"Skirt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one is the husband Mean more by its suggestions and allusions than is said Must we be always either vapid or serious? Newspaper-made person No power on earth that can prevent the return of the long skirt No room for a leisure class that is not useful Persistence of privilege is an unexplained thing in human affairs Poor inhabitants living along only from habit Repose in activity Responsibility of attractiveness Responsible for all the mischief ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... owner of said husband stood beside him, one foot a little in advance of the other, her folded parasol hanging down the front of her skirt from her gloved hands, her eyes just returning to the landlady's from an excursion around the ceiling, and her whole appearance as fresh as the pink flowers that nestled between her brow and the rim of its precious covering. She smiled as she began her speech, but not enough to spoil what she honestly ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... transforming her husband, she did not forget herself. She discarded the silk skirt and jacket of pina for European costume, loaded her head with false hair, and her person with such extravagances generally as to disturb the peace of a whole ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... daughter, was almost invisible under a straw hat with feathers waving from its pinnacled crown. Miss Celandine, by no means a bad-looking young lady, wore her best black jersey, buttoned at the throat, over her cambric body, her best pique skirt, trimmed with torchon lace, her white silk mitts, and her blue-and-white bonnet. After settling Mrs. Stiles in a corner with Georgiana, Tecumseh Sherman, and Augustus, Celandine and Mr. Mecutchen disappeared, to go and stand on the door-step. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... down slowly before her, and touched the hem of her coarse black baize skirt. "Your ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... employer's eye, which, like a hand, guided him to the table with his notebook. Under the almost physical pressure of that authoritative glare he did not dare to look who was in the room, but the rim of his eye saw the movement of a skirt like the far-away, shadowy canter of a ghost's robe. He fixed his attention ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... astonished the whole table with his appearance. He was slow, solemn, and silent in his behaviour, and wore a raiment curiously wrought with hieroglyphics. As he came into the middle of the room, he threw back the skirt of it, and discovered a golden thigh. Socrates, at the sight of it, declared against keeping company with any who were not made of flesh and blood, and, therefore, desired Diogenes the Laertian to lead him to the apartment allotted ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... sittin' on behind you can't be leadin' me," returned Billy; "but cuttin' the kid it was a skirt tipped it off to me where you was—the beautiful senorita of El Orobo Rancho, I think Jose called her. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Fidy," she said with reckless generosity, "the blue skirt to Lobelia, and my Madonna—" Her eyes rested wistfully on her most cherished possession. "I think I'd like Rosy to have that when ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... of us, then, die annually. Out of this million ten or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot, drowned, hanged, poisoned, or meet a similarly violent death in some other popular way, such as perishing by kerosene-lamp and hoop-skirt conflagrations, getting buried in coal-mines, falling off house-tops, breaking through church, or lecture-room floors, taking patent medicines, or committing suicide in other forms. The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... the stirrup. At that, a little leap, and I mounted the bicycle. It was all done nimbly, in less time than the telling takes, for we are both of us naturally quick in our movements. Hilda rode like a man, astride—her short, bicycling skirt, unobtrusively divided in front and at the back, made this easily possible. Looking behind me with a hasty glance, I could see that the savages, taken aback, had reined in to deliberate at our unwonted evolution. I feel sure that the novelty of the iron horse, with a woman riding it, played not ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... eyebrows, and her colour was brilliant. She was hot, leaning back behind the shaft of old marble of the mantel-piece, to escape the fire. She wore a simple dress of apple-green satin, with full sleeves and ample skirt and a tiny bodice of green cloth. This was Josephine Ford, the girl Jim ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... she has taken in her life. She might have been getting her fare ready for him. There are a dozen handy spots where she might have had a receptacle built for carrying small change—in a pocket in her skirt, in a fob at her belt, in her sleeve or under her cuff. Counting fob pockets and change pockets, a man has from nine to fifteen pockets in his everyday garments. If also he is wearing an overcoat, add at least three more pockets to the total. It would seem that she might have had at least one ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Dress Mockersons & Legins & Skirt of the Skin of the Cabre or Antelope, long fringed & roab to the fringes & with Sleaves, verry white, and Roabes- all were Dressed to be without hare ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... after having dropped her riding-skirt, and given that and her bonnet to Marian to carry up-stairs, and seated herself in the chair that Edith offered her at the table, she said, sipping her coffee, and glancing between the white curtains and the green vines of the open ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... in my cap, and two more in the skirt of my coat," added the patient with a smile, as he pointed to his ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... no need to admit that women would carry away the prize of vanity in a competition where differences of custom were fairly considered. A man cannot show his vanity in a tight skirt which forces him to walk sideways down the staircase; but let the match be between the respective vanities of largest beard and tightest skirt, and here too the battle would be ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... on the lawn by the footmen, and afterwards, being tired of the game, I found myself strolling with Muriel Leithcourt, a bright, dark-eyed girl with tightly-bound hair, and wearing a cotton blouse and flannel tennis skirt. ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... that way; but they must have long skirts and no feet, and when finished a cut is made in the skirt—as in the picture—and the framework thus produced is bent back. When the doll is placed on the table and gently blown it will move ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... of Fan's visit, Polly sat down before her fire with a resolute and thoughtful aspect. She pulled her hair down, turned her skirt back, put her feet on the fender, and took Puttel into her lap, all of which arrangements signified that something very important had got to be thought over and settled. Polly did not soliloquize aloud, as heroines on the stage and in books have a way of doing, ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Hazel had had a nice home in Mt. Alban. Had she run away from it? And how was it that she looked so subdued?—she used to be a vivacious creature, fond of dresses and gaiety. Now she wore a plain white waist and a skirt of cheap blue serge. The Mt. Alban color was gone, and pensiveness dusked her ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... York. "Wife said she was inquirin' about the circus, but she wanted to know first if they couldn't oblige her with a few trinkets o' mournin', seein' as how she'd got to pay a mournin' visit. Wife thought't was a bosom-pin, or somethin' like that, but turned out she wanted the skirt of a dress; 'most anything would do, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... whose whole life teems with good deeds, while Elizabeth's reeks with an odour so bad that no student of history can peruse the account without wondering why she was allowed to live; for truly she was as bad a shrew as ever wore a skirt! ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... with a low, thorny brush, which, as she came to it, caught her skirt, and forced her to draw rein, and stoop ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... being linked with the outside world only by caravan route, and its inhabitants were practically all half-civilized negroes of the Fulbee tribe, who retained all of their forefathers' superstitions and wore no garb over their frescoed black bodies except a short gikki or skirt. ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... misgivings of the young man, for seeing that they continued to advance toward the bastion—something he had till then doubted—he pulled his master by the skirt ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the full panoply of a chief. He wore a short skirt or kilt reaching to his knees. Above it a loose vest or shirt, girt in by a gold belt, while over his shoulders he wore the British mantle, white in colour and worked with gold. Around his neck was the torque, the emblem of ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... returning from church. They were silhouetted against the red sky in the white landscape. Jendrek, his head in the air and his arms crossed behind his back, was walking on the left side of the road, the gospodyni in her blue Sunday skirt, and her jacket unbuttoned, so that her white chemise and bare chest were showing, on the right. The gospodarz, his cap awry, and holding up nis sukmana as for a dance, lurched from right to left and from left to right, singing. The labourer laughed, not because they ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... kind Lizzie dressed herself in her best; a soiled pink silk shirtwaist with elbow sleeves, a spotted and torn black skirt that showed a tattered orange silk petticoat beneath its ungainly length, a wide white hat with soiled and draggled willow plume of Alice blue, and high-heeled pumps run over on their uppers. If she had but known it she looked ten times better in the old Madonna ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... climbed a high tree and looked around. And he saw a river and climbed down and took the king to it. He unsaddled the horse, gave him water and grass, and let him rest. And when the king had bathed, the pilgrim took two fine mangoes from his skirt, washed them and gave them to ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... the Countess, "and quit my skirt—you are too bold to detain me. Content thyself, I think not ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... to visit me I am her waiting maid, While she's a lady, grand and stern. Of her I'm 'most afraid. She sends me for my mother's hat, Then takes her nicest skirt, And trails it all around the house Until ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... drawing the laundress to her by the skirt, "I have not the courage to confess to him the reward with which I am about to pay his silent love and his charming belief ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... for a minute as if she were afraid to speak. I looked back to see if the Frog was gaining on us. The red roadster had disappeared. The girl who stood before us looked about eighteen or twenty. She wore a plain suit of dark blue cloth with a long skirt down to the ground and a white sailor hat with a veil draped around it that covered her face. In her hand she held a small traveling bag. She looked beseechingly from one to the other of us and then her eyes ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... or musical comedy has given us some excellent art, especially at the end of the 19th century, when Sylvia Gray, Kate Vaughan, Letty Lind, Topsy Sinden, and others of like metier gave us skirt and ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... I rejoice in the bondage more than in all licentious liberty, and what Thou biddest me do, I do'—if you will further say, 'As Thou art, so am I in the world'—and if you will further say, 'Leave me not alone, and let me cling to Thee on the road, as a little child holds on by her mother's skirt or her father's hand,' then, and only then, will you walk ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... with greater interest than ever. He was my senior by about a dozen years seemingly, a neat, well-built fellow, clean-shaven, a little over the middle height, carrying a rattan in his hand, though he had a small sword tucked under the skirt of ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... borne patiently to have her thread broken three times by Totty pulling at her arm with a sudden insistence that she should look at "Baby," that is, at a large wooden doll with no legs and a long skirt, whose bald head Totty, seated in her small chair at Dinah's side, was caressing and pressing to her fat cheek with much fervour. Totty is larger by more than two years' growth than when you first saw her, and she has on a black frock under her pinafore. Mrs. Poyser too has on a black gown, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... no valid reason why the rustle of a woman's skirt in passing, the faint suggestion of some delicate perfume, should have focussed his attention. He saw scores of women and girls in the library every day. He passed thousands on the streets. This one, now, upon whom he gazed with a detached ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... please. One would have thought he took a real interest in my clothes; but of course it was owing to his artistic nature. We found a blue serge—I wouldn't have believed, after my deadly experience, that blue serge could be so pretty—and a coat and skirt of creamy cloth; and an evening frock of white chiffon, I think the girl called it. Actually it has short sleeves above my elbows, and quite a low neck, that shows where my collar-bone used to be when I was thinner than I am now. It seems ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... look about the figures and a freedom of touch about the drawing which makes one think at first that the picture is some modern, hasty but clever sketch in silhouette of a number of short skirted school girls at play. The waist is extremely small and elongated, the skirt, or petticoat, bell shaped, and the whole figure "sinuous." One of the figures appears to have a cloak or jacket, but the breasts ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... horrible there to Aleck who in every case turned inland to skirt the chasm, gazing down with interest the while at the nesting-places of the sea-birds which covered nearly every ledge, each one being alive with screaming, clamouring, hungry young, straining their necks to meet the swift-winged ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... Mrs Twitter had put out a hand when Mrs Frog tripped and was about to tumble, and thus kept her from falling. When Mrs Frog, weary of life, was on the point of rushing once again to London Bridge, with a purpose, Mrs Twitter caught the skirt of her ragged robe with a firm but kindly grasp and held her back, thus saving her from destruction; but, best of all, when the poor woman, under the influence of the Spirit of God, ceased to strive with her Maker and cried out earnestly, "What must I do to be saved?" Mrs Twitter grasped ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... winks," she brought down the faded pink ribbon that had been her mother's. That night she discovered that neither of the brown ginghams would go over the white muslin, as they had shrunk when they were washed, but that the alpaca would. There was not even a bit of white showing beneath the skirt, as she had discovered by tilting ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... sheltering traverses of Dunderberg and the heights beyond, many of their number reappeared upon the promenade deck, and first among them was the bonnie little maid now clinging to the guard-rail at the very prow, and, heedless of fluttering skirt or fly-away curl, watching with all her soul in her bright blue eyes for the first glimpse of the haven where she would be. No eyes on earth look so eagerly for the grim, gray facade of the riding-hall or the domes and turrets of the library ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... feminine attractiveness. A great grandmother on my mother's side had been in her day a famous beauty. And when asked the secret of her charm, as she frequently was (to my infant imagination she appeared as a superhumanly radiant vision who walked about the streets in a hoop-skirt with an admiring throng in her wake, constantly being forced to explain why she was beautiful), she did not utter testimonials for anybody's soap, nor for a patent dietary system, nor even for outdoor exercise. She replied simply, "Peppermints". Great ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... Ye tutelar saints of my own city! which Ye love not with more holy love than I, To lash up from the deep the Adrian waves, And waken Auster, sovereign of the Tempest! 130 Till the sea dash me back on my own shore A broken corse upon the barren Lido, Where I may mingle with the sands which skirt The land I love, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... at you, Mr. Clay; and immediately advancing and offering his hand. He was met in the same spirit. They met halfway, shook hands, Mr. Randolph saying, jocosely, You owe me a coat, Mr. Clay—(the bullet had passed through the skirt of the coat, very near the hip)—to which Mr. Clay promptly and happily replied, I am glad the debt is no greater. I had come up and was prompt to proclaim what I had been obliged to keep secret for eight days. The joy of all was extreme at this happy termination ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... passing some distance away from the bungalow. Dermot looked at him with curiosity. His head was bare, and his thick black hair shone with oil. He wore a European shirt and a dhoti, or cotton cloth draped round his waist like a divided skirt. His legs were bare except for gay-coloured socks and English boots. Gold-rimmed spectacles completed an appearance as unlike that of the ordinary tea-garden coolie as possible. He was the typical Indian student ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... plantations smoking large cigars, and are not affected in any manner by the weed. Children of both sexes up to the age of twelve years are permitted to roam about the streets naked, while their parents are not much better off. Nothing but a skirt is worn by the women and the men wear ragged shirts and trousers. Shoes are rarely seen in Porto Rico and a native who is lucky enough to have them is the cynosure of all eyes. The women do not know what silks and satins are, and, it seems, are not desirous of knowing. When night comes the ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... head, which, on festive occasions, is almost concealed by their jewels, and the heavy scarlet pomegranate blossoms which adorn their dark hair. A Turkish vest and sleeves of embroidered silk, open in front, and a skirt of white or some light color, completes the costume. The Jewesses wear in addition a short Turkish caftan, and full trousers gathered at the ankles. At a ball given by Mr. Very, the English Consul, which we attended, all the Christian beauties of Aleppo were present. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... the desert expanse, had moved in front of him. Sommers hit the horse with his crop and was about to gallop on, when something in the way the woman held herself caught his attention. She was leaning against the wind, her skirt streaming behind her, her face thrust into the air. Sommers reined in his horse and ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... careful for that—and yet each and every one on the lookout for precisely the type of man that Max represented: one never happy or even contented when outside the radius of a waving fan or away from the flutter of a silken skirt. ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Cossar, "If they don't set the place on fire they'll come here. Troops may not be here for an hour yet. Fifty per cent. Hooligans in the crowd, and the more furnished flats they go into the better they'll like it. Obviously.... They mean a clear out. You put this skirt and bonnet on, Bensington, and ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... one of these houses. Where it stood, the hill rose steep. One might enter a narrow alley, skirt a board fence, dodge into a box hall, seasoned with dinners long past, and mount by a steep staircase to the dining room; or he might enter that dining room directly from the street, such was the slope of the hill. A row of benches parked the front ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... the hill on the opposite side; the form escapes from my view. What charm has gone from the twilight? See, again, where the step steals through the ruins and along the desolate court. Ah! deep and true heart, do I divine the remembrance that leads thee? I pass through the wicket, down the dell, skirt the laurels, and behold the face looking up to the stars,—the face which had nestled to my breast in the sorrow of parting years, long years ago; on the grave where we had sat,—I the boy, thou the infant,—there, O Blanche, is thy fair ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I have suggested might appear a little more difficult to carry out. The dress of a person who purchases newspapers (though it mostly consists of coloured evening editions arranged in a stiff skirt, like that of a saltatrice, round the waist of the wearer) has many mysterious points. The attire of a person prepared to criticise the Poet Laureate is something so awful and striking that I dare not even begin to describe it; the one fact which I am willing to reveal, ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... tried to take. Still, he contrived to go twice round the room. When at the end, standing with legs apart, he suddenly clicked his feet together and fell on one knee, a bit heavily, and she danced gracefully around him, smiling and adjusting her skirt, the whole ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... it is cruel to the child. There is no reason for distinguishing sex by dress in young children. "Jumpers" form the best dress for either a little boy or little girl in which to play. Even when they are older and a skirt distinguishes the girl, bloomers or knickerbockers of the same material beneath, approach the ideal of dress for comfort, health and decency more nearly than white petticoat and drawers. Indeed, the skirt is best when it is a part of a blouse, which is also a ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... negro wailed, and turning in despair from the last speaker, imploringly caught the Methodist by the skirt of his coat. But a change had come over that before impassioned intercessor. With an irresolute and troubled air, he mutely eyed the suppliant; against whom, somehow, by what seemed instinctive influences, the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... footprints left in the snow by the two fugitives, the young detective glanced, moreover, at the marchioness's feet, just perceivable beneath her skirt, and his disappointment reached its climax when he found that they were ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... broad meadows that skirt the Connecticut by Hadley and Northampton, one seems to see under the distant oaks spectral shapes of Indian struggle, or wandering regicides, hiding their noble heads in caves, or bursting out like white spirits to lead and avenge. The air is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "Never skirt a market," the latter said; "always go through it. It's the next best thing, in the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... and hence declined to volunteer. When his betrothed, a charming girl and a devoted lover, heard of his refusal, she sent him, by the hand of a slave, a package inclosing a note. The package contained a lady's skirt and crinoline, and the note these terse words: "Wear these, or ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... did not cease while he stayed; nor has he since, that I know of. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful suspense for three weeks that he remained there, 'fluttering the proud Salopians like an eagle in a dove-cote'; and the Welsh mountains that skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no such mystic sounds ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... thrill the world! It must be so splendid to know that one has such power, and to hear people own that one possesses a "masculine intellect"! I don't care for most women's novels, but hers are immense; don't you think so, Mrs Bhaer?' asked the girl with the big forehead, and torn braid on her skirt. ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... flashing eyes to his, and her tones seemed to stab him as she uttered, 'You? you too?' Then gathering up her riding-skirt, she made haste to leave us, but found the door guarded by Tom Allen. When she saw that she was really a prisoner among us, alarm seized her, and woman-like, she began to cry, but not passionately or humbly. Her spirit was still equal to the occasion, and she faced us with the tears running over ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... practical way of doing it would be, if the skirt is quite plain, to lift it well from the top, and set it neatly on to a band, so making the skirt shorter as well as fuller. Eight inches is not considered too short for present wear, though personally I think six inches a more graceful length. However, do not be tempted to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... mainland of Scotland, exhibit their higher hills and precipices on their western coasts: the Ward Hill of Hoy attains to an elevation of sixteen hundred feet; and there are some of the precipices which skirt the island of which it forms so conspicuous a feature, that rise sheer over the breakers from eight hundred to a thousand. Unlike, however, the arrangement on the mainland, it is the newer rocks that attain to the higher elevations; the heights ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... them both, and at once; not because the unusual exertion had made any appreciable inroad upon his strength, but because he foresaw new phases of picturesqueness in the young girl's dainty handling of the oars. Nor was he disappointed. The skirt of her dress was narrow and long, beginning, like an infant's robe, a few inches below the arms, and thence descending in softly curving lines to her feet, with as little hint of rigidity or compression about the tenderly rounded waist as about the full fair throat ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... the tables, obviously bored, sat Catherine Flint, only daughter of the Billionaire. A rare girl, she, to look upon—deep-bosomed and erect, dressed simply in a middy-blouse with a blue tie, a khaki skirt and low, rubber-soled shoes revealing a silk-stockinged ankle that would have attracted the enthusiastic attention of gentlemen in any city of the world. No hat disfigured the coiled and braided masses of coppery hair that circled her shapely head. A healthy tan on face and arms and ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... since then, so there has been nothing to sew. A peddler sold them a piece of gingham which they made up for Cora Belle. It was broad pink and white stripes, and they wanted some style to "Cory's" clothes, so they cut a gored skirt. But they had no pattern and made the gores by folding a width of the goods biasly and cutting it that way. It was put together with no regard to matching the stripes, and a bias seam came in the center behind, ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... took a smiling aspect instead of the dull and listless manner which she had just had. "You see my skirt? Well, my manager makes me wear it so long. These managers are too tiresome. As for me, the shorter the skirt the better I like it. There is always too much of it. A simple fig leaf! Mon Dieu, that is enough! You agree with me, don't you, my dear, that it is not necessary to have ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... instance, who has danced unending hours with Juozas Raczius, to whom she is engaged. Alena is the beauty of the evening, and she would be really beautiful if she were not so proud. She wears a white shirtwaist, which represents, perhaps, half a week's labor painting cans. She holds her skirt with her hand as she dances, with stately precision, after the manner of the grandes dames. Juozas is driving one of Durham's wagons, and is making big wages. He affects a "tough" aspect, wearing his hat on one side and keeping a cigarette in ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... smoky oillamp rams her last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone makes back for her lair, swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the doorstep with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a comer two night watch in shouldercapes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A plate crashes: a woman screams: a child ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... love. Song and dance and hands that sway The passion of a thousand lyres Ever through the live-long day, And the monarch never tires. Sudden comes the answer curt, Loud the fish-skin war-drums roar; Cease the plaintive "rainbow skirt": Death is drumming ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... was drawn tightly back into a cracker knot. In front she wore a bunch of tight frizzes under a little flat velvet hat with strings, something of the style of 1879. Her gown was of black made with a full skirt trimmed with black satin bands. She wore an old-fashioned plush dolman heavily beaded and covered with fringe. Her shoes were thick like a man's, and to crown all she carried a fish-net bag. She didn't seem to realize that she ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... wedding cards, etc., that came to them through the mail, and developing a paper business on that basis; and the Skeleton in the Closet, which shows how the fate of the Southern Confederacy was involved in the adventures of a certain hoop-skirt, "built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark." Mr. Hale's historical scholarship and his exact habit of mind have aided him in the art of giving vraisemblance to absurdities. He is known in philanthropy as well as in letters, and his tales have a cheerful, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... better," said Iver, "and that pale blue skirt of yours, the white stockings, the red kerchief round your head—in color as in arrangement ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... good. Everything was permitted to Gian' Battista. But why trample upon the pieces; why seek to humiliate her spirit? Aha! He could not break that. She dried her tears. And Giselle! Giselle! The little one that, ever since she could toddle, had always clung to her skirt for protection. What duplicity! But she could not help it probably. When there was a man in the case the poor featherheaded ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... inaugurates the rite of purification practised to this day in Japan. The Records describe minutely the process of his unrobing before entering a river, and we learn incidentally that he wore a girdle, a skirt, an upper garment, trousers, a hat, bracelets on each arm, and a necklace, but no mention is made of footgear. Twelve Kami are born from these various articles as he discards them, but without exception these additions to Japanese mythology ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... selfishness of her father's disregard of her. She struggled, poor child, passionately to improve herself. She sat for hours in her room working at her clothes, trying to mend her stockings, the holes in her blouses, the rip of the braid at the bottom of her skirt. She waited listening for the cuckoo to call that she might be in exact time for luncheon or dinner, and then, as she listened, some thought would occur to her, and, although she did not dream, her definite tracking of her idea would lead her to forget all ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... how much pork, impendin crysis, Dutch cheeze, popler suvrinty, standard poetry, children's strainers, slave code, catnip, red flannel, ancient history, pickled tomaters, old junk, perfoomery, coal ile, liberty, hoop skirt, &c., ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... the river. A portion of thick forest of about two hundred acres, upon this side of the river, was a tempting covert for elephants, and the aggageers, who were perfectly familiar with the habits of the animals, positively declared that the herd must be within this jungle. Accordingly, we proposed to skirt the margin of the river, which, as it made a bend at right angles, commanded two sides of a square. Upon reaching the jungle by the river side, we again heard the trumpet of an elephant and about a quarter of a mile distant we observed a herd of twelve of these animals shoulder-deep in the river, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... street garb, were dressed generally in a short metallic-looking tunic of drab, with a brighter-colored girdle. The women, most of them, wore only a sort of skirt, reaching from waist to knees; a few had circular discs covering their breasts. There were hardly any children to be seen, except occasionally a little face staring at them from a window, or peering down from a roof-top. Once or twice they passed a woman with an infant slung ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... but she quite for-got how large she had grown in the last few min-utes, and jumped up in such haste that the edge of her skirt tipped the ju-ry box and turned them all out on the heads of the crowd be-low; and there they lay sprawl-ing a-bout, which made her think of a globe of gold-fish which she had ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... the picture of a brown-eyed, brown-haired girl of exquisite proportions, standing framed in the open window. She was clad in a riding suit of light material, with a long-skirted coat which obviously concealed the divided skirt beneath. Her long, brown top boots were white with dust of the trail, and her vicious-looking Mexican spurs hung loosely upon her heels. Her eyes were bright with intelligence and good humor, and her pretty ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... not answer this, but only, with her hand to her breast stood back a little and watched him with frightened eyes. She was wearing an old, faded, green blouse, open at her scraggy neck and her skirt was a kind of bed-quilt, odd bits of stuffs of many colours stuck together. Her scanty hair was pulled into a bunch on the top of her head, her face where it was not brown was purple, and her hands were always shaking so that her fingers rattled together like ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... trail wound for six miles across bleak heights before it came down to timber on the other side of the range. I set forward as rapidly as possible, for the northern sky looked stormy. I must not only climb up fifteen hundred feet, but must also skirt the icy edges of several precipices in order to gain the summit. My friends had warned me that the trip was a foolhardy one even on a clear, calm day, but I was fated to receive the fury of a snowstorm while on the most broken portion of ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... to yourself a miracle and a mystery, you smile inwardly, and are content. They are on the wrong scent, and you may pursue your plans in peace. They are indiscriminate and satisfied. They do not know the relation of what appears to what is. If they chance to skirt along the coasts of your Purple Island, it will be only chance, and they will not know it. You may close your port-holes, lower your draw-bridge, and make merry, for they will never come within gun-shot of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... between two houses, at the extremity of which was a stile, and beyond it a green field, and the foliage of trees. Turning down this lane, he entered the field, and crossed it in a diagonal direction, till he reached its further corner. Here, on the skirt of a coppice, and under the shade of some large chestnut-trees, a group was assembled, and a scene presented itself, that might be sought for in vain in any country but Spain. Above a wood-fire, which burned black ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... this impression strong upon him he resolved to put no confidence in the words of the Rapparee. In a few minutes the horses were brought up, and Randy (Randall) Ruah having wiped Mr. Folliard's saddle—for such was his name—with the skirt of his cothamore, and removed the hoar frost or rime which had gathered on it, he brought the animal over to him, and said, with a kind of ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the full skirt of fifty years ago, with huge red roses on a white-and-green dotted background, and, as aprons, would have made the snake doctor look like a very young circus. I couldn't stand the thought and cranked my mind as hard as I could for a half minute. ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... I?' said Mrs. Menlove—an exclamation which was more apposite than her mistress suspected, considering that the speaker, after retiring from duty, had slipped down her dark skirt to reveal a light, puffed, and festooned one, put on a hat and feather, together with several pennyweights of metal in the form of rings, brooches, and earrings—all in a time whilst one could count a hundred—and enjoyed half-an-hour of prime courtship by ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... brain with blood pressure. Put cushion under buttocks, wind skirt close about legs, and raise feet in ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... wore her hair gathered on the top of her head into a high top-knot, Nunaga wore a higher top-knot. In regard to costume, Nuna wore sealskin boots the whole length of her legs—which were not long—and a frock or skirt reaching nearly to her knees, with a short tail in front and a long tail behind; Nunaga, being similarly clothed, had a shorter tail in front and a longer ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... plump cheek which showed no trace of past anguish, and Hannah seated herself upon his knee, being watchful of the pleats of her skirt as ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... white and her face looked fresh and cool under a large hat of Leghorn straw, with its black-velvet strings hanging loose upon her shoulders. Her short skirt showed her dainty ankles. She walked with a brisk step, using a tall, iron-shod stick, while her disengaged hand crumpled some flowers which she had gathered on the way and which she dropped heedlessly ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... twenty-second birthday, Ruth seemed to be in her element. She had donned, in a spirit of mischief, a gown she had worn five years before on the occasion of some festivity. The girlish fashion of the white frock, with its straight, full skirt to her ankles, the round baby waist, and short puffs on her shoulders made a very child ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... over the waists of two old dresses, and contoggled a old dress skirt so's it looked most as well as new. Amelia is a good contoggler and a good Christian. And I shouldn't be surprised any day to see her snatched away by some widower or bachelder of proper age. She would be willin', ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... that preliminary struggle through the mud-tanks (which Winterfeld, I think, had happened to skirt, and avoid), were hard bested. This, so far as I can learn, was the worst of the chaos, this preliminary part. Intolerable to human nature, this, or nearly so; even to human nature of the Platt-Teutsch type, improved by Prussian drill. Winterfeld's repulse we saw; Schwerin's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle |
