"Unconventional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... early dreams. In the first years of her marriage the sober symmetry of Givre had suggested only her husband's neatly-balanced mind. It was a mind, she soon learned, contentedly absorbed in formulating the conventions of the unconventional. West Fifty-fifth Street was no more conscientiously concerned than Givre with the momentous question of "what people did"; it was only the type of deed investigated that was different. Mr. Leath collected ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... plainly time that we should explain our mysterious selections. Confidingly we entrust her with the secret, and lay bare our unconventional plan. At the first she listens unmoved, but the idea of "pique-nique" is soon borne in upon her, and lets in a ray of light. The frost thaws a trifle. "We are with friends," we say; "they are on the bluffs; they have desired to ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... Fandor, "I certainly am going to do an unconventional thing. If my summing up of them is right, these bankers are balanced, calm, cold, without imagination, and distrusting it in others. I shall have to be eloquent to convince them, to make them listen to me and get them to do what I want. ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... said with dignity. "We need not go over the ground. Mr. Fenton made us acquainted, I presume, because he agrees with me in seeing nothing wrong in my position, however unconventional it may be. You will see that if I had been ashamed of the fact I could easily have kept it ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... she had seen a few English people, for Monteriano was not the end of the earth. One or two inquisitive ladies, who had heard at home of her quarrel with the Herritons, came to call. She was very sprightly, and they thought her quite unconventional, and Gino a charming boy, so all that was to the good. But by May the season, such as it was, had finished, and there would be no one till next spring. As Mrs. Herriton had often observed, Lilia had no resources. She did not like ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... unconventional and eccentric preacher in Newbury awoke one sleeper in a most novel manner. The first name of the sleeping man was Mark, and the preacher in his sermon made use of these Biblical words: "I say unto you, mark the perfect man ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... or more unconventional than the intercourse between these young people. Miss Lee had known Hammond all her life; Maggie always spoke and thought of herself as second to Annabel in Geoffrey Hammond's regard. One brilliant autumn ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... of things natural have their own point of view, individual, unconventional, whimsical, if you please,—very different, at all events, from that of clearer-witted and more serious-minded men; and the inhabitants of Sanford will doubtless take it as a compliment, and be amused rather ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... those old writings might be presented to make a graphic picture of that era of horror and bloodshed. No one, no matter what his family, his manner of living, his standing in the community, was safe. Women feared to do the least thing unconventional; for it was an easy task to obtain witnesses, and the most paltry evidence might cause most unfounded charges. And the only way to escape death, be it remembered, was through confession. Otherwise the witch or wizard was still in the possession of ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... a political exile from Prussia, who did good service, military and political, to the Northern cause—"those who visited the White House—and the White House appeared to be open to whosoever wished to enter—saw there a man of unconventional manners, who, without the slightest effort to put on dignity, treated all men alike, much like old neighbours; whose speech had not seldom a rustic flavour about it; who always seemed to have time for a homely talk and never to be in a hurry to press business; and who occasionally ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... true festival. The celebration of Christmas has often little or nothing to do with orthodox dogma, yet somehow the sense of obligation to keep the feast is very strong, and there are few English people, however unconventional, who escape altogether the spell of tradition in ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... accepted the protection of some admirer. Who he may have been at first, how many more there were than one, how long the various amours endured, it is idle to speculate. She was for her period as thoroughly unconventional as many another woman of letters has been since in relation to later times and manners, as unhampered and free as her witty successor, Mrs. de la Riviere Manley, who lived for so long as Alderman Barber's kept mistress and died in his house. Mrs. Behn has given us poetic pseudonyms for many ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... all merely so many instruments of torture, systems of cruelty, whereby the priest becomes master and remains master.... Every one knows this, but nevertheless things remain as before. What has become of the last trace of decent feeling, of self-respect, when our statesmen, otherwise an unconventional class of men and thoroughly anti-Christian in their acts, now call themselves Christians and go to the communion-table?... A prince at the head of his armies, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and arrogance of his people—and yet acknowledging, without ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... sketch, though it is not easy to say that he is on the same level. Gilet is the man of distinct gifts, of some virtues, or caricatures of virtues, who goes to the devil through idleness, fulness of bread, and lack of any worthy occupation. He is extraordinarily unconventional for a French figure in fiction, even for a figure drawn by such a French genius as Balzac. But he is also hardly to be called a great type, and I do not quite see why he should have succumbed before ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Wholly unconventional in nature, caring nothing and knowing little of the extreme ideas of orthodox society on these subjects, the girl Berene and the woman Mrs Irving had lived a life so wholly secluded from the world at large, so ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in which our beds had been made. The sons of mine host with a number of others were serving. I always was rather unconventional. So I asked my fellow guests whether I could fall to, and without waiting for permission I commenced eating, a very good thing I did, ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... her. Judging from the glimpses I had as the party spoke together and leaned to look, it was quite a sensation. But apparently by common consent they left whatever move was to be made to the bride; and to my surprise this move was most unconventional. She got up with an abrupt gesture and started over to our table—alone. This, for a girl of her sort, was going some. I glanced doubtfully at Worth. He shrugged ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... leave the room, she had seen his sleek head close to Myra Ingleby's on the further side of the duchess's crowd. He opened the door and Jane passed out. She felt equally desirous of saying two things to him,—either: "How dared you behave in so unconventional a way?" or: "Tell me just what you want me to do, and I will ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... that he actually married a grocer's daughter. That was really quite too delightfully original. I was charmed when I heard about it: I thought it was so exactly like dear Mr. Le Breton. He's so deliciously unconventional in every way. He was Lynmouth's tutor for a while, as you've heard, of course; and then he went away from us, at a moment's notice, so nicely, because he wouldn't stand papa's abominable behaviour, and quite right, too, when it was a matter of conscience—I dare say he's told ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... conspiracy of gloves and veils, handkerchiefs and ribbons, to break the captivity of the drawer. The room was like an unoccupied guest-chamber. Yet in every detail of furniture and decoration it spoke of an unconventional but exacting taste. Trent, as his expert eye noted the various perfection of colour and form amid which the ill-mated lady dreamed her dreams and thought her loneliest thoughts, knew that she had at least the resources of an artistic nature. His interest in this unknown personality grew ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... the young man had spoken only to his horse, words of encouragement uttered in a pleasant voice, and both girls were still too stunned by the sudden peril and their equally sudden rescue to realize their very unconventional situation; Edith with both arms around the stranger, her cheek pressed into his shoulder; Fran sitting on the saddle-bow, held in position by his left arm while his right hand clasped ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... have outdone that intuition, and only one of the larger breed would have been unconventional enough to suggest what the younger generation, hampered by other feelings than those of West Carbery, "were ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... talk was not at all to Patty's liking, she saw no reason to reject the offered friendship because of it. The Van Ness sisters might prove to be interesting companions, in spite of their unconventional ways. So two vacant chairs were drawn up, and the four girls sat in a group, and very soon were chatting away like ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... school, kept by a family of four sisters, for whom the dry bones of teaching had been clothed with life. The house was perched on a high, windy cliff. The sisters, Miss Stella and Miss Clara, Miss Lucy and Miss Marianne, did their own teaching, and did it in a perfectly unconventional way to the twenty or so girls who made up ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... forgive me for writing on the impulse of the moment in this unconventional way, but I have only just discovered that we are neighbours, for the Directory confirms what the unmistakable tones of a certain piano had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... the characters in Greek tragedy were the heroes of well-known popular legends. In abandoning the well-trodden circle Aeschylus has here ensured an undying freshness for his work—it is novel, free and unconventional; more than that, it ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... economy of noting only the stereotyped phase of a situation. It comes from the difficulty of finding journalists who can see what they have not learned to see. It comes from the almost unavoidable difficulty of finding sufficient space in which even the best journalist can make plausible an unconventional view. It comes from the economic necessity of interesting the reader quickly, and the economic risk involved in not interesting him at all, or of offending him by unexpected news insufficiently or clumsily described. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... of modern Egypt the Philadelphia Telegraph says: "It is a tale of fresh, invigorating, unconventional love, without the usual thrilling adventures. It is wholesome, although daring, and through its pages there vibrates a living spirit such as is only found ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... it from any standpoint you will, suggest any solution you will, conventional or unconventional, sanctioned by law or in defiance of law, woman is in the same position, fundamentally, until she is able to determine for herself whether she will be a mother and to fix the number of her offspring. This unavoidable situation is alone enough to ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... missing, but the hour fixed had already passed, so they sat down happily to the tables. Juanito was always unconventional. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... take down his coat and hat from the peg on the wall and start for the door. On the other hand, it must have required not a little courage on the man's part to have torn himself away from this lovely, if unconventional, creature, just as he was beginning to love truly and appreciate her. But, then, Johnson was a ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... undecided. It seemed such a strange thing to do, under the circumstances; but then, as I knew, Jack Osborne had always been fond of doing strange things. Though a member of Brooks's, he was unconventional in ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... an unconventional meeting," he said. "I received your letter, Charles, and I am bound to say the contents would have astonished me exceedingly had they been written by anybody but an Evors. But our race has always been a law unto itself, with more or less disastrous consequences. We have been a wild and reckless ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... beard, a pair of round owlish spectacles, and two ridiculous ear-muffs, left only a suggestion of face here and there. He closed the door and stepped into the room. "I have every right here, I assure you, even though my arrival is somewhat unconventional. See—I have the key." He held up a large brass key that was the counterpart of the one Hal Bentley had bestowed upon Mr. Magee in that club on far-off ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... the unconventional has a greater appeal than the more standardized type of home, remodeling an old barn into a country home has its advantages. This is particularly so if one can find either a capacious one of roughly laid ledge stone, once popular in parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania and more rarely ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... himself strongly enlisted in this contest on the side of the new school. His free, unconventional nature found in its teachings a musical atmosphere true to the artistic and political proclivities of his native Poland; for Chopin breathed the spirit and tendencies of his people in every fibre of his soul, both as man and artist. Our musician, however, in freeing himself from all servile ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... been very pleasant. But if there is any truth in what they said—well, you can guess the rest. I want you to tell me yourself; I am never content to accept hearsay evidence against my friends. I prefer to be unconventional, as you see. Please ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their own tense feelings that they failed to hear the opening and shutting of the front door, which was left unlatched during the day for just such unconventional calls as the one Mrs. Parr now happened to make. The first intimation they had of interruption was her shrill and terror-stricken cry: "Felicity! Felicity! Your maid ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... their farewells, for people soon grow familiar and unconventional at sea. Blair shouted, "Lennard's a born hospital nurse, but he'll overfeed your patient." Then amid falling shades and hollow moaning of winds the yacht drove slowly away with her foresail still aweather, and the fleet hung around awaiting the admiral's ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... movement had need of exactly such an infusion of fresh and ardent blood; so that the new society was warmly welcomed, and met with immediate success, finding recruits alike among the rich and the poor. Its unconventional methods, its eager and militant spirit, were felt to supply a lacking element, and the first picturesque and dashing exploits of the Union were on the whole well received. The obvious sincerity and earnestness of these very fresh ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Honor Bright may be very popular in the District, but she'll get herself talked about and end all her chances of marrying well. Naturally it is the ambition of her parents to see her well settled, but she's far too unconventional. Did you hear of her escapade ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... easily explained. Winchell knew her in Sibley, and though he has undoubtedly followed her over here for love of her, he seems a decent fellow, and I don't believe intends any harm. I will admit her stopping outside his door to talk with him was unconventional, but I can't believe that she was aware of any impropriety in the act. Nevertheless, that did settle the matter with Helen. 'You can dine with them any day if you wish,' she says, 'but—' ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... emotions became too intangible for intellectual expression I asked my friend the musician to insert paragraphs in a minor key. The love-scenes I was particularly anxious to have written in musical phrases. But he shrank from so unconventional a form, not being sure he was a genius. I was also disheartened by the disappointing behaviour of the diverse scents with which I had expressed myself on certain blank pages. They would not ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... that I'm a woman, too, my dear, although my life has been sheltered. Otherwise, what has happened to you might have happened to me. And besides, I am what is called unconventional, I have little theories of my own about life, and now that you have told me everything I understand you and love you even more than ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Cowboy; reckless, rough, in an unconventional suit of clothes; I hain't, as a rule, got much to say, and my ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... an unconventional cosmopolitan in that ancient world which he so vividly portrays; he was a barbarian by birth, a Greek by education, and wrote his book in the Romans' language. In his use of luminous slang for literary purposes he was ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... The whimsical, unconventional interposition of the reader, and the author's reasoning with him, aSterne device, is employed so constantly in the book as to become a wearying mannerism. Examples have already been cited, additional ones are ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... made a most delightful circle. Generally they all managed to meet every day, and the usual trysting-place was The Haven, partly because it was in so central a situation for everybody, but chiefly because the kind-hearted, unconventional Castletons were ready at any and every time to welcome visitors, and would allow friends to 'drop in' in true Bohemian fashion, quite regardless of whatever happened to be taking place in the household. From the studio, indeed, they were excluded while Mr. Castleton was at his easel, ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... you arrive, Mr. Burton?" she asked. "You're certainly a happy-looking trio—so unconventional! You look as if you had been ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... uneasiness, Sylvia Graham experienced a distinct satisfaction when, late that afternoon, she beheld her unconventional acquaintance mounting the steps with a buoyant and assured step. Upon being admitted, he went promptly to ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... accompanied her, and continued with her through the long hard weeks of travel in mail and lumber wagons over rough roads, through mud and rain, to the remotest settlements, far from the railroads. Because it was a necessity, traveling alone with a gentleman whom she hardly knew troubled her not at all, unconventional though it was. ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... found at first displeasing, was what I wanted to help me to shake off the gloomy incubus of thought oppressing me. It was hardly within the proprieties to call upon her at such an hour, but it could not matter very much, when the girl's own ideas were so unconventional. She had independent means, and lived apart from her family in order to be rid of domestic limitations. She had told me that she carried a latch-key—indeed she had shown it to me with a flourish of triumph—and that she delighted in ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... never get beyond the dirt and smells and thievery. Some never get used to the delicious thrills of surprise which every turn and every corner and every vista and every night and every morning hold for the beauty-lover. Nothing could be more heterodox, more bizarre, more unconventional than Constantinople scenes. Nothing could be more orthodox than the views of Naples. To be sure, poets have written reams of poetry about it, travellers have sent home pages of rhapsodies about it, tourists have conscientiously "done" the town, with their heads cocked on one ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... foolish love to Columbina and, mingling imbecile stupidity with maliciousness, delights in the domestic discord which he helps to foment. The first act of the opera may be looked upon as an induction to the conventional comedy which comes to an unconventional and tragic end through the fact that the Clown (Canio) is in real life the husband of Columbine (Nedda) and is murderously jealous of her; wherefore, forgetting himself in a mad rage, he kills her and her ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... work Signer Puccini is said to have offered to reimburse the management of the theatre for the expenditures entailed by the production. Failures of this kind are frequently inexplicable, but it is possible that the unconventional character of the story and the insensibility of the Italians to national musical color other than their own, had a great deal to do with it in this case. Whatever the cause, the popular attitude toward the opera was ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the world. There was hardly a day at first but some good Christian would step into Non's office and tell him the world would make him suffer for it if he kept on recklessly believing in it and doing all those unexpected, unconventional, honest things that somehow, apparently, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... him more disastrously than it would have done if it had been the first of the series instead of the last. One may express the thing briefly by saying that, as far as Bream was concerned, Sam's unconventional appearance put the lid on it. He did not hesitate. He did not pause to make comments or ask questions. With a single cat-like screech which took years off the lives of the abruptly wakened birds roosting in the neighbouring trees, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... beside her, hot and breathless after running hard. Mrs. Loring guessed at once that this must be Carnaby de Tracy, the young hopeful and heir of Stoke Revel of whom Mr. Lavendar had so often spoken, but the startling and unconventional nature of his appearance was not at all what one expected in a member of his family. Robinette stole more than one look at him as the offertory went round; a robust boy with a square chin, a fair ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a barbarian, Miss Willis, but I have a request to make. I am in the mood to-night to be unconventional"—the corners of his serious mouth lifted humorously—"to be what I really am," he illuminated, "and to meet you in the same spirit." He paused with a little shrug. "It is a disappointing reversion to the primitive, I must admit." He ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... branchlets, and tasseled with cones a foot and a half long. And when these superb arms are outspread, radiating in every direction, an immense crownlike mass is formed which, poised on the noble shaft and filled with sunshine, is one of the grandest forest objects conceivable. But though so wild and unconventional when full-grown, the sugar pine is a remarkably regular tree in youth, a strict follower of coniferous fashions, slim, erect, tapering, symmetrical, every branch in place. At the age of fifty or sixty years this shy, fashionable form begins to give way. Special branches are thrust out ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... atmosphere with which such a man might very appropriately be invested. Since homely, colloquial expressions have entirely different associations, they would be entirely out of keeping with the tone of such a sketch, unless the religious leader were an unconventional revivalist. A single word with the wrong connotation may seriously affect the tone of a paragraph. On the other hand, words and phrases rich in appropriate suggestion heighten immeasurably the ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... nothing unconventional about the request. The girl glanced at the figures on the check, then stepped back into her cuddy, seeking among rows of burdened hooks for whatsoever articles would be on the hook bearing corresponding figures. To Trencher, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... place which the Mountain Lapp calls "home." It cannot be anything very elaborate or bulky, as it has to be packed up and moved about nearly every day, and it has to be carried on the backs of the reindeer in summer, or drawn by them in sleighs in the winter. So it is nothing more than a most unconventional form of tent, not altogether unlike the wigwam of the Red Indian, or the dwelling of many other nomadic people. A few long poles are stuck up on a circle, with their ends fastened together to form a sort of cone, and over this framework is stretched a covering of coarse ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... three, or four missionaries. Obviously, it would not be very likely that two single workers of opposite sex would be included in the group; to say nothing of the fact that such an allocation of workers would normally be considered highly unconventional! Usually single women workers were sent to one station, and a man (or men, if there were that many) to another. Missionary travel, except for going to a summer resort, was usually confined to one's own district, and missionaries working outside ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... how much of this information Lisette repeated to Pomponnet, but Pomponnet, having a will of his own, refused to entertain monsieur Tricotrin at any price at all. More-over, he found it unconventional that she should desire the poet's company, considering the attentions that he had paid her; and she was forced to listen, with an air of humility which she was far from feeling, to a lecture on the responsibilities ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... storming in a high key at some one in the room with him. As we passed under the heavy matted curtains the two attendants who were holding them up cast a rather horrified glance at our dusty shoes and unconventional costume. The Vali was sitting in a large arm-chair in front of a very small desk, placed at the far end of a vacant-looking room. After the usual salaams, he motioned to a seat on the divan, and proceeded at once to examine our credentials ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... imagined future that was romantic, delicious and turbulent. Now she knew exactly how much she had counted on this visit to Paris as the door through which she would pass into a new and extraordinary romance. She had felt certain that something wonderful, something unconventional, bizarre, perhaps almost maddening, was going to happen to ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... discovered this north-west coast, and came to Ilfracombe, with which they were delighted; and the unconventional lady, with her broad-brimmed straw hat tied under her chin (in the days when people wore bonnets), was soon a familiar enough figure, to be seen scrambling over the rocks of the bay which is haunted by the spirit of Tracy, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Caswell at his office. It was an unconventional thing to do to ask him to call, but she made some plausible pretext. She was surprised to find that he accepted it without hesitating. It set her thinking. Drummond must have told him something of her and he had thought ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... unwilling to avail themselves of the latest resources of brilliant individual discernment. I know what it means to see a beloved one die, who might have been saved had the physician in charge been willing to try new expedients. The doors of this hospital must be ever open to rising unconventional talent. There shall be no creeds ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... regret. The solemn fir-trees, whose "slender tops are close against the sky" here, the watching hills, and the calmly beautiful river, seem to gaze sorrowfully at me as I stand in the moonlighted midnight to bid them farewell. Beloved, unconventional wood-life; divine Nature, into whose benign eyes I never looked, whose many voices, gay and glad, I never heard, in the artificial heart of the busy world,—I quit your serene teachings for a restless and troubled future. Yes, Molly, smile if you ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... For the equivalent of seventeen cents we secured a quart of rich cream, half a dozen hard-boiled eggs, a couple of pounds of fine raspberries, and a large fresh wheaten roll. These we ate in courses, as we perched on soap-boxes and other unconventional seats, surrounded by smoked fish, casks of salted cucumbers, festoons of dried mushrooms, "cartwheels" of sour black bread, and other favorite edibles, in the open-fronted booths. A delicious banquet it was,—one of those ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... for sound work, but a deep sympathy with the latest effort of the human spirit to express itself in new forms. So deep and real will be his feeling for life that he will be eager to understand and possess every fresh manifestation of that life. However novel and unconventional the new form may be, it will not make its appeal to ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... commotions, appeared to him to be infinitely more desirous than the pomp and formality of evening dress and opera boxes. This morning the relations between himself and Laura seemed charming, intimate, unconventional, and full of opportunities. Never had she appeared prettier to him. She wore a little pink flannel dressing-sack with full sleeves, and her hair, carelessly twisted into great piles, was in a beautiful disarray, curling about her cheeks and ears. "I didn't see anything of you at all ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... westerner, uncouth and unconventional, appears in political and social life in Washington. He attains power in politics, and a young woman of the exclusive set becomes his wife, undertaking his education in ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... most of all), succeed only in being themselves, and that is what Borrow does. His attraction is rather complex, and different parts of it may, and no doubt do, apply with differing force to this and that reader. One may be fascinated by his pictures of an unconventional and open-air life, the very possibilities of which are to a great extent lost in our days, though patches of ground here and there in England (notably the tracts of open ground between Cromer and Wells in Borrow's own county) still ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... ingenuity in hypocrisy would almost certainly have suggested to him that she was no novice in the life of deception. Her appearance of frankness, even of bluntness, was admirable. To every one she presented herself as a woman of strong will and unconventional temperament who took her own way openly, having nothing to conceal, and therefore nothing to fear. She made a feature of her friendship with the tragic Englishman; she even dwelt upon it and paraded it for the pretense of blunt and Platonic friendship was the cloud with which she concealed ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... for one or two other trivial lapses from grace, Liosha led a pretty equable existence at the boarding-house. If she now and then scandalised the inmates by her unconventional habits and free expressions of opinion, she compensated by affording them a chronic topic of conversation. A large though somewhat scornful generosity also established her in their esteem. She would lend or give anything she possessed. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... Ah, Olympians were unconventional indeed—that was a part of their high bravery and privilege; but what it also appeared to attest in this wondrous manner was that they could communicate to their chosen in three minutes, by the mere light of their eyes, the same shining cynicism. He was to wonder of course, tinglingly ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... had been unconventional in other relations besides that of sheriff. He once casually mentioned to me that he had served on the police force of Bismarck, but he had left because he "beat the Mayor over the head with his gun one day." He added: ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... nervous hurry for she had a dread that he might fulfil his promise, if she did not forbid him as soon as they met. Then she slipped it into an envelope and addressed it to A. Courtney, Esq., it never having even occurred to her for a moment that there was anything at all strange or unconventional in a young girl making such a point that the meeting should be in ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... infanta answered his eager words with a few cold, common-place sentences; a sense of constraint and uneasiness appeared to haunt the apartment; the interview was at an end. English ideas of love-making had proved much too unconventional for ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... for the rudeness her mother had shown me at her home, that afforded me the opening for which I was longing. We were sitting on a grassy hummock, weaving garlands, when I replied to the apology by declaring my intention of marrying her, with or without her mother's consent. Unconventional as the declaration was, to my surprise she showed neither offense nor wonderment. Dropping the flowers with which we were working, she avoided my gaze, and, turning slightly from me, began watching our horses, which had strayed away some distance. ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... each side of her slender waist and lifted her high, so that her pretty head rose above the crowding people. Alice chanced to turn her face that way just then and saw the unconventional performance. Her eyes met those of Adrienne and she gave a nod of smiling recognition. It was a ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... style. This house was noted as early as 1690. In one of its halls were white cases full of books. His aunt had wished to put them in order. She had found frivolous books in them, ornamented with engravings so unconventional that ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... "It will be very—unconventional, won't it?" she smiled. "But there are times when conventionalities must be thrown aside, and I shall be grateful if you'll take care of me, and do all the planning, please." Then, womanlike, contradicting her own last sentence, ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... report was characteristic of the mining engineer. He returned to his chief, who was organizing the camp with a view to eventualities. There was a keen glitter in his hollow eyes as he made his statement. There was a nervous restraint in his whole manner. He chewed unmercifully as he made his unconventional statement. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... very individual style of the Roman capital, often marked by a peculiar exaggeration in the width of the round letters, contrasted with narrow tall forms in such letters as E, F and L. Mr. Bradley has become more free and unconventional in his later work, but his specimens have always been noteworthy for beauty of line and spacing; see 111. Figure 109 shows his employment of a brush-made variant of the Roman form; [107] and 110 shows both capitals and small letters drawn in his ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... a character of very marked and lofty type, the most suggestive study or sketch of the future American man that has yet appeared in our history. How broad, unconventional, and humane! How democratic! how adhesive! No fine arabesque carvings, but strong, unhewn, native traits, and deep lines of care, toil, and human sympathy. Lincoln's Gettysburg speech is one of the most ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Malory's Morte d'Arthur. His own English translation of the Golden Legend, a mediaeval Latin collection of lives of the saints, is scarcely less in importance. Among many other titles the following may serve to show how unusual and unconventional were his selections: ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... Radical opinions, the Westminster was associated, in its palmy days, with such "persons of importance" as George Eliot, George Henry Lewes, and J.S. Mill, retaining to the present moment an isolated preference for the expression of unconventional, and often outre opinions. It has always been somewhat fanatical and, now that really distinguished writers seldom enter its pages, has become associated, in the general view, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... scenery at once secured an exceptional success; it was a revelation in romance, and the public recognised that it stood in presence of a monumental literary work. France was a-fire with delight at a something so new, so unconventional, so entirely without purpose, religious, moral or philosophical: the Oriental wanderer in his stately robes was a startling surprise to the easy-going and utterly corrupt Europe of the ancien regime with its indecently tight garments and perfectly loose morals. "Ils produisirent," said Charles ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... she exclaimed, shaking her finger at him in the most unconventional way. "It was intended to be a disguise. There is absolutely nothing the matter ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... from exclaiming with protest, but I came to myself to discover that Matthew was devouring huge slabs of the roasted bones and half a dozen batches of the corn bread in a manner that was ravenously unconventional. I remembered that the last time I had seen him at repast, just about forty-eight hours past, he had speared a croquette of chicken with disdain, and I decided not to apologize for the meal even ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... desire, and while he scarcely made any effort to seek her society, she noted with secret satisfaction that he often appeared as if accidentally near her, and that he ever made it the easiest and most natural thing in the world for her to join him. His conversation was often as gay and unconventional as she could wish; but she seldom failed to detect in it an uncomfortable element of satire and irony. He always left her dissatisfied with herself and with a depressing consciousness that she had made no ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... was thoroughly unconventional in all his manners and moods, and in his methods of conducting the affairs ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... convicts were said to do; but you are not such a craven, no more am I. We must think of the future, not the past, and I feel very sure that if we married, the result would be death to our friendship. We had a splendid time, and we might still have a splendid time, if you could be unconventional and realise how many other women are also. But probably you have decided against my suggestions, or I should have heard from you. So I suppose you hate me, and I'm awfully sorry to think it. You won't come to me, then. But that doesn't lessen my obligations, and I'm going to ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... quarters. All these are changes that make for the beauty no less than the utility of home, as proved by the fact that many artists, especially those who have studied abroad where old country houses are more or less of this unconventional character, go into the country and alter in this fashion old and even abandoned houses into houses admired for their charming individuality. Illustrations of such "hermitages" frequently appear in the magazines, and may be studied ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... not so pleasant a place for a confidential chat as the unconventional postscript. The real value and the true purpose of the preface is to serve as a telephone for the writer of the book and to bear his message to the professional book-reviewers. On the other hand, only truly devoted readers ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... offices in London had dulled her cheeks. Her smile had the fresh innocence of a child's and she possessed a curious felicity of manner which was delightful though a little puzzling. Her view of strikes and the important work of the Ministry was fresh and quite unconventional. Sir James, who had all his life moved among serious and earnest people, found Miss Molly's easy cheerfulness very fascinating. Even portentous words like syndicalism, which rang in other people's ears like the passing bells of our social ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... can find at the cabarets and concerts, and he enjoyed the contrast of fresh tones with the faces marked by vice and poverty; Lautrec's two great influences have been the Japanese and Degas. Of the former he retained the love for decorative arabesques and the unconventional grouping; of the other the learned draughtsmanship, expressive in its broad simplification, and one might say that the pupil has often been worthy of the masters. One can only regret that Lautrec should have confined his vision and his high faculties to the study of a small and very ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... Row. The young girls and young men in flapping panamas, in tunics and jackets of every kind and color, gave certainly an agreeable liveliness to the spectacle, which their elders emulated by expressions of taste as personal and unconventional. A lady in the old-fashioned riding-habit and a black top-hat with a floating veil recalled a former day, but she was obviously riding to lose weight, in a brief emergence from the past to which she belonged. ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... too clever a man to imagine for a moment that she had any real affection for him. They were pals, that was all. He liked her very much—she was sure of that. But it was not love. How could a woman of her character expect to inspire decent love in any man? Theirs was a careless, unconventional tie, which could be broken to-morrow. A quarrel, and she would see him no more. She shivered. The mere thought of such a contingency was decidedly unpleasant. It's so easy, she mused, to become accustomed ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... functions. A knight-errant to the core, the atmosphere of Williams under Hopkins gave him his consecration. His comrades recognized him as an intellectual leader, essentially religious but often startlingly unconventional, "under great terrestrial headway," "the most strenuous man I ever saw." He said ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... wondering what she could say to Frederic to account for her presence there. It was unconventional at least for a girl to be motorcycling about the country dressed in man's clothes with a chauffeur. Hoff must surely realize now that she had been shadowing him. She felt almost certain that he had known it from the very ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... conscious imitation, and Lamb was not long in finding his feet and indicating his peculiar individuality. He had learned much from the free expressions of the old dramatic poets, and in such pieces as "The Old Familiar Faces"—a poignant cry from a suffering soul—or in his unconventional sonnet, "The Gipsy's Malison," written more than thirty years later, we have some of the most markedly individual of his poems. He was not a poet, he declared—running counter to the judgement of ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... care-free and unconventional life began to circulate, and presently our Eden was invaded by the only serpent I have ever found in the newspaper world—a girl reporter from Boston. She telegraphed that she was coming to see us; ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... of belonging to the ruling classes and having a long steady pedigree. "If report be true," says the same friend, {201} "his mother was of French origin, and in early life an actress." The foreignness as an asset overcame his objection to the French, and "an actress" also sounded unconventional. The friend continues: "But the subject of his family was one on which Borrow never touched. He would allude to Borrowdale as the country whence they came, and then would make mysterious allusions to his father's pugilistic ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... news of the state or of other cities being of value only in so far as it affects women and men of one's own town through former exchanges of courtesy or hospitality, or for similar causes. Nor does it concern itself with the unconventional, the abnormal. Elopements, clandestine marriages, unusual engagements, freakish parties, and similar extraordinary social and personal news do not come within the sphere of the society editor, but take regular, and usually prominent, places ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... To her the miner was a new character, unlike any she had ever met, and though rough and unconventional, she was ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... known to extend visits before with great cleverness, but this one assumed an established aspect. She was not going away, the neighborhood decided, until she had achieved that which she had come to accomplish. The present unconventional atmosphere of the place naturally supported her. And how probable it seemed, taking into consideration Captain Palliser's story, that Mr. Temple Barholm wished her to stay. Lady Joan would be obliged to stay also, if her mother intended that she should. But the ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... cliffs and began to perceive the high grey walls of the castle in the distance, Verna and I were faster friends than ever, and anyone seeing us together would have thought we had known each other all our lives. I felt more and more happy to think I had met her first in this unconventional way, for as the castle loomed up closer and we passed gardeners and keepers and jockeys with a string of race-horses out for exercise, I felt that my pretty companion was constrained by the sight of these obsequious faces and changing ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... Therefore sensible and experienced people always assume that when a declaration of love is made to an already married person, the declaration binds the parties in honor never to see one another again unless they contemplate divorce and remarriage. And this is a sound convention, even for unconventional people. Let me illustrate by reference to a fictitious case: the one imagined in my own play Candida will do as well as another. Here a young man who has been received as a friend into the house of a clergyman falls in love with the clergyman's wife, and, being young and inexperienced, ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... drift of conventionalism. The dalesmen were a primitive and hardy race who kept alive the traditions and often the habits of a more picturesque time. A common level of interests and social standing fostered unconventional ways of thought and speech, and friendly human sympathies. Solitude induced reflection, a reliance of the mind on its own resources, and individuality of character. Where everybody knew everybody, and everybody's father ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... were in the kitchen and Irene was in her own room. The lawyer reflected, with a deprecating glance at his unconventional costume, that their evening caller could be none other than their neighbor, the beautiful Miss Lord, so as he opened the door he regretted that his appearance was not ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... moment she said: "Now we have walked all around the square. Now I am going to walk home; ... and thank you ... for my walk, ... which was probably as wholesome a performance as I could have indulged in—and quite unconventional enough, even for you." ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... solidarity, without which the assurance necessary to the work is bound to falter and dwindle out; and there is also needed a degree of popular countenance, not to be had by isolated individuals engaged in an unconventional pursuit of things that are neither to be classed as spendthrift decorum nor as merchantable goods. In this connection an isolated one does not count for one, and more than the critical minimum will count for several per capita. It is a case where the "minimal ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... picture in the Zuloaga exhibition that grazes the border-land of the unconventional is Le Vieux Marcheur. It is as moral as Hogarth and as bitter as Rops. It recalls the Montmartre days of the artist when he was acquainted with Paul Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec. Two women are crossing a bridge. Their actuality ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... about to tear himself away from the pleasant antiseptic odor and orderly bustle, the house physician pressed him to stay to luncheon. He yielded, longing to hear the talk about cases, and remembering with pleasure the unconventional manners and bad food of the St. Isidore mess-table. After luncheon he was urged to attend an operation by a well-known surgeon, whose honest work he had always admired. It was late in the afternoon when he finally started to ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... ask the question!" I stammered, a little taken aback at having begun a conversation in so unconventional ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... vague and agitating fears at rest—did as Damaris bade him. Standing in the conflicting gaslight and moonlight, the haunted quiet of the small hours broken only by the trample and wash of the sea, he read Darcy Faircloth's letter from its unconventional opening, to its equally ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... less confidential and altogether unconventional, which I propose to hold with the readers of this modest volume have to do with certain sub-laws which are so often overlooked that—to return to the figure of the building—the wind finds its way through chinks; the floors creak and the general impression is that ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... was changed; and I told her so with unconventional frankness, studying her closely as ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... playing out our parts in a most unconventional fashion. Ralph Lorimer, are you sure that it is not ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... bit of a fix. The firm he was trading for on Motukoe didn't do business in the same free-and-easy way as did Bobby Towns' captains and the unconventional Bully Hayes. They made him sign papers, and every time the ship came the rufous-headed Scotch supercargo took stock, and a violent altercation would result over the price of the trade; but as the trader generally had a big lot of produce for the ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... he could never tell in the least how he should find her. She seemed to have a mood for every day. Sometimes she would be in a great hurry and would almost run past him; sometimes she would saunter along in the most unconventional way, glancing from time to time at a book or a paper; sometimes her eager face would look absolutely bewitching in its brightness; sometimes scarcely less bewitching in a consuming anxiety which seemed unnatural in ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... becomes intelligible as soon as we observe that Sophocles was deliberately seeking what he regarded as an archaic or "Homeric" style (cf. Jebb, Introd. p. xli.); and this archaism, in its turn, seems to me best explained as a conscious reaction against Euripides' searching and unconventional treatment of the same subject (cf. Wilamowitz in Hermes, xviii. pp. 214 ff.). In the result Sophocles is not only more "classical" than Euripides; he is more primitive by ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... country for originalities and everything unexpected and unconventional. From the point of view of an ordinary European observer every feature of Indian life is contrary to what could be expected. Shaking the head from one shoulder to another means no in every other country, but in India it means ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... of an apprentice, but they have been included because, however faulty in technique, they do serve to illustrate a past that can never come back, and men and women who were outwardly crude and illiterate but at core kind and chivalrous, and nearly always humorously unconventional. The bunch grass, so beloved by the patriarchal pioneers, has been ploughed up and destroyed; the unwritten law of Judge Lynch will soon become an oral tradition; but the Land of Yesterday blooms afresh as the ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... moment she was walking by his side down the smooth marble stairs and out through the grand entrance into Fifth Avenue. The strange part about it was, she was not in the least excited over a very unconventional situation. She had allowed a handsomely groomed, young, red-haired adventurer to pick her up without the formality of an introduction, in the Public Library. She hadn't the remotest idea of his name—nor had he of ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... despite the warning of friends, peacock-feathers hid from view the walls; this comfortable little boudoir, with its rugs, cozy Turkish corner, and dull sweet odors was originally a hall-bedroom; Tekla's ingenuity and desperate desire for the unconventional had converted the apartment into the prettiest of the Calcraft flat. Here, and here alone, was the imperious critic forbidden pipe or cigar. Cigarettes he abhorred, therefore Tekla allowed her favorites to use them. She became sick if she merely lighted one; ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... He could not but feel that, if the elder sister came face to face with his marvellous machine, good must result for his plans. Rebecca walked with nervous haste, dreading Phoebe's possible discovery of this most unconventional conduct. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... debarred from doing so, because he must finish with an ensemble number where the appeal is made by numbers of people, costumes, pretty girls and music. At the beginning, however, the writer may be as unconventional as he pleases—providing he does not take too long to bring on his first ensemble, and so disappoint his audience, who are waiting for the music and the girls. Therefore the writer must be content to "tag on" his plot to an opening ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... whose merit was not fully recognized. With scarcely an exception, no individual leader was more self-reliant, or handled imperfect tools with greater skill. For seven months he kept the flag flying over the lonely Baralong kraal in the veld. His unconventional even theatrical methods were not to the taste of his serious superiors, who underestimated his success. His only reward was the Companionship of the Bath, which was also bestowed upon the militia colonels, most of whom, from no fault ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... was a domestic scene which would have done Mrs. Arnot's heart good to have witnessed; but poor Mrs. Haldane would have sighed over it as so utterly unconventional as to be another proof of her son's unnatural tastes. In her estimation he should spend social evenings only in aristocratic parlors; and she mourned over the fact that from henceforth he was excluded from ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... more. Since Providence had been good enough to rescue them, why should they fly in its face? A little patience, and a blameless happiness lay before them. Let him not blind himself to the immense relief he really felt at being spared social obloquy. After all, a poet could be unconventional in his work—he had no need of the practical outlet demanded for the ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... the Royal Academy. In 1780 he was elected an Associate; in the following year he obtained the full honours of academicianship. His easel-pictures were for the most part landscapes, effective and forcible after an unconventional fashion, and wholly at variance with the "classically-composed" landscapes then in vogue. Turner, when, in 1808, he was appointed Professor of Perspective to the Royal Academy, is said to have taken up his abode at Hammersmith, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... up, Pen," laughed Bobby, "and create a general diversion, I'll tell a story myself—you'll see the kind of confession stuff we generally put over in our little group of unconventional thinkers. Attention, folks! Harken to the Tale of Dora the Dressmaker! Which proves that the way of the transgressor, as observed on Manhattan Island, is ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... for a bridegroom to perform his toilet in, but, considering the unconventional nature of the marriage, a not inappropriate one. What events had been enacted in that earthen camp since it was first thrown up, nobody could say; but the primitive simplicity of the young man's preparations accorded well with the prehistoric spot ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... his own creations, and there is, for that reason, an intimate note in his interpretations, an indescribable sympathy, and an underscoring of his meanings that even a much superior actor might miss. He is so absolutely unconventional in his bearing and speech as to seem amateurish, yet he secures with his naturalism some poignant effects. I shan't soon forget his Karl Hetman, the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... leaning back, "it is a little unconventional my coming here alone; but Mama was not well enough, and I—Victor," she said, with a sudden indrawn breath, "I felt I must come and see you. I told her I felt I should die there if they would not ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... dinner-party (for which I was in the act of dressing), and it might be that he had taken it into his head to come my way, though we had arranged to go separately. It was a small and confidential affair at the table of a good but unconventional political lady, an old friend of his. She had asked us both to meet a third guest, a Captain Fraser, who had made something of a name and was an authority on chimpanzees. As Basil was an old friend of the hostess and I had never seen her, I felt that it was quite possible that he (with his ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... did), and being devoured by the white ants. And there's Sabine, the loveliest of them all; ah! it was like a star rising when she came into the room. And that's Miriam, in her coachman's cloak, with all the little capes on, and she wore great top-boots underneath. You young people may say you're unconventional, but you're ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... the Mormons at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, was a great success. His humour was so entirely fresh, new, and unconventional, it took his hearers by surprise, and charmed them. His failing health compelled him to abandon the lecture after about eight or ten weeks. Indeed, during that brief period he was once or twice compelled to dismiss his audience. I have myself seen him sink into a chair and nearly ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... with as near an approach to archness as a woman of her type is capable of, "you must not think me odd if I do something that may seem to you a little bit unconventional. It is only your own kindness to me which encourages me to ask a favor, which I shouldn't wonder if you would rather grant than not. The fact is, there is a gentleman who wishes very much to dance with me, and my card is already full. Now, would you mind giving up one of yours? I know, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... with regard to the diagrams of this book, that they are purposely somewhat unconventional, not being drawn to scale nor conforming to the canons of professional draughtsmanship. Where advisable, a part of a machine has been exaggerated to show its details. As a rule solid black has been preferred to fine shading in sectional drawings, and all ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... away slowly and sat down on the sofa. "I'm tired," she said a little defiantly, "that's all—you know if you will come and call at such dreadfully unconventional hours you mustn't expect to find people with all the paint on. I never ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... chortles—is dead. It is true. He is dead, dead and buried. And a fluttering, chirping host of men, little men and unseeing men, have heaped him over with the uncut leaves of Kim, wrapped him in Stalky & Co., for winding sheet, and for headstone reared his unconventional lines, The Lesson. It was very easy. The simplest thing in the world. And the fluttering, chirping gentlemen are rubbing their hands in amaze and wondering why they did not do it long ago, it was so very, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... possible future Brighton, Lymington is never likely to become crowded with visitors again, but artists find many good studies on the river and in the town and even on the "soppy" flats themselves, and there are salt baths at high tide for those unconventional holiday-makers who favour ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... academic because it is thorough, but only because it is dead. Neither is a drawing necessarily academic because it is done in what is called a conventional style, any more than it is good because it is done in an unconventional style. The test is whether it has life ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... her part, quite as vaguely ill at ease. She saw before her one of those men whom the sex would vaguely generalize as "nice," that is to say, correct in all the superficial appointments of style, dress, manners, and feature. Yet there was a decidedly unconventional quality about him: he was totally unlike anything or anybody that she could remember; and as the attributes of originality are often as apt to alarm as to attract people, she was not entirely prepossessed ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... three on the broad couch and the rest distributed impartially between the floor and the window-seat. Such complete informality had never seemed permissible in the sedate Clyde mansion; but somehow these surroundings seemed to invite one to be as comfortable and unconventional ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... also deep seated in us. So we are clannish; and we love to do the unusual, to break away from the commonplace and routine of our lives. There is often a thrill of satisfaction—even if it be later followed by remorse—in doing the forbidden or the unconventional. ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... explicable the raging exclamations he is reported to have permitted himself to lately use towards Johannesburg and the cause of reform upon which it is so earnestly engaged. That His Honour should have been generally credited with indulging in unconventional vernacular terms concerning the pronouncedly loyal and hearty reception accorded to him on his visit to the Rand Agricultural Show, seems to argue a lapse into the habits of his youngest days, which has a direct significance ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... feet from the beds to get ready. In the officers' quarters the captain rose regretfully from after-dinner digestion, and the three lieutenants sought their helmets with a sigh. Lieutenant Balwin had been dining an unconventional and impressive guest at the mess, and he now interrupted the anecdote which the guest was achieving ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... retrieved his "things." They were not only dry, but clean, and the majority of the wrinkles had been pressed from his trousers and coat. The mud had even been brushed from his shoes. Not that Galusha noticed all this just then. He was busy dressing, having a nervous dread that the unconventional Primmie might find she had forgotten something and ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a friend's dinner or at the opera or on a country-club porch if I had had my luck with me. Now what was I to think her—an escaped lunatic or something more accountable and therefore worse? If I detest anything, it is the unconventional, the stagy, the mysterious. Setting my teeth, I resolved to wait until she concluded her researches; after that, politely ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... wish to know the natives of the country intimately, like other unconventional desires I had at times experienced, might have remained a sneaking wish until this day, but for an accident which freed me for a time from English supervision. My people had provided me with introductions ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... considerateness, the restraint of a modesty which could not but judge, yet mistrusted its fitness, marked his ordinary intercourse. Overflowing with affection to his friends, and showing it in all kinds of unconventional and unexpected instances, keeping to the last a kind of youthful freshness as if he had never yet realised that he was not a boy, and shrunk from the formality and donnishness of grown-up life, he was the most refined and thoughtful of gentlemen, and in the midst of ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Julie. He remembered that first night and the kiss, and how he had half hated it, half liked it. He felt now, chiefly, anger that Donovan had had one too. One? But he, Peter, had had two.... Then he called himself a damned fool; it was all of a piece with her extravagant and utterly unconventional madness. But what, then, would she say to this? Had she anything in common ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... that this is a most extraordinary and unconventional letter to send a man whom I have seen once. But you are not human to me; you are a spirit of the thunder-storm of August first. I cannot even remember how you look. Your voice—I'd recognize that. It has a quality of—what is it? Atmosphere, vibration, ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... any frantic anxiety to abandon his own way of life. He had a furtive and foolish notion that these people are of no importance whatever. These coteries, these at-homes, and flat philosophies are not the real thing. It sounds unsocial and unconventional, no doubt, but it is a question so far unsettled in the author's mind whether any genuine artist loves his fellows well enough to co-habit with them on a literary basis. For some mysterious reason the real men, the original ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... Slocum, of Boston, sailed alone around the world. They called on the adventurous skipper at once and invited him to visit Vailima, which he did on the following day. Mrs. Stevenson was delighted with the unconventional ways and conversation of the captain, and, indeed, found in him much that was kindred to her own spirit. When he wished to buy some giant bamboo from her plantation for a mast for his little vessel, ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... so entirely fresh and unconventional, that it took his hearers by surprise, and charmed them. His failing health compelled him to abandon the lecture after about eight or ten weeks. Indeed, during that brief period he was once or twice compelled to dismiss ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne |
