"Promiscuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... abate the awful slaughter of my race. A resolution against lynching was introduced by Mrs. Fessenden and read, and then that great Christian body, which in its resolutions had expressed itself in opposition to the social amusement of card playing, athletic sports and promiscuous dancing; had protested against the licensing of saloons, inveighed against tobacco, pledged its allegiance to the Prohibition party, and thanked the Populist party in Kansas, the Republican party in California and the Democratic party in the South, wholly ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... His visits were, therefore, promiscuous, without any other view than that of amusement; and though his pride was flattered by the advances of the fair, whom he had captivated, he never harboured one thought of proceeding beyond the limits of common gallantry, and carefully avoided all particular ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... understood that your Majesty has a specially true and holy title to these kingdoms of Peru, because your Majesty and your most sacred ancestors stopped the sacrifices of innocent men, the eating of human flesh, the accursed sin, the promiscuous concubinage with sisters and mothers, the abominable use of beasts, and their wicked and accursed customs[20].] For from each one God demands an account of his neighbour, and this duty specially appertains to princes, and above all to your Majesty. Only for this ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... beach-combers and idlers. By proper care of the eggs and young the turtles could easily be increased enormously in number, and a regulated capture of them be made to yield a legitimate profit. But neither the United States Government nor our own take any steps to restrain promiscuous slaughter of the turtles which come to the shore in order to lay their eggs. Soon the City Fathers will have to do without the "green fat" and their wives without tortoise-shell combs. It will serve them right. Such destitution in these—and, be it noted, in many other matters—will deservedly ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... promiscuous messing story did not greatly concern the Mahomedans, other cries were made use of to create suspicion and distrust amongst the followers of the Prophet. One of these, which equally affected the Hindu and Mahomedan, was the alleged unfairness of what was known ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... streets they see a pretty girl and immediately lay plans to become acquainted. Then the courtship begins. In the present condition of society it is a very easy thing for well reared girls to begin a promiscuous acquaintance, with ample opportunity for courtship. There was never a time when the bars were so low. With the public dance, or even the more exclusive german, the skating rink and the moving picture ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... diamonds in the gaslight as she swung the train about. There was no attempt on the part of the men to assume imposing or elegant disguises. The cheapest dominoes, and generally nothing more than a mask, afforded them all they wanted—the opportunity to carry on a bravado and promiscuous flirtation with these women. That part of the family circle tier which faces the stage was given up to the musicians. The rest of the gallery was crowded with spectators. The boxes below were all taken up, the occupants being mainly maskers overlooking ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... occupation of the street cars in 'Frisco, is climbing almost perpendicular heights, and then sliding down hill. All very pleasant except when the cogs in the cable slip, and you become part and parcel of a promiscuous mix-up, all passengers tumbling over and on to each other into the front end of the car, and if you are at the bottom of the struggling heap, with your nose banged against the door, and suffocating fat parties wedged on top of you, this rapid transit slide ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... After fumbling a little more, he took sister H.'s bag, gave a dive here, a poke there, and a kind of promiscuous rake with his five fingers, and turned to the trunk. There he seemed somewhat dubious. Eying the fine silk and lace dresses,—first one, then the other,—"Ah, ah!" said he, and snuffed a little. Then he peeped under this corner, and cocked his eye under that corner; then, all at once, plunged ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the master glorified all by his presence. I saw Rossini's writing-table, which is a thing never to be forgotten: brushes, combs, toothpicks, nails, and all sorts of rubbish lying about pell-mell; and promiscuous among them was the tube that Rossini uses for his famous macaroni a la Rossini. Prince Metternich said that no power on earth would induce him to touch any food a la Rossini, especially the macaroni, which he said was stuffed with hash and all sorts of remnants of last week's ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... frightful. Those were days of capital punishment for half the offences in the calendar, and of what was to her scarcely less dreadful, of promiscuous imprisonment, fetters, and gaol fever. Poor Aurelia's ignorance could hardly enhance these horrors, and when her perceptions began to clear themselves, her first thought was of flight from a fate equally dreadful to the guilty or ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be inferred, from the short view which has been taken of the state of society, that the disease occasioned by an unrestrained and promiscuous intercourse of the sexes cannot be very common in China. In fact, it is scarcely known, and the treatment of it is so little understood, in the few cases which do occur, that it is allowed to work its ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... words with glittering eyes, impetuous voice, and face pale with passionate emotion, he was scared; for as his scattered wits returned to him, he felt that he had been playing with edge tools, and had cut and slashed in rather a promiscuous manner. Dazed and dizzy, he sat staring at the excited figure before him, forgetting the indignity he had received, the mistake he had made, the damage he had done, in simple wonder at the revolutions going on under his astonished eyes. When Dolly stopped for breath, ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... stand he might be of wood, so far as he is responsive to the moods and feelings of his auditors. They must come to him; he will not go to them: but they do not always come. Latterly the people have felt insulted, the lecturer showed them so little respect. Then, before a promiscuous gathering, and in stirring and eventful times like ours, what anachronisms most of his lectures are, even if we take the high ground that they are pearls before swine! The swine may safely demand some apology of him who offers them ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... is the day, unless the times are chang'd, That poets us'd to sing in merry lays, And with sweet garlands crown'd, promiscuous rang'd, To thy rich wines, great Bacchus, chaunt thy praise. With these gay chorists, when my fates were kind, Free, unreserv'd, to thee, immortal power! (The pleasing object fresh salutes my mind) Without disguise a part ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... be natural or it may be artificially called forth. Among natural causes which develop sex precocity is promiscuous playing with other boys and girls for hours without supervision. It may also be produced by playful repose on the stomach, sliding down banisters, going too long without urinating, by constipation or straining at stool, irritant cutaneous affections, and rectal worms. Sliding ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... Such a village community was not the least honourable item in the sum of New England civilisation. Its spreading elms and plain white houses, its generous summers and ponderous winters, its immediate background of promiscuous field and forest, would have been part of the composition. For the rest, there were the selectmen and the town-meetings, the town-schools and the self-governing spirit, the rigid morality, the friendly and familiar manners, the perfect competence of the little society to manage its ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... of promiscuous cheers for "the captain," "the prefects," "the cook," "Jason," "the school cat," "Thucydides!" and finally for "Dulce Domum!" Grandcourt broke up ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... circumstances in which it was encountered by those teachers, we might be sure of not erring much by figuring situations very similar to what might occur in much later and nearer states of society. If we should imagine one of these good and wise instructors going into a promiscuous company of the people, and asking them, with a view at once to see into their minds and inform them, say, ten plain questions, relative to matters somewhat above the ordinary secular concerns of life, but essential for them to understand, it would be a quite probable supposition that he did not ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... not give an inch. "You'll put a stop to nothin' this way; an' you'll sure start somethin' that'll be more than stealin' a few calves. The time for stringin' men up promiscuous like, on mere suspicion, is past in Arizona. I reckon there's more Cross-Triangle stock branded with the Tailholt Mountain iron than all the rest of you put together have lost, which sure entitles me to a front seat when it comes, ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... a word. If the open hand which is Bred in the Bone with him scatters its largesse somewhat broadcast, the revenues of Crompton, thanks to her, are in the main directed to good ends. In that stately mansion, whose hospitality is as proverbial though less promiscuous than of old, not only is there room for Mrs. Coe the elder to dwell with her young folks, without jar, but in a certain ground-floor chamber, the same he used to inhabit in old times, there dwells an ancient divine, once Carew's chaplain. He is still ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... fields convey'd. The corps of kings, and captains of renown, Borne off in state, are buried in the town; The rest, unhonor'd, and without a name, Are cast a common heap to feed the flame. Trojans and Latians vie with like desires To make the field of battle shine with fires, And the promiscuous blaze ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... of destiny Pronounced, "All mortals must submissive die." The princes wait around with weeping eyes, And the dome echoes all with piercing cries: With doleful noise the matrons scream around, With female shrieks the vaulted roofs rebound: A dismal noise! Now one promiscuous roar 50 Cries, "Ah! the noble Frederic is no more!" The chief reluctant yields his latest breath; His eye-lids settle in the shades of death; Dark sable shades present before each eye, And the deep vast abyss, Eternity! Through perpetuity's expanse he springs; ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... about a dozen priests who were carrying hot water which they dipped out of a boiling caldron and were sprinkling it about in the temple with curious intonations and chantings. They ran back and forth, swishing the water about in a very promiscuous manner. I stood at a respectful distance fearing to get some of the hot fluid on myself. Meanwhile the White Horse stood in the yard well groomed and cared for, little knowing what they were doing in his honor. I could not hear of a single place where their poor or sick and afflicted were cared ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... scientific basis. But a strong feeling against dark seances has arisen from the abuses to which they have led. It is possible that the extent of the evil has been exaggerated, and has thus produced an exaggerated prejudice against darkness as a condition. It is, however, safe to say, that, even if promiscuous seances are ever useful or wise, a promiscuous dark seance should never be sanctioned by an ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... there in a more advanced state. Besides, as the mind is cultivated, and taste gains ground, the passions become stronger, and rest on something more stable than the casual sympathies of the moment. Health and idleness will always account for promiscuous amours; and in some degree I term every person idle, the exercise of whose mind does not bear some proportion to that of ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... road, and in the small towns, are generally very dirty, and inhabited by a very motley and promiscuous set of beings; the men, women, children, indeed pigs, fowls, &c. all huddled together. The pigs here appear so well accustomed to a cordial welcome in the houses, that when by chance excluded, you see them impatiently rapping at ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... have rather called it weakness in them. But suppose you are right, and that it's weakness not to be able to desire promiscuous suffering for others, would you go further and say that it is Christian for those, who have not experienced a certain kind of suffering, to force that particular kind ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... on criticism is timely and sensible. As he justly contends, some authorized amateur critics deal far too roughly with the half-formed products of the young author, while most unofficial and inexperienced reviewers fairly run mad with promiscuous condemnation. The fancied brilliancy of the critic is always greatest when he censures most, so that the temptations of the tribe are many. We are at best but literary parasites, and need now and then just such a restraining word as ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... can't change the color of his eyes; but that's a girl's reason, every time. You better be fanning for home, Mary V. You've no business out this far alone. I think I'll have to put your dad wise to the way you drift around promiscuous. You can't tell when a stray greaser might happen along. No, I mean it! You're always kicking about my doing things I shouldn't; well, you've got to quit riding around alone the way you do. What if I had been ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... of Berlin does not permit the promiscuous scattering of floral decorations and advertising matter on the statues of German gods, and the fact that the wreath remained there month after month proved that somebody high up was sanctioning the methods ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... men at the luncheon party, which was really not a luncheon party at all, but a promiscuous coming together of four of the men who usually sat at what was called the Colonel's table. First of all there was the Colonel himself,—Colonel Edgar Fitzmaurice, C.B., D.S.O.,—easily the most popular member of the ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that He could do nothing more than any man could do; He was known to them as the son of Joseph, and as far as they knew was of ordinary earthly parentage, and yet He had the temerity to declare that He had come down from heaven. Chiefly to this class rather than to the promiscuous crowd who had hastened after Him, Jesus appears to have addressed the remainder of His discourse. He advized them to cease their murmurings; for it was a certainty that they could not apprehend His meaning, and ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... of our classical authorities. Jerome says that in Gaul he himself saw Attacotti (the primitive inhabitants of Galloway) devouring human flesh, and refers to their sexual relations, which more probably imply some system of polyandry, such as still prevails in Thibet, than mere promiscuous intercourse. Traces of this system long remained in the rule of "Mutter-recht," which amongst several of the more remote septs traced inheritance invariably through the mother and ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... laces and his brandy and his silk—I takes him, sir, in the very act of illegality, red-handed, so to speak, and then, if he shows fight, or if he runs away, then I shoots, sir, and then if I hits, why it's a good job too—but none of this promiscuous work for Augustus Hobson. Slow ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... account a little for its unfamiliarity. And perhaps, too, there was something in the emotions through which I had been passing for a week and more, to intensify my insight, to enable me to pierce the unusual, to question the accepted. But it came to me then, I am sure, for the first time, how promiscuous, how higgledy-piggledy was the whole of that jumble of mines and homes, collieries and potbanks, railway yards, canals, schools, forges and blast furnaces, churches, chapels, allotment hovels, a vast irregular agglomeration of ugly smoking accidents in which men lived ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... thanks to those who favored me with their votes) less like a candidate than an unconcerned spectator of a public proceeding. But here the face of things is altered. Here is an attempt for a general massacre of suffrages,—an attempt, by a promiscuous carnage of friends and foes, to exterminate above two thousand votes, including seven hundred polled for the gentleman himself who now complains, and who would destroy the friends whom he has obtained, only because he ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... by the regular, reasonable and sensible conduct and expression of the People there collected, that I should rather have entertained an idea of being transported to the British senate than to an adventurous and promiscuous assembly of People of a remote Colony, were I not convinced by the genuine and uncorrupted integrity and manly hardihood of the Rhetoricians of that assembly that they were not yet corrupted by venality ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... estranged, Had found no native home, or found it changed, 30 And, half uncivilised, preferred the cave Of some soft savage to the uncertain wave— The gushing fruits that nature gave unfilled; The wood without a path—but where they willed; The field o'er which promiscuous Plenty poured Her horn; the equal land without a lord; The wish—which ages have not yet subdued In man—to have no master save his mood;[354] The earth, whose mine was on its face, unsold, The glowing sun and produce ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Benavides repeated his story of the rockets. In her present tumult, the girl forgot the touch of realism with regard to the firing that he had heard. Certainly there was a good deal of promiscuous rifle-shooting after the departure of the launch, but warships use cannon to enforce their demands, and the boom of a big gun had not woke the echoes of Fernando Noronha that night. Philip deemed the present ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... my word and Foster's that there is not the least danger from them. About here they are merely grown-up children, cruel and destructive as most children are; but they know their masters by this time, and the old days of promiscuous scalping are over. The only other childish propensity they keep is thieving. Even then they only steal what they actually want,—horses, guns, and powder. A coach can go where an ammunition or an emigrant wagon can't. So ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of this labyrinth was a castle of the early promiscuous order of architecture—an order which was until recently much employed in the construction of powder-works, but is now entirely exploded. In this baronial hall lived an eligible single party—a giant ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... "Mrs. Gallilee," you will find her talking—and you will sometimes even find the author talking—of scientific subjects in general. You will naturally conclude that it is "all gross caricature." No; it is all promiscuous reading. Let me spare you a long list of books consulted, and of newspapers and magazines mutilated for "cuttings"—and appeal to examples once more, ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... the confines of France; in all, 15 to 20 frs. per day. Behind the Londres a narrow lane leads up to the Corniche road by the village of Le Carniet. Those hotels marked in this instance with an asterisk do not receive promiscuous company. Abundance of excellent restaurants, cafs, and furnished rooms. English chapel in France, above the Htel Victoria. Mean winter temperature, 49.3. Cabs.—The course, within the principality, 1 fr.; the hour, 3frs. To Menton and back, 15 frs. The omnibus that runs between Monte ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... words, ecclesiasticism is less cheap a commodity and not dispensed in the same abundance at the street-corners. Heaven forbid, at the same time, that I should undervalue the Roman churches, which are for the most part treasure-houses of history, of curiosity, of promiscuous and associational interest. It is a fact, nevertheless, that, after St. Peter's, I know but one really beautiful church by the Tiber, the enchanting basilica of St. Mary Major. Many have structural character, some a great allure, but as a rule they all lack the dignity ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... if you throw me out, every word goes promiscuous. In a heffort of the mind like this it is every word, or no word. Now, did I see him come along the big passage?—a 'currydoor' they call it now, though no more curry in it than there is door. No, I never seed him come along the passage, and that made it more reproachful. He come out of a green-baize ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... quite pleasant, for instance, to hear him speak of Americans in the frank and unconstrained manner which he adopted when talking to us. We could hardly wonder at it when we looked at the promiscuous crowd which formed his idea of American society. Refined and well-bred people there certainly were, but these were precisely the ones who never forced themselves upon his notice, leaving him to be struck and stunned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... again the British strength engage; Still they remember that destructive rage Which lately made their trembling host retire, Stunned with the noise, and wrapt in smoke and fire; The waves with wide unnumbered wrecks were strow'd, And planks, and arms, and men, promiscuous flow'd. 110 Spain's numerous fleet, that perished on our coast, Could scarce a longer line of battle boast, The winds could hardly drive them to their fate, And all the ocean laboured with the weight. Where'er the waves in restless errors roll, The sea lies open now to either pole: ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... dancing carnivals, the ease of travel, the laxity of laws, the opportunities for promiscuous interviews, all tend to give youth a false impression of the reality of life and to make the path of the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... them, when he saw a flash in the pan from the gun of a countryman posted behind a wall, and almost instantly the report of two or three muskets. These he supposed to be from the Americans, as his horse was wounded, as was also a soldier close by him. His troops rushed on, and a promiscuous fire took place, though, as he declared, he made repeated signals with his sword for his men ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... entire time of the father, and social and political unrest and misdirected ambition distracts the mother. The son or daughter has a wider latitude and a freer reign than they once had. The opportunities for promiscuous intimacies are easier, and the public conveniences and utilities lend themselves to the designs of evil-intentioned and loose-moraled women. The ease of travel, the laxity of laws, the theater, with its unchaste and indecent plays, the moving picture snows, the vaudeville resorts, whose highest ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... in his terseness of speech. A man dependent on himself naturally does not give himself away to the first comer. He is more interested in finding out what the other fellow is than in exploiting his own importance. A man who does much promiscuous talking he is likely to despise, arguing that ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... that, not one of these pedants who growled at promiscuous botany has once objected to promiscuous dancing, not even with the gentleman's arm round the lady's waist, which the custom of centuries cannot render decent. Yet the professors of delicacy connive, and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... courts, about 15 or 20 feet square, round which the houses, mostly three stories high, are built, and in the centre of which is a dunghill. The houses are occupied indiscriminately by labourers of the lowest class, thieves, and prostitutes, and every apartment is filled with a promiscuous crowd of men and women, all in the most revolting state of filth. Amid such scenes and such companions as these, thousands of the most intelligent of the Highlanders are content to take refuge, for it is precisely those who are best educated and best informed ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... over those materialistic minds into which the light of spirituality had as yet scarcely penetrated. Her thought had begun to shape a definite purpose; she was still to be a message-bearer, but the message must be set forth in her life conduct. The futility of promiscuous verbal delivery of the message to whomsoever might cross her path had been made patent. Jesus taught—and then proved. She must do likewise, and let her deeds attest the truth of her words. And from the day that she bade the suggestions of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... in some amusement. Scott, who was a man of little education, had periodic spells of promiscuous reading, and frequently surprised his friend with ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... join themselves together without any particular ceremony other than that the man by previous agreement with the woman gives her some zeewant or cloth, which on their separation, if it happens soon, he often takes again. Both men and women are utterly unchaste and shamelessly promiscuous in their intercourse, which is the cause of the men so often changing their wives and the women their husbands. Ordinarily they have but one wife, sometimes two or three, but this is generally among the chiefs. They have also among them different conditions of persons, such ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... evil. The planter would no longer be under the necessity of a heavy expenditure for slaves. He would only pay a very moderate price for his labor; a price, indeed, far less than the cost of the maintenance of a promiscuous gang of slaves, which the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... scene, though the change was by no means welcome to Akizzi. In the Lebanon things were no better. Here Namyauza was struggling with the headmen of Puzruna and Khalunni. "They began hostilities together with Biridashwi against me and said: 'Come, let us kill Namyauza.' But I escaped." This promiscuous warfare raged most fiercely in the south. Here a certain Labaya tried to play the part taken by Aziru in the north. But fortune was less favourable to Labaya. Probably he failed to induce his undisciplined officers to act in unison, and the unhappy man's sole achievement seems to ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... imploring him for the sake of the country, and for the sake of his good name, to put an end to the carousings in his camp, and to sweep out all kind of women, be they wives, sisters, sweethearts or the promiscuous rest ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... thing I want you all to bear in mind," added a tall fellow, who hearing the tumult in the hall had come back to see what it was all about. "Those colors shall not come down without the colonel's orders, and I'll mix up promiscuous with any chap who lays an ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... galliard, confined to the more important guests, and in which both Alizon and Dorothy were included, the former dancing, of course, with Richard, and the latter with one of her cousins, young Joseph Robinson: and a jig, quite promiscuous and unexclusive, and not the less merry on that account. In this way, what with the dances, which were of some duration—the trenchmore alone occupying more than an hour—and the necessary breathing-time between them, it was on the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... powerful protection of the Government, these peaceable people have begun to relinquish their old mode of communistic existence in their strange dwellings. Until recently, there was a promiscuous living together of large families in the numerous apartments of a single house, to which access could be only obtained through a small aperture in the roof. More modern cottages are being built for single families now; farming is also carried ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Munich had warning of the approach of the epidemic months before it broke out, no sufficient means were adopted by the authorities to fortify the city against its attack. All summer long the street-drains sent up their concentrated stenches and the undrained streets spread far and wide their promiscuous abominations. The general daily disinfection ordered by the city government was never thoroughly enforcedly the police, and as often as a lull occurred in the virulence of the pestilence it was almost totally neglected by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... was carried to Rome with great pomp, and its ashes were deposited in the mausoleum of the Caesars. Caius was recognized as his successor without opposition, and he commenced his reign by issuing a general pardon to all State prisoners, and scattering, with promiscuous munificence, the vast treasures which Tiberius had accumulated. He assumed the collective honors of the empire with modesty, and great expectations were formed of a peaceful ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... said Patsy, decidedly. "I'm all tired out, and poor Myrtle is worn to a frazzle. There's no chance of seeing the canyon to-night, and as for the dancing, card playing and promiscuous gaiety, it doesn't appeal much to a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... to the angels," and protested gallantly that Reynolds ought to have painted the angels listening to her. For which sprightliness he received immediately a fervent hug and a kiss from those so sweet and promiscuous lips. The skeptics object, that Reynolds exhibited the picture in London in 1790, a year before Haydn reached London, but it is a shame to spoil a good ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... if Peter had them too, his part of the business was to take the simplest course to establish the falsity. There were difficulties indeed attached even to the simplest course, but there would be a difficulty the less if one should forbear to meddle in promiscuous talk with the general, suggestive topic of intimate unions. It is certain that in these days Nick cultivated the practice of forbearances for which he didn't receive, for which perhaps he never ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... humanitarian aspirations. With this intellectual capital he hoped to lead a useful life in the country. When he had repaired and furnished the house he set himself to improve the estate. In the course of his promiscuous reading he had stumbled on some descriptions of English and Tuscan agriculture, and had there learned what wonders might be effected by a rational system of farming. Why should not Russia follow the example of England and Tuscany? By proper drainage, plentiful manure, good ploughs, and the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... not for libertinism, though only in so simple and innocent a form as kissing. I do not long for the repetition (or more properly commencement) of Polydore Virgil's days of "promiscuous" kisses. Let these remain, as heretofore, in fiction, and in fiction alone. "A glutted market makes provisions cheap," saith ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... it back with humble apology—all I can hold in both hands, m'sieu'," he said at once. "I would not insult you so, much less Madame Barbille. If she'd been like what I've hinted at, I wouldn't have gone her way, for the promiscuous is not for me. I'll tell you the whole truth of what happened to-day this morning. Last night I met her at the river, and—"Then briefly he told all that had happened to the moment when Jean Jacques had left him at the flume with the words, "Moi, je suis philosophe!" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... now apparent that matters were miserably managed on the battle-field, until Gen. Lee assumed command in person. Most of the trophies of the victory, and thousands of arms, stores, etc. were pillaged by the promiscuous crowds of aliens and Jews who purchased passports thither from the Provost ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... cross-examined into a betrayal that his mind had been entirely neutral in the matter. He thought school much more bearable under this modification of circumstances; and he went on contentedly enough, picking up a promiscuous education chiefly from things that were not intended as education at all. What was understood to be his education was simply the practice of reading, writing, and spelling, carried on by an elaborate appliance of unintelligible ideas, and by much failure in the effort to learn ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... notwithstanding apparent Congressional sanction, that I interpose with a feeling of relief a veto in a case where I find it unnecessary to determine the merits of the application. In speaking of the promiscuous and ill-advised grants of pensions which have lately been presented to me for approval, I have spoken of their "apparent Congressional sanction" in recognition of the fact that a large proportion of these bills have never been submitted to a majority of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... places are filled by a population of many thousands of miserable creatures. The houses in which they live are altogether unfit for human beings, and every apartment is filled with a promiscuous crowd of men, women and children, in a state of filth and misery. In many of the houses there is scarcely any ventilation. Dunghills lie in the vicinity of the dwellings, and from the extremely defective sewerage, filth of ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... the report of the Secretary for 1893 that the vicious system of promiscuous free distribution of its departmental documents be abandoned is again urged. These publications may well be furnished without cost to public libraries, educational institutions, and the officers and libraries of States and of the Federal Government; but from all individuals ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... whole question is summed up in the statement that the ability to produce library books when called for, depends strictly upon keeping them in their proper place: and this is quite incompatible with promiscuous ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... in 1681. Mrs. Randolph, when attending Mr. Willard's preaching at the South Church, was observed "to make a curtsey" at the name of Jesus "even in prayer time"; and the colony was threatened with "gynecandrical or that which is commonly called Mixt or Promiscuous Dancing," and with marriage according to the form of the Established Church. The old order was changing, but not without producing friction and bitterness of spirit. The orthodox brethren stigmatized Ratcliffe as "Baal's priest," and the ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... promiscuous and indecent splashing down of dead people in so many wells, is bad. It surrounds Death with revolting associations, that insensibly become connected with those whom Death is approaching. Indifference and avoidance are the natural result; and all the softening influences of the great ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... shall not be understood as involving the rich in a promiscuous censure. I know as amiable examples among these and among their children, as among others of the society. But we must naturally expect more deviations among the rich, number for number, than ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Gentleman and peasant, Protestant and Catholic, priest and layman, all were plundered, maltreated, outraged. The indignation became daily more general and more intense. There were frequent skirmishes between the soldiery and promiscuous bands of peasants, citizens, and students; conflicts in which the Spaniards were invariably victorious. What could such half-armed and wholly untrained partisans effect against the bravest and most experienced troops in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 'you, sir,' 'you, madam,' 'my Lord, you——,' etc.; we reserve 'thou' for the special case of addressing the Deity. The application of the motive of courtesy is here reversed; it would be irreverent to merge this vast personality in a promiscuous assemblage. ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... Around these wonders, as I cast a look, The trumpet sounded, and the temple shook, And all the nations, summoned at the call, From diff'rent quarters, fill the crowded hall: Of various tongues the mingled sounds were heard; In various garbs promiscuous throngs appeared; Thick as the bees that with the spring renew Their flow'ry toils, and sip the fragrant dew, When the winged colonies first tempt the sky, O'er dusky fields and shaded waters fly; Or, settling, seize the sweets the blossoms yield, And ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... it. It told a familiar story. The prisoner's gang had started a fight in the street, probably with a scheme of ultimate robbery in view, and the police had come upon it unexpectedly. The rest had got away with an assortment of promiscuous bruises. The "Kid" stood his ground, and went down with two "cops" on top of him after a valiant battle, in which he had performed the feat that entitled him to honorable mention henceforth in the felonious annals of the gang. There ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... concert finished at ten, we adjourned to the Zamaconas' (Minister of Mexico) first ball, and I hope, for them, their only one. It was one of those soirees where people appropriate the forks and spoons. It cost, they say, ten thousand dollars. The assemblage was promiscuous, to say the least. Every one who asked for an invitation got one, and went. The Minister had hired the house next the Legation, and cut doors into it so that there should be plenty of room, but even then ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... rebellion, however real it may at first have seemed, had passed away? Sir Michael O'Dwyer protested, it is true, against General Dyer's monstrous "crawling order," and it was promptly disallowed. But what of many other "orders" which were not disallowed? What of the promiscuous floggings and whippings, the indiscriminate arrests and confiscations, the so-called "fancy punishments" designed not so much to punish individual "rebels" as to terrorise and humiliate? What of the whole judicial or quasi-judicial administration of martial law? The essential ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... they were deficient, both were compelled to make great innovations. The frame of government which Numa formed was democratic and popular to the last extreme, goldsmiths and flute-players and shoemakers constituting his promiscuous, many-colored commonalty. Lycurgus was rigid and aristocratical, banishing all the base and mechanic arts to the company of servants and strangers, and allowing the true citizens no implements but the spear ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... let it pass, without looking twice at the car itself, which indeed was disguised out of knowledge in the promiscuous mire of many countries; but the red eyes behind the driver's goggles were not so slow. Down went his feet on clutch and brake without a second's interval; round spun the car in a skid that tore studs from ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... of fifteen, hastily laid aside her novel and did her best to remove the cups and saucers from the breakfast table, not omitting to break one in her hurry. Meanwhile her mother closed the kitchen door, caught up from the dining-room sofa a promiscuous pile of hats, coats, rubbers and shawls, threw them into a convenient closet, placed the colored cloth on the table and hastened to open the front ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... his pottery, his pewter-work, and particularly his bookbindings, of which he was very proud. And he was turning his wife into a copy of himself, perverting her by his extravagant opinions and his promiscuous friendships, so that the little devotee who had been confided to his keeping was now on the high road to every kind of folly. She still went to mass and partook of the holy communion; but she was each day growing more and more familiar with wrong-doing. A disaster must ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... This promiscuous association is tacitly regarded as a necessary evil, the suppression of which would produce alarming and disastrous effects upon the community at large. The passions, indolence, and the love of dress and display are the main agents in producing the class of women we have under consideration. ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... his Diamonds pours apace; 75 Th' embroider'd King who shows but half his face, And his refulgent Queen, with pow'rs combin'd Of broken troops an easy conquest find. Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, in wild disorder seen, With throngs promiscuous strow the level green. 80 Thus when dispers'd a routed army runs, Of Asia's troops, and Afric's sable sons, With like confusion different nations fly, Of various habit, and of various dye, The pierc'd battalions dis-united ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... the foundation a gallery had been raised, which was covered with an awning, and was occupied by a dense mass of white and colored ladies. On another side the gentlemen of the procession stood. The other sides were thronged with a promiscuous multitude of all colors. After singing and prayer, the Hon. Nicholas Nugent, speaker of the house of assembly, descended from the platform by a flight of stairs into the cellar, escorted by two missionaries. The sealed phial was then placed in his hand, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... polygamy, being a secondary precept of the natural law, failed in its application in that age of lapsed humanity, when a woman was better one of many wives, protected by one husband, than exposed to promiscuous violence and ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... rich men's tables. But in a commercial country, a busy country, time becomes precious, and therefore hospitality is not so much valued. No doubt there is still room for a certain degree of it; and a man has a satisfaction in seeing his friends eating and drinking around him. But promiscuous hospitality is not the way to gain real influence. You must help some people at table before others; you must ask some people how they like their wine oftener than others. You therefore offend more people than you please. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... swimming after a cocked hat—there, a group of ragged wretches scraping sea-weed from a dripping officer of the staff; noise, uproar, and confusion every where; smart aid-de-camps mounted on donkeys; trim field-pieces "horsed" by a promiscuous assemblage of men, women, cows, ponies, and asses. Crowds of idle country-people thronging the little quay and obstructing the passages, gazed upon the whole with eyes of wonderment and surprise, but evidently enjoying all the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Ingling." Another, a little boy of eight years old, was found to be firmly impressed with a belief in the existence of dragons, and openly stated that it was his intention when he grew up, to rush forth sword in hand for the deliverance of captive princesses, and the promiscuous slaughter of giants. Not one child among the number interrogated had ever heard of Mungo Park,—some inquiring whether he was at all connected with the black man that swept the crossing; and others whether ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... man of sense ever loved a Tiptoe. So they continue at home until the house is broken up; and then they retire in a galaxy to some provincial Belle Vue-terrace or Prospect-place; where they endeavour to forestall the bachelors with promiscuous orange-blossoms and maidenly susceptibilities. We have characterised these heart-burning efforts after "station," as originating with, and maintained by, the female branches of the family; and they are so—but, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... ever get out, and the man who is running them will make a big hole in somebody's bank account," said one informant meditatively. "However, there's no use wasting time trying to give him advice. I strolled round one morning promiscuous, and sat down in his office. 'See here, Colonel, you're ploughing a bad patch,' I says, 'and having a knowledge of good ones I might tell you something if I ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... great power, although its officials in Duke or Creek Town are no longer allowed to go chopping and whipping promiscuous- like, because the Consul-General has a prejudice against this sort of thing, and the Effik is learning that it is nearly as unhealthy to go against his Consul-General as against his ju-ju. So I do not believe you will ever get the truth ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the king of menaces thrown out by the agitators, he began to think of retiring from Hampton Court, and of putting himself in some place of safety. The guards were doubled upon him; the promiscuous concourse of people restrained; a more jealous care exerted in attending his person; all under color of protecting him from danger, but really with a view of making him uneasy in his present situation. These artifices soon ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... it is too bad of you," said the lady with some pardonable irritation. "Why do you bring people to dinner in this promiscuous way? It will quite upset the table. Just fancy asking an old Welsh clergyman to dine, who has not the slightest pretensions to being a gentleman, when one has the Prime Minister and a Bishop ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... continue to hold; but such supplies within the reach of Confederate armies I regarded as much contraband as arms or ordnance stores. Their destruction was accomplished without bloodshed and tended to the same result as the destruction of armies. I continued this policy to the close of the war. Promiscuous pillaging, however, was discouraged and punished. Instructions were always given to take provisions and forage under the direction of commissioned officers who should give receipts to owners, if at home, and turn the property over to officers of the quartermaster or commissary departments ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to over-emphasize the voluptuary in Mr. Pepys, but it is Mr. Pepys, the promiscuous amourist; stringing his lute (God forgive him!) on a Sunday, that is the outstanding figure in the Diary. Mr. Pepys attracts us, however, in a host of other aspects—Mr. Pepys whose nose his jealous wife ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... striking face and her expert interest in horses and yachts; Highland shooting-lodges, English hunting-fields, claimed her for their own. Southern Europe, the Nile, Bayreuth—in short, wherever social life was bright, comfortable and select, there she turned up promiscuous, as the spirit moved her, to be welcomed open-armed as a matter of course. Men, young and old, continued to pay her homage, which was not just the sort of homage they paid to Frances; proposals of marriage were, or might have been if not nipped in the bud, almost as plentiful as invitations to ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge |
