"Smartness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... off your smartness, bub," sharply spoke the man at last, as he fully comprehended that Ree had purposely given him an evasive answer, "I asked ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... which is half telegraph office and half school, for economy in buildings is practised in Montenegro. They saluted us smartly in military fashion. The born soldier is noticed at once, even in the small children; many generations of fighting ancestors have bequeathed a smartness and accuracy of movement which can be envied by many ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... use grumbling, Tom; all you have to think about is to do your duty with smartness, keep sober, and to avoid doing anything wrong, and with your education, which I wish I had, you ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... Willmers take their departure. In a humorous monologue Gertrude decides to accept the Burgomaster. She is interrupted in her soliloquy by Lampe, the Beadle, who is a regular old Paul Pry, and boasts to the widow of his smartness and sagacity. According to himself he can ferret out anything, or any one, from a defrauder of the revenue to a thief, an anarchist or a murderer. Then he goes on to say that he intended to serve notice of distraint on Frau Willmers, but had found her door ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... But he hasn't troubled the Pytchley for the last eight years. There was a time when he was the last thing in smartness in the German court—officer in the Guards, ancient family, rich, darned clever—all the fixings. Kaiser liked him, and it's easy to see why. I guess a man who had as many personalities as the Graf was amusing after-dinner company. Specially among the Germans, who in my ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... family determine the needs of citizens. Its conversation, its reading, its customs, set the standard of social needs. Where the father laughs at the smartness of the artful dodge in politics, where the mother sighs after the tinsel and toys that she knows others have bought with corrupt cash, where the conversation at the meal-table steadily, though often unconsciously, lifts ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... homeliness, an old-fashioned peace in the land. The swaggering conqueror, the arrogant Berliner type of all that is unpleasant, modern and insolent now overruns Germany. The ingenuousness, the naive quality that made dear the art of the Fatherland, has disappeared. In its place is smartness, flippancy, cynicism, unbelief, and the critical faculty developed to the pathological point. I thought of Schubert, and sighed in the presence of all this wit and savage humor. Bayreuth is full of doctrinaires. They eagerly ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Willems, I take you in hand. Mind it is the last. The second time; and the only difference between then and now is that you were bare-footed then and have boots now. In fourteen years. With all your smartness! A poor result that. A ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... about under the name of "smartness," and commended under that of "cuteness," till the rule becomes of frequent and practical application, that the disgrace attending a dishonourable transaction lies only in its detection,—that a line of conduct which custom has sanctioned in public life cannot be very ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... example. Judging him by his novels alone it would be difficult to determine his rank; but judging him by his high aim and distinguished style (a style remarkable for its charm and purity in an age too much influenced by newspaper slang and smartness) he is certainly one of the best of our recent prose writers. Since his first modest volume appeared in 1860 he has published many poems, sketches of travel, appreciations of literature, parlor comedies, novels,—an immense ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... sanctity, and the respect we have for a man, for his force, ability, constancy, and dignity, is no sentiment evoked by his floating thoughts but an assurance founded on our own observation that his conduct and character are to be counted upon. Smartness and vivacity, much emotion and many conceits, are obstacles both to fidelity and to merit. There is a high worth in rightly constituted natures independent of incidental consciousness. It consists in that ingrained ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... first thought was, "Not likely!" I had visions of a boring evening: I knew Surbiton. I knew its elegances and petty refinements. I knew its pathetic apings of Curzon Street and Grosvenor Square. I knew its extremely dull smartness of speech and behaviour. I foresaw that I should enjoy myself as much as I did at the Y.M.C.A. concert where everybody sang refined songs and stopped the star from going on because he was about to sing the "Hymn to ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... by a group of cowgirls, one of whom is caressing his leg. To the right, Radha and the friend are approaching through the trees. The style with its sharp curves and luxuriating smartness illustrates a vital development of the Jain manner in ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... in good fighting sense, he soon made a name for himself as a warrior, and could raise a party agin the Ottaways any time he chose. Most of the fighting that's been going on since you came here has been stirred up by Mahng, and ef the whites gets drawed into it, it'll be his doings. With all his smartness he never met up with Songa, or leastways never got the best of him, till this last time, when, fur as I kin make out, they caught him and his squaw and their young one travelling from one Ottaway village to another. They say Songa made the prettiest fight ever was seen, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... self as a standard and control. He will do those things which "carry on" toward the ideal self, leave undone those things which do not. The man or woman who wishes simply to cut a figure "socially" will cultivate the wit, the gayety, the facility, the smartness, which are the familiar ingredients of such a personality. The same persons will be singularly blind to abysses of ignorance which would be painfully in the consciousness of those who had set up for themselves ideals of erudition ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... destined to move on to Canada with their families as United Empire Loyalists. This was their first war; and they did so well in it that Wolfe gave them the rifleman's motto they still bear in token of their smartness and dash—Celer et Audax. Unfortunately they did not then wear the famous 'rifle green' but the ordinary red. Unfortunately, too, the rifleman's green has no connection with the 'green jackets of American backwoodsmen in the middle of the eighteenth century.' The backwoodsmen were not dressed ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... says I, I says to 'em, 'I don't care about your smart mum-mum-minister and what fine sermons he preaches. Let him BE smart,' I says. Says I, 'Smartness won't g-g-g-git ye into heaven.' ("Amen!") 'No, sirree! it takes more'n that. I've seen smart folks afore and they got c-c-cuk-catched up with sooner or later. Pride goes ahead of a tumble, I've ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a group of natty officers stood lightly chatting while they covertly listened. At the other end, with Irby and Mandeville at his two elbows, General Brodnax conversed with Kincaid and Bartleson, the weather-faded red and gray of whose uniforms showed in odd contrast to the smartness ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... would go swinging down the road and into Claverings park, and perform various exercises with commendable smartness and a profound disregard for Lady Homartyn's known objection to any departure ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... imposed on and exercised by the ruling classes, and symbolically imaged in their code of honour, took an effective shape in the banning of cowardice and of cowardly crime. So far as positive values go, the ethics of nobility degenerated into smartness, the claim for "satisfaction" and the exclusiveness of rank; a Prussian and Kantian abstraction, the conception of duty, a conception at bottom unproved and incapable of generating conviction, became a rule of life, made effective by training and control. The ruling powers and their controls have ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... F.A. a week or two before this date, and was with us till the end of the great Somme push of July. He was a most capable C.O., strict but much respected by the men, and under him the Ambulance attained a high degree of smartness and discipline such as it had never ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... if you mean that," said Vilda argumentatively, "I don't call writin' poetry any great test of smartness. There ain't been a big fool in this village for years but could do somethin' in the writin' line. I guess it ain't any great trick, if you have a mind to put yourself down to it. For my part, I've always ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Plausaby, I heard you say yourself that his wife would have to do without silk dresses and new bonnets. For my part, I don't think much of that kind of smartness that can't get a living. I wouldn't have a man like Mr. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... herself, was a rosy-cheeked, black-haired, pert girl of about eighteen, who under ordinary circumstances would have found herself able to answer, with a due degree of smartness, any question which might have been addressed to her. But fright will sometimes cower the stoutest heart, and Molly, standing before the coroner at this juncture, presented anything but a reckless appearance, her naturally rosy cheeks blanching at the first word addressed to her, and ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... justice be said that to write a biography of Mr. Choate in such a lingo as this is an insult to the subject. We believe we are fair with Mr. Parker's style. Indeed, where it is not relieved by such barbarisms as we have quoted, it purls along with a certain weak smartness which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... completely exhausted, you fall gradually into a refreshing sleep—your thoughts grow confused—the stage-coaches, which have been 'going off' before your eyes all night, become less and less distinct, until they go off altogether; one moment you are driving with all the skill and smartness of an experienced whip—the next you are exhibiting a la Ducrow, on the off-leader; anon you are closely muffled up, inside, and have just recognised in the person of the guard an old schoolfellow, whose funeral, even in your dream, you remember to have ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... just below the meadow, where there was apt to be good skating. That made her remember the September day and the picnic, when Edith had talked about jealousy—"Bingoism," she had called it. "She tried to attract him by being smart. I detest smartness!" The burning pain under her breastbone was intolerable. She thought of the impertinent things Edith had said that day—and the ridiculous inference that if the person of whom you were jealous, was more ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... that time I was perfectly au fait to all the tricks of Arkansas' smartness, I returned to the hall, took my pistols from the holsters, placed them in my belt, and, seizing my rifle, followed his trail upon the soft ground of the fields. It led me to a corn-house, and there, after an hour's search, I found my lost saddle-bags. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... have taken rank among the professors of the art. I don't know a more pleasing exhibition; for there are not a dozen really bad pictures in the collection, some very good, and the rest showing great skill and smartness ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... youngsters appeared more than usually intent upon whatever they were employed about before the Rabbi's entrance. Youth is a bad courtier, ever preferring frolic and amusement to sobriety and attention. They had been at once piqued and pleased by Robin's smartness, and resolved to whet their own wit upon so well-tempered ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... no great thing," said Tom. "The firm owes Williams nearly four times that amount, and he isn't a man who will stand much foolishness. Father is not making so much money, either, as you think for, and the first thing you know, with your smartness, you will ruin him and me both, if you keep on making a fool of yourself. But that wouldn't hurt you. You don't think ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... the long stretches of dingy streets, then cleaner ones, with their old and comfortable houses; the park, with its bare trees and shrubs, and finally the Avenue, with its smooth paving and pretentious homes, its hurrying cars of luxurious make, its air of conscious smartness. As contrast to my ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... by the affinity of sounds, that, by remembering the last word in one line, we often call to mind both the verses. Then, in the quickness of repartees (which in discoursive scenes fall very often), it has so particular a grace, and is so aptly suited to them, that the sudden smartness of the answer, and the sweetness of the rhyme, set off the beauty of each other. But that benefit which I consider most in it, because I have not seldom found it, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... motion of the shafts, in a manner regular and brusque. On the road the distanced wedding guests straggled in pairs and groups. The men advanced with heavy steps, swinging their idle arms. They were clad in town clothes; jackets cut with clumsy smartness, hard black hats, immense boots, polished highly. Their women all in simple black, with white caps and shawls of faded tints folded triangularly on the back, strolled lightly by their side. In front the violin sang a strident tune, and the biniou snored and hummed, while the player capered solemnly, ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... sincerely wished she could imitate the hero of it in his piety, not his powder. She was about to say so when the sound of approaching steps announced the advent of her host. She had been rather impressed with the "smartness" of Lisha by his wife's praises, but when a small, sallow, sickly looking man came in she changed her mind; for not even an immensely stiff collar, nor a pair of boots that seemed composed entirely of what the boys call "creak leather," could ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... the calamities of others. I led weakness and negligence into difficulties, only that I might divert myself with their perplexities and distresses; and violated every law of friendship, with no other hope than that of gaining the reputation of smartness and waggery. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... always a pleasanter companion than a clever man. But you were talking of the choice of a wife; and pertness in a girl, although it may be amusing at the time, may become something else by and by. Indeed, I shouldn't advise a young man to marry an epigrammatist, for you see her shrewdness and smartness are generally the result of experiences in which he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... characteristic air of intelligence and wisdom to the parrot's face. We naturally expect so clever a bird to speak. And when it turns upon us suddenly with a copy-book maxim, we are in no way astonished at its surpassing smartness. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... while she talked, and, for the moment, she lost entirely her resemblance to Jane, who was never animated, though she made a perpetual murmurous sound. Unlike Jane, Fanny was vivacious, pert, and, for her years, extraordinarily sophisticated. Already she dressed with extreme smartness; already she was thinking of men as of possible lovers; and already she was beginning, in her mother's phrase, "to manage her life." Her trite little face, in its mist of golden hair, which she took hours to arrange, still reminded ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... Frayling; "but all the same, you'll be able to make a good deal of that boy, or I'm much mistaken. And as for Angelica, why, when she is at the head of an establishment of her own she will require all her smartness. But teach her housekeeping, Lady Adeline; that is the thing ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... wonders, in our own minds," laughed Charley. "We have got a chance to show our smartness right now. I, for one, am getting mighty hungry and we haven't ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... for General Kemp, who inspected us in a field near Camblain, and said that he was much pleased indeed with our turnout. General Montagu-Stuart-Wortley was equally complimentary at the second inspection, and congratulated all ranks on their appearance and smartness, which, considering the state of the trenches, was very creditable. The demonstration was particularly interesting, and proved the futility of the famous German flame projector. As many men as possible were placed in a trench, while ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... specially made light top-boots, with large shady sun helmets; and because for a long time he had not seen anything much but slipshod garments among women riders, or exceedingly warm-looking correct home attire, he appreciated their cool smartness. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... nobody here who could have stood as decent second to him, or even third, if I hadn't been a soldier in the Bang-up Locals (as we was called for our smartness)," said Grandfer Cantle. "And even as 'tis we all look a little scammish beside him. But in the year four 'twas said there wasn't a finer figure in the whole South Wessex than I, as I looked when dashing past the shop-winders ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... crimson brocade is the slipover blouse which follows the lines of the French cuirasse. Charmingly simple, this blouse, quite devoid of trimming, achieves smartness by concealing the waistline ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... "it seems that there's fishing and sailing to be done, and I'm not quite sure about that major man. Guess he's always had people to wait on him, and that doesn't tend to smartness in any one. When my daughter and her friends go out on the lake, or up the river, you'll ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... compare the greatness of the ends secured, with the smartness of the means employed, a review of the results of the Moravian Missions, throughout the heathen world, will strike us ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the door opened wider, and I found myself confronted by a woman with a candle. She had not the most prepossessing of expressions, though her hair, eyes and features were decidedly good. She was dressed with tawdry smartness—earrings, necklace, and rings, and very high-heeled buckle shoes. Indeed, her costume was so out of keeping with the rusticity of her surroundings as to be quite extraordinary. This fact struck me at once, as did her fingers, which, though ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... for the loss of the dear country and friends I had left for ever, a slight tap at the door roused me from my painful reveries, and Mrs. C—- entered the room. Like most of the Canadian women, my friend was small of stature, slight and delicately formed, and dressed with the smartness and neatness so characteristic of the females of this continent, who, if they lack some of the accomplishments of English women, far surpass them in their taste in dress, their choice of colours, and the graceful and becoming manner in which they wear their clothes. If my young friend ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... in the public gardens, and they hurried back to the brilliantly lighted mess-rooms to give vent in heated language to their indignation. They were really rather pleased at Sarudine's discomfiture, since often enough his smartness and elegance in dress and demeanour had served to put them ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... various crews would land with their rifles and cutlasses, and a field gun from each ship. Headed by the flag-ship's band, we would be marched to a plain, and there engage in infantry drill as a battalion. Meantime the guns' crews were competing with each other as to their qualifications for smartness. The guns would be taken to pieces, unlimbered, and scattered on the ground, and the wheels of the gun-carriage wheeled away a considerable distance. On the order being given to "Limber up, and fire!" the crew which mounted ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... come not altogether empty-handed: there is to-day no true American music but the sweet wild melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales are Indian and African; we are the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal, dyspeptic blundering with the light-hearted but determined Negro humility; or her coarse, cruel wit with loving, jovial good humor; or her Annie Rooney ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... not of her "smartness" but of her pathetic loveliness. All night her sobs had echoed in his heart. When he had driven his gay party home after their stop at Anthony's, he had ridden for miles alone in the storm. He had welcomed the beat of the rain in his face. He had ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... ecstatically of the streets, the tram-roads, the lights of the town, the smartness of his flock, the delights ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... these people stealing by day only, and that they do not take life or distress any person by personal ill-usage, and that they do not break into houses by digging walls or breaking door-locks, but simply by their smartness manage to abstract property; owing to such trifling thefts I looked upon their proceedings as a petty matter and have not interfered with them." [605] This recalls ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... surrendered by the old Buddhist proprietors, however cleverly or craftily the bonzes may yield outward conformity to governmental edicts. On the other hand, the efforts, both archaeological and practical, which have been made in recent years by fiercely zealous Shint[o]ists, savor of the smartness of New Japan more than they suggest either sincerity or edification. It often requires the finest tact on the part of both the strenuous Buddhists and the stalwart purists of Shint[o], to extricate the various gods out of the mixture and ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Bailey. "Well, I guess there ain't nothin' said against her now—not in THIS town, there ain't! Why, all hands can't praise her enough for her smartness in findin' out about that Thomas. If it wan't for her, he'd be botherin' you yet, Cy. You know it. ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of Congress favour the influence of the sable goddess. In the first place, the members are paid by the day—eight dollars each. Permit us to observe, Jonathan, that you scarcely display your usual "smartness" here. It would be much better to contract with them by the scrape. As for instance—To involving the country in a war with Mexico, so much—To ditto with Great Britain, so much more. One year you might lay down a lumping sum ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... scant toilet appliances, as usual, in part compensated by excellent beds, good food, good wine, and very moderate charges. The oddest part of these experiences is that the dirtier the inn the better the fare. Wherever we found a little smartness and tidiness, there we were sure to find also a decided falling-off in ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... hand in your pocket if required—however—between ourselves—it will take somebody sharper than you think, and who isn't good old Atkins, to induce Captain Len Guy to take a passenger. Yes, indeed, it will take all the smartness of the good fellow who now drinks to your health, regretting that you ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... betide other women who arouse their jealousy, for they will scandalise and blight the reputation of the purest of their sex in the suburban belief that the invention of scandal is the hallmark of smartness. ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... and Tom Mowbray gave him an approving glance; the others interchanged looks. The Etna had a reputation familiar to seamen and a nickname too; they called her the "Hell-packet." Of all the tall and beautiful ships which maintained their smartness and their beauty upon the agony of wronged and driven seamen, the Etna was the most terrible, a blue-water penitentiary, a floating place of torment. To enhance the strange terror of her, the bitter devil who was her captain carried his wife on board; the daily brutalities that made her ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... town. Having therefore seen the deputation of the town off for Turin, my next most anxious endeavour was to cause the battle to cease, which had been carried on at the advanced posts with great smartness. I therefore once more took to my boat to begin the arduous duty of separating the combatants. General La Marmora sent aide-de- camps, but it took time before they could reach all points from which cannon ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... two months of sea-fare, he appreciated the generous spread. But I did not. It smacked of extravagance. All the same, it was a remarkable feat to have produced it so quickly, and I congratulated the steward on his smartness in a somewhat ominous tone. He gave me a deprecatory smile and, in a way I didn't know what to make of, blinked his fine dark eyes in ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... ain't really nothin' the matter with the Widow Larkin—so fur's smartness is concerned, ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... chatter and her superficial brightness were a novelty, it had seemed for a short time that luck might be glancing towards her. A young man of foreign title and of Bohemian tastes met her at a studio dance, and, misled by the smartness of her dress and her always carefully carried air of careless prosperity, began to pay a delusive court to her. For a few weeks all her freshest frocks were worn assiduously and credit was strained to buy new ones. The flat was adorned with ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hundred pounds of flour in sacks, some tin cups and a coffee pot, frying pan and some few other necessary articles. All these things were "packed" on the back of a led horse—and whoever has not been taught, by a Spanish adept, to pack an animal, let him never hope to do the thing by natural smartness. That is impossible. Higbie had had some experience, but was not perfect. He put on the pack saddle (a thing like a saw-buck), piled the property on it and then wound a rope all over and about it and under it, "every ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the next morning Orso was up and ready to start. His style of dress betrayed the desire for smartness felt by every man bound for the presence of the lady he would fain please, combined with the caution of a Corsican in vendetta. Over a blue coat, that sat closely to his figure, he wore a small tin case full of cartridges, slung ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... as Solomon was and his "smartness" grows on him. He has an idea that every house he buys from is trying to get unfair advantage of him, and that he must present a bold front or he will be imposed upon. He always magnifies his importance as a buyer, and fancies ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... body!' cried Mr Inspector. 'Talk of trades, Miss Abbey, and the way they set their marks on men' (a subject which nobody had approached); 'who wouldn't know your brother to be a Steward! There's a bright and ready twinkle in his eye, there's a neatness in his action, there's a smartness in his figure, there's an air of reliability about him in case you wanted a basin, which points out the steward! And Mr Kibble; ain't he Passenger, all over? While there's that mercantile cut upon him which would make you happy ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... smartness, the cock of the hat to which John Willet had objected, and the spring nosegay, all betokened some little errand of his own, having a more interesting object than a vintner or even a locksmith. So, indeed, it turned out; for when he had settled with the vintner—whose ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... out our own damnation," said Ishmael, and then could have kicked himself for his own smartness that he heard go jarring through the night. He waited in a blush of panic for some reproof, such as "That was hardly worthy, was it?" But the Parson, ever nothing if not unexpected, did not administer ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... pretty mamma" is of the very spirit of the redundancy by which children hope in heaping words together to express accumulation of emotion. Du Maurier's children never make the nasty pert answers upon which, for their nearly impossible but always vulgar smartness, the providers of jokes about children for the comic papers generally depend. He is simply going on with his "novel"—The Tale of the House it might be called—when he affords us realistic glimpses ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... upon the restoration of the Edict of Nantes (1685). He soon mixed with the gayest society, and became well known as a prolific writer of songs, prologues, epilogues, masques, and the lighter dramatic fare. Much of this work is not lacking in wit and volatile smartness, but it is all far too ephemeral to have any permanent value as literature. He edited The Gentleman's Journal, but is perhaps best remembered for his translation of Don Quixote, and his concluding Urquhart's version ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... Jack's mind an impression which had begun to form, that the smart set, so-called, is not altogether lacking in, well,—smartness. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... was little changed since 1889, when his figure was a well-known one in Europe. He showed the same alertness of step, brightness of look and manner, and smartness of dress, which distinguished him then. In his Court he was a striking figure, in marked contrast to those about him, for it must be confessed that all in attendance showed some neglect of appearance which compared ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... had lost their air of well-groomed smartness: the gate stood ajar, the gravel was unraked, the verandah-flooring black with footmarks. With all the blinds still down, the windows looked like so many dead eyes. Mahony's first knock brought no response; ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... of Bartley's was one of the things that made him popular; he passed the time of day, and was give and take right along, as his admirers expressed it, from the first, in a community where his smartness had that honor which gives us more smart men to the square mile than any other country in the world. The fact of his smartness had been affirmed and established in the strongest manner by the authorities of the college at which he was graduated, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... and estate that had belonged to the English ancestors of one of them. It is written in a curiously tortured idiom, largely borrowed from the Bible, and all the characters are continually given to verbal smartness or peculiarity of one kind or another. The characters are not individualized. Each is a type, smoothed out by sentimental handling into something meant to be sympathetic. Moreover, the real difficulties of the narrative ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... musket; but it was a fatal invasion of the principle of beauty to adopt a permanent cock. There is no doubt that the flat cocked hat, the small three-cornered pinched hat of the days of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., gave much smartness to the soldier, and much neatness to the civilian; the change, too, corresponded with other alterations of dress, from the loose and flowing, to the tight and succinct principle; but picturesque effect was entirely lost; all the sentimentality, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... happier days. But Lady Mason had dressed herself after none of these fashions. Never had her clothes been better made, or worn with a better grace; but they were all black, from her bonnet-ribbon down to her boot, and were put on without any attempt at finery or smartness. As regards dress, she had never looked better than she did now; and Mr. Furnival, when his eye caught her as she turned her head round towards the judge, was startled by the grace of her appearance. Her face was very pale, and somewhat hard; but no one on ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... assigned for the present corruption and degeneracy of our taste, but I think the writer has omitted the principal one, which I take to be the prejudice of parties. Neither can I excuse either side of this infirmity; I have heard the arrantest drivellers pro and con commended for their smartness even by men of tolerable judgment; and the best performances exploded as nonsense and stupidity. This indeed may partly be imputed to policy and prudence; but it is chiefly owing to that blindness, which prejudice and passion cast over the understanding: ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... tradition of old Phillips Corey, and he had heard a great many things about the Corey who had spent his youth abroad and his father's money everywhere, and done nothing but say smart things. Lapham could not see the smartness of some of them which had been repeated to him. Once he had encountered the fellow, and it seemed to Lapham that the tall, slim, white-moustached man, with the slight stoop, was everything that was offensively ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his first impression—the one made in haste and some vexation, when she had first tried to thrust herself into the Ball household and demanded the place filled by Sheila Macklin. This girl certainly was not insane. But with all her apparent smartness, Cap'n Ira easily saw that she was not intelligent—that she had scarcely ordinary understanding. Beside the newcomer's shallow nature and even more shallow endowments, Sheila seemed to be ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... have been an impulse from this vision that carried me as far as Hyde Park, where I saw not a soul, either of the quick or the dead, in the chilly drizzle, save a keeper cleaning up the edges of the road. In the consecrated closes, where the vanished children of smartness used to stand or sit, to go and come like bright birds, or flowers walking, the inverted chairs lay massed together or scattered, with their legs in the air, on the wet grass, and the dripping leaves smote damply together overhead. Another close, in Green Park the afternoon before, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... the smartness of that?" exclaimed Andy. "And so of course poor old Cadger, who is as honest as the day is long, never suspected any trick, but went and opened the door ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... One amateur fisherman of considerable experience and by no means susceptible to intangible irritations, and not to be diverted from his sport by trifles, has frequently been compelled to move from a favourite ground by a stream of the scum drifting to his anchored boat. The fumes gave intense smartness to the eyes, which were relieved by a gush of tears, but keen discomfort recurred when the tears were ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the orderlies who accompany these ambulances handling about forty English wounded, transferring them from the automobiles to the reception hall, and the smartness and intelligence with which the members of each crew worked together was like that of a champion polo team. The editor of a London paper, who was in Paris investigating English hospital conditions, witnessed the same performance, and told ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... the Consulate was discreetly shut in by drawn jealousies. Within, beside Reebeler himself, were a number of men, all of whom narrowly scrutinized the newcomer. Those who were not in uniform carried themselves with a cocky smartness that belied their civilian clothes. The man from Cadiz returned their gaze with the same imperturbable steadiness and the same concealed wariness which he had employed when, in the Plaza de Toros, he awaited the charge ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... as their gunners in this campaign, our losses would have been very much heavier, and it is possible that here we catch a glimpse of some consequences of that corruption which was one of the curses of the country. The guns were moved with great smartness along the ridge, and opened fire again and again, but never with great result. Our own batteries, the 74th and 77th, with our handful of mounted men, worked hard in covering the retreat and holding back ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... will be preserved, for they give to the traveller that which our country generally lacks, and which is so largely the attraction of Italy and Spain. Instead of adapting and modifying the houses and homes that the climate suggests, the new American comers have brought here from the East the smartness and prettiness of our modern nondescript architecture. The low house, with recesses and galleries, built round an inner court, or patio, which, however small, would fill the whole interior with sunshine and the scent of flowers, ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... said Paul; "and perhaps after all our smartness we're going to get lost in the dark. How many ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... said Stacy, "that Harriet has been, in all respects, up to the 'casion whenever I've made a rise in the world. There's smartness in that woman, I can tell you. When I was elected alderman of our ward, she just went into the saloon and dealt out licker to my constituents with her own hand. There is no telling the number of votes she got for me by that perseeding. ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... joined the family they embarked on board the Barbadoes, for Rio and Buenos Ayres. Greatly were the girls amused at the tiny little cabin allotted to them and their mother—a similar little den being taken possession of by Mr. Hardy and the boys. The smartness of the vessel, and the style of her fittings, alike impressed and delighted them. It has not been mentioned that Sarah, their housemaid, accompanied the party. She had been left early an orphan, and had been taken ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... were emerging from the bushes in the gathering shadow. What splendid soldiers the war has fashioned for us! They are no longer merely the diligent and conscientious cavalrymen we took pleasure in commanding, and whose smartness we admired in peace time. The stern experience of the battlefield has hardened, strengthened and ennobled them. Their faces are manlier; their discipline, far from relaxing, has become more thorough; their courage has developed, and, in ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... thirty-odd establishments; the difference is only in the charges exacted for the briefly-timed love, and consequently in certain external minutiae as well: in the assortment of more or less handsome women, in the comparative smartness of the costumes, in the magnificence of the premises and the luxuriousness ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... strange news. One could be smart, devote oneself to study—be a "greasy grind"—and yet fail of prominence; and one could fail to pass—"flunk"—and yet climb to the pinnacle of prominence. Evidently smartness and studiousness had nothing to do with it, and Missy felt a pleasurable thrill. Formerly she had envied Beulah Crosswhite, who wore glasses and was preternaturally wise. But maybe Beulah Crosswhite was not so much. Manifestly ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... Wellesley—this, a lady—with that keen and paradoxically impractical expression which marks pure intellectuality; an alert matron, plainly, almost shabbily, dressed (aristocratic Boston still scorns sartorial smartness); a very well-bred young girl with bone spectacles; a student, shabby, like the Back Bay matron, but for another reason; a writer; a business man whose hobby is Washingtonia. These, all of them, you may enjoy along with your cup of tea ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... Quincey, Walter Pater or even Jeremy Taylor had made such sustained music. He marvelled at the lofty structures of old seventeenth century prose-men, and compared them with the chippy staccato of the modern perky style, its smug smartness, its eternal chattering gallop. He absorbed the quiet prose of Addison and Steele and swore it tasted like dry sherry. Swift, he found brilliantly hard, often mannered; and he loved Dr. Goldsmith, so bland, loquacious, welcoming. In Fielding's ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... smiling, always glancing about him, seeming to feel that people might be watching him and trying to detect something. This conscious expression, since it was as far as possible from boyish mirthfulness, was usually attributed to insolence or "smartness." ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... to take advantage of his neighbors and cheat them, but he would do it so smoothly that they never once suspected that they were being cheated. Mr. Snake would go about all day cheating everybody he met. At night he would go home and chuckle over his smartness. It wasn't long before he began to look down on his neighbors for being so honest that they didn't suspect other people of being dishonest, and for being so ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... was wrong for him also. What had he to do with Chelsea? Chelsea was a parish; it was not the world. He had been gravely disappointed in Chelsea. Marguerite had no shimmer of romance. She was homely. And she was content with her sphere. And she was not elegant; she had no kind of smartness; who would look twice at her? And she was unjust, she was unfair. She had lacerated his highly sensitive pride. She had dealt his conceit a frightful wound. He ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... for a journey after all so short! There were no individual objects; there was nothing but dozens and hundreds, all machine-made and expressionless, in spite of the repeated grimace, the conscious smartness, of "the last new thing," that was stamped on all of them. The fatal facility of the French article becomes at last as irritating as the refrain of a popular song. The poor "Indiens Galibis" struck me as really more interesting—a group of ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... volumes for the smartness of the young patrol leader, though somehow his chums did not seem to consider it such a wonderful feat for Elmer. That is the penalty for being successful; others expect great things from such a comrade, so that he is ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... he presented a back sufficiently conscious. Yet though to Vanderbank he couldn't look young he came near—strikingly and amusingly—looking new: this after a minute appeared mainly perhaps indeed in the perfection of his evening dress and the special smartness of the sleeveless overcoat he had evidently had made to wear with it and might even actually be wearing for the first time. He had talked to Vanderbank at Mrs. Brookenham's about Beccles and Suffolk; but it was not at Beccles nor ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... that time I was perfectly au fait to all the tricks of Arkansas smartness, I returned to the hall, took my pistols from the holsters, placed them in my belt, and, seizing my rifle, I followed his trail upon the soft ground of the fields. It led me to a corn-house, and there, after an hour's ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... to Zimmermann, the famous litterateur of the Ghetto, "she is proud of Yankee smartness. Only natural." And his light blue eyes followed his wife's pretty figure as she flitted hospitably amongst her guests. Admiration beamed through ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... in putting any kind of Smartness into Pieces of such a Nature as Dr. South's; but what is still worse, we generally find these Smartnesses to be quite vague and superficial; they don't enter, but only play upon the ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... Rue de la Paix, I met a well-known English producer of plays, and he piloted me to the Cafe de Paris, which seemed to have lost nothing of its special atmosphere of smartness and costliness. Louis the Rotund, who in the early days of the war went off to guard bridges and gasometers, was playing his more accustomed role of maitre d'hotel, explaining with suave gravity the unpreventable altitude of prices. And for at least the tenth time he told me how in ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... he had heard—"ego verbum audivi"—and with greater abundance those he had said, including a great many puns. Thus it happens that certain chapters of his "De Nugis Curialium," a title that the work owes to the success of John of Salisbury's, are real novels, and have the smartness of such; others are real fabliaux, with all their coarseness; others are scenes of comedy, with dialogues, and indications of characters as in a play[286]; others again are anecdotes of the East, "quoddam mirabile," told on their ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... who was habited in a coarse, blue coat, which, without being either a greatcoat or a surtout, partook of the nature and qualities of both, had about him that sort of slovenly smartness, and swaggering gait, which is peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in the streets by day, shout and scream in the same by night, call waiters by their Christian names, and do various other acts and deeds of an equally facetious description. He wore a pair of plaid trousers, and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... yaks, which I noticed had been marching with more than usual smartness, bolted while I was ordering Chanden Sing and Mansing to take down the loads, and went straight into ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... China as a missionary, and he draws on you for a hundred; you worry because you're afraid your business is going to smash, and your health busts up instead. Worrying is the one game in which, if you guess right, you don't get any satisfaction out of your smartness. A busy man has no time to bother with it. He can always find plenty of old women in skirts or trousers to spend their days worrying over their own troubles and to ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... is that he does not exaggerate; his fools are never overwitty, his buffoons too grotesque, his men of wit too anxious to display their smartness, nor his fine gentlemen too fond of immodest and ribald talk. His satire is always kept within bounds, his repartees are never out of place, his plots are but seldom intricate, and the moral of his plays is not obtruded, but follows as a natural ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... beamed and laughed over his smartness: he was conscious of having said something that, in shape at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... pretty well tired of each other. He had found out that a peer is, as a friend, but as a plebeian, and a great poet not always a high-minded man. His Lordship had, on his part, discovered that something more than smartness or ingenuity is necessary to protect patronage from familiarity. Perhaps intimate acquaintance had also tended to enable him to appreciate, with greater accuracy, the meretricious genius and artificial tastes of his ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... husband grow stern and gloomy, and out of solicitude and affection had clung faithfully to him through all fortunes. It would seem, to hear her talk, that she never had quite realized that Richard Trafford, the man of forty, was any other than "Mas'r Dick," the boy whose smartness at school, and whose popularity among his companions, had always been her boast and pride. Gray and worn he was getting, gloomy, sad, even harsh at times to her, yet he was only "Mas'r Dick," and her ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... as I could remember out of Homer's Iliad, wondering the while what my tutor, Mr. Josias How, of Trinity College, would think to hear me so use his teaching. By-and-bye, as I warm'd to the tale, Joan forgot her new smartness; and at length, when Hector was running from Achilles round the walls, clapp'd her hands for excitement, crying, "Church an' King, lad! ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... flighty woman," Marlow said, in reply to his wife's remark. "She likes to have young men like Jimmy trailing after her; and Grimmer only laughs. I suppose it's what they call being 'smart.' Pity he doesn't put a little more smartness into his business affairs." He chuckled slightly at the recollection of the dredging shares, which had been some of those he, himself, had received as vendor. "Still, Jimmy is old enough to take care of himself now," he went on, ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... appearance. The black-eyed and black-haired Russian girl was just as well developed for her age and as rugged as she could be; but in her cheap way her frock was the "very latest thing," her hair was dressed wonderfully, and the air of "city smartness" about her made the difference between her ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... course has been peculiar," he thought. "She comes from no common stock. If I've ever seen a Southern gentleman, her father's one, and her plump little body is full of hot Southern blood. She's a thoroughbred, and that accounts for her smartness and fearlessness. Where other girls would whine and toady to your face, and be sly and catlike behind your back, she'd look you in the eyes and say all she meant point-blank. I'm glad indeed things are taking their present ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... had been fixed as the hour at which Mr. Blyth was to present himself at the lodgings in Kirk Street. He arrived punctual to the appointed time, dressed jauntily for the occasion in a short blue frock coat, famous among all his acquaintances for its smartness of cut and its fabulous old age. From what Zack had told him of Mat's lighter peculiarities of character, he anticipated a somewhat uncivilized reception from the elder of his two hosts; and when he ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... rat-tail, and cow-hocks. The Drummer detested that animal, and the best of the Band-horses put back their ears and showed the whites of their eyes at the very sight of him. They knew him for an upstart and no gentleman. I fancy that the Colonel's ideas of smartness extended to the Band, and that he wanted to make it take part in the regular parade movements. A Cavalry Band is a sacred thing. It only turns out for Commanding Officers' parades, and the Band Master is one degree more important than the Colonel. He is a ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... well! if you think so, I won't persuade ye, though I don't think so much of your smartness as I did, after that. Still, we won't quarrel; you've done me a mighty good turn, that I must say, and I only feel I aren't level without doing something to pay the debt. Come, now, you've got your trade as I've got mine. Let me have the bill, and I'll pay it like ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... also to write for the future, asking with what feelings posterity will read us—if it reads us at all. This is a good discipline. We know by practice what will hit some contemporary tastes; we know the measure of smartness, say, or the delicate flippancy, or the sentence with "a dying fall." But one should also know that these are fancies of the hour—these and the touch of archaism, and the spinster-like and artificial precision, which seem to be ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... whole superficies of his mind became filled with a desire to conceal this difference. He recalled the various characteristics of those who worked along with him. One knew all topical songs, slang and phrases; another affected a smartness in dress; a third discussed theatres with semi-professional knowledge. Harvey, however, could never have entered the world, or lived in it, if he had first to pass through the portals of such ideas! He delivered his letter; he was wearied out, and as he returned he noticed ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... question of introductions Miss Fancourt—apparently as yet unmarried—was far away, while the wife of his illustrious confrere was almost between them. This lady struck Paul Overt as altogether pretty, with a surprising juvenility and a high smartness of aspect, something that—he could scarcely have said why—served for mystification. St. George certainly had every right to a charming wife, but he himself would never have imagined the important little woman in the aggressively Parisian dress the partner for life, the alter ego, of a man ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... heroes, seeming to glean satisfaction from their grease-stained khaki. It must be admitted that the South African War is responsible for a somewhat changed condition of thought as regards cleanliness and its relation to smartness. No such abstraction disturbed the Devons; a Devon man was always clean. Individuals of some corps could be readily identified by their battered helmets or split boots; not so the Devons. No helmet badge was necessary for their identification, and the veriest tyro could not fail to recognize ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... day he did; at least he tried. He put on his hat and he took his cane in his hand and as he started down the street he sought to put smartness and springiness into his gait. If the attempt was a sorry failure, he, for one, did not appreciate the completeness of the failure. He meant, anyhow, that his step no longer should be purposeless and mechanical; that his walk should hereafter have ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... decorative Georgettes; bright cool Prints | | for a summer morning; pastel Chiffons or buoyant | | Taffetas for the evening party. And in Coats—there's | | the slim "wrappy", the Cape-back. | | | | When Youth Steps Out—if it's young youth, it chooses | | for smartness and comfort, a "Felice" Pump—in patent or | | tan calf, with matching buckles. If it's more | | sophisticated youth—there's the sophisticated Shoe; the | | Shoe of high, "Spiked" heel and daringly contrasted ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... quite the "swaggerist" of the gun tribe, has his own private car built especially for him. Such of the cavalry's former part as the planes do not play he plays. He keeps off the enemy's scouts. Do you seek team-work, spirit of corps, and smartness in this theatre of France, where all the old glamour of war is supposed to be lacking? You will find it in the attendants of Archibald. They have pride, elan, alertness, pepper, and all the other appetizers and condiments. They are as neat as a private yacht's ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... poet who devoted himself to the one class of poetry which, apart from satire, the conditions of the Silver Age were qualified to produce in any real excellence—the epigram. In a period when rhetorical smartness and point were the predominant features of literature, the epigram was almost certain to flourish. But Roman poets in general, and Martial in particular, gave a character to the epigram which has clung to it ever since, and has actually changed the significance ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... but now, she never gave the Major a chance, and cared nothing at all whether he looked over the way or not. Other changes had come to pass too. The Major, standing in the shade of his own apartment, could make out that an air of greater smartness had recently come over Miss Tox's house; that a new cage with gilded wires had been provided for the ancient little canary bird; that divers ornaments, cut out of coloured card-boards and paper, seemed to decorate the chimney-piece and tables; that a plant or two had suddenly ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... some smartness and sharpness of speech may sometimes be used in defence of truth, and impugning errors of bad consequence; especially when it concerneth the interest of truth, that the reputation and authority of its adversaries should somewhat ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... an able seaman, and was sent on board the ship Sea Horse to the East Indies. His position at first was little better than that of a foremast hand, but it was not long before the captain noticed the lad's smartness and keen attention to his duties, and very soon he called him to the quarterdeck ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... the corner there among the obscure ones. Some one will see you in time—if you live long enough. And the next: What have you to offer? Intelligence; thought? No sale; you make us all feel uncomfortable. Virtue? Tut, tut, my dear! Cleverness, charm, facile smartness? The crowd gathers round. Beauty? The crowd grows thicker. Money—wealth—gold by millions? Ah! Come to our arms, you golden one, rotten to the core though you may be—gentleman with a gorilla's tastes; lady with Madonna face, Venus body, viper soul! Come to the throne; we salaam before ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... much agitated by this speech, and feared lest the Enchanter should have overheard it; but he had been loudly calling her attention to the flowers, and chuckling over his own smartness in getting them for her; and it was rather a blow to him when she said very coldly that they were not the sort she preferred, and she would be glad if he would send them all away. This he did, but afterwards ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... worst of it there, papa,' said Cecilia, taken by the unexpectedness and smartness of the comparison coming from wits ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... courage, the fidelity and devotion of her love. Retz, moreover, mistakes entirely the order of her adventures; he forgets and then invents. In striving after epigrammatic point, he sacrifices truth to smartness of style, and writes as though he looked upon events in which the passions of the Duchess made her take part as mere trifles, whereas among them there were some than which none were ever of graver ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... a thousand times to every truant, and it would have very little effect, because he thinks that he will be an exception. He never sees beyond his own boyish smartness. Few men and women realize how true it is that these smart rascally fellows, who persist in remaining in ignorance, are to be the vicious, pauper, criminal class who are to fill the dens of vice, the poorhouses, and the prisons; who are to be burglars, highwaymen, and murderers. In place ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... With the smartness characteristic of our navy the men were formed up in a line with their backs to the mission wall. The officer in command gave one look at them, and then almost ran up the ladder which Barton ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... frowned Smith. "That sounds like Yankee smartness to me—seems to make a great deal more sense than ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... ink would 'take' on anything, and it shone like a 'patent leather' boot. Further, Constance developed a 'hand' for lettering which outdid Mr. Povey's. Between them they manufactured tickets by the dozen and by the score—tickets which, while possessing nearly all the smartness and finish of Mr. Chawner's tickets, were much superior to these in originality and strikingness. Constance and Mr. Povey were delighted and fascinated by them. As for Mrs. Baines, she said little, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... spectators were paraded about two thousand Girl Guides. It delighted the eye to see the companies march with precision and smartness, while the ear was charmed and the marital spirit stirred by the music of the pipes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... fun, seldom or never I think to mischief, to which so many lads at that age are prone. I cannot recall anything that then indicated he would hereafter become a literary celebrity; but perhaps he was too young then. He usually held his head more erect than lads ordinarily do, and there was a general smartness about him. His weekday dress of jacket and trowsers, I can clearly remember, was what is called pepper-and-salt; and, instead of the frill that most boys of his age wore then, he had a turn-down collar, so that he looked less youthful in consequence. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... mental differences no less pronounced. No adjective has been more frequently applied to the Anglo-Saxon than the word "dull." The American mind has been accused of ignorance, superficiality, levity, commonplaceness, and dozens of other defects, but "dulness" is not one of them. "Smartness," rather, is the preferred epithet of derogation; or, to rise a little in the scale of valuation, it is the word "cleverness," used with that lurking contempt for cleverness which is truly English and which long survived in the dialect of New ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... try to show your smartness on me, young man. You are a new-comer, and I let you off this time. Answer me that way again, and you will remember it as long as you live." And the master glared at him like a savage bull about to ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... officers as a fine determined set of men, and especially of Wickham, the first lieutenant, as a "glorious fellow." The latter being responsible for the smartness and appearance of the ship strongly objected to his littering the decks, and spoke of specimens as "d—d beastly devilment," and used to add, "If I were skipper, I would soon have you and all your d—d mess ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... have just crossed the road, and are following this happy couple down the street, are a fair specimen of another class of Sunday—pleasurers. There is a dapper smartness, struggling through very limited means, about the young man, which induces one to set him down at once as a junior clerk to a tradesman or attorney. The girl no one could possibly mistake. You may tell a young woman in the employment of a large dress- maker, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... false too: the affected smartness of the wit does not suit the situation; or, rather, as a writer in the Athenaeum has said of a similar speech, "it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... idea, and heartily applauded the little Middy for his smartness. Even the Doctor saw a certain kind of merit in it, and Brownson acknowledged it to be quite feasible. In fact, expanding on it, the Lieutenant assured his hearers that, by means of large parabolic reflectors, luminous groups of rays could ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... sobriety prevailed. Half an hour might have passed, when a tap at the door was answered by a direction to enter. A middle-aged man, in the dress of an officer, but whose uniform wanted the usual smartness of the profession, made his appearance, and ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... my children shame themselves from me? From where did they get the stuff to work themselves up in the world? Did they get it from the air? How did they get all their smartness to rise over the people around them? Why don't the children of born American mothers write my Benny's plays? It is I, who never had a chance to be a person, who gave him the fire in his head. If I would have had a chance ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... modern Cincinnatus due credit for his undoubted smartness, it must be borne in mind that the movements of the Free State forces were generally determined by the Oorlogscommissie, a body made up of President Steyn, Judge Hertzog, Advocate De Villiers, and two or three other prominent men, whose trained intellects concerted the plan of ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... which arose from them when they perceived the youth of one of the strangers and the destitution of the other. Their escort did not halt, however, but pushed on, followed by a great crowd of Mormons, until they reached a waggon, which was conspicuous for its great size and for the gaudiness and smartness of its appearance. Six horses were yoked to it, whereas the others were furnished with two, or, at most, four a-piece. Beside the driver there sat a man who could not have been more than thirty years of age, but whose massive head ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Waite acted as counsel. The case for the United States was not presented in a manner worthy of the occasion. According to Adams the American contentions "were advanced with an aggressiveness of tone and attorney-like smartness, more appropriate to the wranglings of a quarter-sessions court than to pleadings before a grave international tribunal." The American counsel were instructed to insist not, indeed, on indemnity for the cost of two ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... usually happens, that the Sheriff-clerk, especially supposing him agent for several lairds of the higher order, is possessed of one of the best-looking houses; and such was that of Mr. Bindloose. None of the smartness of the brick-built and brass-hammered mansion of a southern attorney appeared indeed in this mansion, which was a tall, thin, grim-looking building, in the centre of the town, with narrow windows ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... game would wax very brisk indeed, and would be kept up with a smartness rendering such an encounter as this quite tame. But the Billickin almost invariably made by far the higher score; and would come in with side hits of the most unexpected and extraordinary description, when she ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... semicircles of twelve points each; one, I suppose, for noon, and the other for midnight. The town has, so far as its principal street is concerned, a city-like aspect, with large, fair edifices, and shops as good as most of those at Rome, the smartness of which contrasts strikingly with the rude and lonely scenery of mountain and stream, through which we had come to reach it. We drove through Narni without stopping, and came out from it on the other side, where a broad, level valley opened before us, most unlike the ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had not done so much as he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully exaggerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their garments; he had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out of his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned to think that this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren among ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers with such individual propriety that they look as if ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Subject. But, that his Virulence might not seem to be levelled singly at me, he has done me the Honour to join Dr. Bentley in the Libel. I was in hopes, we should have been both abused with Smartness of Satire at least, tho' not with Solidity of Argument; that it might have been worth some Reply in Defence of the Science attacked. But I may fairly say of this Author, as Falstaffe does of Poins;—Hang him, Baboon! ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... penetrated by surprising passages, which turn and turn at sharp angles till they lead you out on a muddy strand overflowed continually by the rushing tide. Everywhere the brick houses have a mellow look, and in Mrs. Glegg's day there was no incongruous new-fashioned smartness, no plate-glass in shop-windows, no fresh stucco-facing or other fallacious attempt to make fine old red St. Ogg's wear the air of a town that sprang up yesterday. The shop-windows were small and unpretending; for the farmers' wives and daughters who came to do their shopping ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... pudding. The rapidity with which every new-comer got served, was remarkable; and the dexterity with which the waitresses (quite new to the art a month before) discharged their duty, was as agreeable to see, as the neat smartness with which they wore their dress ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... I know not, and am in no condition to guess. A certain snappish vivacity (very unlike the style of Frederick whom it personates); a wearisome grimacing, gesticulating malice and smartness, approaching or reaching the sad dignity of what is called 'wit' in modern times; in general the rottenness of matter, and the epigrammatic unquiet graciosity of manner in this thing, and its elaborately INhuman turn both of expression and of thought, are visible characteristics of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... that's nothing when you are used to it," said Ben Boltrope, the man-o'-war's-man, who was pretty well king of the forecastle by reason of his service in the navy and general smartness as a seaman. "What is eight days in a boat without grub, when you've got to go ten, as I've done, besides wandering about on a sandy shore after swimming for a day and night to save my life? ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... and the ceremonies are disciplinary exercises designed to teach precise and soldierly movement, and to inculcate that prompt and subconscious obedience which is essential to proper military control. To this end, smartness and precision should be exacted in the execution of every detail. Such drills should ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... into the business of the hour won the family, and placed them all in friendly relations at once. The old lady let them do what they would, admiring everything, and declaring over and over again that her new assistants "beat her boys and girls to nothin' with their tastiness and smartness." Sylvia trimmed the table with common flowers till it was an inviting sight before a viand appeared upon it, and hung green boughs about the room, with candles here and there to lend a festal light. Moor trundled a great cheese in from the ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott |
