"Frowsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... door, which not even the tyrant concierge might violate! I thought of all the other interiors of the house, floor above floor, and serried one against another—vile, mean, squalid, cramped, unlovely, frowsy, fetid; but each lighted and intensely alive with the interplay of hearts; each cloistered, a secure ground where the instincts that move the world might show themselves naturally and in secret. There was something tragically ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... Samson had his first acquaintanceship with women, except those he had known from childhood—and his first acquaintanceship with the men who were not of his own art world. Of the women, he saw several sorts. There were the aproned and frowsy students, of uncertain age, who seemed to have no life except that which existed under studio skylights. There were, also, a few younger girls, who took their art life with less painful solemnity; and, of course, the models in the "partially draped" ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... of the office; what though the paint had faded and the varnish cracked all over the house! To Margaret Mueller and also to the eldest Miss Morton, who only managed to breathe below her locket when they were under the stars, it was a dream of marble halls, and the frowsy Freddie Kollander and the other waiter who brought in the food on thick, cracked oblong dishes were vassals and serfs ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... shares, an Cottage haase property, he dubbed th' lad Sydney Algernon as aw've telled yo. Aw think its nobbut reight at aw should tell yo at this rewl abaat names doesn't allus hold gooid, for ther's a mucky, dirty nooased, draggle-tail'd lass lives up awr yard, wi frowsy hair at couldn't be straightened wi nowt short ov a cooambin machine; shoo hasn't a hawpney to bless hersen wi, an yet shoo's called Victoria Hujaney, after th' Queen o' these lands, an Ex-Empress ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... experience in an atelier des dames in Paris! She had come down the hill from her dark little room on Montmartre, fancying that the gray December day was crystalline, that the dingy Rue Germain Pillon—with its dirty gamins of both sexes in cropped hair and blouses or white caps and black gowns, its frowsy women slouching in doorways, its succession of odorous cuisines bourgeoises, vile-smelling lavoirs, cheap fruit-shops and plebeian cremeries, its slimy cobblestones, its gutters running not with laughing waters, and sending up scents not of spicy isles ensphered by sun-illumined ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... week before election in the city, where I had the opportunity of observing what may be called the charitable side of politics. For a whole month, or more, the burden of existence had been lifted from the shoulders of the homeless. No church or organization, looked out for these frowsy, blear-eyed and ragged wanderers who had failed to find a place in the scale of efficiency. For a whole month, I say, Mr. Judd Jason and his lieutenants made them their especial care; supported them in lodging-houses, induced the night clerks to give them attention; took the greatest pains to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... awe. Kosinksi stood little apart from the rest, not a little bewildered by the enthusiastic reception which had been accorded him by old friends. In one corner, too, I recognised my old friend Short, fully dressed, as usual, in his frowsy clothes, as though eternally awaiting the call-to-arms, the long-delayed bugles of the social revolution; there he lay, much as when I first set eyes on him, wrapped up in old banners and rugs, blinking his eyes and muttering curses at the hubbub which ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... have? There were Sally and Fred, And Martha and Luke and Leander; There was Jack, a small boy with a frowsy red head, And the look of ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... manuscript story of the sparrows, and offered it for burnt sacrifice. There were old planks, splinters, and chips for our fire. My frowsy friend produced from some interior of his frayed clothing half a loaf of bread, pepper, ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... pushing away of the straw, a young girl sat up. A little bewildered, she divested her head and shoulders of a frowsy straw thatch and stood erect, shaking it off from her ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... a frowsy head from its pillow, put a dirty hand to her eyes to shade them from the sun entering the darkened room by the open door, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... or discernible remembrance of their last meeting. Her fine blond hair was frowsy and a button was missing at the throat of her dress. (Some women begin to let themselves go after marriage; some after the promise of marriage.) There were cake-crumbs also in one corner of her mouth. "These are ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... adorned with bunches of orange ribbons, attended by a regular band of music, playing God save great George our King, and headed by a thin swarthy personage, of a sallow aspect, and large goggling eyes, arched over with two thick semicircles of hair, or rather bristles, jet black, and frowsy. His apparel was very gorgeous, though his address was very awkward; he was accompanied by the mayor, recorder, and heads of the corporation, in their formalities. His ensigns were known by the inscription, Liberty of ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... their bivouac there in miserable isolation. The officer whom the messenger saluted as his superior was bare-headed, having evidently just risen from the ground where his rubber cloth and blanket still lay. His dress was wet and begrimed with mud; his hair was frowsy, lying in ropy tangles upon his head and hanging over his brows; and his face was haggard with anxiety and suffering. It was Brigadier-General ——; and here in this solitary wilderness had actually been his bivouac, ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... by the name of a street, although in reality it was a blind alley, for a high wall closed one end of it. It was very narrow, and while infants played in the unclean gutters, frowsy women discussed domestic or more exciting matters with women on the ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... a bedroom with a brick floor in a cottage. I really hardly know what it's like, as I arrive there about twelve o'clock every night and fall into bed, and then up again at 7.30 next morning as a rule, and frowsy at that. The roads here are just as muddy as ever, and if you go off the roads you go too deep. We are camouflaging the whole place, and I think it will soon be very difficult for the Huns to see it. At least, when I say "we" are camouflaging, ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... tossing her pretty head. "Extremes attract all men. But now in this sober and common guise of every day, I am neither Cinderella nor yet the Princess—merely a frowsy, rustic, freckled maid with a mouth somewhat too large for beauty, and the clipped and curly poll of a careless boy. And I desire to know, once for all, how I ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... ugly hall every morning. She hated the scrubby palms in front. She hated the pillars where the paint was peeling badly. She hated the conflicting odors that seeped into the atmosphere at certain hours of the day. She hated the three old maids on the third floor and the frowsy woman on the first, who sat on the front steps in her soiled breakfast cap and bungalow apron. She hated the nervous tenant who occupied the apartment just over her mother's three-room-and-bath, and pounded with a broom handle on the floor when Lorraine ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... by many a puff and pant which the damp air exaggerated in a prodigious way, did not seem to warrant the interest I had shown in it. As she stepped into the room I saw only a big frowsy woman, who had attempted to make a show with a new silk dress and a hat in the latest fashion, but who had lamentably failed owing to the slouchiness of her figure and some misadventure, by which her hat had been set awry on her head and her usual complacency destroyed. Later, ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... palaces now reared their heads, and granite columns of gigantic girth opened a vista to the railway world beyond. The miserable waste ground, where the refuse-matter had been heaped of yore, was swallowed up and gone; and in its frowsy stead were tiers of warehouses, crammed with rich goods and costly merchandise. The old by-streets now swarmed with passengers and vehicles of every kind: the new streets that had stopped disheartened in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... an air half irritable, half good-natured, in a short gown, who was holding forth to a class. It was all complete: I had my place and my duty before me; and then gradually day by day the life shaped itself. I had a little cubicle in a high dormitory. There was the big, rather frowsy dining-room, where we took our meals; a large comfortable library where we could sit and read; outside there were two or three cricket fields, a gravelled yard for drill, a gymnasium; and beyond that stretched what were called "the grounds," which ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the functionary, Lanyard traversed that frowsy anteroom where doubtful wasters are herded on suspicion in company with the corps of automatic Bacchanalians and figurantes, to the main restaurant, the inner sanctum toward which the naive soul of the travel-bitten Anglo-Saxon ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... splash of the slowly turning paddles of the couple of steam tugs that lay alongside mingled with the din it made. A gangway from one of them led to the Scarrowmania's forward deck, and a stream of frowsy humanity that had just been released from overpacked emigrant boarding-houses poured up it. There were apparently representatives of all peoples and languages among that unkempt horde—Britons, Scandinavians, Teutons, Italians, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... in your between-dances saunterings?—smooth-hewn pyramids of crystal ice, embowered in ferns and palms, and lit up from behind by some device which makes them glow a lovely rose-color all over—that man deserves a prize, I protest, for an inspiration that hardly could be expected from the frowsy atmosphere of lawyers' chambers. It will be morning, pale and gray, before the last volunteers see the last ladies to their carriage, and betake themselves bedward with ears ringing with half a dozen waltz tunes, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... look after herself. Never so much as fed the hogs or done the milkin' first! Looky here, Seabeck! You'll git paid back, an' I'll take your figgers fer what I owe, but if you git after Charlie, I'll—kill yuh. You let 'im go, I'm the one he hurt most—and I ain't goin'—" She laid her frowsy old head on her arms, like one who is utterly crushed ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... but it was not a pretty object he contemplated, for the man was untidy, unwashed and frowsy in looks. He was red-eyed and white-faced, but perfectly sober, although there was every appearance about him of having only lately recovered from a prolonged debauch. Consequently his temper was morose ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... back and watched the fray. The old man gazed full at the frowsy apparition in the doorway. If dagger looks could have stabbed her, the lady would have dropped dead stuck full of as many daggers as a cushion is of pins. The gold headlights suffered eclipse behind a pair of tightly perked lips; and one hand darted hold ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Gallet made an opera-book out of France's story, and Massenet set it to music. It is a delectable story, but it fell into the hands of master craftsmen, and the admirers of "art for art's sake" and at any cost, have cause to rejoice at the treatment which it received. Glimpses into the life of the frowsy fraternity of cenobites, and fragments of their doleful canticles are not engaging in themselves, but they are fine foils to pictures of antique vice and the songs and dances of classic voluptuaries. There are splendid dramatic potentialities for those who like such things and ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... don't, just now, know exactly where, but I hope very shortly to be able to give you a clearer notion,—attired in a rotten, dirty pair of boots; a filthy, tattered pair of trousers; a ragged, unwashed apology for a shirt; a greasy, ancient, shapeless coat; and a frowsy peaked ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... men were seated in Walter's dingy chambers on the second floor in Fig-Tree Court, Temple. The room was an old and rather frowsy one, with shabby leather furniture from which the stuffing protruded, panelled walls, a carpet almost threadbare, and a formidable array of calf-bound volumes in the cases lining one wall. The place was heavy with tobacco-smoke as the pair, reclining in ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... thud at the back of the room. Honey Hoke had fallen out of his chair. Now he lay on the floor, his legs drawn up and the back of his frowsy head resting against a rung of the chair in which still sat the dead ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... City population—just, in fact, most of its interesting if unlikable folk, its people who mattered, its insolent spoilt darlings whom you liked to recognize in the Carlton atrium, in Hyde Park, in a box at the theatre: yet the frowsy, worthy millions were there all the same. The air of its then smelly streets was used up and had the ammoniac strench of the stable. It was a weary London. The London actors had not returned from Cornwall and Switzerland. Provincial companies ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... soaked, cold, and hungry, we found it shut up. He had not received the message and was away from home. Investigation showed that our only resource in the commissary line were some wads of sticky, unsalted, boiled rice which our Igorot carriers had inside their hats, in contact with their frowsy hair. We bolted as much of this as the Igorots could spare, killing its rather high flavour with cayenne peppers picked beside the trail, and continued our journey. In descending a steep hill my horse stumbled and while attempting to recover himself drove ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... disheveled demons of the pit. Like some master imp torturing a pigmy over the flames, old Ben York was kneeling close beside the blaze, holding to the coals a hickory stick, which served as spit for the roasting of a squirrel. The brilliance shone full on the frowsy gray whiskers, and, above them, the blinking, rheumy eyes, so intent on the proper browning of the game. None of the outlaws had a weapon in his grasp—a fact noted with satisfaction by the chief of ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... not examine. Of these the janitors merely popped out their heads—frowsy heads, most of them—and gave the number of rooms and the price in a breath of defiance and mixed ale. At length I was the only one able ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... eyes deep and liquid, and Tasso's gold in her hair, though of a bad figure, ill set off by a bad dress,—but Venus herself could not have been seen to advantage in such evil plight as they, panting, perspiring, ruffled, frowsy,—puff-balls revolving through an atmosphere of dust,—a maze of steaming, reeking human couples, inhumanly heated and simmering together with a more than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Shawanoes whom they had been accustomed to meet on the other side of the Mississippi. The poetical American Indian is far different from the one in real life. It is rarely that a really handsome warrior or squaw is met. They are, generally a slouchy, frowsy, lazy, unclean people, of whom nothing is truer than that distance lends enchantment to ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... Adrian Brownwell, a Gallant, must creak as he struts. Neal Dow Ward, an Infant, must put on long trousers. E. W. Bemis, a Lawyer, must be dignified; Jacob Dolan, an Irishman and a Soldier, must grow unkempt and frowsy. Robert Hendricks, Fellow Fine, must have his blond hair rubbed off at the temples, and his face marked with maturity. Lycurgus Mason, a Woman Tamer, must get used to wearing white shirts. Gabriel Carnine, a Money Changer, must feel ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... down upon the grimy counter in the dusty far corner of the little store and stared sourly at Pete Hamilton, who was apathetically opening hatboxes for the inspection of an Indian in a red blanket and frowsy braids. ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... sketch of 'this prince' whose title was a lurid delusion. Patrick heard of a sexagenarian rake and Danube adventurer, in person a description of falcon-Caliban, containing his shagginess in a frogged hussar-jacket and crimson pantaloons, with hook-nose, fox-eyes, grizzled billow of frowsy moustache, and chin of a beast of prey. This fellow, habitually one of the dogs lining the green tables of the foreign Baths, snapping for gold all day and half the night, to spend their winnings in debauchery and howl threats ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... caricatures. In 1751 the dress of a dandy is described in the Inspector. A black velvet coat, a green and silver waistcoat, yellow velvet breeches, and blue stockings. This too was the aera of black silk breeches; an extraordinary novelty against which "some frowsy people attempted to raise up worsted in emulation." A satirical writer has described a buck about forty years ago;[67] one could hardly have suspected such a gentleman to have been one of our contemporaries. "A coat of light green, with sleeves too small for the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... next morning came, however, my plans for the day suddenly underwent an alteration; for as I sat in my frowsy lodgings at a rather later breakfast than usual, devouring my doubtful eggs, munching my tough toast, and sipping my cold coffee, with an advertisement page of the Shipping Gazette propped up before me on the table, the following advertisement ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... finished the door was opened and Pecksniff, looking all shrunken and frowsy and yellow, passed out, never to enter again into the lives of any ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... the same landing were now partly open and blocked with the heads of frowsy inquisitive women. The steamy smell was thicker in the darkness. Mr. Wrenn felt prickly, then angry at this curiosity, and ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... sloop again to reef down and make all taut. Her sailor-soul would not allow her to leave the lapstreak in a frowsy condition. ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... that was watching the craft's motions. A sudden pang of disappointment chilled him from head to foot, for among that idle, shiftless-looking group, there was not one whom he could possibly mistake for his uncle. They were all fishermen, dull-faced, dirty, and out at their elbows. Some frowsy, ill-clad women had come out of their houses, and, with children clinging to their skirts, ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... empty place, hung with tapestries and gayly lighted. Here the semblance of gayety persisted, and Karl, affability itself, spoke a few words to each of the guests. Then it was over. The guests left, the members of the Council, each with a wife on his arm, frowsy, overdressed women most of them. The Council was chosen for ability and not for birth. At last only the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... breaking my back and tearing my fingers and the damned wall paper—while the damned frowsy-headed landlady yells and the damned frowsy-headed boarders stick out their heads! And so in the end I get into my steaming hot room and shut the door and fall down on the bed ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... friend's insensibility alarmed Charteris almost more than the actual wounds, and he gave his horse to the groom, and walked beside the bearers, trying to induce them to keep step, and not jar the patient unnecessarily. It was therefore an unfortunate moment for a large and frowsy—he would almost have said snuffy—figure to lurch forward and clasp him in an ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... and P'ing Erh possess the charms of handsome women?" dowager lady Chia resumed. "And aren't you yet satisfied with them that you must, of a day, go slyly prowling and gallavanting about, dragging indiscriminately into your rooms frowsy and filthy people? Is it for the sake of this sort of wenches that you beat your wife and belabour the inmates of your quarters? You've nevertheless had the good fortune of starting in life as the scion of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... of locomotion the Elevated possesses a rugged charm which is all its own, the serene pleasure of gazing into frowsy bedroom windows at elderly coloured ladies in bust bodices and flannel petticoats, being only equalled by the sudden thrill you experience when the two front carriages hurtle down into the ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... hardly prepared to find in Hamburg a parody of polite life in this respect. During the whole performance there was a continual interchange of social greetings between corpulent ship-chandlers, their heads violently greased for the occasion, and certain frowsy women sprinkled scantily through the house. There was an old gentleman sitting next to me who turned the performance to a nobler use; he had apparently brought his son there for the purpose of tuition; holding the libretto between them, he translated with great rapidity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... quite the opposite of an angel presented itself. It was Bridget; and her red hair was dishevelled, her face flushed to the parboiled tint, and her dress uncommonly damp and frowsy. A mop which she held in her hand ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... that dumpled hag, stood snuffling by, With her three frowsy blowsy brats o' babes, The scum o' the Kennel, cream o' the filth-heap—Faugh! Aie, aie, aie, aie! [Greek: otototototoi], ('Stead which we blurt out, Hoighty toighty now)— And the baker and candlestick maker, and Jack and Gill. Blear'd ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... "sample" was growing quite rough looking and frowsy, from being pulled in and out of Twaddles' coat so many times, and it was almost noon when they had disposed of ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley
... is pretty, David?" demanded Carol promptly. "I was so relieved. Most of them are so red and frowsy, you know. I've seen lots of new ones in my day, but this is my first experience with a ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... us we shall awake one morning, find them at our bedsides, give a kick, and die from sheer ennui. They'll use our banners to boil their fat puddings in, they'll roast oxen in the highways, and after our girls have married them they'll turn them into kitchen wenches with frowsy skirts ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... each stair they throng'd anon, Gentle, semple, throng'd anon: Souter and tailor, frowsy Nan, The ancient widow young again, Simpering behind ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... exclamation of impatient disgust he loosed her, and went into the back room. It was empty. He went up the rickety stairs, and, as he had expected, found the door of the bedroom locked. He kicked it open and went into the frowsy room. The child was not in it. He came downstairs and opened the back door. As he did so, he heard a scuttling rustle. The garden was empty, but the rustle he had heard set him exploring the dirty, rag-covered hedge with keen eyes. He saw nothing, and walked ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... fretfully. Again she started to shake him but stopped—Bub wasn't going to the Gap, so she let him sleep. For a little while she looked down at him—at his round rosy face and his frowsy hair from under which protruded one dirty fist. She was going to leave him, and a fresh tenderness for him made her breast heave, but she did not kiss him, for sisterly kisses are hardly known in the hills. Then she went out into the ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... She came out into the hall. Evan found himself curiously studying the odd bumps that the curling pins made under her frowsy boudoir cap. She required no lead to ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... have been fixed, with sleepy fondness more than maternal, upon him, her chosen instrument, during all his address; and we can imagine the frowsy Frow weeping big fat tears with him as he weeps. Pope's "passion had not been too powerful for his understanding," nor for his imagination neither, when he was inditing the following ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... awake and unduly excited. Swarms of people of the lowest class, unkempt, ragged, and frowsy, but all armed in some fashion, were prowling around intent on mischief, and cheering for De Retz. Bands of Black Mantles, grave and preoccupied as became owners of property, guarded the shops, in dread equally of ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... be seen during the week in the streets of Potsdam, laden with window-sashes, etc., while on Sunday and holidays the seat where formerly the dying emperor reclined was occupied by the "Herr Tischlermeister" and his frowsy, vulgar-looking "frau." Yet there was not a word of truth in this story. The pony-carriage used by "Unser Fritz" during the closing days of his life is preserved as a species of sacred relic in the imperial coach-house at Potsdam, while the pony leads a life of ease, idleness ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... "Perhaps that little, frowsy Christine. She seems to stay out of nights. I heard her last night when you were sleeping. I really think she came in very late, crept upstairs, and then I am ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... him and say I didn't know. But I did. We all knew. He was too much of a good fellow. His failure to get on bothered him a good deal, and one day he got roaring full and went up and down town telling people how smart he was. Then his pride left him, and he let his whiskers grow frowsy and used his vest for a spittoon, and his eyes watered too easily for a ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... far off. One of the regular old tumble-down streets, given up long ago to cobblers and tinkers of all kinds, and you're going to take tea with a girl who lives in that frowsy, dirty place!" ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... on the frowsy sofa—indispensable to a Pimlico furnished flat—and, with her elbow on one palm and her chin on another, reviewed the situation. She was the brains of a little combination which had done so much to distress and annoy susceptible financiers in the City of London. (The record of the Stegg sisters ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... story is the best, to my mind," said Mr. Harry, "and as romantic as even a girl could desire. The affair of the stolen box was much talked about along Sudbury way, and Miss Jerrold got to be considered quite a desirable young person among some of the youth near there, though she is a frowsy-headed creature, and not as neat in her personal attire as a young girl should be. Among her suitors was Jacobs. He cut out a blacksmith and a painter, and several young farmers, and father said he never in his life had such a time to keep a straight face, as when Jacobs came ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... home he found that Helen had been having her troubles, too. Mrs. Finn had disappointed her and sent a frowsy female, who exuded vile whisky and the unpleasant odors of ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... shirt, scarf, and cap, socks more like anklets for holes, and a pair of split boots; bedraggled hat, frowsy jacket, blouse and skirt, squashy boots, and perhaps a patchy "pelerine" or mangy "boa"—such is accepted as the natural costume for the heirs of all the ages. Prehistoric man, roaming through desert and forest in his own shaggy pelt, was infinitely better clad. ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... own regard, as I loitered there, Fastened on one proletariat pair, With finery frowsy, and oily hair; Oh, what a surprise! "SALLIE" and "BILL" were the names they flung Frankly abroad with unreticent tongue, Lounging and staring where graciously ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... the man curiously, while his horrid old mother was speaking of him. He found "My son Benjamin" to be little and lean, and buttoned-up slovenly in a frowsy old great-coat that fell down to his ragged carpet-slippers. His eyes were very watery, his cheeks very pale, and his lips very red. His breathing was so uncommonly loud, that it sounded almost like a snore. His head rolled helplessly in the monstrous big collar of his great-coat; and his limp, ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... with sharp gable roofs lined either side of the way. Frowsy women draped themselves over the window-sills. Pallid and wasted parodies on childhood contested the middle of the street with great, slow drays, drawn by enormous horses. On the sidewalks twin streams of masculine humanity flowed ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... between nine and half-past they were journeying back to Christminster, the only two occupants of a compartment in a third-class railway-carriage. Having, like Jude, made rather a hasty toilet to catch the train, Arabella looked a little frowsy, and her face was very far from possessing the animation which had characterized it at the bar the night before. When they came out of the station she found that she still had half an hour to spare before she was due at the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... A frowsy whore with black straw sailor hat askew came glazily in the day along the quay towards Mr Bloom. When first he saw that form endearing? Yes, it is. I feel so lonely. Wet night in the lane. Horn. Who had the? Heehaw shesaw. Off her beat here. What is ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... days sauntering about Melbourne, swinging a neatly-rolled silk umbrella, smoking very excellent cigars. He passed several frowsy acquaintances of other days, and on two he bestowed small alms. He felt great satisfaction in the fact that none of his former companions recognised Nickie the Kid in the well-groomed, ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... were fix'd on the far end of the room, where Anthony and the brute Settle stood, with a shattered chair between them. Their swords were cross'd in tierce, and grating together as each sought occasion for a lunge: which might have been fair enough but for a dog-fac'd trooper in a frowsy black periwig, who, as I enter'd, was gathering a handful of coins from under the fallen table, and now ran across, sword in hand, to ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... dugout, nor was he impressed with the comfort it displayed. The place was dirty, unkempt, and his dream of the picturesque, old-time trapper died out entirely. He beheld walls bare of all decoration, simply a rough plastering of mud over the lateral logs; a frowsy cupboard, made out of a huge packing-case, containing odd articles for housekeeping purposes. There were the fragments of two chairs lying in a heap beside a dismembered table, which stood only by the aid of two legs and the centre post which supported ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... lone marshes that had come to have such a charm for us. Evidently, they were beginning to feel that the year was growing old. Greens were sobering into browns, and near the water's edge were tips of silvery white. The frowsy-looking grassy bunches, here and there, were ducking blinds, where hunters soon would be in hiding with their wooden decoys ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... species as she is found in sleeping-car dressing- rooms had taught Emma McChesney to rise betimes that she might avoid contact with certain frowsy, shapeless beings armed with bottles of milky liquids, and boxes of rosy pastes, and pencils that made arched and inky lines; beings redolent of bitter almond, and violet toilette water; beings in doubtful corsets and green silk petticoats perfect as to accordion-plaited ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... is ugly and frowsy," she declared, "but it isn't worth talking about. I have made up my mind to insist upon moving from here into Park Lane, or one of the Squares. It is absolutely a frightful neighbourhood, this. If only you could see the people who have been ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... did you, scrambling up my chair? Got up all alone too; would you think I'd dare? Got my clothes all twisted; 'fraid I mussed my curls: What did papa say about frowsy-headed girls? ...
— The Nursery, May 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... on, to judge by the swift turning, the strong resistance of the spools. Not one of the women near me but is degrading to look upon and odourous to approach. These creatures, ill clad, with matted, frowsy hair and hands that look as though they had never, never been washed, smell like the byre. As for the children, I must pass them by in this recital. The tiny, tiny children! The girls are profane, contentious, foul-mouthed. There is much partisanship and cliqueism; you ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... of life made her thoughtful. She, to whom Maggie had always seemed an old woman, was a widow, but Maggie's husband survived as a lusty invalid. And she guessed that Maggie, vilely struggling in squalor and poverty, was somehow happy in her frowsy, careless way. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... her apron on quite straight and her hair was a little frowsy. Elizabeth had proposed it should be cut short on the neck for the summer, but ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... has sprung up that Mme. de Stael was too wise and witty to be acceptable to Napoleon; and many women repeated with unction that the conqueror of Europe was no match for this frowsy little woman. It is, perhaps, worth while to look into the facts, and to decide whether Napoleon was really of so petty a nature as to feel himself inferior to this rather comic creature, even though at the time many people thought ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... comes an elderly person, evidently George Luk's "My Old Pal," who is balancing a large bundle of sticks on her head. Across the way is a Whistler etching; Whistler did not happen to etch it; but it is a Whistler etching all the same. You look up a frowsy little courtyard, the walls of which are more graceful than plumb, and you see a horse's head sticking out into the etching. Also, across the way the "k" has dropped out of steak on the window of a chop-house. The public-houses down this way, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... boys whom he knew round about Ajaccio There were Andrew Pozzo and Charles Abbatucci, for example. They had everything they wished, their fathers were rich and powerful; and they made fun of him, calling him "little frowsy head," and "down at the heel," just because his mother could not always look after his clothes, and keep him neat ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... ever do that, little Frowsy-head?" he said, pointing to my sketch. I looked up. His face was as serene and sunny as that of the child ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the post, had prevailed against her decision. He himself had met the covered vehicle at his gate, and with calm but forceful courtesy had insisted on their alighting. "Your train is half a day late," said he. "You'll be wiser waiting here than at the frowsy station. Besides, I wish to see this young woman again." So saying, he fairly lifted Miss Arnold from the fur-robed depths of the dark interior, and deposited her on the wind-swept path. "Run in," said he, ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... to say, not one which has been recognised and described—yet seems to be readily "smelt" by the animals of its own kind. The bats—especially the large frugivorous bats—have a very unpleasant, frowsy smell. ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... flurries of autumn snow. The water fowl greet the day with joyous clamor, adding a quaint, rural touch, almost startling in this city of silent palaces. They splash about the wooded island, screaming lustily when boys come in skiffs to steal their eggs. Swallows and frowsy little sparrows flit from their nests, built in the very hands of the golden ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... LaSalle, Clark. The streets were packed. The noise and rush tired him, and bewildered him. He came to a moving picture theatre—one of the many that dot the district. A girl occupied the little ticket kiosk. She was rather a frowsy girl, not too young, and with a certain look about the jaw. Tyler walked up to the window and shoved his money through the little aperture. The girl fed him a pink ticket without looking up. He stood there ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... bare-elbowed on the ledge of her half-door, her hair in curl-papers, her face the pale unwholesome pinched oval of most London women of her class. Her bodice was pinned across her chest; she was coarse-aproned, new from the wash-tub or the grate. Not a sign upon her but told of her frowsy round. The stale air of foul lodgment was upon her. I found out indeed this much about her ostensible state, that she was the wife of a cab-driver whose name was Ventris. He was an ill-conditioned, sottish fellow who treated her badly, but had given her a child. But he was chiefly on night-work ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... him delivered up at head-quarters. Yet, this cannot be." Here the bewildered officer looked round. "I have a warrant to commit this rebel unto the safe keeping of—ay, the captain of his majesty's cutter, the Dart. But this," surveying the deck with a suspicious glance, "is as frowsy and fusty a piece of ship-timber as ever stowed coals and cods' tails between her hatches. I pray we be not nabbed!" said he in a supplicating tone to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... occurrence for fourteen years. Three months after the du Bousquier marriage society remarked, not without astonishment, that the linen of the chevalier was frayed and rusty, that his hair was irregularly combed and brushed. With a frowsy head the Chevalier de Valois could no longer be said to exist! A few of his ivory teeth deserted, though the keenest observers of human life were unable to discover to what body they had hitherto belonged, whether to a foreign ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... now. She had become the woman of impoverished households—strong and hard and rough. With frowsy hair, skirts askew, and red hands, she talked loud while washing the floor with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down near the window, and she thought of that gay ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... hand-split on the spot. The sun beat hot upon them, and they diffused a faint aromatic fragrance, refreshing as the scent of vinegar, into the long, unfloored room, which certainly needed something of the kind. It reeked with stale tobacco-smoke, the smell of cookery, and the odors of frowsy clothes. A row of bunks, filled with spruce twigs and old brown blankets, ran down one side of it, a very rude table down the other, and a double row of men with bronzed faces, in dusty garments, sat about the latter, eating voraciously. Fifteen minutes was, at the outside, the longest time ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... she looked ghastly when she came in," declared the mother of three frowsy daughters. "It's strange she ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... the tram and the main thoroughfare, and turned into frowsy streets, peopled with frowsy men and women and raucous with the bickering play of frowsy children. It was still daylight. Over London the spring had fluttered its golden pinions, and I knew that in more blessed quarters—in ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... and in his 'Jekl: A Story of the Ghetto', he gave proof of talent which his more recent book of sketches—'The Imported Bride groom'—confirms. He sees his people humorously, and he is as unsparing of their sordidness as he is compassionate of their hard circumstance and the somewhat frowsy pathos of their lives. He is a Socialist, but his fiction is wholly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... A frowsy looking woman came out, all smiles, and nodded pleasantly at the expectant group in the wagon. Behind her loomed the tall, lean form of Lucky Todd, the "proprietor," who was serious as a goat, which animal he closely resembled ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... a somewhat sorry spectacle. Give him sixty years of this and add an unbalanced mind, and—Madison did not like the picture that now rose up suddenly before him—a creature, bent, vapid of face, deaf and dumb, frowsy of dress, and a world removed from the thought of a morning bath. It might be picturesque in a way—but it wasn't a way Madison liked. Somehow, he'd have to jerk the old chap out of his rut and get him rigged up a little more becomingly, before the trusting public, ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... awakening the other to the fact that his teeth were promenading about at the top of his throat. He struggled to a sitting posture with a gasp, felt frenziedly for his "adjustables" and looked round upon the mixture of dirty, frowsy figures. He stirred Nobby into wakefulness by the simple expedient of tickling him beneath the chin with a grimy big toe protruding from a rent in an obsolete ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... have been born with. Many looked anaemic and consumptive, but the majority were highly coloured and frankly drunk. And if the men were forbidding, the women were appalling. There was no attempt at smartness in their attire; they were dowdy and frowsy, and even the ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of you. 'I wonder what has become of him,' I said to myself." He did not remember my name, or perhaps he had never known it, so I had to introduce myself afresh. The contrast between his flashy clothes and my frowsy, wretched-looking appearance, as I saw ourselves in the mirrors on either side of me, made me sorely ill at ease. The brilliancy of the gaslight chafed my nerves. It was as though it had been turned on for the express purpose of illuminating my ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Quebec, most celebrated in our annals by reason of the incidents which attach thereto, one may name the frowsy and tortuous highway which circulates from the foot of Mountain Hill, running for a distance of two hundred feet below the Cape, up to the still narrower pathway which commences west of St. James street and leads to the foot of the hill "de la canoterie;" [107] ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... beef and baked the bread, which formed our unvaried menu week in and week out. Most peasant mothers with a family of nine have no time for idleness, but Mrs M'Swat managed things so that she spent most of the day rolling on her frowsy bed playing with her dirty infant, which was as fat ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... embroidery and came down to her accustomed rustic arm-chair, smilingly conscious of the perfection of all that pertained to herself, from the soft ringlets on her broad forehead, so different from the stiff, frowsy crimps of the country-girls, to the small Newport ties with their cardinal-red bows, the only bright color about her. She was just beginning to wonder what kept the doctor so long, when, raising her eyes from a reverie which had been almost a nap, she saw him driving ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... stick into at the best of times. I remember laughing and looking across the room at him. Well, I saw an expression in his eyes that settled it. He looked as if he could see me—just like I know I am—in the mornings when I first wake up—all frowsy and fuddled, with this little bit of a mat I've got, sticking out in tails, about as long as your hand, on the pillow. It takes a bit of courage for a man to even go and live with a woman after he's seen her like that. I assure ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... he was naked, with the exception of a breech-cloth. His feet were of large size, encased in shabby moccasins, while frowsy leggins dangled between the knee and ankle. His body, from the breech-cloth to the shoulders, was splashed and daubed with a half dozen kinds of paint, while his black, thin hair straggled about his shoulders and was smeared in the same fashion. Like ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... Mousie called them; for it was evident that each one had a family on board, and the little entrance to the hidden cabin resembled a hole from which men, women, and children came like rabbits out of a burrow. Tough, hardy, barefooted children were everywhere. While we were looking, one frowsy-headed little girl popped up from her burrow in the boat, and, with legs and feet as red as a boiled lobster, ran along the guards like a ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... father rich enough to support her at home, but for all that she is a working girl. She is never idle. She is studying or sewing or helping about the home part of the day. She is romping or playing or swinging out of doors the other part. She is never frowsy or untidy or lazy. She is never rude or slangy or bold. And yet she is always full of fun and ready for frolic. She does not depend upon a servant to do what she can do for herself. She is considerate toward all who serve her. She is reverent to the old and ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... just barely room enough between the island on one side and the main land on the other; in this sluggish water she seemed to go like a racehorse; now and then small log cabins appeared in little clearings, with the never-failing frowsy women and girls in soiled and faded linsey-woolsey leaning in the doors or against woodpiles and rail fences, gazing sleepily at the passing show; sometimes she found shoal water, going out at the head of those "chutes" or crossing the river, and then a deck-hand stood on the bow and ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Frowsy girls sat along the curbstones before their baskets. Their dank hair hung trailed over their brows. They were not beautiful to see as they crouched in the mire. But their souls were seen by God; and if their souls ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Charlie went up to the watchplace again, muttering as he passed me, "Bad look-out for all of us, when that surly old beast is Captain. No gentle blood in him, no hospitality, not even pleasant language, nor a good new oath in his frowsy pate! I've a mind to cut the whole of it; and but for the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... striking picture of sweet poetic beauty. I stood in contemplative admiration meditating, as I waited for my coolies, who sat moodily under a dilapidated roadside awning, nonchalantly picking out mouldy monkey-nuts from some coarse sweetmeat sold by a frowsy female. Then upwards we toiled in the dark, the weird groans of my exhausted men and the falling of the gravel beneath their sandalled feet alone breaking the hollow's gloom. Uncanny is night ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... frowsy wig from her head, and beneath was a cloud of disordered hair that shimmered in ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... I used my freedom in many foolish ways; but most of them were harmless, and some of my truancies from work were even useful to me. Do what I would, I could not find the strength of will to go and pick up types in a frowsy printing office when the picture-gazing fit was on me; and many a time I shirked my duties for the vicious pleasure of a long day's intercourse with Turner in the National Gallery, or for a lingering stroll amongst the marbles at the Museum. One never-to-be forgotten day, my ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... upon the verge of a new era, in which Exclusionism must be overthrown, it will avail thee not to call us base-born and frowsy peasants. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... on station duty so often. The rickety country station lit by one large lamp; the thirteen waiting V.A.D.'s; the long wooden table loaded with mugs of every size; kettles boiling; the white clock ticking on; that frowsy booking clerk.... ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... seat, and with Val's suitcase placed flat in the front, where she could rest her feet upon it. Val was so happy at the prospect of getting away from the town that she actually threw a kiss in the direction of Arline, standing with her frowsy head, her dough-spotted apron, and her tired face ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... the dust. A pair of silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece were stained an iridescent brown. The mirror was fly-blown. In the corner of the room a tray held the remains of the last meal, and a plate containing broken food had overflowed onto a neighboring chair. An odd, uncleaned boot lay, like a frowsy, drunken visitor, on the floor. The springs of the armchair on ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... after Nannie, like the cow, was corralled (and we may use this term without reproach, since she had been rampant all day), a small figure slipped from out the house and hastened to the garden. His little face, frowsy as is the manner of his breed, was uplifted, and his saucy little eyes gleamed with fire. He had probably observed that the peas were flourishing and that they were the one living result of Steve's heroic labors, ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... burning inside the wineshop, where men reclined on frowsy couches. I stumbled over one of them, found an empty place and let myself sink down on it, arranging myself automatically in the sprawl of Dry-towners indoors. In public they stood, rigid and formal, even ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... court, that I found them bestowed. In the good days of that house the apartment had probably served as a library, for there were traces of shelves along the wainscot. Four or five mattresses lay on the floor in the corner, with a frowsy heap of bedding; near by was a basin and a cube of soap; a rude kitchen-table and some deal chairs stood together at the far end; and the room was illuminated by no less than four windows, and warmed by a little crazy sidelong grate, propped up with bricks in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him over, from his frowsy, soft green beaver hat with the bow at the back, to his tan pumps that a prosperous young man would have thrown back in the closet six weeks before, as being out of season. The young man grinned his understanding of the appraisement, and Luck saw that his teeth were well-kept, ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... wandered round muddy streets of Rione Monti, and entered some churches. S.S. Cosmae Damiano in Forum: it has got lost, so to speak, in the excavations, and you seek it through blind alleys and a long dark passage—a dirty, tawdry church, with a few frowsy, sluttish people; and behind the ballroom chandeliers above the altar, a Ravenna apse, gold and blue; and lambs in procession ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... An-ina were sitting beyond one of the two wood fires that had been replenished. The old chief, Wanak-aha, was squatting on his haunches amongst his frowsy fur robes at the opposite side. He was a shrivelled, age-weazened creature whose buckskin garments looked never to have been removed from his aged body. His years would have been impossible to guess at. All that was certain about him was that his mahogany face was like creased ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... and jungle country for his studio, and no hampering, sordid cares to distract him. The light of genius in such an obscure world was unrecognised. Being beyond comprehension, it existed as the coldest commonplace. Not one of his fellows was equipped mentally to register the deviation from the frowsy norm of the camp exemplified in him; and if the camp never produced another artist the default would ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... tide of things. There had been children there at some time, for there were broken toys, collections of dried plants, curious stones, in an attic. The little drama of the house shaped itself for me, as I walked through the frowsy, faded rooms, with a touching insistence. This bedroom had never been used since Miss Eleanor died—and I could fancy the poor, little, timid, precise life flitting away among the well-known surroundings. This had been Miss ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gun before he followed Dave through the dormer window and passed into the frowsy bedchamber. None of the details of it escaped his cool, keen gaze, least of all the sawed-off shotgun in ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... so circumstanced, it cannot be supposed that such a trifle as the killing of a frowsy friar would be much resented, even had he not taken so bold a measure to obtain his pardon. His petition was granted, of course, as soon as asked; and so it would have been had the indictment drawn up by the Canterbury town-clerk, viz., ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... jangle of bells echoing through the interior. After a second's wait—snortingly impatient on Mr. Wilder's part; he was being pressed close by the none too clean citizens of Valedolmo—the door was opened a very small crack by a frowsy jailoress. Her eye fell first upon the crowd, and she was disposed to close it again; but in the act she caught sight of the Signorina Americana dressed in white, smiling above a bouquet of oleanders. Her eyes widened with astonishment. It ...
— Jerry Junior • Jean Webster
... piece, but comes in at the fifth chapter, only to disappear mysteriously in the eighth; the orphan boy is companioned by a girl of equal age, and these two bright spirits, mutually sustaining each other, cast a radiance over the old Doctor in his dusty, frowsy, cobwebby study, which brings out the external appearance and internal peculiarities of the man, in the most vivid manner. The dispositions and appearances of the two children are also contrasted, as Raphael might have drawn and contrasted ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... and the ancient Jewish burying-ground; lower Greenwich Village, where run-down American families with Italian lodgers live on streets named for kings, in wooden houses with gambrel roofs and colonial fanlights. From the same small-paned windows where frowsy Italian women stared down upon Ruth, Ruth's ancestors had leaned out to greet ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... almost blinded him and the numerous islands made it difficult for him to keep the channel. Seeing smoke pouring from a cabin that stood dangerously near the brink, he sounded the bugle in hope of stirring up some one from whom he could glean a little information. A frowsy individual sauntered out, glanced over the river and without displaying the least interest, was proceeding to arrange some crocks and ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... d'Aubigne, /alias/ the Tiger, /alias/ Mrs. Quest, and such a sight as she presented George had never seen before. Her fierce face bore traces of recent heavy drinking and was moreover dirty, haggard and dreadful to look upon; her hair was a frowsy mat, on some patches of which the golden dye had faded, leaving it its natural hue of doubtful grey. She wore no collar and her linen was open at the neck. On her feet were a filthy pair of white satin slippers, and on her back ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... miscellaneous treasures were guarded by swarthy men and women of Israel, who paraded in front of their narrow dominions all the working day, and if you did but pause for an instant, you must expect to be dragged into some hideous Babel of frowsy chattels, and made a purchaser in spite of yourself. Escaping from this uncomfortable mart to the hospital footway, a strange scene of utter desertion came over you; long, gloomy lines of cells, strongly barred, and ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... she frequently wore. On Saturday, a half-day, upon which all the girls wore their best clothes to the office, if they had matinee or shopping plans for the afternoon, Miss Cottle often appeared with her frowsy hair bunched under a tawdry velvet hat, covered with once exquisite velvet roses, and her muscular form clad in a gown that had cost its original owner more than this humble relative could earn in a year. Miss Cottle's gloves were always expensive, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... not to be alone. There were three double beds: one well rumpled as if just vacated; one (the middle) tenanted by a frowsy headed, whiskered man asleep in shirt-sleeves and revolver and boots; the third, at the other end, recently made up by having its blanket covering hastily thrown against ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... Poor souls. Let them! Amigo mio, I have a life. I have to think, gage, act, concentrate. And when I want time of my own, Shane, I have it. The housewife with her frowsy duties, being kissed perfunctorily on the mat, the man who wears a stilted mask to the world, and before her—lets go.... Ugh! And the mondaine with her boredom ... the hatred in wide houses.... Oh, I know. Sometimes I think it's so ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... way," began the other, complying briskly. "She was just coming out of the cheap grocery, and had several bundles in her arms, as if she might have been buying bread, and some such things. I knew her just as soon as I set eyes on her, for she wore that same old frowsy red dress, and had a little tad of a shawl pinned over her shoulders. The poor thing looked like a wind'd blow her away, with her thin, pinched face, and big ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... men are mingled in it. Hence another fall for the art. Still the least of the witches retains somewhat of the Sibyl. Those other frowsy charlatans, those clownish jugglers, mole-catchers, ratkillers, who throw spells over beasts, who sell secrets which they have not, defiled these times with the stench of a dismal black smoke, of fear ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... more about the machinery of commerce today than I did six weeks ago, and there are many others like me—we discovered that the machinery of commerce was moved by bills of exchange. I have seen some of them, [laughter,] wretched, crinkled, scrawled over, blotched, frowsy, and yet those wretched little scraps of paper move great ships laden with thousands of tons of precious cargo from one end of the world to the other. [Applause.] What is the motive power behind them? The honor of commercial men. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... and then wretched election meetings, as of late in New York, where a worn-out FERNANDO WOOD and others like him gabble as much treason as they dare. It is all played out—Mozart, Tammany, and all the trash. Rummy, frowsy candidates, treating Five-Point graduates, and shoulder-hitting bravos yelling at the polls, are beginning to be disgusting and anti-national elements. Their very existence is an insult to these great, serious and glorious times of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various |
