"Chatty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... o clock, tea is served on every corner in Blunderland by the Policeman on beat. They have become quite a public function, but they're a trifle hard on the police who don't care for tea, because we have to be very polite and take it with everybody who comes up, and be nice and chatty into the bargain. In addition to this we are required to go to dances and take care of the wall-flowers and make ourselves generally agreeable. It is one of the laws of Blunderland that all girls are born free and equal in the pursuit of life, liberty and german favours, and when ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... incompleteness of its vague happiness. And this remarkable day was simply marked in Mrs. Markham's diary as follows:—"Went with E. to Indian village; met Padre and J. H. J. H. actually left shell and crawled on beach with E. E. chatty." ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... reminded that the satirists are not deriding the average life of the citizen, any more than the artists who make fun of the foibles of our own day in the pages of Punch. Cicero hardly ever mentions his meals, his cookery, or his wine, even in his most chatty letters; such matters did not interest him, and do not seem to have interested his friends, so far as we can judge by their letters. In one amusing letter to Poetus, he does indeed tell him what he had ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... Family Records never before examined. On the next day I carried my projected visit into execution—towards seven in the evening. The lodgings of M. Langevin are on the second floor of a house belonging to a carpenter. The worthy priest received me on the landing-place, in the most cheerful and chatty manner. He has three small rooms on the same floor. In the first, his library is deposited. On my asking him to let me see what old books he possessed, he turned gaily round, and replied—"Comment ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... very busy and almost happy—moving around that room on tiptoe in my slippers while she slept, or talking to her in a bright and chatty way, about everything that I thought would interest her, or bringing her flowers, or feeding her the liquid food which ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... moving in. So the neighbor turned to Drylyn and asked him when he was intending to wake up, as sleep-walking was considered to be unhealthy. Drylyn gave a queer, almost wistful, smile, and so they went along; the chatty neighbor spoke low to another man, and said he had never sized up the true state of Drylyn's feeling for the Gazelle, and that the sheriff might persuade some people to keep regular, when they found the man they were hunting, but ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... to his mother and also to her—pleasant, chatty letters, full of affection and warm with brotherly kindness. If Anna ever shed tears over them he ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Africans, but with straight hair and European features. A large number of them visited the ship this morning. They were fine specimens of physical development, and wore scarcely any other covering than a cloth about the loins. They were sprightly and chatty, and in their quaint ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... remember the French-grey trousers we used to walk out with—those he strapped so tight over the remarkably chatty and pleasant French-polished boots whose broken English we used to admire ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... such a comfortable sort of body, that young doctor," said a poor washerwoman, suffering from a scalded arm, as Doctor Mayne made her rounds alone one morning. "She is that chatty and sociable that I forget the pain while she is about, and it would do your heart good to see how she do cozy up the place before she ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... very little go a great way, and she would often appear in toilets that were quite effective. With those of her own age and sex in her narrow little circle, she was not a special favorite, but she was with the young men, for she was bright, chatty, and had the knack of putting awkward fellows at ease. She kept her little parlor as pretty and inviting as her limited materials permitted, and with a growing imperiousness gave the rest of the family, and especially her father, to understand that this parlor was her domain, and that she would ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... remote from all the other convicts. He could hardly conceal his satisfaction, for everything was falling out much better than he could possibly have expected; and, under the influence of his newly awakened hope, he became quite chatty and affable with the sentry, who gradually thawed under the Englishman's flow of talk and high spirits. Douglas now found that he was not expected to extract ore, for indeed there was no tram-line here whereby it could be carried away. This particular tunnel had been ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... he was chatty and sociable as before, and he made so much of his wife that it was quite absurd. He bore her in his hands, so to speak, and absolutely could not do enough ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... prisoners by allowing them to travel second class. They simply would not believe that German officers in England always travelled first. The private, who owned a cigar factory in Hanover, became quite chatty and seemed very anxious to know if I thought the trade relationships between England and Germany would be the same as ever after the war. He was very surprised and, indeed, quite distressed when I told him that I thought there would be a considerable change—it seemed that the ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... turned from them coldly. The two families have ever since maintained a close intimacy; and it is pretty generally thought that a closer relation will, ere long, exist between them. I called upon the Ellis's yesterday. Their reception was far from cordial. I tried to be self-possessed, and as chatty as usual; but it was uphill work, you may depend on it. Once I ventured an illusion to the party at Willets; but it was received with an embarrassed silence. I left early and without the usual invitation to repeat my visits. To-day I met Mr. Ellis in the street, and received from him the ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... her thoughts. But Joyce explained that it was all a misapprehension—that her sister had never been near Richard Hare, but was as indignant against him as they were. Upon which Wilson grew cordial and chatty, rejoicing in the delightful recreation her tongue would ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... free from conversation. Nobody present felt inclined to be chatty. John Parker was wondering what Miguel Farrel's next move would be, and was formulating means to checkmate it; Kay, knowing what Don Mike's next move would be and knowing further that she was about to checkmate it, was silent through a sense of guilt; Mrs. Parker's eight miles in the ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... rule—say what you have to say clearly and quickly. Although the letter should be written on the ordinary social stationery and follow the placing and spacing of the social letter, no time should be wasted in trying to make the letter appear friendly and chatty. The clerks in business houses who usually attend to the mail seem to be picked for their obtuseness, and do not often understand a letter which is phrased in other than commonplace terms. Once I overheard ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... nor Germany produced historians equal to those of Italian or of Scottish birth. France was the home of the memoir, personal, chatty, spicy and unphilosophic. Those of Blaise de Montluc are purely military, those of Brantome are mostly scandalous. Martin du Bellay tried to impart a higher tone to his reminiscences, while with Hotman a school of pamphleteers ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... stumbled upon the man in the street. He was most comfortably drunk, and pleasant and chatty. Harte remarked upon the splendidly and movingly dramatic incident of ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... imperfect German. She could not repress Karlchen when he was unduly kind as she would have done in English, and with his mother presiding, as it were, at their opening friendship, she did not like to begin by looking lofty. Luckily the princess was unusually chatty that evening. She sat next to Karlchen, and continually joined in the talk. She was cheerful amiability itself, and insisted upon being told all about those sons of her acquaintances who were in his regiment. When he half turned his back on her and dropped his voice to a rapid undertone, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... that chatty way, Clayton," interrupted Linton. "'Prisoner at the bar's' the right expression to use. Why don't you let somebody else have a look in? You're the rottenest president of ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... sociable circle at the hotel was much reduced, and among others the Clipper family departed. We missed Mr. Clipper greatly, for though bearing strong evidence to Darwin's theory about the face, he was a chatty companion and capital "raconteur," while his facility for remembering names, even of places visited in his youngest days, ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... cautiously, with a perfectly human care; others, less thoughtful, ran up and down, heedless of the child hanging at their breasts, preoccupied with something, discussing something, and stopping every moment to quarrel with other monkey ladies—a true picture of chatty old gossips on a market day, repeated in the animal kingdom. The bachelors kept apart, absorbed in their athletic exercises, performed for the most part with the ends of their tails. One of them, especially, attracted our attention by dividing ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... shall not marry. I shall be gay and frisky all my first years; then I shall take to some solid employment, perhaps write a volume of letters or chatty journal and say sharp things about my neighbors, wear a high cap and spectacles, and keep a cat who will scratch every guest. There, is it not a ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... during the previous month his janitor, to whom he had delivered a rather muddled lecture on the "brother-hoove man," had come up next day and, on the basis of what had happened the night before, seated himself in the window seat for a cordial and chatty half-hour. Anthony wondered in horror if Gloria would regard him as he had regarded that man. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... emerged from the auberge on the other side, assisting us, by his advice, as to the best spot to choose for our passage. B—— and the trooper had just finished breakfast in the auberge, and departed. The landlady of the "Scorpion," a very chatty and amusing personage, insisted upon it that I was a German. She favoured me with a sporting anecdote, setting forth how she had killed three rabbits during an expedition to pick some rose laurier on the hills. As ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... fitted me better than I had supposed, though it seemed the hair curled beneath my hat brim in too generous luxuriance; so perceiving a barber's adjacent, I entered and gave my head to the ministrations of a chatty soul whose tongue wagged faster than his snipping scissors. Shorn of my superabundant locks, I sallied forth, and chancing upon a jeweller's shop, I entered and purchased a silver watch for the Tinker, another for Jessamy Todd, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... porch reminds me sometimes of a popular Summer Resort piazza, it is so gay and chatty. The ladies of the camp come over nearly every day and bring their sewing and fancy work, and Huldah and I serve tea. It would do you good to see how mamma enjoys Mrs. Levering and Mrs. Seldon. They're like the friends she used to have back in Plainsville, and this is the first ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... quicker sympathies and readier emotional response to many phases of life give her a distinct advantage. Her insight into the lives of others, and her intuitive understanding of them, especially fit her to write good "human interest" articles. Both the delicacy of touch and the chatty, personal tone that characterize the work of many young women, are well ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... commentary on hair-cutting. I wonder if I am sufficiently chatty with my hair-cutter. Most men talk to their hair-cutter all the time. They discuss politics and revolutions and Britain's unconquerable might, while I, having made a blundering start with the weather, am brought up with a round turn on the Bolsheviks and President WILSON'S manner of dealing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... visits to the city, Mr. Irving suddenly asked if I could give him a bed at my house at Staten Island. I could. So we had a nice chatty evening, and the next morning we took him on a charming drive over the hills of Staten. Island. He seemed to enjoy it highly, for be had not been there, I believe, since he was stationed there in a military ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... give me credit for being a good correspondent, I fear; but the truth is that I seldom find time to do more than write long chatty letters to my dear father and sisters, occasionally to Thorverton, and to Miss Neill and one or two others to cheer them in their sickness and weariness. Any news from afar may ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were merely friendly and chatty, telling of money troubles, successes and family affairs. To these he recorded a few friendly remarks on wire spool, telling the same joke to each, and slipped each loop of wire into an envelope ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... Mary had sent them a five-pound note. And for about a year Mary sent them two or three pounds every month and at Christmas five pounds again. Then her letters stopped altogether, both to them and to me. To me she had kept writing always the same, kind and chatty and about herself. She told me she had to save and scrape a little but that she had hope some day to be able to get me down. I never dreamed it was not so, not even when the letters stopped, though afterwards, when I went ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... the drawing in the official envelope, smiling happily. "Old Chauvin is not exactly chatty," ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... the windows and sliding shutters. Captain Maxwell tried to make him comprehend our track on the globe. He had felt it becoming to preserve some state while business was going on, but he now became quite chatty and familiar. He went all over the ship, accompanied by the other chiefs and his own personal suite, consisting of a pipe bearer, a man who carried his large camp chair, another with a cover of red cloth for the chair, and a man who carried a ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... madeira. My rank as a general and my fame have robbed me for ever of cabbage-soup and savoury pies, and goose with apple-sauce, and bream with boiled grain. They have robbed me of our maid-servant Agasha, a chatty and laughter-loving old woman, instead of whom Yegor, a dull-witted and conceited fellow with a white glove on his right hand, waits at dinner. The intervals between the courses are short, but they seem ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... dispatches, too, were very full and thorough. Webster valued them particularly, and remarked that he "always laid aside every other correspondence to read a diplomatic dispatch from Mr. Irving." He had time, too, for many charming chatty letters to the nieces at Sunnyside. Here is a Thackerayish passage from one of them: "You seem to pity the poor little queen, shut up with her sister like two princesses in a fairy tale, in a great, grand, dreary palace, and wonder whether she would not like ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... pleasant and chatty, and of course asked a great many questions about America. Nearly all English people I've met want to talk about our country, and it seems to me that what they do know about it isn't any better, considered as useful information, than what they don't know. But Mr. Poplington ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... and the questions were soon answered in a sense as laudatory as his friends or even himself could have desired. It was unanimously voted that his conversation was as agreeable as his writing; but, oddly enough, its agreeableness was of an entirely different kind. His literary knack of chatty criticism had required a new word to convey its precise effect. To "birrell" is now a verb as firmly established as to "boycott," and it signifies a style light, easy, playful, pretty, rather discursive, perhaps a little superficial. Its characteristic note is grace. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... woman's having a free field. They certainly made lovely correspondents; they picked up something bright before you could turn round; there wasn't much you could keep away from them; you had to be lively if you wanted to get there first. Of course, they were naturally more chatty, and that was the style of literature that seemed to take most to-day; only they didn't write much but what ladies would want to read. Of course, he knew there were millions of lady-readers, but he intimated that he didn't address himself exclusively to the gynecaeum; he tried to ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... rose with the leaping flames, until some of the members of the party became quite facetious. This was especially the case when supper had been disposed of and the pipes were lighted. It was then that Rance became chatty and anecdotal in his tendencies, and Jeffson told marvellous stories of Yankee-land, and Douglas, who devoted himself chiefly to his pipe, became an attentive listener and an awkward tripper up of the heels of those who appeared to be "drawing the long-bow," and Meyer looked, ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... quickly tore the letter open again, for she considered it her duty to show John what she had written. But a long time passed and he did not return. And Amrei blushed when the chatty ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... merely a friendly affair. I paid my twenty marks, and was given plus a hundred. I drew for my first game a chatty type of man, who started minus twenty. We neither of us did much for the first five minutes, and then I made a break ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... own land, way down in Algeria, under his real name, his only name of Antoine Mergy. He is married to an Englishwoman, and they have a son whom he insisted on calling Arsene. I often receive a bright, chatty, warm-hearted letter from him." ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... Creighton, of London, was an incessant smoker of cigarettes. Mr. Herbert Paul, in his paper on the Bishop, says that those who went to see him at Fulham on a Sunday afternoon always found him, if they found him at all, "leisurely, chatty, hospitable, and apparently without a care in the world. There was the family tea-table, and there were the eternal cigarettes. The Bishop must have paid a fortune in tobacco-duty." There is a side view of another tobacco-lover in the "Note-Books" ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... trimly Thou sett'st thy chatty sail! For me alone all dimly Seemeth the sun to fail. Young FRANK he frowneth grimly, And thou turn'st haughty pale. 'Tis not the taint of "City," For here be scores who sport Their Mayfair manners pretty In Cop-the-Needle Court. Ah, chill me not so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... too reserved for my taste. I like a chatty customer—when I'm not too busy. But she bore a high character for being a ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... off, and straight-way, with a life-reviving gurgle, the stream called thunda panee gushes forth, and plant and shrub lift up their heads and the garden smiles again. The dust also on the roads is laid and a grateful incense rises from the ground, the sides of the water chatty grow dark and moist and cool themselves in the hot air, and through the dripping interstices of the khuskhus tattie a chilly fragrance creeps into the room, causing the mercury in the thermometer to retreat from its proud ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... way, Frank easily led the engineer on, and it was not long before the man was quite taken with the chatty passenger. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)
... chatty and agreeable, treating Mona more as an equal than she had ever done before. She seemed in excellent spirits, and talked so gayly and enthusiastically about the trip that the young girl really began to ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... miracle. I had dreamt that it might come to pass, even as it did, and I knew that talk for it should be stored safely away. This talk had been the coinage of my leisure. As we walked I would say, lightly,—"Do you like it here as well as you did back East?"—or, still better, as sounding more chatty,—"How do you like it here?"—an easy, masterful pause—"as well as you did back East?" A thousand times had I rehearsed the inflections until they were perfect. And now ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... showing feeling or anything in the guards. But he took my hand. And we climbed out to charge—Poor fellow, he was killed—" Herbertson dropped his head, and for some moments seemed to go unconscious, as if struck. Then he lifted his face, and went on in the same animated chatty fashion: "You see, he had a presentiment. I'm sure he had a presentiment. None of the men got killed unless they had ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... was not made any easier to him by the behaviour of the sergeant. Instead of being overwhelmed by a sense of discovered guilt, the police, both Rahilly and Constable Ma-lone, were pleasantly chatty, and evidently bent on making the drive home as agreeable as possible for the doctor. They told him the names of the hills and the more distant mountains. They showed the exact bank at the side of the road ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... found that my friend from Palmella had departed: but several contrabandistas had arrived from Spain. They were mostly fine fellows, and unlike the two I had seen the preceding week, who were of much lower degree, were chatty and communicative; they spoke their native language, and no other, and seemed to hold the Portuguese in great contempt. The magnificent tones of the Spanish sounded to great advantage amidst the shrill squeaking dialect of ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... many acquaintances at the hotel, not a few of which were anything but desirable for a boy of his age and character. He was on chatty terms with all the stage-drivers, hostlers, and servants about the premises, and also got acquainted with many strangers who stopped there for a season. He was very fond of listening to the stories of the drivers and other frequenters of the stage-office, and he would ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... Godfrey was placed in a vehicle. A soldier mounted by the side of the driver, the latter shouted to his horses, and started at full gallop. Soon after leaving the town they passed a caravan of forty carts carrying tea. The soldier, who appeared a chatty fellow, told him they would be three months on their way to Moscow. At a town named Verchne Udinsk they regained the main road and turned east and continued their journey through Chita, a town of three thousand ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... other, breaking into English and rubbing a musquito off of her well-tanned shank with the sole of her foot, "tis Mizziz Ri-i-i-ly what live there. She jess move een. She's got a lill baby.—Oh! you means dat lady what was in de Chatty Hawspill!" ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... grouse, a brace of partridges, ditto of snipes, ditto of curlews, and a large salmon. If you were to ask Mr. Weightman's opinion of my character just now, he would say that at first he thought me a cheerful chatty kind of body, but that on farther acquaintance he found me of a capricious changeful temper, never to be reckoned on. He does not know that I have regulated my manner by his—that I was cheerful and chatty so long as he was respectful, and that when he grew almost contemptuously familiar I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... forehead. Perhaps it was because he wanted to be polite that he said he had enjoyed our company on the previous day, and had determined, if possible, to have a more extended conversation. With the usual coffee and cigarettes, the kadi became informal and chatty. He was evidently a firm believer in predestination, as he remarked that God had foreordained our trip to that country, even the food we were to eat, and the invention of the extraordinary "cart" on which we were to ride. The idea of such a journey, in such a peculiar way, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... bell of time Ring onward with a chatty chime— How we have fled o'er earth and sky, And what you ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... is an art, and there is no pleasure equal to that of receiving and reading a chatty and well-worded epistle from some dear friend. I have some packets of letters preserved to-day that I read and reread. They are always fresh and interesting to me. They are a complete index to the character of the writer, and they serve, after long years have passed, ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... heard to say anything, that those who boasted of being intimate with him obviously lied in their teeth—all this prepared him for sacrifice. Christiania is a hot-bed of gossip, and its press one of the most "chatty" in the world. Our "greatest living author" was offered up as a wave-offering, and he smoked daily on ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... that overhead there was a faint light, which grew stronger and then died out over and over again. The stillness was awful, but I had a companion, and that made my position less painful. He would not talk, though as a rule he was very bright and chatty; now he would only say, "Wait ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... bottle of red wine, some dry bread, and Peder Halstensen as guide. I mention Peder particularly, because he is the only jolly, lively, wide-awake, open-hearted Norwegian I have ever seen. As rollicking as a Neapolitan, as chatty as an Andalusian, and as frank as a Tyrolese, he formed a remarkable contrast to the men with whom we had hitherto come in contact. He had long black hair, wicked black eyes, and a mouth which laughed even when his face was at rest. Add a capital tenor voice, a lithe, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... gossip &c (converse) 588; din in the ears &c (repeat) 104; talk at random, talk nonsense &c 497; be hoarse with talking. Adj. loquacious, talkative, garrulous, linguacious^, multiloquous^; largiloquent^; chattering &c v.; chatty &c (sociable) 892; declamatory &c 582; open-mouthed. fluent, voluble, glib, flippant; long tongued, long winded &c (diffuse) 573. Adv. trippingly on the tongue; glibly &c adj.; off the reel. Phr. the tongue running ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... long hand, they bore every resemblance to a social letter from a lady to some old neighbor and told how many of her housekeeping troubles had been ended by using a certain kind of furniture polish. The letters were written in such a chatty style that they were read through and passed around to ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... that she grew sadder and sadder all the time. There was nobody she could talk to about him, for her mamma's eyes filled with tears at any chance allusion to him. Aunt Betsy nearly snapped her head off when she asked her a question, and Uncle Squire, chatty as he was upon every other subject, would squint his eyes in a knowing way, puff out his cheeks, and answer, "Lay o'ers ter ketch meddlers." Yes, there was one person she was sure she could coax into telling her why her ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... but interested, really interested in living. And Mrs. Nelson. Her children were living and married and happy, but she had given up her home, sold it—the pretty place with the hospitable yard that used to seem to be fairly spilling over with wholesome, boisterous boys and chatty, beribboned little girls. She was rooming with a family, taking her meals at a restaurant, keeping up her zest in tomorrow by running a shop. She thought of how her friend, Mrs. Robinson, gracious, democratic woman of wide sympathies that she was, had ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... Miss Milbrey. That young woman was still friendly, which he could understand, and highly amused, which he could not understand. While the temperature was at its lowest the first load ascended, including Miss Milbrey and her parents, a chatty blonde, and an uncomfortable little man who, despite his being twelve hundred feet toward the centre thereof, had three times referred bitterly to the fact that he was "out of the world." "I shall see you soon above ground, shall I not?" Miss Milbrey had asked, at which her mother shot Percival ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... publication, may have its value, but it cannot have the charm of a letter written in the familiar intercourse of friendship. It is the correspondence prompted by the heart which reaches the heart of the reader. The humour, the gaiety, the tenderness, and the chatty details that make a letter attractive, should be prompted by the feelings and events of the hour. Carefully constructed sentences and rhetorical flourishes ring hollow; to write for effect is to ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Got into spirits. Never was more chatty. We sat late at whist. Mr. H. and self agreed at parting to take a gentle ride, and dine at the old house ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Mayson avoids learned terminology. He uses the simplest English, and goes straight to the point. He begins by showing the young learner how to choose the best wood for the violin that is to be. Throughout a whole chatty, perfectly simple chapter, he discourses on the back. A separate chapter is devoted to the modelling of the back, and a third to its 'working out.' The art of sound-holes, ribs, neck, fingerboard, the scroll, the belly. Among the illustrations is one showing the ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... Shrewd, chatty, kindly, the municipal councillor—Bernard by name— showed the greatest interest in us, his easy manners never verging on impertinence. He was much pleased to learn that I had come all the way from England in order to describe these regions for my country-folks, and ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... be for each of my friends to set aside one day in each week to write to the president, opening it in a chatty way by asking him if he does not think we are having rather a backward spring, and what he is doing for his cut worms now, and how his folks are, etc., etc. Then gradually lead up to the statement that you think I would be an ornament ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... record,' said Psmith, 'of the meeting of an institution called the Tulse Hill Parliament. A bright, chatty little institution, too, if one may judge by these reports. You in particular, if I may say so, appear to have let yourself go with refreshing vim. Your political views have changed a great deal since those days, have they not? It is extremely interesting. A most fascinating study for political ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... sketch of character than Mr. Emerson's living picture of Dr. Ripley. I myself remember him as a comely little old gentleman, but he was not so communicative in a strange household as his clerical brethren, smiling John Foster of Brighton and chatty Jonathan Homer of Newton. Mr. Emerson says, "He was a natural gentleman; no dandy, but courtly, hospitable, manly, and public-spirited; his nature social, his house open to all men.—His brow was serene and ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... She had anticipated a long afternoon of chatty gossip with her neighbor; but she saw that Mercy had some strong reason for hurrying ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... been in peril of expressing as "funny." Yes, she was funny, wonderful Mamie, and without dreaming it; she was bland, she was bridal—with never, that he could make out as yet, a bridegroom to support it; she was handsome and portly and easy and chatty, soft and sweet and almost disconcertingly reassuring. She was dressed, if we might so far discriminate, less as a young lady than as an old one—had an old one been supposable to Strether as so committed ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... to see you about merging the Brightlight Electric Company with the Consolidated, Mr. Burnit," said Mr. Sharpe in a chatty tone, laying his hat, cane and gloves upon Bobby's desk and seating ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... we sat down. I am happy to say that they enjoyed Susie's culinary efforts, and we had the nicest chatty time. Just as we finished we all stopped conversing and listened. The rain was pelting down upon our little window panes and the wind came in heavy gusts, while, far away, the thunder was rolling. Then, after a time, we heard steps upon the little porch and I rose to open ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... they yielded, and enjoyed a sumptuous lunch of cold meat and bread and cheese, which made new men of them. It took all their good manners to curb their attentions to the joint; and their chatty host spun out the repast with such stories of his own school days, that the ten minutes grew to fully half an hour ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... letter-writer, and having so much to attend to, and "he doesn't reply to my or our letters as he should." My reply to this nonsense is, never mind whether he reciprocates your extreme condescension or not. The communication with him should be kept going, and if letters are bright, chatty, and without a word of indiscreet reproach for any lack of attention on his part, depend upon it he will ultimately melt into penitence and become a self-accused rascal. Of course I have known many cases where unjustifiable ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... I want to know," replied Tom. "Seems to me you're mighty chatty all of a sudden. Is it ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... indifference to formal structure, impulsively involuted syntax, long, wandering sentences—seems to move, as does Robert Lloyd's satire (at a somewhat slower pace), toward a genuinely new style. In being chatty, fluid, iconoclastic, spontaneous-sounding, self-revealing, his satire might eventually prove capable of dealing with the problems that the Augustan satirists had predicted but did not have to deal with so directly. But both Churchill and Robert ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... Peter coaxed Skinski off in a corner and there they hobnobbed for fifteen minutes while my wife and her aunt and I tried to get cheerful and chatty with "Aunt Flo," but we only succeeded in dragging from her four ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... half-way from our respective starting-points. As we approached each other it became with me a question whether we should speak. I thought it likely that the stranger would accost me, and in the event of his doing so I was quite ready to be as sociable and chatty as I could be according to my nature; but still I could not think of anything particular that I had to say to him. Of course, among civilised people the not having anything to say is no excuse at all for not speaking, but I was shy and indolent, and I felt ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... I went in, and had some beer, and you know I can give a long yarn when I want; but it wants only a little care to deceive these knowing countrymen, so I talked and talked, until they got quite chatty, and then I put the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... and came across the room towards her impulsively. He was going to carry this through. "You've got me there. Properly." He took the basket from her hand. "Come on, we'll cut the flowers. I'll be absolutely chatty ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... decade. Its owner assays to take a ride on it; but the best he can do is to wabble around a vacant space in front of the hotel, the awkward motions of the old bone-shaker affording intense amusement to the crowd. After supper this chatty and entertaining gentleman brings his wife, a rotund, motherly-looking person, to see the bicycle; she is a Levantine Greek, and besides her own lingua franca, her husband has improved her education to the extent of a smattering of rather misleading English. Desiring to be complimentary ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... one berry is said to be sufficient to cleanse a gallon of water. The method of using them is curious, although simple. The vessel which is intended to contain the water, which is generally an earthen chatty, is well rubbed in the inside with a berry until the latter, which is of a horny consistency, like vegetable ivory, is completely worn away. The chatty is then filled with the muddy water, and allowed to stand for about an ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... such as we now expect to find in any well-regulated guide-book, and they dealt largely in reported conversations with intelligent foreigners, racy innkeepers, and garrulous peasants. In a word, they were chatty. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... perhaps three miles by road and not above eight minutes by automobile at the rate we traveled to an aviation camp at the back side of the town. Here was very much to see, including many aeroplanes of sorts domiciled under canvas hangars and a cheerful, chatty, hospitable group of the most famous aviators in the German army—lean, keen young men all of them—and a sample specimen of the radish-shaped bomb which these gentlemen carry aloft with the intent of dropping ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... was not always in this chatty fashion that he wrote, for in 1856, when the question of slavery was being fiercely discussed throughout the country, he expressed his views on the subject with a moderation and broadmindedness exceedingly rare in those ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... a little cataract on the American side, which throws its silver sheeny veil over a cave called the Grot of Rainbows? Whoever stands on a rock in that grotto sees himself in the centre of a rainbow-circle, above, below, around. In like manner, merry, chatty, positive, busy, housewifely Katy saw herself standing in a rainbow-shrine in her lover's inner soul, and liked to see herself so. A woman, by-the-by, must be very insensible, who is not moved to come upon a higher plane of being, herself, by seeing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Mrs. Lance at home, and whether she boasts any offspring besides a grand pianoforte did not appear. She was civil and chatty enough, and offered to introduce us to some acquaintance in Southampton, which we ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... the right art; one could not remain doubtful and timorous where a person was so earnest and simple and gentle, and talked so alluringly as he did; no, he won us over, and it was not long before we were content and comfortable and chatty, and glad we had found this new friend. When the feeling of constraint was all gone we asked him how he had learned to do that strange thing, and he said he hadn't learned it at all; it came natural to him—like other ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were accustomed to address the chatty, familiar old lady in this way,—"you have seen ghosts, haven't you? What is the most startling thing that ever happened in ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... long chapters, more than 250,000 words. And yet, at this hurried and impatient point, with the coda already begun, Dreiser halts the whole narrative to explain the origin, nature and inner meaning of Christian Science, and to make us privy to a lot of chatty stuff about Mrs. Althea Jones, a professional healer, and to supply us with detailed plans and specifications of the apartment house in which she lives, works her tawdry miracles, and has her being. Here, in sober summary, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... behaved beautifully. I asked him to be sure and look in any time he was passing, and after a few chatty remarks ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... now summing-up, in such very nice, chatty, confidential style that it is impossible to hear one half of his observations, while the remainder is totally inaudible.... Nevertheless, I already gather that he regards the affair with the restricted narrowminded view that it is simply the question of damages.... He appears ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey |
