"Smartness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arranging the hair. Where you find one or more of these indications, you find the easiest road to favorable attention through the appetite of the individual for praise. If he is of the intellectual type, praise him for his smartness. If he is a fat man, praise him for his popularity, his political astuteness, his financial acumen, his artistic ordering of a dinner, for his impartiality. If he is of the bony and muscular type, praise ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... boy—perhaps he is too smart; but his smartness is not worldly cunning; it is made up of those elements of character which constitute a noble and true man—good judgment, quick perception, and manly decision, mingled with those moral and religious attributes which are the leading springs of the true life. If ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... Notting Hill, Fleet Street and the Strand. I have here purposely opposed to each other streets that have obvious points of likeness. But what a yawning gulf of difference is between each couple! Hill Street, with its staid distinction, and Pont Street, with its eager, pushful 'smartness,' its air de petit parvenu, its obvious delight in having been 'taken up'; High Street Notting Hill, down-at-heels and unashamed, with a placid smile on its broad ugly face, and High Street Kensington, with its traces of former beauty, and its air of neatness and self-respect, as befits ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... interest me much," quoth I. "Indeed, this American smart set don't appeal to me either for its smartness or ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... constant and secret ambition—went far farther than that. It was to be of man's estate, broad-shouldered and heavy-bearded; to wear huge black boots up to his thighs, and a blue flannel jersey; to have a peaked cap (not forgetting a brass button on each side by way of smartness); and then to come along, in the afternoon, with a yellow oilskin tied up in a bundle, to the wharf where the herring fleet lay, the admiration and the envy of all the miserable creatures ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... with insinuating eyes, a battered countenance, and a nervous twitch about the mouth. He spent his whole life hanging about the aristocratic world; frequented the English clubs of both capitals, and had the reputation of a smart, not very trustworthy, but jolly good-natured fellow. In spite of his smartness, he was almost always on the brink of ruin, and the property he left his son was small and heavily-encumbered. To make up for that, however, he did exert himself, after his own fashion, over his son's education. Vladimir Nikolaitch spoke French very well, English well, and German badly; that ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... strange news. One could be smart, devote oneself to study—be a "greasy grind"—and yet fail of prominence; and one could fail to pass—"flunk"—and yet climb to the pinnacle of prominence. Evidently smartness and studiousness had nothing to do with it, and Missy felt a pleasurable thrill. Formerly she had envied Beulah Crosswhite, who wore glasses and was preternaturally wise. But maybe Beulah Crosswhite was not so much. Manifestly it ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... first cross-roads I saw a splendid and erect individual, flashing forth authority, gaiety, and utter smartness in the gloom. Impossible not to believe that he was the owner of all the adjacent ground, disguised as a cavalry officer ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... to his first impression—the one made in haste and some vexation, when she had first tried to thrust herself into the Ball household and demanded the place filled by Sheila Macklin. This girl certainly was not insane. But with all her apparent smartness, Cap'n Ira easily saw that she was not intelligent—that she had scarcely ordinary understanding. Beside the newcomer's shallow nature and even more shallow endowments, Sheila seemed to ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... too, the buttoning up to the chin, which, on the mountain's side, you had perhaps rather dispense with; but which the soldier must adhere to, if he would keep up the essential degree of stiffness and smartness of dress. Coats of this kind, and equipments of this nature, are worn by the Prussian and French infantry—two good authorities in military matters; they have been tried on our police force; something ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... eyes grew serious, troubled, petulant, if she was afraid of missing the flower-show, or merely of not being in time for tea, with muffins and toast, at the Rue Royale tea-rooms, where she believed that regular attendance was indispensable, and set the seal upon a woman's certificate of 'smartness,' Swann, enraptured, as all of us are, at times, by the natural behaviour of a child, or by the likeness of a portrait, which appears to be on the point of speaking, would feel so distinctly the soul of his mistress rising to fill the outlines of her face that he could not refrain ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... landing smartly, and a lieutenant, diminutive but highly effective in appearance, led six men toward the Karluk. He wore a sword and revolver; the men carried carbines. Their disciplined rank and smartness, the waiting launch, the gunboat in the offing, were ominous with the suggestion of power, the will to administer it. The officer in command carried his chin at an arrogant tilt. Lund had rigged a gangway and stood at the head of it, saluting the lieutenant ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... more, it hurts more when they don't blame! Thirty copecks yes! And maybe she needs them now, eh? What do you think, my dear sir? For now she's got to keep up her appearance. It costs money, that smartness, that special smartness, you know? Do you understand? And there's pomatum, too, you see, she must have things; petticoats, starched ones, shoes, too, real jaunty ones to show off her foot when she has to step over a puddle. Do you understand, sir, do you ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... would go swinging down the road and into Claverings park, and perform various exercises with commendable smartness and a profound disregard for Lady Homartyn's known objection to any ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... had been fixed as the hour at which Mr. Blyth was to present himself at the lodgings in Kirk Street. He arrived punctual to the appointed time, dressed jauntily for the occasion in a short blue frock coat, famous among all his acquaintances for its smartness of cut and its fabulous old age. From what Zack had told him of Mat's lighter peculiarities of character, he anticipated a somewhat uncivilized reception from the elder of his two hosts; and when he got ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... a room that was coloured a bright green. He was himself stout and red-faced and of a surpassing smartness, his light blue suit was very tight at the waist and very broad over the hips, his white spats gleamed, his pearl pin stared like an eye across the room, his neck bulged in red folds over his collar. Mr. Boset was eating chocolates out of a little cardboard ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... close up to the most venerable of men and halting in front of the bottle-green waistcoat, made a trigger of his right thumb and forefinger, applied the same to the brim of the broad-brimmed hat, and, with singular smartness and precision, shot it off the polished head as if it ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... weakness and negligence into difficulties, only that I might divert myself with their perplexities and distresses; and violated every law of friendship, with no other hope than that of gaining the reputation of smartness and waggery. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... and specially made light top-boots, with large shady sun helmets; and because for a long time he had not seen anything much but slipshod garments among women riders, or exceedingly warm-looking correct home attire, he appreciated their cool smartness. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... up-to-date girl, Sam. A girl that can work herself up to head floor-lady in wholesale ribbons and forty dollars a week has got in her the kind of smartness my boy should have in his wife. I'm an old woman standing in the way of my boy. If I wasn't, I could go out to Marietta, Ohio, by Ruby, and I wouldn't keep having inside of me such terrible fears for my boy and—and how things are now on the ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... shrugging up her thin shoulders and casting a queer glance round her from under her brows; "let us take him away quickly, before he cuts himself with his own smartness." ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... fear, on the decline; we no longer see the vigour of handling and smartness of conception formerly apparent in his works: or, "A little stricter attention to drawing, as well as composition, would render this artist's works ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... one before the curtain goes up. The business interior; the typewriter on the left; the head of the firm opening cryptic correspondence and dictating unintelligible answers; spasmodic incursions of cocksure buyers and bagmen; a prevailing air of smartness, of hustle, of get-on-or-get-out. In The Melting Pot Mr. ZANGWILL has been creating a diversion with an Hebraic theme, his hero being a refugee from Kieff, where his family had perished in a pogrom. This new variation has occurred—independently, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... figure to fit, Jenny," Miss Peace replied, modestly. "I guess that's half the smartness of it. It doos set good, though, I'm free to think. The styles is real pretty this summer, anyhow. ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... our poor demoralized by them, and either crazed by dissent, or heathenized by their former distance from church. Who would take us? No more Mr. Davisons! There was no more novelty, and too much smartness to invite self-devotion. So we were driven from pillar to post till we settled down into this Mr. Touchett, as good a being as ever lived, working as hard as any two, and sparing neither himself ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... (but didn't) boast of a 'Varsity education, and he prided himself on his smartness, but he was far from being "gleg at the uptak'," as the Scots say, and his powers of observation and deduction assuredly would not have qualified him for a position as a Scotland Yard "sleuth." Seemingly he was quite unconscious of the electrical atmosphere ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... which were numbered in two semicircles of twelve points each; one, I suppose, for noon, and the other for midnight. The town has, so far as its principal street is concerned, a city-like aspect, with large, fair edifices, and shops as good as most of those at Rome, the smartness of which contrasts strikingly with the rude and lonely scenery of mountain and stream, through which we had come to reach it. We drove through Narni without stopping, and came out from it on the other side, where a broad, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is but dimly visible. A dying fire burns on the left. A curtained window in the centre of the back wall. A door on the right. The furniture is plush-covered and commonplace, with a kind of shabby smartness. A couch, without back or arms, stands aslant, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... counsel. The case for the United States was not presented in a manner worthy of the occasion. According to Adams the American contentions "were advanced with an aggressiveness of tone and attorney-like smartness, more appropriate to the wranglings of a quarter-sessions court than to pleadings before a grave international tribunal." The American counsel were instructed to insist not, indeed, on indemnity for the cost of two years of war, but on compensation ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... fool; there was no doubt as to that; the only thing now was how he could best retrieve his folly. He had walked blindly into a trap, suspecting nothing, confidently relying on his own smartness, believing himself unknown. Now he must find his way out. It angered him to realize how easily it had been accomplished; not so much as a blow struck; no opportunity even for him to cry out an alarm—only that dark cabin, and the threatening revolver shoved against ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... was meant to deceive the public. With equal candour she wore a magnificent set of teeth, and a touch of rouge on each cheek-bone. To Aunt William's extreme annoyance Lady Virginia was dressed to-day in a strange medley of the artistic style combined oddly with a rather wild attempt at Parisian smartness. That is to say, in her cloak and furs she looked almost like an outside coloured plate on the cover of Paris Fashions; while when she threw it open one could see that she wore a limp crepe de chine Empire ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... eyes, that gives the characteristic air of intelligence and wisdom to the parrot's face. We naturally expect so clever a bird to speak. And when it turns upon us suddenly with a copy-book maxim, we are in no way astonished at its surpassing smartness. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... wore a pink-spotted muslin dress and a straw hat, with pink ribbon. She certainly looked extremely pretty, and not at all what she had such a dread of before Mrs. Foster, smart. Mrs. Foster had a horror of smartness ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... others, and be ruled by others, but he cannot rule himself. The cure would appear to be to train every German for an officer, and then put him under himself. It is certain he would order himself about with discretion and judgment, and see to it that he himself obeyed himself with smartness and precision. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... his Georgics; and Sir Richard Blackmore at the like age composing his Arthurs, declared the same to be the very acme and pitch of life for epic poesy—though since he hath altered it to sixty, the year in which he published his Alfred.[201] True it is, that the talents for criticism—namely, smartness, quick censure, vivacity of remark, certainty of asseveration, indeed all but acerbity—seem rather the gifts of youth than of riper age. But it is far otherwise in poetry; witness the works of Mr Rymer and Mr Dennis, who, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... take advantage of his neighbors and cheat them, but he would do it so smoothly that they never once suspected that they were being cheated. Mr. Snake would go about all day cheating everybody he met. At night he would go home and chuckle over his smartness. It wasn't long before he began to look down on his neighbors for being so honest that they didn't suspect other people of being dishonest, and ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... is the slipover blouse which follows the lines of the French cuirasse. Charmingly simple, this blouse, quite devoid of trimming, achieves smartness by concealing the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... those old days very much longer than they do now. The smartness of children like my grandsons, Shem, Ham and Japhet, for instance, who at the age of two hundred and fifty arrogate to themselves all the knowledge of the universe, was comparatively unknown when I was a child. To begin ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... International Copyright Treaty with the United Kingdom, who is an author of any book, etc., shall have the sole right of printing, publishing, etc., for a number of years on certain conditions. This is a narrow construction of the Canadian Act, and savours somewhat of smartness and sharp practice. I believe it is not a fair construction and is certainly not in accord with the spirit and manifest intention of the Act. I am not alone in entertaining this opinion which still remains ...
— The Copyright Question - A Letter to the Toronto Board of Trade • George N. Morang
... man strolled past, hands behind his back. He was placidly smoking a cigar, and, though the dusk had deepened, Mayo could perceive that he was attired with some pretensions to city smartness. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... home. At any rate, be that as it may, the change was not a little welcome, and much did I see to wonder at in the old Castle, the new Gaol, the size of the city, the extent of the Market Place, the smartness of the people, and the glare of the shops. It well repaid me for the ride of twenty-six miles and the jolting of the carrier's cart along the ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... was a pattern of town prettiness and smartness. So trim her waist, her cap, her dress—I wondered how they had all been manufactured. Her speech had an accent which in its mincing glibness seemed to rebuke mine as by authority; her spruce attire flaunted an easy scorn to ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... most ancient and honoured of all the idols fell with a crash. A perfect father was lost in some common, swaggering, loud-voiced, street-mannered creature, grotesquely self-satisfied, of a cheap, shabby smartness, who came flaunting those things he should not have flaunted, and proclaiming in every turn of his showy head his lack of those things without which the little boy now saw no ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... same mocking smile playing about his mouth. "Never will do, in the world. Your smart fellows are always running off, stealing horses, and raising the devil generally. I think you'll have to take off a couple of hundred for his smartness." ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and smiled. I snatched a quick look at the lady again. She was dressed with an amount of care and a smartness of detail that seemed somewhat uncalled for on the Indian Ocean. A cruise on a P. and O. steamer is not a garden party. Her chair was most luxurious, and had her name painted on it, back and front, in very ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... four nations, but the British is the main authority. G.H.Q. Constantinople occupies a large barracks which faces a parade-ground. Indian sentries march to and fro outside and enjoy thus serving their King, a picture of polish and smartness. Facing the barracks is a smaller building called "The Jockey Club" where the Commander-in-Chief himself and many of his staff meet to lunch or dine, play billiards, or chat pleasantly over ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... out of the place, but I did not know what they were laughing at nor whom they were laughing at, and it was a matter of no interest to me anyway. Through that incident I acquired an enviable reputation for smartness and penetration, but it was not my due, for I had not penetrated anything that the cow ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... that Pamphlet I know not, and am in no condition to guess. A certain snappish vivacity (very unlike the style of Frederick whom it personates); a wearisome grimacing, gesticulating malice and smartness, approaching or reaching the sad dignity of what is called 'wit' in modern times; in general the rottenness of matter, and the epigrammatic unquiet graciosity of manner in this thing, and its elaborately INhuman turn both of expression and of thought, are ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... envied them! Then the whole superficies of his mind became filled with a desire to conceal this difference. He recalled the various characteristics of those who worked along with him. One knew all topical songs, slang and phrases; another affected a smartness in dress; a third discussed theatres with semi-professional knowledge. Harvey, however, could never have entered the world, or lived in it, if he had first to pass through the portals of such ideas! He delivered ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... Prints | | for a summer morning; pastel Chiffons or buoyant | | Taffetas for the evening party. And in Coats—there's | | the slim "wrappy", the Cape-back. | | | | When Youth Steps Out—if it's young youth, it chooses | | for smartness and comfort, a "Felice" Pump—in patent or | | tan calf, with matching buckles. If it's more | | sophisticated youth—there's the sophisticated Shoe; the | | Shoe of high, "Spiked" heel and daringly contrasted | | leathers—dainty, ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... he had walked out with his nephew and three boys who boarded in the house; but Mr. Low found Miss Evans in a small parlour, dressed, as she always was in an evening, with some pretensions to fashion and smartness: she was very busy with a huge basket of stockings, ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... courage imposed on and exercised by the ruling classes, and symbolically imaged in their code of honour, took an effective shape in the banning of cowardice and of cowardly crime. So far as positive values go, the ethics of nobility degenerated into smartness, the claim for "satisfaction" and the exclusiveness of rank; a Prussian and Kantian abstraction, the conception of duty, a conception at bottom unproved and incapable of generating conviction, became a rule of life, made effective by training and ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... her away from him, and paternal pride and affection were both gratified, he saw no reason to complain. This satisfaction, however, did not prevent his "stirring her up" now and then, as he said, that he might sun himself in the glow of her youthful temper and chuckle inwardly over her smartness. ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... Charles Hotel parlor a group of natty officers stood lightly chatting while they covertly listened. At the other end, with Irby and Mandeville at his two elbows, General Brodnax conversed with Kincaid and Bartleson, the weather-faded red and gray of whose uniforms showed in odd contrast to the smartness all about them. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Remarkable, for you have a hole through your ear. And Melanthius, when he was ridiculed by a comedian, said, You pay me now something that you do not owe me. And upon this account jeers vex more; for like bearded arrows they stick a long while, and gall the wounded sufferer. Their smartness is pleasant, and delights the company; and those that are pleased with the saving seem to believe the detracting speaker. For according to Theophrastus, a jeer is a figurative reproach for some fault or misdemeanor; and therefore he that hears it supplies the concealed part, as if he ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... kindness from one whom he had learned to consider as a man of unlimited means and unusual smartness, quite set him up in ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... them more strongly tersive, and clearing the Eyes; and they had a rough smartness, as if they carryed Sand or Gravel into ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... his own ideas of military smartness, and these lads were all clean-shaven. They trooped in from their game, under that little cloud of shrapnel smoke that still hung in the sky, for all the world a crowd of overheated and self-conscious schoolboys receiving an unexpected visit from ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... taste in all her arrangements, and although the expenses of the outlay and the first year's rent had swallowed up a considerable portion of the money she had laid by, it soon proved that she had calculated well, and her shop became a sort of lounge for the officers, who amused themselves with her smartness and vivacity, the more so as she had a talent for repartee, which men like to find in ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... mammoth hotels, paltry dwellings, empty lots, prodigiously wide avenues, a fossil population, and a series of gigantic public buildings, which seemed dropped by accident into a fifth-rate backwoods settlement. During the sessions Washington was overrun with "Smartness": Smart pages, smart messengers, smart cabmen, smart publicans, smart politicians, smart women, smart scoundrels! Greatness became commonplace here, and Mr. Douglas might drink at Willard's Bar, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... homogeneous mass! He told me that there was a public library in Grasmere, to which he has access in common with the other inhabitants, and a reading-room connected with it, where he reads the "Times" in the evening. There was no American smartness in his mind. When I left the house, it was showering briskly; but the drops quite ceased, and the clouds began to break away, before I reached my hotel, and I saw the new moon over my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... break their hearts, and they will fill these coveted places with a languid, discontented incapacity. Great difficulty will be experienced in finding schools for the girls from which the offspring of tradesmen are excluded. Vulgarity has to be jealously anticipated. In a period when Smartness (as distinguished from Vulgarity) is becoming an ideal, this demands at times extremely subtle discrimination. The art of credit will be developed to ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... "Too much smartness is Marian's trouble," replied Miss Waring. "There's nothing in the gymnasium she can't do; she's become the best French scholar we ever had, but that's about all. She's worked hard at French because she thinks it gives her a grand ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... discoveries, or on the look-out for materials to make wives or husbands jealous, the women only come to be seen, glad to let everybody know that they are without any restraint upon their actions. There was certainly no question of smartness there, considering the disordered style of dress worn. The women seemed to have agreed to shew all the signs of disorder imaginable, to give those who saw them something to talk about. As for the men, on whose arms they ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of the population of the country. Even on quitting Epernay, I had noticed it to my companion. The human beings you see, are chiefly females—ill-featured, and ill complexioned— working hard beneath the rays of a scorching sun. As to that sabbath-attire of cleanliness, even to smartness among our own country people, it is a thing very rarely to be seen in the villages of France. At Brillon, we bought fine cherries, of a countrywoman for two sous ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... smartness, bub," sharply spoke the man at last, as he fully comprehended that Ree had purposely given him an evasive answer, "I asked ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... and estate that had belonged to the English ancestors of one of them. It is written in a curiously tortured idiom, largely borrowed from the Bible, and all the characters are continually given to verbal smartness or peculiarity of one kind or another. The characters are not individualized. Each is a type, smoothed out by sentimental handling into something meant to be sympathetic. Moreover, the real difficulties of the narrative are ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... force him to release his relaxing hold upon his fashionable clubs, upon luxurious attire and habits, he would suddenly and with accelerated speed drop into the abyss—We have all caught glimpses of that abyss—frayed fine linen cheaply laundered, a tie of one time smartness showing signs of too long wear, a suit from the best kind of tailor with shiny spot glistening here, patch peeping there, a queer unkemptness about the hair and skin—these the beginnings of a road that leads straight and short to the barrel-house, ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... decided, on account of their smartness of dress, that they were not English. Indeed, the man addressed her in French, to which she responded. Her coiffure was in the latest mode of Paris, her gown showed unmistakably the hand of the French dressmaker, while her elegance was essentially that of the Parisienne. ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... though there should be occasion for it, few are so unfortunate in their Relations and Acquaintance not to have some Friend capable of giving them advice, if they are not too ignorantly conceited to ask it. Aurelian was so pleased with the easiness and smartness of her Expostulation, that he forgot to make a reply, when she seem'd to expect it; but being a Woman of a quick Apprehension, and justly sensible of her own perfections, she soon perceived he did not ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... Dorcas, represented her danger from Singleton, in order to dissuade her from going at all, unless she allowed me to attend her; but I was answered, with her usual saucy smartness, that if there were no cause of fear of being met with at the playhouse, when there were but two playhouses, surely there was less at church, when there were so many churches. The chairmen were ordered to carry her to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... "Tusser's general precepts have often an expressive brevity, and are sometimes pointed with an epigrammatic turn, and smartness of allusion." ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... always glancing about him, seeming to feel that people might be watching him and trying to detect something. This conscious expression, since it was as far as possible from boyish mirthfulness, was usually attributed to insolence or "smartness." ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... country and friends I had left for ever, a slight tap at the door roused me from my painful reveries, and Mrs. C—- entered the room. Like most of the Canadian women, my friend was small of stature, slight and delicately formed, and dressed with the smartness and neatness so characteristic of the females of this continent, who, if they lack some of the accomplishments of English women, far surpass them in their taste in dress, their choice of colours, and the graceful ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... to a Collector. Mohammedans, Hindus, and a few Parsees arrived, some in smart carriages, a few in hired conveyances, and others on foot. Another motor car with an Indian owner drove up. At present the dash, and go, and smartness of a motor-car seem strangely out of keeping with the spirit of leisure, and delay, and general shabbiness so ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... political horizon, her dauntless courage, the fidelity and devotion of her love. Retz, moreover, mistakes entirely the order of her adventures; he forgets and then invents. In striving after epigrammatic point, he sacrifices truth to smartness of style, and writes as though he looked upon events in which the passions of the Duchess made her take part as mere trifles, whereas among them there were some than which none were ever of graver or even more ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... would land with their rifles and cutlasses, and a field gun from each ship. Headed by the flag-ship's band, we would be marched to a plain, and there engage in infantry drill as a battalion. Meantime the guns' crews were competing with each other as to their qualifications for smartness. The guns would be taken to pieces, unlimbered, and scattered on the ground, and the wheels of the gun-carriage wheeled away a considerable distance. On the order being given to "Limber up, and fire!" the crew which mounted its gun and fired ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... the helpers saw them depart to the platform where their train was waiting for them, with very natural relief. But they were no sooner gone, when a guardsman, with the manners, the stature, and the smartness of his kind, came back to the counter, and asked to speak to the lady in charge of it. "Those chaps, Miss, what have just gone out," he said apologetically, "have never been used to ladies, and they don't know what to say to them. So they asked ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their departure. In a humorous monologue Gertrude decides to accept the Burgomaster. She is interrupted in her soliloquy by Lampe, the Beadle, who is a regular old Paul Pry, and boasts to the widow of his smartness and sagacity. According to himself he can ferret out anything, or any one, from a defrauder of the revenue to a thief, an anarchist or a murderer. Then he goes on to say that he intended to serve notice of distraint on Frau ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... groaned the pale lady-doctor, turning uneasily away from the little things that lay squirming and making such grimaces, as only very young babies can make, in the face of Mrs. Pimble. The alleged father stood there, chuckling over the smartness of his progeny. Mrs. Pimble darted one withering glance upon him, and walked away without another word. She roused old Dr. Potipher, and took him home with her. Well she did so, for Garrison was much worse ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... all wonders, in our own minds," laughed Charley. "We have got a chance to show our smartness right now. I, for one, am getting mighty hungry and we haven't bagged anything ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... him with naive admiration. To admire him was agreeable to her; and she liked also to feel unimportant in his presence. But she fought, unsuccessfully, against the humiliating idea that his personal smartness convicted her of being shabby—of being even inefficient in one department of her existence; and she could have wished to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... the Quickness of Repartees, which in Discoursive Scenes fall very often: it has so particular a grace, and is so aptly suited to them, that the Sudden Smartness of the Answer, and the Sweetness of the Rhyme set off ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... himself trying to picture Robert Turold in the part of a smart lively young fellow, and failing utterly. But Time took the smartness out of a man in less than thirty years. It had also taken the liveliness out of Robert ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... happened but still in all I might of interfered because I am the only 1 of them that has got a heart Al and the only reason Alcock and Brady is so sick now is that they are scared to death of what will happen to them if they get found out. Because their smartness won't get them nothing up in front of the Court Marshall as he has seen to many ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner
... wondrous mixture of sneakingness and smartness, and his expression did most villainously belie him, if he were not as sharp a customer as ever wagged an elbow, or betted on ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... premised, the shyness was still in evidence, and the author became as silent and austere as the other members of the company. There was a youth, in trousers obviously pressed under his mattress, and a coat too short for him, whose air of shabby smartness brought tears to the eyes of the author, who had passed through very much the same purgatory years before. Indeed it was very much like a coffee room in purgatory, if the reader can imagine such a thing, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... of the day, or, rather, the place where it used to be, it seems to me as if there's a mistake somewhere. It looks as if religion meant greenness, and infidelity meant science and smartness, according to the papers. I'm no scientist myself. I don't know evolution from the side of a house. As an evolver I couldn't earn my board, probably, and I wouldn't know a protoplasm from a side of sole leather; but I know when I get to the end of my picket rope, and I ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... languished against the hot bricks of the doorway. Dick came round between him and Melchard, peering down upon that sordid wreck of smartness. He turned to ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... seems that there's fishing and sailing to be done, and I'm not quite sure about that major man. Guess he's always had people to wait on him, and that doesn't tend to smartness in any one. When my daughter and her friends go out on the lake, or up the river, you'll go ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... crept out of the lodge, looking over his shoulder as he went through the door. Then he ran away as fast as he could go. Over hills and valleys, across rivers and creeks, toward the east. He wasted much breath laughing at his smartness as he ran, ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... face which only arouses comical thoughts in others. I'm a buffoon. But excuse an old man's cackle. You, Rodion Romanovitch, you are in your prime, and, like all young people, you appreciate, above all things, human intelligence. Intellectual smartness and abstract rational deductions entice you. But, to return to the SPECIAL CASE we were talking about just now. I must tell you that we have to deal with reality, with nature. This is a very important thing, and how admirably does she often foil ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... reporter over in surprise. I studied him closely for the first time. He belonged to the world, not to Osageville ... the world of fashion, of smartness ... a world I despised. My world and his would always be like separate planets. He would consort with people for the mere pleasure of social life with them. The one thing I did not like about him was his small mouth ... but ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... flushed while she talked, and, for the moment, she lost entirely her resemblance to Jane, who was never animated, though she made a perpetual murmurous sound. Unlike Jane, Fanny was vivacious, pert, and, for her years, extraordinarily sophisticated. Already she dressed with extreme smartness; already she was thinking of men as of possible lovers; and already she was beginning, in her mother's phrase, "to manage her life." Her trite little face, in its mist of golden hair, which she took hours to arrange, still reminded one of the insipid angel on a ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... very day he did; at least he tried. He put on his hat and he took his cane in his hand and as he started down the street he sought to put smartness and springiness into his gait. If the attempt was a sorry failure, he, for one, did not appreciate the completeness of the failure. He meant, anyhow, that his step no longer should be purposeless and mechanical; ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... leaning back in my carriage, at (I think) Ware, while they were changing horses, when a voice, strongly associated with my meditations, struck upon my ear. I looked out, and saw Thornton standing in the yard, attired with all his original smartness of boot and breeches: he was employed in smoking a cigar, sipping brandy and water, and exercising his conversational talents in a mixture of slang and jokeyism, addressed to two or three men of his own rank ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... islands from a party who did not own them; with real smartness and a good counterfeit of disinterested friendliness we coaxed a confiding weak nation into a trap and closed it upon them; we went back on an honored guest of the Stars and Stripes when we had no further use for him and chased him to the mountains; we ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... souls of poets dead and gone for our judges. But we are also to write for the future, asking with what feelings posterity will read us—if it reads us at all. This is a good discipline. We know by practice what will hit some contemporary tastes; we know the measure of smartness, say, or the delicate flippancy, or the sentence with "a dying fall." But one should also know that these are fancies of the hour—these and the touch of archaism, and the spinster-like and artificial precision, which seem to be points in some ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... of would-be "smartness" was seen by Beau Lovelace. He had a wholesome contempt for the Snake—and all its class,—he would never have looked at it, or known of the paragraph, had not a friend of his at the Garrick pointed it out to him with half a smile ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... labor. Cavour wrote one circular to all cabinets, and so do all European statesmen. So, as they are, the State papers are a curious agglomeration of good patriotism and confusion. So the Minister to England is to avoid slavery; the Minister to France has the contrary. All this is not smartness or diplomacy, but rather confusion, insincerity, and double-dealing. One must conclude that Lincoln and Seward have themselves no firm opinion. The instructions to Mexico would sound nobly-worded but for the confusion ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... modest swagger about Miles as he spoke, for he rather prided himself on his business acumen and general smartness, so Katherine's next words were a ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... hunchback had opened the door and introduced to the company a dapper, affable gentleman who was habited, as became his calling, for the most part in black; but he lent an air of smartness to his notarial garb by reason that the black of his coat and breeches was of silk, and that he wore a quantity of costly lace. This was Master Griveau, one of the principal notaries of Paris, and a man that had been employed not a little by the Prince de Gonzague. For this reason his face ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... smarter at church. Religious fervour, if it ran to limpness of dress, or form, or mind, was punishable according to law. A wholesome spirit of competition was encouraged, not in the taking of many prizes, the attending of many services, or the acquirement of much Euclid, but in dress, smartness, and ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... creditable smartness in getting inboard the flying-jib that we had cut away for them, and by the time that this was accomplished they had drawn up so close to us that by bearing away a point or two to port and starboard respectively, both craft were enabled ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... vehemency, some smartness and sharpness of speech may sometimes be used in defence of truth, and impugning errors of bad consequence; especially when it concerneth the interest of truth, that the reputation and authority of its adversaries should somewhat be abased or abated. If by partial opinion or reverence towards ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... irritations, and not to be diverted from his sport by trifles, has frequently been compelled to move from a favourite ground by a stream of the scum drifting to his anchored boat. The fumes gave intense smartness to the eyes, which were relieved by a gush of tears, but keen discomfort recurred when the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... and terms, signed by all parties, for surrendering and accepting the surrender of the town. Having therefore seen the deputation of the town off for Turin, my next most anxious endeavour was to cause the battle to cease, which had been carried on at the advanced posts with great smartness. I therefore once more took to my boat to begin the arduous duty of separating the combatants. General La Marmora sent aide-de- camps, but it took time before they could reach all points from which cannon were firing, not on the town but all the points of attack. ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... for prompt obedience to the orders which had been given them, the crew sprang to their several stations and did their work with a smartness which would have been creditable even on board a man-of-war; and in another minute the ship had paid handsomely off on the larboard tack, with her ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... crazy and they didn't dare oppose him. That's why they are so slow. But they'll be here soon and he'll be put to bed. Lemuel says the man'll take a blazed trail the rest of his life, and will have time to get over his smartness while his bones heal. But I think it's too bad. I'm sorry for him, and so is Dad. Now, come. They're going to table and I'm hungry as a bear. Isn't it fine of Mrs. Roderick to get a meal this time of night, or day, or whatever hour ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... subjugation not before anticipated had an inspiring effect. In short, female Nyack began to carry a high head, and to make male Nyack feel that he was no longer master in its own house. Dolly Chapman presided at these tea-parties with that smartness peculiar to women of her class, taking particular pains to explain how much could be done for Nyack and the world—if only the women could get the direction of things into their own hands. A church as the means of carrying out these new and grand ideas was exactly ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... has its wooden verandah, which shields the living rooms against the glare of the sun in summer, and shelters them from snow and rain in winter. These wooden verandahs are in a greater or lesser state of repair and smartness, and under the roof of every verandah hang rows of the same ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... that?" he asked, with quiet ferocity, in his strong Lancashire accent. "What does Ferrier's smartness matter to us? The Labor men are sick of it! All he's asked to do is to run straight!—as the party wants him ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was his daughter. It had been easy enough after that to find Jean on his mother's visiting list. Mrs. Witherspoon and Mrs. McKenzie had exchanged calls during the life-time of the latter, but they had lived in different circles. Mrs. Witherspoon had aspired to smartness and to the friendship of the new people who brought an air of sophistication to the staid and sedate old capital. Mrs. McKenzie had held to old ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... philosopher, though of a different genre, was also a most agreeable companion, an Irishman transplanted in his youth to St. Omers, and who had grafted upon his native humour a considerable share of French smartness and repartee—such were the two, who ruled supreme in all the festive arrangements of this jovial regiment, and were at last as regular at table, as the adjutant and the paymaster, and so might they have continued, had not prosperity, that in its blighting influence upon the heart, spares neither ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... the young man progressed in his thoughts when an automobile of surprising smartness swept around the corner and drew up in front of the house of yellow stucco, and from it descended a charming young person. She was of the Dresden-shepherdess type, with large blue eyes of ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... principles involved in this war,—a man petrified in English conceit, and at the end of his art when, like a twopenny reporter, he has made a smart little sneer at something or somebody. He writes on America as Sala wrote on Russia, in the same petty, frivolous vein, with the same cockney smartness; but fails to be funny, whereas Sala frequently succeeds. He came here to write for England, not the truth, but something which his readers expected. His object was to supply a demand, and he did it. He learned nothing, and returned as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cries Ballantrae, "and come on deck again when you are sober. Do you think we are going to hang for you, you black-faced, half-witted, drunken brute and butcher? Go down!" And he stamped his foot at him with such a sudden smartness that Teach fairly ran for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her milliner's, where she tried on a number of absurdly impossible hats. She bought one at last, to realise immediately as she left the shop that she would never persuade herself to wear it because she felt that it gave her an air of Gerty's "smartness" which sat like an impertinence upon her own individual charm. Glancing at her watch she found that only two hours had gone since she left the house, and turning up the street she walked on with a step which seemed striving to match in energy her ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... in his tale, neither did his listeners; neither he nor they ever smiled or laughed; in my time I have not attended a more solemn conference. To him and to his fellow gold-miners there were just two things in the story that were worth considering. One was the smartness of its hero, Jim Smiley, in taking the stranger in with a loaded frog; and the other was Smiley's deep knowledge of a frog's nature—for he knew (as the narrator asserted and the listeners conceded) that a frog likes shot and is already ready to eat it. Those men discussed those ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... they became considerably more indolent than when they had to deal with lady Feng. But after the expiry of three or four days several concerns passed through her hands, which gave them an opportunity to gradually find out that T'an Ch'un did not, in smartness and thoroughness, yield to lady Feng, and that the only difference between them was that she was soft in speech and gentle in disposition. By a remarkable coincidence, princes, dukes, marquises, earls, and hereditary officials arrived for consecutive days from various parts; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... was a general favourite for his pleasantry, the gentleness of his manner, and the smartness of his repartee. He had attained tolerable scholarship, was in the fifth form in 1793, the year in which he left Eton, and wrote good Latin verses, an accomplishment which he partially retained to his last days. From Eton he went to Oriel, and there commenced that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... good saddles are generally of pigskin, and the flaps of cow-hide. The fact of the seat being of buckskin or other rough leather will increase the lady's security in the saddle, but may somewhat detract from the smartness of her appearance, especially if the leather is white. I can see no objection to the seat of the saddle being of rough brown leather. Formerly, all side-saddles had a "stuffed safe," in which the front part of the near flap is padded, but nowadays it is rarely, if ever, used ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... take Mr Hunt's own account of the matter, they appear to have become pretty well tired of each other. He had found out that a peer is, as a friend, but as a plebeian, and a great poet not always a high-minded man. His Lordship had, on his part, discovered that something more than smartness or ingenuity is necessary to protect patronage from familiarity. Perhaps intimate acquaintance had also tended to enable him to appreciate, with greater accuracy, the meretricious genius and artificial tastes of his copartner in The Liberal. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... their promotion merely on account of good workmanship, but through influence. It might be that they had had their "chance" through a relative or successful business man, or it might be that they "got next" to a politician, who required no other qualification than "smartness." A boy in a telegraph or a lawyer's office has a better opportunity to reach influence than a boy in a workshop. The scholastic requirement for such advancement as these vocations contemplate, is provided for in the established ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... With the smartness characteristic of our navy the men were formed up in a line with their backs to the mission wall. The officer in command gave one look at them, and then almost ran up the ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... told upon their character with the usual deteriorating effect. Many of the Highlanders, too, had wrought as labourers at the Caledonian Canal, where they had come in contact with south-country workmen, and had brought back with them a confident, loquacious smartness, that, based on a ground-work of ignorance, which it rendered active and obtrusive, had a bizarre and disagreeable effect, and formed but an indifferent substitute for the diffident and taciturn simplicity which it had supplanted. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... more civilized centres and by all sorts of nondescript garments in the interior. The sleeveless coat, however, is still worn by many Syntengs in the interior and by the Bhois and Lynngams. The men in the Khasi Hills wear a cap with ear-flaps. The elderly men, or other men when smartness is desired, wear a white turban, which is fairly large and is well tied on the head. Males in the Siemship of Nongstoin and in the North-Western corner of the district wear knitted worsted caps which are often of a red colour. These are sold at Nongstoin market at about 8 or 9 ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... said Lord Vignoles to Zimmermann, the famous litterateur of the Ghetto, "she is proud of Yankee smartness. Only natural." And his light blue eyes followed his wife's pretty figure as she flitted hospitably amongst her guests. Admiration ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... question, and had alluded to a renewal of their old intimacy. For Uncle Billy, with all his trustful simplicity, had been tortured by two harrowing doubts: one, whether Uncle Jim in his new-fledged smartness as a "city" man—such as he saw in the streets—would care for his rough companionship; the other, whether he, Uncle Billy, ought not to tell him at once of his changed fortune. But, like all weak, unreasoning men, he clung desperately to a detail—he could not forego his ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... it usually happens, that the Sheriff-clerk, especially supposing him agent for several lairds of the higher order, is possessed of one of the best-looking houses; and such was that of Mr. Bindloose. None of the smartness of the brick-built and brass-hammered mansion of a southern attorney appeared indeed in this mansion, which was a tall, thin, grim-looking building, in the centre of the town, with narrow windows and projecting gables, notched into ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... with contempt at home and abroad. His father, when he found that his son's smartness was no longer useful in making bargains, shoved him out of his way whenever he met him. All the food or clothes that he had at home seemed to be given to him grudgingly, and with such expressions as these: "Take that; but it is too good for ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... this absurd woman's statements, thus fairly epitomized, there is not one that is true—not one of which the essential falsity is not evident, obvious, conspicuous to even the most delinquent observation. Yet with the smartness and smirk of a graduating seminary girl refuting Epicurus she marshals them against the awful truth that every year in Europe and the United States alone more than five thousand human beings the of hydrophobia—a fact which her controversial conscience ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... their command, imagine that they can command obeisance and popularity. Woe betide other women who arouse their jealousy, for they will scandalise and blight the reputation of the purest of their sex in the suburban belief that the invention of scandal is the hallmark of smartness. ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... honors have alighted where they are least due. You think that the saying of your crown prince has more smartness than truth, more malice than honesty. You think that the court has judged on false principles, and acted on an impulse rather than on reason; that the king has consulted his own ease in affecting to do justice; that the courtiers have paid a homage to their master, in affecting to pay ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... warning light of that bleak headland he presented a back sufficiently conscious. Yet though to Vanderbank he couldn't look young he came near—strikingly and amusingly—looking new: this after a minute appeared mainly perhaps indeed in the perfection of his evening dress and the special smartness of the sleeveless overcoat he had evidently had made to wear with it and might even actually be wearing for the first time. He had talked to Vanderbank at Mrs. Brookenham's about Beccles and Suffolk; ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... Salve, as one may say, had completed his apprenticeship to the sea; and in his blue shirt loosely knotted round the throat, his leather belt and canvas trousers, he had such a look of smartness and energy that it required no very great amount of discernment to perceive in him a sailor from top to toe. He had, sooner than most, risen superior to the dangers and temptations to which young sailor lads are exposed ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... opinion I've mentioned did become my view of the situation; and I said to myself 'Cyril, good dog; here's your vocation quite handy. Find the young lady, find her, good fellow! Ingratiate yourself in her eyes, and you've got, not only an asbestos mine, but a wife of such smartness and enterprise as rarely falls to the lot of a rising young man.' I didn't blame her one bit for the part she had taken, for I'd seen the beast she'd have had to live with. No doubt her action was the properest she could take. And I thought if I came on her panting, flying, and offered ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... this has changed. The stores in New York are now the most beautiful in the world, and the women are dressed to perfection. They are as clever at the demi-toilette as the Parisian, and the extreme neatness and smartness of their walking gowns is very refreshing after the floppy, blowsy, trailing dresses, accompanied by the inevitable feather boa, of which English girls, who used to be so tidy and "tailor-made," now seem so fond. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... closing years, inasmuch as, while remaining a nonconformist, he had a good deal to do with proposed political- ecclesiastical compromises. He died on the 8th of May 1703, having preserved his "spirits and smartness'' to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of view, were only eight and a half. The night was fearfully dark, and the roads were altogether unworthy of the name. Yet there is an immense traffic on this route, which is the highway from East to West. The Americans, with all their "smartness," have not the knack of making either good roads or good streets. About 11 P.M. we arrived at Uniontown, 12 miles from Brownsville. There the horses were to be changed, an operation which took about an hour to accomplish. Three coaches were ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... appeared, nor so slender; she had beautiful shoulders, lovely arms, and fine, long hands. She was very neat in her dress, and her coiffure, always trim and tasteful, with none of the Bohemian carelessness or the exaggerated smartness of many artists—even in that she was catlike, instinctively aristocratic, although she had risen from the gutter. At bottom she ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... possess a very arresting personality. No one seeing her two or three times could have given any very accurate description of her. Lady Harriet had more than once described her as a negligible quantity. But Lady Harriet systematically neglected everyone who had no pretensions to smartness. She ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... boarding-house? I know of a good many. Some 's right smart,—'ristocratic, and 'ristocratic prices. Then there's some good enough in every way, only not quite so smart,—and with this advantage, you don't have the smartness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... W.K.; so I need negotiate no further, but wait the event. Breakfasted at home, and somebody with us, but the whirl of visits so great that I have already forgot the party. Lockhart and I dined at an official person's, where there was a little too much of that sort of flippant wit, or rather smartness, which becomes the parochial Joe Miller of boards and offices. You must not be grave, because it might lead to improper discussions; and to laugh without a joke is a hard task. Your professed wags are treasures to this species of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... thought of him and his remarks to me? But no; I had run away. She—or that Victor—would tell of the meeting at the bridge, and all my independence and the rest of it would be regarded as of a piece with that, just the big-headed "smartness" of a country boor. In their eyes I was a nuisance, that was all. A disagreeable one, perhaps, like the Shore Lane, but a nuisance, one to laugh at and forget—if it could not ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the new womanhood of Western Europe shows its worth. It is an exit. There is likely to be something like a truce in the fashions throughout Europe for some years. It is in America if anywhere that the holy fires of smartness and the fashion will ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... their smartness, an' their prominence. Ain't one o' ther signs o' the zodiac up in ther heavens named after ther goat—Capricornus is ther feller ter what I refer—an' them heathen chaps what wuz half man an' half goat? Didn't they come pretty near bein' ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... occasion was nobly redeemed. Our humble hero pursued his studies with zeal and success. In due time he entered Maynooth, where he distinguished himself not simply for smartness as a student, but as a young man possessed of a mind far above the common order. During all this time nothing occurred worthy of particular remark, except that, in fulfilment of his former vow, he never wrote to any of his friends; ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... that the instrument is good enough for mere letter-writing; then I meant to add the fact that you can't write literature with it, because it hasn't any ideas and it hasn't any gift for elaboration, or smartness of talk, or vigor of action, or felicity of expression, but is just matter-of-fact, compressive, unornamental, and as grave and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the situation towards a point where they could have met upon a normal plane. A very pretty woman with whose affairs one has nothing whatever to do, and whose pretty home has been the perfection of modern smartness of custom, suddenly opening her front door in the unexplained absence of a footman and confronting a visitor, plainly upon the verge of hysteria, suggests ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sell them in the teeth of competition. The country shops are flooded with what he calls 'shoddy.' An army of eager commercial travellers pushes showy goods on the shopkeepers and the public at half his price. Even the farmers in remote districts are beginning to acquire a taste for smartness. Some things in which he used to do a useful trade are now scarcely worth making. There is hardly any demand for the checked head-kerchiefs. The women prefer hats and bonnets, decked with cheap ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... ironmonger for (pounds)17, the exact sum which he claimed as being due to himself. I was much complimented by the gardener, who seemed to think that so much had been rescued out of the fire. I fancy that the ironmonger was the only gainer by my smartness. ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... filled to the brim with people. The permanent population, dressed in the stiffness of its Sunday best, escorted gingham wives or sweethearts; a dozen outsiders like myself tried not to be too conspicuous in a city smartness; but the great multitude was composed of the men of the woods. I sat, chair-tilted by the hotel, watching them pass. Their heavy woollen shirts crossed by the broad suspenders, the red of their sashes or leather shine of their belts, ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... themselves from me? From where did they get the stuff to work themselves up in the world? Did they get it from the air? How did they get all their smartness to rise over the people around them? Why don't the children of born American mothers write my Benny's plays? It is I, who never had a chance to be a person, who gave him the fire in his head. If I would have had a chance to go to school and learn the language, what couldn't ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... trustworthy as their gunners in this campaign, our losses would have been very much heavier, and it is possible that here we catch a glimpse of some consequences of that corruption which was one of the curses of the country. The guns were moved with great smartness along the ridge, and opened fire again and again, but never with great result. Our own batteries, the 74th and 77th, with our handful of mounted men, worked hard in covering the retreat and holding ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the second time, Willems, I take you in hand. Mind it is the last. The second time; and the only difference between then and now is that you were bare-footed then and have boots now. In fourteen years. With all your smartness! A poor result that. A very ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... furniture of the house. The day after he joined the family they embarked on board the Barbadoes, for Rio and Buenos Ayres. Greatly were the girls amused at the tiny little cabin allotted to them and their mother—a similar little den being taken possession of by Mr. Hardy and the boys. The smartness of the vessel, and the style of her fittings, alike impressed and delighted them. It has not been mentioned that Sarah, their housemaid, accompanied the party. She had been left early an orphan, and had been taken as a nursemaid by Mrs. ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... to change the guard, for some of our men were put on sentry-go that night outside the officers' quarters, in spite of our utter weariness. We were smarter than the Kurds, and German officers like smartness. ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... rein upon some headlong propensity, and await a calm for fair adjustment. Such a course is not usually held to be a proof of wisdom or virtue; and men are much more ready to praise and think well of smartness, and spirit, and readiness for an encounter. To leave off contention before it is meddled with does not command any very general admiration; it is too quiet a virtue, with no striking attitudes, and with ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... Commissioner, made a compromise by which some five thousand miles of the area in dispute were assigned to Great Britain and seven thousand to the United States. The award was not popular on either side, and the public seized eagerly on stories of concealed "Red Line" maps, stories of Yankee smartness or of British trickery. Webster, to win the assent of Maine, had exhibited in the Senate a map found in the French Archives and very damaging to the American claim. Later it appeared that the British Government also had ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... English language; "Public worship is a necessary evil. It is a factor in vulgar civilisations. Without it, the system of religious politics would fall into cohesion,—absolute cohesion!" And he rapped his fist on the table with a smartness that made his hearers jump. "At the last meeting I addressed in this division, I said we must support the props. The aristocracy must bear them on their shoulders. If your Squire stays away from church, he may be called a heathen with propriety, though a Liberal. And why? Because he ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... waving black hair, the dark skin, and the carefully trimmed mustache and chin-tuft which gave the lawyer's face a combined effect of romance and smartness. No; it was the eyes, cool, shrewd, dark-gray eyes, which suggested this latter quality. The recollection of having seen one of them wink, in deliberate hostility of sarcasm, when those other trustees had their backs turned, came mercifully at the moment to recall the young ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... "swaggerist" of the gun tribe, has his own private car built especially for him. Such of the cavalry's former part as the planes do not play he plays. He keeps off the enemy's scouts. Do you seek team-work, spirit of corps, and smartness in this theatre of France, where all the old glamour of war is supposed to be lacking? You will find it in the attendants of Archibald. They have pride, elan, alertness, pepper, and all the other appetizers and condiments. They are as neat as a private yacht's crew, and as lively ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... countenance. For all that, the book was a success in its day; and no less an authority than the aesthetic Grand Mogul, J. L. Heiberg, hailed it as a work of no mean merit. It strikes us to-day as an exhibition of that mocking smartness of youth which often hides a childish heart. It was because he was so excessively sentimental and feared to betray his real physiognomy that he cut these excruciating capers. His other alternative would have been mawkishness. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Such an amount of luggage for a journey after all so short! There were no individual objects; there was nothing but dozens and hundreds, all machine-made and expressionless, in spite of the repeated grimace, the conscious smartness, of "the last new thing," that was stamped on all of them. The fatal facility of the French article becomes at last as irritating as the refrain of a popular song. The poor "Indiens Galibis" struck me as really more interesting—a group of stunted ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... have succeeded, had it not been for the fact that the night was pitch-dark, and that another ship was trying that very venture with extinguished lights. And these two ships met, bow to bow, with such an energy of adventurous smartness, that both sharply sank. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... foul-smelling passages, broken chairs, scant toilet appliances, as usual, in part compensated by excellent beds, good food, good wine, and very moderate charges. The oddest part of these experiences is that the dirtier the inn the better the fare. Wherever we found a little smartness and tidiness, there we were sure to find also a decided falling-off ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of debate will say that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honorable ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... sporadic foreign tourists. Crisp, curling, tawny hair, a sweeping soldierly moustache, with a resolute chin and gleaming blue eyes accentuated a handsome face burnt to a dark olive by the fiery Indian sun. An easy insouciance tempered the habitual military smartness of the man who had known several different services in the fifteen years of his wasted young manhood. As he swung into the glare of the hospitable doorway of the Grand Rational, the obsequious head porter doffed his ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage |
