"Prosaic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... past her, and said as he reached for his cap, "There, that's all right. It's my mistake. I'm sorry." He spoke like a farmer who has failed to sell a sheep. His manner was utterly prosaic, and up to the last she thought he had not understood her. "But it's money we offer you," she informed him, and then darted back to the study, believing for one terrible moment that he had picked up the blank cheque. When she returned to the hall he had ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... possible?" she exclaimed, "Why, I cannot conceive of anything lovelier! If she has been stolen all these years, and her people unconscious of her very existence, to have them appear on the scene, and recognize and claim her, will seem like a beautiful bit of fiction interwoven in our prosaic, every-day life, or like the closing scene in some drama, where the wrongs at last are all made right. To think what happiness it will bring to them, to ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... association with the Canterbury pilgrims, the subsequent history of the Tabard is somewhat prosaic. Here a record tells how it became the objective of numerous carriers from Kent and Sussex, there crops up a law report which enshrines the memory of a burglary, and elsewhere in reminiscences or diary may be found a tribute to the excellence of the inn's rooms and food ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... with a manager—that was what generally happened. Her father was a most interesting old man, a genius in his way, but just such an one as might prove his daughter's ruin. He would keep her singing the old music, perhaps marry her to a clerk, and she would be a fat, prosaic mother ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... they do," Owen had answered, and Beclere's knowledge of himself propitiated Owen, who recognised a clever man in the remark, a man of many sympathies, though the exterior was prosaic. All the same Owen would have wished for some music in the evening, and for some musical assistance, for while waiting for the eagles to arrive he spent his time thinking how he might write the songs he heard every morning among the palm-trees; written down they ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... We also need to teach the lesson, that the Hollander taught, of not refusing to do the small things because the day of large things had not yet come or was in the past; of not waiting until the chance may come to distinguish ourselves in arms, and meanwhile neglecting the plain, prosaic duties of citizenship which call upon us every hour, every day ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... of matrimony and of the family may seem unromantic, prosaic, materialistic; but we must not suppose that because of it the Romans failed to experience the tenderest and sweetest affections of the human heart. The letters of Cicero himself show how tenderly even Romans ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... of nature: which is indeed curious considering what we are taught here and there as to the infallibility of our august mother. Well, the world of humanity had done this for Beauchamp. His afflicted historian is compelled to fling his net among prosaic similitudes for an illustration of one thus degradedly in its grip. If he had been off with his love like the rover! why, then the Muse would have loosened her lap like May showering flower-buds, and we might have knocked great nature up from her sleep to embellish ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... much for a youth in a peevish state of convalescence. What lover could send his heart's eloquence by word of mouth with a peppery, prosaic father? ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied with his work, but with the resolution of raising at a future day a worthy monument to the memory of her whom he has lost. It is the promise and purpose of a great work. But a prosaic change seems to come over his half-ideal character. The lover becomes the student—the student of the thirteenth century—struggling painfully against difficulties, eager and hot after knowledge, wasting eyesight and stinting sleep, subtle, inquisitive, active-minded and sanguine, but omnivorous, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... my heart renew its allegiance to the poet who has made it lovely to the imagination as well as to the eye, and so identified his fame with the noble stream that it "rolls mingling with his fame forever?" The prosaic traveller perhaps remembers it better from the fact that a great sea-monster, in the shape of a steamboat, takes him, sitting in the car, on its back, and swims across with him like Arion's dolphin,—also that mercenary men on board offer him canvas-backs in the season, and ducks of lower degree ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the side of Mentone, San Remo is sadly prosaic. The valleys seem to sprawl, and the universal olives are monotonously grey upon their thick clay soil. Yet the wealth of flowers in the fat earth is wonderful. One might fancy oneself in a weedy farm ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... but the introduction of Hercules is a great improvement upon the original version of the last act, in which the rescue of Alcestis is effected by Apollo. The French librettist did not treat the episode cleverly, and indeed all the last scene is terribly prosaic, and lacking in poetical atmosphere. To see how the appearance of the lusty hero in the halls of woe can heighten the tragic interest by the sheer force of contrast, we must turn to the 'Alcestis' of Euripides, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... instantaneous success he tried to persuade Jane to go on the stage; but Jane had no artistic ambitions, to say nothing of her disinclination to paint her face. She preferred the prosaic reality of stenography and typewriting. No sphere could be too dazzling for Paul; he was born to great things, the consciousness of his high destiny being at once her glory and her despair; but, as regards herself, her outlook on life was cool and sober. Paul was peacock ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... and apparent contradiction between the individual and the author that makes the character of Eugene Field interesting to the student. If the man were simply any prosaic person possessed of the gift of telling tales, writing stories, and singing lullabies, this study of his life would have been left unwritten. Many authors have I known who put all there was of them ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... prosaic and unimpressive appearance of the convention hall assumed for the occasion an entire change last evening. When the convention closed its forenoon's labors, it took a recess until half-past 7 o'clock for the purpose of affording ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... which first amazed Mrs. Pennycook, because she never suspected her husband of being such an "old softy," and then enraged her when she reflected that never since their honeymoon had Dan shown her anything more than the prosaic consideration of the unimaginative married man for ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... of the immortal mind, abounds in the materials of poetry, and it is the highest office of the bard, to detect this divine element among the grosser pleasures and labors of our earthly being. The present life is not wholly prosaic, precise, tame, and finite. To the gifted eye it abounds ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... to be able to admire with you this lovely cloud, this stretch of country which so fills us with reverence, to listen with you to the poetry of the wind from beyond the mountain, as when we walked together at Boulogne. But here a great many prosaic occupations prevent me from speaking to you ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... vouchsafed Deputy-Surveyor Evans as he stood and gazed — a vision of all that would cover the spacious lands before and beyond him before one hundred years had passed away — the entry he made in his diary would surely have reflected in its style his flight of imagination. Instead, we have the prosaic statement:— ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... gallant hunter plucked a spray of it and put in his helmet, it is certain that the humble plant gave the stately name of "Plantagenet" to twelve sovereigns of that kingdom; and their battle-cry—which meant to them conquest and dominion, but has a very practical sound to us, and a specially prosaic meaning to one like the blind broom-maker of ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... uncultivated and sunburnt wilderness." The comparison appears so much the more suitable, when we remark that wilderness and desert are here personified, and appear as hungry and thirsty. This, however, was too poetical for several prosaic interpreters. Hence they would in both instances supply a [Hebrew: b] after the [Hebrew: k], "as in the wilderness" "I place her in the condition in which she was formerly, in the [Pg 236] wilderness." But it is self-evident that such a supplying of the [Hebrew: ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... a positive relief to see the prosaic figure of Floss Eden, in brief tennis skirts and shady hat, hurrying across the lawn, with her boyish stride; racquet swinging, her round face ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the great Epic of the North, we lay no claim to special critical insight, nor do we care to deal at all with vexed questions, but are content to abide by existing authorities, doing our utmost to make our rendering close and accurate, and, if it might be so, at the same time, not over prosaic: it is to the lover of poetry and nature, rather than to the student, that we appeal to enjoy and wonder at this great work, now for the first time, strange to say, translated into English: this must be our excuse for speaking ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... Arthur's that smile was! thought the girl. "Romantic persons never have any adventures. It is to the prosaic these things fall. Because of their nearness ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... content. At first it was enough to have Dick there, to stop in the doorway of his room and see him within, occupied with the prosaic business of getting into his clothes or out of them, now and then to put a hand on his shoulder, to hear him fussing in the laboratory again, and to be called to examine divers and sundry smears to which Dick attached impressive importance and more impressive names. But behind Dick's ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... almost venom is,' develop into the temperate, unexacting, peaceful and harmonious unions which come under this heading. To the ardent youths and maidens—restless seekers after the elusive joy of life—who will have none of this prosaic and inglorious counsel, and who are prepared to stake their all on the belief that the first sweet sting of love is going to last for ever, I say: Get your roses-and-raptures over some other way; don't ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... had saved them from undue rashness and precipitancy. They were getting on a little too fast. Their valued friend Miss Travers had made what he was not ashamed to call a suggestion both rare and beautiful, but alas! in these prosaic modern days the sordid question of pounds, shillings and pence could not be wholly disregarded. How much ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... Truly a prosaic young gentleman enough. Everything with him was to be exactly in all its parts what it appeared on the face of it, and everything was to go on doing exactly what it had been doing hitherto. If a thing looked solid, it was to be very solid; if hollow, very hollow; ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... and the natural beauty of Ischia, it must be borne in mind that a residence on the island possesses one or two serious drawbacks. Apart from the ever-present fear of earthquakes, which hangs like the sword of Damocles above the heads of the inhabitants, there is yet another disadvantage, prosaic but very real, in the lack of pure water, every well and rivulet on Ischia being more or less impregnated with sulphur, with the result that water for drinking (and in summer even for domestic) purposes has to be conveyed by boat from Naples. It is bad enough to be dependant ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... criticised it as wholly untenable. All three, however, may be considered as comrades in a revolt against the conventional diction of eighteenth century poetry, from which Coleridge's "dreamy tenderness" and mystical flights of fancy were as remote as Wordsworth's rusticity and almost prosaic studies of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... voice cried, passionately. "To be looked upon as 'dead,' to be near to the rascal who smiles to think that I am in my grave.... And everything so dull and prosaic on the surface! Yes, I have friends who will aid me in the business. Some day I may be able to thank you face to face, to tell you how I managed to ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... Booth died, the wife of the famous "General," the "Army" reported her as "Promoted to Glory from Clacton-on-Sea." It was extremely funny. Clacton-on-Sea is such a prosaic anti-climax after Glory. One was reminded of Sir ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... Ruyler, who had looked upon the whirlwind of passion that had swept him into a romantic and unworldly marriage, as likely to remain the one brief drama of his prosaic business man's life, began dimly to apprehend that he was hovering on the edge of a sinister and complicated drama whose end he could as little foresee as he could escape from the hand of Fate that was pushing him inexorably forward. When Fate suddenly ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... him because his father had given him the upper farm; and if Anne wouldn't "have him" Nettie Blewett would. There was romance for you, with a vengeance! Anne laughed—and then sighed. The bloom had been brushed from one little maiden dream. Would the painful process go on until everything became prosaic and hum-drum? ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... now as he walked up the silent road he still bewailed, the fate that had called him to such an uneventful life as a pedagogue's. What a prosaic existence he led, so stagnant, so colourless! Secure, methodical, year in year out, what call was there for bravery? He thought enviously of those roving, mediaeval days, so near and so remote, of quests and spies and condottieri and many a risky blade-drawing business. And suddenly came a doubt, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... services that can be rendered to the literature of a nation. "The chief glory of every people," says Johnson, "arises from its authors." That would be a bold thing to say to-day and was a bolder then, especially in so prosaic a place as the preface to a dictionary. But the world sees its truth more and more. And it is less out of place in a dictionary than appears at first sight. For that glory is not easily gained or recognized till both authors ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... the amatory passion itself. If this was love, love had been overrated. Love was a poetic impulse, and his own state of feeling with regard to the Baroness was largely characterized by that eminently prosaic sentiment—curiosity. It was true, as Acton with his quietly cogitative habit observed to himself, that curiosity, pushed to a given point, might become a romantic passion; and he certainly thought enough about this charming woman to make him restless and ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... affection for hanging about in the Court Journal office, smoking a morning cigarette and looking over files. Like all ingrainedly idle men, he was very fond of lounging and chatting in places where other people were doing work. But one would have thought that, even in the prosaic England of his day, he might have found a ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... face, and resting on his pack, which had been his pillow, was our Wandering Willie, playing and singing like an angel—"an Orpheus; an Orpheus." What a picture! When reproved for wasting his health and time by the prosaic farmer, the poor fellow said: "Me and this quarry are lang acquant, and I've mair pleasure in pipin to thae daft cowts, than if the best leddies in the land were ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... ring of the word "Mexico," I did turn my face in that direction: and no sooner had I set foot on those glorious shores, trodden by a Columbus and a Cortez, than I recognised the home both of the poetic and the picturesque. In that very land, called prosaic—the land of dollars—I inhaled the very acme of the poetic spirit; not from the rhythm of books, but expressed in the most beautiful types of the human form, in the noblest impulses of the human soul, in rock and stream, in bird, and leaf and flower. In that very city, which, thanks to perjured ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... of political platforms based on general theories, the broad vistas which it may be made to encompass, and lastly the opportunity for eloquent self-expression offered by parliamentary debates, all taken together exert a powerful attraction for the intellectualized mind. Contrast with this the prosaic humdrum work of a trade union leader, the incessant wrangling over "small" details and "petty" grievances, and the case becomes exceedingly clear. The mind of the typical intellectual is too generalized to be lured by any such alternative. He is ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... The prosaic side of the question was that the country was torn by the factions of Whig and Tory, which were then in the full bloom of party spirit and narrow rancorous animosity. The close of the life of William IV. had presented the singular and disastrous ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Harrisburg,—a plain, prosaic town of brick and wood, with nothing especially attractive about it, except its broad-sheeted, shining river, flowing down from the Blue Ridge, around wooded islands, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... sliding modulations. . .deadening the poignancy of the minor third in the more satisfying reassuring chord of the dominant ninth, which again finds its rest on the key-note—C major— the common chord, so sober and uninteresting that it well symbolizes the common level of life, the prosaic key-note to which unfortunately most ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... the large business desk with prosaic standard equipment which stood on the carpet on the other side of the pool. They moved rapidly past the pool, Quillan still hauling at her arm. Trigger kept staring at the pillars they passed. Long-limbed, supple and languid, they floated in their crystal cages, in ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... defects of a poet, who with all the courage of uncorrupted youth had avowed his zeal for a cause, which he deemed that of liberty, and his abhorrence of oppression by whatever name consecrated. But it was as little objected by others, as dreamed of by the poet himself, that he preferred careless and prosaic lines on rule and of forethought, or indeed that he pretended to any other art or theory of poetic diction, except that which we may all learn from Horace, Quinctilian, the admirable dialogue, De Oratoribus, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... will see that your dreamland is a prosaic place, after all. There is a man in Paris who receives letters daily from Kosnovia, and they tell of events that are not printed for the multitude. Last night, when I was certain we should go to Delgratz, I sought him and heard the latest news. Your Alec means ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... while I have abridged, the legends relating to a hero who undoubtedly exercised considerable influence over his country and his time, because in those legends we trace, better than we could do by dull interpretations equally unsatisfactory though more prosaic, the effigy of the heroic age—not unillustrative of the poetry and the romance which at once formed and indicated important features in the character of the Athenians. Much of the national spirit ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... under that pretext, wildly and wickedly would throw off all responsibility from him, and from ourselves, his retainers and abettors; and yet something, after all, is to be conceded to the mask of the poet. All nations and times have agreed in not judging him by the prosaic laws to which we who write and speak prose are amenable. His is a playful part, and he has a knack of slipping from under the hand of serious judgment. He is a Proteus, and feels himself bound to speak ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... occasions." As she passed along in her progresses, the people, whose applause she courted, remained cold and silent. The temper of the age, in fact, was changing and isolating her as it changed. Her own England, the England which had grown up around her, serious, moral, prosaic, shrank coldly from this child of earth, and the renascence, brilliant, fanciful, unscrupulous, irreligious. She had enjoyed life as the men of her day enjoyed it, and now that they were gone she clung ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... Everybody worries a little when a cherished dream shows a likelihood of coming true. Some people take firm steps to stop things right there, so a romantic daydream won't be spoiled by transmutation into prosaic fact. But Joe said doggedly: "Twenty ferry trips to pile up fuel, and the twenty-first ship should be able to refuel and go on out. And then somebody will ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... point of view we have always had a sympathy with the Cambridge mathematician who has been so much abused. He said, "After all, 'Paradise Lost' proves nothing"; and various persons of poetical tastes and temperament have been very severe on the prosaic observation. Yet, "after all," he was right: Milton professed to prove something; he was too profound a critic—rather, he had too profound an instinct of those eternal principles of art which criticism tries to state—not to know that on such a subject he ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... began to laugh. "We ought to be good friends," she said; "for our names are about equally imposing. Billy and Teddy! Could anything be more prosaic? Good-by," she added, as she rose. "Truly, I must go ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... nor Scott, I think, was crafty enough to imitate the prosaic drawl of the printed broadside ballad, or the feeble interpolations with which the "gangrel scrape-gut," or bankelsanger, supplied gaps in his memory. The modern complete ballad-faker WOULD introduce such abject verses, but Scott and Hogg desired to decorate, not to debase, ballads with ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... mind to die for good and all, taking refuge in the fortress of Capranica, from a wholesome dread of having his throat cut by robbers. There is such a difference between dying in a sonnet with a cambric handkerchief at one's eyes, and the prosaic reality of demise certified in the parish register! Practically it is inconvenient to be dead. Among other things, it puts an end to the manufacture of sonnets. But there seems to have been an excellent understanding between Petrarch and Death, for he was brought to that grisly monarch's ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... knew absolutely nothing about art. One is set wondering, indeed, whence, by virtue of what mysterious uncomprehended forces, this passion had come upon him. He was, to all appearance, a practical, even prosaic person... however, we have a good many people of the same sort ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... and tell me, your silly, vain, flirtatious daughter, how I can be unconventional in this prosaic midday of civilization." ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Marshal of Leavenworth is clearly a pot-companion of the first (whiskey and) water. He declines to address his fellow-citizens in the commonplace terms usually recognised in more prosaic communities. To adopt his own style of phraseology, ROBERTSON is clearly a "gay and festive cuss." He is a specimen brick from Kansas, and doubtless always carries one in his hat. The expression "ordinary ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... "disgust," a prosaic word which seems to mar a fine stanza, Byron does not mean "distaste," aversion from the nauseous, but "tastelessness," the inability to enjoy taste. Compare the French "Avoir du degout pour la vie," "To be out of conceit with life." Byron was "a lover of Nature," but it was seldom that he ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... with commonplace facts instead of with fancies. The child is not encouraged to make a living creature of this inanimate dummy, to tell it stories, or to exercise her imagination in some other way. She is provided with a round of prosaic and extremely material duties, and her mind is carefully kept within these bounds by details of soap and feeding-bottles, which do not offer scope for any flight ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... and entering the regions so well known to his imagination, found them strangely barren of adventure. He made many voyages. He knew the magic monotony of existence between sky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the exactions of the sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread—but whose only reward is in the perfect love of the work. This reward eluded him. Yet he could not go back, because there is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... upon himself to remember that he was not actually in a remote and desolate frontier town from which the inhabitants had fled; that back of him but a few steps was abounding life, that outside was the prosaic world passing and repassing a gate hard to enter. He whistled the fragment of a tune and went farther along this street of uncanny silence and vacancy, noting, as he went, the signs on the shop windows. There was the Busy Bee Restaurant, Jim's Place, the Hotel Renown, the Last ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... fairies gamboling Where the honey-bees do suck, Mab and Ariel and Puck? Ah! no modern mortal sees Creatures delicate as these. All the simple faith has gone Which their world was builded on. Now the moonbeams coldly glance On no gardens of romance; To prosaic senses dull, Baldur's dead, the Beautiful, Hark, the cry rings overhead, 'Universal Pan is dead!'" "Requiescant!" Claude's grave tone Thrilled us strangely. "I am one Who would not restore that Past, Beauty ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... the lady. Shakespeare has given us his Ophelia and Desdemona, creations of this false theory, and I have heard men declare them to be perfect types of womanhood. In Ruffini's charming story of Doctor Antonio, we have the same lovely heroine in our prosaic modern life. But mark how all these women utterly fail in the great hours of trial. All untrue to the demands of their love, all incapable of mating the men who have sought them. But in Portia, in Miranda, in Imogen, we have women in whom is ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... not; he was filled with an exhilaration akin to mysticism, and he sat waiting for what he was certain must be the experience above all others in his prosaic existence. ...
— McIlvaine's Star • August Derleth
... clod-pated[obs3], addle- pated[obs3]; dim-sighted, short-sighted; thick-skulled; weak in the upper story. shallow, borne, weak, wanting, soft, sappy, spoony; dull, dull as a beetle; stupid, heavy, insulse[obs3], obtuse, blunt, stolid, doltish; asinine; inapt &c. 699; prosaic &c. 843; hebetudinous[obs3]. childish, child-like; infantine[obs3], infantile, babyish, babish[obs3]; puerile, anile; simple &c. (credulous) 486; old-womanish. fatuous, idiotic, imbecile, driveling; blatant, babbling; vacant; sottish; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... employments, and having passed five years without going to town, where, by the way, "he had a large house always ready to receive him." Dryden has interspersed many of these little particulars in his prosaic compositions, and I think that his character and dispositions may be more correctly acquired by uniting these scattered notices, than by any biographical account which can now be given ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... him saying, "These great maneuvers, after all, they're a sham. It's music-hall war, directed by scene-shifters. Hunting's better, because there's blood. We get too much unaccustomed to blood, in our prosaic, humanitarian, and bleating age. Ah, as long as the nations love hunting, I shall not despair ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... she had an imagination) drew out all the sweetness that there was for it in that idea. Then it occurred to her sound, prosaic commonsense that a reputation is still a reputation, all the more precious if somewhat precariously acquired; that, though you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, hanging is very poor fun when for years you have seen nothing ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... them, Margery?" It was prosaic pathos, but pathos nevertheless. "There's coal to be bought, you know, and my life insurance comes due next month. I don't want to seem to be stingy, you know that; ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... and the scenes transport one all over the earth,—to England, Italy, Switzerland, Japan, and Kamtschatka. But this is a little commonplace history, all about one man and one woman, living straight along in one little prosaic town in New England. It is, moreover, a story with a moral; and for fear that you shouldn't find out exactly what the moral is, we shall adopt the plan of the painter who wrote under his pictures, "This is a bear," and "This is a turtle-dove." We shall tell you in the proper time succinctly ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the union proves unhappy, it is not reasonable to insist on the continuation for ten or even five years of an empty form which corresponds to no real marriage union. Even if marriage is placed on the most prosaic contractive basis it is a mistake, and indeed an impossibility, to pre-ordain the length of its duration. The system of fixing the duration of marriage beforehand for a term of years involves exactly the same principle as the system of fixing it beforehand for life. It is open to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... poet's well-merited epithet is that of the 'well-languaged Daniel;' but, likewise, and by the consent of his contemporaries, no less than of all succeeding critics, the 'prosaic Daniel.' Yet those who thus designate this wise and amiable writer, from the frequent incorrespondency of his diction with his metre, in the majority of his compositions, not only deem them valuable and interesting on other accounts, but willingly ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... this: the chapters shall be their own defence. If I had wished to present my readers with nothing but a dry chronicle of facts I should have toned this down to something more prosaic. But every one who has had any experience of life will know that her surprises are sometimes very bewildering; that fiction is nothing but uncommon experience made ordinary, or heaped inartistically upon ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sufferings and glorification in the proper relation, he takes his stand between the sufferings and the glorification of the Servant of God, and from that position, that appears to him as being already past which, in reality, was [Pg 328] still future. It is only an interpreter so thoroughly prosaic as Knobel who can advance the assertion: "No prophet occupies, in prophecy, another stand-point than that which in reality be occupies." In this, e.g., Hitzig does not by any means assent to ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... their subsistence depended, to vote the overthrow and conquest of those absolute masters. The little county town of Ennis, situated on the river Fergus, about 110 miles south-west of Dublin, was the centre of attraction or of apprehension, and the hills that rise on either side of the little prosaic river soon swarmed with an unwonted population, who had resolved, subsist how they might, to see the election out. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the eyes of the empire were turned, during those days of June, on the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... here is interest, not sympathy, for sympathy with actual suffering, be the object good or bad, is in its nature painful; an obvious reason why so few in the more prosaic world have the virtue to ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... Coins and some ornaments of this Temple of Isis. David listened to Michael Angelo's account with strange interest, for it seemed to him as though the fabled characters of Bulwer's story were endowed with actual reality by Michael Angelo's prosaic statements. ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... one—William Buddock of Thornton, St. Clair County, Michigan—manufactured a small effigy in cement, and in due time brought about the discovery of it. But, though several country clergymen used it to strengthen their arguments as to the literal, prosaic correctness of Genesis, it proved a failure. Finally, in 1889, twenty years after "the Cardiff Giant" was devised, a "petrified man" was found near Bathurst in Australia, brought to Sydney, and exhibited. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... and successes were chiefly valued as serving the prosaic end of providing permanently for himself and his daughters. His highest ambition was to restore among his fellow-townsmen the family repute which his father's misfortunes had imperilled. Ideals so homely are reckoned rare among poets, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... fainter than the horns of elf-land, came now and then a few bars of music played by the casino band. The Hudson was broadened by the night into an illimitable sea—those lights, dimly seen on its opposite shore, were not beacons for prosaic trolley-lines, but low-set stars millions of miles away. The waters in front of the inn were gay with fireflies—or were they motor-boats, smelling of gasoline and oil? Once the hermit had known these things and had sported with Amaryllis in the shade of the red-and-white-striped ...
— Options • O. Henry
... Hamlet says, real mysteries in this dull, prosaic life of ours. One or two true tales may not come amiss. I am quite ready to give any member of the Psychical Society chapter and verse and authorities, and every available ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... introduced by the translators at points where they would come naturally in the story. The work, both in prose and verse, is well done, and the attempt was successful to make, as the preface proposes, the "rendering close and accurate, and, if it might be so, at the same time, not over prosaic." The last two paragraphs of this preface are particularly interesting to one who is tracing the influence of Old Norse literature on English literature, because they are words with power, that have stirred men ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... houses were marked by white stones, the steps being scrubbed and hearthstoned almost daily; the gloomier doorsteps were black, except on Sundays. Thus variety was achieved by houses otherwise as monotonous and prosaic as a batch of fourpenny loaves. This was not the reason why the little South London side-street was called Baker's Terrace, though it might well seem so; for Baker was the name of the builder, a worthy gentleman whose years and virtues may still be deciphered on a doddering, round-shouldered ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... man in all history with whom you may compare Rajah Brooke. His career was the score of a hero of the footlights or of the dime novel rather than the life of an actual history-maker in this prosaic nineteenth century. What is true of him is also true in a less degree of his famous nephew and successor, Sir Charles Brooke, G. C. M. C., the ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... But, released from Amelia's personal supervision, romantic little Susie led Eliza astray; and the two took a furtive and fearful joy in seeing all they could of the "goings on" of the couple who had boldly converted the prosaic Cornish hotel into a land of excitement ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... admiration of every citizen. It was proposed to give him a reception. Elkanah was the moving spirit in the preparations. Captain Nat, so they learned by telegraphing, would arrive on the noon train Thursday. His was not to be a prosaic progress by stage all the way from Sandwich. A special carriage, drawn by the Daniels span and escorted by other vehicles, was to meet the coach at Bayport and bring him to Trumet in triumphant procession. All this was to be a ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... had only such a vague remembrance of his early classic course as a man has in the House of Commons, let us say, who still keeps up two or three quotations; or a reviewer who, just for decency's sake, hints at a little Greek. Our people are the most prosaic in the world, but the most faithful; and with curious reverence we keep up and transmit, from generation to generation, the superstition of what we call the education of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for her husband in a prosaic sort of way, but she knew no more of his inner nature and latent utter selfishness a year after her marriage than she had known a year before. Yet, because of the strain of dark blood in her veins—her mother was a Tahitian half-caste—she felt the mastery of his savage resolution in ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... no love for the calling. But he went to West Point because, as he quaintly tells us, his father "rather thought he would go"; and he fought through one war with credit, but without glory. The other war, which was to claim his powers and his science, found him engaged in the most prosaic of peaceful occupations; be obeyed its call because he loved his country, and not because he loved war. All the world knows the rest, and all the world knows that greater military mastery has not been shown than his campaigns illustrated. He does not say this in his book, or ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... as I have just said, of all times and nations,—it is an interior and more delicate difference which we are examining in the gift of Christian, as distinguished from unchristian, song. Orpheus, Pindar, and Horace are indeed distinct from the prosaic rabble, as the bird from the snake; but between Orpheus and Palestrina, Horace and Sidney, there is another division, and a new power of music and song given to the humanity which has ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... far into the night before he finished, while the faces of his auditors grew grave again. The security of this well ordered office, with the familiar tokens of distant peaceful England all about them, made a prosaic background for the visions which were flashing through the minds of these three Englishmen. Even now, to Renwick, as he related his experience again, the whole thing seemed incredible, and the reiterated questions of his Chief, ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... young as partridges show for theirs. The cry is harsher and noisier than that of the latter. There is one sort which has a cry of so curious a description that a good deal of speculation has arisen as to its significance. It sounds like "Tre-tre-tre," and is meant, according to a prosaic Sicilian proverb, to be a declaration by the bird of its market value, which it assesses at three coins. Others have likened its cry to the harsh, grating blast of a cracked trumpet. Such being the case, ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... the Eastern Expedition, that of dazzling the imagination of the French people and of exhibiting the incapacity of the Directory, had been abundantly realized. His eastern enterprise had now shrunk to practical and prosaic dimensions, namely, the consolidation of French power in Egypt. Yet, as will appear in later chapters, he did not give up his oriental schemes; though at St. Helena he once oddly spoke of the Egyptian ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... questions of maritime practice seemed dead issues. Let the dead past bury its dead! To remove possible causes of future controversy seemed wiser statesmanship than to rake over the embers of quarrels which might never be rekindled. So it was that in prosaic articles they provided for three commissions to arbitrate boundary controversies at critical points in the far-flung frontier between Canada and the United States, and thus laid the foundations of an international accord which ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... the language! What a transformation! I thought this to myself as I stood on the opposite side of the street looking at the sign. To be sure, it, was only printed in French and sad little letters they were that composed the name, but my mind quickly translated them into the more prosaic English as I stood and gazed. Delle Josephine was a milliner and I had been recommended to try and get a little room "sous les toits" that she sometimes had to let, during my stay in the dismal Canadian village with the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... Rolliad,' so popular that it went through twenty-two editions in twenty-seven years, accused Sheridan of inflammatory speeches among the operatives of the northern counties on the cotton question. Sheridan retorted by saying that he believed Lord Rolle must refer to 'Compositions less prosaic, but more popular' (meaning the 'Rolliad'), and thus successfully turned the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... have darkened to their final tone, and stand in their differences of character and not of mere date. Almost all the green is grave, not sad and not dull. It has a darkened and a daily colour, in majestic but not obvious harmony with dark grey skies, and might look, to inconstant eyes, as prosaic after spring as eleven o'clock looks after ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... you a vivid little impression I received of a certain prosaic person, a grocer, named Wiggins, and how he passed through the Change. I heard this man's story in the post-office at Menton, when, in the afternoon of the First Day, I bethought me to telegraph to my mother. The place was also a grocer's shop, and I found him and the proprietor talking as I went ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... Hanover, April 22d, 1819. From his earliest years his poetic nature broke through the barriers of his prosaic surroundings; but in spite of these significant manifestations, the young poet was educated to be a merchant. He was sent to a commercial school in Brunswick, and then put to serve an apprenticeship in business. His inclinations, however, were not to be repressed; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... to her would too readily preclude any contemplation of its hidden possibilities, but for a lively, susceptible imagination, which would surely intervene to prevent any such tendency being carried out to its too prosaic end. It was through appeals to her imagination and affection, rather than to her reason and intellect, that Madeleine could be influenced; and whatever large sympathies with humanity she might acquire through life, whatever aspirations after a high and noble ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... stitches and the maker's name and date. The sampler is in superb preservation, the colours are particularly rich and well chosen. This sampler is also from the South Kensington Collection. Often the worker's name is followed by a verse or rhyme having a delightfully prosaic tendency. One can imagine the poor girls, in the early days we are writing of, writhing under the infliction of having slowly and painstakingly to ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... another land, indeed into a bright land. He wakes from his dreams with a pious echo of his wish fulfillment on his lips ... "to which end help us, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen." It is quite prosaic to conclude this melodious finale by means ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... only other record that remains to us. Columbus was received in solemn state by the sovereigns of Aragon and Castile, and was welcomed by a crowd greater than the streets of Barcelona could hold. Cabot was paid L10. The dramatic splendor of the one reception, the prosaic mercantile character of the other, represent the different tempers in which Spain and England approached ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... refracted ray into its circular air-holes, the prismatic effect is enchanting. Thousands of persons visit Montmorenci every winter for no other object than that of enjoying this sight. It is needless to add that the youthful generation visit the Cone for the more prosaic purpose of toboganning or sledding from its summit away down to the middle of the ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... prepared it for its more prosaic return journey by train, they left the boat on the shore and following a beaten path came presently into the very heart of the thriving ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... prosaic conclusion of the love-story I added some remarks intended as an apology for introducing such a story into my sketches of travel, and showing how the little narrative brought into view some of the characteristics of the people of ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... expressed in poetry—some elements of imagination which always entwine with reason; why he should have supposed epic verse to be inseparably associated with the impurities of the old Hellenic mythology; why he should try Homer and Hesiod by the unfair and prosaic test of utility,—are questions which have always been debated amongst students of Plato. Though unable to give a complete answer to them, we may show—first, that his views arose naturally out of the circumstances of his age; ...
— The Republic • Plato
... whose family and friends were in hourly expectation of his death, and it is only when such discussions and arrangements come to be recorded as a part of the history of a reign that we are likely to feel impressed by the difference between the prosaic, practical details of the business of this world and the sacred solemnity of the event that is supposed already to cast its ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... ornament, and are not easily persuaded to close the sense at all. Blank verse will therefore, I fear, be too often found in description exuberant, in argument loquacious, and in narration tiresome. His diction is certainly poetical, as it is not prosaic; and elegant, as it is not vulgar. He is to be commended as having fewer artifices of disgust than most of his brethren of the blank song. He rarely either recalls old phrases, or twists his metre into harsh inversions. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... his recent work, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, maintains that they were 'a most prosaic, materialistic people, without any ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... history into such a world as this. But side by side with this wayward, fanciful stream of poesy and romance ran a torrent of intenser song. The spirit of the earlier bards, their joy in battle, their love of freedom, broke out anew in ode after ode, in songs extravagant, monotonous, often prosaic, but fused into poetry by the intense fire of patriotism which glowed within them. Every fight, every hero had its verse. The names of older singers, of Taliesin, Aneurin, and Llywarch Hen, were revived in bold forgeries to animate the national resistance and to prophesy victory. It was in North ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... see the people and especially the church and Sunday-school at this outpost. Now one can go out there by rail, but that is prosaic. It is not apostolic; those apostles tied on their sandals, girt up their garments and walked. But I found I couldn't do that way, for there was the big Cumberland to cross and several creeks, not to speak of "runs," "branches" and mud-holes. The circuit riders? Yes, they went on horseback; ...
— The American Missionary, October, 1890, Vol. XLIV., No. 10 • Various
... and was much pleased to see some of my own birds, which I had sent for from the yacht, holding their own against fine specimens from all parts of the world. They had, of course, originally been brought from England for the prosaic purpose of forming an addition to our larder, a fate from which they have happily escaped, as they will not now return to the 'Sunbeam.' There was also a miniature zoological-garden, containing a numerous collection of deer ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... discrowned and discredited, had sought refuge in exile, the great German War machine had been smashed, and demobilisation began at a rate which led to inevitable congestion and disappointment. The prosaic village blacksmith was not far out when, in reply to the vicar's pious hope that the time had come to beat our sword into a ploughshare, he observed, "Well, I don't know, sir. Speaking as a blacksmith of forty-five years' experience, I may tell you it can't be done." "The ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... near by the river Long cymes of honey-suckle grew, Odorous in the air; and the violet, too, Entangling with the phlox, and ever Entessellated beds of petal'd mosaic Stretching out before us, rich As the drapery of a dream in which The toil of life was not prosaic. Neither can the hungry ear Enfashion music softer, sweeter, Drawn from lyre, than the meter— Rippling ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... portions of the Halachic Midrash are identical in character with the Talmud. The Midrash has many passages in which the simple graces of form match the beauty of idea. But for the most part the style is simple and prosaic, rather than ornate or poetical. It produces its effects by the most straightforward means, and strikes a modern reader as lacking distinction in form. The dead level of commonplace expression is, however, brightened by brilliant passages ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... molest one's door, The streets are choked with messy mist; I'm the proverbial Bachelor, An old, prosaic Pessimist. Yet somehow—who can tell me why?— Urged by the Past's dim Phantom, I'm Disposed my cosy Club to fly, And prank it ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... my travels eagerly; for I wished to cool my brain by daily contact with the more prosaic minds of men of business. I went South. For a time I banished all thoughts of my book and project. But after some months of this change of occupation, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I found leisure in the course of wide travels to ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... little scenes of this little drama, mixed up with gleams of the shop-windows, and noises of the streets, and great ghosts of passing omnibuses, and horses steaming in the frosty air. How many girls, like her, go dreaming about the prosaic streets? It was not, perhaps, a very elevated or heroic dream, but the visionary chariot full of fine things for the children, was better than Cinderella's pumpkin carriage, or many another chariot of romance. Her cousins, who were so much her elders, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... pleasure to learn, somewhat later, that this very prosaic solution of the difficulty ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... what avoid. But you must, pray, understand that what follows will be more useful to the tiro in prose than to the tiro in verse; for while even a lecturer may help you to avoid writing prose in the manner of Milton, only the gods—and they hardly—can cure a versifier of being prosaic. ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... met the man." When confronted with Mrs. Bourne he said that he had "never seen the woman before," etc. On the other hand, he told of his peregrinations during the lost fortnight, and gave all sorts of details about the Norristown episode. The whole thing was prosaic enough; and the Brown-personality seems to be nothing but a rather shrunken, dejected, and amnesic extract of Mr. Bourne himself. He gave no motive for the wandering except that there was "trouble back there" and he "wanted rest." ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... development of the woods had any charm for him. In vain did the fields display their golden treasures of ripening corn; in vain did the pale barley and the silvery oats wave their luxuriant growth against the dark background of the woods; all these fairylike effects of summer suggested only prosaic and misanthropic reflections in Julien's mind. He thought of the tricks, the envy and hatred that the possession of these little squares of ground brought forth among their rapacious owners. The prolific exuberance of forest vegetation ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... reasons no doubt why Stella should come back; but they did not include the reason why she had. Dick Hazlewood was well aware of it. He had learnt it only the afternoon before when he was with her on the river. But he thought it a reason too delicate, of too fine a gossamer to be offered to the prosaic mind of his Aunt Margaret. With what ridicule and disbelief she would rend it into tatters! Reasons so exquisite were not for her. She ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... to find two very ordinary and prosaic tradesmen thus in the front of popular literature in the beginning of the eighteenth century. There is no comparison between Allan Ramsay and Samuel Richardson in respect to genius. That humdrum old bookseller evoked by some miraculous art the most delicate and lovely of creations out of the midst ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... do them justice, and you will prefer to be silent rather than slander them by inadequate portrayal. They are at first sight not attractive-looking. If you stand outside and look at them from a distance their lives will appear to you very humdrum and prosaic. But remember that for almost thirty years our Lord lived just such a life in Nazareth, making ploughs and yokes; and then, when the younger brothers and sisters were able to care for themselves, snatched three years from supporting a peasant family in Galilee to redeem a world. And who was Peter ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... of the enthusiast's fire in the cool gray eyes to go with the words, and Miss Adair wondered at it. He had stood for her as an embodiment of things practical and prosaic; as one too keenly watchful and alert on the purely industrial side to be in any sense a dreamer of dreams. Some part of her thought slipped ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... and dreaming, I knew that a great thing had befallen me. For me, Andrew Garvald, the prosaic trader, coming out of the darkness into this strange company, the foundations of the world had been upset. All my cares and hopes, my gains and losses, seemed in that moment no better than dust. Love had come to me like a hurricane. From now I ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... of Arcadia, as has been said before, is an intoxicating air; but it is more, it is an air charged with a subtle magic whereby the commonest objects, losing their prosaic, matter-of-fact shapes, become transfigured into things of wonder, and delight. Little things that pass as mere ordinary common-places,—things insignificant, and wholly beneath notice in the every day world, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... to us, although it is often an effort toward wisdom, i.e., toward the comprehension of things. It would be more correct to say, with Tylor, that it represents a state intermediate between that of a man of our time, prosaic and well-to-do, and that of a furious madman, or of a man ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... him seemed to fade away. Ah! if there was but some faint chance of distinguishing himself for her sake!—if she were but a princess in distress!—a lady for whom he could enter the lists and fight until he won! What was there in this prosaic century that he could do for her?—literally ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... airs and graces, to hang out along the fence like any ordinary hired girl, jabberin' with anybody that went along the road," said his mother incisively. He knew that she didn't like her new neighbors, so this did not surprise nor greatly pain him. Neither did the prosaic facts that were now first made plain to him. His divinity was a Mrs. Burroughs, whose husband was conducting a series of mining operations, and prospecting with a gang of men on the Casket Ridge. As his duty required ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte |
