"Uncombed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... silent, and looked discouragingly rude. His sweaty, dirty shirt was open at the neck, his arms were bare, his scraggly teeth were yellow with tobacco, and his uncombed hair lay tumbled about on his high, narrow head. His clumsy, unsteady hands played with the dishes on the table. His pride was struggling with his sense of justice; he knew he ought to consent, and yet it was so hard to acknowledge himself to blame. The ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the worst of it." There was a brief pause; suddenly a man staggered out of the gin-shop, smearing the back of his hand across his mouth as he came—a massively built, ill-favoured brute, with a shock of uncombed red hair and small ferret-like eyes. He stared stupidly at the weeping Liz, then at Mother Mawks, finally from one to the other of the loafers who stood by. "Wot's the row?" he demanded, quickly. "Wot's up? ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... surmounted by a kind of cushion or roll of hair which gives the idea of weight and size. Nor should the hair have the appearance of a bird's nest, and look tumbled and untidy. This was lately the "beau ideal" of a well dressed head. It was desired that it should appear unkempt and uncombed, as if it had been drawn through a quickset hedge. The back of the head, if well shaped, has a beautiful appearance, reminding one of a stag, which is so graceful in look and motion. But when it is disfigured by a large ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... said. "Come in." In the midst of the riot of wealth, the professor didn't seem to have changed at all. He was still wearing the same ratty robe he'd worn in the carnival, his hair was still as uncombed. It was only on second glance that Charley saw the look in his eyes. Professor Lightning was Dr. Schinsake now; the eyes said that, and were proud of it. And the world ...
— Charley de Milo • Laurence Mark Janifer AKA Larry M. Harris
... everything to do with personality, therefore the physical structure must come in for its share of proper attention. No man of refined personality would walk the streets with a soiled face or uncombed hair. Such things do not give poise. They are the evidences of a laggard spirit. The more we exercise the more energetic we become, the surer we are of ourselves, the farther we get in the ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... broker fast asleep. His face, which was turned toward me as I entered, showed that it had been many days since he had been shaved, and his hair had apparently been uncombed for about the same length of time. His clothes were very old, and a good deal torn, and he wore ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... another of those Unfortunate Workmen that's spoiling the profesh." The veteran stared at Carl reprovingly, yet with a little sadness, too, at the thought of how bitterly he had been deceived in this young comrade, and his uncombed head slowly ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... soft or gracious in the tresses of her hair. When Lady Ushant had been young men had liked hair such as was that of Mary Masters. Arabella's yellow locks,—whencesoever they might have come,—were rough and uncombed. But it was the look of age, and the almost masculine strength of the lower face which astonished Lady Ushant the most. "Has he spoken to you ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... his hiding-place, presenting a very ludicrous spectacle, with his unwashed face and uncombed hair, and the dirty ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... watch-chain a great uncut ruby which must have been worth five thousand pounds. One trade-mark of the sea alone did he possess, in the dark, curly ringlets which fell to his shoulders, matted there as long uncombed, but typical in all of the man. This then was the fellow upon whose every word that company of ruffians appeared to hang, who obeyed him, as I observed presently, when he did so much as lift his hand, who seemed to have in their uncouth way a veneration for him, inexplicable, remarkable—the ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... should once or twice have fallen but for the kindness of the Genoese mariners. At last we reached the beach, and were proceeding towards the gate of the town, when two persons, Moors, came up to us. I almost started at sight of the first; he was a huge old barbarian with a white uncombed beard, dirty turban, haik, and trousers, naked legs, and immense splay feet, the heels of which stood out a couple of inches at least ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... description. They still retained their summer dress, consisting of cotton stuff of various colors shaped into frocks, and descending to the knee. Their trousers were of the same material. They were covered with slouched hats, worn bare by constant use, beneath which their long hair fell matted and uncombed over their cheeks; and these, together with the dirty blankets wrapped round their loins to protect them against the inclemency of the season, and fastened by broad leathern belts, into which were thrust axes and knives ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... distinction because a man may be a democrat and be ashamed of the party, and a man may be of the party and not know a single principle of democracy), should be debarred from voting, I ask, is an Irishman just landed, unwashed and uncombed, more fit to vote than a woman educated in our common schools? Think of the mothers and daughters of this land, among whom are teachers, writers, artists, and speakers! What a throng could we gather ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... armed and ready for assault, opposite to the man who loved him so dearly. His figure and appearance had always been singular, but now it was more so than ever. He had been sleeping in his clothes, and he had that peculiar look of discomfort which always accompanies such rest. His black, elfish, uncombed locks, had not been cut since he left Durbelliere, and his beard for many days had not been shorn. He was wretchedly thin and gaunt; indeed, his hollow, yellow cheeks, and cadaverous jaws, almost told a tale ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... remark, and his only reply to the wordy fix into which the learned agent had drawn him was made in the dumb-show of scratching with his one disengaged hand (the other being employed in holding his hat) his uncombed head—an operation that created much laughter, which was not damped by the Agent's putting, with a serious face, a concluding question or remark to him to the effect that he presumed he (the witness) had ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... sat next to him, was in every respect unlike the ci-devant nobleman. He was a large, rough, burly man, about forty years of age; his brown hair was long and uncombed, his face was coarse and hot, and the perspiration was even now running down it, though drinking and smoking was at present his hardest work; his lips were thick and sensual, and his face was surrounded by huge whiskers, which made him look uncouth and savage; his ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... and began to whistle. It was hard to understand how he had captured the loyal heart of this dusky princess. He was neither good-looking nor of a taking manner. His appearance was dirty, unkempt. His fair hair, very thin and getting gray at the crown, was long and uncombed, and his moustache was ragged and grossly stained. Yet she loved him with a devotion which had made her willing to renounce her people for him if necessary, and this means far more in a savage than it does amongst the ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... down, saying wild incoherent things to herself under her breath. She wore the red dress she had worn at Manchester—now a torn and shabby rag—and over it, because of the cold, a long black cloak, a relic of better days. Her splendid hair, uncombed and dishevelled, hung almost loose round her head and neck; and the emaciation of face and figure made her height and slenderness more abnormal than ever as she ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... woful figure by the door as she turned her head—no bonnet, no shoes, and a tattered frock, all draggled with dirt and rain, and the long, uncombed locks straggling about the child's shoulders, and such a blue, pinched ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous
... on a different countenance, to speak with a different voice, to walk with a different stop. We all saw how he appeared with soiled raiment, with his person uncared for, and foul with dirt, with his hair and beard uncombed and untrimmed."[168] In Rome men under afflictions, particularly if under accusation, showed themselves in soiled garments so as to attract pity, and the meaning here is that Rullus went about as though under grief at the condition of his poor fellow-citizens, who were distressed by ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... more fortunate at the opposite door, for Alfred was still asleep. The young man, upon hearing the news, however, made a toilet of unexampled brevity, and came breathlessly forth. Thorpe followed him to the balcony, where he stood collarless and uncombed, with the fresh morning breeze blowing his hair awry, his lips parted, his eyes staring with what the uncle felt to be a painful fixedness ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... were fastened by long rope traces six Flemish horses of different heights, but each large and clumsy enough to draw an English waggon. The nose of the foremost horse was thirty-five feet from the body of the coach, their hoofs all shaggy, their manes all uncombed, and their tails long enough to please Sir Charles Grandison himself. These beasts were totally disencumbered of every sort of harness except one strap which fastened the saddle on their backs; and high, high upon their backs, sat ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... long wait before the lieutenant answered, and he didn't look much like a police officer when his face finally showed up on the screen. His hair was uncombed and he was unshaven. His eyes were slightly bleary, ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... black men dancing in a circle around what seemed to be a section of a fallen tree. Off to the side, the women, slightly smaller than the men, were cooking a wild hog on a spit, over a smoking fire. Their hair was thick and woolly and uncombed. Their arms and ankles were adorned with copper bracelets. Some of the men wore leather thongs that dangled from their legs. There were a few rude shelters in the clearing, merely improvised affairs of branches. As the men danced they sent up a song in a high, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... George Lawson of Selkirk acted for many years as theological tutor to the Secession Church. One day, on entering the Divinity Hall, he overheard a student remark that the professor's wig was uncombed. That same student, on that very day, had occasion to preach a sermon before the Doctor, for which he received a bit of severe criticism, the sting of which was in its tail: "You said my wig wasna kaimed this ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... "Steve" poked his uncombed, sleepy head through the "booby" hatch cover. "Well, this is something like! If the 'old man' will let us take it easy after inspection, I won't think life in the navy is ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... dangling among the ropes. The drawn saber, too, never consorted well with the dirty outside woolen wrapper which generally hung loose from the man's neck. Heaven knows, I did not begrudge him his comforter in that cold weather, or even his long, uncombed shock of hair; but I think he might have been made more spruce, and I am sure that he could not have looked more uncomfortable. As I went, however, I felt for him a sort of affection, and wished in my heart of hearts ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... expecting the sight of an acquaintance. Crumbling milestones stand by the wayside, with deep-cut letters so smoothed by the hand of time that we cannot read them as we pass. Flowers grow thick in the hedgerows. A boy is lolling on the green grass in front of a cottage door—an uncombed English hind, with a face of rustic ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... The unshaven beard—it was the middle of morning—was a reddish mist over his face. His eyes were sunken in shadow. His hair was uncombed. He sat with his shoulders hunched up like one who suffers from cold. Altogether his appearance was that of one whose energy has been ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... against an hundred windows. Long streamers of garments fluttered from fire-escapes. In all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags and bottles. In the street infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of vehicles. Formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossiped while leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels. Withered persons, in curious postures of submission to something, sat smoking pipes in obscure corners. A thousand ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... gray hair met them at the door of the long dining-room. She had a tired and almost toothless smile; but had it not been for her greasy wrapper, uncombed hair and grimy nails, Mother Beasley might have been ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... vain. From the rear of a near-by house little Maggie appeared. A dirty, faded old shawl was wrapped about her tiny waist, hiding her bare feet and trailing behind. A sorry wreck of a hat trimmed with three chicken feathers crowned her uncombed hair, and the ragged remnants of a pair of black cotton gloves completed her elegant costume. In her thin little arms she held, with tender mother care, a doll so battered and worn by its long service that one wondered at the imaginative power of the child ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... feeblest of the band of victims, Juggernaut spared him to Moloch. All his companions were disposed of. Three months' "play" in the streets got rid of this tender company,—shoeless, half-naked, and uncombed,—whose age varied from two to five years. Some were crushed, some were lost, some caught cold and fevers, crept back to their garret or their cellars, were dosed with Godfrey's cordial, and died ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... where many a family goes without dinner, unless the father can knock down a squirrel in the woods, or his pale sickly boy pick up a terrapin in the swamps? We did, indeed, sometimes fall in with a little corn; but then, the poor, skinny, sun-burnt women, with long uncombed tresses, and shrivelled breasts hanging down, would run screaming to us, with tears in their eyes, declaring that if we took away their corn, they and their children must perish. Such times I never saw, and I pray God, I may never see nor hear of again; ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... instinct that lady started back when she saw Hartsook, for she had just built a fire in the stove, and she now stood at the door with unwashed face and uncombed hair. ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... while her fingers moved slowly, drawing out the laces, her cogitations were very busy. What concern were the Dows of hers or Maria's? They were not pleasant people to go near, she judged, from the look of their house and dooryard as she had seen it in passing; and the uncombed, fly-away head of the little girl gave her a shudder as she remembered it. They were not people that were often seen in church; they could not be good; maybe they used bad language; certainly they could not be expected to know how to "behave." Slowly the laces were pulled out of Matilda's ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... some cold tea into two little cups, when Monsieur Perrier made his appearance, his face begrimed and his shaggy hair uncombed. I had been used to the sight of rough men in Adelaide, on our sheep-farm, but I had never seen one more boorish. He stood in the doorway, rubbing his hands, and gazing at us unflinchingly with the hard stare of a Norman peasant, while he spoke in rapid, uncouth ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... His uncombed hair was littered with straw and bits of corn-blades from the fodder on which he had lain. His clothing was stained. He wore no linen and the shoes ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... loosening with filthy hand the uncombed masses of jet-black hair, which still retained something of the perfume of better days. "Not yet! ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... did his courage ebb at first that he very nearly made up his mind to retreat without attempting to see Captain Gary. In his unwashed, uncombed condition, the contrast between himself and those around was embarrassing enough even to his ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... two years, and was quite unable to sit up; another blanket was fastened up against the side of the place to shelter her from the wind. On the other side of the fire crouched the daughter, listening to what I said about administering the medicines. A little boy with bright eyes and a stock of uncombed black hair was also crouching over the fire. This was Willie, the youngest of the family, now about five years old, and little did I think then how much I should have to do with that boy in his after life. Sitting down by the poor ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... baggage the next, and that of the passengers the last.[32] Fortunately for the horses, there were but four passengers, though the vehicle could have carried eight. One, by his little green cap, with a misshapen shade for the eyes; light, shaggy, uncombed hair; square high shoulders; a coat that appeared to be half-male half-female; pipe and pouch—was undeniably a German student, who was travelling south to finish his metaphysics with a few practical notions of men and things. A second was a Jew, who had trade in every lineament, and who belonged ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the floor, in the space before the altar, unwashed, uncombed, unconscious of the dirty rags that scarce covered them; quite happy and self-forgetful in the charming friskings and friendly lollings of the well-fed, carefully groomed, beautiful little dog. Ailie, still so excited that ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... Stephen's face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... voyage, a settee was placed beside the soft couch which Derry had appropriated to Blair's especial use. The occupant of the settee was a huge, muscular, repulsive young man, whose yellow hair lay uncombed on his pillow, while his pale, freckle-marked face was distorted with pain, rage, and the torture of a rebellious spirit, when sorely smitten by ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... over the smooth rocks. We remember but two or three table-cloths which entirely covered the table, and only one which was clean. There are but two daily meals; one does not feel the need of more; they are partaken at nine and three, or an hour earlier than in Guayaquil. When two unwashed, uncombed cooks bend over a charcoal fire, which is fanned by a third unkempt individual, and all three blinded by smoke (for there is no chimney), so that it is not their fault if capillaries and something worse are mingled with the stew, with onions to right of them, onions to left of them, onions ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... and laughingest mirth. Conceivable enough! Through coarse Thersites-cloak, we have revelation of the heart, wild-glowing, world-clasping, that is in him. Bravely he grapples with the life-problem as it presents itself to him, uncombed, shaggy, careless of the "nicer proprieties," inexpert of "elegant diction," yet with voice audible enough to whoso hath ears, up there on the gravelly side-hills, or down on the splashy, Indiarubber-like salt-marshes of native Jaalam. To this soul also the Necessity of ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... race, but for their exact resemblance in every other particular, even in the dressing of their hair, though this was even more elaborately performed—an attention to appearance which is curious enough, when compared with the dirty, uncombed locks of European fishermen; but among the South Sea Islanders fishing is no miserable drudgery of the lowest classes, but the pride and pleasure of the most distinguished, as hunting is with us. Tameamea, the mighty King of the Sandwich Islands, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... on a chair, under the table there was a basket with a filthy rag in it. . . . Nut shells were strewn about in the windows. Bugrov himself was not quite in his usual trim when Groholsky walked in . . . . With a red face and uncombed locks he was pacing about the room in deshabille, talking to himself, apparently much agitated. Mishutka was sitting on the sofa there in the drawing-room, and was making the air vibrate ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Price and Giles Peram suddenly came upon a wild-eyed, haggard young man, mounted upon a jaded steed. He had slept on the ground, for his uncombed hair had leaves still sticking to it, and his clothes were faded, soiled and torn. The evenings were cold, it being late in October, and the fugitive was looking about for a place to sleep. At a glance, both recognized him as ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... Lloyd's dainty nose, as she went in, said more plainly than words, "Poah white trash!" For the house had a stuffy smell of liniment and bacon grease. An old woman came forward to meet them in her stocking feet and a dirty woollen wrapper. Her uncombed gray hair straggled around her ears, and her wrinkled face was unwashed and grimy. Lloyd was thankful that she did not offer to shake hands. She sat down on the edge of a chair, breathing the stuffy air as sparingly ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... some stretched out on the benches and others leaning on the tables with their elbows, some were barefoot others were wearing their shoes slipshod like slippers; almost all were dirty and poorly clad; their clothes were unbuttoned, their hair uncombed, and their faces frightful; they wore pistols in their belts, and sabers, with scarves turned into shoulder-straps. Bottles, bits of bread, fragments of meat and bones lay strewn around on the floor, and smell ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Gunther went dirty—unwashed and uncombed, With hands black as pitch through the garden he roamed; When suddenly a monstrous black shadow fell o'er him, And the Woman Who Scrubs Dirty Goops stood ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... 12.30, to beat to Sop's Island, which we reached between three and four o'clock. We landed immediately with our poor fisherman's wife, who appeared an intelligent, seriously-disposed person, and she could read. Her children were very wild, hair uncut and uncombed, without shoes and stockings. She had come from the Barred Islands (in the Fogo Mission), and lamented the separation from her Church and clergy. She guided us to the residences and fishing rooms of the different residents and others in Sop's Island, and we appointed a service for ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... excited, half circle of men who were roaring about the negro, and had already pressed him forward until he stood confronting me, his grin of derision changed into a scowl of hate. They were a rough, wild lot, bearded and uncombed, ranging in color from the intense black of Central Africa to the blond of Scandinavia, half naked some, their voices mingling in a dozen tongues, their eyes gleaming with savagery. They impressed me as animals of the jungle, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... a shaded place against the railing. His mind was struggling in a vortex of ancient history, and this was the picture which arose from the strife. A very commonplace, bare-legged lad, with curly, uncombed hair and face so freckled that a few yards' distance merged them into one complete shade of reddish brown. He surveyed the neighboring bridge, and it came into his mental vision unconsciously. The long, lean girders he had once trod with the careless ease of ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... the most savage manners, since a people impressed with a sense of humanity would have abhorred so cruel a practice, and a nation skilled in the arts of war would have disdained so impotent a resource. [39] Whenever these Barbarians issued from their deserts in quest of prey, their shaggy beards, uncombed locks, the furs with which they were covered from head to foot, and their fierce countenances, which seemed to express the innate cruelty of their minds, inspired the more civilized provincials of Rome with horror ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... more intelligent people. They were unable to employ for each family a teacher, and the population was too sparse to collect the children in a neighborhood school. These ran wild, half naked, unwashed and uncombed, hatless and bonnetless through the woods and grass, followed by packs of lean and hungry curs, hallooing and yelling in pursuit of rabbits and opossums, and were as wild as the Indians they had supplanted, and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... daily bread by menial toil. And the washer-women were asking, "Why should we toil at the tub, and Citizeness Orleans ride in her carriage and dress in satins? We are as good as she, and our blood is as red." And at the corners of the streets, the uncombed mob were beginning to inquire, "Why should Citizen Orleans, who, by adopting the title of Egalite, has confessed himself to be only our equal, be in possession of magnificent palaces, and of thousands of acres of the public domain, and of a revenue of millions of francs, ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... weekly. In those of Deansgate, which are 28 in number, 550 persons, including 235 women and 36 children, were found at one time on a Saturday night. Many of the beer-shops are a haunt of the young of both sexes among the factory people, 'the majority with faces unwashed and hair uncombed, dancing in their wooden clogs to the music of an ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... came forth with his ragged garments, unwashed face and uncombed hair, from one of those haunts of darkness and misery which fill the city with crime and suffering. He was a little child, and yet there was none of its peace on his brow, or its light in his eye, as he looked up with a strange, wistful earnestness ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... populous village in the south of Lancashire. The speaker was a woman, the regularity of whose features showed that she had once been good-looking, but from whose face every trace of beauty had been scorched out by intemperance. Her hair uncombed, and prematurely grey, straggled out into the wind. Her dress, all patches, scarcely served for decent covering; while her poor half- naked feet seemed rather galled than protected by the miserable slippers in which she clattered ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... her mouth, giving that feature much the expression of a bull-dog, while a sullen fierceness about her face, increased the resemblance to that animal. Her teeth, utterly unacquainted with the action of a brush, were prominent, so that her lip seldom covered them, and her uncombed hair hung rough and shaggy around her unattractive face. Agnes at once guessed that this poor child was deficient in intellect, and ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... of constitution you see going about of a morning rather in dishabille—hair uncombed haply—face and hands even unwashed—and shirt with a somewhat day-before-yesterdayish hue. Yet are they, so far from being dirty, at once felt, seen, and smelt, to be among the very cleanest of her Majesty's subjects. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... of eight years. One could expect nothing better of a creature who, according to the concierge, fed her husband upon pork-butcher's meat, to spare herself the trouble of getting dinner, and passed the entire day with uncombed hair, in a dressing-sacque, reading novels, and telling her fortune with cards. The grocer's daughter declared she had met her one evening, at a dancing-hall, seated with a fireman before a salad-bowl full of wine, prepared in the ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... with a rapid step, near the shadow of the wall; she is poorly dressed; her age is between forty and fifty; her forehead is bound with a red checkered handkerchief, from which hang meshes of uncombed hair. The face is red and the eyes blurred, and she moves with her look bent down on the ground. Her right hand is in her pocket, or in the bosom of her half-unbuttoned dress; in the other hand she holds one of the high, narrow tin cans in which milk is carried in Paris, but which now, in the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... voice, standing upon one of the trunks, and surveying all our proceedings in the most impertinent manner. The creature was dressed in a ragged, dirty purple stuff gown, cut very low in the neck, with an old red cotton handkerchief tied over her head; her uncombed, tangled locks falling over her thin, inquisitive face, in a state of perfect nature. Her legs and feet were bare, and, in her coarse, dirty red hands, she swung to and fro an empty ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... morrow of his carouses, the zinc-worker always had a headache, a splitting headache which kept him all day with his hair uncombed, his breath offensive, and his mouth all swollen and askew. He got up late on those days, not shaking the fleas off till about eight o'clock; and he would hang about the shop, unable to make up his mind to start off to his work. It was another day lost. In the morning he would complain ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... my eyes. Instead of the smart young soldier, smoothly shaven, with closely-trimmed hair, and rather carefully attired, as I had appeared on board the Warrior, the glass reflected a bearded face, the skin visibly roughened and reddened by exposure, the hair ragged and uncombed. Even to my view there remained scarcely a familiar feature—the lack of razor and shears, the exposure to sun and water, the days of sickness and neglect, had all helped to transform me into a totally different-appearing ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... It was said that, full of threats, I had taken a shotgun menacingly from a rack ... that a vicious bull dog lay between my feet, growling ... that I went, sockless, in sandals ... had long, flowing, uncombed hair.... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... head. "No, not really. Mostly crackpots. Have you ever noticed how it is that the nonconformists in any society are usually crackpots? The people on your side that admit belonging to our organizations, are usually on the wild eyed and uncombed hair side—I admit it. On the other hand, the people in our citizenry who subscribe to your system, your religion, that sort of thing, are crackpots, too. Applies to religion as well as politics. An atheist in your country ...
— Summit • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Avenue. Instead of falling immediately into the arms and affections of that worthy and very enterprising lady, the door is opened by a slatternly maid of all work-her greasy dress, and hard, ruddy face and hands-her short, flabby figure, and her coarse, uncombed hair, giving out strong evidence of being overtaxed with labor. "Is it Mrs. Slocum hersel' ye'd be seein'?" inquires the maid, wiping her soapy hands with her apron, and looking querulously in the face of the ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... onderstaynd you to lafe at me, saw?" drawled the soldier, turning back with a pretence of heavy gloom on his uncombed brow. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... road near the outskirts of the city, a sentry, a small, gray-haired man, had stepped out before the car. From the door of a neighboring wineshop, a hideous old woman, her uncombed, tawny yellow hair messed round her coarse, shiny face, came out to ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... Student's Guide," &c. Instead of the prim, neat, little man we had always imagined him to be, we found him tall, coarse, slovenly, and unshaven; a man of 46 years of age; hair of an iron-grey, rough and uncombed; features large; cheek-bones prominent; and the straps of his trowsers unbuttoned, and flapping about his slippers. But, under this unpromising exterior, we discerned a soul of great intelligence, frankness, and ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... though not more than midway between thirty and forty years old, was clad in a strange uncouth garb of the coarsest materials, and his lank long hair hung matted and uncombed upon his shoulders from a "brim" of extravagant dimensions. This style of dress was not then recognised as the distinctive badge of a religious sect, as it is now of the people called "Quakers," or, as they are more favourably designated, "Friends." The ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... own house. Sometimes he walked slowly along the street past the Wescott house when Rosalind sat alone on the front porch. He raised his hat and spoke to her. Their eyes met. He had a long, hawk-like nose and his hair was long and uncombed. ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... so ugly, and the face too, that there was no pity felt for her; those dirty, wrinkled features bore witness to her contempt for the cleansing qualities of water. Her uncombed hair was hanging in masses about her ears and face, and her countenance expressed cruelty and passion. But Harpstenah had nothing to avenge; when she was young she was passed by, as there was nothing in her face or disposition that could attract; and now in the winter of life she was ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... I knew again the good old way to La Ferrare, mounted on a huge bear. This at a distance would have put me in mind of St. Jerome's picture, had but the bear been a lion; for the poor way was all mortified, and wore a long hoary beard uncombed and entangled, which looked like the picture of winter, or at least ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the old man and the boy, in a checked shirt without vest. His suspenders, once gay-colored, had given most of their color to his shirt, and had marked irregular broad bands of pink and brown and green over his shoulders. His hair was uncombed, merely pushed away from his face. He wore a mustache only, though his face was covered with a week's growth of beard. His face was rather gaunt ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the hair is uncombed, the whole person looks untidy. The hair should be combed carefully every morning and again made tidy before each meal. You should use as little water as possible to moisten the hair. The glands can be made to give out ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... golden bristles. When they hear the magic playing, Hear the harp of Wainamoinen, Fall their brushes on the billows, Fall their combs with silver handles To the bottom of the waters, Unadorned their heads remaining, And uncombed their sea-green tresses. ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... handled with kid gloves; dusty, snuffy^, smutty, sooty, smoky; thick, turbid, dreggy; slimy; mussy [U.S.]. slovenly, untidy, messy, uncleanly. [of people] unkempt, sluttish, dowdy, draggle-tailed; uncombed. unscoured^, unswept^, unwiped^, unwashed, unstrained, unpurified^; squalid; lutose^, slammocky^, slummocky^, sozzly^. nasty, coarse, foul, offensive, abominable, beastly, reeky, reechy^; fetid &c 401. [of rotting living matter] decayed, moldy, musty, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... not afraid of her,"—the uncombed chorister advanced bravely. "She's only a boarder. And after this, I'm goin' to mind ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... the next morning, however, appeared Doctor Grimshawe, wearing very much the same aspect of an uncombed, unshorn, unbrushed, odd sort of a pagan as at other times, and making no difference in his breakfast, except that he poured a pretty large dose of brandy into his cup of tea; a thing, however, by no means unexampled or ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his shoulders, as befitted a hero, and tousled a couple of uncombed heads as they walked. The kids clustered around the booths, as Kovacs entered one to locate a hotel room, and Paul another, to ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... were obliged to pay taxes if they wished to hold their lands. These changes angered many and there were frequent rebellions against the king, but he put them all down, and year after year came nearer the goal of his ambition. And his hair continued to grow uncut and uncombed, and got to be such a tangled mass that men called him Harold Lufa, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... harbored, We'd a hundred Jews to larboard, Unwashed, uncombed, unbarbered— Jews black, and brown, and gray; With terror it would seize ye, And make your souls uneasy, To see those Rabbis greasy, Who did naught but scratch and pray: Their dirty children puking— Their dirty saucepans cooking— ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their loafers' coats, out at elbows, or their laborers' jackets, defaced with grimy toil; the women drawing their shabby shawls tighter about their shoulders, to hide the raggedness beneath; all of them unbrushed, unshaven, unwashed, uncombed, and wrinkled with penury and care; nothing virgin-like in the brides, nor hopeful or energetic in the bridegrooms;—they were, in short, the mere rags and tatters of the human race, whom some east-wind of evil omen, howling along the streets, had chanced to sweep together into an unfragrant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... But the opening of the door, and the tapping continuing from the inside, caused him to look up. He was slightly startled by the figure of a young girl, dirty and shabbily clad. Still, her great black eyes, her coarse, uncombed, lusterless black hair falling over her sunburned face, her red arms and feet streaked with the red soil, were all familiar to him. It was Melissa ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... and she was parting it with a golden comb and about to braid up the long tresses; but when she saw the goddesses before her, she stayed and called them within, and rose from her seat and placed them on couches. Then she herself sat down, and with her hands gathered up the locks still uncombed. And smiling she addressed ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... blue cloth, with glittering brass buttons half the size of dollars, covered his upper man, while loose drab trousers of stout double-milled, and a pair of well-blacked boots, completed his attire; so that he looked as different an animal as possible, from the unwashed, uncombed, half-naked creature he presented, when lounging in his bar-room in ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... suitable medium of intelligence. The opposite and adjoining houses were small, and apparently occupied by persons of an indigent class. At one of these was a sign denoting it to be the residence of a tailor. Seated on a bench at the door was a young man, with coarse uncombed locks, breeches knee-unbuttoned, stockings ungartered, shoes slipshod and unbuckled, and a face unwashed, gazing stupidly from hollow eyes. His aspect was embellished with good nature, though ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the face of the unknown and uttered a shriek. In the crimson nose, in the ruffled, uncombed hair, in the pitch-black moustaches of which one was jauntily twisted and pointed insolently towards the ceiling, he ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... philosopher. His long, dirty nails and ragged, uncombed hair and beard were intended to impress his subjects with the wisdom of a man so absorbed in learning that he was above such things as cleanliness. Unfortunately, they had just the opposite effect, and the people made fun of him. They laughed at his sacrifices, where he was ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... The Greeks and Romans made their combs of it. The Egyptians used them made of ivory and wood, and toothed on one side only; those of the Greeks had teeth on both sides. Great care was usually taken of the hair; to go with it uncombed was a ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... flowers, sang, and listened to stories of the world beyond the hill. At times the school would dwindle away, and I would start out. I would visit Mun Eddings, who lived in two very dirty rooms, and ask why little Lugene, whose flaming face seemed ever ablaze with the dark red hair uncombed, was absent all last week, or why I missed so often the inimitable rags of Mack and Ed. Then the father, who worked Colonel Wheeler's farm on shares, would tell me how the crops needed the boys; and the thin, slovenly mother, whose face was pretty when washed, assured me that Lugene must ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... his ears. But mark the sequel: the instant he was gone, my very English curiosity hurried me out of the gate St. Gallo; 'twas the place and hour appointed. We had not been driving about above ten minutes, but out popped a little figure, pale but cross, with beard unshaved and hair uncombed, a slouched hat, and a considerable red cloak, in which was wrapped, under his arm, the fatal sword that was to revenge the highly injured Mr. Martin, painter and defendant. I darted my head out of the coach, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... note. [The note contained the names of some of Cave's regular writers.] Johnson accepted the invitation; and being introduced by Cave, dressed in a loose horseman's coat, and such a great bushy uncombed wig as he constantly wore, to the sight of Mr. Browne, whom he found sitting at the upper end of a long table, in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, had his curiosity gratified.' [Mr. Carlyle writes of 'bushy-wigged Cave;' but it was Johnson whose wig is described, and not Cave's. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... forced to seek abroad for those amusements which he could not obtain at home. By the time he had completed his eighth year he was to be seen daily mingling with the poor boys in the village, with face unwashed and hair uncombed, and clothes more ragged and dirty than those of ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... a rapid step under the shadow of a wall. She was poorly dressed, her age was between forty and fifty; her head was bound with a red-checked handkerchief, from which fell meshes of coarse, uncombed hair. Her face was red, her eyes blurred, and she moved with her eyes bent down to the ground. Her right hand was in her pocket; in the other she held one of the high, narrow tin cans in which milk is carried ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... opening of the door, and the tapping continuing from the inside, caused him to look up. He was slightly startled by the figure of a young girl, dirty, and shabbily clad. Still her great black eyes, her coarse uncombed lusterless black hair falling over her sunburned face, her red arms and feet streaked with the red soil, were all familiar to him. It was ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... effects, are often exceedingly happy. He often engages a troupe of wandering players for months at a time, and he himself and his retinue form the entire audience. They are allowed to come on the stage uncombed, drunk, their parts not half learned, and half dressed. The prince is not for the serious and tragic, and he enjoys it when the players, like Sancho Panza, give loose ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... shirt; with the left hand chained to the wall, and the right foot to the floor. An inkstand stood on the floor by his side; and on his knee was some paper, on which he was writing. His hair and beard were uncombed, and his fine eyes glared with fury as we approached him. He tried to rise, ground his teeth, made grimaces, and shook his fist at my grandfather, who tried in vain to draw me out of the room. But, escaping from his grasp, I stepped ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... violently and refused to modify his standpoint. He was evidently speaking, for his jaws were making movements, which in the din and uproar could not rise above grimaces. There was a battered high hat on the back of his head, and his hair was uncombed, and his face unwashed. At last silence was restored and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill |
