"Genteel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Poultry of all kinds is in great plenty, and cheap: fowls, ducks, &c. about two shillings per couple. A horse at livery, half a Louis per week; two horses, all expences included, a Louis and two livres. Board and lodging in a genteel house, five-and-twenty Louis annually. Dr. M—— agreed with me, that for three hundred a year, a family might keep their carriage and live in comfort, in Amiens and its neighbourhood. I must not forget another observation; the towns in France are cheaper than the villages. The consumption ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... a town life; but the principal thing which gave my mind a turn was a friendship I formed with a young fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless son of misfortune. He was the son of a simple mechanic; but a great man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage, gave him a genteel education, with a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was ready to launch out into the world, the poor fellow in despair went to sea; where, after a variety of good and ill fortune, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... coat exhibit the unmistakable symptoms of age, but, for all that, Captain Farquhar stands forth an honourable, high-spirited gentleman. And gentleman George Farquhar is both by birth and bearing. Was he not the son of genteel parents living in the North of Ireland, and did he not receive a polite education at the University in Dublin? So polite, indeed, has his training been that he is already the author of that wonderful "Love and a Bottle," a comedy wherein he amusingly holds the mirror up ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... austere standard of mental discipline, and then fail to enforce it, by making inevitable concessions to the mental weakness inherited from long generations trained upon the system of starvation. The system, indeed, too often reminds me of an old picture in Punch, of genteel poverty dining in state; in a room hung with portraits, attended by footmen, two attenuated persons sit, while a silver cover is removed from a dish containing a roasted mouse. The resources that ought to be spent on a wholesome meal are wasted in keeping up an ideal of state. Of course ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... manners of their low, or Dutch school of comedy, in which Jonson led the way, by his "Bartholomew Fair," and similar pieces, are noticed, and censured, as unfit for a polished audience. The characters in what may be termed genteel comedy are reviewed, and restricted to the Truewit of Jonson's "Silent Woman," the Mercutio of Shakespeare, and Fletcher's Don John in the "Chances." Even this last celebrated character, he observes, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... that Man, in the Fall, has natural Powers to act rightly, and is therefore condemnable when he does not, tho', by Necessity; he wants Inclinations to be virtuous, would, to use Mr. J—s's genteel Language, be a senseless Falshood, and shew Poverty of Argument (I am loth to add as he does) and Effrontery too. Such Rudeness deserves Lamentation as well as Reproof, nor do I on this Occasion set before him his own Words with any ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... if a Guide ever cheated under any circumstances whatsoever! After each girl in turn had thrown down her mallet and declared that she wouldn't play, Dick swiftly defeated Jerry, the party recovered its tempers, and they were sitting down to play "I met a One-horned Lady always Genteel" when the ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... received by General Arnold in the most polite manner, conducted to the Chateau de Ramezay, the headquarters of the Continental Army, where a "genteel" company of ladies and gentlemen had assembled to welcome them, after which they supped with Arnold, probably in the ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... qua non; Whereas, with a horn that never offends, You may join the genteelest party that is, And enjoy all the scandal, and gossip, and quiz, And be certain to hear of your absent friends; - Not that elegant ladies, in fact, In genteel society ever detract, Or lend a brush when a friend is blacked, - At least as a mere malicious act, - But only talk scandal for fear some fool Should think they were bred at CHARITY school. Or, maybe, you like a little flirtation, Which even ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... women were all deeply impressed with Lucy's genteel mourning costume, and felt an added respect for the little creature in her trailing crepe. Marie and Babette were in and out continually, aiding and suggesting, and Rachel had stayed with ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... ony guess what brought her here?" and, "Is yon bonny creature her ain bairn?" But to these and sundry other interrogatories, the important hostess gave for answer, "Hoot, I hae nae time to haver the noo." She stopped at a small, but certainly the most genteel house in the village, occupied by a Mrs. Douglas, who, in the country phrase, was a very douce, decent sort of an old body, and the widow of a Cameronian minister. In the summer season Mrs. Douglas let out her little parlour to lodgers, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... amasing sight of money, not quite L45[29] tho' Aunt Suky said, that she suppos'd Aunt Deming would be frighted out of her Wits at the money it cost. I have got one covering, by the cost, that is genteel, & I like it much myself. On thursday I attended my aunt to Lecture & heard Dr Chauncey[30] preach a third sermon from Acts ii. 42. They continued stedfastly—in breaking of bread. I din'd & spent the afternoon at Mr. Whitwell's. Miss Caty Vans was one of our company. Dr. Pemberton[31] & Dr Cooper ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... READ IT IN THE PAPERS,' replied the dear little fashionable rogue of seven years old. She knew already her importance, and how all the world of England, how all the would-be-genteel people, how all the silver-fork worshippers, how all the tattle-mongers, how all the grocers' ladies, the tailors' ladies, the attorneys' and merchants' ladies, and the people living at Clapham and Brunswick Square,—who have no more chance of consorting ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... would know how many of the "airs" of a fine lady are "put on," contrast her with a woman who has never had the advantages of a genteel training. What appear as the curvettings and prancings of a high-mettled nature turn out, from the light thus afforded, to be only the tricks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... prostration of our honour) is indispensable to the very existence of this country, I think that for these two years past they have done their utmost to hasten the fulfilment of their own prophecy.' Yet, he adds, 9,000 copies are printed quarterly, 'no genteel family can pretend to be without it,' and it contains the only valuable literary criticism of the day. The antidote was to be supplied by the foundation of the 'Quarterly.' The Cevallos article, as Brougham says, 'first made the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... and for his country in foreign lands, and who was coming home. Everybody stood up and gazed, Melchior with them. Then the crowd parted, and the hero came on. No one asked whether he were handsome or genteel, whether he kept good company, or wore a tiger-skin rug, or looked through an opera-glass? They knew what he had ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... here—here—here—here! See Zorah, queen of the West and princess of the East, who is about to begin one of her most sublimely sensational dances. See her, see her, you may never again see her! Graceful, glittering, genteel. Graceful, glittering, gen-te-e-e-l. I am telling you about Zorah, queen of the West and princess of the East, in her ancient Asiatic dance, the most up-to-date little act in the entire show business to-day. Here she is, ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... owner are old friends and companions and can not part but with a pang of regret. A good horse, well cared for, should work cheerfully until he is thirty years of age; yet how few are able to perform genteel service after fifteen! It is a sad sight that of the high-mettled, noble animal, once the petted darling of wealth, caressed by ladies and children, and guarded so that even the winds of heaven might not visit him too roughly, ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... Blimy! It amooses 'em, all but the genteel ones. Cheer oh! Press! Yer can always myke somefin' out o' nufun'? It's not the fust thing as 'as ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the favorite of moderate sentimentalists, in what were called "genteel" circles, was William Cowper. He presented little or nothing that could affright the gentle emotions, and much that pleasurably stimulated them. He enriched the poetry of the domestic affections, and had a vein of sadness which occasionally, as in To Mary, deepened into the most touching ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... rarely experienced from the night exposure. There are very few women at the first opening of new diggings, the life is too rough and rude; and some of those who do come, rock the cradle—but not the household one—with the men. The diggers, however genteel the life they may have led before, soon acquire a dirty, rough, unshaven look. Their coarse clothes are all of a colour, being that of the clay and gravel in which they work, and the mud with which they become ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... church-going children and the pealing of the high organ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high, genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall), and the painted Jacobean[17] tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... Fitzboodle, sometimes as Michael Angelo Titmarsh, but always in the Gentlemanly Interest. In his youth (as ever) he is found applauding the well-bred Charles de Bernard, and remarking of Balzac and Dumas that the one is 'not fit for the salon,' and the other 'about as genteel as a courier.' Balzac and Dumas are only men of genius and great artists: the real thing is to be 'genteel' and write—as Gerfeuil (sic) is written—'in a gentleman- like style.' A few pages further on in the same pronouncement (a review of Jerome Paturot), I find ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... adoring attention. They looked genteel. They looked ironed-out. They coughed politely, and crossed their legs with quietness, and in expensive linen handkerchiefs they blew their noses with a delicacy altogether optimistic ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... and toil as she might, even with the boys' wages the widow could not make more than sufficed to keep up the little home. Then, too, her child would have to do something for herself when she grew up; she would have no one to look to but herself, and though teaching would be perhaps a more genteel way of support, it was a very laborious one, and would make it necessary to go away from home, as the Lloyd girls were going to do, and to remain away for several years, first at some higher institution of learning and then at the Normal School, and where would the money come from ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... not help it. There was something so funny in the whole affair. They seemed such babies, playing at love; and their love-making, if such it was, had been carried on in such an exceedingly open and lively way, not a bit of tragedy about it, rather genteel comedy, bordering on farce. It was such a contrast to—certain other love stories that she had known, quite buried out of ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... the two Misses Smith—twins—genteel, middle-aged spinsters, who, until the arrival of the sprightly and attractive widow, had alternately cherished high hopes of the wealthy Jew. Their chief energies were devoted to the task of blowing one another's ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... Saunders in TAPA. XLIV, 1913). At any rate, we have ample evidence of the turbulence of the early Roman audience. (Ter. Prol. Hec. 39-42, and citations immediately following). Note the description of Mommsen:[46] "The audience was anything but genteel.... The body of spectators cannot have differed much from what one sees in the present day at public fireworks and gratis exhibitions. Naturally, therefore, the proceedings were not too orderly; children cried,[47] women talked and shrieked, now and then a wench prepared to push her way to the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... "Anything you like, darling," says he: "I love you." I put on my best company manners and stepped up to the copper. "If you please, sir," says I, "can you direct me to Carrickmines Square?" I was so genteel, and talked so sweet, that he fell to it like a bird. "I never heard of any such Square in these parts," he says. "Then," says I, "what a very silly little officer you must be!"; and I gave his helmet a chuck behind that knocked it over his ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... of Canterbury was once on a tour, when a genteel man, apparently in earnest conversation, though alone in a wood, attracted his notice. His Grace made up to him, and, after a little previous conversation, asked him what ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... who protested to me that no such price was demanded, but left me to give the slaves what I pleased for their labour: the governor being already better satisfied about me than when my clerk spoke to him, or than that officer I sent last would have caused him to be: for the governor being a civil, genteel, and sensible man, was offended at the officer for his being so industrious to misrepresent me. I received from the governor a little lamb, very fat; and I sent him 2 of the guinea-hens that I brought from St. Jago, of ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... at it—in it, in fact; my house is in the warehouse. It's not a very genteel locality, nor a fine house, it is good enough for me; but I warn you not to expect anything great, and I can't alter my ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... my boy; but he has to thank you more than me; we must now be looking out for a quiet, genteel place for him, where he will ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... of the day when poor little Daisy had disappeared from her Palace Beautiful Mrs. Flint's boarders were enjoying their genteel repast in the cool shades of her parlor. They had shrimps for tea, and eggs, and buttered toast, and a small glass dish of sardines, to say nothing of a few little dishes of different preserves. Mrs. Dredge, who was considered ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... and requested them to accept them or sometimes beckoned the working people to come up to the carriage, which almost without exception they readily did, and then received a book or tract. In case of genteel persons, whom we sometimes met, I repeatedly ordered the driver to stop, and I got out of the carriage, and handed the books or tracts to them. Often also I walked up a hill, and then conversed with the persons whom I joined, or gave tracts ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... Ne parlez pas du people!" cried the Countess Zamoiska, with a gesture of disgust. "A set of beastly peasants, no better than their own cattle, or a band of genteel robbers, who have made it unsafe to live anywhere on Polish soil, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... here—but in such an abominable hole, that a lady is naturally ashamed to be caught there by any genteel acquaintance." ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... another class of genteel convivialists, to whom the poet was attracted by principles as well as by pleasure; these were the relics of that once numerous body, the Jacobites, who still loved to cherish the feelings of birth or ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... tableau; induction, introduction; prologue, epilogue; libretto. performance, representation, mise en scene[French], stagery[obs3], jeu de theatre[French]; acting; gesture &c. 550; impersonation &c. 554; stage business, gag, buffoonery. light comedy, genteel comedy, low comedy. theater; playhouse, opera house; house; music hall; amphitheater, circus, hippodrome, theater in the round; puppet show, fantoccini[obs3]; marionettes, Punch and Judy. auditory, auditorium, front of the house, stalls, boxes, pit, gallery, parquet; greenroom, coulisses[Fr]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... know everybody," was Mrs. Benson's comment to Irene, as she observed his greeting of one and another as the guests tardily came down to breakfast. "Anyway, he's a genteel-looking party. I wonder if he belongs to Sotor, King and Co., of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... quite "the best butter." To me the penance turned out interesting after a period of natural repulsion. A most unpleasant addition to sepulchral sentiment is here the fashion: photographs of the departed set into the stone. You see an elegant and genteel marble cross: there on the pedestal above the name is the photo:—a smug man with bourgeois whiskers,—a militiaman with waxed mustaches well turned up,—a woman well attired and conscious of it: you cannot think how indecent looked the pretension of such types to ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... at home when he arrived, and received him with some surprise, Mrs. Wheeler, who was in her usual place on the sofa, shook hands with him in a genteel fashion, and calling his attention to a somewhat loudly attired young man of unpleasant appearance, who was making a late tea, introduced him as ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... the heads of her sisters, for Dora Carbonel had not been a first-rate hair-cutter, and it was nearly the same with every one, except the desperate truant, Ben Shales, and the cobbler's little curly girl, who was sent all the way to Downhill to Miss Minifer's genteel academy, where she learnt bead-work and very ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... must be a deplorable narrowness of mind, that would confine these seats of instruction to the limited views of one or two learned professions. To the praise of this age be it spoken, a more open and generous way of thinking begins now universally to prevail. The attainment of liberal and genteel accomplishments, though not of the intellectual sort, has been thought by our wisest and most affectionate patrons[c], and very lately by the whole university[d], no small improvement of our antient plan of education; and therefore I may safely affirm that nothing (how unusual soever) is, under ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... to be rough in manners, if coupled with prosperous circumstances, than be "genteel" and at the same ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... his whole kith and kin; many disagreeable circumstances in regimental life; Digby sells out; love in a cottage; execution in ditto. Digby had been much applauded as an amateur actor; thinks of the stage; genteel comedy—a gentlemanlike profession. Tries in a provincial town, under another name; unhappily succeeds; life of an actor; hand-to-mouth life; illness; chest affected; Digby's voice becomes hoarse and feeble; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... the matter now? Why, you used to be civil and genteel. I say, I suppose you have found ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... Mrs. Sowler's coarse method of eating and drinking. She kept her eyes on her plate, and only consented to taste malt liquor under modest protest. When Jervy lit a cigar, after finishing his supper, she reminded him, in an impressively genteel manner, of the consideration which he owed to the presence of an elderly lady. "I like it myself, dear," she said mincingly; "but perhaps Mrs. ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... county. On every side the fields and moors of Staffordshire, intersected by roads and lanes, railways, watercourses and telegraph-lines, patterned by hedges, ornamented and made respectable by halls and genteel parks, enlivened by villages at the intersections, and warmly surveyed by the sun, spread out undulating. And trains were rushing round curves in deep cuttings, and carts and waggons trotting and jingling on the yellow roads, and ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... that had so long lorded it in Boston society. Indeed, so far had the rival contingents progressed that there was a serious searching of the pretensions of any new-comer whose origin had to do with other enterprises. "Coppers" were respectable, were genteel, and, above all, were not "trade," for the average old-time Bostonian affects the Anglo-Saxon contempt for the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... queer ones; but let those who are invited be frank, hearty, good-tempered people, such as one will be glad to meet over and over again without any ceremony—none of your simpering people, who are afraid to laugh for fear of opening their mouths too wide, but who are so mighty genteel that they are afraid to enjoy anything for fear ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... were once finer dwellings than the peasants' houses which are now the only habitations on the Lido; and I suspect that a genteel villa must formerly have stood near the farm-gate, which we found surmounted by broken statues of Venus and Diana. The poor goddesses were both headless, and some cruel fortune had struck off their hands, and they looked strangely forlorn in the swaggering attitudes of the absurd ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... on oiled wheels. After the huge clatter of New York, there is something mellow and human about the drowsy hum of Chestnut Street, the genteel reaches of Walnut, and the neat frontage of Spruce Street. Ellenora, so quick to notice her surroundings, was at first bored, then amused, at last lulled by the intimate life of her new home. She had never been ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... 1860 till 1873. The cause of his leaving them is only half told in Mr Aldis Wright's edition of the Letters (p. 365, footnote). Mr Berry, a small man, had taken to himself a second wife, a buxom widow weighing fourteen stone; and she, being very genteel, could not brook the idea of keeping a lodger. So one day—I have heard FitzGerald tell the story—came a timid rap at the door of his sitting-room, a deep "Now, Berry, be firm," and a mild "Yes, my dear;" and Berry appeared ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... especially in a country where even our Universities can supply you with candidates for employment at a cheaper rate than you can obtain the services of a first-class cook. This young man had tried everything that was genteel: he had even aspired to literature: sought employment on the Press, on the Stage, everywhere in fact where gentility seemed to reign. Nor do I think he lacked ability for any of these walks; it was not ability but opportunity ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... Bantam Hen. "I think it is in very poor taste to lay such large eggs as most of the Hens do here. Small ones are much more genteel." ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... the coveted body of the beautiful young lady. The compact, it was arranged, should close at her death, but the Evil One was to remain meanwhile by the side of Dauntesey in the form of an elegant "self," or genteel companion. In due course the eventful day arrived when Eustace stood before the altar. But the marriage ceremony was no sooner over than, on leaving the sacred edifice, the elements were found to be the reverse of favourable to them. The flowers strewed ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... moved, his clumsy and awkward limp was exchanged for a sort of shuffle, which, as it might be the consequence of a wound in those perilous times, had rather an interesting than an ungainly effect. At least it was as genteel an expression that the party had been overhard travelled, as the most polite ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... sometimes yield to duty; and Draco, though in the king's drawing-room, and loyally supporting in Parliament the measures of the ministry, is still Draco, though cruelty in him has learned the dialect of fashion and clothed itself in the privileges of the genteel. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Mrs. Sparsit, who talked a great deal of her genteel birth, rich relatives and of the better days she had once seen. She was a busybody, and when she sat of an evening cutting out embroidery with sharp scissors, her bushy eyebrows and Roman nose made her look like a hawk picking out the eyes of a very ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... subtle enough for me. His father did not joke. Indeed he was full of useful information, and only too fond of imparting it, and he always made use of the choicest language in doing so; and Mrs. Scatcherd was immensely genteel. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... has not been seen for many a long year; and the intelligent Mr. Mole, the gardener (who has been impressed as an odd man for the occasion, and is served up in a pseudo-livery to make him more presentable), sees more "genteel" people than have, for a long time, been visible to his naked eye. The intelligent Mr. Mole, when he has afterwards been restored to the bosom of Mrs. Mole and his family, confides to his equally ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... regiments of jovial visitors in little houses nigh the Strand and Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill and Cheapside;—houses hidden in narrow passages and sombre courts—houses, compared with which the lowliest residences in a "genteel suburb" of our own time would appear capacious mansions. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that the married barrister, living a century since with his wife in chambers—either within or hard-by an Inn or Court—was, at a comparatively ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Captain, from the vessel; and the boy with the tied-up rags turned round, and we—yes, we saw nothing but packthread, in bows, genteel bows. The front part of the boy only was covered: he had only the foreparts of trowsers—the rest was ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... considerately entered into conversation with Shoni, endeavouring to express himself in his mother-tongue, but with that hesitation and indistinctness common to the dwellers in the counties bordering upon England, and to the "would-be genteel" of too many other parts of Wales, who, perfectly unconscious of the beauty of their own language, and ignorant of its literature, affect English manners and customs, and often pretend that English is more familiar to them than Welsh, a fatuous course of conduct ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... existence. But Mr. Carville had nothing. I passed in mental review the details of his appearance, his blue serge suit, his dark green tie, his greying moustache, clipped short in a fashion that might be American, English, French or German. His voice had been quiet and deferential, but by no means genteel; nor had it any hint of the roystering joviality of a sailor. More than anything else his gait, in its sedate unobtrusiveness, seemed to me utterly at variance with the rolling swagger which ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... Desmond. I was brought up by two maiden aunts in the town of Dundalk, and they were always bothering me about my manners; so that though I could hold my own in a slanging match down by the riverside, I was as awkward as a young bear when in genteel company. They used to have what they called tea-parties—and a fearful infliction they were—and I was expected to hand round the tea and cakes, and make myself useful. I think I might have managed well enough if the old women would have let me ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... fault. Mr Ernest bought the tickets like a gentleman should (it says in the etiquette book), and I couldn't fight with him there and then,—you're always telling me to be more genteel." ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... and docility, my attention to deserve his confidence and love, and a conduct, in general, devoid of the least art and founded on my sincere regard and esteem for him, won and attached him so firmly to me, that, after having generously trusted me with a genteel, independent settlement, proceeding to heap marks of affection on me, he appointed me, by an authentic will, his sole heiress and executrix: a disposition which he did not outlive two months, being taken from me by a violent cold that he contracted, as he unadvisedly ran to the window, on an alarm ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... is as follows: He allows it to be known that he is prepared to pay very high sums for letters which compromise people of wealth or position. He receives these wares not only from treacherous valets or maids, but frequently from genteel ruffians who have gained the confidence and affection of trusting women. He deals with no niggard hand. I happen to know that he paid seven hundred pounds to a footman for a note two lines in length, and ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sight and the exhibition; they are pleased with the manners, and gratified with the conversation of the visitors on the occasion. As soon as they go abroad, they associate the idea of drinking with all that is manly and genteel. They fall into the custom, and imitate the example that is set them. Circumstances and situations expose one to more temptations than the rest. Perhaps his resolution, or his moral principle, is not so strong; and in this way, one out of twenty-five of those who live to thirty years of age becomes ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... gallop along the railroad as fast as steam can carry them. However, we are happily a quiet dull race, and do not take them in; we only open our eyes and stare at all the wonders round. I do not know what we may come to in time, we may be as genteel as Kate's friend, Willie Turner, says the people are in Aurelia Place—that perked-up row of houses, whose windows and doors give them such a comical expression of countenance, more like butterflies ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you are just in time for dinner.' With that a sarvent began sounding a big conch-shell, a great door was flung open, and the next thing, I found myself in an ilegant room, sitting down to dinner with a mighty genteel looking company." ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... also wore mourning, genteel but inexpensive. Her prettiness endured, but she was pale, and had a ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... brilianto, gxemo. Gendarme gxendarmo. Gender sekso. Genealogy genealogio. General gxenerala. General (milit.) generalo. Generate produkti, naski. Generation generacio. Generosity malavareco. Generous malavara. Genial bonvola. Genitive genitivo. Genius genio. Genteel gxentila. Gentle dolcxa. Gentleman sinjoro. Gently dolcxe. Genuflect genufleksi. Genuine vera. Genus gento. Geography geografio. Geology geologio. Geometry geometrio. Geranium geranio. Germ gxermo. German Germano. German (adj.) Germana. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Having set the Ancients against the Moderns, Echard is able to attack the looseness of English double plots by pointing to Terence's success within a similar structure. He is also able to praise Terence's genteel style. Against this, Echard admits, along with his precursors, Plautus' superiority in point of vis comica, which he defines, interestingly, as "Liveliness of Intreague" (sig. a8). Echard is thus able to claim, with considerable conviction, the superiority of English ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... said Emma Mason. "It's surprising how those words rhyme so nicely. Seems almost as though it was done a-purpose! Reminds me of piece day at school. There was a mighty pretty piece I learned called the 'Wreck of the Asperus.'" And she subsided into a genteel melancholy. ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... he had dined at the cook-shop, or at his more genteel and gloomy restaurant of the Bronze Horses, it was his custom to lounge an hour or two over a cup of coffee and a Virginia cigar at one of the many caffes, and to watch all the world as it passed to and fro on the quay. Tonelli was gray, he did ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... after much cringing in the antechambers of Ministers, he obtained at last the Cross of St. Louis as a kind of indemnity. About the same time he also bought with his Indian wealth the place of an officer in the Swiss Guard of Monsieur, the present Louis XVIII. Being refused admittance into any genteel societies, he resorted with Barras and other disgraced nobles to gambling-houses, and he even kept to himself when the Revolution took place. He had at the same time, and for a certain interest, advanced Madame d'Estainville ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... Continental nations in general have the idea. They would have advertised a "pretty" house or a "large" one, or a "convenient" one; but they could not, by any use of the terms afforded by their several languages, have got at the English "genteel." Consider, a little, all the meanness that there is in that epithet, and then see, when next you cross the Channel, how scornful of it that Calais spire ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... on his discriminatingly chosen shabby-genteel clothes with a care for the effect he intended them to produce. The collar and cuffs of his shirt were frayed and yellow, and he fastened his collar with a pin and tied his worn necktie carelessly. His overcoat was ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... shooting, and riding, and were lavishly hospitable. They sought to have their children well taught, not only in letters but in social accomplishments like dancing; and at the proper season they liked to visit the Virginian watering-places, where they met "genteel company" from the older States, and lodged in good taverns in which "a man could have a room and a bed to himself." [Footnote: Letter of a young Virginian, L. Butler, April 13, 1790. Magazine of Amer. Hist., ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... endeavoured to make him despise his former course of life. His hair was cut after the newest fashion, and became his chief care; he went abroad with it all the morning in papers, and drest it out in the afternoon. They could not, however, teach him to game, swear, drink, nor any other genteel vice the town abounded with. He applied most of his leisure hours to music, in which he greatly improved himself; and became so perfect a connoisseur in that art, that he led the opinion of all the other footmen at an opera, and they never condemned ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... this charity for nothing. We can get medical assistance for nothing. We can get our children educated for nothing. Why should we work? Why should we save?" Such is the idea which charity, so-called, inculcates. The "Charitable Institution" becomes a genteel poor-house; and the lesson is extensively taught that we can do better by ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... famous in local annals. About 1825 it was first occupied by Mr. William Lyon Mackenzie, who continued to reside in it for several years. It was here that the Colonial Advocate was published by that gentleman, at the time when his office was wrecked and the type thrown into the bay by a "genteel mob," a farther account of which lawless transaction will be found in the sketch of the life of W. L. Mackenzie, included in the present series. The building subsequently came into the possession ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... "I call occasionally and leave my card in the shape of an apple, finding Madam Rosa living like an independent lady, with her large box and private yard on the sunny side of the barn, a kind ostler to wait upon her, and much genteel society from the city when she ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... brogue decaying into a common would-be genteel accent with an unexpected strain of Glasgow in it]. I must be going. Ivnmportnt engeegement in the ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... come away, and lived almost a year more with my honest old woman, and began now to be very helpful to her; for I was almost fourteen years old, was tall of my age, and looked a little womanish; but I had such a taste of genteel living at the lady's house that I was not so easy in my old quarters as I used to be, and I thought it was fine to be a gentlewoman indeed, for I had quite other notions of a gentlewoman now than I had ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... shrill voice cried; "for God's love, man, get on!" Mr. Pope had risen. This pallid shaken wisp was not in appearance the great Mr. Pope whose ingenuity had enabled Homeric warriors to excel in the genteel. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... ever rejoiced in a more expressive name than Dull Street. It was not a specially dirty street, or a specially disreputable street, or a specially dark street. The neighbourhood might a hundred years ago have been considered "genteel," and the houses even fashionable, and some audacious antiquarians went so far as to assert that the street took its name not from its general appearance at all, but from a worthy London alderman, who in the reign of George the First had owned most ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... green, Lilacs then, and daffodillies, And the nice leaved lesser lilies Shading, like detected light, Their little green-tipt lamps of white; Blissful poppy, odorous pea, With its wing up lightsomely; Balsam with his shaft of amber, Mignionette for lady's chamber, And genteel geranium, With a leaf for all that come; And the tulip tricked out finest, And the pink of smell divinest; And as proud as all of them Bound in one, the garden's gem Hearts-ease, like a gallant bold In his cloth of purple ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... Richard Roe desirous of entering upon a formal courtship with some refined young girl of fashion. You are also, being a college graduate, engaged in the bond business. One morning there comes into your financial institution a young lady, named Dorothy Doe, who at once attracts your attention by her genteel manners, as exemplified by the fact that she calls the president of your company "father." So many young people seem to think it "smart" to refer to their parents as "dad" or "my old man"; you are certain, as soon as you hear her say "Hello, ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... not exactly like the idea of having Mr. Charles placed under compulsion to take me, whether he liked me or not; and I decided, if he objected to the arrangement, to take myself out of his way. We walked to the residence of Mr. Charles, which was a genteel house in a good section of the city. He had a parlor and bed-room, and seemed to live in good style. Before she said anything about me, Mrs. Whippleton took her son into the entry, where, I suppose, she "laid down ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... Poor creature! she, as well as I, had but an imperfect idea of what she was to endure. The punishment was to be inflicted in the great square, and the troops were out, and a large concourse of people were assembled. She appeared on the raised platform upon which she was to suffer, in a genteel undress, which contributed still more to heighten her extreme beauty. The sweetness of her countenance obtained for her the commiseration of those who were ordered and accustomed to execute the will of the despotic and cruel emperor. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the performance here and there with original reflections on life, which are perfectly dignified, but become humorous from contrast with their surroundings. In spite of its comical effect, the piece has a very genteel air, for its material is taken from that general stock of information that passes current in cultivated families. The young man of fashion who had never heard of Elijah, or of Poe's "Raven," would not ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... and were then placed on a silver dish; but what happened further they knew not; or, in fact, what it was to be boiled, and to lie on a silver dish, they could not possibly imagine; but it was said to be delightful, and particularly genteel. Neither the chafers, the toads, nor the earth-worms, whom they asked about it could give them any information—none of them had been boiled or laid on ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... time had come when she must 'do something', and the people to whose guidance she looked had but narrow experience of life. Alice and Virginia sighed over the contrast with bygone hopes, but their own careers made it seem probable that Monica would be better off 'in business' than in a more strictly genteel position. And there was every likelihood that, at such a place as Weston, with her sister for occasional chaperon, she would ere long find herself relieved of the necessity of working for ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... and the baby, wee Jeannie, with Macgregor were going out to dinner at "Aunt Purdie's," who was "rale genteel an' awfu' easy offendit." The anxious mother was counselling her young son regarding his behavior at the table of ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... put away, and in the long afternoon Mary Adams sat sewing as Rhoda Kollander rambled on. For the third time Rhoda came back to comment upon the fact that Grant Adams had quit working in the printing office—a genteel trade, and had stopped delivering papers for Mr. Brotherton's newspaper stand—a rather high vocation, and was degrading himself by learning the carpenter's trade, when Mary Adams cut into the current of ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... German pianist and conductor, was born at Dresden, on the 8th of January 1830. At the age of nine he began to study music under Friedrich Wieck as part of a genteel education. It was only after an illness while studying law at Leipzig University in 1848 that he determined upon music as a career. At this time he was a pupil of Moritz Hauptmann. In 1849 revolutionary politics took possession of him. In the Berlin Abendpost, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... he gently folded his hands together, with that genteel applause that may even be indulged in in a box at the opera itself. "Bravo. I like to see young persons enthusiastic; it looks as if they had some of the real fire of genius in their ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... few days, the genteel inhabitants of the square began to remark the customs of their neighbour. The sight of a young gentleman discussing a clay pipe, about four o'clock of the afternoon, in the drawing-room balcony of so discreet a mansion; and perhaps still more, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Fuller's well-worn story, which is now Scott's, commends itself for comparative simplicity. Everybody has heard how her Majesty, meeting with a plashy place, made some scruple to go on; when Ralegh, dressed in the gay and genteel habit of those times, presently cast off and spread his new plush cloak on the ground, whereon the Queen trod gently over, rewarding him afterwards with many suits for his so free and seasonable tender of so fair a footcloth. Fuller, again, it is who vouches for the sequel of the incident. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... said Steinert, patronizingly; "coons has more genteel home life in jail than they does out. An' don't forget the District of Columbia is governed by folks that ain't residents of it, only durin' the session. Th' politicians don't leave their frien's in the cooler very long. Say, Senator Stevens, ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... dedicated to St. John; rebuilt in 1770; enlarged, elaborated, and rejuvenised in 1853; plagued with dry rot for a considerable time afterwards; in a pretty good state of architectural health now; and likely to last out both this generation and the next. It looks rather genteel and stately outside; it has a good steeple, kept duly alive by a congregation of traditional jackdaws; it has a capital set of bells which have put in a good deal of overtime during the past five months, through a pressure of election business; and ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... course not!), names a referee, who shall hear the testimony in the case, and submit a copy thereof, together with his decision thereon, to the Court for confirmation. Then, before the referee—who is to be properly feed for his officiation—go the divorce-lawyer and two or three shabby-genteel-looking 'witnesses,' who from thenceforth shall never be findable by mortal man again. The 'witnesses' swear to any thing and every thing—that they have seen and recognized defendant in highly improper houses with improper persons; that they know plaintiff ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... our situation is that the quasi-genteel working class, of whom our modern complex life supports hundreds of thousands—telephone operators, stenographers, and the like—greedily devour the newspaper accounts of the American aristocracy and model ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... is—she made me feel I was a rascal: but people who scorn, And tell a poor patch-breech he isn't genteel, Why, they make him kick up—and he treads on a corn. It isn't liking, it's curst ill-luck, Drives half of us into the begging-trade: If for taking to water you praise a duck, For taking to beer why ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... though frivolous amusements which suited his capacity and his inclinations. He was endowed with the utmost elegance of shape and person, was noted for a fine mien and easy carriage, distinguished himself in all warlike and genteel exercises, and was celebrated for those quick sallies of wit in which his countrymen usually excel. By all these accomplishments, he gained so entire an ascendant over young Edward, whose heart was strongly disposed to friendship ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... not necessary to remind you that she is a child of love," said Droom, "That's the genteel way to ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... breezy work-a-dayness as we have been talking of, but something very different indeed beyond the walls of our private garden. There are black, oozy factory yards and mangy grass-plots heaped with brickbat and refuse; and miles of iron railing, and acres of gaunt and genteel streets not veiled enough in fog; a metaphorical beyond the garden walls, in which a certain number of us graduate for the ownership of sooty shrubberies and clammy orchid houses. And we poor latter-day mortals have ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... girls, whether daughters of the upper-ten-dom, the mediocrity, the cottage, or the kennel, aim at one standard of dress and deportment, seldom accomplishing a perfectly triumphant hit or an utterly absurd failure. Those words, "genteel" and "ladylike," are terrible ones and do us infinite mischief, but it is because (at least, I hope so) we are in a transition state, and shall emerge into a higher mode of simplicity than has ever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... for her to do next day. When bedtime arrived, two or three of the servants in company, with each a lighted candle in her hand, conducted her to her lodging. They led her to a ground room, with a boarded floor, and two sash windows. The room was grandly furnished, and had a genteel bed in one corner of it. They had made her a good fire, and had placed her a chair and a table before it, and a large lighted candle upon the table. They told her that was her bedroom, and she might go to sleep when she ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... that Loring entered still retained some of the features of its more genteel beginnings, but the huge blaring teleceiver screen was filled with the pouting face of a popular singer. He advanced to the bar that occupied one ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... was called Little Weatherbury Farm, and his person was the nearest approach to aristocracy that this remoter quarter of the parish could boast of. Genteel strangers, whose god was their town, who might happen to be compelled to linger about this nook for a day, heard the sound of light wheels, and prayed to see good society, to the degree of a solitary lord, or squire at the very least, but ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... was of course great joy at Orley Farm. The old father felt that the world had begun again for him, very delightfully, and was more than ever satisfied with his wisdom in regard to that marriage. But the very genteel progeny of his early youth were more than ever dissatisfied, and in their letters among themselves dealt forth harder and still harder words upon poor Sir Joseph. What terrible things might he not be expected to do now that his dotage was coming on? Those three married ladies had ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... ef you han't come from Miss Peter Smith's! Well, she'd oughter do gret things with that 'ere meetin'-'us o' her'n for the chickens; it's kinder genteel-lookin', and I spose they've got means; they've got ability. Gentility without ability I do despise; but where 't'a'n't so, 't'a'n't no matter; but I'xpect it don't ensure the faowls none, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... ape gentility,' he said quietly. 'I'm glad the young lady's well again, but genteel formal ain't much in my ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... nationality is. He knows nobody I do. I feel certain of that. Yet he must belong somewhere, have some set of friends, some circle of acquaintances, I suppose. He isn't at all vulgar. One couldn't call him genteel, which is worse, I think. It's all very odd. I'm not conventional. In Paris I'm considered even terribly unconventional. I've met all sorts of men, but I've never met a man like Arabian. But the other day—don't you remember?—you ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... arguments, but were I to sign the pledge, what good would it do. I have no desire to go about with a sermon on my lips, and a frown on my brow, to bestow on all the luckless wights who 'touch, taste or handle.' It is not genteel to scold, and I fancy they might think me impertinent were I to advise. Who is there among my acquaintance who would not resent my interference with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... a silly and conceited baronet, has three daughters, the eldest two, unmarried, and the third, Mary, the wife of a neighbouring gentleman, Mr. Charles Musgrove, heir to a considerable fortune, and living in a genteel cottage in the neighbourhood of the Great house which he is hereafter to inherit. The second daughter, Anne, who is the heroine, and the only one of the family possessed of good sense (a quality which Miss Austin is as sparing of in her novels, as we fear her great mistress, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... excellent idea," broke in Mrs. Brimmer, with genteel precision. "You see these people evidently recognize the fact of Mr. Brimmer's previous ownership of the Excelsior, and the respect that is due to him. I, for one, shall accept the offer, and insist upon Miss ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... dark places. He refused to answer even when Christine called him. He skulked miserably past Christine's sisters when he met them in the passage. He scowled at them, his head down, like a hobbled, angry little bull. And Christine's sisters drew in their nostrils in a last genteel effort at self-control. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... get into a railway carriage, or the cabin of a steamer, and after taking a book or a nap for an hour or two, raise our heads, and find ourselves, somehow or other, fifty miles off—in the country. The country is a genteel house in a genteel street, or a nice villa in a row of nice villas, where we are surrounded with all the conveniences we enjoy at home. The very society is the same; for our friends, Thomson and Smith, and the whole of that set, have brought ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... by the Underground as far as Aldersgate; and a short walk took us to Saxe-Coburg Square, the scene of the singular story which we had listened to in the morning. It was a poky, little, shabby-genteel place, where four lines of dingy two-storied brick houses looked out into a small railed-in enclosure, where a lawn of weedy grass and a few clumps of faded laurel-bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden and uncongenial atmosphere. Three gilt balls ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... set him to follow and watch his stepfather to the house of a woman of whom she was jealous. The boy possessed great natural abilities, and in good hands would have turned out something different than a life-long prison drudge. He was handsome, genteel in appearance, an apt scholar, though very self-willed and headstrong, and as he grew up his naturally hot temper became uncontrollable. At an early age he had discovered that by threats of self-injury he could bend his parents to his wishes, but found in his stepfather one who would put up ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Heavens! how vulgar you are! I confess I wonder you could possibly be the father of such an intelligent girl as I am. Did ever anybody in genteel style talk of Cathos or of Madelon? And must you not admit that either of these names would be sufficient to disgrace the finest ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... been spent in domestic service, and part in a suburban dressmaker's establishment. She keeps the house very clean, pins up the oleographs presented to us at Christmas time by the grocer and the oil-man, and thinks I look genteel in a silk hat when we walk out to hear the band in the ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... initiating nucleus of engineers and skilled mechanics. If it is an educated class, its existence implies a class of educators, and just as far as it does get educated the schoolmasters will be skilled and educated men. The shabby-genteel middle-class schoolmaster of the England of to-day, in—or a little way out of—orders, with his smattering of Greek, his Latin that leads nowhere, his fatuous mathematics, his gross ignorance of pedagogics, and his incomparable snobbishness, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... which immediately left the room. There was nothing found on the gentleman's person to lead to a discovery of his name or residence. About twelve o'clock, however, on the following night, three interesting young ladies, of very genteel appearance, between the ages of sixteen and twenty, arrived at the house in which the gentleman died, accompanied by the dog. They came in a chaise from Richmond. It appears that the dog, immediately after the decease of his master, ran off to Richmond, where he usually resided. As soon as ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... avail you naught, Mordaunt Merrilac," she quavered. "In spite of all you can do, some day, my hero, Jack Harkness, will find this den and rescue me!" Prolonged handclapping came from the more genteel portion of the audience, mingled with cheers and cat-calls ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... with you there. I think I never saw anybody look more genteel than Miss Elisabeth does now, bless her! And the jet trimming on her ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... accommodate two people easily. On the whole, it is rather the sort of room that the nineteenth century has ended in struggling to get back to under the leadership of Mr. Philip Webb and his disciples in domestic architecture, though no genteel clergyman would have tolerated it ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... Canon of Canterbury (circa 1700). In his "Dissertation on Letter-Founders," Rowe Mores describes this woman as the "indefessa comes" of her brother's studies, a female student in Oxford. She was, says Mores, a northern lady of an ancient family and a genteel fortune, "but she pursued too much the drug called learning, and in that pursuit failed of being careful of any one thing necessary. In her latter years she was tutoress in the family of the Duke of Portland, where we visited her in her sleeping-room at Bulstrode, surrounded with books ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... my matweed, I pitched a noble one, sufficient to cover or entertain a numerous company, and so tight everywhere as to keep out the weather. The front of this new apartment I hung with blue cloth, which had a very genteel effect. I had almost forgotten to tell you that I contrived (by hanging one of the smaller sails across, just in the middle, which I could let down or raise up at pleasure) to divide the tent occasionally into two ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... said very simply, "for the Germans to get a 'double casualty.'" It was the sort of remark, he thought, that he would have expected Margaret to make. With all the horror of genteel pauperism staring her in the face, that woman was thinking big, and was keeping her head up. With all the bitterness of loss behind her, she had, that very day, so she told him, been helping another more fortunate one to choose frocks ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... to the great city, among the grand folks, you would make a sensation, madam. I have made one myself, who am dark; the chi she is kauley, {38} which last word signifies black, which I am not, though rather dark. There's no colour like white, madam; it's so lasting, so genteel. Gentility will carry the day, madam, even with the young rye. He will ask words of the black lass, but beg the word ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... there fell to my lot a tidy, efficient-trained English girl; pretty, and genteel, and neat, and knowing how to do every thing, and with the sweetest temper in the world. "Now," said I to myself, "I shall rest from my labors." Every thing about the house began to go right, and looked as clean and genteel as Mary's own pretty self. But, alas! this period of repose was interrupted ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... be especially observed in justice to poor Kit that he was by no means of a sentimental turn, and perhaps had never heard that adjective in all his life. He was only a soft-hearted grateful fellow, and had nothing genteel or polite about him; consequently, instead of going home again, in his grief, to kick the children and abuse his mother (for, when your finely strung people are out of sorts, they must have everybody else unhappy likewise), ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... family, but by the whole of Lemvig, was equally sparing of her words, but her face was constantly laughing. A flowered, red cotton cap fitted close to the thin face, giving something characteristic to the high cheek-bones and hanging lip. "She assisted in the household, but could take no part in genteel company," as the lady expressed herself. She could never forget how, at the Reformation Festival, when only the singers sang in the church, aunt began singing with them out of her book, so that the churchwarden was forced to beg ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... nearly forgotten to point out a very genteel-looking young man in black, who wears a distressingly long frock coat and a white neckcloth, who escorts Mrs. Meeker to her carriage, and enters ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... amused myself by reading a crude fly-sheet nailed on the wall, offering a reward of fifty guineas to anyone giving information leading to the arrest of one Samuel Nixon, commonly called 'Swift Nicks,' a notorious highwayman, six feet high, of very genteel appearance, well-spoken, but a cruel, bloody ruffian with it all. The Highlander interrupted my reading by beckoning me to follow him. Upstairs we went, and he ushered me into a room where were two gentlemen ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... was an elderly man of shabby-genteel appearance and polite address. Miles did not quite like the look of him. In the circumstances, however, and with a strangely desolate feeling of loneliness creeping over him, he did not see his way to reject ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... drum till he beat in its crown, procure them a single spectator. Thoroughly disgusted, they quitted the spot and returned home, Bruin getting into a dispute with one of the City police by the way for comporting himself bearishly towards a richly-dressed and genteel-looking cat, who was quietly serenading his ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... I speak of, on the gabert that carried me down to Dunbarton on my way to the Humanities classes, I could have sworn I was leaving a burgh most large and wonderful. The town houses of old Stonefield, Craignish, Craignure, Asknish, and the other cadets of Clan Campbell, had such a strong and genteel look; the windows, all but a very few, had glass in every lozen, every shutter had a hole to let in the morning light, and each door had its little ford of stones running across the gutter that sped down the street, smelling fishily a bit, on its way to the shore. For ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... of the commandments in the Decalogue. Between the long-boat and the fore-hatch is the galley, where the "Doctor" (as the cook is universally called in the merchant service) is busily employed in dishing up a steaming supper, prepared for the cabin mess; the steward, a genteel-looking mulatto, dressed in a white apron, stands waiting at the galley-door, ready to receive the aforementioned supper, whensoever it may be ready, and to convey it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... merchant showed him an $8 shawl, but it did not please the fancy of old Bill Daugherty. "Show me a shawl that you would be pleased to see your wife wear, one that you would be proud to see her wear to church, that old shawl is not genteel." This time the merchant took down a $16 shawl and after close examination, and the assurance that it was the best one he had in the house, Daugherty accepted the shawl. "Now," said Daugherty, "I want my cash." The merchant counted out the balance ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... contentment. Having found and duly salvaged that log, it was necessary to cut it up; and then I began to be thankful that pit-sawing was not forced upon me as a profession in the days of inexperienced youth. Pit-sawing is deceptive. It has the appearance of being easy, though not genteel, when others are the toilers, and in the red dust, torn by the polished steel teeth from out the heart of the dull log, do you not "inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia which the musky wings of the zephyrs scatter through the cedared groves of the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the mill his attention was arrested by Jack Hickey—a witty, good natured Irishman. He was a quaint character, full of fun and humor. His employment was washing and scouring wool and shoddy—not a very genteel labor, for it was wet and dirty work, as well as tiresome. However, Jack received for such service $1.75 per day, and this made him happier than a $10,000 salary ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... there are many degrees of West-endiness, so to speak, in the western neighbourhood of London, and this square was, in the opinion of Miss Tippet, the West-endiest place she knew, because there dwelt in it, not only a very genteel and uncommonly rich portion of the community, but several of her own aristocratic, though distant, relations, among whom ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... live in Lilliput Street, that neat little street which runs at right angles with the Park and Brobdingnag Gardens. It is a very genteel neighborhood, and I need not say they are of ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... marriage with a lady who had a portion of about four thousand pounds. Nobody in the neighbourhood could conceive why she married him and endowed him with her wealth, unless because he had a tall, handsome figure, a good set of features, a genteel address, and the most perfect good-humour. It might be some additional consideration, that she was herself at the reflecting age of twenty-eight, and had no near relations to control ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... drinking is not considered a disgrace, young men indulge without a thought of the consequences. Instead of excluding them from genteel circles, their dissipation is smoothed over, or unnoticed; and it has become so prevalent in this city that of all the gentlemen whom I meet in so-called fashionable society, there are very few who abstain from the wine-cup. I have seen them at parties, staggering ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... am not going to play then," said Lina primly, "my mother wants me to be genteel, ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... are not fit for public print—, such as the story of the Scarlet Nuns, the abominable story of the Spotted Dog, or the thing that was done in the quarry. And all this red roll of impieties came from his thin, genteel lips rather primly than otherwise, as he sat sipping the wine out of his ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... clergyman; John a lawyer; Tom a doctor, and Dick a farmer." He then goes into town and looks about to see what he will do with Sammy. He returns home and says "Sammy, I see watch-making is a nice genteel business; I think I will make you a goldsmith." He does this, regardless of Sam's natural inclinations, ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... aye sae clean and neat, Both decent and genteel; And then there's something in her gait ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Must sit and say "Thank you!" for Aunt Mollie's leavings, precious scraps she dared not refuse—Maw, who had a pride as fierce and keen as any! It was devilish! Oh, it was kind of Aunt Mollie to give; it was the taking that came so bitter hard. And then they weren't genteel about their giving. There was always that air of superiority, that conscious patronage, as now, when Uncle Clem, breaking off his conversation with the invalid in the next room about the price of mutton on the hoof and the chances of the Democrats' getting in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... worry about you as long ago as 1915, and you know what happens to people when LENIN really starts to worry about them. He wasn't satisfied that enough violent interest was being taken in you; the mere Socialists he regarded as far too moderate and genteel. As for their First and their Second International—he wanted something thoroughgoing, something with a bit of ginger to it. So at the Zimmerwald Congress on the 5th September of that year all the out-and-outs unanimously ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... and slums in Liverpool, as elsewhere, and Sparrow street, which Bet had left, seemed by contrast to Paradise Row, which she presently entered, a thoroughly respectable, indeed genteel, place of residence. Paradise Row was not very far from the river. It was entered by a court, court of not more than twenty feet square. Under one of the houses there was an archway, and it was only through this archway that any one could approach Paradise Row, This charming ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... treasuries were empty. The portionless brothers and relatives of the feudal lords, to whom no employments save war, adventure, and piracy were open, pillaged them illegally. Along the coasts especially, piracy was considered not only a legitimate, but a genteel, profession. So in order to protect themselves, the cities began to join themselves ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway |
