"Prim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stand upright beneath the decaying ceiling. Worn boards and ragged walls, and the rusty ribs fallen from the fireplace, are all that meet your eyes, but I see a round, unsteady, waxcloth-covered table, with four books lying at equal distances on it. There are six prim chairs, two of them not to be sat upon, backed against the walls, and between the window and the fireplace a chest of drawers, with a snowy coverlet. On the drawers stands a board with coloured marbles for the game of solitaire, and I have only to open the drawer with ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... his word, packed up his portmanteau, and paid his bill. He had just completed this heavy operation, when somebody wanted to speak to him, and a sort of half-clerical, half-legal sort of looking gentleman was introduced, who, with a starched face and prim air, said that he came to request in writing the name of the officer who was dressed as a devil in the masquerade of the ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... other modes of expression of lofty thought and rapt feeling require not only a free outlet but natural and unrestrained surroundings. The true poet is at home in the forest or on the mountain rather than in prim parterres. The philosopher sees most clearly and reasons most suggestively, when his faculties are not cramped by the need of observing political rules and police regulations. And the historian, when he is tied down to a mere investigation and recital of facts, without reference to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... mile from the city, so the dirt will not annoy you; and you will meet such pleasant people there that you will not mind the smoke. I am sure, Mary, you will come away quite in love with Limeton, and prefer it to this prim ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... reason why we shouldn't stay as long as we wish. You are surely not so prim that you are doing it ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... into my room some morning early and look out to the gate, the cobwebs must be diamond-sprinkled on the circle at the doorway, the catalpa trees must stand like stiff, prim, proper, knickerbockered footmen, on either side of the hedge, the ground must rise in a very gradual swell and culminate in the rose- covered gate. Throw it a kiss for me—(I wonder if there could be any ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... where he treated them with truly romantic truculence. He was himself always, moreover, and ideally cared as little for nature as a fairy-story teller. In this sense he was more romantic than the romanticists. His "Automedon," his portrait of General Prim, even his "Salome," are wilful in a degree that is either superb or superficial, as one looks at them; but at any rate they are romantic a outrance. At the same time it was unmistakably the aspect of things rather than their ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... you were much sought after," said Clelia, with a prim shyness not like her own stormy confession. Sabrina, with her white hair and her young face seemed somehow set apart from love and the sweet uses ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... town itself is beautiful, and pleases most when one's back is turned to it. It must be very ancient, for I well remember that five years ago, when I matriculated there (and shortly after received notice to quit), it had already the same gray, prim look, and was fully furnished with catch-polls, beadles, dissertations, thes dansants, washerwomen, compendiums, roasted pigeons, Guelphic orders, graduation coaches, pipe-heads, court-councilors, law-councilors, expelling councilors, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to enjoy discussing it. Page averred that the whole affair had always passed his comprehension, "—what that ease-loving, vain, indulgent, trivial-minded grandson of Henri Quatre could ever have seen for all those years in that stiff, prim, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... had a fair income, and so this prim, precise, exact and crystallized mode of education was continued. Out of her great love for her child, the mother sent him away from home when he was eight years old. Of course there were tears on both sides; but now a male man must educate him, and women were to be dropped out of the equation—this ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... room was ridiculously large! On the smooth white walls reddish shadows moved in a fantastic procession, and from the big chintz-covered lounge the monstrous blue poppies leaped out of the firelight. The high canopy over the bed was draped with prim folds of damask, and the coverlet was of some quaint crocheted work that hung in fringed ends to the floor. Here again from the threadbare velvet carpet the blue poppies stared back ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... is deep, that FEESH. So deep I no can understand hims. They tella me much other peoples no can understand hims too. He makee much policee with his Foreign Relations. I ask a much people to tella me who are his Foreign Relations. They laugh great deal and tella me Spain and General PRIM. No knowee Spain countree in Japan. I no tink it much of a countree, no havee muchee—how you call—Commerce. One ting puzzle me great deal. Here much freedom. Sometimes I tink, too much. But that Island—how you ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... made any other plans for me to-morrow morning?" inquired Miss Welland in a prim and social tone, belied by the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... door was open; for the girls were afraid of robbers, and left their bed-room door wide open at night, as a natural and obvious means of self-defence. The girls slept together; and the frill of the pale sister's prim little night-cap was buried in the other ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... impossible the demure, prim thing. Sure all the world is hypocrisy Well, I thank my stars, whatsoever sufferings I have, I have none in reputation. I wonder at the men; I could never think her handsome. She has really a good shape and complexion but no mein; and ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... glimpses I used to catch of her at that time, slim-legged and swift, and shrilly sweet of voice as a lark, and as shyly a-flutter at the motion of a hand toward her, or else seated prim as any grown maiden, with grave eyes of attention upon her task ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... to buy a house owned by so famous a man," she insinuated gently one day, after vainly trying to awaken a proper enthusiasm in a prim little woman who was talking ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... only when they were safe back in the sailboat again, going down the bay with their precious freight, the hoarded money all spent and nothing to think of but tiller and sail. I looked at the unworn carpet, the glass vases on the mantelpiece with their prim bunches of bleached swamp grass and dusty marsh rosemary, and I could read the history of Mrs. Tilley's best ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... were seen Good pinners edg'd with colberteen;[4] Her petticoat, transform'd apace, Became black satin, flounced with lace. "Plain Goody" would no longer down, 'Twas "Madam," in her grogram gown. Philemon was in great surprise, And hardly could believe his eyes. Amaz'd to see her look so prim, And she admir'd as much at him. Thus happy in their change of life, Were several years this man and wife: When on a day, which prov'd their last, Discoursing o'er old stories past, They went by chance, amidst their talk, To the churchyard, to take a walk; When Baucis ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... have ever met, and I presume it is attributable to the fact that she has never been thrown with children, and having always associated with older persons, has insensibly imbibed their staid thoughts, and adopted their quiet ways. I should not be more astonished to see my prim puritanical grandmother yonder step down from the frame, and turn a somersault on the carpet, or indulge in leap-frog, than to find Regina guilty of any boisterous hoidenish behaviour, or unrefined, undignified language. If she had been born ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... fancy store, kept by two prim but pleasant spinster sisters. Besides newspapers, stationery, thread and needles, and so forth, they kept a stock of toys, candies, and pickled limes, which insured them a run of custom among the young folk, who always spoke of them as the Little Women. Not to disappoint ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... "Partant pour la Syrie" Peace conditions "Pekin, Siege of" Pelcoq, Jules, artist Pelletan, Eugene Picard, Ernest Pietri, Prefect Pigeon-Post Piquet, M. Pius IX Pollard family Pontifical Zouaves Pontlieue (Le Mans) Pont-Noyelles, battle of Postal-services, see Balloon, Courier, Pigeon. Prim, General Prussians, not ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... name With classic Rogers shall go down to fame, Be this thy crowning work! In my young days How often have I with a child's fond gaze Pored on the pictured wonders thou hadst done: Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison! All Fielding's, Smollett's heroes, rose to view; I saw, and I believed the phantoms true. But, above all, that most romantic tale Did o'er my raw credulity prevail, Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things, That serve at once for jackets and for ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a rustle of dresses down the stairs outside, and two thin little girls, looking excessively proper and prim, came in with an elderly gentlewoman who was their governess and wore a pince-nez to impart the necessary suggestion of a superior intellect. They were the Miss Mutlows, sisters of one of the day-boarders, ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... and inquiring eye on me. "I'm Captain Pendarves' housekeeper," she said, with a prim and bridling air, and once more her expression challenged me. "Deny it if you can, sir!" was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... well enough the way the votes would run; that every grog-shop in the ward was his recruiting station; that all Farnham's tenants would vote against their landlord; that even the respectable Budsey and the prim Scotch gardener were sure for him against their employer. Farnham's conscience which had roused him to this effort against Metzger's corrupt rule, would not permit him to ask for the votes of his own servants and tenants, and he ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... prim, cityish way, and Sarah and Delia were so much astonished thereat that they forgot to bow at all, and Delia stared rudely at her black dress. There ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... his son to go as well as he did, and Miss Virginia too, poor thing. The knocker seemed to make the house opposite echo very strangely, as I thumped; but when the door was opened in a few minutes, everything in the hall seemed very proper and prim, while the maid who came looked as stiff and disagreeable as ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... a man in the case already." "Oh no," said Father, "country air does her such a lot of good, and when I take the children away for a change I don't forbid any innocent pleasures." My darling Father, I had to keep a tight hand on myself so as not to kiss him then and there. They were all so prim, with their eyes glued to their plates as if they had never eaten rum pudding before. It is true that Ferdinand winked at Marina, but of course she noticed nothing. They soon put away their first helps, and they all took a second, and then they went on ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... seven Mrs. Alfred appeared. She looked more prim and nice and neat than ever in this black silk dress with old lace on the open square in front and on the ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... wonderful eyes of the darkest blue and hair of the deepest brown that waved and clustered around the temples—a mouth that was winsome and sweet, a small and aristocratic nose, a chin that was slightly determined, giving her altogether a queenly air, as she sat so straight and prim ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... behind ears the natural prominence of which was enhanced by her grayish hair being drawn up tightly and rolled into a "bun" on the very top of the head. She was the personification of neatness, if such be the word to characterize the prim stiffness of a flat-figured, elderly spinster. She wore large, square-toed, common-sense shoes, with low heels capped with rubber cushions, which, as I was shortly to discover, had earned for the lady the sobriquet of "Old Gum Heels." What her real name was I never found out. Nobody knew. She ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... autumn of 1868 the throne of Spain had been vacant in consequence of a revolution in which General Prim had been the leading actor. It was not easy to discover a successor for the Bourbon Isabella; and after other candidatures had been vainly projected it occurred to Prim and his friends early in 1869 that a suitable candidate ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... utensils in the kitchen. Left alone for a moment Dagmar recovered her composure and glanced about the room. It seemed almost fragrant in its clean freshness. She had never occupied such a room, with that peculiar, bracing atmosphere. The small mantel with its prim vases looked a veritable home shrine, and the center table with the sprigs of budding lilacs, seemed to the forlorn girl something to reverence. The rag rugs under her feet were so spotless, the curtains so white—it suddenly occurred to the girl these things could not exist in the ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... and are therefore less interesting as self-revelations. Prosperity is not always the best condition under which to produce the highest work, and the temperament of Rembrandt was so peculiar that there is little wonder that the prim Dutchmen were not entirely captivated by his exuberant sensuality, or that we ourselves reserve our admiration principally for the more sombre and mysterious products of his later years after misfortune began to fall ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... the day, the go-ahead lads of that time, had let down the flaps of their cocked hats into slouching, and we must say, most slovenly circular brims. There was a sort of free-and-easy look affected in that day about the head, totally at enmity with the prim rigidity of the cocked beaver; you might have taken off your chapeau rond, as it then came to be called, and you might have sat on it—it would have been never the worse; but not so with its stiff old father—no ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the Protestant religion at Court at all. All that the Protestants do there is to hear sermons—it is all so dismal and noisy. But here, with you, you have a proper soul. It seems to me that you are like a little herb-garden, very prim and plain, but living and wholesome and pleasant to walk in at sunset. And these Protestants that I know are more like a paved court at noon—all hot and hard and glaring. They give me the headache. Tell me all ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... of prandial attractions, Littimer tried to occupy himself by looking at the people around him. The omnifarious assembly included pale, prim-whiskered young clerks; shabby, lonely, sallow young women, whose sallowness and shabbiness stamped them with the mark of integrity; other females whose specious splendor was not nearly so reassuring; ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... and her father had a discussion as to whom it could be, Raeburn maintaining that it was Thomas a Kempis. Wishing to verify it, Erica went to a bookseller's and asked for the "Imitation of Christ." A rather prim-looking dame ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... I met and loved in that brief month in Paris, I cherish tenderer memories. Prim little Pauline Deschapelles! How clearly I can still see the respectable brass plate on the door of your little flat—"Mademoiselle Deschapelles—Modes et Robes;" and indeed the "modes et robes" were true enough. For you were in truth a very hard-working ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... important men who were heirs to some snug country property, and their gambrel-roofed houses odorous with traditions of old-time visits by some worthies of the Colonial period, or of the Revolution. The good, prim dames, in starched caps and spectacles, who presided over such houses, were proud of their tidy parlors,—of their old India china,—of their beds of thyme and sage in the garden,—of their big Family Bible with brazen clasps,—and, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... adventurers would beat in the long run, but they would go home not wholly unlearned. Should they stay to a turkey-shoot, they would see in it the Occidental analogue of their own public matches—more picturesque, if not quite so prim and scientific. Strictly, it presupposes conditions non-existent in England—a community, for instance, first of hunters, and second of hunters with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... asked if Clem meant Mr. Fulmort of St. Matthew's, Whittingtonia, and when he said "Yes, he lived in the clergy house," he began regularly to play him off, asking the most absurd questions about fasts and feasts and vigils and decorations, and Clem answered them all in his prim little self-sufficient way, just as if he thought he was on the high- road to be St. Clement the Martyr, till I was ready ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Although the Duke was enemie to him, Yet he most Christian-like laments his death: And for my selfe, Foe as he was to me, Might liquid teares, or heart-offending groanes, Or blood-consuming sighes recall his Life; I would be blinde with weeping, sicke with grones, Looke pale as Prim-rose with blood-drinking sighes, And all to haue the Noble Duke aliue. What know I how the world may deeme of me? For it is knowne we were but hollow Friends: It may be iudg'd I made the Duke away, So shall my name with Slanders tongue be wounded, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Lucy Dayton so much disliked and dreaded, was a cousin of Mr. Dayton, and was a prim, matter-of-fact maiden of fifty, or thereabout. That she was still in a state of single blessedness was partially her own fault, for at twenty she was engaged to the son of a wealthy farmer who lived near her father. But, alas! ere the wedding day arrived, there came to the ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... even uglier. Rows of red brick villas in the suburbs of a town in the Midlands are, one would suppose, as hideous as human half-wittedness could invent or endure. But they are different. They are complete; they are, in their way, compact; rounded and finished with an effect that may be prim or smug, but is not raw. The surroundings of them are neat, if it be in a niggling fashion. But American ugliness is not complete even as ugliness. It is broken off short; it is ragged at the edges; even its worthy objects have around them a sort of halo of refuse. Somebody said of the rugged ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... hours, during same three or four days, a very prim and devout-looking Episcopal clergyman, with a cast in his eye, had visited Alonzo. According to his card, he was the Rev. Melton Hargrave, of Cincinnati. He said he had retired from the ministry on account of his health. If he had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... put his five great-coats in front; but was reconciled when little Miss Sharp was made to quit the carriage, and mount up beside him—when he covered her up in one of his Benjamins, and became perfectly good-humoured—how the asthmatic gentleman, the prim lady, who declared upon her sacred honour she had never travelled in a public carriage before (there is always such a lady in a coach—Alas! was; for the coaches, where are they?), and the fat widow with the brandy-bottle, took their places inside—how the porter asked them all ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she began to disengage her hand from his—loosened the slim fingers one by one, all the while watching him sideways with prim lips pursed ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Prim-rose first borne child of Ver, Merry Spring times Herbinger, With her bels dimme. Oxlips, in their Cradles growing, Mary-golds, on ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... becoming—rather—are they not?" And here, having arranged the glasses in the ordinary form of spectacles, I applied them gingerly in their proper position; while Madame Simpson, adjusting her cap, and folding her arms, sat bolt upright in her chair, in a somewhat stiff and prim, and indeed, in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... not at all as you and I had imagined it to be. There is no high wall around it as there is at Fort Trumbull. It reminds one of a prim little village built around a square, in the center of which is a high flagstaff and a big cannon. The buildings are very low and broad and are made of adobe—a kind of clay and mud mixed together—and the walls are very thick. At every window are heavy wooden shutters, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... tower door. Kindly tell her, Augustina, that I will let her have the key of it. And kindly tell her also—as from yourself, of course—that she will be treating us all with courtesy if she does come home at a reasonable hour. We have been a very quiet, prim household all these years, and Mrs. Denton, for all her virtues, has ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... twisted yews, no weeping willows; the few fir trees hold themselves stiffly up, as though in pride at this triumph of the vegetable over the animal; and the great bushes of faded geranium only throw into relief the regular lines of limestone mounds, each with its prim wooden cross of advertisement. Always an ugly and a dreary place, it was, when I saw it a few days after the relief, more dreary than ever; for the sun, whose presence makes the difference of a season in ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... in her behaviour, and such a laughing hoyden! Pastorella had with him the allowance of being blameless; but what was that towards being praiseworthy? To be only innocent is not to be virtuous! He afterwards spoke so much against Mrs. Dipple's forehead, Mrs. Prim's mouth, Mrs. Dentifrice's teeth, and Mrs. Fidget's cheeks that she grew downright in love with him; for it is always to be understood that a lady takes all you detract from the rest of her sex to be a gift to her. In a word, things went so far that I was dismissed. The next, as I said, ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... orchard out in back where grew the apples which sometimes gave her an "upset"; the garden where grandpa spent hours and hours "cultivating" his vegetables; and grandma's own particular garden, which was given over to tall gaudy hollyhocks, and prim rows of verbena, snap-dragon, phlox, spicy pinks, heliotrope, and other flowers such as ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... told you, has hardly any garden; having the sea, it doesn't need one. But there is a little formal place about twenty paces across, set, as it were, in the heart of the House. A small prim square, bounded on the north, south and east by the House itself, and on the west by the cliff and the sea. There is a stone balustrade to divide the garden from space. In the middle of the square is a stone basin with becalmed water-lilies ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... less jealous arrangement of drapery which the Beauty of the last century had insisted on as presenting her most fittingly to the artist. She rolled up the sleeves of her dress, she turned down its prim collar and neck, and glanced from her glass to the portrait, from the portrait back to the glass. Myrtle was not blind nor dull, though young, and in many things untaught. She did not say in so many words, "I too am a beauty," ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "Take off that prim little cap. Tie up your hair with black ribbon, and put on a blouse. Then you will be ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... dramatic entertainment censored by a frail, prim little thing like Miss Beach tickled his burly sense of humor. "It would be a horrible thing if I should go to see anything vulgar, wouldn't it?" he observed. "But I think I'll take a chance. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... who once a week thumped it for an hour and the sum of two-and-sixpence gathered her shawl about her and tied the ribbons of her bonnet beneath her pointed chin: the little girls were also enshawled by prim figures who now materialised from the shadowy seats where they had waited for this moment; and the boys, with a hurried touching of caps to Mr. Eliot, went clattering out through the flagged and panelled passage into the High Street. Hilaria, by the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... I don't know what Uncle Win would do with a little girl! Miss Recompense Gardiner keeps the house, and she's as prim as the crimped edge of an apple pie. And there is ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... problem of his calling gradually became a standing vexation. It fell under the class of conundrums, and one remembered from childhood that it is mean to be told the answer; so I could not say to Mister Perkins—for it was characteristic of the prim little man that no properly constituted person could have said Perkins—"By the way, what is your line of things?" or any more ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... standing prim, erect, and stiff, fell limply into a convenient rocking chair, and looked closely at this orphaned nephew who had come ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... to have them at fifty," replied Elise; "you'll be such a charming middle-aged lady, Patty. A little prim, perhaps, ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... bye," said Dymock, "the question is, what is to be done now? I am afraid that aunt Margaret will look prim and stately if I carry the little one up to the Tower; however, I see not what else to do. Who is afraid? But put your fire out, Shanty, and come with us. You shall carry the bantling, and I will take the lanthorn. Mayhap, aunt Margaret may think this arrangement the more genteel ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... Davis are sitting on that bench, smoking tobacco from long silver pipes; and by them are Fenton and Wishington, who have both tried to follow Drake's path around the world, and failed, though by no fault of their own. The short, prim man, in the huge yellow ruff, is Richard Hawkins, the admiral's hereafter ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... they ended. The cinders went on another ten feet and petered out. Beyond, the fields closed in. Brett looked up at the sun. It was lower now in the west, its light getting yellow and late-afternoonish. He turned and looked back at the train. The cars stood high and prim, empty, silent. He walked back, climbed in, got his bag down from the rack, pulled on his jacket. He jumped down to the cinders, followed them to where they ended. He hesitated a moment, then pushed between the knee-high stalks. Eastward across the field he could ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... midst of a hostile population, the little band of worshippers was armed to the teeth. The father carried his "plain falling band" and steeple-crowned hat with a stiff air, and also carried lethal weapons. His prim wife and daughters bare Bibles, and his serving men, muskets. "Like a servant of the Lord, With his Bible and his sword," the unflinching old soldier of the Commonwealth strode manfully from his homestead to his religious duties, not unprepared to deal with any foes ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... the most imposing mansion, and often have I seen the old house shining with lights across its whole broadside of windows, and gay with the sound of a dozen French violins. The garden, now a wilderness, was the pride of the island. Its prim arbors, its spring and spring-house, its flowerbeds, where, with infinite pains, a few hardy plants were induced to blossom; its cherry-tree avenue, whose early red fruit the short summer could scarcely ripen; its annual attempts at vegetables, which never came to maturity,—formed ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... for him the danger to which he's exposed from himself?" I asked. "Look out sharp, if he has lately been too prim. He'll presently take a day off, treat us to some exhibition that will ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... though we were poor I was to take the fresh air," replied the child in a prim little voice, out of which all ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... gradually changed to "Lison." Since the birth of Jeanne she had become "Aunt Lison," a sort of poor relation whom everyone treated with a careless familiarity which hid a good-natured contempt. She was prim and very timid even with her sister and brother-in-law, who liked her as they liked everyone, but whose affection was formed of an indifferent ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... do let them have one day in which they can howl and racket and frolic to their hearts' content. A holiday isn't a holiday without plenty of freedom and fun; and they shall have full swing once a week," Mrs. Bhaer used to say, when prim people wondered why banister-sliding, pillow-fights, and all manner of jovial games were allowed under the once ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Tredgold sat in the private office of Tredgold and Son, land and estate agents, gazing through the prim wire blinds at the peaceful High Street of Binchester. Tredgold senior, who believed in work for the young, had left early. Tredgold junior, glad at an opportunity of sharing his father's views, had passed most of the work on to a clerk ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Richard, with something like a sigh. "Out in the country everybody knows everybody else, and outside of a few prim people all are as sociable as can be. But I suppose if one wants to make money one must expect to give up ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... as he imagines it to be? But if independence is indeed a boon,—and I, for one, am too thoroughbred a New Englander ever to doubt it,—it is not the only good, nor even the highest. The nettle, standing straight and prim, asking no favors of anybody, may rail at the grape-vine, which must lay hold of something, small matter what, by which to steady itself; but the nettle might well be willing to forego somewhat of its self-sufficiency, if by so doing ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... in the avenue, and who carried upon his arm a half-empty basket of cheap wares. The man was ragged; his toes were thrusting through his shoes; it was evident that he wore no linen, and a week's growth of beard dirtily stubbled his chin,—in a word, he was a man from whom M. Chateaudoux's prim soul positively shrank. M. Chateaudoux went quickly by, fearing to be pestered for alms. The hawker, however, remained seated upon the bench, drawing idle patterns upon the gravel with a hazel stick stolen from ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... at the door, and in a few minutes they were deposited before the prim exterior of ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... her the Rose Queen," Barlow was communing with himself. For the oval face with its olive skin, as fair as a Kashmiri girl's, was certainly beautiful. The black hair was smoothed back from a wide low forehead, after the habit of the Mahratti women; the prim simplicity of this seeming to add to the girlish effect. A small white-and-gold turban, even with its jauntiness, seemed just the very thing to check the austere simplicity. The girl's eyes, like Ajeet's, were the eyes of some one unafraid, of one born to a caste that felt ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... the Abbess observing, with a prim aspect, that she had read quite enough concerning such worldly vanities, and the Count of Crevecoeur, breaking out, "Aroint thee, deceitful witch!—Why, this device smells rank as the toasted cheese in a rat trap.—Now fie, and double fie, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Strand, past Villiers, Essex, Salisbury, Northumberland and many more streets whose names tell of vanished splendors, whose dingy lengths are smoke-blackened, and far enough off from the whole aroma of Belgravia, is Craven street. The houses are all of a pattern—prim, dingy, small-windowed habitations, but within this one there must be comfort, for the fire-flames dance on the meek minute panes and a heavy curl of smoke is cutting the air above its square, business-like little chimney-pot. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... self-respecting and historical village, tolerated no villas. If such abodes ventured to arise, they sprouted timidly in the fields beyond its boundaries. Moreover, the age and history of Highfield Cottage were too widely known for any change of name. The cottage was connected with the high road by a prim little garden and a red-tiled footpath; eight long narrow windows commanded a satisfactory outlook—including Littlecote Hall—a square white mansion withdrawn in dignified retirement behind elms and beeches, in age the contemporary of its ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... to the scene of the crime—a high, dingy, narrow-chested house, prim, formal, and solid, like the century which gave it birth. Lestrade's bulldog features gazed out at us from the front window, and he greeted us warmly when a big constable had opened the door and let us in. The ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... about her that neither grief nor poverty could destroy. She was so unmistakably the gentle-woman. In the simple, but dainty white cap, with its floating strings, which modestly covered her dark waving hair, the plain black dress and prim collar fastened with its mourning pin, she made a reposeful picture of the old-fashioned conception of ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... prim has crossed the way, He sprawls their nimble feet below, But what care they for yea-and-nay, Still ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... the way the ladies ride, Prim, prim, prim; This is the way the gentlemen ride, Trim, trim, trim. Presently come the country-folks, Hobbledy gee, ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous
... the King of France, and having revenge on their oppressors on the field of Fontenoy. Elsewhere in every country of Europe do we discover them or their descendants in the front ranks, and at the helm of affairs—in Spain, O'Donnell and Prim; in France, Mac Mahon and Lally Tollendal; ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... sudden bursting forth of character and capacity that began with our grandfather! But as I go on in life, day by day, I become more of a bewildered child; I cannot get used to this world, to procreation, to heredity, to sight, to hearing; the commonest things are a burthen. The prim obliterated polite face of life, and the broad, bawdy, and orgiastic—or maenadic—foundations, form a spectacle to which no habit reconciles me; and "I could wish my days to be bound each to each" by the same open-mouthed wonder. They are ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at the door. Her eyes were shining with mischief. "You've got a visitor," she said. Maida could see that she was trying to keep her lips prim at the corners. She wondered who it was. Could ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... staid old chaplain, who had often assisted the surgeon and helped to fill cartridges, contributing his own cotton hose for the purpose when those government stores gave out in battle, and who never smiled, even when committing a marine to the briny deep; the purser, too, prim and business-like, looking as if he were a complicated key with an iron lock of his own strong chest, calculating perpetually the amount of dollars deposited in his charge, the total of pay to be deducted therefrom, and never making a mistake save when ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... off that bonnet, and let me see thee as thou art really; with thy hair about thy face. So." Peggy reached over and untied the bow as she spoke, then removed the prim little bonnet from her cousin's head. "How beautiful thee is," she commented gazing at the maiden with admiring eyes. "I think thee grows more so every time I see thee. That bonnet ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... this Tape, and was a bright red all over. She was disgustingly prim and formal, and could never bend herself a hair's breadth this way or that way, out of her naturally crooked shape. But, she was very potent in her wicked art. She could stop the fastest thing in the world, change the strongest thing into the weakest, and the most useful into the ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... prim mistress in the whole length and breadth of England, it was Matilda Worrick. She liked girls to be neatly dressed; she could not bear to see them out at what she called inclement hours. She would have ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... church very often,' said Betty, putting on a prim little air. 'We have several businesses there; but we don't tell every ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... his church, and, in short, became quite a demure pastor's wife. Occasionally my old fondness for fun would break out, to the horror of some of his antediluvian flock; but Ernest was very good, and bore patiently with me, and now I am as prim and precise as any old maid of sixty. At home I do as I like; that is, when Ernest likes it too. I sing, and play, and romp with the dogs and kittens; but the moment the door bell rings, lo! a demure matron receives her guests! Ernest's health is quite restored, and I am as happy ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... waiter smiled so broadly that he showed two long rows of white teeth. It could not be Dotty who amused him. Her conduct was all that is prim and proper. She sat beside her papa as motionless as a waxen baby, her eyes rolling right and left, as if they were jerked by a secret wire. It certainly could not have been Dotty. Then what was it the man saw which ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... had looked forward through a dull, disappointing day to an evening with Felicite Delord. She was expecting him—she would be greatly disappointed. He sighed a second time, for he was far from happy. Life seemed to be one long constant worry over money matters and Myra Nell. Being a prim, orderly man, he intensely disliked searching for mislaid articles, but he began a systematic hunt; for, knowing Myra Nell's peculiar irresponsibility, he was prepared to find the missing slipper anywhere between the hammock on the front gallery and the kitchen in the rear. However, ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... has long been settled.[2] The original editors did their work faithfully according to the editorial standards of their day; and they were well within the latitude allowed them by the terms of Clarendon's instructions when they occasionally omitted a passage, or when they exercised their somewhat prim and cautious taste in altering and polishing phrases that Clarendon had dashed down as quickly as his pen could move.[3] Later editors have restored the omitted passages and scrupulously reproduced Clarendon's own words. But no edition ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... considerable part in his political education. He was influential with the Regency in Spain, which succeeded Queen Isabel when that sovereign became too malodorous to be longer tolerated, and he was the personal friend of the Regent, General Prim, whose motto, "More liberal today than yesterday, more liberal tomorrow than today," he was fond of quoting. He was present in Madrid at the time of General Prim's assassination and often told of how this wise patriot, recognizing the unpreparedness ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... usum Scholarum. Per Alexandrum Humium ex antiqua et nobili gente Humiorum in Scotia, a prim{a^} stirpe quinta sobole oriundum. This work is dated October 1660, and is therefore merely a transcript. It is an epitome of Buchanan's History, and Chr. Irvine in Histor. Scot. Nomenclatura, calls it Clavis in Buchananum, and Bishop ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... yet considered the spiritual significance of slang? The dictionaries inform us that "slang is a conversational irregularity of a more or less vulgar type;" but that is not all. The prim definition refers merely to words, but I am rather more interested in considering the mental attitude which is indicated by the distortion and loose employment of words, and by the fresh coinages which seem to spring up every hour. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... divorce from her; she states, however, that she never at any time had physical relationships with Rosenthal, who was a man of fragile organization and health. Sacher-Masoch united himself to Hulda Meister, who is described by the first wife as a prim and faded but coquettish old maid, and by the biographer as a highly accomplished and gentle woman, who cared for him with almost maternal devotion. No doubt there is truth in both descriptions. It must be noted that, as Wanda clearly shows, apart from his abnormal sexual temperament, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ages and sizes thronged the spot; and the rumour of the day's doings even penetrated up the defiles of Taff Vawr and Taff Vach, bringing down old apple-faced farmers and their wives, who were told of a power and a speed that would alter everything, and do away with horses altogether. Prim, cosy, apple-faced people, innocent and primitive, little thought ye then of the changes which the clanking monster was to yield; how Grey Dobbin would see flying by a mass of wood and iron, thousands of tons of weight, bearing not only ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... noticed," rather grimly rejoined Mr. Ashe. Blue Bonnet's prim New England aunt had not suffered him to remain long in ignorance of her disapproval of ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... to possess our souls in patience until to-morrow," sighed Grace. "Isn't this a lovely, roomy house, Elfreda? I'm so glad, too, that there isn't a prim, stiff parlor. I like this immense living-room much better. The girls will surely like it. It will serve as a library too. That little room just off the hall will make such a convenient office for me. Imagine me as the head of a college house, with an office ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... species: Dr. Plot speaks of a fir-tree in Staffordshire, of 150 foot high, which some think of spontaneous growth; besides several more so irregularly standing, as shews them to be natives: But to put this at last out of controversie, see the extract of Mr. de la Prim's letter to the Royal Society, Transact. n. 277, and the old map of Crout, and of the yet (or lately) remaining firs, growing about Hatfield in the commons, flourishing from the shrubs and stubs of those trees, to which I refer the reader. As for buried trees of this sort, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... side, somewhat tight and tubby, with his chest out and his head back, went the prim figure of Mr. May, reminding one of a consequential bird of the smaller species. His plumbago-grey suit fitted exactly—save that it was perhaps a little tight. The jacket and waistcoat were bound with silk braid of exactly the same shade as the cloth. His ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... a dressing-gown and escorted him to an unexpectedly modern bathroom at the end of the corridor. When Quest returned, his toilet articles were all laid out for him with prim precision; the window was wide open, the blinds drawn, and a soft breeze was stealing through into the room. Below him, the park, looking more beautiful than ever in the morning sunshine, stretched away to a vista of ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he burst out. "You can't understand. You 're a girl. You like to be prim and neat, and to be good in deportment and ahead in your studies. You don't care for danger and adventure and such things, and you don't care for boys who are rough, and have life and go in them, and all that. You like good little boys in white collars, with clothes always clean and hair always ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... scarlet livery appeared. After exacting particular attention to his commands, my father quitted Mrs. Waddy, and we mounted the carriage, laughing at her deplorable eyes and prim lips, which he imitated for my amusement. 'A load is off my head,' he remarked. He asked me if splendour did not fatigue me also. I caught the answer from his face and replied that it did, and that I should like to go right on to Dipwell 'The Burgundy sleeps safe there,' said ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... If scandalous reports concerning a certain young man in Richmond should reach us here in the North, relating his unparalleled exploits in the giddier circles of our gay capital, I should know without the telling that it was our prim ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... old plainsmen wouldn't thank Major Lessard or any one else for disturbing their last, long sleep; the wide, unpeopled prairies had always been their choice in life, and I felt that they would rather be laid away in some quiet coulee, than in any conventional "city of the dead" with prim headstones and iron fences to shut them in. A Western man likes lots of room; dead or alive, it irks him to ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Prim, don't throw cold water on our little party," said Alicia. "You know how the conversation would run, with ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... a strong force. There were lords magnificently condescending to commoners; M.P.s who talked politics, and M.P.s who had had enough of that sort of thing at St Stephen's and didn't; hearty squires from adjacent county seats; prim bankers, with whom the said squires were anxious to be on good terms, since they were the priests of Mammon; officers from near garrison towns, gay and lighthearted, who devoted themselves to the fairer portion of the company; and a sprinkling of barristers, literary men, hardy explorers, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... me to walk or hunt with Xenophon, and to saunter through his kitchen or his grounds. And all because I could not show the requisite grammatical ticket. Could anything be more fascinating than the tale of Xenophon's prim yet most lovable young wife, or the glorious picture of the boy and girl lovers with which Xenophon ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... surroundings—crowed lustily from the cradle in which, after the fashion of the country, it was tightly strapped. It was a low, grimy room, with one square bit of a window, and far from clean. Dr. Gilly, the prim English biographer of Neff, quaintly says: "Cleanliness is not a virtue which distinguishes any of the people in these mountains; and, with such a nice sense of moral perception as they display, and with such strict attention to the duties of religion, it is astonishing that they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... boys, you see, and so the same rules do not apply to us, for girls always have to observe the conventions," said Nealie, with the prim little air which she sometimes put on for the sake ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... much of your pin in your dress, too little of our taste—too little of our elegance, too much of your what you call tidiness, or God know what! But never you mind dat so much, Miss Rose; and you not prim up your little mouth, but listen to me. Never you put in one pin before you ask yourself, Miss Rose, what for I do it? In every toilette that has taste there is above all—tenez—a character—a sentiment to be support; suppose your lady is ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... really know of this girl on whom he had bestowed the priceless boon of his society for life? How did he know what she was—he could not find the exact adjective to express his meaning, but he knew what he meant. Was she worthy of the boon? That was what it amounted to. All his life he had had a prim shrinking from the section of the feminine world which is connected with the light-life of large cities. Club acquaintances of his in London had from time to time married into the Gaiety Chorus, ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... surpris'd the darling rent: Where yawn'd the frieze is now become a doubt; And glory, at one entrance, quite shut out.(12) He scorns Florello, and Florello him; This hates the filthy creature; that, the prim: Thus, in each other, both these fools despise Their own dear selves, with undiscerning eyes; Their methods various, but alike their aim; The sloven and the fopling are the same. Ye whigs and tories! thus it fares with you, When party rage too warmly you pursue; ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... Frank? What am I to do? Think how desolate I am, how unfriended, how much in want of some one whom I can call a protector! I cannot have you always with me. You care more for the little finger of that prim piece of propriety down at the old dowager's than you do for me and all my sorrows." This was true, but Frank did not say that it was true. "Lord Fawn is at any rate respectable. At least, I thought he was so ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... rather pathetic thing is that, although it must be a hundred years since the place was deserted, there are still multitudes of flowers which must have come from those in the old garden. There are iris and narcissus and a little blue flower, with a neat, prim, clean smell that makes one feel as if it ought to be put with lavender into chests of fresh old linen. The narcissus in particular was growing around everywhere, together with real wild flowers like the painted columbine and star of Bethlehem. It was a lovely spot on a headland ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... shades, and its front door-yard was efficiently manned with plum trees and a peach, while the back yard was given over to vegetables. Elder Harricutt walked to Economy every day to his office in the Economy bank. He said it kept him in good condition physically. His wife was small and prim with little quick prying eyes and a false front that had a tendency to go askew. She wore bonnets with strings and her false teeth didn't quite fit; they clicked as she talked. She kept a watch over the road at all times and very little ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... like precious stones, parrots, and birds Of all rich plumage, fly from tree to tree, The whole scene vocal with sweet varied song; And here a widespread lawn bedecked with flowers, With clumps of brilliant roses grown to trees, And fields with dahlias spread,[4] not stiff and prim Like the starched ruffle of an ancient dame, But growing in luxuriance rich and wild, The colors of the evening and the rainbow joined, White, scarlet, yellow, crimson, deep maroon, Blending all colors in one dazzling blaze; There orchards bend beneath their luscious loads; Here vineyards ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... King and the Tories, and considered that the presumption of the colonists must be put down with a high hand. They little knew of what stuff the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers—the sturdy Puritans, the dashing Cavaliers, the prim Quakers, and of many other classes whom persecution, poverty, or their crimes, had driven from Europe—were made, as I had full many opportunities afterwards of discovering. A just and judicious policy which at once would have ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... light, and freedom seemed to come again into the frozen world. The blithe and genial spirit of the black-avised little barber-poet was itself the greatest imaginable contrast to the soured Puritanism and prim formalism that for half a century and more had infested the national letters. But the author of The Gentle Shepherd himself—and small blame to him—did not fully comprehend the nature and extent of his mission. He did not wholly rid himself from the prevalent idea that the simple natural ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... called, in town, Monsieur Madeleine; his workmen and the children continued to call him Father Madeleine, and that was what was most adapted to make him smile. In proportion as he mounted, throve, invitations rained down upon him. "Society" claimed him for its own. The prim little drawing-rooms on M. sur M., which, of course, had at first been closed to the artisan, opened both leaves of their folding-doors to the millionnaire. They made a thousand advances ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... their high, carved backs and faded velvet cushions, that had been so firm and luxurious once, were tottering and insecure; but it mattered little, since no one ever came to sit in them now round the festive board, and they stood against the wall in prim order, under the rows ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... thing, May felt like going on; so she nibbled and meddled with all sorts of forbidden things till she heard a step, then she ran away; and by and by, when the bell rang, came in with the rest as prim and proper as if she did not know how to play pranks. No one missed the cake, and her mother gave ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... was an old building with sharp eaves and dormer windows, its shingles stained a dark gray by long exposure to wind and weather. Faded green shutters hung on the windows of the lower story. Behind it grew a thick wood of spruces. The little yard in front of it was grassy and prim and flowerless; but over the low front door a luxuriant early-flowering rose vine clambered, in a riot of blood-red blossom which contrasted strangely with the general bareness of its surroundings. It seemed to fling itself over the grim old house as if intent on bombarding ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Grandma, with prim precision The seam-stitch impaleth deftly On her sharp and glittering needle, Then she turns and answers calmly, With a deep assurance—"Never Was ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... there's no use of your trying to make a prim Puritan maiden of me. Zeb doesn't fight like a deacon, and I can't love like one. Ha! ha! ha! to think that great soldier is afraid of little me, and nothing else! It's too funny ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... apron, elbowed the dink and dainty dame, his city mistress; where clowns with hobnailed shoes were treading on the kibes of substantial burghers and gentlemen of worship; and where Joan of the dairy, with robust pace and red sturdy arms, rowed her way onwards, amongst those prim and pretty moppets, whose sires were knights and squires. The throng and confusion was, however, of a gay and cheerful character. All came forth to see and to enjoy, and all laughed at the trifling ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... and be absent some weeks. But, pray, what pretty neat damsel was with you? She says, she smiled, and asked, If his honour did not know who it was? No, said he, I never saw her before. Farmer Nichols, or Farmer Brady, have neither of them such a tight prim lass for a daughter! have they?—Though I did not see her face neither, said he. If your honour won't be angry, said she, I will introduce her into your presence; for I think, says she, she ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... the old man seemed to indulge less frequently in his violent outbreaks of furious passion, and to have laid aside his rugged untamable fierceness, since his marriage. There he sat beside his beautiful Annunciata, spruce and prim, in the richest, gayest apparel, smirking and smiling, challenging in the sweet glances of his grey eyes,—from which a treacherous tear stole from time to time,—those who were present to say if any one of them ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... regiment. He was not at first sight an impressive looking officer. He was of medium height, of slight build, with a pallid countenance, and a weakish drawling voice. In his movements there was an appearance of loose jointedness and an absence of prim stiffness. At once schools and drills were established for commissioned and non-commissioned officers and rumor credited Barlow with their establishment. Discipline became stricter: the duties of the soldier ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... Commander-in-Chief his services as second in command of the army. He did right. Battalions and brigades could hardly have strengthened the hands of the general, and invigorated the spirits of the troops, so much as the active accession of Hardinge. Prim etiquette may pucker its thin lips, and solemn discretion knit its ponderous brows; but neither discipline nor prudence ran any risk of being injured or affronted by the veteran of the Peninsula. What the exigency required, he knew; what the exigency exacted, he performed. That those who censure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... the tokens and they blooed 'em as above, While Jim-o done the hinvalid 'oom Sammy had to shove. Sez I: "No noble 'eroes what's bin fightin' for their king Should smirch theirselves by doin' this dis- 'onerable thing." But fine old gents 'n' donahs prim They stopped 'n' slid the beans to Jim. You betcher life I let 'im hear just ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... skirts just hitting her shoe tops in front and sagging in an ungainly fashion behind, had teetered solemnly through a "square" dance with him. Mother Douglas herself had always sat very straight and prim on a bench, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes blinking disapprovingly at the ungodly ones who let out an exultant little yip now and then when they started exuberantly through the mazes of ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... My doll... Mimi... You see..." was all Natasha managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned against her mother and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter that even the prim visitor could ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Rita. "But he's got the idea he would be doing me a favor in marrying me; and when a man gets that notion it's fatal. Also—He doesn't realize it himself, but I'm not prim enough to suit him. He imagines he's liberal—that's a common failing among men. But a woman who is natural shocks them, and they are taken in and pleased by one who poses as more innocent and impossible ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... the rock of St. Helena under a glass case, miniatures all representing the same blue-eyed lady, now with hair curled, now in a ball dress, now in a yellow gown with leg-of-mutton sleeves. And all this—consoles, King of Rome, marshals, yellow-gowned, short-waisted ladies, with that prim stiffness which was considered graceful in 1806, this atmosphere of victory and conquest—it was this more than anything we could say to him that made him accept so naively ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... was flourishing; making no display of itself, but offering to any who should choose to turn aside and look at them a few blossoms such as, for beauty and fragrance, are worthy to be, as they really are, cousin to the rose. On one of my rambles I came upon some plants of a strangely slim and prim aspect; nothing but a straight, erect, military-looking, needle-like stalk, bearing a spike of pods at the top, and clasped at the middle by two small stemless leaves. By some occult means (perhaps their growing with Tiarella had something to do with the matter) I felt at once ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... in the other stockings. Some of them Julia had no use for, such as silk for dresses, China crape shawls and fans, but they were just the things for his Grandmothers, who, after this, sat beside the fireplace, very prim and fine, in stiff silk gowns, with China crape shawls over their shoulders, and Chinese fans in their hands, and queer shoes on their feet. Julia liked their presents just as well as he did his own, and probably the Ambassador knew ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... He was conventional, and prim in his thoughts of life and all he desired it to give. He was a creature of a past generation; and whenever in time he had chanced to exist he would always have lagged a generation behind. But there was that one colourful streak which somehow, as if by a mistake in creation, ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... good old Quaker, a native of the city of Penn. Captain Marlin had been for many days and nights considering whether it were best to carry a complement of wine for himself and friends, and grog for his crew. He had that morning met Simon Prim, and asked his opinion, which he gave as above; yet Captain Marlin seemed undetermined. He felt it to be an important question, and he desired to come to ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... to church, he made a furtive visit to the farm parlour in an endeavour to glean some fragmentary knowledge of the young man whose place he had usurped, and whose ill-repute he had fastened on himself. There were many photographs hung on the walls, or stuck in prim frames, but the likeness he sought for was not among them. At last, in an album thrust out of sight, he came across what he wanted. There was a whole series, labelled "Tom," a podgy child of three, in a fantastic frock, ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... shrubbery veils the view from the street and in between shrubs and arbor lies a small pool of water flowers and goldfish. On the arbor's right, in charming privacy, masked by hollyhocks, dahlias and other tall-maidenly things, lie beds of strawberries and lettuce and all the prim ranks and orders ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... delaine had been introduced, and at first it disturbed and embarrassed him; but his light, elastic temper soon recovered its careless buoyancy, with a sly smile at what he considered an oddity, newly discovered, in the character of his prim sweetheart. "Oh! it's all right, of course," he thought; "Sally knows what she's about; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... discreetly retired to some distance, that her presence might be no check upon the private conversation of her lord and lady, now came forward; and as she made her reverential curtsy, the Earl could not help smiling at the contrast which the extreme simplicity of her dress, and the prim demureness of her looks, made with a very pretty countenance and a pair of black eyes, that laughed in spite of their mistress's desire ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... carpeted and hung with lace curtains! Once a young man of fashion had come to the Waldorf and registered himself and "Miss Elsie Cochrane"; and when the clerk made the usual inquiries as to the relationship of the young lady, it transpired that Miss Elsie was a dog, arrayed in a prim little tea-gown, and requiring a room to herself. And then there was a tale of a cat which had inherited a life-pension from a forty-thousand-dollar estate; it had a two-floor apartment and several attendants, and sat at ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... this was impossible, how they could draw on their bankers in New York. Mr. Washburne walked about cheerily shaking everyone by the hand, and telling them to make themselves at home. How different American diplomatists are to the prim old women who represent us abroad, with a staff of half-a-dozen dandies helping each other to do nothing, who have been taught to regard all who are not of the craft as their natural enemies. At the English ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... After a while she said in a prim little voice, which she adopted now and then when she wanted to conceal her ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... abroad in wild confusion, freed from the trammels of trellis work, broken fragments of which still adhered to some of their branches. They grew just as they listed, and resembled well-bred trees, once neat and prim, which, having gone astray, now flaunted but vestiges of whilom respectability. And from tree to tree, and from bough to bough, vine branches hung in confusion. They rose like wild laughter, twined for ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola |
