly disposition as the Egyptian serpent: it did not occur to them to console the shipwrecked with the charm of a lengthy gossip, but they swallowed them with a healthy appetite. Putting aside entirely the marvellous element in the story, what strikes us is the frequency of the relations which it points to between Egypt and Puanit. The appearance of an Egyptian vessel excites no astonishment on its coasts: ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and the ladies have, with the tact for which they are sometimes distinguished, retired early to bed-rooms, where it is believed they spend hours in the combing of their beautiful hair, and the interchange of gossip. You are in high spirits. You think, indeed you are sure (and again, on thinking it well over, not quite so sure), that the adorable ROSE looked kindly upon you as she said good-night, and allowed her pretty little hand to linger in your own while you assured ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... brought all these manifold activities into being had its talisman in the word "Gold"; but, since Pesquiera had come neither as a prospector nor investor, he heard with only half-concealed impatience the easy gossip of his fellow travelers about the famous ore producers of ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... button-hole. But what can he tell us of the negotiations that led Gladstone back to public life or of the secret councils of the Fourth Party, whereby Sir Stafford was gradually eclipsed? Good memoirs must ever be the cumulation of gossip. Gossip (alas!) has been killed by the Press. In the tavern or the barber's-shop, all secrets passed into every ear. From newspapers how little can be culled! Manifestations are there made manifest to us and we are taught, with tedious iteration, the things we knew, and need not have ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Indiarubber Man when the corporal had withdrawn. "Really, Phillips has a knack of disclosing great truths as if they were the lightest gossip." ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... a village is the corner grocery store; in a small city, what goes on about the public square; in the medium-sized city, what transpires in the leading cafe; in New York, Fifth Avenue and Central Park are the all-abounding sources of gossip. The Avenue has a thousand curious eyes; those on the sidewalk peering into automobiles and carriages for sensations; those being whirled along in vehicles, straining their power in the quest of salacious ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... they break out into downright foulness of speech, their comparatively silent enjoyment of detestable stories is a thing to make one shiver. Here again good-fellowship is absent. Comfortable tradesmen, prosperous dealers, sharp men who hold good commercial situations, meet to gossip and exchange dubious stories. They laugh a good deal in a restrained way, and they are apparently genial; but the hard selfishness of all is plain to a cool observer. The habit of self-indigence has grown upon them until ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... thing as an intimacy formed by the Curate in some house where the Incumbent is not liked, and is that intimacy never used by the Curate not for the noblest ends? Is there no weak listening to parochial gossip on the Curate's part? Is there never any allowance by the younger man of a growth around him, in ways which he could stop summarily, if he tried, of a certain unwholesome sort of preference and popularity? Is it not sometimes known that a Curate condescends so low as to concur ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... that I am younger than they are?" she thought. "And would I have them? Would I share that secret with any in the world—but one? Do I want to dance—to dance—Good God! And talk nonsense and the gossip of the Island with these youths when I have naught to say but that my soul has grown wings and that the cold lamp in my breast has blown out, and lit again with the flame that keeps the world alive? Even if I think it best never to see him again, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... dissimulation with the gusto of an apostle and the authority of an expert. Dissimulate, but do not simulate, disguise your real sentiments, but do not falsify them. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and mouth mostly shut. When new or stale gossip is brought to you, never let on that you know it already, nor that it really interests you. The reading of these Letters is better than hearing the average comedy, in which the wit of a single sentence of Chesterfield suffices to carry an ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of money, which enabled her to relinquish business, set up her carriage, and become one of the first ladies in Palermo. Ten years passed; and one day a grand carriage stopped at her door. A lady alighted and entered her palace. When she had her face to face, the lady said: "Gossip, do you know me?" "No, madam." "What! do you not remember that I am the lady to whom you came ten years ago, when these children were born? I, too, am she who held out her hand and asked for food. I was the fairies' captive; and if you had not been generous enough to give me to eat, I should ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... his companions his own history of the recent dialogue, in which, according to his own account of the matter, he had completely gotten the better of that "young upstart, Blunt," a man of whom he knew positively nothing, divers anecdotes of the Effingham family, that came of the lowest and most idle gossip of rustic malignancy, and his own vague and confused notions of the rights of persons and of things. Very different was the conversation that ensued in the ladies' cabin, after the welcome disappearance of the uninvited guest. Not a remark of any sort ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... king," a squarely-built man,—whose bare arms with the knotted muscles showing through the skin, and hands begrimed with charcoal, indicated that he was a smith,—remarked to a gossip as the little crowd broke up, "but it is a grievous pity that he was brought up a Norman, still more that he was not left in peace to pass his life as a monk as he desired. He fills the land with his Normans; soon as an English bishop dies, straightway a Norman is clapped into his place. ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... Dona Rosita?" stammered Demorest, in surprise. "Come, Joan," he added, with a forgiving smile, "you don't mean to imply that I dislike her because I couldn't get up a thrilling interest in an old story I've heard from every gossip in the ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... contemporary gossip about those in power, in which most people see the chief interest of home politics. Denisov, dissatisfied with the government on account of his own disappointments in the service, heard with pleasure of the things done in Petersburg which seemed to him stupid, and made forcible and sharp ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy |
