"Finery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suddenly into a shudder of something like fear and disgust, as she saw, watching her from under the wall of the gardens opposite, a crooked, withered Jewish crone, dressed out in the most gorgeous and fantastic style of barbaric finery. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... velvet riding-habit, with gold buttons, a regal garment in its time, but now somewhat rubbed and worn; a tall hat of antique form perched upon her heavy braids, and she looked very businesslike. Peggy had found no such splendour, but had put on a scarlet military coat over her own bicycle skirt. "Finery is good," she said, "but not on horseback." A three-cornered hat, with the mouldering remains of a feather, completed her costume, and she announced herself as the ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... contrary she issued from her chamber conscious of every article of finery adorning her plump person. She settled, unsettled, resettled her hat a dozen times, and tried no less than a score of locations for her large cameo pin. Her freshly washed lisle gloves had unfortunately ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... he led the company into the interior of the hall with the mallows. The windows were pasted with paper, and the bedsteads made of wood, and all appearance of finery had been expunged, and Chia Cheng's heart was naturally much gratified; but nevertheless, scowling angrily at Pao-y, "What do you think of this place?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... girl, "must I go back to the house? I am so precious shabby, and your lady-mother has got such piercing eyes. But there, we can smuggle in the back way. I'll go up to my room and put on my bits of finery. Bedad! but I look as handsome as the best when I am dressed up. Come along, Nora; we'll get in the back way, and I'll give the ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... coquetry—and she was not wanting in it—never woman seemed to take less heed of her appearance; her toilette was finished in a moment, she cared nothing for finery except at balls and fetes; if she displayed a little at other times it was simply in order to please the king. If the Court subsisted after her it was only to languish. Never was princess so regretted, never one so worthy of it: regrets have not yet ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... but they're not swarthy. Did he talk at all?" "Not a word." "Did he play about?" "Never was out of the nurse's arms." "Dear me! Was he like Brotherton?" "I don't think I am a judge of likenesses." "He's a healthy child?" "I can't say. He seemed to be a good deal done up with finery." Then the Marchioness declared that her younger son showed an unnatural indifference to the heir of the family. It was manifest that she intended to accept the new Popenjoy, and to ally herself with no party base enough to ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... into the fire, swinging her dogskin gloves in her hands. She wore a plain pearl grey walking dress and deerstalker hat with a single quill in it. The severe but immaculate simplicity of her toilette might have been designed to accentuate the barbarities of Blanche Moyat's cheap finery. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... undismayed, made his appearance before the tribunal, arrayed in a corslet of proof, with a golden hilted sword, a scarf embroidered with pearls and gold, and a hat bravely plumaged with white, blue, and, orange feathers—the colors of William the Silent—of all which finery he was stripped, however, as soon as he ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... farmhouse. Often the gipsy women, whose vans go slowly along the main roads while they make expeditions to the isolated houses in the fields, bring with them very similar bundles of publications. The sale of books has thus partly supplanted that of clothes-pegs and trumpery finery. Neither pedlars nor gipsies would carry such articles as books unless there was a demand for them, and they thereby demonstrate the growth ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... but could not overtake her. She left behind one of her glass slippers, which the Prince took up most carefully. She got home, but quite out of breath, and in her nasty old clothes, having nothing left her of all her finery but one of the little slippers, fellow ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Atherley; "the only man whose temper could stand all he would have to put up with. We had good proof of that even on the wedding-day, when you kept him kicking his heels for half an hour in the church while you were admiring the effect of your new finery in ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... and finish, that the building showed itself instantly for what it was—the cheap boarding-house of a mill town. A group of tired-looking girls sitting on the step in blessed Sunday idleness and cheap Sunday finery stared as he and Johnnie ascended and crossed the porch. One of these, a tall lank woman of perhaps thirty years, got up and followed a few hesitating paces, apparently more as a matter of curiosity than with any ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... is time for you to leave off now. Though you must not suppose that I think twice about my things. When I look at you, it makes me long to give you my best cloak and a tidy hat. Oh, where is all your finery ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... are wise. Oh, how courageous!" And she went back for her finery. And certain it is she had more baggage than I should choose for ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... let himself be dragged along by his lively chattering friend, and they soon came to the cottage. The procession was just sallying forth, to go to the church. The young countryman was in his usual linen frock; all his finery consisted in a pair of leather breeches, which he had polished till they shone like a field of dandelions; he was of simple mien, and appeared somewhat confused. The bride was sun-burnt, with but a few ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... in such a life," said John Gordon. "A woman should not wear a stuff gown always; but the silk finery and the stuff gown should follow each other. To my taste, the more there may be of the stuff gown and the less of the finery, the more it will ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... the universally-worn girdle; the happy owner of a waistcoat or a pair of trowsers, thinks his wardrobe amply furnished. Some have nothing more than a shirt, and others, as much oppressed by the heat under a heavy cloth mantle as they would be in a Russian bath, are far too vain of their finery to lay it aside. Shoes, boots, or stockings, are rarely met with, and the coats, mostly too tight and too short, make the oddest appearance imaginable; many of their wearers can scarcely move their arms, and are forced to stretch them out like the sails of a windmill, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... you," he said, with ill-suppressed gaiety in his voice. "We should all have been blown out of the water last night if it hadn't been for me. Forgetful of my finery, I went and—looked on. The magic result was that I saved the situation, and—incidentally, ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... as it feels, I'm sure. It's getting very late—we ought to be off," and Juliet gathered up her belongings and gave him a long loose coat to hold for her which covered her finery completely. ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... of grand dinners in my time," he said, "and dined, by Jove, in a company where there was a king and royal duke at top and bottom, and every man along the table had six stars on his coat; but dammy, Glanders, this finery don't suit me; and the English ladies with their confounded buckram airs, and the squires with their politics after dinner, send me to sleep—sink me dead if they don't. I like a place where I can blow my cigar when the cloth is removed, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "To take off this finery and send back the money, and just be myself. I wish to respect myself, but somehow I don't now. Oh, Mummy, Mummy, I ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... for he came back that evening in time to prepare the thin gruel which made his master's supper, with a suit of black—a little threadbare, but still highly respectable—two shirt fronts, and two white cravats. But, out of all this finery, Jackeymo held the small-clothes in especial veneration; for as they had cost exactly what the medallion had sold for, so it seemed to him that San Giacomo had heard his prayer in that quarter to which he had more exclusively directed the saint's attention. The other ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... proffered accommodation, as he courteously stood with his pew door open, bowing to the fair creature as if she had been a queen. The five Misses Erminstoun knelt on their velvet cushions, arrayed in feathers and finery, and strong in riches and worldly advantages; but my pale sister, in her coarsely-fashioned mourning-garb, seated on a bench, and kneeling on the stone, might have been taken for the regal lady, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... you, because I need a spy; but, understand that a fellow who allows himself to be used as a spy, is, indeed, a useful subject, but generally a worthless one, and to whom it is becoming to be modest and humble. I am now going to Berlin; you will accompany me. Take off your finery, so that every one may not recognize at once the peacock by his feathers. Go to the taverns and listen to what they say about the war; whether the people are much dissatisfied about it. Keep your ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... of his daughter's beauty and popularity, as happily as the big cat lying on the sunny side of the bunk-house. He found all sorts of excuses for invading where his presence was little wanted while Zen's finery was being displayed for admiration. Y.D. always pretended that such invasions were quite accidental, and affected a fine indifference to all this "women's fuss an' feathers," but his affectations deceived at least none of the ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... lavish all their finery upon their heads. Their costume in Russia is very different to that of the natives. The Russians hold them in great contempt; never speaking of them without abuse; and feel themselves contaminated by their touch, unless it be to have their fortunes told. Formerly they were more ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... aprons and cooks' caps, worn hotel towels and napkins, ragged shirts and collars—not a thing worth the lumber in the box, except as old linen for the hospitals. There was a great deal of bedraggled finery, than which nothing could have been less appropriate, when nine out of every ten women who applied for clothes, wanted plain black in which to mourn for their dead. And the hats and bonnets were of every shape ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... vessels that had glowed in the wood-fuel light when a large family had gathered there about the hearth; the stone well under the walnut-tree where dead Dina had often stayed to smile on him; the cypress-wood presses where Pippa had kept her feast-day finery and her pearls; the old vast sweet-smelling sheds and stables where he had threshed and hewn and yoked his oxen thirty years if one: all these things, and a hundred like them, were dear to him with all the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... life of the people of the Piano di Sorrento is the famous dance known as the Tarantella, which may be witnessed by the curious at almost any time—for money. Even when performed by professional dancers, tricked out in spick and span stage-peasant finery, the Tarantella is a most graceful exhibition of movement, although the dance naturally gains in interest when it takes place in the days of vintage or on the popular festivals of the Church, without the presence of largesse-giving strangers. ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... ruined by buying good pennyworths. Again—It is foolish to lay out money in a purchase of repentance; and yet this folly is practiced every day at auctions, for want of minding the almanac. Many a one, for the sake of finery on the back, has gone with a hungry belly and half-starved his family. Silks and satins, scarlet and velvets, put out the kitchen fire, as poor Richard says. These are not the necessaries of life; they can scarcely be called ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... She said it pained her to see him prancing about, with his two long, arched tail-feathers nodding as he walked. The truth was, Henrietta could not endure it to have any one more elegantly dressed than she. And there was no denying that the Rooster's finery outshone everybody else's. Why, he wore a comb on his head that was even bigger than Henrietta's! And he had spurs, too, ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... But there is method in our madness; we can give reasons for it—satisfactory to ourselves, perhaps also to Him who made us, and you, and all tailors likewise. Will you, freshly bedizened, you and your footmen, from Nebuchadnezzar and Co.'s "Emporium of Fashion," hear a little about how your finery is made? You are always calling out for facts, and have a firm belief in salvation by statistics. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... plot has been hatched to rob this house while your master is away. That pack doesn't hold finery as Fanny was at first led to believe, but it holds a man, and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... was the world so queer and awry and obstinate? After all, you could do so little with it. Your plans came to nought so easily. Lizzie Wise, in her Sunday-school class, preferred going in the mill, and buying herself cheap finery, because the other girls did it. And so all through. You tried to train some one, and he or she followed the ignis fatuus more readily than any high, ennobling truth. It was hard lifting people out of their ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... aborigine the value and importance of the treasure she was about to guard, I cannot say. Flip darted an interrogatory look at Lance, who nodded a quiet assent, and she flew into the inner room. She did not linger on the details of her toilet, but reappeared almost the next moment in her new finery, buttoning the neck of her gown as she entered the room, and chastely stopping at the window to characteristically pull up her stocking. The peculiarity of her situation increased her usual shyness; she played with the black and gold ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... covered with timber, to support the earth which they lay over, and thereby kept the body from being pressed. They then raised the earth in a round hill over it. They always dressed the corpse in all its finery, and put wampum and other things into the grave with it; and the relations suffered not grass nor any weed to grow upon the grave, and frequently visited it and made lamentation." [Footnote: Hist. Indian Tribes of the United States, ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... broken meat, I marvelled how they had found their way to Midway Reef; it was sure at least some vessel must have brought them, and that long ago, for they had multiplied exceedingly. Part of the floor was strewn with a confusion of clothes, books, nautical instruments, odds and ends of finery, and such trash as might be expected from the turning out of several seamen's chests, upon a sudden emergency and after a long cruise. It was strange in that dim cabin, quivering with the near thunder of the breakers and pierced with the screaming of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... approach of any danger; men who, having been well tried, needed not to boast, and who, having carried off triumphantly their respective brides many years ago, needed not to decorate their persons with the absurd finery that characterised their younger brethren. They were comparatively few in number, but they composed a sterling band, of which every man was a hero. Among them were those who occupied the high positions of ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the eyes of all true women science is hostile to the sense of shame. They feel as if one wished to peep under their skin with it—or worse still! under their dress and finery. ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... critics have always done. Training and wages and social approbation are very elastic spring-boards, and the whole course of history has seen these offered bounteously to one sex and as sedulously withheld from the other. Let woman consent to be a doll, and there was no finery so gorgeous, no baby-house so costly, but she might aspire to share its lavish delights;—let her ask simply for an equal chance to learn, to labor, and to live, and it was as if that same doll should open its lips, and propound Euclid's forty-seventh proposition. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... was near they would wander in the long evenings through the streets and look in at the dazzlingly lit shop-windows, with their tempting, glittering show of gold and finery. Louise kept asking continually how much he thought this thing or that cost—that lace, or the cloak, or the stockings, or those gold brooches. "Wait till you marry that doctor," Peer would say, "then you can buy all those things." So far neither ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... hour later that the Mills boys set out for the Cross-roads. Their father and mother went with them; but Vashti did not go. She had "been out to look for the cow," and got in only just before they left, still clad in her yesterday's finery; but it was wet and bedraggled with the soaking dew. When they were gone she sat down in ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... for an hour. After making Mind Purchases of about $8000 worth of washable Finery edged with Lace, a ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... often thinks he is himself. The attempt has been made to suggest that archaeology ought not to consist in sitting in a charnel-house amongst the dead, but rather in ignoring that place and taking the bones into the light of day, decently clad in flesh and finery. It has now to be shown in what manner this parading of the Past is needful to the gaiety ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... room, and filled all the chairs except the one on which Miriam had retreated into the farthest corner of the bay-window. Seated there, not quite in profile, against the light, her head turned and slightly inclined, in order to get a better view of Evie's finery, her slender figure possessed a sort of Vandyke grace, heightened rather than diminished by the long plumes and rich draperies of the month's fashion. Evie flitted between closets, wardrobes, and drawers, prattling while she worked off that first event of ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... far away from us in their own solitude. If ever you felt or found this in a London street; if ever it furnished you with one serious thought, or any ray of true and gentle pleasure; if there is in your heart a true delight in its green railings, and dark casements, and wasteful finery of shops, and feeble coxcombry of club-houses, it is well; promote the building of more like them. But if they never taught you any thing, and never made you happier as you passed beneath them, do not think they have any ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... baby house, with two of her little neighbors, Minnie and Maggie Elliott, to keep her company. It was a dark, rainy sort of day; but what difference did that make to the children? They never wanted to make a parcel of stupid morning calls, or go out shopping and spend all their money on silly finery; no—they were full of their play in the house, and didn't care a doll's shoe-string how ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... night, I should have risked a surprise. Yes. There they go. Well, we can see at last the direction they take, and if there is a road, we'll risk a night's march, and try to come up with them. Our horses—our guns—in the hands of that wretched crew! And look at the groom dressed out in all that finery—plunder, I ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... one of the richest capitalists in Paris one day met an extremely pretty little working-girl. Her mother was with her, but the girl had taken the arm of a young fellow in very doubtful finery, with a very smart swagger. The millionaire fell in love with the girl at first sight; he followed her home, he went in; he heard all her story, a record of alternations of dancing at Mabille and days of starvation, of play-going and hard work; he took an interest in ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... alongside bartering, we were honoured with visits from several parties of the Tassai ladies, in whose favour the prohibition to come on board was repealed for the time. The young women were got up with greater attention to dress and finery than when seen on shore, and some had their face blackened as if to heighten their attractions. The outer petticoat, worn on gala days such as this, differs from the common sort in being much finer ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... unlocked and opened the door for Houston, and one of them entered with him. It was a small room, evidently a woman's, and its general squalor and dilapidation were made more apparent by tawdry, shabby bits of finery strewn here and there. Curtains of red damask, faded and ragged, hung at the window, excluding the daylight, and on a small table a kerosene lamp had burned itself out. But Houston took little notice of the room; ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... of toll. "People have come to understand that a spade is a spade, and L10, L10," she would have said. Had Mrs. Hanbury Smith not noticed the application, there might, perhaps, have been an end of it, but she was silly enough to send over from Paris a little trumpery bit of finery, bought in the Palais Royal for ten francs. Whereupon Mrs. Carbuncle ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... trust to having one. A man should not keep fine clothes locked up in his chest only that his valet may occasionally show off in them; no, nor yet strut about in them in his chamber, only that his valet may puff him and his finery abroad. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... "Too much finery!" growled Ranjoor Singh. "I will attend to that. First, listen! Other than your talk, I have had no proof at all of you! ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... half-comical, with a leer of low familiarity in his eves, but his waxed mustache of military proportions, his patch of goatee just above the chin, his elaborately oiled hair and flaming necktie, set off his faded face with an odd gear of finery and impressiveness. His skin was that of an old roue's, patched up and calked, but the features were those of a once handsome man ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... got through at the Nest," said that semi-worthy fellow, "give us another call here. I should like my woman and Kitty to have a look at your finery, before you go down to ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... said, drily, as he looked about him. "The other morning finished up the rags on hand—but you are doing your best, with flimsy finery, to get up ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... the occasion. Dropping all the tulle into place, she walked from bay-window to table and back again, displaying her finery. "Isn't it pretty?" she agreed. "See the ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... second wedding gown was being hurriedly prepared. After an hour's delay, however, the belated garment arrived, when the bride-elect was quickly dressed and walked into the large drawing-room in all of her bridal finery, leaning, as was then the custom, upon the arm of the groom. Archbishop Hughes conducted the wedding service, and seized upon the auspicious occasion to make an address of some length. Previous to the ceremony, my intimate friend, the young bride's older sister, Cornelia ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... 3000 men. A shrewd troop, said the Earl, of the first soldiers in Christendom, to be landed some fine morning in England. And he too had heard of the jewelled suits of cramoisy velvet, and all the rest of the finery with which the triumphant Alexander was intending to astonish London. "Get horses enough, and muskets enough in England," exclaimed Leicester, "and then our people will not be beaten, I ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... pleased the Chink, who ripped it up and made it over into a Chinese robe, with flowing draperies falling to his heels. He dressed himself in his new costume and, being proud of possessing such finery, sat down on a bench outside his door so that everyone passing by could see how magnificent ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... it's an honest hydraulio canal, of the most straightforward character, a poor but respectable mill-race which has devoted itself strictly to business, and has turned mill-wheels instead of fooling round water-lilies. It can afford that ultimate finery. What you behold in the Bridal Veil, my love, is ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... filling the air with the fumes of latakia. Most of them were Turks in European clothes and the fez, but there were some German officers and what looked like German civilians—Army Service Corps clerks, probably, and mechanics from the Arsenal. A woman in cheap finery was tinkling at the piano, and there were several shrill females with the officers. Peter and I sat down modestly in the nearest corner, where old Kuprasso saw us and sent us coffee. A girl who looked like a Jewess came over to us and ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... on the road from York, which ran through dense woods, where Indians often waylaid the traveller. The bridegroom's father was present with the rest. It was a concourse of men in homespun, and women and girls in such improvised finery as their poor resources could supply; possibly, in default of better, some wore nightgowns, more or less disguised, over their daily dress, as happened on similar occasions half a century later among the frontiersmen of West ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... of Mr. Sheldon's domain by this time. Diana and Georgy had walked behind the lovers, and had talked a little about the sermon, and a good deal about the bonnets; poor Diana doing her very uttermost to feign an interest in the finery that had attracted Mrs. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... very busy looking about for the last two days, and have been in fifty houses if I have been in one. I want some place with a decent address, cheap, and beyond all things, clean. The dirty holes that some of these lodgings are! such tawdry finery and such servants, with their faces and hands not merely dirty, but absolutely macadamised. And they all make this confounded great Exhibition a plea ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... Markham hesitated. It might do Maddy a deal of hurt to go to Aikenside, he said, her humble home would look mean to her after all that finery, while the temptations to vanity and ambition would be greater there than at home; but Maddy put all his objections aside, and long before the doctor came she had written to Mrs. Agnes that she would go. The doctor could not understand why it was that in Maddy's home he did not think ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... appearance of this unreadable young woman. Of what use to warn her against himself, or against the possible, nay, probable misconstruction that would be given their unusual friendship? Craig would not be idle with his tales. And why had she put on all this finery to-night? To subjugate him? ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... "a sweet disorder in the dress" was a bit overdone in Daisy's case, but her merry, breezy laugh, and her whole-souled joy at seeing Mona again rather corresponded with her disarranged finery. ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... cotton! This was surely the best man in the world, and the most generous. It is true that the velvet was creased, and that the woolen trousers were well worn, and it was difficult to guess what had been the original color of the felt hat, it had been so soaked with rain; but dazzled by so much finery I was unconscious of the imperfections which ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... little things. I was playing poker one night with a man, and broke him. He got up from the table and went back into the ladies' cabin, and in a short time returned with some diamonds and a lady's watch and chain. He wanted to put them up, but I told him I never played for women's finery. A man offered him about one-half what the stuff was worth, and he was so crazy to play that he was about to let them go, when I advanced him much more on them than the stranger had offered; for I knew he would lose them. We began ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... and shockingly dissipated. And she married him. No, I cannot understand French girls. Do as I will, it is quite incomprehensible to me how Louise, loving another, could suffer herself to be decked out in bridal finery and go to the altar and take the marriage oaths. Not if perdition had threatened would I have submitted. I have a feeling that Mr. Pollingray should have shown at least one year's resentment at such conduct; and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... winter, and she wore two red roses in her black braids. Her cheeks and her lips were fuller of warm red life than the roses. She lowered her black eyes before her father and her brothers, for there was a light in them which she could not subdue, which belonged to Burr Gordon only. No costly finery had Madelon Hautville, but she had done some cunning needle-work on an old black-satin gown of her mother's, and it was fitted as softly over her sweet curves as a leaf over a bud. A long garland of flowers after her own design had she wrought ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... considerable power. Having thus cemented a firm friendship with the Totonacas, we returned to our new settlement of Villa rica. We found there a vessel newly arrived from Cuba, under the command of Francisco Sauceda, called el pulido or the beau, from his affectation of finery and high manners. In this vessel there had arrived an able officer named Luis Marin, accompanied by ten soldiers and two horses. He brought intelligence that Velasquez had received the appointment of adelantado of Cuba, with authority to barter and colonize ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... not by some happy chance that the Captain found her arrayed in such finery, as is so often the case with heroines of romance, but the result of much premeditation and studied effect. Ever since her meeting with Blanch she had dressed herself daily with terrible deliberation and nicety of precision, the same as ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... the gestures of the showmen, the bright balloons, the shooting-galleries, the gipsy tents, the crudely stained canvas walls, the groups of coachmen and servant girls and children in their holiday finery. At moments one can even ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... freely, the company gradually broke up. Marheyo went to the little hut he was forever building. Tinor began to inspect her rolls of tappa, or employed her busy fingers in plaiting grass-mats. The girls anointed themselves with their fragrant oils, dressed their hair, or looked over their curious finery, and compared together their ivory trinkets, fashioned out of boar's tusks or whale's teeth. The young men and warriors produced their spears, paddles, canoe-gear, battle-clubs, and war-conchs, and occupied themselves in carving, all sorts ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... to impoverish the poor, who are not affected by the sumptuary laws; for the regent has lately laid very severe restraints on the articles of dress, which the middling class of people found grievous, because it obliged them to throw aside finery that might have ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... questions of taste, whether in manners, diet, clothing, or household decoration, we cannot afford to take the attitude of the Rev. Mr. Honeythunder, "Come up and be blessed, or I'll knock you down!" We may find a preference for cheap finery very exasperating, but our own example is far more likely to be followed in the long run if we do not insist upon it too much at first. Begin by teaching the homemaker to mend and keep the clothing ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... close up to Ibrahim's camel, where it stood as if it were some beautiful piece of statuary, while its bit and bridle were removed and the present quickly adjusted to its head, Harry Frere taking up a hole or two here and there till a perfect adaptation was made, when as if proud of its new finery the noble charger tossed up its head, making the scarlet hanging plume float about in the glowing air, and then stood motionless with head erect. Once more there was a loud outburst from the chief's assembled followers, and he stood looking as proud ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... signals he could devise. 'It's his ghaist,' muttered Davie; yet, coming nearer, he seemed to acknowledge his living acquaintance. The poor fool himself appeared the ghost of what he had been. The peculiar dress in which he had been attired in better days showed only miserable rags of its whimsical finery, the lack of which was oddly supplied by the remnants of tapestried hangings, window-curtains, and shreds of pictures with which he had bedizened his tatters. His face, too, had lost its vacant and careless air, and the poor creature looked hollow-eyed, meagre, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... vain, an incomprehensible intoxication and madness, an impenetrable horror, an exhibition of hypocrisy and disease, A dizziness seized her as if she were falling from a high tower. She was ashamed of her showy dress, its conspicuous finery, and in passionate excitement she tore the costly lace from her arms and, with an expression of the utmost loathing, threw it ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... it was the anniversary of Short-legs's death; and he also said that till then all the Wagogo had been in mourning by ceasing to wear all their brass bracelets and other ornaments, and they now wished to solemnise the occasion by feasting and renewing their finery. This being granted, the next day another pretext for delay was found, by the Wahumba having made a raid on their cattle, which necessitated the chief and all his men turning out to drive them away; and to-day nothing could be attended to, as a party of fugitive Wanyamuezi ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... originally instituted, our bucolic friends gather at early morning with the products of their farms; a good deal of noisy buying, selling, and barter takes place. Later in the day the ladies invest their profits in a little mild finery, or in simple pleasures; and, later still, when the public-houses have done their work, comes a greater or lesser amount of riot, rude debauchery, and vice; and then, voila tout—the fair is over for a year. One can ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... removed by the roots. He had stood aloof during the fracas in the dirty garish dance house under the sidewalk, laughing consumedly; and had awakened the next night to find the victor mending her tattered finery. She made him an excellent cup of coffee, and he had told her curtly that she ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... so careful for its credit: and just because you don't care to obey its whole words, that you are so particular about the letters of them. The Bible tells you to dress plainly,—and you are mad for finery; the Bible tells you to have pity on the poor,—and you crush them under your carriage-wheels; the Bible tells you to do judgment and justice,—and you do not know, nor care to know, so much as what the Bible word ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... that she had received in her ten years' battle with business reminded her to be tender at sight of the wounds of others. But now, as she studied the woman huddled there in the corner, she was conscious of a shuddering disgust of her—of the soiled blouse, of the cheap finery, of the sunken places around the jaw-bone, of the swollen places beneath the eyes, of the ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... road that leads to the place of meeting. This incites the young men and maidens to hurry through their morning's work and look up their jatra dresses, which are by no means ordinary attire. Those who have some miles to go put up their finery in a bundle to keep it fresh and clean, and proceed to some tank or stream in the vicinity of the tryst grove; and about two o'clock in the afternoon may be seen all around groups of girls laughingly making their toilets in the open air, and young men in separate parties ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... it—but their temptation is, to waste of the very simplest—I had almost said, if I may be pardoned the expression, of the most barbaric—kind; to an oriental waste of money, and waste of time; to a fondness for mere finery, pardonable enough, but still a waste; and to the mistaken fancy that it is the mark of a lady to sit idle and let servants do ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... on shirt, stockings, breeches, vest and coat, I walked up and down my room with hat under the arm, hand on the guard of my sword, thinking all the time on the looking-glass, and regretting that Catherine, the lace-maker, could not see me in such finery. ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... drummers, the dancers, the women, and the priests. The drums—perhaps twenty strong, and some of them twelve feet high—continuously throbbed in time. In time the singers kept up their long-drawn, lugubrious, ululating song; in time, too, the dancers, tricked out in singular finery, stepped, leaped, swayed, and gesticulated—their plumed fingers fluttering in the air like butterflies. The sense of time, in all these ocean races, is extremely perfect; and I conceive in such a festival that almost every sound and movement fell in one. So much the more unanimously ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sir. I have seen, in the last three days, scores of women come out; but none of them needed a second look. Some were intent on their own finery, others were clearly bent on shopping. Some looked up and down the street, for a lover who ought to have been waiting for them. Not one of these had a secret of life ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... Osage girl herself wore a beautiful beaded robe, feather-trimmed and brilliantly dyed. It was her "coronation robe" in the picture she was helping to film. But Mr. Hammond, who likewise attended the dance, allowed the girl to wear this finery, which really was part of ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... returned home the next evening from her day's labours, Anne (Dixon no longer) crossed over, all in her bridal finery, to endeavour to induce her to join the dance going on in her ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... great horror of accidents, he should begin by stopping the firing at Courbevoie, which is a great deal more dangerous than the galloping of a horse on the Boulevard Montmartre. As you may imagine, the officers went on galloping and wearing their finery under the very nose of the general, while he walked about stoically in plain clothes. However, although they did not obey him, they owed him a grudge for the orders he had given. Opposition was being hatched, and was ready to burst forth on the first opportunity, which ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... substance sported superfine Saxony with the broadest of silk-velvet collars; but the fit suggested second-hand finery. Other elongated cocoa-nuts bore jauntily a black felt of 'pork-pie' order, leek-green billycocks, and anything gaudy, but not neat, in the 'tile'-line. Their bright azure ribbons and rainbow neckties and scarves vied in splendour ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... most fantastic shapes; the flooring, consisting of three-inch planks, was upheaved in several places; the gangways leading to the sleeping-cabins at the sides were shot away; the handrails were gone, and the elegant carpet was concealed beneath a chaos of fragments of finery. The books on the shelves of the library remained unmoved; the piano was thrown on one side; and the floor presented huge upheaved and rent chasms, through which might be seen the still greater ruin in the lower cabin. Below the saloon, or drawing-room, is ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the Mission and before the church awaiting the guest of honor and his escort. A mass was to be said in behalf of the departing guests; the Juno would sail with the turn of the afternoon tide. Men and women were in their gayest finery, an exotic mass of color against the rough white-washed walls, chattering as vivaciously as if the burden of their conversation were not regret for the Chamberlain and his gay young lieutenants. ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... passes the Revolution Cart; writing on the walls its MENE, MENE, Thou art weighed, and found wanting! A Spectre with which one has grown familiar. Men have adjusted themselves: complaint issues not from that Death-tumbril. Weak women and ci-devants, their plumage and finery all tarnished, sit there; with a silent gaze, as if looking into the Infinite Black. The once light lip wears a curl of irony, uttering no word; and the Tumbril fares along. They may be guilty before Heaven, or not; they are guilty, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... search was at last rewarded! For there, down under a pair of white satin dancing slippers, in provokingly easy view, lay the much desired finery. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... hawthorn, piping to his flock, as though he should never be old, and the same poor country-lad crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the finery ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... the usual origin of Yankee shipmasters' complaints to their government. I made a present of a captured Yankee clock to each of the princes, and gave them a package of writing-paper. They seemed anxious to get some finery for their wives, but I told them we were not in that line, like ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... the darkness, met first a blinding glare, and then he made out the faces and forms of many people, amid an extravagant display of splendid robings—billowy laces, brilliant-hued finery, ribbons, silks and misty drapery. And then he caught the meaning of that jarring hum, and he saw the tired, pale, happy face of his wife, bending, as were a score of others, over her sewing machine—toiling, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... duck can swim," as we say at sea; we were well armed, had plenty of ammunition, mustered a crew of twenty-six prime seamen, the pick of the Barracouta's crew—men who would go anywhere, and face anything—we carried an ample supply of blankets, beads, brass wire, old muskets, and tawdry finery of various descriptions, priceless in the eyes of savages, for the purpose of peaceable ransom, if such could be accomplished; but we lacked an interpreter, a man acquainted with the barbaric language of the up-river natives, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... her taste for the arts was no longer to be gratified with pictures, paintings, statues, cameos, and other objects of vertu, which filled her with so much joy and admiration; if her elegant manners and fondness for finery and dress were to be denied all that was costly, all that was fashionable, and which seemed to have been expressly invented for the adorning of an empress. And when, in some of those grave, melancholy hours of internal anxiety, the ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... Harrie. She stole out to him that evening after the bridal finery was put away, and knelt at his feet in her plain little muslin dress, her hair all out of crimp, slipping from her net behind her ears,—Harrie's ears were very small, and shaded off in the colors of a pale apple-blossom,—up-turning her flushed ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... before yesterday at Elia laelia Chudleigh's. There was a concert for Prince Edward's birthday, and at three, a vast cold collation, and all the town. The house is not fine, nor in good taste, but loaded with finery. Execrable varnished pictures, chests, cabinets, commodes, tables, stands, boxes, riding on One another's backs, and loaded with terrenes, filigree, figures, and every thing upon earth. Every favour she has bestowed is registered by a ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... practise as she preaches," whispered Belle to Polly, as Miss P. became absorbed in the chat of her other neighbors. "She pays her chamber girl with old finery; and the other day, when Betsey was out parading in her missis's cast-off purple plush suit, Mr. Curtis thought she was mademoiselle, and bowed to her. He is as blind as a bat, but recognized the dress, ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... retained his own, which was directly in the rear. She shut the communicating door, and was glad she had done so when she heard his step in the passage and knew he had come to make the brief toilet he thought necessary for tea. She tore off her finery—hung the pretty costume in her closet, and, as she laid her hat on the shelf, registered a vow that no power on earth should induce her to pay for it with Ponsonby money. Though the clock pointed to ten minutes to seven, she shook down her hair and parted ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... foot within a Catholic place of worship, Madeleine and I went in to look for her sister; but my mother kept the children outside. As soon as we entered we found ourselves almost in darkness, what little light there was proceeding from great wax candles; and there was a good deal of tawdry finery and trumpery all about, and a strong smell of incense. I was looking about me with curiosity and interest, mixed with a certain repulsion, when Madeleine, in an eager undertone, exclaimed, "There she is!" and pressed forward, I close following, ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... and the simplicity of her mien, and perhaps by the dignity of her undefended state. She never asked him into her house, though she would drive and walk with him. Her strength, that summer, seemed to her boundless. She could work all day and sit up half the night sewing old finery or washing and ironing it, and then she could sleep dreamlessly for two or three hours, and wake to work again and drive with Clayton Rand in the evening. It seemed to her at times as if that life would go on breathlessly forever, and ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... set expression of vacuity. Just as skeletons always seem mysteriously elate. Their pride is an absence of everything else—a sort of rigid finery they put on in lieu of a shroud. Never mind staring after them, please. They are Mr. and Mrs. Jalonick who live across the street from my home. I dislike staring even after truths. Listen, I have something more to say about ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... disaffected in Lancashire. This person procured a beautiful uniform of green and gold, and proceeded to Ireland, expecting to appear on the field of action as an extempore commander. The police were on his track, and he was arrested, with all his military finery, and committed to prison, without even having signalised himself in command of a corporal's guard of pikemen. Mr. MacManus was an honest man to the cause to which his whole heart was given. The ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... lover, as she gathered flowers in the sunshine. Conscientious Eva took the Life of Mary Somerville to her room, and read diligently for half an hour, that no time might be lost in her new course of study, Carrie sent Wanda and her finery up the chimney in a lively blaze, and, as she watched the book burn, decided to take her blue and gold volume of Tennyson with her on her next trip to Nahant, in case any eligible learned or literary man's head should offer itself ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... was so tucked and folded inward that she appeared to have swallowed her lips. In the daytime she wore a black silk cap tied under the chin, and a dimity short gown over a quilted petticoat. Tante-gra'mere was rich in stored finery. She had inherited brocades, and dozen dozens of linen, including sheets and napkins. Her things were washed by themselves and bleached on their own green, where the family ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... morning Joseph was told he could go see his mother; he did not know he was free, and couldn't understand why he was given the first suit of clothes he had ever owned, and a pair of shoes. He dressed in his new finery and was started out on his six mile ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... wheezing up the hill again about the middle of the forenoon. He did not alight himself, but Ida May needed the presence of nobody to lend her assurance. She hopped out of the car with her bag and flaunted her cheap finery through the gate and ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... nobleman a coronet, or a fine estate, and you've got him, and may lead him where you like. It's the same with a tradesman. Show him some money and stir up his covetousness, and you may lead him as with a halter. And with the women it's also plain sailing. Give them finery and sweets—and you may do what you like with them. But as to the peasants—there's a long row to hoe with them! When he's at work from morn till night—sometimes even far into the night—and never starts without a thought of God, how's one to get at him? ...
— The First Distiller • Leo Tolstoy
... disposition. Linen for the house she purchased, and things needed for the rooms and the kitchen. But she would expend nothing in clothes for herself. When pressed on the subject by her aunt, she declared that her marriage would be one that required no finery. Her own condition and that of her proposed husband, she said, made it quite unnecessary. When she was told that Steinmarc would be offended by such exaggerated simplicity, she turned upon her aunt with such a look of scorn that Madame Staubach ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... Magdalen has probably too much of the abject expression of mendicity in her attitude; and, for a creature thus poor and prostrate, one is surprised to find her gazing upon a golden cross. It is a piece of finery ill placed in the midst of such wretchedness. But Canova is fond of gilt; yet what is appropriate in Hebe may be discordant in the Magdalen. This penitent creature, here so touchingly expressed, is deeply wrapped in meditation upon her crucified Master. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... house in New Mexico. As we were crossing the Long Route I asked her if she spoke the Mexican language. She told me that she had forgotten every word of it. Everything at the Maxwell ranch had on its holiday finery in anticipation of the arrival of this young lady and Mrs. Maxwell came to meet the coach that bore her beloved child. It was one of the most touching incidents that ever came up in my life, before or since. The mother ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... hat, no gloves, no ornaments, except the rings on her fingers, and a little jewelled watch in a leather bracelet on her wrist. There was, indeed, about her whole figure an air of almost professional escape from finery. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... began already to feel excited, and to fall in with this wild proposal. The very mention of dress had excited her Indian love of finery. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... At the click of the gate the lounger rose and disclosed the stalwart figure and brown, smiling, handsome face of Mr. Lige Willetts, an habitual devotee of Minnie Briscoe, and the most eligible bachelor of Carlow. "The ladies will be down right off," he said, greeting the editor's finery with a perceptible agitation and the editor himself with a friendly shake of the hand. "Mildy ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... shouting roysterers, going along under the boughs of the wood, and following the turns of that most companionable of rivers. And there were boats going up and down; boats full of young people, all holiday finery and mirth, and boats with duck-hunters, and other, to Sir Roger, detestable marauders, with guns and dogs, and great bottles of beer. In the fine grove, on summer days, there might be found hundreds of people. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Ned Pest; and, as I loved the dear little fellow more than a paltry frock, I con'scended to stay!" Here the gardening-groom at the "Snuggery," opposite, grinned and winked horribly, observing something about little Ned's being a "surfeit of finery"—finery that had to be shown and aired,—airing begetting the society of aubun viskers and hofficer X, 50!—officers, making Mr. "Snuggery" chuckle amazingly, and grin more—observing hofficers to be all the "kick" now!—At the same time, jerking his thumb ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... your golden helmet and your spear, and your glancing shield, and your silken cloak, you look like a king. But take them off, my boy, beautiful as they are. Your little mother would like to see you, her own brave boy, without any fairy finery." ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... presents among the friendly Indians, a measure which had been suggested by Washington. They were distributed with that grand ceremonial so dear to the red man. The chiefs assembled, painted and decorated in all their savage finery; Washington wore a medal sent to him by the governor for such occasions. The wampum and speech having been delivered, he advanced, and with all due solemnity, decorated the chiefs and warriors with the medals, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... those days to ornament ships of war far more profusely than at present. At length Don Hernan came on deck. He observed the skiff alongside; and his eye falling on Lawrence, he very naturally at first took him to be some poor fisherman habited in the cast-off finery of a gentleman. Lawrence, however, guessed who he was from his uniform, and, shuffling along the deck, made him one of his profoundest bows, which Don Hernan returned with ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... windows were plate-glass, with mahogany sashes—only, here and there, a Gothic casement was stuck in by way of looking "tasty;" and through one window on the ground-floor, the lights shining within, showed crimson silk and gilded chairs, and all sorts of finery—Louis Quatorze in a nutshell! The reader knows the sort of house as well as if he had lived in it. Ladies of Fanny Millinger's turn of mind always choose the same kind of habitation. It is astonishing what a unanimity of taste they have; and young men about town ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... softest little voice in the world, appeared to have the desired effect. The eyes were dried, the sobs checked, and soon Elleney emerged from her garret, and came clattering down the corkscrew stairs in her unyielding little best boots, clad all in her Sunday finery, every sunshiny hair in its place, and her blooming face a vision of wonder and delight to any ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... in getting out of her wedding-finery. There was a momentary temptation to call for help. But she thought better of this, and in the end she came down-stairs like a girl, in a light, clinging dress of Chinese silk, with a girdle and tassel at the waist, and a red ribbon woven into the ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... was gone, her finery a-flutter in the sweeping west wind, Arline muttered aloud her opinion of men, and particularly of politicians who rode about in special trains and expected ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... "fair, charming, true, lovely, and clever." The Essex Journal of Massachusetts of the late eighteenth century, commenting upon the follies common to "females"—vanity, affectation, talkativeness, etc.,—adds the following remarks on dress: "Too great delight in dress and finery by the expense of time and money which they occasion in some instances to a degree beyond all bounds of decency and common sense, tends naturally to sink a woman to the lowest pitch of contempt amongst all those of either sex who have capacity enough to put two thoughts together. A creature who ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... feathers suddenly begin to grow, and go on growing till they become three or four times as long as he is, and so flutter behind him in the wind like streamers when he flies. Nor does he rest content with this finery. When he is about three years old he doffs his chestnut plumage, and in its place dons a snowy white one. He is then a truly magnificent object. The first time one catches sight of this white bird with his satin streamers floating ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... a cheap picture, but, ah me! I fear even the deft graciousness of the highest art could not have softened the rigid angularities of that youthful figure, its self-complacent vulgarity, its cheap finery, its expressionless ill-favor. York did not look at it a second time. He turned to the letter ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... course,' Sir George consented, ever gallant, 'and the son presented himself, daubed over with dirt of divers colours, and began to hop about. He was well built, he danced cleverly, he cackled in his finery, and his mother was hugely proud of him. She might have been an English duchess, introducing a pretty daughter to a first ball. It was seeing the parent in the child, the most marked form of self-flattery. Actually, tears of joy ran down those black, wizened cheeks. ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... old battered hats or bonnets, and shapeless gowns like bathing dresses, or it may be in crinolines of an early type. Chiefs of influence and women of high birth, who in their native dress would look, and do look, the ladies and gentlemen they are, are, by their Sunday finery, given the appearance of attendants upon Jack-in-the-Green. If a visit be paid to the houses of the town, after the morning's work of the people is over, the family will be found sitting on chairs, listless and uncomfortable, in a room full of litter. In the houses of the superior ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... stupid, and old enough to be the father of his wife, as I call her on account of the wedding ring on her finger. She was, for the place and post, a complete surprise, being a jaunty, townish, garish woman, dressed in decayed finery. He would have slit my throat for a groat, she for a grudge. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... rather in a likeness of such dress; for both the male shape and the female, though defined, were evidently unsubstantial, impalpable—simulacra—phantasms; and there was something incongruous, grotesque, yet fearful, in the contrast between the elaborate finery, the courtly precision of that old-fashioned garb, with its ruffles and lace and buckles, and the corpse-like aspect and ghost-like stillness of the flitting wearer. Just as the male shape approached the female, the dark Shadow started from the wall, all three ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... human being, except the members of their own family, and not one of the family can read. In summer they catch salmon and codfish; and in the winter kill seals. And yet they are not heathens or savages. The woman, though rowing, was very neatly dressed, with a necklace, but no other superfluous finery; the man was tidy; both were civil. They presented us with two salmon, all they had in their boat, and promised us finer ones to-morrow. They expressed much pleasure at the prospect of attending the services, and of having their ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... overtake her. She left behind one of her glass slippers, which the prince took up most carefully. She got home, but quite out of breath, without coach or footmen, and in her old cinder clothes, having nothing left of all her finery but one of the little slippers, fellow to that she dropped. The guards at the palace gate were asked if they had not seen a princess go out. They said they had seen nobody go out but a young girl very meanly dressed, who had more the air of a poor ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the stream of mud that gently rolled along the street. The coquettish mule had small feet, a nicely trimmed tassel of a tail, perked-up ears, and seemed much given to little tosses of the head, affected skips and prances; and, if he wore the bells, or were bedizened with a bit of finery, put on as many airs as any belle. The moral mule was a stout, hardworking creature, always tugging with all his might; often pulling away after the rest had stopped, laboring under the conscientious ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... dream, Peter went into the room into which the clothes had been taken, and where the little men helped him to take off his things and dress himself in his new-finery. Some of them then brought a long mirror, in which Peter could see himself from head to foot, and he fairly laughed with delight at his fine appearance in ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... two faithful henchmen, I was suddenly struck by the thought that they were not very brisk servants for a gentleman to take to fashionable London. I had taken Paddy out of his finery and dressed him in a suit of decent brown; but his hair was still unbarbered, and I saw that unless I had a care his appearance would greatly surprise and please London. I resolved to have him shorn at the first ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... companies in them for wealthy gentlemen. The vast royal tree, expanding so luxuriantly at Versailles, sends forth its offshoots to overrun France by thousands, and to bloom everywhere, as at Versailles, in bouquets of finery and of drawing ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the rural pleasures she has heard me describe to her. If Bob knew the truth, she'd never go, and poor little Nolla would lose the most wonderful opportunity of her young life. I'd best not prejudice Bob or mother, but just pay the bills for finery and whims and bide ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... chains. To-day he would appear in one gay dress, to-morrow in another; but all flimsy and gaudy, of little substance and less worth. The peasant folk, who are naturally malicious, and when they have nothing to do can be malice itself, remarked all this, and took note of his finery and jewellery, piece by piece, and discovered that he had three suits of different colours, with garters and stockings to match; but he made so many arrangements and combinations out of them, that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... could see where a rest was made, and again where some animal went out of the beaten path. Bits of the Indians' finery, too, were noted every once in a while—a bit of gaudy bead trimming, a discarded moccasin or ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... former comrades, telling Mr. Law to choose between them, and he would take the other. Cookmaids and footmen were now and then as lucky, and, in the full-blown pride of their easily-acquired wealth, made the most ridiculous mistakes. Preserving the language and manners of their old, with the finery of their new station, they afforded continual subjects for the pity of the sensible, the contempt of the sober, and the laughter of everybody. But the folly and meanness of the higher ranks of society were still more disgusting. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... commanding all to be laid before him, "See," said he, "this womans finery, and what fools our wives make us; they should be six pound and a half; yet I've another of Mercury's making, that weighs ten": And that he might not be thought to tell a lye, called for his gold scales, and commanded them to be ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... so, it is. You go as you be clothed now, master. I know what maids be, and 'tis finery and good coats which do work more on the hearts of they nor anything else in ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... prospective bride could dwell more persistently on her own affairs than did Martie's thoughts. Rose, welcome at the Parkers', envied and admired even by Ida and May and Florence; Rose, prettily buying her wedding finery and dashing off apt little notes of thanks for her engagement cups and her various "showers"; Rose, fluttering with confidences and laughter to the admiring Rodney, with the diamond glittering on her hand; these and a thousand other Roses haunted Martie. Lydia and her mother admired and marvelled ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... unchangeableness. Even in the dead of winter you could tell with half an eye how it would look bedecked in its summer finery. Down the stretch of years, past many an intervening milepost, it always stood clearly envisioned to its sons and daughters both natural and adopted. There was about four hundred yards of macadam ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... beggin' money to buy you a new suit of clothes to go to Presbytery in; and I told 'em if it was to get Mis' Page a new dress, I was ready to give; but not a dime was I goin' to give towards puttin' finery on a man's back. I'm tired o' seein' the ministers walk up into the pulpit in their slick black broadcloths, and their wives settin' down in the pew in an old black silk that's been turned upside down, wrong side out, and hind part before, and sponged, and pressed, and made ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... always charitable societies, and there are always menial labours to do, and either door of escape from the sale of honour would be sought by the girl of right ideals. It is a bitter experience to see the woman who has stepped down into the soil of life flaunting her finery and her power in the face of virtue. But look about you and see how soon the finery becomes tatters—how soon the power is ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... girl, Terence," Ryan said, as they quitted the shop. "She will be the envy of all the peasant girls in the neighbourhood, when she goes to church in all that finery, to ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... bridal attire, and the prince's young bride in her wedding dress: but I never saw such bliss as that of a little four-year-old girl whom I watched this evening. She had got a new blue dress, and a new pink hat. The finery was just put on, and all were calling for light, for the moonbeams that came through the window were not bright enough. They wanted very different lights from that. There stood the little girl, stiff as a doll, keeping her arms anxiously off her dress, and her fingers stretched ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the inn at Stettin, Sidonia got all her baggage carried in from the waggon, and there dressed herself with all her finery: silken robes, golden hairnet, and golden chains, rings, and jewels, that all the people saluted her when she came forth, and went to the castle to ask for his Highness the Duke. He was in his workshop, and had just finished ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold |
