"Gaudy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself. This was a polite way of begging for a contribution towards the expenses of some music in the Saint's honour, so we gave him whatever it may have been, and his messenger departed: well satisfied. At six o'clock in the evening we went to the church—close at hand—a very gaudy place, hung all over with festoons and bright draperies, and filled, from the altar to the main door, with women, all seated. They wear no bonnets here, simply a long white veil—the 'mezzero;' and it was the most gauzy, ethereal-looking audience I ever saw. The young women ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... accent: 'Flowers—ornamental papers for the stove—flowers! paper-flowers!' She is the accredited herald of summer—a phenomenon, this year, of very late appearance. We should have seen her six weeks ago, if the summer had not declined to appear at the usual season. She is the gaudy, party-coloured ephemera of street commerce, and will disappear from view in a fortnight's time, to be seen no more until the opening summer of '53. Her wares, which are manufactured with much taste, and with an eye to the harmony of colours, are in much request among ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... of the pretty but gaudy parrot tribe, our most beautiful birds may be said to be the wren (Malurus longicaudus, Gould), the grosbeak (Estrelda bella, Lath.), the king-fisher (Alcyone Diemenensis, Gould), the diamond birds (Pardalotus species), and the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Self-interest is their strong motive generally. The missionary makes them understand the value of his counsel in their tribes. It means their raising cocoanuts for their oil, flocks of chickens and droves of hogs, for all of which they can obtain pipes, quantities of tobacco, a gun, and gaudy-colored cottons. When the chiefs find that their power is gradually passing from them into the hands of the missionaries, they only smoke more poisonous tobacco, expose themselves all the more to the weather through the cheap fragmentary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... aside by a hand on each hip, reveals an incredible expanse of waistcoat, the pattern of which raves horribly. From pocket to pocket of this gaudy shield curves a watch chain of massive links—nearly a ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... "silver sea" where the gaudy and giddy come; We're for a peacefuller air Breathing of Uncle Tom Cobley ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... from the Church of St. Agnes; it has been long left uncared-for and unfrequented, and, stripped of its movable ornaments, it is now in a half-ruinous condition. But its decay is more impressive than the gaudy brightness of more admired and renovated buildings. The weeds that grow in the crevices of its pavement and hang over the capitals of its ancient pillars, the green mould on its walls, the cracks in its mosaics, are better and fuller of suggestion to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... Paris never alters. It's a queer little world and a rotten one. We are here just at the ebbing of the tide. Don't you feel the hatefulness of it—the thin-blooded scream for pleasure which needs the lash of these painted women, these gaudy cafes, this yellow wine all the time? My God! and they call it pleasure! Look at these people going to their work, Julien. There's where the red blood flows. They're the people with the taste of life between their teeth. ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... paid her the tribute of a quickly drawn breath, even as he took his eyes from her to scan the butterfly pages who ran to and fro, recovering the gilded rings. Yellow hair and red hair and brown hair curled on their gaudy shoulders, but no black. In all the picture there was but one figure crowned with such raven locks as had distinguished Fridtjof the Bold, and that figure belonged to a girl standing directly opposite by the mossy curb of the old well, which, guarded ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... such plants as chrysanthemums, auriculas, geraniums, and many others, to be exposed to the influence of cold, frosty nights, as when the "fell destroyer" commences to exert its power all plants touched by it rapidly decay. Gladioli will now be clothed in the full glory of their gaudy, but handsome dress; they are comparatively easy to manage in well-drained spots, and being such continuous bloomers, at least three or four or even half a dozen should be in every small garden. In winter they must be covered by about six inches of litter; but in cold and ill-drained soils ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... "Notes sur les Forts Vitrifies de la Creuse." Thuot: "La Forteresse Vitrifiee du Pay de Gaudy," ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... showing it, was seeming more than a little pleased to see him. "Why, how d'ye do, Mr. Norman?" said she. And her friendliness and assurance of manner jarred upon him. There was not a suggestion of forwardness; but he, used to her old-time extreme reserve, felt precisely as if she were bold and gaudy, after the fashion of so many of the working girls who were popular with ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... looms of Lyons, Venice, and Genoa, at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. The first perfectly simple in manufacture, trusting wholly to beauty of design, and the play of light on the naturally woven surface, while the latter eke out their gaudy feebleness with spots and ribs and long floats, and all kinds of meaningless tormenting of the web, till there is nothing to be learned from ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... beautiful than that of the bush of Northern New Zealand. The colouring is not so good; in the mass, it is not so lustrous, nor so varied. The rich flowers are hidden away, so that the fewer and less gaudy blossoms of our bush are more conspicuous, because severally more plentiful. But a woodland scene in England, the old home across the seas, even surpasses all in the glory of its ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... I have some gold and silver money, besides a lot of beads, trinkets, and gaudy tinsel things, such as earthly savages have been willing to barter valuable ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... the kingfisher scuffled out of sight in a fright, having learnt the lesson that a small tyrant, however grandly he may dress, is not always believed in; for with all his bright colours and gaudy plumes he was no match for the great sober-hued, flap-winged heron, who only laughed at him, and all his grand swaggering; and, as soon as he was gone, settled himself down to his work, and caught fish enough for a good ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... jewel-fronted gaudy chariot; the four equally pacing, stately horses; good-tempered and well trained; young and of graceful appearance; perfectly pure and white, and draped with flowery coverings. In the same chariot ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... little New Orleans went puffing down the Ohio, in 1811, would have been doubly amazed at the splendid development in the art of boat building, could they have seen the stately Sultana or Southern Belle of the fifties sweep swiftly by. After a period of gaudy ornamentation (1830-40) steamboat architecture settled down, as has that of Pullman cars today, to sane and practical lines, and the boats gained in length and strength, though they contained less ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... rights; at least, prevent the curses of posterity from being heaped upon your memories. If you, with united zeal and fortitude, oppose the torrent of oppression; if you feel the true fire of patriotism burning in your breasts; if you, from your souls, despise the most gaudy dress which slavery can wear; if you really prefer the lonely cottage, while blessed with liberty, to gilded palaces, surrounded with the ensigns of slavery you may have the fullest assurance that tyranny with ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... finally dawned on him, came with a rush on the second morning. He had spent two nights in the gaudy Pullman then provided—a car intended to make up for some of the inconveniences of its arrangements by an over-elaboration of plush and tortured glass—when the first lone outposts of the prairie metropolis began to appear. The side-tracks ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... in the centre of the specimens, where its bulk is greatest, and is often beautifully tinged at its thinner edges by the iron with which the stone is impregnated. It is not rare to find some of the better preserved fossils colored in a style that reminds one of the more gaudy fishes of the tropics. We see the body of the ichthyolite, with its finely arranged scales, of a pure snow-white. Along the edges, where the original substance of the bone, combining with the oxide of the matrix, has ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... fever was subdued, and he again, with indefatigable diligence, resumed his labors. To discourage the extravagance of the nobles, he set the example of extreme economy in all his personal expenses. He indulged in no gaudy equipage, his table was very frugally served, and his dress was simple in the extreme. No man in the kingdom devoted more hours to labor. He met his council daily, and in all their conferences exhibited a degree of information, shrewdness, and of comprehensive statesmanship which ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... inhabited by the governor, was very scantily furnished: a few old chairs, a couple of tables, and the walls whitewashed and decorated with prints of the Virgin Mary and his excellency's patron saint. The house of the priests, which adjoined the cathedral, was in much better repair, and more gaudy ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... heaven, while she also balanced a steaming coffee-pot on a pair of crossed green sticks at one corner of the chimney. In the ashes I could see little mounds which I afterward found to be flaky, nutty com-pones, and I flew to kneel at her side with my head on her gaudy neckerchief. ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the grounds around it, were charmingly lighted—the outside lamps being those gaudy and curious forms containing lighted ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... middle of November, after the now famous express robbery had taken place, a man, roughly dressed in a coarse suit of blue, wearing a woolen shirt open at the neck, and, knotted around his throat, a gaudy silk handkerchief, was strolling leisurely along the east bottoms near Kansas City. His face was tanned by exposure to the sun, and his shoes had the flattened and battered condition which is the natural consequence of a long and weary tramp. He walked as if he had no particular objective ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... extraordinary spectacle to the eye which has never witnessed it before, yet all intent upon that wide and mystic curtain, whose dusky undulations permit us now and then to discern the momentary glitter of some gaudy form, or the spangles of some sandalled foot, which trips lightly within: Then the light, brilliant as that of day; then the music, which, in itself a treat sufficient in every other situation, our inexperience mistakes ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... be a common experience—to find S. Mark's, as seen for the first time, especially on a Sunday or fete day, when the vast red and green and white flags are streaming before it, a little garish, a little gaudy; too like a coloured photograph; not what one thinks a cathedral ought to be. Should it have all these hues? one asks oneself, and replies no. But the saint does not long permit this scepticism: after a while he sees that the doubter drifts into his vestibule, to be rather taken by the novelty ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... was "painted with red stick-lac," probably the same preparation of vermilion as is used at the present day on the lacquered ware of Burmah, Siam, and China.[1] Gaudy colours appear at all times to have been popular; yellow, from its religious associations, pre-eminently so[2]; and red lead was applied to the exterior of dagobas.[3] Bujas Raja, in the 4th century, painted ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... dressed farmers' lads, with red hands and rough hair, she quite as snobbishly ignored as she was ignored in her turn by the well-set-up, fashionably dressed young swells of the University, with their white hands, with their thin, gaudy socks tautly pulled over their ankle-bones, and their shining hair glistening like lacquer on their skulls (that being the desideratum in youthful masculine society of the place and time). Sylvia snubbed the masculine jays of college partly because it was a breath of life to her battered ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... however skilfully executed or admirably designed, I do not like such monuments so well, nor think them so appropriate to our cathedrals, as the rude effigies of knights and warriors in complete armour, with their feet on couchant hounds, or those stately though sometimes gaudy and fantastic monuments, in which, among crowds of emblematical devices and armorial bearings, the husband and the wife lie side by side in the richest costume of the day, while their children are kneeling around them; these, with the venerable figures of abbots and bishops, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... pestered him so—by placards that defaced the landscape when he traveled, and by staring advertisements in the newspapers and magazines—by silly little jingles that he could not get out of his mind, and gaudy pictures that lurked for him around every street corner. Here was where they made Brown's Imperial Hams and Bacon, Brown's Dressed Beef, Brown's Excelsior Sausages! Here was the headquarters of Durham's Pure Leaf Lard, of Durham's Breakfast ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... man of gigantic stature, dressed in coarse canvas breeches, and with a handkerchief of gaudy dye twisted about his head. His bold features wore the usual Indian expression of saturnine imperturbability, and he half sat, half reclined upon the log as motionless as a piece of carven bronze, staring at Landless with ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... to let me go, without them, along the 'Meseglise way,' wrapped up in a huge Highland plaid which protected me from the rain, and which I was all the more ready to throw over my shoulders because I felt that the stripes of its gaudy tartan scandalised Francoise, whom it was impossible to convince that the colour of one's clothes had nothing whatever to do with one's mourning for the dead, and to whom the grief which we had shewn on my aunt's death was wholly unsatisfactory, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the long bow which leaned against the same support. The posture was that of elegant ease, and the best calculated to bring out in clear relief the Apollo-like splendor of his figure. The luxuriant black hair streaming over the shoulders, the gaudy eagle feathers thrust in at the crown, the lustrous black eyes, the slightly Roman nose, the rows of colored beads around the neck, the dull yellow of the hunting shirt, the quiver of arrows behind the right shoulder, the red sash, holding knife and tomahawk, the gold bracelet on ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... little Georgian building. It is but three stories high, built of light red brick, and finished with white marble. All around garish millinery shops display their showy goods. Peddlers with pushcarts lit by flickering flames, vie with each other in their array of gaudy neckties and bargain shirtwaists. Blazing electric signs herald the thrills of movie shows. And, salient by the force of extreme contrast, a plain little white posterboard makes its influence felt. It is lit by two iron lanterns, and ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... dressed in his freshest and most gaudy costume, had marched into the neighbouring town, carrying his drum; he stationed himself in the large, public square, and made such good play with his drum-sticks that he soon had a curious crowd around him, to whom he made an eloquent address, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... on foot to their place of meeting, and now turned back to see a whole coachful of children safely deposited at the welcome house. At one time, I admired how carefully the working man carried the baby in its gaudy hat and feathers, and how his wife, trudging patiently on behind, forgot even her care of her gay clothes, in exchanging greeting with the child as it crowed and laughed over the father's shoulder; at another, I pleased myself with some passing ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... for beauty being the real secret of life. I don't know what I expected, but I went out and wandered eastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black, grassless squares. About half-past eight I passed by an absurd little theatre, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy play-bills. A hideous Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He had greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled shirt. 'Have a box, my Lord?' he said, when he saw ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... despise, acquiescence in methods that you know to be utterly false and wrong! How sick I am of it all! It's the old experience, all over again, which I used to have as a child with the Tom Smith paper crackers. You are fascinated by the tinsel, and the colored paper, and the gaudy label. You think that when you've dissected one, and pulled it all to pieces, you'll find a bugle and a gold crown inside—because that's what it says on the box. But, the first thing you know, you'll find yourself blowing on a tin whistle ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... countenance, arising from an elevated pride of soul, which did not forsake it when life was extinct. He was habitually taciturn, but, when excited, his eloquence was nervous, concise, and figurative. His dress was plain, and he was never known to indulge in the gaudy decoration of his person, which is the common practice of the Indians. On the day of his death, he wore a dressed deer skin coat and pantaloons. He was present in almost every action against the Americans, ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... cracks; and while the daughter was wearing an apron of cotton-cloth at four francs an ell, the rain was falling on the grandmother's bed and the little children's cradles. The roof and walls were repaired; we supplied the materials and paid the workmen; but no more money for gaudy aprons. In another case, an old woman had been reduced to beggary because she had listened too well to her heart, and given all she had to her children, who had turned her out of doors, or made her life so unbearable that she preferred ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... coquettish glances through half-dropped lids, shot arrowy beams from under archly lifted brows, and said gravely, "Don't form yourself on her, Rebecca; clover blossoms that grow in the fields beside Sunnybrook mustn't be tied in the same bouquet with gaudy sunflowers; they are too sweet ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "My new evening dress isn't quite finished—we ran short of trimming. I can't go out, because the Simons are coming in to afternoon tea; so you just hurry and go over to Balding's to match it. I got it there, and they had plenty. Here's a bit." She held out a fragment of gaudy sequin trimming. "I think you could finish the dress without me getting in the dressmaker again—she's that run after she makes a regular favour ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the costume of the devil, as being the most appropriate, and mounting a jackass, he rode down in his dress to the masquerade. But, as Jack was just going in, he perceived a yellow carriage, with two footmen in gaudy liveries, draw up, and with his usual politeness, when the footmen opened the door, offered his arm to hand out a fat old dowager covered with diamonds; the lady looked up, and perceiving Jack covered with hair, with his trident and his horns, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... all living things, men and animals, wild or tame, and fish and gaudy fowl, rush to this flame of love." —Virgil, Georg., ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... enchantment. The optical illusions, produced by ingeniously arranged mirrors, were a pleasing surprise to the visitor. Luxuriant palms decorating the labyrinthian garden appeared to be endless in number—casting their shade over hundreds of life-like figures in gaudy costumes. Each of these groups in wax, was multiplied again and again in the perspective of mirrors. Entering the palace, the visitor was unable to shake off the feeling of perplexity caused by the extraordinary spectacles to be witnessed within its walls. ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, 10 Bear 't that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; 15 For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Are most select and generous, chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, 20 And borrowing ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... delicate tints or colours, with soft undefined forms of clouds, foretell fine weather: but gaudy or unusual hues, with hard, definite outlines, presage ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy
... They were such as are now familiar to chemists. Vessels tightly closed were burst open when tormented in the fire, apparently by some invisible agency; intangible vapours condensed into solids; from colourless liquids gaudy precipitates were suddenly called into existence; flames were disengaged without any adequate cause; explosions took place spontaneously. So much that was unexpected and unaccountable justified the title of "the occult science," "the black ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... of joy, which the maid who served me learned by heart, as fast as I made them. We together sang thy praises, O, my God! The stones of my prison looked in my eyes like rubies; I esteemed them more than all the gaudy brilliancies of a vain world. My heart was full of that joy which Thou givest to them who love Thee, in the midst of ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... and strutted across the deck. Turning in grave farewell, he grasped his booty with one arm and, after a few sharp words to his men, swung himself down by the chains with the other. To man after man we gave gaudy cloths or knives or, when all the knives were given away, a cutlass or a gun; and when at last the only canoes in sight were speeding toward shore like comets with tails of red flannel and purple calico, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... the College, nor play any games with dice or cards or of any unseemly kind. Yet the Foundress showed a tenderness for human weakness by permitting the Fellows and Scholars to play cards in Hall on some of the Gaudy days for "moderate stakes and at timeous hours." Moreover, she ordained that L30 from the College revenues should be spent on College banquets to be held on Gaudy days, by which were meant the great Church festivals, the election days of Fellows and College officers, ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... galley-west. The automobile had sped on—so we were excitedly informed by some other tourists who had witnessed the collision—leaving the wreckage bottom side up in the ditch. The mule was on her back, all entangled in the twisted ruination of her gaudy gear, kicking out in that restrained and genteel fashion in which a mule always kicks when she is desirous of protesting against existing conditions, but is wishful not to damage herself while so doing. The tourists, aided by half a dozen peasants, had dragged the driver out from ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... one end of this feast sat the wild, pastoral, gaudy company, speaking little over their food; and there at the other the pale padre, questioning his visitor about Rachel. The mere name of a street would bring memories crowding to his lips; and when his guest would tell him of a new play, he was ready ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... why we admire her as we have never admired a nation before. We ourselves are an old and experienced people, who have, we hope, outlived gaudy and dangerous dreams; but we have not been tested like the French, and we do not know whether we or any other nation could endure the test they have endured. It is not merely that they have survived and kept their strength. It is that they have a kind of strength ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... however, just notice, that the charms of gaudy inartistic colouring frequently exercise a powerful sway even over minds familiar with better things; although that sway is always indicative of the decay of intellectual or moral freshness. Thus, it is remarked by an old Greek author (Dionysius of Halicarnassus), ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... might appear in full splendour, in the rays of the sun: I reserve for you a finer, and a more profound enjoyment, to behold it by the light of the moon." Perhaps there is a distinction of the same kind between the gaudy brilliancy of varied colours, and the chaster simplicity of uniform shadows; and it is probably for this reason, that on the first view of a picture which you have long admired in the simplicity of engraved effect, you involuntarily recede from the view, and seek in the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... shroud swatheth mortals each hour, Yet little we reck of what's hanging us o'er; O would on the world that ye laid not such stress, That its baubles ye lov'd not, so gaudy and poor; O where are the friends we were wont to caress, And where are the lov'd ones who dwelt on our floor? They have drank of the goblet of death's bitterness, And have gone to the deep, to return never more; Their mansions bewail them in tears and distress; Yet has paradise lovelier mansions ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... about it. He was more secure of his intellect in the matter of peaches than inner lights. Cowed and awed as he could have been by no body of men, he followed Bluhm up a dirty flight of stairs into the assemblage of Superior Women. The office was by nature a chamber with gaudy wall-paper of bouquets and wreaths. Viewed as an office, it was well enough, but in the aesthetic, light of a Holy Ground of Ideas it needed sweeping. The paper, too, hung in flaps from the damp walls: dusty files of newspapers, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... manly brows, The happy fortune of the fight foreshows. Rang'd on the line oppos'd, Antonius brings Barbarian aids, and troops of Eastern kings; Th' Arabians near, and Bactrians from afar, Of tongues discordant, and a mingled war: And, rich in gaudy robes, amidst the strife, His ill fate follows him- th' Egyptian wife. Moving they fight; with oars and forky prows The froth is gather'd, and the water glows. It seems, as if the Cyclades again Were rooted up, and justled in the main; Or floating mountains floating mountains meet; ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich not gaudy; For the apparel oft ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... moon stole up from its lair, hovered above the sky-line, a gaudy orange sphere in the haze of smoke. It shed a tenuous glimmer on the sea of bison that had engulfed us; and at the half-revealed sight MacRae lifted his clenched hands above his head and cursed the circumstance that had brought us to such extremity. That ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... she followed Mary Ann through the shop into the house, and was ushered into the sitting-room, or parlour as it was called. The room was like Mary Ann's dress—full of all sorts of bright colours and gaudy ornaments of poor quality. ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... by all students of Nature that bold and gaudy animals usually have means of defending themselves that make them very disagreeable to their enemies. They either have poisonous fangs, sharp spines, ferocious claws, or disagreeable odours. There are still others that escape destruction because of the bad company with ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... stooped to a slouch hat. This typical head gear of the West had no attraction for him. The formal black or brown derby for winter and the seasonable straw hat for summer seemed necessary to tone down the frivolity of his neckties, which were chosen with a cowboy's gaudy taste. To the day of his death Field delighted to present neckties, generally of the made-up variety, to his friends, which, it is needless to say, they never failed to accept and seldom wore. Often in the afternoon as it neared two o'clock he would stick his head above the partition between our ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... nonsense you can talk when you try to. . . . As for me I'm going down to the Brier Water to look into it. If there are any trout there foolish enough to bite at those gaudy-feathered ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, splashed with gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out with medallions of the Dolorous Way. But there was one oddity, in the way of an ex voto, which pleased me hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat, swung from the vault, with a written aspiration that God should conduct the Saint Nicolas of Creil ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... right. There were two Argus pheasants, a male and female—the male alone being decorated superbly. The Argus belongs to the same family as the peacock, but is not so gaudy in colouring, and therefore, perhaps, somewhat more pleasing. Its tail is formed chiefly by an enormous elongation of the two tail quills, and of the secondary wing feathers, no two of which are exactly the same, and the closer they are examined the greater is seen to be ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... drink and drugs, she has come up only as the smoke has cleared away, but always in time to demand the spoils! She has filched from the systems of philosophy of every land and age, and after bedaubing them with her own gaudy colors, has foisted them upon unthinking mankind as divine decrees and mandates! She has foully insulted ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... pathetic than the spectacle of world-wide fetichism. It is not to be contemplated with derision, but with profoundest sympathy. We all remember the pathos of Scott's picture of his Highland heroine, with brain disordered by unspeakable grief, beguiling her woes with childish ornaments of "gaudy broom" and plumes from the eagle's wing. But sadder far is the spectacle of millions of men made for fellowship with God, building their hopes on the divinity dwelling in an amulet of tiger's teeth or serpent's fangs or curious shells. And it ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... comic operas to ours is, they have no refinement or colours or subtleties to please the eye—all is gaudy and blatant. The "Merry Widow," for instance, could make one weep, it is so vulgar and changed, especially the end. But if the people prefer it like that the managers are quite right to let them ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... the house, attracted her attention. She rushed to the window. There was a chariot painted in gay colors, and men in scarlet and gold uniforms, and such music! The new dress was forgotten, and she flew down stairs and out of the door. With a troop of children she followed the gaudy chariot and gayly caparisoned ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... by the whole population of the city, assembled at early dawn in the great square to greet the rising of the Sun. They were dressed in their gayest apparel, and the Indian lords vied with each other in the display of costly ornaments and jewels on their persons, while canopies of gaudy feather-work and richly tinted stuffs, borne by the attendants over their heads, gave to the great square, and the streets that emptied into it, the appearance of being spread over with one vast and magnificent awning. Eagerly they watched the coming ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... enactments, foppish modes of dressing the hair was discountenanced or forbidden, not less than the use of gaudy clothes and bright arms. Some of these regulations have a quaint air to readers of this generation; and as indications of manners in ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the correct angle, and more than one had stumbled over her train as she dropped her skirts and tripped into the church. They were still further bedecked with a profusion of false jewellery, cotton lace and fringe, ribbons streaming from every curve and angle, and shoes as gaudy as the flowers on their bonnets. Their men, in imitation of the aristocrats, wore, of the best quality they could muster, smart coats, flowered waistcoats, ruffled neck-cloths, tight white trousers, and pointed ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... girls were simpering with parasols, some young men, who had just come in from rowing, were sitting cross-legged on the grass, coatless, their shirt-sleeves rolled up in manly fashion, their hands resting on their white flannel trousers, their gaudy ties floating about, as they laughed and tried to be witty with the ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... juillet.—Apres votre depart de Christ Church [Oxford] le 17 nous avons eu le ou la 'Gaudy.' Ainsi que vous l'aviez prevu, j'ai du dire quelques mots a peine prepares. Comme il n'y avait pas de reporter, et que je n'avais aucune note, et comme l'auditoire, y compris nos Seigneurs les eveques, avait accueilli mon speech avec bienveillance, ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... the Chipewyans are now totally without power. The presents of a flag and a gaudy dress still bestowed upon them by the traders do not procure for them any respect or obedience except from the youths of their own families. This is to be attributed mainly to their living at peace with their neighbours and to the facility which ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... that has taken the gaudy fly, felt a check and recognised that a Power had her in hand, recognised in the light-going and fair-speaking Pinckney something of adamant, a will not ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... these, a lady has a fair opportunity for the proper display of a refined and judicious taste. All that is gaudy, needless, or even elaborate, is vulgar. Perfect simplicity, indeed, as regards, not only her own costume, but "the trappings of her palfrey," is expected, at the present day, on the part of every well-bred ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... ruined these works; they ended in gaudy dresses and expensive machinery, but poetry was not associated with them. The youthful days of Louis XIV. raised them to a height of costly luxuriance to sink them ever ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... larger than natural, of gaudy color, and in bad taste, is divided into three parts, each presenting an important phase in the life of the convert, surnamed "The Prophet." In the first, behold a long-bearded man, the hair almost white, with uncouth face, and clad in reindeer skin, like the Siberian savage. His ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of India's gaudy zone, And plunder piled from kingdoms not their own, Degenerate trade! thy minions could despise Thy heart-born anguish of a thousand cries: Could lock, with impious hands, their teeming store, While famish'd nations died along the shore; Could mock the groans of fellow ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... is one of the most wonderful cathedrals to be seen in all North Italy—free from all the gaudy finery and atrocious bad taste which have afflicted me all over South Italy. The town is the quaintest place imaginable—built of narrow streets on several steep hills to start with, and then apparently stirred up with a poker to prevent monotony ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... brings us livres de luxe in plenty, books which are no books, but have gilt and magenta covers, and great staring illustrations. These are regarded as drawing-room ornaments by people who never read. It is scarcely necessary to warn the collector against these gaudy baits of unregulated Christmas generosity. All ages have not produced quite such garish livres de luxe as ours. But, on the whole, a book brought out merely for the sake of display, is generally a book ill "got up," and not worth reading. Moreover, it is generally ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... from me by dull lines of high-spiked palings! How I peeped through gates and over fences at trim lawns and gardens, and longed to stay, and admire, and speculate on the name of the strange plants and gaudy flowers; and then hurried on, always expecting to find something still finer ahead—something really worth stopping to look at—till the houses thickened again into a street, and I found myself, to my disappointment, in the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower— Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... execution. The Europeans erected their forts[032]; landed their merchandize; and endeavoured, by a peaceable deportment, by presents, and by every appearance of munificence, to seduce the attachment and confidence of the Africans. These schemes had the desired effect. The gaudy trappings of European art, not only caught their attention, but excited their curiosity: they dazzled the eyes and bewitched the senses, not only of those, to whom they were given, but of those, to whom they were shewn. Thus followed ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... soul. The so-called decorations vanished from her view, and she felt as if she stood in her father's presence. She was at one elevated and humbled. As suddenly the idea faded and fled, and she beheld but the gaudy festoons and draperies and paintings which disfigured the grandeur. She wept and sped away. Now it was too late to interfere, and things must take their course. She would have been but a Cassandra-prophetess to those who saw but the pleasure before them. She had not been present ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... guess it is," was the rather doubtful response, for Poly, in her swift survey of the narrow, gaudy parlor, discerned little ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... real as goodness, and more powerful. This belief has not one quality of truth or good. It is either ignorant or malicious. The malicious form of animal magnetism ultimates in moral idiocy. The truths of immortal mind sustain man; and they annihilate the fables and mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy pretensions, like silly moths, singe their own wings and fall into dust. In reality there is no mortal mind, and consequently no transference of mortal thought and will-power." Page five hundred two: "Spiritually ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Wisconsin, and Verona was our little village; but they both served the soul of youth as well as the real places would have done, and were as really Italian as anything else in the situation was really this or that. Heaven knows what gaudy sentimental parade we made in our borrowed plumes, but if the travesty had kept itself to the written word it would have been all well enough. My misfortune was to carry it into print when I began to write a story, in the Ik Marvel manner, or rather ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... garments worn in ancient Egypt were exceedingly gaudy, and they made up in colour all that they lacked in variety of design. In the Middle and New Empires the robes of the men were as many-hued as their wall decorations, and as rich in composition. One may take as a ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... the latter, in perfect simplicity of heart, and utter ignorance of the true cause of his wife's care of his comfort in the present instance—"Jenny, but that is a bonny thing," he said, looking admiringly at the gaudy commodity, into which he had now thrust his hand and part of his arm, in order to give it all possible extension, and thus holding it up before him ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... admiration is dependent merely upon the picture being larger than any other in the room, and having bright masses of red and blue in it: let him be assured that the picture is in reality not one whit the better for being either large, or gaudy in color; and he will then be better disposed to give the pains necessary to discover the merit of the more profound and solemn works of Bellini and Tintoret. One of the most wonderful works in the whole gallery is Tintoret's ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Here, you, sir, go up quietly, and tell Mr. Rollins Dr. Renton wants to see him. The waiter came back presently to say Mr. Rollins would be right along. Twenty-five minutes past twelve. Oyster trade nearly over. Gaudy-curtained booths on the left all empty but two. Oyster-openers and waiters—three of them in all—nearly done for the night, and two of them sparring and scuffling behind a pile of oysters on the trough, with the ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... evening. "The western sky was all aflame" with the gorgeous hues of the sunset; the air was like amber mist, and the shrill-voiced Canadian birds, with their gaudy plumage, sang their vesper laudates high in the green gloom of the ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... yacht's rail and joined the on-coming throng. It was like a scene out of a fairy tale—the gaudy Chinese lanterns bobbing to and fro, the gaily-coloured crowd, the shining white yacht rocking gently on the noiseless swell. Everyone was laughing. Some were singing. There was not a serious face to be seen in all the crowd that poured over the ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... another. And I, too, yield and go to pack my things. Yet how shall man decide what he may want In four revolving weeks; what hats, what coats, How many collars and what handkerchiefs, What flannel trousers—all the articles, Shoes, scissors, waistcoats, gaudy ties and boots, Socks, safety-razor-blades and leather belts, Studs, links, dress-suit, and plain and coloured shirts, And undervests—the articles, in short, That make a man in very truth a man? Did AGAMEMNON, when he rushed to war, And sought ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... her trunk towards her, and proceeded to unpack the collection of gaudy dresses that she had bought with so much pride at the Bon Marche in Paris, and which were all in the worst ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... swept onward, like race-horses straining against the rider. Now the spectators could make out plainly the boatmen. It could be seen that they had decked themselves out for the occasion. Their heads were bound with bright-colored fillets, their necks with gay scarves. The paddles were adorned with gaudy woollen streamers. New leggings, of holiday pattern, were intermittently visible on the bowsmen and steersmen as they half rose to give ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... while the men, moving about with violent gesticulations and loud exclamations, employ themselves in their well-known and allotted tasks. By degrees graceful forms arise, and richly-tinted pavilions, with gilded summits, glitter in the sunbeams, while gaudy banners flutter in the air. Long lines of canvas sheets appear, and spacious enclosures formed of kanauts secure the utmost privacy to the dwellers of the populous camp; while the elephants, who have trodden out the ground, and ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... gold and silver;[A] pins and peacock feathers for lands and tenements; gilded coaches and outlandish hobby-horses for goodly castles and ancient mansions; their woods are turned into wardrobes, their leases into laces; and their goods and chattels into guarded coats and gaudy toys. Should your Majesty fly to them for relief, you would fare like those birds that peek at painted fruits; all outside." The writer then describes the affected penurious habits of the grave citizens, who were then preying ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Celtic Dis was a beneficent god of the dead who enjoyed a happy immortality. They were not cold phantasms, but alive and endowed with corporeal form and able to enjoy the things of a better existence, and clad in the beautiful raiment and gaudy ornaments which were loved so much on earth. Hence Celtic warriors did not fear death, and suicide was extremely common, while Spanish Celts sang hymns in praise of death, and others celebrated the birth of men with mourning, but their deaths with joy.[1188] ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... mused aloud. Berthe struck her pony in a tremor of fright. The American was riding ahead. "Fire and sword," Jacqueline went on, and her voice lowered to intense scorn, "they make the final tableau, but—it's gaudy, it's cheap." ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Eagle, and Yellow Panther heard him in silence and without a change of countenance, but the eyes of the other chiefs sparkled. They loved blankets of brilliant colors, beads, and the many gaudy trinkets that were sold or given away at the post. New rifles and fresh ammunition, also, would be acceptable, and, in order to deserve than in increasing quantities, they resolved that the next quest for ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the second group. Behind each ear he wears a tall plume from the wings of the eagle, and around his neck are strung rows upon rows of sacred shell beads, turquoises, and gaudy pebbles. The third is preceded by the great shaman of the hunt. His dress is a tight-fitting suit of buckskin; long fringes depend from his sleeves, and the front and shoulders of his jacket are profusely embroidered with porcupine-quills. A small ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... gallery (second floor) you have a glorious sight—the flags of the different countries represented, the lofty dome, glittering jewelry, gaudy tapestry, etc., with the busy crowd passing to and fro 'tis a perfect ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and they stared at her curiously as she passed, a tall figure, closely veiled. She looked at the well-remembered shops, the stationery shop with its old-fashioned, fly-blown knick-knacks, the milliner's with cheap, gaudy hats, the little tailor's with his antiquated fashion plates. At last she came to the station, and sat in the waiting-room, her heart full of infinite sadness—the terrible ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... pots was there, a squat fifty-foot carrier painted a gaudy yellow—the Folly Bay house color—flying a yellow flag with a black C in the center. She was loading fish from two trollers, one lying on each side. One or two ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... innocence. Laziness, liquor and loud asseverations of freedom and equality were its only blessings claimed; and the commission of overt acts, beyond those named, were rare enough to prove the rule of force of habit. Lured from old service for a time, most of them followed not far the gaudy and shining Will-o'-the-Wisp; and almost all—especially the household and personal servants—soon returned to "Ole Mas'r" once more, sadder and wiser for the futile chase after freedom's joys. But, even these were partly spoiled and rendered of far less practical use to themselves, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... dyes: The gloomy pine, the poplar blue, The yellow beech, the sable yew, The slender fir, that taper grows, The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs; And beyond the purple grove, Haunt of Phillis, queen of love! Gaudy as the opening dawn, Lies a long and level lawn On which a dark hill, steep and high, Holds ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... on in the night, to the great relief of the captain, and soon a string of gaudy signal flags were set which notified the Brutus, lying at anchor about a mile away, to stand by. The hawser had been cast off over night and so the Brutus was free to steam to any position her captain thought advisable. As soon as the signalling was completed ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... accustomed to the general dowdiness which in this respect prevails in England. Most of the English girls seem to have no idea that their feet should be dressed. The Viennese lady is very tasteful. She is neither slipshod nor gaudy. I never beheld more dainty toilettes. Everything about them, as a sailor would say, is cut ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... in perfect order. The low fence around it had been repaired, and several leaning headstones straightened up. But, guided by a sense of fitness, and having before him the awful example for which Fetters was responsible, the colonel had added no gaudy monument nor made any alterations which would disturb the quiet beauty of the spot or its harmony with the surroundings. In the Northern cemetery where his young wife was buried, he had erected to her memory a stately mausoleum, in keeping with similar memorials ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Collinson's Mill! There's nothing gaudy and spectacular about that, boys, eh? No, sir! it's a square, honest beacon that a man can steer by. We'll be there in twenty minutes." He was pointing into the darkness below the already descending trail. ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... boasting but one,—advertised as a wonderful rarity,—which was very badly situated. There were plenty of traktiri, or low-class eating-houses, some of which had "numbers for arrivers"—that is to say, rooms for guests—added to their gaudy signs. These were not to be thought of. But we had been told of an establishment which rejoiced in the proud title of gostinnitza, "hotel," in city fashion. It looked fairly good, and there we took up our abode, after due and inevitable chaffering. This hotel was kept, over shops, on the first ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... corners of great churches; where there were winking lamps of gold and silver among pillars and arches, kneeling figures dotted about at confessionals and on the pavements; where there was the mist and scent of incense; where there were pictures, fantastic images, gaudy altars, great heights and distances, all softly lighted through stained glass, and the massive curtains that hung in the doorways. From these cities they would go on again, by the roads of vines and olives, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... himself, the rajah was well disposed towards the English. These important circumstances were borne in mind by Mr Brooke. The rajah was now at Sar[a]wak, and the adventurer determined to enter the river of that name, and to proceed as far as the town. He was well supplied with presents; gaudy silks of Surat, scarlet cloth, stamped velvet, gunpowder, confectionery, sweets, ginger, jams, dates, and syrups for the governor, and a huge box of China toys for the governor's children. From Mr Brooke's own diary, we extract the following account of his position ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... bastard of great Mercury, Got on Thalia when she was asleep: My gaudy grandsire, great Apollo hight,[113] Born was, I hear, but that my luck was ill, To all the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... certainly mixed, some very beautiful things rubbing shoulders with modern specimens of clumsy early Victorian furniture. A room at the back was given up to the Delft china, but even this was spoilt by ordinary yellow arabesque wall-paper, on which were hung the rare plates and dishes, and by some gaudy window curtains, evidently recently added. The collection itself, made by Mrs. Koopman at very moderate prices, before experts bought up all the Dutch relics, was then supposed to be of great value. Our hostess conversed in good English with a foreign accent, ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... to her. Sibyl flushed and looked lovingly into Betty's face. Betty then took Sibyl behind the screen, and, lo and behold! her deft fingers put the tiny wreath into a graceful position; arranged the soft, light hair so as to produce the best possible effect; twisted a white sash round the gaudy green dress, to carry out the idea of the marguerites; and brought Sibyl back, charmed with her appearance, and looking for once ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... by Britons once were counted, Close to my side were monies lent and paid; If princes died—some gaudy herald mounted Upon my head, and proclamations read; Till Gresham rose; who used me very ill, He moved the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... then, Or I shall be before thee. See,—thou canst not see! Then I will tell thee that my wings are on. I'll mount, I'll fly, and with a port divine Glide all along the gaudy milky soil, To find my Laius out; ask every god In his bright palace, if he knows ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... when accomplishments are rendered subservient to the development of moral goodness, that they may become pursuits at all worthy of an accountable being. We were not sent into this world to flutter through life, like the gaudy butterfly, only to be seen and admired. We were designed to be useful to our fellow beings; and to make all our powers and capabilities, in some way or other conducive to the happiness and welfare of our co-journeyers on the path ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... nonchalantly at a cigarette, held between lean, saffron-colored fingers. The deck was white as the snows of a northern Winter, while the brass work along the railings and about the cannon glittered brilliantly in the sunshine. There was a gaudy yellow-and-white striped canopy stretched above a portion of the deck aft; the huge masts seemed to pierce into the blue of the skies; while on every side were ranged grim guns ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... around her. Where scarcely a second before she had been on the outer fringe of the crowd, she now appeared to be in the very center of it. Women were pushing up behind her, women who wore shawls as she did, only the shawls were mostly of gaudy colors; and men pushed up behind her, mostly men of swarthy countenance, who wore circlets of gold in their ears; and, brushing her skirts, seeking vantage points, ragged, ill-clad children wriggled and wormed their way deeper ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... with at every turn in Wrangell, are not objects of worship, but are used apparently for a heraldic purpose. Some of the ancient war canoes of this tribe are still in existence, but they are only brought out on the occasion of a feast, when a chief and his crew appear in the gaudy panoply ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... lordship sought eventually to cover up the unfortunate escapade. He would hand you English letters—and Scotch ones too!—with an air of covert insolence that was the joy of half the village. And on Sundays he was to be seen, garbed in knickerbockers, gaudy stockings, and sometimes high, yellowish spats, walking with his peasant girl along the very road his more spirited forbear ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... together as young women of any color do, their black hair sleek with oil, their cheeks red with vermilion, their wrists heavy with brass or copper or pinchbeck circlets, their small moccasined feet peeping beneath gaudy calico given them by their white lords. Older squaws, envious but perforce resigned, muttered as their own stern-faced stolid red masters ordered them to keep close. Of the full-bloods, whether Sioux or Cheyennes, only those drunk were other than ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... particular forms, that the pleasure, we receive from the beauty of the human form, originates from mental character: witness the charm of the infant, innocence of the snow-drop, of the soft elegance of the hyacinth, &c. and, on the contrary, our dis-relish of the gaudy tulip, the robust, unmeaning, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... Lady," Summer coverts shady, the greenwood home, the sweep of sunny fields, A butterfly befit; but where's the wit that mire-befouled to the swamp-demon yields? Oh, birds of Iris-glitter, black and bitter will be the wakening when those gaudy plumes Fall crushed and leaden, as your senses deaden ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... nun there was only one other woman in the company. This was the vulgar, bouncing Wife of Bath. She dressed in rich and gaudy clothes, she liked to go about to see and be seen and have a good time. She had been married five times, and though she was getting old and rather deaf, she was quite ready to marry again, if the husband she had should ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Julia and Anna accepted the proposal readily. Denah declined; she felt in no humour for it; also she thought a refusal showed a superior mind—one likely to appeal to a serious young man, who had no taste for the gaudy, gay, or fast, and who also had a tendency towards seasickness. But, alas, for the fickleness of man! While Denah stood with her father and Mijnheer, Julia rode round the centre of lighted mirrors on a prancing wooden horse, and Joost—the serious, the sometimes seasick—rode beside ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... moral reading, I must confess that I like to have some of this gaudy substance in my pocket. Its presence cheers and comforts me, diffuses a genial warmth through my body. My eyes rejoice in the shine of it; its clinquant sound is music in my ears. Since I then am in his paid service, and reject none of the doles of his bounty, I too dwell in ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... handkerchief with the brightest border, thrust it within his hunting shirt. He then proceeded to the lodge of the old chief, bearing the other ostentatiously in his hand, as though he were carrying the fate of his nation in the gaudy bit of silk and ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... is softly pictur'd here; Here the proud moss-rose spreads its transient pride; Close by, the willow drops a dewy tear, And gaudy flow'rs ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... the signs—the long and curious names— And wondered who invented them, and if Their owners knew how very strange they were. A corps of weary firemen met me once, Late home from service, with their gaudy car, And loud with careless curses. Then I stopped, And chatted with a frowsy-headed girl Who knelt among her draggled skirts, and scrubbed The heel-worn doorsteps of a faded house. Then, as I left her, and resumed my walk, ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... is delightfully commemorated in the old custom of Queen's College, by which, at the Gaudy dinner on Jan. 1st, each guest receives a needle with a silk thread of the colour of his faculty—Theologians black, Lawyers blue, Arts students red—and is bidden 'Take this and be thrifty'. The mending of the hood was a duty which must ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells |
