"Shabby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "A mighty shabby old customer," he said, "and I doubt if I could feel at home in his skin; but I'm willing to risk it for the sake of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... a minor key. But, indeed, every sigh is a waste of so much energy that I try to turn my stone towards the erection of the infinite temple without grieving that it was not long since built. I used to despise justice as a shabby virtue, but now it seems to me the only lack. We are unjust in our treatment and in our opinion of persons. In the first we are too sweet, in the last too severe. For we eternally measure men by a standard ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... this simple society had its own social habits. If he did not take this well-meant advice, he must justify himself by his own method. He made up his mind to go to the next meeting of the medical society. His clothes were a trifle shabby, but as the meeting was in the evening, he could go in his evening dress—drop in casually, as it were, from an evening entertainment. That silly bit of pride, however, angered him with himself. He went in his ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... mystery: How and where John got such a shabby lot, Such a shocking pair, I do declare Though he may know, I ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... dignity, not dignity aped. Betty read so much, and rapidly read what else she could see. She saw that the figure she was admiring was dressed but indifferently; the black silk had certainly seen its best days, if it was not exactly shabby; no ornaments whatever were worn with it. The fashion of garments at that day was, as I have remarked, very trying to any but a good figure, while it certainly showed such a one to advantage. Betty knew her own figure could ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... occupied the lower seat, on the west side, on which was likewise placed a rather shabby blue satin sitting-rug, with a back-cushion; and upon perceiving Tai-yue come in she urged her at once to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... place was a bench, and on the bench sate a poorly drest woman, and by her, leaning against a tree, was a man whom I thought I'd sean befor. He was drest in a shabby blew coat, with white seems and copper buttons; a torn hat was on his head, and great quantaties of matted hair and whiskers disfiggared his countnints. He was not shaved, and as pale ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... vacation, and like to puzzle the country folks. They are the very same chaps, like as not, the visitors have seen in plays at the city theatres; but of course they don't know 'em in plain clothes. Kings and Emperors look pretty shabby off the stage sometimes, I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Peru, 6 m. inland from Callao, its port, a picturesque but somewhat shabby city, 700 ft. above the sea-level, regularly built, with many plazas; has a cathedral and 70 churches; trade is in the hands of foreigners, mostly Germans, and industries are unimportant; it was founded by Pizarro, and his bones lie buried in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... train of thought was interrupted by the vision of a barefooted, ragged little girl hurrying down the street. In spite of her shabby, mean attire, you could hardly help noticing how pretty she was, with her rough curly hair falling over her shoulders and her eyes dancing with laughter; in her hand she carried a brimming pail of water which dripped on to her little bare feet ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... this district was very striking; pavements, often in good condition, were general, the irrigating ditches were bridged by a single slab of the red sandstone of Szechuan, perhaps ten feet in length, while at every turn there were charming little stone shrines in place of the shabby wooden ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... Middleton School who approached her in popularity. She was clever without being a scrap conceited, and was extremely good-natured, doing her work for the pleasure of doing it and not because she wanted to outstrip a schoolfellow. She was conscientious too, and would have scorned to do a mean or shabby thing; but she was hopelessly untidy, careless to a fault, late for school half her days, getting into countless scrapes and getting out of them as best she could—the butt of her class as well as the favorite, ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... trail. Doubtful as he was, West had neglected no precautions. The map assured him that they were invading a disorderly section of the city, where to be well-dressed would only invite suspicion, and might lead to trouble. To avoid this possibility, he had donned his most shabby suit, and wore a cap largely concealing his face. In one pocket of his jacket within easy reach lay hidden his service revolver loaded, and he had induced Sexton to accept a smaller weapon in ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... afternoon. Betty had gone to church, and he was alone with his grandmother, reading The Pilgrim's Progress to her, when, just as Christian knocked at the wicket-gate, a tap came to the street door, and he went to open it. There he saw a tall, somewhat haggard-looking man, in a shabby black coat (the vision gradually dawned upon him till it reached the minuteness of all these particulars), his hat pulled down on to his projecting eyebrows, and his shoes very dusty, as with a long journey on foot—it was a hot Sunday, he remembered that—who looked ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... laid her dead, there, to her mind, he would rest for ever, far from her. The lonely grave on the wild west coast was the shrine towards which her poor heart would yearn thereafter at all times, always. She had erected a handsome tombstone on the hallowed spot, and was going away in her shabby clothes, the more at ease for the self-denial she had had to exercise in order to beautify it. The radical difference between herself and Beth, which was to keep them apart for ever, was never more apparent than at this moment of farewell. The other children cried, but Beth remained an ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... at a village, and looking about for an inn, he found one that, although rather shabby, would, he thought, suit him. So he asked whether he could pass the night there, and the mistress said certainly. No one lived at the inn except the mistress, so that the traveller was ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... back to this transaction I am bitten by a kind of remorseful shame. It was such a shabby little lodging for my artist bride, and yet, at the moment, it seemed all that we could safely afford, and she cheerfully made the best of it. Never by word or sign did she hint that its tiny hall and its dingy and unfashionable furnishings were unworthy of us ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... course not!), names a referee, who shall hear the testimony in the case, and submit a copy thereof, together with his decision thereon, to the Court for confirmation. Then, before the referee—who is to be properly feed for his officiation—go the divorce-lawyer and two or three shabby-genteel-looking 'witnesses,' who from thenceforth shall never be findable by mortal man again. The 'witnesses' swear to any thing and every thing—that they have seen and recognized defendant in highly ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... base and capital. The white and yellow paint was faded and blistered. Below the broad flight of crazy front-steps the grass grew rank in the gravel walk, and died out in brown, withered patches on the lawn, where only plantain and sorrel throve. It was a sad and shabby old house enough, but even the patches of newspaper here and there on its broken window-panes could not take away a certain simple, old-fashioned dignity from its ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... (loose), of tie (shabby), she once more reached his face. She dwelt upon his mouth. The lips were shut. The eyes bent down, since he was reading. All was firm, yet youthful, indifferent, unconscious—as for knocking one down! No, no, no! She looked ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... described as eccentric in his general mode of conduct. He "strutted proudly barefoot along the streets of Athens; he was careless and shabby in his dress; in his manner he was affected and haughty and was subject to ecstatic trances and visions. During these trances he would maintain a standing posture for hours, buried in his thoughts, and was quite oblivious to the external world. There was a celebrated occasion in the camp ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... of the Lindsay folks by sight; but at the foot of the hill he met two people, a man and a boy, whom he did not know. They were sitting in a shabby, old-fashioned wagon, and were watering their horse at the brook, which gurgled limpidly under the little plank bridge ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... own services; though I cannot help suspecting that, as in the case of ultroneous offers of service upon most occasions, it was not likely to be acceptable. The motion miscarried, however—impoliticly rejected, as I think. The sound of five shillings sounds shabby, but the fact is that it does in some sort reconcile the party to whom it is offered to leave his own house and business at an exact hour; whereas, in the common case, one man comes too late—another does not come at all—the attendance is given by different individuals ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... immediately, and do see to it, that nothing is left behind. I can afford to lose nothing they have had placed in their hands. I am literally suffering for my black dress. Will you send it to me when you receive this? I am looking very shabby. I hope you have entirely recovered. ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... do not place you in relation with them, you had better get out of their way and keep as far as possible from having anything to do with them,—still, he will scarcely ever attain an adequate notion of their wretchedly mean and shabby nature: all his life long he will have to be extending and adding to the inferior estimate he forms of them; and in the meantime he will commit a great many mistakes ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... was a man short and powerfully built, dressed in a shabby-genteel sort of way, with a massive head covered with black hair, heavy side whiskers and moustache, and a clean shaved chin, which had that blue appearance common to very dark men who shave. His mouth—that is, as much as could be seen of it under the drooping ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... couple roaming aimlessly round that great bare enclosure at the end of the Camden Road, known as the Caledonian Market. It was just eleven by the clock tower, and wares were still pouring in; arriving in all manner of shabby carts and vans—mostly drawn by aged and decrepit horses. Every variety of goods had its own particular pitch. In one quarter were piles of books, brown, musty volumes of all shapes and sizes, also tattered magazines, and of theological works a great host. Farther ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... his voice, as every unfortunate individual will do who is bitten by the music mania. Then among the ladies there were a half-score of dubious pale governesses and professionals with turned frocks and lank damp bandeaux of hair under shabby little bonnets; luckless creatures these, who were parting with their poor little store of half-guineas to be enabled to say they were pupils of Signor Baroski, and so get pupils of their own among the British youths, or employment in the choruses ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Fortune han't come up to meet you! that's real shabby of her; and how to get you down there to-night, I am sure is more than I can tell." ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 2: Excellence is twofold: one is in temporal, the other in spiritual things. Now it happens at times that a person, by outward words or signs, pretends to be lacking in external things, for instance by wearing shabby clothes, or by doing something of the kind, and that he intends by so doing to make a show of some spiritual excellence. Thus our Lord said of certain men (Matt. 6:16) that "they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast." Wherefore such persons are guilty of both vices, irony ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... took the foremost of our novelists, the greatest, we would say, since Scott, into this room, and could not but mark the solemnizing effect of sitting where the great magician sat so often and so long, and looking out upon that little shabby bit of sky, and that back green ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... in the hall," he said, and stepping back he lifted down a somewhat shabby gray raincoat and flung it toward her. She picked it up, and slipped it on. It was large, but still she could wear it, and while she stood in the middle of the room hesitating, she slipped her hands into the ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... my brother to do anything shabby," replied the girl; "but I shouldn't be sorry, of ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... shoes are items of dress not to be disregarded by the woman who wishes to look well dressed. Shabby gloves are ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... tent, at night-fall, reclined the three friends. They looked contented, and on good terms with the world; but, though prosperous, they certainly did not look it. In fact, they were all three exceedingly, almost disreputably, shabby. They looked more ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... a captain in the army. Sherman gets licked at Wicksburg, an' I gets took brisoner; an' purty quick me an' anoder feller runs away. Here he is;" and, as the Dutchman spoke, a man wearing a shabby Confederate uniform appeared. ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... meet; you must be, in fact, slovenly and dirty in your appearance, or you will be put down as an aristocrat. I recollect once an American candidate asked me if I would walk out with him? I agreed; but he requested leave to change his coat, which was a decent one, for one very shabby; "for," says he, "I intend to look in upon some of my constituents, and if they ever saw me in that other coat, I should lose my election." This cannot but remind the reader of the custom of candidates in former democracies—standing up in the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Seating himself in his shabby old armchair, he tried to collect his scattered wits. He scarcely realised, even yet, what had happened; but, unless he had dreamed it all, he had been honoured by the marked attentions of a marble statue, instigated by a heathen goddess, ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... had me fondle her there in the golden castle on the mammoth's shabby back, before the city streets packed with curious people. She had little enough appetite for privacy at any time. But for the life of me I could not do it. The Gods know I was earnest enough about my task, and They know also how it repelled me. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... this occasion, which meant a good deal. An Overcombe man in those days would have a best coat, and keep it as a best coat half his life. The miller's had seen five and twenty summers chiefly through the chinks of a clothes-box, and was not at all shabby as yet, though getting singular. But that could not be helped; common coats and best coats were distinct species, and never interchangeable. Living so near the scene of the review he walked up the hill, accompanied by Mrs. Garland ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... unfortunate people who invariably fancy that the possessions of other people must be better than their own. Many a time her poor husband regretted the day that he had first seen her, and often her meanness and shabby ways put him to shame. But he had not the courage to rule her, and she only got worse ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... ragged night-gown for a shabby suit of clothes, he took Gay's one clean apron out of a rickety bureau drawer ("for I can never find a mother for her if she's too dirty," he thought), her Sunday hat from the same receptacle, and last of all a comb, and a faded Japanese parasol that stood in a corner. These he deposited under the ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is simply absurd!—the story is always: The finances are at the lowest ebb—save and save again. To protect the plumes in his new cap from being injured by the rain, the sovereign of half the world ordered an old hat to be brought, and waited in the shower until the shabby felt came. And where are the millions which this excellent economist saves from his personal expenses? The dragon War devours them all. True, he has vanquished foes enough, but the demon of melancholy, that makes even Dr. Mathys anxious, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a stranger entered the village from the direction of the downs. He was a short, stout person in an extraordinarily shabby top hat, and he appeared to be very much out of breath. His cheeks were alternately limp and tightly puffed. His mottled face was apprehensive, and he moved with a sort of reluctant alacrity. He turned ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... that the time will come when people will find it difficult to believe that a rich community such as our's, having such command over external nature, could have submitted to live such a mean, shabby, dirty ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... Mayor was walking in the square below in company with the Town Councillors. As they passed the column he looked up at the statue: "Dear me! how shabby the Happy Prince ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... answer he by turns must be, 230 Like that small wit in modern tragedy,[88] Who, to patch up his fame—or fill his purse— Still pilfers wretched plans, and makes them worse; Like gypsies, lest the stolen brat be known, Defacing first, then claiming for his own. In shabby state they strut, and tatter'd robe, The scene a blanket, and a barn the globe: No high conceits their moderate wishes raise, Content with humble profit, humble praise. Let dowdies simper, and let bumpkins stare, 240 The strolling pageant hero treads in air: Pleased, for his ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... in the family for her love of what was old; the more shabby a dress was, the more distinguished she seemed to think it; and the more faded a shawl, the more, according to her, it resembled a Cashmere. This affection for old things extended itself sometimes to cakes, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... can bear being set off against a background of sulphur yellow?" ... "Here's a gorgeous table centre, quite beautifully worked. Whom do we know who is old- fashioned enough to use table centres still?" ... "Here's a piece of Turkish embroidery, which would be the very thing to cover that shabby old sofa at the Vicarage; it was absolutely in holes the last ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... birthday, the twenty-first of June; and there was a party in honour of it, as usual. I received a message from the footman to say that a gentleman wanted to see me. Going up into the hall, there I found the Colonel, wasted, and worn, and old, and shabby, and as wild ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... she said, smiling faintly. Inwardly she was comparing him to Mr. Berry—Mr. Berry, whose highest ideal in life was to bring everything down to a nice, shabby, ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... as to give every cluster as fair a chance as possible of a goodly allowance of sun.' There are some exceptions to this; but the low regular dwarfs are the great wine-givers. 'Walk and gaze, until you come to the most shabby, stunted, weazened, scrubby, dwarfish, expanse of snobbish bushes, ignominiously bound neck and crop to the espaliers like a man on the rack—these utterly poor, starved, and meagre-looking growths, allowing as they do the gravelly soil ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... his mother looked indifferently round the room, now exploring with her foot a shabby place in the carpet, now rising to hook a sagging length of curtain to its ring. She had come into his room to receive confidences and to help him; his moodiness did not invite ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... monks within, Who with jovial din Gave themselves up to all kinds of sin! Ha! that is a convent! that is an abbey! Over the doors, None of your death-heads carved in wood, None of your Saints looking pious and good, None of your Patriarchs old and shabby! But the heads and tusks of boars, And the cells Hung all round with the fells Of the fallow-deer. And then what cheer! What jolly, fat friars, Sitting round the great, roaring fires, Roaring louder ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... in his soutane, sitting down like one of the family, and making them all seem like a picture of some historical and aristocratic romance! And then they were actually "de Fontanges l'Hommadieu." How different he was from that shabby Methodist minister who used to come to see her father in a black cravat with a hideous bow! Really there was something to say for a religion that contained so much picturesque refinement; and for her part—but that will do. I beg to say that I am not writing of any particular ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... the twentieth century, Asa, Waring still clung to the imposing, early Victorian mansion in Hamilton Street. It presented an uncompromising and rather scornful front to the sister mansions with which it had hitherto been on intimate terms, now fast degenerating into a shabby gentility, seeking covertly to catch the eye of boarders, but as yet refraining from open solicitation. Their lawns were growing a little ragged, their stone steps ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that hotel on the lake front built during the World's Fair days? A roomy, rambling, smoke-blackened, comfortable old structure, ringed with verandas, its shabby facade shabbier by contrast with the beds of tulips or geraniums or canna that jewel its lawn. There Hannah Winter went to live. It was within five minutes' walk of Marcia's apartment. Rather expensive, but as homelike as a hotel could ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... leather curtains, to be used in case of rain; and they are really pleasant and comfortable vehicles. The horses do not differ much from the style of cab-horses known all over the world, being thin, shabby and dismal-looking animals as a general thing, though exceptions to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... wickets had been pitched. When we arrived, they appeared to be an object of no little interest to sundry goats. These beasts evidently regarding the stumps as some strange new form of vegetation, sprang up in a single night from the arid soil, sauntered round them enquiringly, and a shabby he-goat, braver than ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... gas-bill or the butcher's account,—I shrink from such a miserable prospect! I love the elegant, the high-bred, the tasteful, in women; I am afraid even my love for you would alter, Juanita, to see you day by day in coarse or shabby clothing, performing such offices as are only suited to servants,—whom we could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... people of New York as a champion of their interests, and it was not long before they sought his aid. At that time, colored people were not permitted to ride in the street-cars in New York City, with the exception of a few old and shabby cars set aside for their occupation. The Fourth-avenue line permitted them to ride when no other passenger ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... to their marriage-ceremony in just such garbs as I had always seen them wear: the men in their loafers' coats, out at elbows, or their laborers' jackets, defaced with grimy toil; the women drawing their shabby shawls tighter about their shoulders, to hide the raggedness beneath; all of them unbrushed, unshaven, unwashed, uncombed, and wrinkled with penury and care; nothing virgin-like in the brides, nor hopeful or energetic in the bridegrooms;—they were, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... house from which the voice seemed to come. It was near at hand, a shabby little cottage with a thin slice of yard closed in by a dilapidated picket fence. He perceived no observers in the alley, and he stepped into the yard. The front windows were open, for the evening was warm, but no lights were visible ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... "My master, who is now in attendance upon the Imperial envoy, owes much thanks to my Lord Kotsuke no Suke, who has been at so great pains to teach him the proper ceremonies to be observed during the reception of the Imperial envoy. This is but a shabby present which he has sent by me, but he hopes that his lordship will condescend to accept it, and commends himself to his lordship's favour." And, with these words, he produced a thousand ounces of silver for Kotsuke no Suke, and a hundred ounces to ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... the habit to give gifts and to receive returns, and such characters, complying with the custom, will look to it nearly that they do not lose. But for persons of a different stamp the statement must be reversed. The shabby Polynesian is anxious till he has received the return gift; the generous is uneasy until he has made it. The first is disappointed if you have not given more than he; the second is miserable if he thinks he has given less than you. This ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... church had noticed Sunday after Sunday a little old lady with a sad, patient face, dressed in very shabby mourning, ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... through the many worries and anxieties that they had undergone, they were quite changed in aspect, and had got a certain indescribable smack of the Tartar both in air and accent, having indeed all but forgotten their Venetian tongue. Their clothes too were coarse and shabby, and of a Tartar cut. They proceeded on their arrival to their house in this city in the confine of St. John Chrysostom, where you may see it to this day. The house, which was in those days a very lofty and handsome palazzo, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the group was one that stood a little detached and behind the others, as though shrinking from such prosperous company. It was made of unpainted wood, with leather hinges, and looked shabby in comparison with the jaunty red, green, and gray paint of some of the other boxes (with their cocky little metallic flags upraised). It bore the good American name of Clark—T. N. Clark—and it seemed ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... throne, the Hemerlingues, restored to favour, never ceased to work for my undoing with the new master. The Bey still keeps on good terms with me; but my credit is shaken. Well, in spite of that, in spite of all the shabby tricks that Hemerlingue has played me, that he plays me still, I was ready this evening to hold out my hand to him. Not only does the blackguard refuse it, but he causes me to be insulted by his wife, a savage and evil-disposed ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... at my last address,—you know it. I can do no more for them. If the shabby Abbotts refuse—as I dare say they will—it wouldn't hurt you to keep them from the workhouse. But it's a devilish hard world, and they must ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... at night that he talked openly, forgetting the exactions of his stage. In the daytime there were affairs to be discussed in state. There were at first between him and me his own splendour, my shabby suspicions, and the scenic landscape that intruded upon the reality of our lives by its motionless fantasy of outline and colour. His followers thronged round him; above his head the broad blades of ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... negro would hardly have accepted it as a gift; and his almost painful emaciation gave him generally the appearance of an animated framework of rags and bones, startlingly embodying the voice and the manners of a prince. Yet the shabby tie about his neck was bound by a ring, in which was set a turquoise of great size and beauty. Evidently he was a being of droll contrasts, and I prepared myself to be surprised ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... Although she has "seen" the bluff of the notorious Smith-Vanderbilt-Belmont female and "raised" her out of her bunion repositories, she has probably not yet reached the summit of her social ambition. Bred to shabby gentility , Miss Alva Smith proceeded to "splurge" when she captured a Vanderbilt. She had probably never seen a hundred dollar bill until permitted to finger the fortune of the profane old ferryman who founded her husband's aristocratic family. She was ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... single planet, and we live unconscious of the whole of it or even of any part of its extent. The gardens we have seen to-day are the old Japan unchanged since they were made a thousand years ago, when they took the ancient ideas of China and India for models. The temples of Tokyo seem like shabby relics of a worn-out era, but here the perfection of their art remains and is kept intact. The landscape of the first Buddhist monastery, where the tea ceremony originated, has the same rivers and islands and little piles of sand which were placed in the beginning, ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... certain bench on the outer boulevard, not far from the tomb of Napoleon—a bench shaded at that date by a shabby tree, and commanding a view of muddy roadway and blank wall—I sat down to wrestle with my misery. The weather was cheerless and dark; in three days I had eaten but once; I had no tobacco; my shoes were soaked, my trousers ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Duncan has paid for his temporising; he's in his place appointed. I passed the knowe where he lay writhing to a terrible end, with a pike at his vitals, and he was moaning for the chief he had helped to a shabby flight." ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... have interpreted his change of colour as an involuntary protest at being initiated into such shabby details, for she went on with a laugh: "I suppose you can hardly understand what it means to have to stop and think whether one can afford a telegram? But I've always had to consider such things. And I mustn't stay here any longer now—I must try to ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... which they bowed, and the difference in it: his the simple formality of his class, Laura's a repressed hostility to such an epitome of the world as he looked, although any Bond Street tailor would have impeached his waistcoat, and one shabby glove had manifestly never been on. Yet Miss Filbert's first words seemed to show a slight unbending. "Won't you sit there?" she said, indicating the sofa corner she had been occupying. "You get the glare from the window ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... before, haven't you?" said Hatty, in her odious teasing way. "Yes, I thought I had better have it: mine is so shabby; and you are only a little Miss—it does not matter for you. Beside, you have Grandmamma to look after you. You shall have it again when I ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... entered. Sir Timothy made his way to the counter, his companion to a table near, where he took a seat and ordered a drink. Sir Timothy did the same. He was wedged in between a heterogeneous crowd of shabby, depressed but apparently not ill-natured men and women. A man in a flannel shirt and pair of shabby plaid trousers, which owed their precarious position to a pair of worn-out braces, turned a beery ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lie awake listening to the watchman's raucous voice, and praying God to send back my warrior rich and scatheless. So times grew more and more difficult. Jack would stay a whole night upon the heath, and come home with an empty pocket or a beggarly half crown. And there was nothing, after a shabby coat that he hated half so much as a sheriff's officer. "Learn a lesson in politeness," he said to one of the wretches who dragged him off to the Marshalsea. "When Sir John Fielding's people come after me they use ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... of some kind. I have no doubt that Marston, poor devil, is jealous. His situation is really pitiably comic—with an intriguing mistress, a saintly wife, and a devil of a jealous temper of his own. I shall meet Mary on reaching town. Has Clavering (shabby dog!) paid his I.O.U. yet? Tell the little opera woman she had better be quiet. She ought to know me by this time; I shall do what is right, but won't submit to be bullied. If she is troublesome, snap your fingers ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of Anne; for Anne might take her turn at some future period, if our school answered. I feel certain, while I am writing, that you will see the propriety of what I say. You always like to use your money to the best advantage. You are not fond of making shabby purchases; when you do confer a favour it is often done in style; and depend upon it L50 or L100, thus laid out, would be well employed. Of course, I know no other friend in the world to whom I could apply on this subject besides yourself. I feel an absolute conviction that ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Anyhow it wasn't more than ten feet by twelve; and as I in a way expected to see the big shadowy cellar-like extent of the Shipping Office where I had been once or twice before, I was extremely startled. A gas bracket hung from the middle of the ceiling over a dark, shabby writing-desk covered with a litter of yellowish dusty documents. Under the flame of the single burner which made the place ablaze with light, a plump, little man was writing hard, his nose very near the desk. His head was perfectly bald and about the ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... touching one another, and the way dark—were the haunts of masters and scholars and all those depending on them. Students, old and young, of high station and low, are crowded in lodging-houses, many of which are shabby, dirty, and disreputable. Hence they come forth to play their games or carry on their feuds. Some haunt taverns and worse places. Others eke out their means by begging at street corners. All get their teaching by gathering ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... uniform at once, sir," observed Mr Selby; "most young gentlemen do." Jack thought it would be very nice, as his best clothes were already shabby; so in an incredibly short space of time he found himself exactly fitted in his naval habiliments with a dirk by his side, and a gold-lace cap. He did not like to wear them in the street, "lest he should appear conspicuous," he ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... "don't imagine I am going to put you off in that shabby manner. To-morrow morning I start for Paris; four days to go, and the same to return, with one day to discharge the commission intrusted to me, is all the time I shall be absent. I shall be back here by the first of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... preserved a provoking reticence, declining to enlighten me any further. "No, Frank," she said in her cheery way, "it is of no use your trying to coax me with your 'dear Miss Pimpernell,' or think to flatter me into divulging my news by false compliments paid to my shabby old bonnet! No, you shall hear it all in good time, so don't be impatient. I won't tell you another word now, my boy, there!" she added finally, trotting off on her parochial rounds and leaving me in suspense until the evening, to exercise my ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... individuality, he remained to the end an imitator of Leech. Perhaps that was the reason that he drew so small a salary from Punch; at any rate, he always resented what he considered to be the contumelious and shabby treatment meted out to him by Mark Lemon. But for such money as he did receive, it must be admitted that he gave full value in the fierceness of his cartoons on Louis Napoleon. He did much book illustration, besides drawing for the Press, serious and comic—his ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... The tele-columnist was a tall, dour and bushy-browed man who took a perverse sort of pride in the impression he gave of shabbiness. He slouched wordlessly into the room, hands thrust deep in the pockets of a makeshift jacket. But there was nothing shabby about the man's perceptive and analytic mind, Beardsley remembered; true, Pederson had fallen from the heights since the ECAIAC debacle, but his retirement from the limelight was more studied than sullen and could only have been his own choosing. Lately he had emerged again, and with all ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... his way through the maze of traffic, instinct and vague stirrings of memory guiding him to a quiet shabby street where he found a dingy little room for a small price. The dangers that might have beset a strange young man in the great city were materially lessened for him on account of his wide reading. He had read up New York always wherever ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... once, when Whistler and his chum ran out of the cabin to look about, they saw a number of familiar figures approaching along the rock-strewn shore. These newcomers were as shabby and bedraggled as themselves, and it ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... Psalm li. l2, l3. He referred very properly to the occasion on which the Psalm was composed, and drew from the text a large mass of sound practical instruction. The chapel (capable of containing about 150 people) was only half-full. Before the sermon, I had observed a very old negro, in a large shabby camlet cloak and a black cap, ascending the pulpit-stairs. I supposed that, being dull of hearing, he had taken that position that he might better listen to the service. However, when the sermon was over, this patriarchal-looking black man rose to pray; and he prayed ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... position that was offered to him—one of those positions which never change, in which men die still unpromoted, save when a miracle intervenes. It was not so good a position for a family of six as it had been for a family of two, but he did not complain. He and Nettie went shabby, but the children were clothed in the best, as ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... habitually careless. He would rush to the printer's office, after twelve hours of hard work, with his hat drawn over his eyes, his hands thrust into shabby gloves, and his feet in shoes with high sides, worn over loose trousers, which were pleated at the waist and held down with straps. Even in society he took no trouble about his appearance, and Lamartine describes him as looking, in the salon of Madame ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... his boots, thought they certainly were a shabby pair to be worn by such a rich gentleman, for he had not yet bought any new ones. The next day, however, he procured some good clothes and proper boots, so that our soldier soon became known as a fine gentleman, and the people ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... was so bare and shabby that this gastronomic outlay seemed an unwarrantable expense, yet what could one do but accept their hospitality in the same generous spirit in which it was offered? So at ten o'clock of a steaming hot morning we cheerfully stuffed ourselves ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... her mental and physical agony. After she had eaten, all would be well with her. She could control Jude and her own fate. She would never let any one think—Gaston above all—that she was not mistress of her own shabby ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... xxix of 'The Citizen of the World', 1762, i. 119-22, which first appeared in 'The Public Ledger' for May 2, 1760, they have a different setting. They are read at a club of authors by a 'poet, in shabby finery,' who asserts that he has composed them the day before. After some preliminary difficulties, arising from the fact that the laws of the club do not permit any author to inflict his own works upon the assembly without a money payment, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... inhabitants dared I speak heart to heart. Judith had gone out of my life. My aunts and cousins regarded me as beyond the moral pale. Mrs. McMurray was still unaware of my return to England. I confess to shabby treatment of my kind friend. I know she would have flown to aid Carlotta in her troubles; but would she have understood Carlotta? Reasoning now I am convinced that she would: in those days I did not reason. I shrank like a snail into its shell. The simile is commonplace; ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... entered, and a ladies' race, in which six fair pedestrians took part. The spectacle of nine burly, bearded Boers urging their asinine steeds to top speed by shout and spur provoked quite as much honest laughter as any theatrical farce ever excited. We on the grand stand were but a shaggy and shabby audience, but we were in excellent spirits and cheered with tremendous gusto the enterprising jockey who won this remarkable "Derby." Shabby as we were, we subscribed L115 in prizes. After the sports I have just described the company retired to ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... Madeira and port wine. But the same books show that the planter was chronically in debt and that bankruptcy was common, while accounts left by travelers reveal the fact that many of the mansion houses were shabby and run down, with rotting roofs, ramshackle doors, broken windows into which old hats or other garments had been thrust to keep the wind away. In a word, a traveler could find to-day more elegance in a back county of Arkansas than ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... the dock a moment, to watch the boys beating back out over the bay, and then turned to go up the beach. They had never been on this part of the coast before. It was lonesome and deserted, save for one rather shabby hut just above high-water mark. Over beyond some distant sand dunes, the boys had been told, was the establishment of the boat-builder, where they had taken their craft to have a ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... are a score or two of suggestions for essays, sketches, and poems, which I have not written, and never shall write. The instant I jot down an idea the desire to utilize it leaves me, and I turn away to do something unpremeditated. The shabby volume has become a sort of Potter's Field where I bury my literary intentions, good and bad, without any belief ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the rejoinder. Talking and laughing merrily over old times on the Tropic Queen, the boys walked on, not noticing much where they were going till they found themselves on an ill-lighted street of rather shabby-looking dwellings. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... ways, for it portrays so strongly human lowliness and degradation. The writer is well acquainted with the life and habits and dialect of the West Tennessee bottoms, and her story is written from the heart and with rare sympathy. The lonely dyke roads, the cheerless homes, the shabby "store," the emotional Methodist meeting, which lasts a week, having two sessions daily—all these are vividly sketched. Mag, the heroine, is a well-drawn character. Camden, the hero, is forceful and earnest. The ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... behind the desk of his shabby little office over Lemark's Liquors in downtown Los Angeles and waited for his first customer. He had been in business for a week and as yet had had no callers. Therefore, it was with a mingled sense of ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle
... concerning that scheming hypocrite. He should have known, however, that the men of the South, all effusiveness on the surface, are never so utterly blind, so deluded as to resist the wise results of reflection. That evening the Nabob opened a shabby little portfolio, badly worn at the corners, in which for ten years past he had manoeuvred his millions, minuting his profits and his expenses in hieroglyphics comprehensible to himself alone. He calculated for a moment, then turned to ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... entrance of a pony phaeton driven by a lady with a servant seated behind. It was doubtful whether the recognition had been mutual, for Mr. Casaubon was looking absently before him; but the lady was quick-eyed, and threw a nod and a "How do you do?" in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the entrance ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... see you at Bloomingdale? You are quite too cruel, to disappoint us so often; we really do not deserve such shabby treatment. Here is the month of June, with its roses, and strawberries, and ten thousand other sweets, and among them you must positively allow us to hope for a visit from our very dear friends at Wyllys-Roof. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... evening a wagon loaded with immigrant goods and a shabby car loaded with children passed our place. The drivers stopped on a nearby claim, threw their bedding on the ground, and slept there. Their deadline for establishing residence was up that night. All over the plains that intensive race went on, the hurried arrival ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... the angels? And then there was that other man, able, well-bred, intellectual, her superior, who had treated her as an equal, and so tacitly demanded that she should conform to his code of honour. And there was Johnny Gillat, poor, old round-faced Johnny, who, under his silly, shabby exterior, had somewhere, quite understood, the same code, and standard of a gentleman, and never doubted but that she had it too—surely these two, also, were on the side ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... that the quarter allotted to his people was near this entrance. He inquired the direction of the sentinel, who did not condescend to answer him. An old man, in shabby robes, who ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... he had pretty shabby clothes and a peaked cap and I guess he was startled to hear us coming. In just a few seconds he was gone in the woods and we all stood gaping there while the boat bobbed up and down, on account of him jumping from it. But I got a squint at his face all right, and ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh |
