"Swagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these anapaests in the Elizabethan or in the seventeenth-century poets, or most rarely. They were dear to the eighteenth century, and, much more than the heroic couplet, are the distinctive metre of that age. They swagger—or, worse, they strut—in its lighter verse, from its first year to its last. Swinburne's anapaests are far too delicate for swagger or strut; but for all their dance, all their spring, all their flight, all their flutter, we are compelled to perceive ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... with a loud croak, and seem to be falling on the ground. When this odd gesture betides them, they are scratching themselves with one foot, and thus lose the centre of gravity. Rooks sometimes dive and tumble in a frolicsome manner; crows and daws swagger in their walk; woodpeckers fly with an undulating motion, opening and closing their wings at every stroke, and so are always rising and falling in curves. All of this kind use their tails, which incline downwards, as a support while ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... Notre Dame, next day, as I mounted the steps of the Hotel de Luynes. My swagger, and that brave suit of pearl grey velvet with its silver lace, bore me unchallenged past the gorgeous suisse, who stood, majestic, in ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... his was a welcome figure in Timber Town. Men turned to look at him as he tramped past in his heavy, mud-stained blucher boots. One man, standing outside The Lucky Digger, asked him if he had "struck it rich." But the "swagger" looked at the man, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... face, his brogue, and his ungainly figure, was exceedingly nervous and sensitive in society, and was anxious, as such people mostly are, to cover his shyness by an appearance of ease, if not even of swagger; and there can be as little question that he occasionally did and said very awkward and blundering things. But our Japanese friend, whom we mentioned in our opening pages, looking through the record that ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... bring himself into habits of prudence and economy; often he was stripped of all his present finances at play; often he lavished them away in fits of unguarded charity or generosity. Sometimes among his boon companions he assumed a ludicrous swagger in money matters, which no one afterward was more ready than himself to laugh at. At a convivial meeting with a number of his fellow-students, he suddenly proposed to draw lots with any one present which of the two should treat the whole party to the play. The ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... dilemma here, so I write asking you to see me in London without delay, going back to the Tyrol later on if the investigation of the diamond mystery renders your return necessary. The Duchess of Chiselhurst is giving a great ball on the 29th. It is to be a very swagger affair, with notables from every part of Europe, and they seem determined that no one connected with a newspaper shall be admitted. We have set at work every influence to obtain an invitation for a reporter, but without ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... chuckling with delight at being completely understood. "I couldn't resist one little bit of sheer swagger. It's a French trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got at by slewing round the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of the left ear. That, and deepening the shadow under the lobe of the ear. It was ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... himself in fancy to that day ahead when Heaven would unfold another blessing for Peg—for him. He put down his hammer and glanced out of the window, and suddenly Maudlin Bates loomed up, with all his hulking swagger obliterating the shoemaker's ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... sat silent a little while, till Leonard was nearly out of sight, then rose, resumed his fardel, and, creeping quick along the hedgerows, followed Leonard toward the town. Just in the last field, as he looked over the hedge, he saw Leonard accosted by a gentleman of comely mien and important swagger. That gentleman soon left the young man, and came, whistling loud, up the path, and straight toward the tinker. Mr. Sprott looked round, but the hedge was too neat to allow of a good hiding-place, so he put a bold front on it, and stepped forth like a man. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... was for the moment the leader of the House. Though he has still some of the ingenuous shyness of youth—though he is modest with all his honours—though he has charmed everybody by the utter absence of swagger and side in his dazzling elevation—there is a ready adaptability about Mr. Asquith to a Parliamentary situation, which is as astonishing as it is rare in men who have spent their lives in the atmosphere of the law courts. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... in England excite such universal interest among all classes of the French as the great chartist demonstration has done. For days and days it was a leading topic in the newspapers, and for days the general subject of conversation. Both newspapers and talkers, relying on the big swagger of the Chartists, and the undisguised alarm of the government, confidently expected a stern and terrible straggle, with barricades, and bayonets, and pikes, and deluges of blood, and awful slaughter. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... must say as you've managed to make yourself pretty tidy comfortable," observed Leslie's guest as he entered the tent and stared about him in astonishment; "picters, fancy lamps, tables and chairs with swagger cloths and jigmarees upon 'em, and a brass-mounted bedstead and beddin' fit for a king! They're a blame sight better quarters than you'll find aboard the Minerva, and ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... one might swear oneself in Paris on some portion of the Boulevards not altogether familiar to the eye, but offering most of the points needful to prove identity, from the monkey and hurdy-gurdy of the Savoyard, the blouse of the carman and Conducteur, to the swagger of the citizen-soldier, and the mincing step and "tournure charmante" of the belles. The fronts of the cafes and hotels, too, as you pass along, you perceive to be covered by chairs occupied by similar loungers ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... went, she danced and sang, and laughed out joyously at everything and at nothing, and talked the most fascinating nonsense—all in the role of "Cousin Burwell." She could imitate him to perfection; her strut and swagger and slang threw me into paroxysms of delight. We picked huckleberries, and dived into the woods to feast upon wild plums that had ten drops of syrupy juice between tough skins and flinty stones encased in the pulp of bitterness, and gathered ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... knew—and he was in correspondence with several—were thinking of joining. If they had been making a move he would have gone at once—very competitive, and with a strong sense of form, he could not bear to be left behind in anything—but to do it off his own bat might look like 'swagger'; because of course it wasn't really necessary. Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this young Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked. It was altogether mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, and he became ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gazed at her fearfully. For the first time in the eight years since his marriage he was encountering the girl again. But a girl no longer. Her figure was slim as ever—or perhaps not quite, for a certain boyish swagger, a sort of insolent adolescence, had gone the way of the first blooming of her cheeks. But she was beautiful; dignity was there now, and the charming lines of a fortuitous nine-and-twenty; and she sat in the car with ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to the Reader," announcing the fulfilment of the first half of the promised production, and bidding him not be downhearted, for the first of the second half (the Sixth Part or eleventh volume of the whole) is actually at Press. It may be noticed that there is a swagger about these avis and such like things, which probably is attributable to Georges, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... notice of it however—either by word, or the movement of a feature. On the contrary, he appears perfectly indifferent to the character of the reception given him. Not that his manner betrays anything like swagger—for he is evidently not one of the swaggering sort. Rather is his behaviour characterised by a cool, quiet effrontery—a sort of sarcastic assurance—ten times more irritating. This is displayed in the laconic style of ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... both, especially you, and find out when you went to him, and why you were sometimes a poor devil in a miserable hole like this, and sometimes a swell going to swagger places with him." ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... of reading as one likes is the most difficult, perhaps the most impossible, of all the arts in modern times, constitutes one of those serio-comic problems of civilisation—a problem which civilisation itself, with all its swagger of science, its literary braggadocio, its Library Cure, with all its Board Schools, Commissioners of Education and specialists, and bishops and newsboys, all hard at work upon it, is only ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... of terror and swagger was a perpetual entertainment to us. One night, a hand-grenade fell out of the pocket of one of the wounded. In defiance of orders, Tailleur, who knew nothing at all about the handling of such things, turned it over and examined it for some time, ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... Reuben Ring; still it hath much of the swagger of the other, though their stature be nearly equal—the manner of carrying the musket is much the same with all the borderers too—one cannot easily tell the form of man from a stump by this light—and—yet do I think it will prove to be ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... place. The meeting, he declared, was not composed of a fourth part of the population, or a hundredth part of the respectability of the village. The resolutions he described as being the work of presuming boys, who swagger of time immemorial; of strangers who had lived but a brief time in the county; and of a few disreputable persons who, bent on construing liberty entirely on their own side, interposed against palpable rights and sacred family feelings their gossiping facts, their grasping rapacity, and their ruthless ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... and everything complete, to take home, than the unfigured "mum" of Beluchistan, or the sea-aye-ee mocking bird, Kokiolliensis Lyttonia. But the Political Agent cannot be taken home. The purple bloom fades in the scornful climate of England; the paralytic swagger passes into sheer imbecility; the thirteen-gun tall talk reverberates in jeering echoes; the chuprassies are only so many black men, and the raja is felt to be a joke. The Political Agent cannot ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... HOSTESS. If he swagger, let him not come here: no, by my faith; I must live among my neighbours; I'll no swaggerers: I am in good name and fame with the very best: shut the door; there comes no swaggerers here: I have not lived all this while, to have swaggering now: ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... spent in the constant struggle for inordinate and grasping gain; that to talk of dollars was to them a source of endless enjoyment; and that their society had for its characteristic distinction the fussy pretension and swagger that usually mark the presence of lucky speculators in stocks. He had attributed to the whole trading class a jealous and ferocious watchfulness of the pocket, and a readiness to sacrifice at any time the honor of the country for the sake of personal profit. To the native merchants he ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... showed the alternating play of a sympathy evidently more selfish than good-humored, and his eyes, in almost glassy clearness, for the first time distinctly showed the expression of that unrestrained ambition and tendency to swagger which afterwards revealed itself as so strong a motive in most ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... famous, was a member from Illinois, but made no mark. Stephens, of Georgia, looked like a corpse, but his clear and ringing voice always commanded attention, and his words went directly to the mark. Toombs was recognized as a leader of Southern opinion, but disfigured his speeches by his swagger and defiance. Among the notable men from the Northern States, Hannibal Hamlin, lately retired from public life, was in the Senate. He was then a young man, erect, fine looking, a thorough Democrat, but not the tool of slavery. Thaddeus Stevens was in the House, and just at the beginning of his remarkable ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... through wreaths of dust and smoke I see the line of high bonnets, the row of brown faces, the swing and toss of the long, red plumes amid the sloping lines of steel. And there rides Ney with his red head, and Lefebvre with his bulldog jaw, and Lannes with his Gascon swagger; and then amidst the gleam of brass and the flaunting feathers I catch a glimpse of him, the man with the pale smile, the rounded shoulders, and the far-off eyes. There is an end of my sleep, my friends, for up I spring from my chair, with a cracked voice calling and ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I'll 'ave 'em fitted; I'll buy me a swagger-cane; They'll let me free o' the barricks to walk on the Hoe again In the name o' William Parsons, that used to be Edward Clay, An' — any pore beggar that wants it can draw ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... muscular strength of his stalwart frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots, and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in the Baron's costume was a large diamond, worth about a hundred thousand francs, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... partaken of his fourth cuspidor of beer and was in a delightful state of swagger and fight when he saw an unusual commotion up the street. What was it, thought Bonaparte—a crowd of boys and men surrounding another man with an organ and leading a little devil of a hairy thing, dressed ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... with them, as much so as any captain of his day, and he always exposed himself courageously to danger. In difficulties, he was observed to be full of magnanimity and resource in getting out of them, always showing himself quite free from swagger and parade. In short, he was a personage worthy to re-establish an enfeebled and a corrupted state. I was fain to say these few words about him in passing, for, having known him and been much with him, and having profited by his teaching, I should ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... this sort could be alleged against Sylvia's appearance, which she felt, as she arrayed herself every morning, to be all that the most swagger frat could ask of a member. Aunt Victoria's boxes of clothing, her own nimble fingers and passionate attention to the subject, combined to turn her out a copy, not to be distinguished from the original, of the daughter of a man with an income five times that of her father. As she consulted her ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... leveled a displeased stare upon the speaker, a young farmer with a bibulous eye and slight swagger of defiance. At the proper moment, with the right audience, the Judge was willing to impart information with lavish generosity. But any attempt to force his hand was looked upon as a ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... his cap over his eyes and a little to one side, and strolled on, humming an old Mexican air. His walk was the swagger of a young Mexican gallant, and in the dimness they would not notice his Northern fairness. Several pairs of eyes observed him, but not with disapproval. They considered him a trim Mexican lad. Some of the men in the doorways took up ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... It's surprisin' too the amount o' wet an ordinary carpet can hold, an' the chap that designed the pattern o' this one might 'ave worked in some water lilies an' duckweed instead o' red roses an' pink leaves if he'd known 'ow it would come to be used. This 'ouse 'as been rather a swagger one, judgin' by the style o' the furniture, but one end an' the roof 'aving gone west with the shellin' the whole show ain't what it might be. An' when the missus as it belongs to returns to 'er 'appy 'ome there's going to be some fervent remarks passed about ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... bushes, forgetting the burden of his weapons and his pack of food. In truth, he swaggered a bit, but it was a gay and gallant swagger, and it became him. He walked for some distance, feeling that he had been changed from a seaman into a warrior, and then from a warrior into an explorer, which was his present character. But he did not see at present the variety and majesty that all explorers ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... goes with more swagger down Princes Street than Johnny Gurkha down the bazaar of Darrapore, particularly in the evening, when he doffs khaki for the mufti suit of his clan—the spotless white shorts, coat of black sateen, little cocked cap ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... China Herald, of Shanghai, describes the scene at the examination at the beginning of September last. The streets, he says, are thronged with long-robed, large-spectacled gentlemen, who inform the world at large by every fold of drapery, every swagger of gait, every curve of nail, that they are the aristocracy of the most ancient empire of the world. Wuchang had from 12,000 to 15,000 bachelors of arts within its walls, who came from the far borders of the province for the examination for the provincial degree. About one-half per ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... evidently proud of themselves and their past exploits with Garibaldi; they had certainly proved that there was plenty of sturdy pluck about them. They are in general a small, swarthy, handsome set of men, but with rather too much of a swagger for soldiers who had seen service. The ladies are graceful and dignified; a trifle too pale, I thought, but I have since learnt that this pallor is studiously acquired—I suppose, to give more sentiment to the expression: in other countries, ladies seem inclined ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... I only leant further back, and by the time it was all over I had resumed an horizontal position, and resolved, like the man in "Happy Thoughts," not to move again whatever happened. I soon felt all right again, and was able to reply in a very swagger voice to Henry's rather meek enquiry concerning the state of the weather. By-and-bye a short interchange of experiences occurred between Henry and a boy who had been put into our third berth at the last moment, the latter in the innocence of his youth frankly avowed himself "awful ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... the face of that. 'I think we shall do pretty well,' he said to the clerk. His very presence in Abchurch Lane of course gave confidence. And thus, when he came home, something of the old arrogance had come back upon him, and he could swagger at any rate before his wife and servants. 'Nor Lord Alfred,' he said with scorn. Then he added more. 'The father and son are two d—— curs.' This of course frightened Madame Melmotte, and she joined this desertion of the Grendalls to her own ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... [Vergil]. pride; haughtiness &c adj.; high notions, hauteur; vainglory, crest; arrogance &c (assumption) 885. proud man, highflier^; fine gentleman, fine lady. V. be proud &c adj.; put a good face on; look one in the face; stalk abroad, perk oneself up; think no small beer of oneself; presume, swagger, strut; rear one's head, lift up one's head, hold up one's head; hold one's head high, look big, take the wall, bear like the Turk no rival near the throne [Pope], carry with a high hand; ride the high horse, mount on one's high horse; set one's back up, bridle, toss the head; give ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... appointed hour for the arrival of Blossett's train in London they had reached Victoria. It was an easy matter to store the car in a neighboring hotel, and presently they had the satisfaction of seeing Blossett swagger from a first-class carriage with a heavy Gladstone bag in his hand. He called a cab and was rapidly driven off in the direction of the city. Egan in his turn called another cab, giving the driver strict injunctions to keep the first vehicle in sight. It was a long chase, but it came ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... for an honest world, in which nations keep their word; for a world in which nations do not live by swagger or by threat; for a world in which men think of the ways in which they can conquer the common cruelties of nature instead of inventing more horrible cruelties to inflict upon the spirit and body of man; for a world in which the ambition ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... unfortunate; and it may be doubted whether he could be 'happy with either were t'other fair charmer away.' Baltazar, the Noble Soldier, is something of a bore. At first we are a little suspicious of him, for he seems to 'protest too much'; and even when these suspicions are set at rest his strut and swagger continue to ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... Gale heard footsteps and the tinkle of spurs. He strode to the window, and was in time to see a Mexican swagger into the front door of the saloon. Dick had only a glimpse; but in that he saw a huge black sombrero with a gaudy band, the back of a short, tight-fitting jacket, a heavy pearl-handled gun swinging ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... eyes of his people, and there was no mistaking the offensive demeanour of his troops. They evidently thought that British soldiers had gone never to return, and they swaggered about in swash-buckler fashion, as only Natives who think they have the upper hand can swagger. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... in whose hands we are told were the very lives of their sons, seem to have been much like Christian fathers of modern days in their indulgences. The lad was now nineteen years old, and does not appear to have been willing, at the first parental attempt, to give up his military appanages and that swagger of the young officer which is so dear to the would-be military mind. Cicero tells him that if he joined the army he would find his cousin treated with greater favor than himself. Young Quintus was older, and had ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost his swagger in ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... salutations of his countrymen he returned the slightest and coldest acknowledgments, throwing a glance of disdain around him as he wended his way to his accustomed place beside the fire; this he did with as much of noise and swagger as he could well contrive; his sabre and sabretasch clanking behind, his spurs jangling, and his heavy step, made purposely heavier to draw upon him the notice and attention he sought for. Trevanion alone testified no ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... surprise. Impassivity is a point of honour with many uncivilised races, and we cannot infer that a savage has no curiosity because he does not excite himself over a mirror, or when his European visitors try to swagger with their mechanical appliances. Mr. Herbert Spencer founds, on the statements of Mr. Bates already quoted, a notion that "the savage, lacking ability to think and the accompanying desire to know, is without tendency to speculate". He backs Mr. Bates's experience with Mungo Park's failure to ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... and the two clerical tennis players departed. Marmaduke was for taking his leave too. All his old loathing of Oliver had suddenly returned. His cousin stood for everything he detested—swagger, arrogance, self-assurance. He hated the shabby rakishness of his attire, the self-assertive aquiline beak of a nose which he had inherited from his father, the Rector. He dreaded his aggressive masculinity. He had come back with the same insulting ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... one, as cunning Mendez had thought, declares it impossible; every one hangs back. Upon which Diego Mendez with a fine gesture comes forward and volunteers; makes his little dramatic effect and has his little ovation. Thoroughly Spanish this, significant of that mixture of vanity and bravery, of swagger and fearlessness, which is characteristic of the best in Spain. It was a desperately brave thing to venture upon, this voyage from Jamaica to Espanola in a native canoe and across a sea visited by dreadful hurricanes; ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... looked at each other and battled. The eye is a more potent weapon than the rapier. The shallow, shifty ones of the gunman fell before the deep, steady ones of the Arizonan. "Slim" Jim, with a touch of swagger to save his face, stepped into the cab and sat down. Clay ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... nonchalantly. He was a thin, anaemic-looking young fellow a couple of years younger than Virginia who affected a swagger and gloves and who had a cough which was insistent, but which he strove to disguise. And yet Florrie's hyperbole had not been entirely without warrant. He had something of Virginia's fine profile, a look of her in his eyes, the stamp of good blood upon him. He suffered ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... the function this evening, sir?" asked the man looking up at Telemachus with tears streaming from his eyes. He had a yellow face with lean blue chin and jowls shaven close and a little waxed moustache that had lost all its swagger for the moment as he had the ends ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... slightly annoyed, allowed himself to be convinced; he threw the gun on to his shoulder with a swagger, and both our heroes, followed by Carefinotu, returned to ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... everyting foreign should be for English. You swagger off with other people's country and say, 'This mine.' You like old J——b and G——d; they speak all the time same as you. English, English, everyting English! an' I say what for you stay? I Greek, an' I stay because Russia better ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... enters; "elle s'avance en se balancant sur ses hanches comme une pouliche du haras de Cordoue"; she suggests an operatic Carmen in her swagger. She is slender, with short, dark hair, cropped a la Boutet de Monvel, and she flourishes a cigarette, the smoke from which wreathes upward and obscures—nay makes more subtle—the strange poignancy of her deep blue eyes. Her nose is of a snubness. It is ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... with painstaking detail. Too late she had discovered that she didn't possess a dress fit to wear at any one's wedding, not to mention her own. From time to time she had dreamed of a swagger tailored suit, but the paradox of a swagger tailored suit in San Pasqual had been so apparent always that Donna could not bring herself to the point of submitting to a measurement in the local dry-goods emporium, having ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... of the rascal's hands, a rattling shower of blows fell on his back, and he took an involuntary header into the river. He crawled up the bank a sad and sober man, and all three at once tumbled from the height of saucy swagger to a low depth of slavish abjectness. The musket was found to have an enormous charge, and might have blown our man to pieces, but for the promptitude with which his companions administered justice in a lawless land. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... on his return; of the poverty in which she and her father existed, and the joy which would be his when he took them from their squalid surroundings. They would all go to Pfahlert's Hotel—that was the swagger hotel in Sydney—and whilst he and old Mr. Maynard "trotted around" and enjoyed themselves, Rose, sweet Rose, and Mrs. Tracey would fuss about over the coming wedding and buy the trousseau and all that sort of thing. ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... that ran round the little one-story weatherboard hotel, and looked down the mile and a-half of road, with little galvanised-iron-roofed cottages at intervals of a quarter of a mile or so, that constituted the township. She watched Conroy, the policeman, resplendent in breeches and polished boots, swagger out from the court-house yard, leading his horse to water. The town was waking to its daily routine; Garry, the butcher, took down the clumsy board that passed for a window-shutter, and McDermott, the carter, passed the hotel, riding a huge rough-coated draught-horse, ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... lacks the exact air, notwithstanding the black broadcloth and the white hat. The city men are of two varieties—the smart, perky-nosed, vulgar young ward worker, and the heavy-featured, gross, fat old fellow. One after another they glide in, with an always conscious air, swagger off to the bar, strike attitudes in groups, one with his legs spread, another with a foot behind on tiptoe, another leaning against the counter, and so pose, and drink "My respects"—all rather solemn and stiff, impressed ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... "Swagger old beggar," he observed. "His guard are well turned out. You know those markings on the shields are a true heraldry—the patterns mean families, and ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... was here a touch of pride; with a more complete mastery of idiomatic English she might have called it "swagger." Nothing counted that was less than a century old, it seemed, and he spoke of a house of a hundred years' standing as she might of a wooden shanty. Decidedly he was ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... having held land here and there which he had got for nothing, and had then almost forgotten about it, and, when reminded of it, still held on to it with that defiant stubbornness which often possesses improvident and careless natures. He had never had any real business instinct, and to swagger a little over the land he held and to treat offers of purchase with contempt was the loud assertion of a capacity he did not possess. So it was that stubborn vanity, beneath which was his angry protest against the prejudice felt by the new people of the West ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... Carlotta, who glided down, and there, with our heads together and holding our breath, we watched the queerest little love drama imaginable. Our cicada stood alert and spruce, waving his antenna with a sort of cavalier swagger, and every now and then making his corslet vibrate passionately. On the top of a blade of grass sat a brown little Juliet—a most reserved, discreet little Juliet, but evidently much interested in Romeo's serenade. When he sang she put her head to one side and ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... country is like a vast disorganised undisciplined army, leaderless, uninspired, going in route-step along the road to they know not what end. In the prairie towns of the West and the river towns of the South from which have come so many of our writing men, the citizens swagger through life. Drunken old reprobates lie in the shade by the river's edge or wander through the streets of a corn shipping village of a Saturday evening with grins on their faces. Some touch of nature, a sweet undercurrent of ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... francs, it was out of the question that you should allow the Widow Dugrival to be robbed of her fifty thousand francs! You were bound to come, attracted by the scent of the mystery. You were bound to come, for swagger, out ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... question are dead set against Ireland—simply because they are unimaginative and ungenerous; they can't sympathize with what seems a hopeless cause, and Ireland to them only suggests the dirty Irish of Polterham back streets. As for European war, the idiots are fond of drums and fifes and military swagger; they haven't brains ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... under the floor of a men's lodging house—that could only be stolen money. Where had he stolen it from? Was he some kind of gentleman burglar, such as plays and novels had been built around? It was a plausible explanation. He looked the part so well; lots of swagger and side, and the whole thing a trifle overdone. What a story! Crowder licked his lips over it, seeing it splashed across the front page. At that moment the parcel Jim had given him slipped off ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... smacking of tongues and shaking of heads. Some one took a piece of chalk and scrawled on the side of the train, "We won the war—now we're going home," and the officers laughed and let it stay. They were all getting what swagger they could out ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of the less important distinctive peculiarities of the gentleman of fashion, we may dismiss this portion of our subject. A gentleman never affects military air or costume if he is not a military man, and even then avoids professional rigidity and swagger as much as possible; he never sports spurs or a riding-whip, except when he is upon horseback, contrary to the rule observed by his antagonist the snob, who always sports spurs and riding-whip, but who never mounts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... brace of baboons answer'd, Yes; and said thou wert a pitiful poor fellow, and didst live upon posts: and hadst nothing but three suits of apparel, and some few benevolences that lords gave thee to fool to them, and swagger. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... to say as I'm disturbing on ye, Passon," he remonstrated, mildly; "I ain't said a mortal wurrd! I was onny jes' keepin' my eye on the clap gate yonder, in case the party in the churchyard might walk through, thinkin' it a right-o'-way. Them swagger folk ain't got no sort of idee as to respectin' ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... and a fashionable greeting from stout, dandified Captain Cluffe, who was by no means so young as he would be supposed, and made up industriously and braced what he called his waist, with great fortitude, and indeed sometimes looked half-stifled, in spite of his smile and his swagger. Sturk, leaning at the window with his shoulders to the wall, beckoned Puddock gruffly, and cross-examined him in an undertone as to the issue of O'Flaherty's case. Of course he knew all about the duel, but the corps also knew that Sturk would not ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... carrying one or two small parcels which apparently belonged to the girl at his side. He was a handsome man, tall and rather spare, with dark eyes and a soldierly look. His movements were quick and forceful, but a hint of what Mrs. Keith called swagger somewhat spoiled his bearing. She thought he allowed his self-confidence to be seen too plainly. The girl formed a marked contrast to him; she was short and slender, her hair and eyes were brown, while her prettiness, for one could not have, called her beautiful, ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... flowers. The flowers of nature, they are, a simple nature at that, and never to be thought of in the same day as the gorgeous, expansive, proud flowers of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century decoration. Those splendid later blossoms flaunt their richness with assured swagger and demand of man his homage, quite forgetting it is the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... the drinkers of the inn had his own individuality of swagger, his truculent independence of mien, which suggested a man by no means habitually used either to receive commands or to render unquestioning obedience. Each of the men resembled his fellows in a certain flamboyant ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... with its air of refinement and dignity. She was making her way to the stairs, when the man she had seen in the car came out of one of the rooms. The objectionable cigarette was between his lips, his hands were thrust in his pockets, there was a kind of swagger in his walk. He looked like a gentleman, but one of the wrong kind, the sort of man one meets in the lowest stratum of the Fast Set. Celia noted all this, without appearing to look at him; it is a way women ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... very long after, attired in blue linen, with yellow boots, in the careless rig-out of a Parisian out for a holiday. He seemed, too, to have become more common, more jolly, more familiar, having assumed along with his would-be rustic garb a free and easy swagger which he thought suited the style of dress. His new apparel somewhat shocked M. and Madame de Meroul, who even at home on their estate always remained serious and respectable, as the particle "de" before their name exacted a certain amount of ceremonial ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... dragging their breakwater frames along in the calms; and that we of the screws found our steam vessels all we could wish, somewhat o'er lively, mayhap,—a frisky tendency to break every breakable article on board. But there was a saucy swagger in them, as they bowled along the hollow of a western sea, which showed they had good blood in them; and we soon felt confident of disappointing those Polar seers, who had foretold shipwreck and disaster ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... reasonably reply, "But this is how I support my friend Anne in her sublime evolutionary effort." Whenever he laughed at an old-fashioned actor for ranting, the actor might answer, "My exaggeration is not more absurd than the tail of a peacock or the swagger of a cock; it is the way I preach the great fruitful lie of the life-force that I am a very fine fellow." We have remarked the end of Shaw's campaign in favour of progress. This ought really to have been ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... great disappointment to the Dons,' Carrel said with a short laugh, and he lit a cigarette with all the swagger of an undergraduate. ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... motionless. She knew now what had happened. He had grappled with the man's will just as once he had grappled with hers. And he had conquered. She expected him to approach her with the royal swagger of victory, and involuntarily she shrank, dreading to encounter him in that mood, painfully ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Pigeon, "is that F.S. corps are 'swagger'—the correct thing. It 'ud never do to be drawn for the Militia, don't you know," he drawled, trying to render ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... the heavy rubber garment she had worn through the swamp. Then she removed her outer clothing and got into the uniform and into the long, polished boots quickly. There was even the swagger cane that ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... cried. "You know I wouldn't have dreamed of taking a passage on a ship like that. She's a floating Waldorf, everyone says so. Dress and swagger society and—Oh, you idiot! I wanted quiet! I wanted to be ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... His voice had been quiet and deferential, but by no means genteel; nor had it any hint of the roystering joviality of a sailor. More than anything else his gait, in its sedate unobtrusiveness, seemed to me utterly at variance with the rolling swagger which we conventionally associate ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... pretentious and insincere is to be vulgar, I really think the vulgar of our time are not these old plutocrats—not even their grandsons, who hunt and shoot and yacht and swagger with the best—but those solemn little prigs who have done well at school or college, and become radicals and agnostics before they've even had time to find out what men and women are made of, or what ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Faloise, for since he had come into his inheritance he had grown extraordinarily up to date. He wore a low collar and was clad in a cloth of delicate hue which fitted close to his meager shoulders. His hair was in little bandeaux, and he affected a weary kind of swagger, a soft tone of voice and slang words and phrases which he did not take the trouble ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... the period of the Kansas struggle. The passions of men were at a white heat. The typical Southern man wore a broad-brimmed felt hat. Many had long hair and loose flowing neckties. There was insolence and swagger in their deportment towards ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... first seen him—he struck her as confessing, with strange tears in his own eyes, to sharp identity of emotion. "Poor thing, poor thing"—it reached straight— "ISN'T she, for one's credit, on the swagger?" After which, as, held thus together they had still another strained minute, the shame, the pity, the better knowledge, the smothered protest, the divined anguish even, so overcame him that, blushing to his ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Miranda Bailey's attempt to learn exactly what had happened was thwarted by Sandy's presentation of Westlake. During the introduction Mormon slipped away. Roaring Russell was endeavoring to readjust his swagger when ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... crowns a year, with the keep of three brave and daring companions (tre compagni bravi e facinorosi), and a palace worth fifty crowns on lease. But Lorenzo had just taken another on the Campo di San Polo at three hundred crowns a year, for which swagger (altura) Pietro Strozzi had struck a thousand crowns off his allowance. Bibboni also learned that he was keeping house with his uncle, Alessandro Soderini, another Florentine outlaw, and that he was ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... had called at the cottage a score of times at least: for the business was quite intolerable. Two evenings out of the six, the long-legged gamekeeper, who was just a big, drunken bully, would swagger easily into These-an'-That's kitchen and sit himself down without so much as "by your leave." "Good evenin', gamekeeper," the husband would say in his dull, nerveless voice. Mostly he only got a jeer in reply. The fellow would sit drinking These-an'-That's cider and ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... very fair at golf. But that morning she had no heart for fishing, and especially in such company. She despised George Sherrard as a prig, fond of boasting of his means, and, indeed, so terribly self-conscious was he that in many circles he was declared impossible. Men disliked him for his swagger and conceit, and women despised him for ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... of the Lecture Bureau may be found in a swagger Club any evening with a Bourbon H. B. at his Right, a stack of Student Lamps at his Left and Two Small Pair pressed ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... for the Foudroyant, the vessel was trim When it fought with the French, for JOHN BULL, under Him, The Star of the Nile. Yes, it carried his flag, When it captured the Frenchman. There's no need to brag, Or to say swagger things of a generous foe. Besides, things have doosedly altered, you know. We're no more like NELSON than I to a Merman; We can sell his flag-ship for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... an idiot of myself," he went on. "I'd no right to come down here like that. I just want you to forgive me now, that's all. I didn't mean to swagger about being rich. I'm not enjoying it a bit till you ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... came jumping up to the door with their guns, but when they saw how many men we had they looked awful scairt. We all had our guns out, too!—Jap Kemp gave me one to carry—" Bud tried not to swagger as he told this, but it was almost too much for him. "Two of our men held the horses, and all the rest of us got down and went into the cabin. Jap Kemp, sounded his whistle and all our men done the same just as they went in the door—some kind of signals they have for the Lone ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... he of sword or dagger, Cockt hat or ringlets of Geramb; Tho' Peers may laugh and Papists swagger, He doesn't care one ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... much-cherished whiskers of the fifties, which was only redeemed by that other touch of devilry that he had shown me in the corridor. By the rich brown of his complexion, as well as by a certain sort of swagger in his walk, I should have said that he was a naval officer ashore, had he not told me who he was ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... that, as they entered; saw Notely enter with his easy, unobservant swagger, lest the unexpected visit of this fashionable company should embarrass her. He walked across the room, humming an ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... honours should be soil'd with rain) A hero all at once became, And (seeing others much the same In point of valour as himself, Who leave their courage on a shelf From year to year, till some such rout In proper season calls it out) 470 Strutted, look'd big, and swagger'd more Than ever hero did before; Look'd up, look'd down, look'd all around, Like Mavors, grimly smiled and frown'd; Seem'd Heaven, and Earth, and Hell to call To fight, that he might rout them all, And personated ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... funnels—just that satisfying angle of slant—that, absurdly enough, was the nobility of the sight. Why, then? Let's get at the heart of this, he said. Just that little trick of the architect, useless in itself—what was it but the touch of swagger, of bravado, of defiance—going out into the vast, meaningless, unpitying sea with that dainty arrogance of build; taking the trouble to mock the senseless elements, hurricane, ice, and fog, with a 15-degree slope of masts and funnels: damn, ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... politics. The minor offices of Quaestor, Aedile, and Praetor he filled with credit, and meanwhile seemed to be giving himself up to shine in Society, which was not, in Rome, then at its best; and his reputation for intrigue, his skill at the gaming-table, and his fashionable swagger were the envy of all the young ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... He had weakly indulged Absalom, and had probably spared the rod, in the boy's youth, as he certainly spared the sword when Absalom had murdered his brother. His own immorality had loosened the bonds of family purity, and made him ashamed to punish his children. He had let Absalom flaunt and swagger and live in luxury, and put no curb on him; and here was the end of his foolish softness. How many fathers and mothers are the destroyers of their children to-day in the very same fashion! That grave ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... combatants. After which he rebuked Billy Silver with a swagger-stick. Wren's share in the business he overlooked. He was by way of being a patron of Wren's, and he disliked Billy Silver, partly for his own sake and partly because he hated his brother, with whom he had come into contact ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Pilgrim—why, the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. His cockle hat and staff transformed to a smart cockd beaver and a jemmy cane, his amice gray to the last Regent Street cut, and his painful Palmer's pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacriligious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the pilgrims there—the silly soothness in his setting out countenance—the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with a swagger. He made a great noise with his heavy boots and with his spurs as ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... they would refuse to let us have the horse and wagon, for I knew that I could not have stood the test as she did; and then, too, these colonial horses seem to have such a good opinion of themselves, and they carry their heads with a swagger that is entirely different from the meek, downtrodden air of the Turpins, and Smilers, and Sharpers of the old country; and their names are as bumptious as themselves. Fancy a horse being named Rockefeller! I vote that we call the dear creature ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... their cigars. The actors were coming in from the theatres for supper, and Maxwell found himself with his friends in a group with a charming old comedian who was telling brief, vivid little stories, and sketching character, with illustrations from his delightful art. He was not swagger, like some of the younger men who stood about with their bell-crowned hats on, before they went into supper; and two or three other elderly actors who sat round him and took their turn in the anecdote and mimicry looked, with ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Angelo is greatly admired, and indeed it might pass for a relic of the palmiest times of Grecian art. The face, amidst its half-vacant, sensual expression, shows traces of its immortal origin, and there is still an air of dignity preserved in the swagger of his beautiful form. It is, in a word, the ancient idea of a drunken god. It may be doubted whether the artist's talents might not have been employed better than in ennobling intoxication. If he had represented Bacchus ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... to the mouth of the Kanawha, hoping to intercept Blennerhassett. The soldiers, if a name so honorable can be applied to the raw levy, mustered on the spur of the moment, assumed all the boisterous swagger which, as they imagined, was the prerogative of the citizen dressed in uniform and armed with musket. It was their idea that a soldier's privilege is insolence, and the badge of his superiority, self-importance. The captain and lieutenants ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... asserted. With the innate ability of the Spaniard to adapt himself to the customs of all foreign countries he imitated the manner of the English inhabitants of Gibraltar. He had bought himself a pipe, wore a traveling cap, turned up trousers and a swagger stick. The day on which he arrived, even before night-fall, they already knew throughout Gibraltar who he was and whither he was bound. Two days later the shopkeepers greeted him from the doors of their shops, and the idlers, gathered on the narrow square before the Commercial Exchange, glanced ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to be a "swagger" ship and crew, the wardroom mess took lunch, instead of dinner, at one o'clock, dining at seven o'clock in the evening. This was the hour adopted by the saloon party, who, I learned, were regularly reinforced by one or more members of the wardroom contingent, by special invitation ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... his vegetables were coming forward very well. Nothing could have been better than his manners—quiet, manly, civil, without the rather aggravating slyness of the ordinary French peasant, and with absolutely nothing of the infantine swagger of the small French bourgeois. These miners here wear a picturesque and practical costume, something between the garb of a sailor and the garb of a fireman, and as their life—like the life of a fireman or a sailor—is lived a good deal apart from the lives of other men, and ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... grew closer and more crooked and the roofs lower and the gutters grosser with mud, a darker curiosity deepened on the brows of Basil, and the figure of Rupert seen from behind seemed to fill the street with a gigantic swagger of success. At length, at the end of the fourth or fifth lean grey street in that sterile district, we came suddenly to a halt, the mysterious lieutenant looking once more about him with a sort of sulky desperation. Above a row of shutters and a door, all indescribably ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... the ball-ground, but at this taunt he turned back, thrust his hands into his pockets, put on a swagger, and stammered: "No, I'm not afraid ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... journals. They lead the reader to infer that the arts and customs of civilized life are rapidly refining the natives of the Sandwich Islands. But let no one be deceived by these accounts. The chiefs swagger about in gold lace and broadcloth, while the great mass of the common people are nearly as primitive in their appearance as in the days of Cook. In the progress of events at these islands, the two classes are receding from each other; the chiefs are daily becoming ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... all great nations to hate meanness, and nothing under God's heaven ever was so mean as American slavery. Think of it. Men who swagger around with pistols and bowie-knifes to avenge their insulted honor, if any one should question it,—imagine one turning up his sleeves to horsewhip an old woman for burning his steak, or pocketing her wages, earned at ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... unhealthy, and if the man happened to be alone, he ordered, and paid, and drank, and went out quickly. If he happened to be with friends, he pointedly addressed his conversation to his countrymen, and left with a certain degree of swagger, and without the appearance ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... though there was an expression in their eyes and a tone in their voices which made the young managers believe that it would take but little to make them break out into open mutiny. They were, however, surprised at Larry's changed manner. There was an impudent swagger in all he did, and when ordered to perform any duty, he invariably replied in a way which made his companions laugh, though he executed the order with promptness. He seemed to be on familiar terms with all the people on the station, and to ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... countenance. And she, on her part, was not able to look at him with complete composure; she remembered the character given to this man by Craig, and she had ventured to give him something else in her report—the swagger of a ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... was fond of Court life and found the country tiresome, and whose habit it was to spend an occasional evening at the Plough Horse for the pleasure of having even an audience of yokels; liking it the better since, being yokels, they would listen open-mouthed and staring by the hour to his swagger and stories of Whitehall and Hampton Court, and the many beauties who surrounded the sacred person of his most gracious Majesty, King Charles the Second. Every yokel in the country had heard rumours of these ladies, but Mr. Mount gave those at Camylott village ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have sat down together to dinner. Two chambermaids came into her room and prepared it without a single word to her about her journey or on any other subject, and when they had gone, 'They are two haughty misses,' said my mother with spirit. But what she most resented was the waiter with his swagger black suit and short quick steps and the 'towel' over his arm. Without so much as a 'Welcome to Glasgow!' he showed us to our seats, not the smallest acknowledgment of our kindness in giving such munificent orders did we draw from him, he hovered around the ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... spirituous liquor the boy had ever tasted; and in a few moments, he felt a wonderful change. He was no longer a timid, cold, disheartened, heart-sick boy, but felt somehow so brave, so full of hope and courage, that he began to swagger, to laugh very loud, and to boast in such high terms of the money in his pocket, and of his future intentions and prospects, that the two boys winked significantly at each other. They proposed, after sitting a while, to walk out and see the shop windows. All three of the boys had taken enough to ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that some women are sentimental, that they don't all "look at things in the large," as men invariably do. In view, however, of the record of this youthful movement of ours, we have a right rather to swagger than ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... least bit scared, though I admit it was a dangerous feat," Daddy Longlegs told them. Then he would strut and swagger about, trying to appear as if there wasn't a braver person than he in all Pleasant Valley. And he talked about his wild ride to everybody ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... space-suited figure came clanking around the curve of the small metal world. The antenna of his walkie-talkie glittered above his head. He seemed to swagger against the ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... with his cavalry swagger and a white weal all round his sunburned face to show where his chin-strap hung, looked the ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... these words—they would have been admirable on the stage—made him reply with prompt ease: "What I meant just now was that you're not to tell him, after all my swagger, that I consider that you and I are really required to ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James |
