"Stuffy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... halls until daybreak. And these thoughts, which had become like invisible presences to the girl, wandered up and down the dim staircase, where the lowered lights awaited George's return, invaded the drawing-room, filled with stuffy red velvet chairs, so like crouching human beings in the darkness, and even thronged about her threshold, ready to spring inside at the instant when George should open the door. While her fire burned brightly on the andirons, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... purse, and shun guides and inns when I can. I care for open air, colour, flowers, weeds, birds, insects, mountains. There's a world behind the mask. I call this life; and the town's a boiling pot, intolerably stuffy. My one ambition is to be out of it. I thank heaven I have not another on earth. Yes, I care for my note-book, because it's of no use to a human being except me. I slept beside a spring last night, and I never shall like a bedroom so well. I think I have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... poking her head out from the upper berth of the stuffy little state-room assigned to Mrs. Fisher, Mrs. Henderson, Phronsie, and herself; "was anything ever so delicious as this boat? —and to think, Mamsie,"—here Polly paused to add as impressively as if the idea had never been ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... but yet they were more or less necessary, so Sam got out at Hollis Creek Inn with her, and led the way determinedly and directly into the stuffy little parlor just off the main assembly room. He saw Mr. Stevens in the door of the post-office, but only nodded to him, and then he drew Miss Josephine into the corner freest ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... this hallowed spot that night, at nine o'clock on his way to his train, came Joe in a yellow mackintosh with a brand-new suitcase in his hand—and showed me history in the making. It was made in a small, stuffy room upstairs. On the one side J. K. with a million American readers behind him, on the other this revolutionist whose name that week had been in newspapers all over the world. So far, so good. But look at him, look at this history maker. Tall, sallow and dyspeptic, ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... long journey Roderick was asleep, and Mary's pretty head had fallen against the cushion as the swing of the carriage gave the direct negative to her words at Calais station. At last, even the maker of commonplaces was silent; and as I reclined at greater length on the cushions of the stuffy compartment, I thought how strange a company we were then being carried over the dull, drear pasture-land of France, to the lights, the music, and the life of the great capital. Of the man Martin ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... been concerned in intrigue before, and it did not agree with our simple lives. I could feel myself deteriorating, morally and intellectually. I had a desire to beat the Precious Ones (who were certainly well behaved for children shut up in two stuffy rooms) or better still to set the house afire, and run amuck killing and slaying down four flights of stairs—to do something very terrible in fact—something deadly and horrible and final that would put an end forever to this melancholy haunt of Tuesday stews and ghoulish boarders with the ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Crab Orchard springs, that favorite resort in the ante-bellum days. What though the main rooms were cramped and stuffy, or that the straggling cottages across the grassy lawn were mere shells. It was a place thoroughly rural, thoroughly enjoyable. Merely to ramble along the winding saw-dust walks to the deep embowered springs, was a sufficient augury of improved health. It was the one daily excitement ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... on with his task, rather a peculiar one, which would have been performed below in a larger vessel, but here the men pretty well lived on deck, caring little for the close stuffy quarters that formed the forecastle, where they had, being considered inferior beings, considerably less space than was apportioned to their ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... cactus, growing a little larger as we travelled south. And always in the mornings when out of the deep canyons the moist, pungent odour of the sage greeted our nostrils. It is inseparable from the West. There is no stuffy germ-laden air there, out in the sage; one is glad to live, simply to breathe it in and ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... prominent feature, and know that in a day or two it will be raw and blistered and burning. I think, in a comfortable inn at night, of the miseries of those who are trying to sleep in damp hay, or on hard boards of chalets, at once cold and stuffy and haunted by innumerable fleas. I congratulate myself on having a whole skin and unfractured bones, and on the small danger of ever breaking them over an Alpine precipice. But yet I secretly know that these consolations are feeble. It is little use to avoid early rising and discomfort, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... time I went into the parlor, which room was then occupied by the young men and young women. It was ever so much pleasanter out-of-doors than in this somewhat gloomy and decidedly stuffy parlor; but as these people were guests at a quilting party, they knew it was proper to enjoy themselves within the house to which ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... Phoebe's room, I suppose," said the visitor, as they reached the landing. "So near you, I can give you any attention you may need in the night. Besides, the sun—oh, the dimity room! Well, I dare say it will do well enough. Stuffy, isn't it? but I am the easiest person in the world to satisfy. And how is Aunt Marcia? I shall go to see her the first thing in the morning; she will hardly expect me to call this afternoon, though I could make a special effort if you ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... I knew very well how hot and stuffy the salon of Madame Brossard's "Grande Suite" must be, while the garden was fragrant in the warm, dry night, and the outdoor air like a gentle tonic. Nevertheless, Professor Keredec and ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... lintels of a door no longer guarded, as gently as if a rich curtain were swaying there. I used sometimes on these occasions to think of the Misses Bordereau and of the pity of their being shut up in apartments which in the Venetian July even Venetian vastness did not prevent from being stuffy. Their life seemed miles away from the life of the Piazza, and no doubt it was really too late to make the austere Juliana change her habits. But poor Miss Tita would have enjoyed one of Florian's ices, I was sure; sometimes I even had thoughts of carrying one home to her. Fortunately ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... is odd what an effect one's early training has. D'you remember how discouraged G.-A. Alison was about our levity—especially mine? She once said bitterly that I was like the ell-woman—hollow—because I laughed in the middle of the Bible lesson. And how antiquated and stuffy we thought her views, and took pleasure in assuring ourselves that we had got far beyond them, and you spent an evening tea-less in your room because you said you would rather be a Buddhist than a Disruption Worthy—do you ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... The room gets very stuffy with tobacco smoke, and really it is quite a warm night. I shall close them before I retire, ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... native reaction, is ordinarily automatic and needs no preparatory reactions, simply because air is so easy to get. But let breathing be difficult, for any reason, and the stifling sensation is as impulsive as hunger or thirst. The stuffy air in a cave or in a hole under a haymow will lead a child to frantic escape. Possibly the delight in being out of doors which shows itself in young children, and is not lost in adults, represents ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... are housed in a huge building, which cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, and is acknowledged to be the largest in the Colonies. But it was not in this palatial building that the great case was tried, but as is usually the way in a dilapidated, stuffy, little police-court, with dingy walls, ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... trousers. Julius had shaken his head over the trousers, knowing that the first walk taken by the garments in company with the winners would be as far as the pop-shop. But lying there in the clean-smelling, airy Hospital ward, he yearned with a mighty yearning for the stuffy West-Central classroom, and the rowdy crew of London roughs hulking and hustling on the benches, learning per medium of "the dodger," that one's duty to one's neighbour was not to abuse him foully without cause, to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... society in England who are masters of their own time, turn night into day, waste millions yearly in oil and wax, and sleep away the most fresh and healthy hours of the morning, for no other visible purpose but to enable themselves to pass the night in the most stuffy and unhealthy atmosphere, is beyond my comprehension. One thing is certain: it has a tendency to enervate both body and mind, and were it not for the revivifying effects produced by a winter residence in the country, where gentlemen take to field sports, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... a moon in two or three hours. At best the accommodations here are bad; rooms stuffy and close and hot. If ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... covered by the porter with a coffee-stained tablecloth. Somebody, by a happy inspiration, fetched a medical man. The expert was chiefly anxious to get the machine at work again, for seven or eight trains had stopped midway in the stuffy tunnels of the electric railway. Azuma-zi, answering or misunderstanding the questions of the people who had by authority or impudence come into the shed, was presently sent back to the stoke-hole by the scientific manager. Of course a crowd ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... nor the childish laughter, nor all the tiny steps that glided over the polished floors. For a moment, as she sat on the edge of a great red-silk couch, taking from the plate presented to her the first sherbet of her life, she suddenly thought of the dark stairway, of her parents' stuffy little rooms, and it produced upon her mind the effect of a distant country which she ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... across a ditch, and some time was required for the train crew to release her. Another stop was made in the middle of a swamp, to put off a light mulatto who had presumed on his complexion to ride in the white people's car. He had been successfully spotted, but had impudently refused to go into the stuffy little closet provided at the end of the car for people of his class. He was therefore given an opportunity to reflect, during a walk along the ties, upon his true relation to society. Another stop was made for a gentleman who had sent a Negro boy ahead to flag the train and notify the conductor ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... St. James, Victoria, and Albert houses, Tank Villa, Poplar Villa, Rose, Brake, and Thorn Villas, as well as Hawthorn, Gorse, Fern, Shrubbery, and Providence Cottages. All had apartments, but many were taken, and many more had rooms either dark and stuffy or without view. Holly House was my first stopping-place. Why will a woman voluntarily call her place by a name which she can never pronounce? It is my landlady's misfortune that she is named 'Obbs, and mine that I am called 'Amilton, but Mrs. 'Obbs must have rushed with eyes wide ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... afternoon it come over me that after this there wouldn't be a single thing any more to remind us of anything good or bad, we've ever done. It'll be most as if we hadn't lived at all. I just felt as though I couldn't go away from everything and everybody I've ever known down to Hiram's stuffy little flat. And yet I suppose we are real lucky to have such a good son as Hiram now the others are all gone. I dun'no' what we'd do if 'tweren't ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... a stuffy little cabin that smelled of tar and various other flavors that were too mixed to be recognizable. As a result he passed one of the most ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... the month of May passed wearily by, and time hung heavily on our hands. We felt the inevitable reaction from the first few days of excitement, and also missed the comforts and ease to which we had been accustomed in former hot seasons. The barracks were close and stuffy, and the officers, in place of the luxury of their bungalows and their pleasant mess, had to endure ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... he see beer? Splendid. He would have a bottle of beer. Yes, and a sandwich. Excellent. Just the thing after an eighty-mile run. What excellent roads they kept in Oxfordshire! He never remembered better. And the Cotswold air was magnificent. Really, one had to spend one's days in a stuffy Court in Town to appreciate the ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Father sits in that stuffy little room of his he usually writes in his sleep. She really does take the most amazing notice of things, and the way she expresses herself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... do it again; but it was so sunshiny, and they were all making such fun, you see, and it did seem so stuffy, and so long and tiresome, I couldn't help it, ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one lose patience to think how Schiller shut himself up in a stuffy closet of a room all day with his exhausting work; and how the sole recreation he allowed himself during the week was a solemn game of l'hombre with the philosopher Schelling. And then he wondered why he could not get on with his writing and why ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... it to use as a refrigerator as well. There is at least a draught of air, such as it is. When fire breaks out, this draught makes of the air shaft a flue through which the fire roars fiercely to the roof, so transforming what was meant for the good of the tenants into their greatest peril. The stuffy rooms bring to mind this denunciation of the tenement builder of fifty years ago by an angry writer, "He measures the height of his ceilings by the shortest of the people, and by thin partitions divides the ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... his hand into his jacket pocket. "If Mr. Thurston had not been of such tireless nature, I might have found leisure to admire the beauty of this most entrancing coast scenery, instead of puzzling over weary figures in a particularly stuffy saloon." ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... stuffy night in the breathless railway carriage; once Marcella went out on the platform and sat down for awhile listening to the echo-like barking of dingoes out on the ranges. In less than five minutes she was back again, her feet and hands prickling and sore with the bites of ants ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... on; you'll need it," he said, heartily, holding out the coat. "It was Steve's. I guess it'll fit you. Mother and Bonnie's over here, waiting. They couldn't stand it without coming along. I guess you won't mind the ride, will you, after them stuffy cars? It's ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... and damp and stuffy now, and filled with unpleasant odors, for it had been unoccupied since early in July. But soon Abel had a roaring fire in the stove, and the things in from the boat, and Mrs. Abel had the room aired, and before ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... their rooms in a way which recalls the manner called artistic, more especially when the artist is a figure or subject, as distinguished from a landscape painter, for the latter lives too much in the free fresh air to cultivate draperies, even if he does not absolutely detest them as being stuffy; and in the same way the bedroom of the only daughter of the Bishop of Morningquest would have made you think of matters ecclesiastical. The room itself, with its thick walls, high stone mantelpiece, small gothic windows, and plain ridged vault, was so in fact; ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... was hot, and the wind was high, and the alkali dust from the sagebrush plains sifted into the car, and whitened the stuffy upholstering, and burrowed into the nerves of the passengers. Everybody longed for the coming of night, and the relief of the climb up the cool heights ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... office of the company—that at the eleventh hour an old ship with a lower standard of speed had been put on in place of the vessel in which I had taken my passage. America was roasting, England might very well be stuffy, and a slow passage (which at that season of the year would probably also be a fine one) was a guarantee of ten or twelve days ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... was oblivious of such a detail, having been made one of the two "stablemen" of my sub-division, a post which was to last for a week, and kept me in constant attendance on the horses down below; so that I might just as well have been in a very stuffy stable on shore, for all I saw of the run down Channel. My duty was to draw forage from the forward hold (a gloomy, giddy operation), be responsible with my mate for the watering of all the horses in my sub-division—thirty in number, ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... stuffy this place is! Violet, I wish you'd go round to Huntley, and talk to him. Of course, he gets a big percentage on the returns, and that makes him anxious to squeeze everyone. But I don't want any risks. We're ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... really looked a most awful devil. You know, he had those wicked eyes that go up at their outside corners like tigers'. He was heavenly. I simply couldn't take my eyes off him, and he kept looking at me. Cleo said very stuffily (she's always stuffy with me), 'Don't stare!' and he must have overheard, because he turned away, and there was a most devilish curl on his lips. If we hadn't got out at the next station, I'm sure we should have ended by smiling at each other quite openly. You know, he was one of the sort who one ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... not noticed when she went to bed was an open trunk heaped with clothing—both for under and outer wear. The rich and "stuffy" gown was typically German, and so was the ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... with the old-fashioned porch and low-studded rooms, though the sleeping-rooms seemed a little stuffy ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... he said, "and it must be very old. It's all stuffy and moth-eaten, and the gold is nearly black. There are green things on it. I know what it is, Terry. It belonged to Gran'ma's uncle in the Irish Brigades. He was killed at Fontenoy. They sent home his things. Nursey told ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... were simple. A room scarcely wider than a cell was assigned to each boy. It was locked at night; but holes were cut in the door so that the fresh air might come in. This, at least, was the theory. Practically, however, the little cell must have been very stuffy, for the windows in the halls were shut tight in order that the health of the pupils might not be injured by currents of damp air ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... room, dignified by the name of a parlour, was a dingy, stuffy apartment of the true Dull Street type. The paper was faded and torn, the ceiling was discoloured, the furniture was decrepit, the carpet was threadbare, and the cheap engraving on the wall, with its title, "As Happy as a King," ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... conscience, supposing for the sake of argument your name to be Wozenham, which I am well aware it is not or my opinion of you would be greatly lowered, and as to airy bedrooms and a night-porter in constant attendance the less said the better, the bedrooms being stuffy ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... to her room. The little cottage was close and stuffy after leaving the outer air. But she did not mind; there appeared to be a hundred different things demanding her attention indoors. She began to set the toilet-stand to rights, grumbling at the negligence of the ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... Messageries vessel had broken down, and that a small Dutch steamer, belonging to the Nederland Indische Stoomship Co., was to be her substitute for that voyage, and still more disgusted were we when shown into a stuffy little cabin containing three bunks, in one of which a fat Dutchman had already retired to rest, the other two being L.'s and my resting-place. We made the best of a bad job, however, and turned in, but not for long; certain ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... room smelt hot and stuffy, but a little window at the back had been thrown open, and the soft air blowing from off miles of plain made the place a little ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... be as happy if I were poor—not real poor, you know, but as we were at Langley before I was born. I went there with him a few weeks ago for the first time; and oh, my goodness gracious! such a poky little house, with the stairs going right up in the room, and such a tiny, stuffy bedroom! I tried to fancy mamma's scent bottles, and brushes, and combs, and the box for polishing her nails, transported to that room, and her in there with Rosalie dressing her hair. It made me laugh till I cried, and I think papa ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the victims to life; only one recovered sufficiently to be released, and Prince brought it in again, quite dead, five minutes later. I shut the little casement window, but the room became so hot and stuffy, and suspicious fumes of stale beer and tobacco began to assert their presence, so that I found myself obliged to open it again. Sometimes the victim's bones were crunched close to my ear, and I found more than one feather in my hair in the morning. Never was ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... changes and chances of a journey which has assuredly more bad weather than good. The gayest are not those who can be pointed out as the happiest. Indeed, the happiest are those who appear to have nothing to make them happy. Martin Bukaty might, for instance, have chosen a better abode than the stuffy cabin of a Scandinavian cargo-boat and cheerier companions than a grim pair of Norse seamen. He might have sought a bluer sky and a bluer sea, and yet he stood on the dripping deck and laughed. He clapped Captain Petersen ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... "Hospital's stuffy, isn't it? Think you could recover health more rapidly outdoors? Sick-leave continued of course, but—how ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... at the little, stuffy room, and thought of all her girlish day-dreams—of the sweet hopes she had had of soon leaving those dingy four walls, and of having a little bower of a cottage to call "home," with a handsome young husband all ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... a good time in that stuffy caravan, and manage to avoid blisters. I thought you would like to hear that father has given me leave to go to Sheppey, and stay for three days with Mr. Fowler, who has promised to take me up in an aeroplane. I am also ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... shook it, also without saying anything, dropped into a chair and pulled a half-broken cigar out of a side pocket. Mashurina gave him a light, and without exchanging a single word, or so much as looking at one another, they began sending out long, blue puffs into the stuffy room, already filled ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... beg of you. I am going over my MSS. for the fifth time, young man! That will give you an idea of my perseverance with difficulties. Follow the example, and you'll soon conquer those young limbs. Now, good morning to you, Price, good morning!' and Philip was hastily bowed out of the stuffy little sanctum, with its piles of MSS. and its odours ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... flagrantly modern clock, brass work, eight hundred francs on the Boulevard St. Germain, the cabinets, brass work, the rich brown carpet, and the furniture set all round the room geometrically, the great gilt mirror, the ancestral portrait, the arms and crest everywhere, and the stuffy bourgeois sense of comfort; a little grotesque no doubt;—the mechanical admiration for all that is about her, for the general atmosphere, the Figaro, that is to say Albert Wolf, l'homme le plus spirituel de Paris, c'est-a-dire, dans le monde, the success of Georges Ohnet and ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... strangely deficient in many respects. I have suffered bitter cold in the great chilly palace; at night one might break one's neck on the dark stone stairway; in some parts an ofttimes very foul and disgusting stench prevailed; the servants slept in stuffy hovels; there was a lavatory of which my father was very proud and which had cost enormous sums of money, but where in broad daylight one had to light a candle in ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... lesson, namely Professor Sigmund Freud. He has now broadened his conception of sexual craving or libido into a general principle of attraction or concretion in matter, like the Eros of the ancient poets Hesiod and Empedocles. The windows of that stuffy clinic have been thrown open; that smell of acrid disinfectants, those hysterical shrieks, have escaped into the cold night. The troubles of the sick soul, we are given to understand, as well as their cure, after all flow ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... fallen into her hands, and with it she now rented Shapley Manor and had set up as a country lady. Benton gazed around the fine old room with its Adams ceiling and its Georgian furniture, and reflected how different were Molly's present surroundings from that stuffy little flat au troisieme in the ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... said this she was sitting in the best of Mrs Jones's sitting-rooms, waiting to have dinner announced. She had taken a drawing-room and dining-room, "because," as she had said, "she didn't see why people should be stuffy when they went to the seaside;—not if they had means ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... as if the "show" would never end. Chagrin and resentment overcame her. What had possessed her to come to this hot, stuffy place with Thomas, instead of reading French in her peaceful, pleasant sitting-room with Austin? Why didn't Austin show more eagerness to be with her, anyway? She liked to be with him—ever and ever so much—didn't see half so much of him as she wanted to. ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... were unceremoniously bundled out of the train. Those who had trunks and bags were roughly bidden to shoulder them and to fall in for the march to the camp. The noon heat was terrible. The sun poured down unmercifully, and after twelve hours' confinement in the stuffy railway carriages few could stretch their limbs. But the military guards set the marching pace and we had to keep to it. If we lagged we were prodded into activity by means ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Heald's passed in irritation and discomfort, and after dinner he stood at the window, his brain full of Maggie—her graces, her fascinating cunning, and all her picturesqueness. He knew nothing yet of his passion, nor did he think he could not bear to lose her until he went from the stuffy cottage towards his studio thinking of his portrait of her. He wanted to muse on the little eyes as he had rendered them. He saw the faults in the drawing hardly at all, and his pain softened and almost ceased when he took up the ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... of TALKING?' said Cyril. 'What I want is for something to happen. It's awfully stuffy for a chap not to be allowed out in the evenings. There's simply nothing to do when ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... our governess was, of course, sensitive to the smallest inlet of cooler air, and "draughts" were accordingly her abhorrence. How we contrived to distinguish a verb from a noun, or committed anything whatever to memory in the fever-heat and "stuffy" atmosphere of the little room which was sacred to our studies, I do not know. At a certain degree of the thermometer Miss Perry's face rises before me and makes my brain spin ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... conversation. The words were the last I ever heard him utter. Perhaps they were the last he did utter, too. For, going down into the cabin to turn in, I decided that it was too stuffy to sleep below. It was a calm night. We were out of the Trades, and the Ghost was forging ahead barely a knot an hour. So I tucked a blanket and pillow under my arm and ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... and stuffy down in the belly of the ship, and also utterly black, for the trader had flicked off his hand-flash. Friday was unhappily possessed of an active curiosity; he wanted terribly to go on with his questions ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... and we took refuge in the cellars beneath the Town Hall. So far as I could gather, the remaining inhabitants of Antwerp must have assembled about this neighborhood, groups taking refuge in small and stuffy cellars, where developments were anxiously awaited. There must have been hundreds of people sheltered underground, and they included the Mexican and Dominican Consuls. Why these stayed I do not know, as none of their people were left behind. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... Spanish prize; and as soon as they get within firing range we'll run up a flag of truce. By the way," he continued, becoming quite courteous, now that he felt he had them in his power, "why do you remain in this stuffy cabin? I shall be very glad to have you up on deck, provided you'll give ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... observations in this direction he querulously complained to the waiter that the atmosphere was stuffy, and prevailed on the man to raise the window a few inches, thus admitting a breath ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... the friends departed, not displeased to get away from the stuffy and vitiated atmosphere of Taylor's room. On the whole, they were not dissatisfied with the result of their expedition. At any rate, they had now proof positive of the fact that Fenwick was at the bottom of the mysterious disappearance of the man ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... should be selected as one would select a color for clothes, to harmonize with the color of the skin in all lights, and, for service Color schemes in decoration are being followed and we have no more stuffy parlors, often closed for days. Instead we have living rooms, with cleanable furniture, strong but light, entirely suitable for winter, and cool in summer. No one has a parlor now-a-days. The best room is generally a living room for the whole family. No more do we see enlarged pictures ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... Whitney ten years before—Oh, yes! Henry Martin! That had been a schoolgirl affair. Nothing serious, you understand. But the Whitney matter had been different. She was greatly in love with him. And the family had disapproved. Some rich, stuffy Boston people, I gathered. But she had made up her mind and taken matters in her own hands. That was her way—a clean-cut sort of person—like a gold-and-white arrow; and now she was going to stick by her choice no matter what happened; owed it to Whitney. There was the quirk in her brain; ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... an hour before they removed the barricade from the door and let the fresh cool morning breeze into their stuffy prison. Even then they did not venture outside, for they still feared some trick on the part of the convicts. As the moments, passed quietly by, however, without any sign of their foes, their fears began ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... recognized as an allergy because it may not manifest as the instant skin rash or stuffy nose or swollen glands or sticky eyes. that people usually think of when they think "allergic reaction." Food allergies can cause many kinds of symptoms, from sinusitis to psychosis, from asthma to arthritis, from hyperactivity to depression, ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... talk as connectedly as possible upon the mysteries of the craft that was all in all to her. Therefore it was his fate to endure weekly torture in the studio built out over the clammy back garden of a frail stuffy little villa where nothing was ever in its right place and nobody every called,—to endure and to watch Maisie moving to and fro with the teacups. He abhorred tea, but, since it gave him a little longer time in her presence, he drank it ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... know about these things myself. My uncle Jeanbernat used to forbid me to go to church. "Silly girl," he'd say to me, "why do you want to go to a stuffy building when you have got a garden to run about in?" I grew up quite happy and contented. I used to look in the birds' nests without even taking the eggs. I did not even pluck the flowers, for fear of hurting the plants; and you know that I could never torture an ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... heroic devotion with yells of execration. When Angus M'Lachlan saved a certain try by tackling a speedy wing three-quarter low and bringing him down with a crash, a hundred voices demanded his removal from the field. And, when Mr. Waddell, playing a stuffy but useful game at half, gained fifty yards for his side by a series of judicious little kicks into touch, the spectators ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... cosmopolitan and yet typically Philippine. Since that day the fine Constabulary Band has come into existence, and the music has grown to be more than a mere feature of the whole scene. The concert would be well worth an admission fee and an hour's confinement in a stuffy hall. Enjoyed in delightful pure air with a background of wonderful beauty, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... also must have slept, for I dreamt that as the result of my having engaged in single combat with a dragon, the dragon, ignoring all the rules of Fairyland, had swallowed me. It was hot and stuffy in the dragon's stomach. He had, so it appeared to me, disgracefully overeaten himself; there were hundreds of us there, entirely undigested, including Mother Hubbard and a gentleman named Johnson, against whom, at that period, I entertained a strong prejudice by reason of our divergent ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... do as well as any, I guess," said Meyers. He drew Mr. Trimm past him into the seat nearer the window and sat down alongside him on the side next the aisle, settling himself on the stuffy plush seat and breathing deeply, like a man who had got through the hardest part of ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... much to settle down. Perhaps these stirrings up have to occur to save us from our disposition to stuffy comfort. There's the magic call of the unknown experience, of dangers and hardships. One wants to go. But unless some push comes one does not go. There is a spell that keeps one to the lair and the old familiar ways. Now I am afraid—and at the same time I feel ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... vexes the unrested soul in nothing more than this, that (like a revolution in Paris) it tempts the people to "go down into the streets." The streets are cooler, at least, than stuffy gas-lit rooms; and if the public would only roam them in a contemplative spirit, with eyes turned up to the peaceful constellations, the public might fall down an area now and then, but would not much disturb the neighbourhood. But the 'Arry that walketh by night thinks of nothing less than admiring, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... were something very new. To her, as to so many poor people, a bedroom was a stuffy place to crawl into at night and get out of as quickly as possible ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... one of the big stores, and it sort of scared me—everything so stuffy and heaped up, and such a lot of people. I don't get down to Baltimore very often, you see. I do most of my buying right in Frederick, but I'd broke my disker, and if you send, it's maybe weeks before the implement house will ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... ever so acceptable as the large, steaming cups which they drank in the stuffy little parlour, and no carriage and pair could have been more welcome than the old market cart that came round to the door afterwards. It was rather a problem how to pack themselves and the driver into it, but ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... without her," said Mrs. Stobell, rejoining the group. "What with losing that nice, airy bunk and getting that nasty, stuffy stateroom, I don't ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... The stuffy court room is packed to overflowing. The fat, one-eyed bailiff is perspiring to no purpose. He cannot make the throng "sit down." In fact every one who has anything to do with the pickets perspires to no purpose. Judge Mullowny takes ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... choose to leave the railroad you may still travel by diligence in Germany, and rumble along the roads in its stuffy interior. As you pass through a village the driver blows his horn, old and young run out to enjoy the sensation of the day, the geese cackle and flutter from you in the dust, you catch glimpses of a cobble-stoned market-place, a square church-tower with a stork's nest on its summit, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... heart since midday, and at dusk it reached its limit in unmistakable rage. That they might be willing to ignore her entirely had not entered her mind before. Her heart was very bitter toward the disagreeable creatures who left her alone all day in a stuffy room, and in a ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... had seen it. It was cold and also stuffy. It was ugly and shabby and stiff. Three tired girls sat there, two trying to read by a strangled gaslight overhead; one trying to entertain a caller in a social fiction of privacy at the other end ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... might discover himself to be fitted for some work of national utility without that preliminary wire-pulling which was essential in humdrum times of peace! How we lingered in long queues, and stamped up and down, and sat about crowded, stuffy halls, waiting, only waiting, to be asked to do something for our country by any little guttersnipe who happened to have been jockeyed into the requisite position of authority! ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... we were forced to camp on a barren spot, and tied the camels down foodless; one night without feed does them no harm—less harm than if they wandered miles in their hobbles looking for it. The weather was now distinctly hot, unpleasant and stuffy, as if about to thunder; but the nights were still cold. At midday we saw two fine quondong trees; how the camels devoured them, leaves, fruit, stones and all! Emus swallow the stones without inconvenience; apparently a camel has an equally convenient interior, ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... on board was regular pandemonium and most uncomfortable for the men. Four officers and 140 other ranks from the second line had joined us at Devonport and we were very overcrowded. Each man had a stuffy and inaccessible bunk and a place at a table in the steerage saloon for meals, which had to be served in three relays owing to the numbers on board. This meant either very perfect time keeping or very perfect chaos, and, needless to say, for the first few days it was the latter. The captain ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... is too stuffy," she answered. "I was obliged to come out myself for some fresh air. Let ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and habitation, occupied by state-pensioners, reduced gentlewomen in receipt of the Queen's bounty and other deserving persons. Many of the apartments have their dependent gardens, and here and there, between the verdure-coated walls, you catch a glimpse of these somewhat stuffy bowers. My companion and I measured more than once this long expanse, looking down on the floral figures of the rest of the affair and on the stoutly-woven tapestry of creeping plants that muffle the foundations of the huge red pile. I thought of the various images of old-world gentility ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... The place was stuffy, foul-smelling, and reeked with a stale combination of tobacco and beer and patchouli, and tears, ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... I would go to school, or not. Must be perfectly dreadful to dress like for church, and sit still in a stuffy little room, and do your "abs," and "bes," and "bis," and "bos," all day long. I could spell quite well without looking at a schoolhouse, and read too. I was wondering if I ever would go at all, when I thought of something else. Dr. Fenner had said to give me plenty of good books. ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... it all, and so am I, now that I've got my breath! I'm remembering what a dewy-eyed little dove of a thing she is. A few days of happy holiday for her, and then the mildest and gayest school I can find, one where they have no stuffy rules about not letting the pupils come ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Gladstone patronised, had made elaborate preparations for Dilke's reception; when he arrived at Glen he was given a warm welcome; and we all sat down to tea. After hearing him talk uninterruptedly for hours and watching his stuffy face and slow, protruding eyes, I ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... and other healthful sports robbed him of a certain dignity in their eyes. Some of the women of the congregation had been inclined to side with the deacons, for it hurt their vanity that the pastor found so many other interests when he might have been sitting in dark, stuffy rooms discussing theology with them; but Douglas had been either unconscious of or indifferent to their resentment, and had gone on his way with a cheery nod and an unconquerable conviction of right, that had only left them floundering. He intended to quit ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... people on steamboats, just as the other day, when we motored, I pitied people in stuffy black trains," said Miss Rivers. "But I don't pity the people on lighters and barges. Don't they look delightful? I should love to live on that one with the curly-tailed red lion on the prow, and the green house with white embroidered curtains and flower-pots, and sweet ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... in September Amory arrived in Princeton and joined the sweltering crowd of conditioned men who thronged the streets. It seemed a stupid way to commence his upper-class years, to spend four hours a morning in the stuffy room of a tutoring school, imbibing the infinite boredom of conic sections. Mr. Rooney, pander to the dull, conducted the class and smoked innumerable Pall Malls as he drew diagrams and worked equations from six ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... were good swimmers, they soon righted their canoe with the loss only of the loaf of bread. During the trip lunch was spread daily under the awning on the top deck. This was much more pleasant than down in the stuffy cabin. After leaving Moreton Bay the sea became rough. A water spout formed not far from the ship, and it appeared large enough to swamp us had we been under it. The wind made it hard to light matches for a smoke, so Captain Pennefather introduced his flint and steel, and lit a stick composed ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... and he locked her in. She knew then that she was a prisoner. When he was at the mill at night, while he slept during the day, she was to be locked up in her stuffy, airless room. When he was about she would do the housework, always ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... public-houses. The landlord's chief interest is the sale of liquor. Under his roof you may, if you choose, eat and sleep, but what you are expected to do is to drink. Yet, even for drinking, there is no decent accommodation. You will find what is called a bar-parlour, a stuffy and dirty room, with crazy chairs, where only the sodden dram- gulper could imagine himself at ease. Should you wish to write a letter, only the worst pen and the vilest ink is forthcoming; this, even in the "commercial room" of many an inn which ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... meet a body Cubbin' thro' the rye, What a body calls a body Dare I say?—not I; Farmers get distinctly stuffy, Neither are they shy, And Masters, when they're ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... one spot like a sailor in a crow's nest, waiting for something to happen; you're in the saddle, riding from point to point all day long, sometimes when there is a trail and sometimes when there isn't, out in the real woods, not in poky, stuffy city streets. You know, Fred, I can't stand the city; I always feel as if I ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... wall-flowers, smile broadly at the least amusing remark, just as though they were not being consumed with jealousy and disappointment. They talk eagerly and gladly to deaf old members of Parliament and stuffy bachelors, whom they hate more intensely than ever after the evening is over. Fans are waving in every direction, the great, broad, heavy "coolers" of the fat mammas, who are just dying from heat and exhaustion; and the pretty, feathery, spangled things, behind which is ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... weedy hay this hot day; and as for the water, that got upset the first hill we went up. Oh, dear! and to add to the rest of my troubles I have got a cinder in my eye, along with this horrible dust that is blowing in that stuffy little window and I know I am going to be smothered to death. Oh, if Nanny were only here, to lick this cinder out of my eye! It smarts so I wish I had hands instead of feet for once in my life so I could get it out. I wonder if people ever think how inconvenient ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... distinguished, and it was very pleasant to see his slim figure keeping step with Lucy, and his long, fair face responding when Lucy spoke to him. People congratulated Mrs. Honeychurch, which is, I believe, a social blunder, but it pleased her, and she introduced Cecil rather indiscriminately to some stuffy dowagers. ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... to leave his own work for public agitation, he plunged into the Socialist campaign with characteristic energy. For two or three years he was constantly devoting his Sundays to open-air speech-making, his evenings to thinly-attended meetings in stuffy rooms in all the poorer parts of London; and, at the call of comrades, he often travelled into the provinces, and even as far as Scotland, to lend a hand. And he spent time and money prodigally in supporting journals which were to spread the special doctrines of his form ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... early days when we had first arrived at Vrntze there were several overfilled Serbian and one Greek hospital. They were only cafes and large villas, unsanitary, stuffy, and overworked. The windows were never open, and through the huge sheets of plate glass could be dimly seen in the thick blue tobacco smoke a higgledy-piggledy crowd of beds. Often two men lay in one bed covered with their dirty great coats, while typhus patients and wounded men slept together. ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... ate the food they had brought, and drank wine and tea. And after weary hours the train set off through snow-patched country to Paris. Everywhere was crowded, the train was stuffy without being warm. Next to Alvina sat a large, fat, youngish Frenchman who overflowed over her in a hot fashion. Darkness began to fall. The train was very late. There were strange and frightening delays. Strange lights appeared in the sky, everybody seemed to be listening ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... between. He saw by the number into which bags and packets had been thrown that the upper berths were the favourites, but he concluded that the lower tiers were preferable. "It will be frightfully hot and stuffy here," he said to himself, "and I should say the lower berths will be cooler than the upper." He therefore placed his trunk in one of those next to the central passage and near the door, and then ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... told, make a ceremony of going out from the city to enjoy the beauties of a moonlight night. We go to a stuffy theatre and applaud a night "set." Nature gives her children the one, and the producer charges his patrons for the other. A propaganda of democratic war economy would teach us to delight in the ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch |
