"Presentable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interrupted by the approach of Mr Macgregor, who had now recovered somewhat from the effects of his violent fit of passion. Having observed during the melee that strangers had arrived at his fort, he had washed and converted himself into a more presentable personage, and now came forward to the group of trappers, all of whom had assembled at the gate. Addressing them in a tone of ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... a nice comfortable house mother over each? If we just had ten picturesque cottages to put them in, with flowers in the front yard and rabbits and kittens and puppies and chickens in the back, we should be a perfectly presentable institution, and wouldn't be ashamed to have these charity experts come ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... everything he is likely to require. At the expiration of the time, having communicated with the cook, he rings the real dinner-bell, and proceeds to take it up with such assistance as he can obtain. Having ascertained that all is in order, that his own dress is clean and presentable, and his white cotton gloves are without a stain, he announces in the drawing-room that dinner is served, and stands respectfully by the door until the company are seated: he places himself on the left, behind his master, who is to distribute the soup; where soup ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Maurice, "is not worth much, being that of a diplomat, but such as it is it is yours. However, my clothes are scarcely presentable," which was true enough. Several buttons were missing, and the collar ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... required courage of the highest order on the part of the colonists to battle through the winter. They were in extreme poverty, and in many cases their frost-bitten, starved bodies were wrapped only in rags before spring came. Those who still had their plaids, or other presentable garments, were prepared to part with them for a morsel of food. With the coming of spring once more, the party travelled northward to 'the Forks' of the Red River, resolved never again to set foot within ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... real as Richard Savage, with whom he is contemporary, and it must be admitted that he is a more presentable personage. What a jolly philosophy is his about the delights of beggary! It has all the humor of Rabelais with no touch of the Touraine grossness. It has something of the wisdom of Aurelius, only clad in homespun instead of the purple. The philosophy ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Turmeric dyes the cotton a fast yellow, the Magenta only stains the cotton crimson, and on washing with water alone, almost every trace of colour is removed again; the madder, however, stains the cotton with no presentable shade of colour at all, produces a brownish-yellow stain, removed at once by a wash in water. But let us take the printed piece of cotton and dye that in the Alizarin bath, and then we shall discover the conditions ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... there would be a woman in it, Terence," O'Grady exclaimed. "With a soft tongue, and a presentable sort of face, and impudence enough for a whole regiment, it was aisy for you to put the comhether on a poor Spanish girl, who had never had the good luck to meet an officer of the Mayo Fusiliers before. Sure, I have always said to meself ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... the same window, and he was fascinated and amazed, and took the child to the director of the Royal Opera, asking for her the advantages of musical education, and the director roughly said: "What shall we do with that ugly thing? See what feet she has. And, then, her face; she will never be presentable. No, we can't take her. Away with her!" But God had decreed for this child of nature a grand career, and all those sorrows were woven into her faculty of song. She never could have been what she became, royally arrayed on the platforms of Berlin and ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... trial to her mother. Addie was pretty as a child, tolerably presentable even at her most awkward age, glided gradually into girlhood and beauty, and finally "came out" completely to Mrs. Blake's satisfaction. But Lottie at fifteen or sixteen was her despair—"Exactly like a great ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... specific . . . I was giving you an illustration of myself in action, my dear. I went to these Nervino people—happened to see one of their posters and got the idea in a flash—I went to them and said, 'Here am I, a presentable man of persuasive manners and a large acquaintance among the leaders of New York Society. What would it be worth to you to have me hint from time to time at dinner parties and so forth that Nervino is the rich man's panacea?' I put the thing lucidly to them. I said, 'No doubt you have a ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... they'd crack up. I used to think I hated responsibility: I am positively getting to enjoy it. (3) There is that confounded "Picture of Tuesday" which I have been scribbling at the whole evening, and have at last got it presentable. This sounds like mere amusement, but, now that I have tried other kinds of hurry and bustle, I solemnly pledge myself to the opinion that there is no work so tiring as writing, that is, not for fun, but for publication. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... thought came to her which added greatly to her distress. If Arthur continued his persecutions, how could she make the next copy-book more presentable? and in case it were not, her father had said positively that he would punish her; and oh! how could she bear punishment from him, when a word or look of displeasure almost broke ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... which could be permitted to the young, was dry narrative, written by people who could not make their personages talk character; they all spoke {190} alike. The author of the Rambler[426] is ridiculed, because his young ladies talk Johnsonese; but the satirists forget that all the presentable novel-writers were equally incompetent; even the author of Zeluco (1789)[427] is the strongest ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... better or more full of hope and good work. Though the apparel will be tattered and torn, the mind, the essence of me, is sound to the core. Please tell the little milliner to have a bonnet picked out for me, and get a dressmaker who will patch me together so I shall be presentable. Now for the Washington convention: Before settling upon the Universalist church, you would better pocket the insults and refusals of the Congregational church powers that be and send your most lovely ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... them, and, what was quite as inconvenient, to hurry up the back stairs to his dressing-room to take off his long gaiters, Blucher boots (as half high ones were then called) and old shooting coat, and make himself presentable. ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I can not employ you, I owe you every courtesy for having put you to this trouble. You will observe that I am not very presentable." ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... was Lord George Wilmot, who ran away with a farmer's daughter. She made quite a sensation; she was quite presentable, and very pretty and well-mannered—but such a temper! They used to be called George and the Dragon. Poor man! he had the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his features. The fine nose had grown fleshy towards the point, the pale eyes were sunk in fat. His hands were strong and elegant; his experience of life evidently varied; his speech full of pith and verve; his manners forward, but perfectly presentable. The lad who helped in the second cabin told me, in answer to a question, that he did not know who he was, but thought, "by his way of speaking, and because he was so polite, that he was some one from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... say. So far as I know, psychologists have not yet made a sufficiently exact study of the nose as a determining factor in matrimony, to warrant an opinion from persons who have made no special study of the subject. The plain fact was that by his twenty-fifth year, Washington was an unusually presentable young man, more than six feet tall, broad-shouldered, very strong, slender and athletic, carefully polite in his manners, a boon companion, though he talked little, a sound and deliberate thinker; moreover, the part he had taken in the war with the Indians and the French made him almost a ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... him a worse designation, but that is a manifest impossibility; for without the assistance of two good presentable members of your Estate, Alpha and Upsilon, he would be a mere nonentity—he it is that has dared to outdo all injuries that I have ever known, expelling me from the nouns and verbs of my inheritance, and hunting me out of my conjunctions and prepositions, till his rapacity has become ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... it possible that anyone with the slightest claims to respectability could be quite indifferent to athletic success. But Rudd was, after all, a presentable fellow, and yet he did not mind in ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... flying rush. The table was laid and the soup was almost ready. The people were coming in. She was late as usual; there was no time to change. She flung her garden hat aside and scrambled into more presentable garments, while footsteps already sounded on the wooden stairs that led up from ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... gave the solid citizens an excuse for leaving home six nights a year, and in a community where meetings of whist clubs and church boards constituted the only justification for carrying a latch-key this new freedom established him at once as a friend of mankind. Fosdick was wholly presentable, and while his contributions to the industrial glory of Montgomery lacked elements of permanence, he had, so the "Evening Star" solemnly averred, "done much to rouse our citizens from their lethargy and blaze the starward trail." ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... think it over before you decide?" he said. "I will come to you, as soon as I am presentable, for your answer. For the present, would you not be wise to go back to your friends? I am too disreputable to escort you, but I will watch you ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... for making me presentable was the wearing of gloves and a shady hat every time I went outside; and she insisted upon me spending a proper time over my toilet, and would not allow me to encroach upon it with the contents of ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... contests, against whom our poor stripped individual is commonly in revolt, are, as we know, not miners, they are reapers; and if we appear no longer on the surface, they cease to bruise us: they will allow an arena character to be cleansed and made presentable while enthusiastic friends preserve discretion. It is of course less than magnanimity; they are not proposed to you for your worship; they are little Gods, temporary as that great wave, their parent human mass of the hour. But they have ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... administered by Sir J. Bowring,[408] Sir W. Rowan Hamilton,[409] and myself. The signed declaration was promised for Christmas, 1864: but nothing presentable was then ready; and it was near Midsummer, 1865, before it was published. Persons often incautiously put their names without seeing the character of a document, because they coincide in its opinions. In this way, probably, fifteen respectable names were procured before ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... you have taken my advice, Helen. We none of us can afford to forget what is due to custom. You are much more presentable." ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... you think you have nothing to do but rush into Alice's arms when you find her? Take some valerian to quiet your nerves, and go to bed. In the morning, try to smooth over those sharp features of yours. Use rouge, if you can't get up your natural color. When you are presentable, come over here again, and we'll stroll out in search of adventure. But mind, I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... have despised him! Gould, who was a bad shot, had bagged five couple, and patronised him insufferably. When they got home he found a warm foot-bath ready in his room, which was a most refreshing luxury, and having made himself presentable he went down to the drawing- room, where the neighbours who were going to act in the forthcoming play were assembled at afternoon tea, preparatory to the rehearsal. And presently they adjourned to the library ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... come down from his scaffold and do his best with a few broad lines to show her what she had really imagined, till she clapped her small, dusty hands with delight and was ultimately carried off by her governess to be made presentable for her daily drive in the Villa Borghese with the Princess ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... in a large mirror to assure herself that her hat was presentable, then followed her escort. As she reached the partly closed door of the office used by the young decorators, she heard a man's voice. The same voice which had been accusing her chauffeur of bad judgment and ignorance of city laws. Before she could change her mind ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... we rode on, leaving passengers and parcels by the way until it showed signs of deepening twilight, when we reached by a slight acclivity the door of the farmhouse that was at the entrance of the place, where I was soon joined by my relatives who took me in charge and made me presentable for supper; but I was too late to join with the family, and took my first meal with ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... writes: "I freely admit that the good looks and modest bearing of the girls were the chief merits of the performance in my eyes. Had the danseuses been scrubbed and well dressed, they would have been a presentable body of debutantes in any European ballroom. One of our party, frivolously disposed, asked a girl (through an interpreter) if she would marry him and go to his country. The reply, 'I do not know you, sir,' was all that propriety could ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... its face towards the new-comer. One sight of the visitor prompted a series of bobbing courtesies, a wondering look in the old sun-browned face, and a folding back into a triangular form of the wet sackcloth apron, which was truly not in a presentable condition. The old woman was the first to speak. "Good-day, miss—good-day!" and then there was a ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... my joints were oiled, my face was washed, and my hands were polished. Altogether I was overhauled, and when I took my place on the tray with my twenty-one companions I was altogether a new being, and by no means the least presentable of ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... to be received anywhere. These Breens seem well off, and anyway, there are the Simpsons—they are all right. Solid comfort, my dear, is not to be despised, especially when a girl can't pick and choose, and may possibly never get another chance. He is awfully presentable, too, and most gentlemanly, I am sure. Oh, on the whole—if you ask me—I'd say, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... it? You will want ever so much more. Then you have just the one pair of new nankeen trousers, last year's trousers are tight for you; you will be obliged to have clothes made in Paris, and Paris prices are not like Angouleme prices. You have only two presentable white waistcoats; I have mended the others already. Come, I advise you to ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... well sleep on the sofa. Ellen is anxious we should have them and would bathe them and do their hair. We think this plan might teach them ways of cleanliness and in other respects influence them for good. When at school I often have to dispatch a scholar to the stream. It is surprising what a presentable appearance the people have, but we want them ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... a suite of offices on the fifth floor, looking directly out over and into the cool green beauty of Madison Forest. In an hour or so, they cleared out the bats and spiders, the rubbish and the dust, and made the place very decently presentable. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... themselves have done to make Captain Teach presentable in the best society? Blackbeard was his sobriquet, for he had one flowing over his chest which patriarchs might be forgiven for coveting. The hair of his head was tastefully done up with ribbons, and inframed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... ride on a jet sled, Tom rode over to the administration building where he managed to clean up enough to make himself presentable at the hotel. Later, as he rode along the curving canal in a jet cab into the main section of Marsport, he relaxed for the first time and ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... was to have a finger in that vacation. The presence in her house of two presentable young men was an excellent excuse for paying off dinner debts and giving a lawn party and a ball. Even at Newport there are never enough men to go round, and with two whole ones for a basis much may be done. The very night of their arrival they "ran into" a dinner-party, as Carrol expressed it. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... dark about everything in the world, including himself. By and by a tall young man came in. He was clean-shaved with a strong bluish jaw and something of the air of a taciturn actor or of a fanatical priest: the type with thick black eyebrows—you know. But he was very presentable indeed. He shook hands at once vigorously with each of us. The young lady came up to me and murmured sweetly, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... beautiful white bugler, you will hardly meet at dinner, he being the shyest of his kind. A Canada goose—not the tough and fishy bird of the Northern coast, but grain- and grass-fed from fledging-time—is tender, delicate, and everyway presentable. From the back upper gallery that looks upon the prairie you are likely to see a company or battalion of his brethren, their long black necks and white ties "dressing" capitally in line, and their invisible legs doing the goose-step ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... courtesies were exchanged, I was shown to a dressing-room, and with the aid of 'Jim,' a razor, and one of the Colonel's shirts,—all of mine having undergone a drenching,—soon made a tolerably presentable appearance. The negro then conducted me to the breakfast-room, where I found ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... really very presentable. Just the wife for a rising young politician. Go in and win her before she's snapped up ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... after Bratti, having business at home, had handed the young stranger over to Nello, and in the barber's shop he had been shaved and trimmed, and made to look presentable, that Tito Melema became more confidential, and explained that he was a Greek; that he was returning from adventures abroad, had suffered shipwreck, and found himself in Florence with nothing saved from the disaster but some few rare old gems ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... admiration. It was characteristic of Marzio that he asked his apprentice's opinion. He was an artist, and had the chief peculiarities of artists—namely, diffidence concerning what he had done, and impatience of the criticism of others, together with a strong desire to show his work as soon as it was presentable. ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... can do, Ned, will make you presentable for the next few days. I believe that a raw beefsteak is the best thing to put on your eye, but is not such a thing in the house, and if there was, I don't think that I should be justified in wasting it for such a purpose. I should say the next best thing would be ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... twice during the evening, was in and out like a flitting shadow, and on each return had brought Mrs. Lawrence new and more significant tidings. Florence had bathed her face and done all she could to make herself presentable, and was preparing to go down, when informed that Forrest was gone. And later that night Mrs. Lawrence deluged her, as she had her brother, with the details of Forrest's ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... clothing contributed was for the women of the Free Level. Thinking that an opportunity had at last arisen for her to express her compassion for the ill-favoured girls of her own former level, Marguerite hastened to bundle up such presentable gowns as she had and sent them to ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... yes; what's in here," slapping his pack contemptuously, "it's only for them wizzent old creatures up in London—them 'at have faces like the map of England when it shows all the lines of the railways—just to make them a bit presentable, you know. And there is no knowing what some of these things won't do to mak' a body smart—what with brooches and handkerchers and collars, and I ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... all unsuspected by her subject, had taken Jane in hand a month ago, and had made her at length fairly presentable. Incidentally she had made herself a martyr. "But never mind," she would say; "the poor child doesn't know how to do herself justice, so somebody else has got ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Martin would have screamed at any Liberty tints. But the carpet was good of its kind, the pictures on the walls not too atrocious. Although they were in gilt frames, the large mirrors over the mantelpiece and at one end of the room were first rate; in short, the drawing-room was fairly presentable, and Mrs. Martin had some traces of her old life still lingering about her which gave a look of domesticity and even repose to the place. Her little work-basket, with its embroidery, was home-like and pleasant. She had forgotten how to play, but she always ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... idiosyncrasies. The details that go to compose this or that gentleman's appearance—such as the little wrinkles around his eyes, and the way his hair grows, and the special convolutions of his ears—all these, presentable on canvas, or evocable by words, are not right matter for the chisel or for the mould and furnace. Translated into terms of bronze or marble, howsoever cunningly, these slight and trivial things cease to be trivial and slight. They assume a ludicrous importance. No man is worthy to ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... First"—Mrs. Hauksbee ticked off the items ostentatiously on her little gloved fingers—"First, my dear, I shall dress him properly. At present his raiment is a disgrace, and he wears a dress shirt like a crumpled sheet of the 'Pioneer'. Secondly, after I have made him presentable, I shall form his ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... came on the very day he finished his book, when Langholm made himself presentable and rode off to the garden-party at Hornby Manor in spirits worthy of the occasion. About seven of the same evening he dismounted heavily in the by-lane outside the cottage, and pushed his machine through the wicket, ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... touched when I saw what pains his mother had taken to put her boy in presentable shape. He had on a pair of coarse shoes, carefully blacked, and a new, cheap hat replaced the dilapidated one of the day before. He wore a short coat and a vest, which must have served him as his Sunday suit for a long time, as they were much ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... "The Bay Psalm Book" could hardly have been struck off. Diversity and grotesqueness of spelling were of course to be expected, and paper might have been coarse without reproof, in that new and poor country; but the type was good and clear, the paper strong and firm, and with ordinary care a very presentable book might have been issued. The punctuation was horrible. A few commas and periods and a larger number of colons were "pepered and salted" a la Timothy Dexter, apparently quite by chance, among the words. Periods were placed in the middle of sentences; words of one syllable ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... broke up Doyle was sure of where his man stood. He was not worried. They did not need Akers any longer. He had been a presentable tool, a lay figure to give the organization front, and they had over-rated him, at that. He had failed them. Doyle, watching him contemptuously, realized in him his own fallacious judgment, and hated Akers for proving ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and I, who consider ourselves twice as presentable and conversable as she, two old maids." Gertrude winced, and Agatha hastened to add: "Why, as for you, you are perfectly lovely! And she has asked us ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... "'Presentable?'" The old man echoed her jovially. "Pshaw! I've seen lots of sick folks. I know what they look like and how they love to kind of nest in among a pile of old blankets and wrappers. Don't you worry about THAT, Miss Alice, if you think he'd like to ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... analyzed by an American economist (General Walker), and called rent of ability. Now this rent, when the ability is of the artistic or political sort, is often paid in kind. For example, a London possessor of such ability may, with barely enough money to maintain a furnished bedroom and a single presentable suit of clothes, see everything worth seeing that a millionaire can see, and know everybody worth knowing that he can know. Long before I reached this point myself, a very trifling accomplishment gave me glimpses of the sort of fashionable life a peasant never sees. Thus ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... interest me immensely. With judicious dress and a little attention to manners, you might be more presentable than I thought you were at first, Florence. Take this chair near me; now go on. What has ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... customs of those who hung upon the fringe of Society to come every Sunday, and bow and smile, and hope against hope for some chance opening. The stranger who came was dependent upon hospitality; but there were soft-footed and tactful ushers, who would find one a seat, if one were a presentable person. The contingency of an unpresentable person seldom arose, for the proletariat did not swarm at the gates of St. Cecilia's. Out of its liberal income the church maintained a "mission" upon the East Side, where young curates ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... was with Donovan and Gorman on the balcony. In Smith's position I think I should have sent some one else to take Donovan's orders, one of the island girls, or one of the boys who were by that time presentable footmen. I should, I feel sure, have concealed myself, feigned sickness, made any excuse, rather than face the King in the presence of Donovan and Gorman. But Smith is greatly my superior. He appeared at once in answer to the summons of the bell. He stood half-way between ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... a considerable sum on me. As we passed from block to block he kept saying, "Now you won't look green," or, "That will make you look American." At one point he added, "Not that you are a bad-looking fellow as it is, but then one must be presentable in America." At this he quoted from the Talmud an equivalent to the saying that one must do in Rome as ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... neat little craft of twenty tons, as gracefully built as if she were a racing yacht. Her shining copper sheathing, her galvanised iron-work, her deck, white as ivory, betrayed the pride taken by John Bunsby in making her presentable. Her two masts leaned a trifle backward; she carried brigantine, foresail, storm-jib, and standing-jib, and was well rigged for running before the wind; and she seemed capable of brisk speed, which, indeed, she had already proved by gaining several prizes in pilot-boat races. The crew of the Tankadere ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... time, the two little girls were in the room they were to share together, and in a few minutes Polly had made herself more presentable by the use of soap and water, and with Molly's help in changing her dress. Then the cousins faced each other and examined one another critically, and presently both burst out laughing. "You don't look a bit as I thought ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... not seem ready with a reply, so he retained his look of injured innocence, and walked on, sucking silently at his cigar. The Raymonds reached the house before us; but, not being in a presentable state, I did not ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... and I must confess to eating with a good appetite. When I lifted my eyes from my plate I saw that Tamsin was watching me curiously, as though she could not quite make me out. Certainly I was not very presentable. My clothes were stained and torn, and my appearance altogether unkempt. I felt ill at ease, too, and did not care to talk much. Besides, in spite of my strange position, I was tired and sleepy. ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... have suffered deeply and shall continue to suffer until I can look my modest wardrobe in the face and say, 'presentable at last,' I am certain that I deserve a special boon of consolation. In plain English, to which I still cling, despite the fact that I dream of some day establishing a marvelous vocabulary of my own, won't you and Elfreda come to Overton to see me, if only for a day? I have thought things over ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... whole crowd were gathered waiting for dinner, the picture was one of such bubbling joy that Jack's very heavy heart seemed to himself to be terribly out of place there and he wondered whether he should be able to put up even a fairly presentable front during the endless hours that must ensue before the time ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... loving plant softened every outline, filled up every crevice, bridged the gaps in the walls, toned down the rudeness of projecting stones, and did everything that an ivy-plant could do to make the rugged old castle as presentable as were the high rounded mounds without the city, cast up by the besiegers when the enemy last encamped ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... him for one of the most brilliant feats of arms in the history of the pass. He had the advantage of the baron in that he could read and write, though with difficulty. Marta had an idea that he was not presentable at a tea-table; however, he must have been more so than the baron, who, she guessed, would have grabbed all the cakes on the plate as a sheer matter of habit in taking what he wanted unless ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... from slavery. If I could not induce these mounted travelers to stop with us, I generally persuaded them to sell their saddle animals. Thus, hiring negroes and buying mules, I gradually put the plantation in a presentable condition. While the cotton was being picked the blacksmith was repairing the plows, the harness-maker was fitting up the harnesses for the mules, and every thing was progressing satisfactorily. The gin-house was cleaned and made ready for the last work of preparing ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... told them the object of his journey, and had promised each a large reward if he was successful. They gave him their word to work with a will at the task which every one up till then had failed to accomplish. The prince bought them each a handsome suit of clothes, and when they were all presentable sent them to tell the king, the princess's father, that he had come with his attendants to watch three nights in the lady's boudoir. But he took very good care not to say who he was, nor whence ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... was, like all the other houses, one story and square, being divided into kitchen, dining-room and two bedrooms. The interior, its shiny furniture covered with dust, was dreary enough, but Kate knew she could make the place presentable, and after the first few days in her new surroundings, began to recover her high spirits. Her father had not yet said she was to stay; but she thought he liked her—Belle told her as much—and she set about ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... turned out he found his own suit, carefully mended and pressed, laid out over a chair. He gladly discarded his badly fitting Spanish uniform, and after a good wash, donned his own clothing again and made quite a presentable appearance as he walked out on deck, where he found O'Connor and Miss Juanita and her mother lounging ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... for we shall not have to bother about our tickets now." And the children hurried up the stairs, while the Dodo remained behind to adjust his gloves, complaining loudly that notice ought to have been given that they were nearing the station, so that he might have made himself presentable ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... with a washbasin and they soon made themselves presentable. Then they hurried to Mr. Chadwick's workshop. They found him standing before a roughly-built table on which were ranged some ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... genuine enthusiasm that he simply could not understand how so young a man could have composed such a score. His remarks concerning the greatness which he had recognised in my talent were really irresistible, and positively amazed me. When asked whether he considered the work presentable and calculated to produce an effect, he declared his only regret was that he was no longer at the head of a theatre, because, had he been, he would have thought himself extremely lucky to secure such a ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... whipped herself into presentable shape again when Keith's voice at the kitchen door caused her to face ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... we stole out like vampires and went about our trench work. It was during these long, sad days that my mind suddenly turned on making sketches. This period of my trench life marked the start of Fragments from France, though it was not till the end of February that a complete and presentable effort, suitable for publication in a paper, emerged. It was nothing new to me to draw, as for a very long time before the war I had drawn hundreds of sketches, and had spent a great amount of time reading and learning about all kinds of drawing ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... rooms arranged a bit more tidily, and she was anxious to leave them looking presentable for she planned to send the doctor on ahead while she found Bob and brought him out with her, she brushed and braided her patients' hair smoothly, and then fed them a very little warm milk. Neither seemed at all hungry, and ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... laughed Roberta. "How draggy winter things seem the first warm days. This velvet hat weighs like lead on my head to-day." She took it off. "I'll run up and make myself presentable," ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... and infinite quality in their esteem. I find, too, that the chance for appreciation is much increased by being the son of an appreciator, and that these boys who now grow up are caught not only years too late, but two or three births too late, to make the best scholars of. And I think it a presentable motive to a scholar, that, as, in an old community, a well-born proprietor is usually found, after the first heats of youth, to be a careful husband, and to feel an habitual desire that the estate shall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... to camp when the field of strife had been a little mopped up and made presentable, and the Brigadier, who saw himself a Knight in three months, was the only soul who was complimentary to them. The Colonel was heart-broken and the officers were ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... in her unexpected choice of "Johnny Dear" the most unworldly of us knew that it was the first glimmering of feminine tact—her first submission to the world of propriety that she was now entering. "Johnny Dear" was undoubtedly the most presentable; even more, there was an educational suggestion in its prominent, mapped-out phrenological organs. The adopted fathers were loyal to their trust. Indeed, for years afterward the blacksmith kept the iron-headed Misery on a rude shelf, like a shrine, near his bunk; nobody but himself and Mary ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... year; while a third provided that all such as were of the craft were to receive at least sixpence a quarter from each customer who desired to be shaved weekly in his chamber or house. One shave per week does not coincide with our modern notions of what is attractive and presentable in the outer man, but the same rule prevailed at Cambridge. The statutes of St. John's College in the latter university affirmed: "A barber is very necessary to the college, who shall shave and cut once a ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... before Winnifred, a manly contrition struggling upon features which, but for the evil courses of he who wore them, might have been almost presentable. ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... very clear that the first thing we must do for him is to give him an outfit, or he'll not be presentable on board, and then I hope, from gratitude, that he will ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... she said. "I'll get him. I'll get him this morning. He's the best accompanist in Chicago. We'll go to work on them and when we've got them presentable, I'll let you know and sing them to ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... room are hung with portraits of all of my presentable ancestors, from the time of Apelles down to that of Copley. There are not too many of them to leave room for some Dutch paintings of fruit, game, and green-grocers' shops, for whets to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Earle, and invited them to luncheon at a hotel restaurant. Excitement had given her more color than usual, to which her mourning acted as a foil, and she looked her best. Lyons was proud of being in the company of such a presentable and spirited appearing woman, and made a point of stopping two or three members of the legislature and introducing them to her. When they reached the restaurant he established them at a table where they could see everybody and be seen, and he ordered scolloped oysters, chicken-salad, ice-cream, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... into the hands of the Jews before he was twenty, and was driven to break the entail by the time he was forty, passing to a family of Dyers. The best that could be said of them was, that the old people were comparatively inoffensive and the young were presentable. They were inclined to be friendly with the town—it might be till they could secure a footing with the county people, if that were possible. They dressed well, thanks to their milliners and dressmakers, kept a good table, a good stable, and a good staff ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... and a python to be dealt with. It was consequently well on in the afternoon ere the somewhat disagreeable task was over, and the men were free to bathe, change their clothing, and generally make themselves presentable. This done, the Flying Fish was taken back to her former berth on the bush-encircled area of open ground, it having been unanimously agreed to spend a few days longer in so splendid a game country as this seemed to be. But all were agreed ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... midshipmen would probably have slept far into the next day had not Francois appeared with their clothes, nicely brushed and carefully mended, so that they were able to make a presentable appearance in their ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... when a messenger arrived from General Washington requesting an interview with her. She, Molly Pitcher, to be received by the Commander-in-chief of the American forces in such a garb as that! How could she make herself presentable for the interview? With her usual quick wit, Molly borrowed an artilleryman's coat, which in some measure hid her grimy and torn garments. In this coat over her own petticoats, and a cocked hat with a feather, doubtless plucked from a straying hen, she made ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... and becoming gloomy in the closing down of night. Dorothy remained hidden in the cabin, until about the time of our approach to the rude landing at Travers' plantation. Whether this isolation arose from an effort to make herself more presentable, or a desire to avoid further contact with the Spaniard, was a question. When she finally emerged at Roger Fairfax's call, and crossed the deck to where the men were, there was no alteration in her dress, but by that time I was busily engaged with ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... explode. But the lover had the native good sense to be present at the moment of the inevitable catastrophe and to be the only person seriously damaged; and since it was his first real lapse from the paths of rectitude, and he was otherwise amiable, athletic, presentable and brave, who shall complain if, after confessing in a manly way and being put into a state of thorough repair, he found happiness in the end? Miss MARGARET MACAULAY tells her story in a pleasant enough way, and describes with some skill its idyllic setting (for Mr. Powell was first ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... with as much complacency as if she had been in a Chatham ball-room. Indeed, if there had been nobody else near, it is not unlikely that she would have disdainfully fascinated the 'tween-decks, and made eyes at the most presentable ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Paul mansion to Adelle's rooms, babbling about school days, Pussy Comstock, and the other girls of her famous "family." Irene even looked with favor upon Archie in his developed condition of a rich woman's husband. Adelle reflected complacently that he was quite as presentable as a man as the young Englishman Irene had married. All you had to do to succeed, in marriage as in other things, was to do what you wanted and make the world accept you and your acts. And she honestly admired the tall blonde Irene, who had ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... enjoyment. It will be understood how a couple of persons so placed as were they found such a bath not only a luxury but a necessity. Men who spend days and weeks in tramping through the woods, without a change of clothing, can not preserve the most presentable toilet, and the washing of clothing, which at other times was done by those at home, was looked after to a greater or less degree by him ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... still in a joking way, proposed to invest his share in the business. Moreover, said he, he did not intend to refuse their help; he would, no doubt, be unable to find employment all at once; and then, too, he would need a complete outfit, for he was scarcely presentable. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... left and Mr. Wishart himself came down, bringing with him Stocks, a certain Mr. Andrews and his wife, and an excellent young man called Thompson. All were pleasant people, with the manners which the world calls hearty, well-groomed, presentable folk, who enjoyed this life and looked forward ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... poetry," you conclude, "and much better appreciated. Think how easy it is to find a poet who will turn you a presentable sonnet, and how very difficult it is to find a cook who will turn ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson |
