"Modish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... took off his hat, a modish Panama, and bowed and smiled to her and to the lady. And one adept in reading the meaning of smiles might have read three or four separate meanings in that smile of his. It seemed to say to Annunziata, "Ah, you rogue! ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... was harped upon by a host of theologians and moralists after him, whenever, as was constantly the case, they had occasion to raise their voice against that dreaded enemy, enthusiasm. There were many who inveighed against 'the new modish system of reducing all to sense,' when used to controvert the doctrines of revelation. But while with vigour and success they defended the mysteries of faith against those who would allow nothing but what reason could fairly grasp, and while they dwelt upon the paramount authority of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... taper staves as smooth 's a bead, Wi' virls and whirlygigums at the head. The Goth was stalking round with anxious search, Spying the time-worn flaws in every arch; It chanc'd his new-come neibor took his e'e, And e'en a vexed and angry heart had he! Wi' thieveless sneer to see his modish mien, He, down the water, gies him ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and decidedly the most feminine. "Mrs. Longman hasn't quite caught the true note," the architect remarked. "The base of the fountain is interesting, though I don't care for the shape. But the figure itself is too prim and modish. Somehow I can't think of Ceres as a proper old maid, dressed with modern frills. The execution, however, shows a good deal of skill. The frieze might be improved by the softening of those sharp lines that cut out the figures like pasteboard. And these women haven't ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... in her modish suit so cunningly devised to emphasize her charms, with the flowers slipping from her arms to the dusty rug, she wept at the vagueness of her recollections, the fading away of grief, to which she had once dedicated herself ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... Janet seemed to her to be a sort of angel—modish, but exquisitely genuine. She saw in the invitation to the Five Towns a miraculous defence against a peril the prospect of which was already alarming her. She would be compelled to go to Turnhill in order to visit Lessways Street and decide what ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... can acquit ourselves to our friends of the great world for the details of such an unfashionable courtship, so well as by giving them, before they retire for the night, a dip into a more modish view of things. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... me?" Mrs. Feinermann gasped. Her hat was awry, and what had once been a modish pompadour was toppled to one side and shed hairpins with every palsied nod of her head. "I ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... is unbecoming to a woman," returns he. "And, praised be God, some still live who have not learned to conceal their nature under a mask of fashion. If this be due less to your natural free disposition than to an ignorance of our enlightened modish arts, then could I find it in my heart to rejoice that you have ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... PAMPHLETS may be learned the genius of the age, the debates of the learned, the follies of the ignorant, the bevues of government, and the mistakes of the courtiers. Pamphlets furnish beaus with their airs, coquettes with their charms. Pamphlets are as modish ornaments to gentlewomen's toilets as to gentlemen's pockets; they carry reputation of wit and learning to all that make them their companions; the poor find their account in stall-keeping and in hawking them; the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... accounted conservative. It sanctions promiscuously usages as venerable as civilization itself, and as transient as the fad of the hour. Democratic institutions and universal educational privileges have bred a social mass intelligent and responsive enough to be modish, but lacking in discrimination ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... four girls, ranging in age anywhere from sixteen to twenty—three very pretty, obviously conscious of their modish garments and wanting everyone else to be conscious of them, too; another, Rosalyn Crane, tall and tanned and strong in limb and shoulder, with frank dark eyes and red lips which smiled and displayed regular, gleaming-white teeth. ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... nature a spy, Professor Kennedy, but—well, sometimes one is forced into something like that." Maude Euston, who had sought out Craig in his laboratory, was a striking girl, not merely because she was pretty or because her gown was modish. Perhaps it was her sincerity and artlessness ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... came—dish-water—and coffee leavings—and porridge scraps full on the crown of my fine young gentleman, drenching his gay attire as it had been soaked in soapsuds of a week old. Something burst from his lips a deal stronger than the modish French oaths then in vogue. There was a shout from the rabble. I dragged rather than led M. Radisson pell-mell into a shop from front to rear, over a score of garden walls, and out again from rear to front, so that we gave the slip to all those officers ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... in one period, in another these Ladies become as wide-winged as butterflies, or float, large, balloon-like visions, down summer streets. And yet in all shapes they have always (I tell myself) created thrilling effects of beauty, and waked in the breasts of modish young men ever the ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... the overture begun, and fear not, if the action of the play demand a lion, but that he shall be a beast of Peter Quince's picking. The ladies shall not be frighted, for our chief comedians will enact modish people of ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Goldsmith's Prentice a pretty Trick; For having been abroad about some business, and coming home i'th' evening, a young Spark, exceeding Beauish, (with a New Modish Suit of Cloaths on) that had been drinking hard all Day, would need be picking of me up, when I did'nt at all intend it. But seeing him so earnest for a Bout, that I cou'd'nt get rid of him, I had him to a House I was acquainted with by th' way, and there ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... cuts love, they say— Mere modish love perhaps it may: For any tool of any kind Can separate what was ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... many forenoons had to be thus occupied. Never forget it! The modish adaptation of woven fabrics to the female contour becomes increasingly complex and minute and exacting and time-occupying in precise proportion as the amount of time increases for which occupation must ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... fortune-telling with cards— like a hundred greater and lesser follies of the mind—were straws floating along the current of British life, intellectual and social, during the reign of George the Second. This was the case, in spite of the enlightening influences of religion, science, and philosophy. Modish society was addicted to matters over which argument was hardly worth while—in which respect we find modish society the same in all epochs. Our ancestresses particularly were often charming women, and almost as often sensible women; but, like the men of Athens, they were ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... there is even a little rouge on his cheek. To speak more intelligibly, his simple and nervous diction is often wire-drawn into a flashy and feeble paraphrase, and his imagery as well as humour, sometimes annihilated by abbreviation. Nay, to make him the more modish, the good lady is at pains to patch up his style with unnecessary phrases and flourishes in the French taste, which have just such an effect in a translation of Homer, as a bag-wig, and snuff-box would have ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... coloring and clear eyes, silently agreed with her. The widow made a charming picture in her modish tea-gown, and the physician, watching her with an appraising eye, acknowledged the beauty which had captivated all Washington. Mrs. Brewster had carried her honors tactfully, a fact which had gained her popularity even among the dowagers ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... well known in the modish world of town for his beauty and adventurous spirit. He was indeed already a beau and conqueror of female hearts. It was suspected that he cherished a private ambition to set the modes in beauties and embroidered waistcoats himself in time, and be as renowned ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and an aristocratic air. She was graceful, intellectual and refined. Her toilette was as finished as Miss Champlin's, but she was not as fresh, in spite of what De Fersen said. The younger, Nancy Hunter, is not so modish, but a perfect rosebud. Her character is gay: she is always laughing, and has beautiful teeth—a thing not common in America." But Vauban, who on this occasion acted as master of ceremonies, promised the prince a greater treat for the morrow, and took him on that day to a house on the corner ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... the elder, and would sit eating cherries with him out of one paper bag, with an affectionate and ironical smile twisting up an eyebrow and curling his lips a little. And he was always careful to have money in his pocket, and to be modish in his dress, so that his son need not blush for him. They were perfect friends, but never seemed to have occasion for verbal confidences, both having the competitive self-consciousness of Forsytes. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... line of vehicular sensationalism, a modish wicker-bodied phaeton and a minute pony-cart were seen on a pleasant afternoon to issue from a driveway far up a street that now has a name, but which used to be adequately identified by saying "up toward the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... rather sharp; every curve of the mouth, clear cut and delicate; the eyes, black, bright and piercing. Such was the man who, attired in a suit of black broadcloth, with buff vest, ruffled shirt, and white stock, and with hair tied in a modish queue, revealed himself to the gaze of the throng in front ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Laura fingered, in an agony of indecision, the pleasing stuff of the dress, and ruefully considered its modish cut. Once, no one being present, she even took it out of the wardrobe. But the merciless spring sunshine seemed to make the purple shoot fire, to let loose a host of other colours it in as well, and, with a shudder, she re-hung it on ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... to Elinor, as Miss Rosa in her modish and well-fitting black crepe de chine and her air of knowing what she was about, was just a trifle awe-inspiring, "do you suppose that would be ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... is commonly said in the provinces that a New Yorker can be recognized anywhere, with his wife, by their modish costumes, their easy manners and their willingness to spend money—two, three and even five cents being paid ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... guardian and 'tis to him I take thee. We go to England by the first boat,—nay, lay back, calm thyself or I take my wagging tongue away; if thou dost so much as stir again, I leave thee. Thou art to go to a great house over there and see grand folks with fine airs and modish dress. Wilt be glad to see outside of convent walls? 'Tis nine years since I brought thee here a babe of six, and have nursed thee well to this hour, and thy strength and health and beauty show the care given thee." She suddenly arose and went to the window to hide if possible ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... readers were entertained with elaborate allegories, in which the passions, the vices, and even the habits of mankind were personified. Lighter ethical topics were served up in letters from Philotryphus, Septimius, or others ending in us, and in communications from Flirtilla, Jack Modish, and Co. Eastern tales and apologues, meditations on human life, essays on morality, inquiries as to whether the arts and sciences were serviceable or prejudicial to the human race, dissertations on the wisdom and virtue of the Chinese, were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... was! What a lot they got out of life! Varian walked quietly by the group, to enjoy better the pretty, modish picture they made. Their quick chatter, their bursts of laughter, the sweet faint odor of the tea, the gay dresses and light flannels, with the quiet, sombrely attired servants to add tone, all gave him, fresh ...
— Mrs. Dud's Sister • Josephine Daskam
... the poet if he spins his thread too fine and does not substantiate his romance by the municipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity and pity. I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer the company of ploughboys and tin-peddlers to the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle and dinners at the best taverns. The end ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... beating down the sale, And selling basely by retail. The wits, I mean the atheists of the age, Who fain would rule the pulpit, as they do the stage, Wondrous refiners of philosophy, Of morals and divinity, By the new modish system of reducing all to sense, Against all logic, and concluding laws, Do own th'effects of Providence, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Life and Conversation; yet would not I be the Esquire for half his Estate; for if it was as much more, he'd freely pare with it all for a pair of Legs to his Mind: Whereas in the Reign of our first King Edward of glorious Memory, nothing more modish than a Brace of your fine taper Supporters; and his Majesty without an Inch of Calf, managed Affairs in Peace and War as laudably as the bravest and most politick of his Ancestors; and was as terrible to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... dolls, not even the serious-minded daughters of the Pilgrims; but the only dolls that were advertised in colonial newspapers were the "London drest babys" of milliners and mantua-makers, that were sent over to serve as fashion plates for modish New England dames. A few century-old dolls still survive Revolutionary times, wooden-faced monstrosities, shapeless and mean, but doubtless well-beloved and cherished in the days of ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... jauntiness about him. His eyelids were red. His face had the doughy look of one whose sleep has been brief and feverish. As he came toward his mother you noticed a stain on his coat, and a sunburst of wrinkles across one leg of his modish brown trousers. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... this is but a faint sketch of the conduct I must have expected from my wife, let her quality have been what it would; or have lived with her on bad terms. Judge then, if to me a lady of the modish taste ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... their prices. There were "little" dressmakers as well, and "little" tailors. In special session they confided to one another the names or addresses of any of these who happened to be especially deft, or cheap, or modish. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... considered with my wife very much of the inconvenience of my going in no better plight, we did resolve of putting me into a better garb, and, among other things, to have a good velvet cloake; that is, of cloth lined with velvet and other things modish, and a perruque, and so I sent him and her out to buy me velvet, and I to the Exchange, and so to Trinity House, and there dined with Sir W. Batten, having some business to speak with him, and Sir W. Rider. Thence, having my belly full, away on foot to my brother's, all along Thames ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... And the sum wanted too great; and so he is always prevented. I have had plenty of schemes! but then I was terribly frighten'd At the expense, especially during a time of such danger. Long had my house smiled upon me, decked out in modish exterior, Long had my windows with large panes of glass resplendently glitterd. Who can compete with a merchant, however, who, rolling in riches, Also knows the manner in which what is best can be purchased? Only look at the house ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... she agreed with smiling effusion, and they both glanced with furtive embarrassed swiftness at Leonora. 'Mamma, this is Mr. Twemlow. Mr. Twemlow my mother.' The dashing modish air of the child was adorable. Having concluded her scene she retired from the centre of the stage in ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... Madame, it is no modish thing, The bookman's tribute that I bring; A talk of antiquaries grey, Dust unto dust this many a day, Gossip of texts and bindings old, Of ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... a neatly-made little man of fashionable, even of modish, cut, spare, smart and whimsical, with a clean-shaved, small-featured face, large, shining brown eyes, abundant and slightly-waving brown hair, that could only be parted, with the sweetest sorrow, in the centre of his well-shaped, almost philosophical head, and movements light and temperate as those ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... m[)o]derate, m[)o]dest, or our present word m[)o]dern. And the law under which Shakespeare uses the word is this: whatsoever is so trivial as to fall into the relation of a mere shape or fleeting mode to a permanent substance, that with Shakespeare is modish, or (according to his form) modern.[29] Thus, a weak, trivial argument (or instantia, the scholastic term for an argument not latent merely, or merely having the office of sustaining a truth, but urged as an objection, having ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... a rich color in Grace's cheeks. In her modish frock of the black which she affected, and which was this morning of fine serge set on by a line of fur at hem and wrist, and topped by a little hat of black velvet which framed the vividness of her glorious hair, she looked the woman of the world, ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... ere he to manhood came, Song from celestial heights had wandered down, Put off her robe of sunlight, dew and flame, And donned a modish ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Scandal! tell me, I beseech you, Needs there a school this modish art to teach you? No need of lessons now, the knowing think; We might as well be taught to eat and drink. Caused by a dearth of scandal, should the vapours Distress our fair ones—let them read the papers; Their powerful mixtures such disorders hit; Crave what you will—there's ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... spreading branches of this tree Penn took his stand. He was young and handsome, and although he wore the simple garb of the Quakers he had not yet perhaps quite forgotten the "modish" ways of his younger days, for about his waist he had knotted a pale blue scarf. Beside him stood his cousin, the deputy governor, and a few more soberly clad Quakers. In front of them, in a great half circle were ranged the Indians, the old men in front, the middle-aged behind, and last ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... work set forth of such perfection, Will praise it self, and doth not beg protection From flatter'd greatness. Industry and pains For gen'ral good, his aim, his Countrey gains; Which ought respect him. A good English Cook, Excellent Modish Monsieurs, and that Book Call'd Perfect Cook, Merete's Pastery Translated, looks like old hang'd Tapistry, The wrong side outwards: so Monsieur adieu, I'm for our Native Mays Works rare and new, Who with Antique could have ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... hair and a soft, ripe glow on her round cheeks. Her eyes were big and brown and velvety, under oddly-pointed black brows, and her crooked mouth was rose-red. She wore a smart brown suit, with two very modish little shoes peeping from beneath it; and her hat of dull pink straw, wreathed with golden-brown poppies, had the indefinable, unmistakable air which pertains to the "creation" of an artist in millinery. Priscilla had a sudden stinging consciousness that her own hat had been trimmed ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... periwigged phrase Won the heart of this sentimental Quaker, At what gold-laced speech of those modish days She listened—the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... on the writing-table, and waited. She had just come in from a walk and was clad in a blue wash waist and dark skirt. She was immediately conscious of the perfections of Lois's raiment, noting its points from silk hose and modish pumps to the utmost tip of the feather on the beguiling ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... suddenly shown him something beyond caprice, beyond accident of mood or temper. The true woman had spoken; all outer modish garments had dropped away from her real nature, and showed its abundant depth and sincerity. All that was roused in him this moment was never known; he never could tell it; there were eternal spaces between them. She had been speaking to him just now with no personal sentiment. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... woman appears in this country, from the moment she rises till night, without being compleatly whitened. Powder or meal was first used in Europe by the Poles, to conceal their scald heads; but the present fashion of using it, as well as the modish method of dressing the hair, must have been borrowed from the Hottentots, who grease their wooly heads with mutton suet and then paste it over with the powder called buchu. In like manner, the hair of our fine ladies is frizzled into the appearance ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... aloud, which is not often,—for I find the process a perilous one,—the aa's and ee's, and uh's and vaus, return upon me and I have to translate them with no little hesitation as I go along, into the more modish sounds. A knowledge of the letters themselves I had already acquired by studying the signposts of the place,—rare works of art, that excited my utmost admiration, with jugs, and glasses, and bottles, and ships, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... from the road. The only object that met Cass's eye was a man's stiff, tall hat, lying emptily and vacantly in the grass. It was new, shiny, and of modish shape. But it was so incongruous, so perkily smart, and yet so feeble and helpless lying there, so ghastly ludicrous in its very appropriateness and incapacity to adjust itself to the surrounding landscape, that it affected him with something more than a sense of its grotesqueness, and he could ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... little surprised to see this minister of Plutus in the shape of a young sprightly beau, trimmed up in all the foppery of the fashion; for they had hitherto always associated with the idea of an usurer old age and rusty apparel. After divers modish congees, he begged to know to what he should attribute the honour of their message; when Ferdinand, who acted the orator, told him, that his friend Count Melvil, having occasion for a sum of money, had been ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Latz, leaping impulsively forward on the chair that was as tightly upholstered in effect as he in his modish suit, then clutching himself there as if he had caught the impulse on the fly—"I ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... him if he could box, made him put on a pair of gloves, and very condescendingly knocked him down three times successively. Next he played him, both upon his flageolet and his cremona, some of the most modish airs. Moreover, he sang him a little song of his own composing. He then, taking up the driving-whip, flanked a fly from the opposite wall, and throwing himself (naturally fatigued with his numerous exertions) on his sofa, observed, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... All that is merely modish will soon go out of fashion, and if you practise it in age, you will appear a fop whom ...
— Advice to Young Musicians. Musikalische Haus- und Lebens-Regeln • Robert Schumann
... eloquent silences when there was any need of them; and thus the fop and the coquette traversed the remainder of that solemn wood without any further speech. Modish people would have esteemed ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... soon learns that the difference between comfort and misery, if not health and illness, may depend on whether he is properly clad. Proper, in this case does not mean modish, but suitable, serviceable, proven by the touchstone of experience to be best for the work or play that is in hand. When you seek a guide in the mountains, he looks first in your eyes and then at your shoes. If both ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... defend us! They play'd the very devil with their rhymes. They hope'd Apollo a new set would send us; And then, invidiously enough, Place'd modish verse, which they call'd stuff, Against the writing of ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... felicity" of the artist with the absurd travesties worn on our American stage, we can better understand the pleasure which filled Mr. James's heart. What, for example, would Madame Nathalie have thought of the modish gowns which Mrs. Fiske introduces into the middle-class Norwegian life of Ibsen's dramas? No plays can less well bear such inaccuracies, because they depend on their stage-setting to bring before our eyes their alien aspect, to make us feel an atmosphere with which we are wholly unfamiliar. ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... Mehul's opera," he says, "reminds one strikingly of Mozart's 'Titus,' and not to the advantage of the latter. The opera 'Titus' is the work of an incomparably greater genius, but it belongs to a partly untruthful, wholly modish, tendency (that of the old opera seria), while the genre of 'Joseph' is thoroughly noble, true, and eminently dramatic. 'Joseph' has outlived 'Titus.'" [Footnote: "Die Moderne Opera," p. 92.] Carl Maria von Weber admired Mehul's opera greatly, and within recent years ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Tinsel, what would be thy lot! What, but to strut neglected and forgot! What boots it for thee to have dipt thy hand In odors wafted from Arabian land? Ah! what avails thy scented solitaire, Thy careless swing and pertly tripping air, The crimson wash that glows upon thy face, Thy modish hat, and coat that flames with lace! In vain thy dress, in vain thy trimmings shine, If the Parisian snuff-box be not thine. Come to my nose, then, Snuff, nor come alone, Bring taste with thee, for taste is all ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... confronted them, after all, when they arrived at the theatre, the Sphinx and Lady Dolly. The older feminine presentment sent her belittling gaze over their heads and beyond them from the curtain; Lady Dolly turned a modish head to greet them from the front of the box. Lady Dolly raised her eyes but not her elbows, which were assisting her a good deal with the house in exploring and being explored, enabling Colonel John Cummins, who sat by her side, to observe how very perfect and adorable the cut ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... come in modish frocks, Where swells appraise our herds and flocks, By days "in profit" great or small, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various
... brilliant of the season, Mrs. Jerrold," said a fashionable old lady, with a dowager air—such a one as we meet with constantly in society, who, tangled up in laces, false hair, and a modish style of dress, look like old faries at a christening, and who impress the young and inexperienced by their affected zest that the fleeting pleasures of life are immortal. "Your matinee is really splendid! Such a fashionable company—so ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... it had once been a handsome loose paletot now shrunk with washing; and this change of clothing gave a still stronger accentuation to his dark-haired, eager face which might have belonged to the prophet Ezekiel—also probably not modish in the eyes of contemporaries. It was noticeable that the thin tails of the fried fish were given to Mordecai; and in general the sort of share assigned to a poor relation—no doubt a "survival" of prehistoric practice, not yet generally admitted ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... smart pretty fellows in Bristol are numbers, some Who so modish are grown, that they think plain sense cumbersome; And lest they should seem to be queer or ridiculous, They affect to believe neither God ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... sacred; for it marks the end of domestic work and worry, the beginning of restful, sociable evening. The mere chink of cups and saucers tunes the mind to happy repose. I care nothing for your five o'clock tea of modish drawing-rooms, idle and wearisome like all else in which that world has part; I speak of tea where one is at home in quite another than the worldly sense. To admit mere strangers to your tea-table is profanation; on the other hand, English hospitality has here its ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... point, the girl's outward seeming met Amidon's eyes as he neared her. From the platform, it was an impressionistic view of a well-kept trap and horse, and a young woman wearing a picture-hat with a sweeping plume, habited in a gown of modish tailoring, and holding the reins in well-gauntleted hands. As he reached the middle of the street-crossing, the face, surmounted by dark hair, began to show its salient features—great dark eyes, strongly-marked brows, and a strong, sweet mouth with vivid lips. Then came the impression of a form ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... aggravations: with all her airs Clary was not a match for the indomitable, unhesitating, brazen (with a golden brazenness) women of fashion. Poor Clary had been the beauty at Redwater, the most modish, the best informed woman there; and here, in this world of London, to which Sam had got her an introduction, she was a nobody; scarcely to be detected among the host of ordinary fine women, except by Sam's reflected glory. This was a doubtful ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... fresh cleanness and his ignorance of the traditions of the place, strode through the onyx-pillared lobby peopled with well-fed, modish human beings who conversed in modulated voices or bustled in and out, engrossed with affairs which might or might not be of national importance. At the desk a perfectly groomed, worldly wise aristocrat proffered a pen well inked and gave Johnny what Bland would have termed ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... infectious spirits. Lorelei began to see sunshine, and before she knew it she was laughing, in the best of humor with herself and her surroundings. Adoree, clad now in a nameless, formless garment which she had discovered in a closet, her own modish belongings safely rolled up in a sheet, had covered her head with a towel turban and incased her feet in an old pair of shoes. Thus equipped, she fell upon the task of regeneration with fanatic ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... exchanging greetings with the royal pages and the older students. A few of these sat near Odo, disdainfully superior in their fob-chains and queues; and as the boy glanced about him he met the fixed stare of one of the number, a tall youth seated at his elbow, and conspicuous, even in that modish company, for the exaggerated elegance of his dress. This young man, whose awkward bearing and long lava-hued face crowned with flamboyant hair contrasted oddly with his finical apparel, returned Odo's look with a gaze of eager comprehension. He ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... immediately behind her. "Allow me to present to you my very dear friend, Mrs. Carleton. Mrs. Carleton is from the city, staying at the Ottawa for a few weeks, and I knew you would like the chance to show her some of our beautiful River." Mrs. Carleton, a pretty, modish woman, with the ease of city manner, bowed quietly and murmured her pleasure. The little girl looked half bashfully through a wealth of natural curls at the grown-ups to whom she was presented in the off-hand method ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes (says the gigantic critic Johnson) are dissolved by the chance which combined them, but the uniform simplicity of primitive qualities neither admits increase nor suffers decay." And assuredly there was never an age in which man so masked his nature under modish innovations as ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... in this disguise for more than seventy years; in fact, not since he had so frightened pretty Lady Barbara Modish by means of it, that she suddenly broke off her engagement with the present Lord Canterville's grandfather, and ran away to Gretna Green with handsome Jack Castleton, declaring that nothing in the world would induce her to marry into a family that allowed such a horrible phantom ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... time for many years that Willoughby Hall had been occupied by any other than caretakers; and Fairhaven, to confess the truth, was a trifle ill-at-ease before the modish persons who now tenanted the old mansion; and consoled itself after an immemorial ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... scene in which the marriage contract is being signed. The costumes are those of the time of Goya. An old beau is marrying a young and beautiful girl. With affected grace and a skipping minuet step, holding a modish three-cornered hat under his arm, he approaches the table to put his signature in the place which the escribano points out with an obsequious bow. He is arrayed in delicate lilac, while the bride is wearing ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... for dogs," said Rhoda. "Mrs Vane is the one for pets; that is, whenever they are modish. She carries dormice in her pocket, and keeps a lapdog and a squirrel. When the mode goes out, she gives the thing ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... fashion. We can but guess that an allusion in a letter from England, an incident at a conversazione at Ravenna, or perhaps the dialogues in Peacock's novels, Melincourt and Nightmare Abbey, brought to his recollection the half-modish, half-literary coteries of the earlier years of the Regency, and that he sketches the scenes and persons of his eclogue not from life, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... risen Lord? She did not quite know what he meant. She went back over the morning's experience, beginning with her dressing-room, when before her mirror she donned her new and very pretty silk dress and arranged all her faultless toilet, adjusting the modish hat that became so well her own type of beauty, fitted on the fresh, dainty gloves that should clasp her beloved music when she should open her throat and sing like a glad bird, delighting in its song, however plaintive. ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... before him, smiling, and he saw that her usual modish house dress was changed for the regulation white duck and peaked cap ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... of these few plain Words of Command, a Woman of a tolerable Genius, who will apply herself diligently to her Exercise for the Space of but one half Year, shall be able to give her Fan all the Graces that can possibly enter into that little modish Machine. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the fate of the human race I am sorry that you attach so much importance to the personal sufferings of the late royal martyr, and that an anxiety for the issue of the present convulsions should not have prevented you from joining in the idle cry of modish lamentation which has resounded from the Court to the cottage. You wish it to be supposed you are one of those who are unpersuaded of the guilt of Louis XVI. If you had attended to the history of the French Revolution as minutely as its importance demands, so far from stopping to bewail his death, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... with gilded lettering, the multifarious awnings, banners, and streamers, the extraordinary number of omnibuses, horsecars, and other democratic vehicles, the vendors of cooling fluids, the white trousers and big straw hats of the policemen, the tripping gait of the modish young persons on the pavement, the general brightness, newness, juvenility, both of people and things. The young men had exchanged few observations; but in crossing Union Square, in front of the monument to Washington—in the very shadow, indeed, ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... altered deportment would have delighted the author of "Sartor Resartus." With his modish and correct clothes, his self-respect seemed to have returned. He carried himself differently, there was a confident ring in his tone. He studied the menu which Wingate passed him, through a well-polished eyeglass, and one could well have believed that he was a distinguished and frequent patron ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... So some would-be wit Dubbed the fair dame. The title may not fit With accurate completeness; It soars some shades too high, this modish mot, As 'Mrs. LYON-HUNTER' sinks too low; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... have no blacks, but as much decency as you choose. You will mark the distinction between my sister and your maids of honour, Mrs. Lewin. She is but a debutante in our modish world, and must be dressed as modestly as you can contrive, to be ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... her. The war had seemed closely knit to the Summer landscape for all its peace, and to the noble old chambers of the Manor. But in that demented modish dining-room it was ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... her reflection quite plainly. She was suddenly inspired to take the soft taffeta girdle from the waist of her dark blue muslin gown, and bind it turban-wise about her head. The effect was pleasingly modish and conventional, and she quickened her steps—satisfied. There was a tingle in the air that set her blood pleasantly in motion, and she established a rhythm of pace that made her feel almost as if she were walking ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... Something of the same sensation was upon him now. She was the sort of woman he had craved for always—slim, elegant, and what to him, with his quick powers of observation, counted for so much, she was modish, reflecting in her presence, her dress and carriage, even her speech, the best type of the prevailing fashion. She excited comment wherever she appeared. People, as he knew very well even now, were envying him his companion. And beneath ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... used to run wild, half clad and half starved, and yet never looked like a beggar, so pretty and so attractive was she. Six months had developed her into a woman and the training of Miss Pinwell, the pink of gentility, had given her the modish airs of a lady of quality. True, her appearance just now had little of this "quality," her walk being in fact somewhat limping and one-sided. But there was good reason for this defect. She had lost one of her high-heeled shoes, that with which she had battered the ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... over his well-groomed person. He was young, good-looking, his nails were beautifully polished, his pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle. These were of a soft putty shade; his coat was bottle-green, and his hat of the latest modish shape. A perfect exquisite, ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... time, or, indeed, till after his death—to the Bishop of Llandaff's anti-French-Revolution sermon on The Wisdom and Goodness of God in having made both Rich and Poor, was signed without qualification, "By a Republican." He refused to join in "the idle Cry of modish lamentation" over the execution of the French King, and defended the other executions in France as necessary. He condemned the hereditary principle, whether in the Monarchy or the House of Lords. The existence of ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... came leisurely down a path, her books under one arm, the other hand holding a class paper which she examined in a cursory way as she walked. She wore a dark skirt and a simple shirtwaist, both quite modish and becoming, and her shoes were the admiration and envy of half the girls at the school. Dorothy Knerr used to say that "Mary Louise's clothes always looked as if they grew on her," but that may have been partially accounted for by the grace of her slim form and her unconscious ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... this dim transparency of rosepoint modelling itself over the immature slenderness of nineteen: and she and her maid Catherine and Mrs. Bendish had spent patient hours trying it on and modifying it to suit the fashion of the day. Laura had refused to impose upon Isabel either her own modish elegance or Yvonne's effect of the arresting and bizarre. "Isn't she almost too slight for it?" Yvonne had asked, and Laura for all answer had hummed a little ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... Circumstances tollerable for the future, I perswaded my Consort to abridge her self of some superfluous Charge which we cou'd not well bear any longer. First we disposed of our Coach, and then our Acquaintance was reform'd of Course; by Degrees a multitude of modish Visitors dwindled away into two or three formal Matrons, which at last ended in a Decent Apartment in a Monastery, where she spent her Time agreeably enough when I was in the Camp. Hitherto the main ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... winding along the banks of the river, as far as the church, that she might see the fine new monument raised to the memory of Lady Modish. Her sisters insisted on going to the next village, as they wanted to buy muslin for a doll's frock. After some little altercation on each side Caroline, with affectionate condescension, gave way to her sisters' inclination, though, as eldest, she had the right of choice, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... slipped into one of the simple house dresses she had worn at the ranch. She had noticed that forenoon that both Belle and Hortense Starkweather were dressed in the most modish of gowns—as elaborate as those of fashionable ladies. With no mother to say them nay, these young girls aped every new ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... with the beautiful old ballad, There came a ghost to Marg'ret's door. There is indeed no comparison. The changes made are nearly all either tinsel ornaments or mutilations of the traditional text, which an eighteenth century poetaster had sought to dress up to please the modish taste of the period. Nothing can be more out of key with the simple, direct, and graphic style of the Scottish ballads, dealing with elemental emotions and the situations arising therefrom, than a style founded on that of Pope, unless it be the style of the modern poet ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... that which is rarely found, except in persons of high birth. Darrell's eyes were of that clear gray which it is difficult to distinguish from blue by day and black at night; and his rich brown hair, which he could not consent to part with, even on the promise of a new and modish peruke from his adoptive father, fell in thick glossy ringlets upon his shoulders; whereas Jack's close black crop imparted the peculiar bullet-shape we have ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... much what periwigged phrase Won the heart of this sentimental Quaker, At what gold-laced speech of those modish days She listened,—the mischief ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... tolerable figure, till he sets out with the hopes of pleasing some one of us. No sooner he takes that in hand, but he pleases every one else by-the-bye. It has an immediate effect upon his behaviour. There is Colonel Ranter, who never spoke without an oath, till he saw the Lady Betty Modish;[164] now never gives his man an order, but it is, "Pray, Tom, do it." The drawers where he drinks live in perfect happiness. He asked Will at the "George" the other day how he did? Where he used to say, "Damn it, it is so," he now believes there is some mistake: ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... said that black suited her, and because black was never out of fashion; black was an expression of her idiosyncrasy. She showed a certain elegance, and by comparison with the extreme disorder of Madame Foucault and the deshabille of Sophia her appearance, all fresh from a modish restaurant, was brilliant; it gave her an advantage over the other two—that moral advantage ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... jeeringly. "Some of us have hands to kiss and some regiments to fight. Harkee, macaroni. The general thinks 't would be a pity to spot those modish buskins and gloves. So much for ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... she gave a little start. "Some one is coming," she said, and, indeed, some one was coming. A man had just mounted the bridge from the Neuilly road and stood there for an instant surveying the two girls. He was a modish young gentleman, very splendidly attired, who carried himself with a dainty insolence, and he now came slowly towards the girls ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... might improve Religion, Politicks, or Love: Grand Keyber, Gormogons, Free Masons, And Heydeger, with all his gay Sons, Would find to suit, with Lectures there, Their Intellectuals to a Hair: Bodens might pick up Wit from thence, and lay The Drama of another Modish Play. So wise a Law would doubtless tend To prove our Senate, Learning's Friend; Whilst Trade, and such like fond Chimeras, Might wait more fit and ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... of Lewdness, Love, and Fighting: who, had he liv'd in our Days, would have made an excellent Town Bully, I wish there were not too much reason to say a modish Gentleman. But tho' old Homer took this way, Virgil, who writes with much more Judgment and Exactness, and follows him in many things, here thought fit to leave him; making his Hero, as I've said, not ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... arranged the whole party without a question, and who understood so little of modish airs as to suspect neither affectation nor trick in the absence of mind and indolence of manners which he observed in Mr Meadows, was utterly amazed by this interrogatory, and staring himself in return, said, "Sir, you seemed so thoughtful—I did not think—I did not suppose ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... yourself is almost always the most becoming, and, however that may be, it is the one that pleases you most. Women of leisure too often forget this; working women, also, in city and country alike. Since these last are costumed by dressmakers and milliners, in very doubtful imitation of the modish world, grace has almost disappeared from their dress. And has anything more surely the gift to please than the fresh apparition of a young working girl or a daughter of the fields, wearing the costume of her country, and ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... privileges which the gods confer upon young women whom they endow with good looks. In the half-freedom of the past year she had bought her own clothes, with only the nominal supervision of Miss Waring's assistant; and in her new spring raiment she was very much the young lady, and decidedly a modish one. Dan glanced from her to the young people at a neighboring table. Among the girls in the party none was prettier or more charmingly gowned than Marian. In the light of this proximity he watched her with a new attention, and he saw that her father, too, studied her covertly, as though realizing ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... praises of himself, and they only could be expected to peruse them, whose passions left them leisure for the contemplation of abstracted truth, and whom virtue could please by her native dignity without the assistance of modish ornaments.' Gent. Mag. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... ordinary stature, and very lean, wearing their black hair frizzled over their shoulders like the Germans, and grease it daily with fish oil, which gives them a nasty smell; yet they consider this as modish. They are extremely poor, egregious liars, the greatest thieves in the world, and very treacherous. They have never heard of any Christians except the Portuguese, with whom they had war for thirteen or fourteen years, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... enter on the present occasion. It is enough to state that in the earlier part of the seventeenth century bands or collars—bands stiffened and standing at the backward part, and bands falling upon the shoulder and breast—were articles of costume upon which men of expensive and modish habits ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... that Nigel returned home, a difference, and a striking difference, was observed in him. His person, of course, became more manly, his manner more assured, his dress more modish. It was impossible to deny that he was extremely good-looking, interesting in his discourse, and distinguished in his appearance. Endymion idolised him. Nigel was his model. He imitated his manner, caught the tone of his voice, and began ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... drinking room of the Cafe Sinister after his angry parting with Elsie Welcome, looked up suddenly and saw the street door open. He stood still staring. The new arrival was Mary Randall. She wore a smart tailored suit and a modish hat. Druce noted these details of costume, the shining bronze hair, the fresh complexion and the trim figure. ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... to the casual eye like the daughter of a wealthy man. She had put all of her autumn allowance for dress into a set of furs, those being something which no ingenuity could evolve at home. The rest of her outfit, even to the odd little scarlet velvet hat, with its successful and modish touch of the ugly, was the achievement of her own hands. Under its absurd and fashionable brim, her fresh face shone out, excessively pretty ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... respective language as to remain settled and unaltered; this stile is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and below refinement, ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... mother's withdrawing-room I fetched our chief household god, a small ancient silver goblet, and, filling it with wine, offered it to the stranger with what I supposed, no doubt wrongly, to be a modish bow. She drank a little, and then, at my urging, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... the result that he was sent to Europe for the grand tour, presumably with outward success, for on August 6, 1664, Mrs. Pepys informs Samuel that "Mr. Pen, Sir William's son, is come back from France and come to visit her. A most modish person, grown, ...
— The Tryal of William Penn and William Mead • various
... very pith and fiber of their mental quality. For the rich and the well-born it was rather an imported fashion, an attractive drapery laid over the surface of minds that were conventional down to the ground, the modish mental recreation of men who lived by custom and guided their steps in the well-worn paths of precedent. In America, as in England, as in France, itself, the formulae of radicalism were well pronounced by ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... Little John's defeat, and, popping out as soon as the fight was over, invited Arthur a Bland to join his band. The three men next continued their walk, until they met a "rose-leaf, whipped-cream youth," of whose modish attire and effeminate manners they made unmerciful fun. Boastfully informing his two companions he was going to show them how a quarter-staff should be handled, Robin challenged the stranger, who, suddenly dropping his affected manners, snatched a stake from the hedge and proceeded ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... parade their charms, the courtly dresses of those beauties of Bird-cage Walk, by St. James's Park, where "Lady Betty Modish" was born—full, long, bouffant brocades, hair piled high, long and graceful scarfs, and gloves reaching to the elbow. Even the rouge and powder were a mask to hide the cheek which did or did not blush when bold eyes were fastened upon it. Let us not be understood, however, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... store for her. She was engaged at two halls in the West End. Her horizon was fast receding and expanding. Homage became nightly tangible in bouquets, rings, brooches—things acceptable and (luckier than their donors) accepted. Even Sunday was not barren for Zuleika: modish hostesses gave her postprandially to their guests. Came that Sunday night, notanda candidissimo calculo! when she received certain guttural compliments which made absolute her vogue and enabled her to command, thenceforth, whatever terms ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... the flagstones gray with dust; An all-round east wind volleying straws and grit; ST. MARTIN'S STEPS, where every venomous gust Lingers to buffet, or sneap, the passing cit; And in the gutter, squelching a rotten boot, Draped in a wrap that, modish ten-year syne, Partners, obscene with sweat and grease and soot, A horrible hat, that once was just as fine; The drunkard's mouth a-wash for something drinkable, The drunkard's eye alert for casual toppers, The drunkard's neck stooped to a lot scarce thinkable, A living, ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... population, and the claim is also more imperative. The result is that, in order to keep up a decent appearance, the former habitually live hand-to-mouth to a greater extent than the latter. So it comes, for instance, that the American farmer and his wife and daughters are notoriously less modish in their dress, as well as less urbane in their manners, than the city artisan's family with an equal income. It is not that the city population is by nature much more eager for the peculiar complacency that ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Dunbury had taken to calling him in distinction from his uncle, was not yet arrived, as Tony had explained; but Ted, her younger brother, was very much on the scene, arrayed in all the extravagant niceties of modish attire affected by university undergraduates. At twenty, Ted Holiday was as handsome as the traditional young Greek god and possessed of a godlike propensity to do as he liked and the devil take the consequences. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... heard to say of Edward Sterling: "There is not a faculty of improvising equal to this in all my circle. Sterling rushes out into the clubs, into London society, rolls about all day, copiously talking modish nonsense or sense, and listening to the like, with the multifarious miscellany of men; comes home at night; redacts it into a Times Leader,—and is found to have hit the essential purport of the world's immeasurable babblement that day, with an accuracy beyond all other men. This is what the ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... the four-poster with a sheet spread over the lower part of her body. The ministrants had clothed it in the old black- silk dress, with its spreading seams and panels of different materials. It reminded Peter of the new dress he had meant to get his mother, and of the modish suit which at that moment molded his own shoulders and waist. The pitifulness of her sacrifices trembled in Peter's throat. He pressed his lips together, and nodded silently to the black Ladies ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... "a wig, that is modish and gay". 'He always wore a wig' — said the 'Jessamy Bride' in her reminiscences to Prior — 'a peculiarity which those who judge of his appearance only from the fine poetical head of Reynolds, would not suspect; and on one occasion some person contrived to seriously ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... your Grace! Many a day, many a day! Ah, we are a sad, naughty court, I fear," answered my Lady, with a penitent sigh. Her chief desire was to be a modish person; therefore she would not be left out of the iniquitous monde, though her face, if nothing else, placed her safely beyond the pale of Whitehall sin. One of the saddest things in life is to be balked in an honest ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... for the present," said Mr. Harrison. He regarded her across the small table with perfectly apparent satisfaction. Nothing bucolic here; a dark and gypsy beauty which glowed and kindled beside the fainter types about them, a wholly modish smartness, an elusive something to which he could not put a name, which gave him always the sense of glad pursuit. There had been in his early attitude, as she had divined, just a trifle of the King and the Beggar Maid, the Town Mouse ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... GAZETTES propagate your Name! Ye blazing Patriots who of Freedom boast, 'Till in a gaol your Liberties are lost! Ye Noble Fair, who, satisfied with Show, Court the light, frothy flatteries of a Beau! Ye high-born Peers, whose ardor to excel, Grows from the beauties of some modish Belle! Ye jocund Crowd, of every degree, Welcome, thrice welcome, to this place and me! —Haste—on the Altar your best offerings leave; And, in return, my favouring smiles receive! First let the PEERAGE come:—'tis my decree To pay ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... honeymooners ever come to Waterloo Bridge? I doubt it. Imagine turning from that sublime sweep of greys and sombre gilts, that perfect arrangement of blank masses and sweeping lines, to the mottled pink of a cheek lately virgin, the puny curve of a modish eyebrow, the hideous ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... well spoken; gentlemanlike^, gentlemanly; ladylike; civil, polite &c (courteous) 894. polished, refined, thoroughbred, courtly; distingue [Fr.]; unembarrassed, degage [Fr.]; janty^, jaunty; dashing, fast. modish, stylish, chic, trendy, recherche; newfangled &c (unfamiliar) 83; all the rage, all the go^; with it, in, faddish. in court, in full dress, in evening dress; en grande tenue [Fr.] &c (ornament) 847. Adv. fashionably &c adj.; for fashion's sake. Phr. a la francaise, a la parisienne; a l' anglaise ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Jean. I had a long and much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit, nor have I any cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tittle-tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disquieted with the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the country.... A certain late publication ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... whom the young hussar, [2] The whiskered votary of Waltz and War, His night devotes, despite of spur and boots; A sight unmatched since Orpheus and his brutes: Hail, spirit-stirring Waltz!—beneath whose banners A modern hero fought for modish manners; 20 On Hounslow's heath to rival Wellesley's [3] fame, Cocked, fired, and missed his man—but gained his aim; Hail, moving muse! to whom the fair one's breast Gives all it can, and bids us take the rest. Oh! for the flow of ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... Q. Ign. The Modish Couple is its name; myself Stood gossip to it, and I will support This play against ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... nor parades of fashion Tempted his genius; his the great highway Where, free from courtly pride and modish passion, Toil tramps, free ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... was of a pure, smooth, fair-haired appearance, and strangely clean for his age and occupation. His profile was of a symmetry he had not yet himself begun to appreciate; his dress was scrupulous and modish; and though he was short, nothing outward about him confirmed the more sinister of Florence's two adjectives. Nevertheless, her poor opinion of him was plain in her expression as she made her present intrusion upon his working hours. ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... "lubly," the eyes alluded to were like "lightenin' bugs," but from the voice and gestures of the singer Mrs. Martin confusedly felt that they were intended for HERS, and even the refrain that "she dressed so neat and looked so sweet" was glaringly allusive to her own modish mourning. Alternately flushing and paling, with a hysteric smile hovering round her small reserved mouth, the unfortunate gentlewoman was fain to turn to the window to keep her countenance until it was concluded. ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... be used for making this pretty jacket, which is extremely modish, and very comfortable for the cool days and evenings sure to be experienced during summer outings. Six skeins of fourfold Germantown will be sufficient; or four skeins of one color for the body and two of white for the border, if ...
— Handbook of Wool Knitting and Crochet • Anonymous
... attractive and pathetic Concert to the early time of Titian. To express a definitive opinion on the latter point in the present state of the picture would be somewhat hazardous. The portrait of the modish young cavalier and that of the staid elderly clerk, whose baldness renders tonsure impossible—that is just those portions of the canvas which are least well preserved—are also those that least conclusively ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... for the patronage of London society. For him a pretty girl is a pretty girl, and it is enough. He seats her comfortably in a chair and paints her as she is. One cannot imagine him turning her into a nymph, a shepherdess, or a priestess of Hymen, or painting her with a very modish coiffure on her head and a pair of blue-ribboned sandals on her bare feet. These things Reynolds did habitually and moreover put his figures in attitudes with up-rolled eyes and extended arms and filled out his larger canvases with ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... the body and a charm against that dreaded corpulency which, in the end, caused his downfall. Some recreation from his work even the most strenuous artist must have; and Mr. Brummell naturally sought his in that exalted sphere whose modish elegance accorded best with his temperament, the sphere of le plus beau monde. General Bucknall used to growl, from the window of the Guards' Club, that such a fellow was only fit to associate with tailors. But that was an old soldier's fallacy. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... and his tone implied that it was the pride of the town, its real treasure. Even to Agatha's absorbed and preoccupied mind it presented a striking contrast to the old red house, which had received her so graciously into its spacious comfort. She marveled that anything so fresh and modish as the house before her could have come into being in the old town. It was next to a certainty that there was a model laundry with set tubs beyond the kitchen, and equally sure that no old horsehair lounge subtly invited the wearied ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... ignoring the presence of Captain Morton who was pretending to be deeply buried in the National Tribune, but who was watching the Judge and trying to summon courage to speak. The Judge unbuttoned his modish gray coat that nearly reached his heels and put his hands behind him for a moment, as he puffed and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Lady Giddygad, came down From spending half a year in town, With cranium full of balls and plays, Routs, fetes, and fashionable ways, Caus'd in her country-town, so quiet, Unus'd to modish din and riot, No small confusion and amaze, "Quite a sensation," is the phrase, Like that, which puss, or pug, may feel When rous'd from slumber by your heel, Or drowsy ass, at rider's knock, Or——should ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various |
