"Tidiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the bridge over which we crossed; but it is far from being a fine town in the interior. The streets are, like all French streets, narrow, and the houses have a look of antiquity, and a want of all repair; nothing like comfort, neatness, or tidiness, in any one of them. This is a melancholy desideratum in France, a want for which nothing can compensate. The road this day conducted us through a finer district than we have observed on this side of Paris; ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... open as at present, became a draughtway for what air there was. A curtain veiled one corner, where the beds were stowed in daytime, with whatever else was unpresentable through dirt or breakage: for the ladies of the Mission valued tidiness above all virtues, and claimed the right to inspect the abode of their washerwoman and pet proselyte. The mother of Iskender courted their inspection, being secured against complete surprise by the position of her house upon an eminence whence approaching visitors could be descried a long way ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... although formal, is pleasing. They were the loftiest poplars which I had ever beheld. The churches, public buildings, gardens, and streets (of which latter the principal is a mile long) have all an air of tidiness and comfort; although the very sight of them is sufficient to freeze the blood of an antiquary. There is nothing, apparently, more than ninety-nine years old! We dined at Karlsruhe, and slept at Schweiberdingen, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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 in ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... knew by experience that she would make her appearance downstairs with a crooked parting and a collar awry, and be grievously plaintive when Carrie found fault with her. Talking never mended matters; Jack was at the hoiden age, and had to grow into tidiness and ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... at the new air of tidiness, and for the first time a suspicion crossed her mind that, out of a pit from which she was expecting no such treasure, some one in her own image might possibly have been digged among her descendants of the second generation. She looked at Agnes Anne with a ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... disagreement that seems to subsist among them.' 'The families of the two lightkeepers here agree very ill. I have effected a reconciliation for the present.' 'Things are in a very HUMDRUM state here. There is no painting, and in and out of doors no taste or tidiness displayed. Robert's wife GREETS and M'Gregor's scolds; and Robert is so down-hearted that he says he is unfit for duty. I told him that if he was to mind wives' quarrels, and to take them up, the only way was for him and M'Gregor to ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hut was no light task for unaccustomed hands, for the bloodwood trees were mighty and tough, and the dubious work of burning up the trunks and branches while yet green, in our eagerness for free air and tidiness, was undertaken. It ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Tidiness is worth more to a business man than most of them realize. In the first place it gives a favorable impression to a person coming in from the outside, and, in the second place, it helps those on the inside to keep things straight. Folders for correspondence, card indexes, ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... invalid, and she beheld a stout, broad-shouldered fellow, with a big red face and greasy, curly hair. The pale, slender little Andryusha had turned into the stalwart Andrei Ivanovitch Byelovzorov. And it was not only his exterior that was transformed. The modest spruceness, the sedateness and tidiness of his earlier years, was replaced by a careless swagger and slovenliness quite insufferable; he rolled from side to side as he walked, lolled in easy-chairs, put his elbows on the table, stretched and yawned, and behaved rudely to his aunt ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... though what it can be I'm sure I don't know," grumbled Phil, who was sleepy and wanted to get to bed. He had washed the supper things after a fashion, had cleared up the kitchen for the night, according to his own ideas of tidiness, and now was sitting in the rocking-chair by the stove, trying very hard to keep his ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... instinct had, of course, been one of dislike and mistrust of anyone who appeared to be in some way on guard over her. But when she took in every detail of the quaint figure of the old man, his scrupulous tidiness of apparel, the resigned stoop of his shoulders, and met in full the gaze of those moist eyes, she felt that the whole aspect of the man, as he sat there polishing his shoes, was infinitely pathetic and, in ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the room was tobacco, which appeared in many different guises—in packets, in a tobacco jar, and in a loose heap strewn about the table. Likewise, both window sills were studded with little heaps of ash, arranged, not without artifice, in rows of more or less tidiness. Clearly smoking afforded the master of the house a frequent means of ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... door. There was no response. He gently opened it. The room was vacant. Not a sound or a voice greeted his entrance. Stiff and well-arranged, the elegant furniture stood mutely against the cold, cheerless walls. The ominous tidiness of the deserted bed-chamber bespoke a fearful story. The father stood for a moment in amazement, silently surveying the apartment, his heart half trembling with a vague fear; then he said, in a hoarse, frightened tone, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... of hermit crabs scuttled and rustled away before him as he advanced up the beach, but under the palms no pigs rooted and grunted. The cocoanuts lay where they had fallen, and at the copra-sheds there were no signs of curing. Industry and tidiness had vanished. Grass house after grass house he found deserted. Once he came upon an old man, blind, toothless, prodigiously wrinkled, who sat in the shade and babbled with fear when he spoke to him. It was as if the place had been struck with the plague, was Grief's ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... superficial observer, their life would have seemed terribly monotonous. There was something chilling about the appearance of the interior of the house. Day after day I used to see everything, even the furniture in constant use, always standing in the same place, and this uniform tidiness pervaded the smallest details. Yet there was something very attractive about their household ways. I had been used to the pleasures of variety, to the luxury and stir of life in Paris; it was only when I had ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... ourselves a moral tidiness, and an aversion to all the manifestations of the brute principle in man, such as the wolfish, degrading hatred for people of other races. The hatred of the Jew is a beastlike, brute phenomenon; we must combat it in the interests ...
— The Shield • Various
... their acquaintance would be worth having. Our opinion of a person's character is always more or less influenced by the clothes he wears and by the house in which he lives. The surroundings of every home of intelligence and tidiness should indicate that it is not the abode of the vulgar and ignorant. Therefore every owner of a homestead should strive to make it a cosey and pleasant home for himself and family. He should take a just pride in keeping his buildings in good repair, ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... had been left unchanged through the supervision of Mycroft Holmes and the immediate care of Mrs. Hudson. As I entered I saw, it is true, an unwonted tidiness, but the old landmarks were all in their place. There were the chemical corner and the acid-stained, deal-topped table. There upon a shelf was the row of formidable scrap-books and books of reference which many of our fellow-citizens would ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the rollers while the summit is folded in the silence of the upper air. Close in-shore half a dozen cruisers were lying like rocks among the deep moving waters; the St. George's ensign floated from the shore flagstaffs, and an air of whiteness and tidiness proclaimed the ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... what's your talk of tidiness and putting things "right there" To little Boyo Browneyes ...
— The Bay and Padie Book - Kiddie Songs • Furnley Maurice
... three little boys, who were turned out three times a day in the ultimate state of good behaviour, tidiness, and cleanliness, and who lapsed three times a day into a state of original sin combined with tar and ship's grease. These three little boys pervaded the vessel with an innocent smile on their three little faces, their mother's winning smile. Every man on the ship was their own familiar ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... squalor of the home. I often think of William Morris, the great craftsman and charming poet, who had much at heart the happiness of all people, especially the poor, and his exclamation, "My eye, how I do love tidiness!" To him, to the artist, it was, as it is, beautiful. George Eliot had to put even the pins in her cushion into some neat arrangement before she could sit down to write. Disorder wastes not only one's feelings and health, it also wastes one's time, for a lot of this ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... to care of the body: cleanliness, diet, exercise, bowel function, sleep. Here we learn about personal tidiness or the reverse, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... and a love of dainty tidiness in the home are marked characteristics of the true Hungarian peasantry: the cottages for the most part are miracles of brightness, brightly polished floors, brightly polished pewter, brightly covered feather pillows. Kapus Irma was a notable exception to the ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Party of Order. It was they who were rallying valiantly at the Bourse round the new tricolour banner and a few gentlemen who wore tricolour brassards or pretty bunches of tricolour riband, and whose general tidiness and freshness contrasted strikingly with the grimy, business-like look of the real soldiers close by. These were streaming into the Place des Victoires, close by, receiving cheers and congratulations from the people about in the square or at the windows, who ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... pushed his great theories of perfection rather hard in his earlier years; and he came back to his native village of Thorpe-Michael full of high intentions to lift the place higher than where it already stood. He had an unyielding habit of tidiness and hated to see children playing in a road; and he hated worse to see a motor-car come faster round a corner than it did ought; or any sign of unsteady steps in a man or woman, who'd stopped too long at the 'Queen Anne' public-house, or anything like that. He weren't what you might call ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... bare, half-lighted little room they entered. The tidiness and cleanliness of it, however, bore witness to her recent occupancy. On the neat bed lay a ...
— Gloria and Treeless Street • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... within hearing. She told herself that she would be lucky if she got them to bed by ten. But she would have been surprised, indeed, had she seen them, half an hour earlier, slip out of the back door, in a condition of exemplary tidiness, dressed in their ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... Dragoons to heaven." It was the scene of a narrow escape for Charles II in his flight to Brighton. The poor remnants of the Castle are now an excuse for picnickers who are not always reverent, in point of tidiness, towards what was once a palace of ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... was an artist in the kitchen, and made coffee to a nicety. She had a knack of tidiness, with which she had infected the Doctor; everything was in its place; everything capable of polish shone gloriously; and dust was a thing banished from her empire. Aline, their single servant, had no other business in the world but to scour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for the first time, observed the wig, the unusual look of tidiness, and, above all, the flower in his hand; she also saw the crucified smile that followed his last remark. "The ridiculous old fool!" thought she,—"what can he mean?" But to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... by the door and the young gentleman strolled to the counter. He cast an amused glance about the store; its display of stock was, thanks to Mary-'Gusta's recent efforts at tidiness, not quite the conglomerate mass it had been when the partners were solely responsible, but the variety ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... looking out upon the garden. The casement was two-leaved, and one leaf only was part open. The air consequently was close and hot. And if the room was neat, that applies only to its natural and normal condition; for if neatness includes tidiness, it could not be said at present to deserve that praise. There was an indescribable litter everywhere, such as is certain to accumulate in a sick-room if the watchers are not imbued with the spirit of order. Here were one or two spare pillows, on so many chairs; over the back of another ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... and use of the instruments, with the special precautions needed when they are of iron, the decencies to be observed during the operation, the general method of bandaging, the placing of the patient, the use and abuse of splints, and the need for tidiness, order, and cleanliness. Many of these directions are enlarged upon in other surgical works of the collection, among which we find especially full instructions for bandaging and for the diagnosis and treatment of fractures ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... arrangements, even in the more favored villages of the plain, on manners and morality, need not be told. It is equally evident that in such circumstances personal tidiness is impossible, though few in our favored land have any idea of the extent of such untidiness. If the truth must be told, vermin abound in most of these houses; the inmates are covered not only with fleas, but from head to foot they are infested with the ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... cosey nest, indeed. The fire burned merrily,—a little coal, a good deal of bogwood and turf, which is the cleanest fire in the world; there was cleanliness, neatness, tidiness, taste everywhere; the etchings and engravings gave tone to the walls; the piano lay open, as if saying, "Come, touch me"; the books, shining in gold and red and blue and purple, winked in the firelight; and, altogether, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... hue, and had come up thither from the estates, where once they toiled as slaves, but now as freemen, to present their thank-offerings unto Him whose truth and Spirit had made them free. In the simplicity and tidiness of their attire, in its uniformity and freedom from ornament, it resembled the dress of the Friends. The females were clad in plain white gowns, with neat turbans of cambric or muslin on their heads. The males were dressed in spencers, vests, and pantaloons, all of white. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... fences; and in school his troubles were only increased, for his books always contained pictures, sometimes of horses, or dogs, or of his friends. This habit did not correspond with his teachers' ideas of tidiness, and punishment followed punishment. It did not help matters, though, and his drawing continued. In time he became quite apt and could make pictures that very closely resembled the objects he drew. His ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... had been sent on from London. They made me feel that I had taken leave of my division for good and all this time. Blenkiron had a private room, where we were to dine; and a more wonderful litter of books and cigar boxes I have never seen, for he hadn't a notion of tidiness. I could hear him grunting at his toilet in the adjacent bedroom, and I noticed that the table was laid for three. I went downstairs to get a paper, and on the way ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... impossible views of them. In general, a little cap placed somewhere on her head; though it was rarely to be met with in the place usually occupied in other subjects, by that article of dress; but, from head to foot she was scrupulously clean, and maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed, her laudable anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own conscience as well as in the public eye, gave rise to one of her most startling evolutions, which was to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... acting, Frances had seen that she was excited about something and she certainly had not the air of one coming to meet a lover. The day in the country had not been conducive to tidiness. Judy's hair was blown, her collar and shirtwaist were rumpled, her shoes dusty and the tears in the train had left a smudge on ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... deserves my special commendation. On very bad camping-ground, beset with rocks and bush, and afflicted with dust between, I find your companies excellently established by ingenious and industrious adaptation to circumstances. The regularity and tidiness are conspicuous, and have been noted by me with great satisfaction. I need not say how much neatness of arrangements must conduce to quickness and good quality of ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... lady," he said, "I was tidying the tree. You don't want last year's hats there, do you, any more than last year's leaves? The wind takes off the leaves, but it couldn't manage the hat; that wind, I suppose, has tidied whole forests to-day. Rum idea this is, that tidiness is a timid, quiet sort of thing; why, tidiness is a toil for giants. You can't tidy anything without untidying yourself; just look at my trousers. Don't you know that? Haven't you ever ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... tumble-downs betokened he had never imagined. Perhaps all this dreariness and desolation made itself more keenly felt because the boy was just from the city, which teemed with life and bustle and energy. In its poorest quarter he had never seen such a lack of tidiness as the interior of Dirk Sharp's house presented. He followed the slowly-plodding trunk-bearers up the yellow sand, wondering if there was such another wretched, desolate, and forlorn place as Culm Rock in the whole ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... enlisted in the mess branch of the service, it was reserved to young colored women to invade successfully the yeoman branch, thereby establishing a precedent. They are all cool, clear-headed and well-poised, evincing at all times, in the language of a white chief yeowoman: "A tidiness and appropriate demeanor both on and off duty which the girls of the white race might do well to emulate." The work of this section has proven highly efficient and satisfactory, as the plans in vogue ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... drawing his dressing-gown more closely round him. The chamber had an aspect of freshness and tidiness that made it almost gay—until he looked at the object in the smoothed and rectified bed. He nodded to his father, who merely gazed at him. There was no definite, definable change in the old man's face, but his ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... were merciless enough with each other, but the owners and the public generally took the keenest interest in these little touches of vanity and handiwork. Many a worthy fellow got a good berth because he and his belongings had the stamp of ingenuity and tidiness about them, and certainly many of them knew that this was a sure means of winning the affections of young girls whom they wished to ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... to which he led me was small, but disfigured with no offensive tidiness. Not a spot of wall was to be seen for books, and yet there were not many books after all. We sat for some minutes enjoying the fragrance of the western incense, without other communion than that of the clouds we were ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... refused to look out. One by one the familiar trees seemed to pass by her as she was bowled rapidly along in the new brougham, as if they were so many ghosts saying good-by. But then there was the roar—the real, real, grand roar—of the Atlantic in her ears. No amount of tidiness, nothing could ever alter ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... crossing the Arve or some mad torrent on your way from Geneva to Chamouni—the travellers entered the town of Cluses and alighted at one of those small Swiss hotels which continually astonish by their tidiness and excellence. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... drawing-room. Once more he passed his long fingers through his Struwel Peter hair and looked about the room for inspiration. Finding none, he mechanically gathered up the two parts of the newspaper, with a man's instinct for tidiness in printed matter, and smoothed out the crumples that Emmy's hand had made on the outer sheet. Whilst doing so, a paragraph met his eye, causing him to stare helplessly ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... new home the "Sunshine" apartment and assured each other that we were very well pleased, and when one morning as I set out for the office I noticed that the lower halls and stairway had suddenly taken on an air of spruce tidiness—had been magically transformed over night, as it were—I was so elated that I returned to point these things out to the Little Woman. She came down to the door with me and agreed that it was quite wonderful, and added the final touch to our satisfaction. She added that it looked ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... stooping to sweep a sprinkle of ashes out of the fender—she was like an old maid in her faddy tidiness—and when she turned, her face was working as if to repress tears. Deb caught her up, a moan bursting ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... rather casual. Tidiness of Natalie's meticulous order would always be beyond her, but after certain frantic searches for what was needed, she made some ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... reviews and other ceremonies, with their martial music, the presence of spectators, etc., are intended to stimulate the interest and excite the military spirit of the command. Also, being occasions for which the soldiers dress up and appear spruce and trim, they inculcate habits of tidiness,—they teach a lesson in ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... J. As a very young child he resisted his mother's efforts to train him into tidiness or restraint. He stole whatever he desired, and though he was alternately punished and pleaded with, though he seemed to desire to please his parents, he continued to steal whenever there was opportunity. At six he entered ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... another. Hira Singh sat drawing silently in the dust, with his injured feet stretched out in front of him. A monkey in the giant tree above us shook down a little shower of twigs and dirt. A trumpet blared. There began much business of closing tents and reducing the camp to superhuman tidiness. ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... the hearth and scattered around without any regard for tidiness may be seen the rice winnow, the bamboo water tube, the coconut-shell watercup, the rice paddles and ladles, leaves of banana and other plants, and the whetstone, while on the fireplace are seen a variety of earthen pots with their covers, and frequently an imported ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... the eyes of the other unfortunates who stood in the spike line. But last and best, and underlying all these motives, it was a sturdy affection he bore her; for man is not prone to bother his head over neatness and tidiness in a woman for whom he does not care, nor is he likely to be proud ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... work than I am by the discomfort that comes from the dust." Then all I can say is that you are wrongly balanced, according to my notion of things. Your health should be of far more value to you than your ideas of house tidiness, but you have reversed the importance of the two. Teach yourself the relative value of things. A hundred dollar bill is of greater value than one for five dollars, and the life of your baby more important than the value of the hundred dollar bill. Put ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... the ancient Chaldean sepulchres of the three first kinds are distinguished by greater care and tidiness. They are not only separated by brick partitions on the sides, and also above and below by a thin layer of brick masonry, but the greatest care was taken to protect them against dampness. The sepulchral mounds are pierced through and through, from top to bottom, by drainage pipes ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... pattered over the stone flags and splashed in the amber stream. She prattled incessantly. What difference, Jane thought, a child made in her home! It had never been a real home, she discovered. Even the tidiness and neatness she had so observed, and upon which she had insisted to her women, became, in the light of Fay's smile, habits that now lost their importance. Fay littered the court with Jane's books and papers, and other toys her fancy ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... and the dynamite speeches of Danton. But we shall understand them all better if we once catch sight of the idea of tidying up which ran through the whole period, the quietest people being prouder of their tidiness, civilisation, and sound taste than of any of their virtues; and the wildest people having (and this is the most important point) no love of wildness for its own sake, like Nietzsche or the anarchic poets, but only a readiness to employ it to get rid of unreason or disorder. With ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... of tidiness, Elizabeth had made reforms. There were now many more servants than there had been in Gower-street, and the drawing-room could not present quite the same look of chaos as had formerly prevailed there. But Elizabeth ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... all the same, people should understand that the camera takes no note of newness, but much of the cut and fit. And a man should certainly not go and alter his outline into a feminine softness, by pouring oil on his troubled mane and plastering it down with a brush and comb. It is not tidiness, ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... him, Ann!" said the doctor. "Button moulders are so ignorant. They know absolutely nothing about hair or the necessity for special tidiness on Sundays. All the same, I'm afraid we shall have a headache if we don't let a reef out somewhere. Sit still a moment, Ann. I was ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... persons, Clara was a snob, but a charming little snob. She ordered him to forget that he belonged to the people. She refused to listen when he talked in the dialect. She made him dress with opulence, and even with tidiness; she made him buy a fashionable house and fill it with fine furniture; she made him buy a brougham in which her gentility could pay calls and do shopping (she shopped in Oldcastle, where a decrepit aristocracy ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... to undergo at periodical times. The inspections keep the boys in khaki on the alert; cleanliness becoming second nature. Nowhere can a vast body of men live bachelor-like as soldiers do and maintain the degree of tidiness and general sanitary healthfulness, as the thorough arm of camp inspection and discipline ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... the lamp, after removing the screen, opened a door which led from the parlor directly into a small, modestly furnished room, which shone with exquisite tidiness, and which exhaled that fresh odor of lavender so dear to all housekeepers from the country. The mirrors and the furniture all glistened alike in the bright fire on the hearth; and the curtains were as white ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... retains the air of old-world quaintness which Mrs. Gaskell has made so familiar in her delightful Cranford. The whole of Knutsford breathes the fresh and bright tidiness one always involuntarily associates with such ladies as "Miss Jenkyns," and every house rejoices in a beautifully neat garden. The Royal George Hotel, in the High Street, is a perfect feast to the eye of panelled ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... crumbling, ragged business which to us means that we stand before the Past; this gradual perishing of things in neglect and defilement, may very well have formed a necessary part of our ancestors' present. Our own standard and habit of tidiness, decorum, and uniformity may be quite recent developments; barbarism, in the sense of decay and pollution, may have existed together with prosperity. It is quite possible that dead donkeys were left in the streets of Haroun-al-Raschid's Bagdad, or Semiramis' ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... room was small—a mere box above the kitchen which Sidney shared with two small cousins. Her bed and the cot where the little girls slept filled up almost all the available space. The furniture was poor, but everything was neat—it was the only neat room in the house, indeed, for tidiness was no besetting virtue of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... as it is?" he cried, mischievously. "Your tidiness won't bear much strain after all, Watson. But I should be glad that you should add this case to your annals, for there are points in it which make it quite unique in the criminal records of this or, I believe, of any other country. A collection of my trifling achievements would certainly be ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... looked abroad upon it she marvelled at a hundred differences between it and her native Midlands. It was wilder—infinitely wilder—than Warwickshire, and at the same time less unkempt; far more savage in outline, yet in detail sober almost to tidiness. It seemed to acknowledge the hand of some great unknown gardener; and this gardener was, of course, the sea-breeze now filling her lungs and bracing her strength. The shaven, landward-bending thorns and hollies, the close-trimmed hedgerow, the clean-swept highroad, alike proclaimed its tireless ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The extreme tidiness of German rooms is a constant source of surprise. They are as guiltless of "litter" as the showrooms of a furniture emporium. You would think that the people who live in them were never employed if you did ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... has the name of being the neatest and tidiest city in Spain, and neatness and tidiness are such dear homely virtues, I thought I could not do better than hie me thither to see if the tale were true. With a wrench I tore myself from the soft capital of Andalusia, delightful but demoralizing. I was growing lazier every day I spent there; I felt energy oozing out of every ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... "Her an't learned tidiness," said Mam Widger. "Lookse! Her scarf on one chair, gloves flinged on another, coat slatted on the ground an' her hat on the dresser—now, since her's come in! Pick 'em up to once, else thee't hae ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... house with tables and chairs and went to church and washed her children with soap. In her plain black cotton dress, the skirt cut very full to allow her to ride astride, her new moccasins and her black straw hat she made a figure of matronly tidiness if not of beauty. She was cooking when they arrived. Her inward astonishment, at beholding Stonor returning with the white girl who had created such a sensation at the post, can be guessed; but, true to her traditions, she betrayed nothing of it to the whites. After a single glance in their direction ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... called him Tidy Naphtali or simply the Tidy One. He was a slender, trim lad, his curly brown hair and his near-sighted eyes emphasizing his Talmudic appearance. He was the cleanliest and neatest boy at the yeshivah. This often aroused sardonic witticism from some of the other students. Scrupulous tidiness was so uncommon a virtue among the poorer classes of Antomir that the painstaking care he bestowed upon his person and everything with which he came in contact struck many of the boys as a manifestation of girl-like squeamishness. As for me, it only added ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... her hair and drop DOGS. I will not have a dog all over the place, and I do like tidiness in women. Especially their hair. In that I would have to ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... the burn was of an extremely serious nature, and she hastened to approach him with a view to examine it. Pao-yue, however, screened his face, and, waving his hand, bade her leave the room; for knowing her usual knack for tidiness he did not feel inclined to let her get a glimpse of his face. Tai-yue then gave up the attempt, and confined herself to asking him: ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... again say, "Quite right"; and it is quite right that for such people they should be tidied; but do those people realize what a wall tidiness builds between child and grown-up? Have they ever thought what a boy feels when his mother comes down to see him at school and the first thing she does when he comes into the room is to say that his collar is dirty, or ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss |
