"Rustic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... place in a densely shaded alley of the garden of the Palazzo Costi one sultry afternoon of the early autumn. The youthful couple were seated very near each other upon a rustic bench. Massetti held Zuleika's small, soft hand in his and the electric touch of her tiny and shapely fingers thrilled him as the touch of female fingers had never thrilled him before. He gazed into the liquid depths of her dark, glowing eyes and their subtile fire seemed to melt his ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... warned us that the shortening days must soon end our twilight drives, and the moonlight nights were too chilly to linger long in the rustic arbors or shady nooks outside. With the peculiar charm of this season of the year there is always a touch of sadness in nature, and it seemed doubly so to me, as my engagement was not one of unmixed joy and satisfaction. Among all conservative ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... above Jove's classic sway A place was won it: The rustic sculptor motioned; then ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... intolerably dull, that she hated the quiet of the place, that she longed for Leeds, and the exciting bustle of the streets; and in the evenings she wrote long letters to the girl-friends she had left behind there, describing with petulant vivacity her tribe of rustic admirers. At the harvest-time she went back on a fortnight's visit to friends; the evening before her departure she promised Anthony to give him her answer on her return. But, instead, she avoided him, pretended ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... We ought however clearly to understand whether 'agrestis,' used by English botanists, is meant to imply a literally field flower, or only a 'rustic' one, which might as properly grow in a wood. I shall always myself use 'agrestis' in the literal sense, and 'rustica' for 'rustique.' I see no reason, in the present case, for separating the Polite from the Rustic flower: the agrestis, D. 449 ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... in dealing and mixing with us; but I was personally of the opinion that it was easier for us to walk through China than it would be for two Chinese, dressed as Chinese, to walk through Great Britain or America. What would the canny Highlander or the rural English rustic think of two pig-tailed men tramping through ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... rustic with idle curiosity, as the old man entered the store and deposited his bundle on the counter. Marsden sat on a chair with no back, nursing his knee and assuming indifference to ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... these dancers! They seem to have no bones. One after another they come in line upon the mighty wall, and each one bends backward to the knees of the one who follows. As I stood and looked at them for the first time, almost I heard the twitter of flutes, the rustic wail of the African hautboy, the monotonous boom of the derabukkeh, cries of a far-off gaiety such as one often hears from the Nile by night. But these cries came down the long avenues of the centuries; this gaiety was distant in the vasty halls of ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... her rank required it, and thought no more of them as articles of finery than a gentleman dressed for dinner thinks of his clean linen and well-brushed coat, the consciousness of which embarrasses the rustic beau on a Sunday. ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... and jollity was going forward. Tables were spread, and great preparations were making for the rustic feast. Some lads and lasses were dancing on the green before the house, while others of the young men were buying ribands, gloves, and such toys, of a pedlar ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... worth their weight in silver, and such tobacco could be obtained only by those about the Court, as a matter of favour, too, rather than by purchase. Lord John would, indeed, have stared aghast had he seen the rustic to whom he had given so valuable a present cast them into a ditch. He rode towards the Maple Gate, excusing his haste volubly to Sir Constans, who was on foot, and walked beside him a little way, pressing him to ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... a day of days, and the artful Hawke laughed as he smoked his cigar upon a rustic bench in the castle Garden. Miss Genie was at his side, pouting, petulant, provokingly pretty and duly agnostic ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... of their bedroom, and to supply them with toilette requisites according to her own very limited notions and possessions. The Dame was a very homely, hard-featured lady, deaf, and extremely fat and heavy, one of the old uncultivated rustic gentry who had lagged far behind the general civilisation of the country, and regarded all refinements as effeminate French vanities. She believed, likewise, all that was said against Queen Mary, whom she looked on as barely restrained from plunging a dagger into Elizabeth's ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... particularly gracious: she regretted his early disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of friendship as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and showed him her album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote: "Rustic trees, your dark branches shed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of further pursuit, he turned off the highway a little beyond, and rumbled noisily down a rustic lane between high banks and hedges where sumac was turning red. Strangely enough, there was something very comforting about his enormous crawling contraption. It was docile and reliable, like an elephant. The crashing clangour of its movement was soon forgotten—became, ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... the room with a rapid, even step, shook hands with the Judge, and got himself out of the room with an easy briskness which the older man, mindful of his own rustic ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... interest to his recital of scenes that had been enacted there may years before; and one year later had them all repeated, with may more, from the lips of Black Hawk himself. How changed the scene. Then it was in its rustic state, now this fine pavilion, being a long, low structure, built somewhat after the Swiss cottage plan, with broad sloping roofs, and wide, long porches on the north and south sides, the one facing the road and the other fronting the river and giving ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... contrary adjectives come up as I think of him. To begin with, there was something physically rustic which suggested to the end his farm-boy origin. His voice was sweet and its Scottish cadences most musical, and the extraordinary sociability of his nature made friends for him as much among women as among men; he had, moreover, a sort of physical dignity; but neither in dress nor in ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... you are a fossil beside him. You talk of making good citizens, quite in the old Hellenic style. Oh yes, I recognised the incurable Aristotle in your exhortation, though you did address it to two score of rustic British children. But, my dear fellow, you are a philosopher in a barbarian's court, and your barbarian has been reading his Darwin. Where you see a ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to run and play in the meadows; a few stayed to help the farmer's wife to put away her earthenware. M. Paul called me from among these to come out and sit near him under a tree—whence he could view the troop gambolling, over a wide pasture— and read to him whilst he took his cigar. He sat on a rustic bench, and I at the tree-root. While I read (a pocket-classic—a Corneille—I did not like it, but he did, finding therein beauties I never could be brought to perceive), he listened with a sweetness of calm the more impressive from the impetuosity of his general nature; the deepest happiness ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... interesting," said Alice. "I should not like to miss the opportunity of going to Mrs. Hoskyn's. People so often ask me whether I have been there, and whether I know this, that, and the other celebrated person, that I feel quite embarrassed by my rustic ignorance." ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... mill, she made no pretense of stopping, but turned into a trail leading through a field of stubble toward a creek. Crossing by a rustic bridge we continued on the trail, which now led uphill to one of the most picturesque spots in the country. The Eagle's Nest, it was called—the summit of a cliff that rose sheer into the air to a height of hundreds of feet above the forest at its base. From this elevated point ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... chance that she saw to speak with her father in private. He was sauntering out the next morning after breakfast. Daisy joined him, and they strolled along through the grounds, giving here and there directions to the gardener, till they came near one of the pleasant rustic seats, under the shade of ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... difficulty, the reconciliation of correspondence with contraries; for such, it is deeply to be regretted, are too often the individual's mind, and the dwelling-place it chooses. The polished courtier brings his refinement and duplicity with him to ape the Arcadian rustic in Devonshire; the romantic rhymer takes a plastered habitation, with one back window looking into the Green Park; the soft votary of luxury endeavors to rise at seven, in some Ultima Thule of frosts and storms; and the rich stock-jobber calculates his ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... a paragon. Though I don't either. It's stupid throwing away one's money when one's no chance. But go into the gambling saloon, and look at the faces. Very comic ones there are there. There's one old woman with a rustic headband and a moustache, simply delicious! Our prince there's another, a good one too. A majestic figure with a nose like an eagle's, and when he puts down a thaler, he crosses himself under his ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... cried Jimmy. "Let her see me laugh! I told her she wasn't to go for a few days yet, because we were sawin' the Kingfisher's stump up into a rustic sate for her, and we were goin' to carry her out to it, and she was to sit there and sew, and umpire the fishin', and whichiver bait she told the Bass to take, that one of us would be gettin' it. And she was pleased ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of Middleshire in a county-guide, which spoke highly, as the phrase is, of Lackley Park, and took up our abode, our journey ended, at a wayside inn where, in the days of leisure, the coach must have stopped for luncheon and burnished pewters of rustic ale been handed up as straight as possible to outsiders athirst with the sense of speed. We stopped here for mere gaping joy of its steep-thatched roof, its latticed windows, its hospitable porch, and allowed a couple of days to elapse in vague undirected strolls and sweet sentimental observance ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... raised, and near it, the bell-cote of the Palais de Justice and the spire of the church break the line of the old houses. Ferns grow by the roadside on every bank, but the cottages and farms are below the average of rustic beauty that one soon demands in this part ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... half-timbered, with high, red-brick chimneys, quaint gables and tiny dormer windows—a delightful old Elizabethan house with a comfortable, homely look. Behind it a well-kept flower garden, with a tree-fringed meadow beyond, while the well-rolled gravelled walks, the rustic fencing, and the pretty curtains at the casements betrayed the fact that the rustic homestead was not the ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... took out of her pocket that little brown French classic, Pharamond, and started again to accompany the French storyteller, advancing on the very tallest of stilts that storyteller ever mounted. It was a wonder truly that Clary on her mossy bank, and by a rustic stile, had not preferred the voices of the winds and the waters, the last boom of the beetle, the last screech of the martin, the last loud laugh of the field-workers borne over a hedge or two on the breeze, to the click and patter of these absurd ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... one in the literary language—who are rich enough to keep a bank for their inferiors almost to the end of time. The depreciation of it by "glaikit Englishers" (I am a glaikit Englisher who does not depreciate), simply because it is unfamiliar and rustic-looking, is silly enough. But its best practitioners are sometimes prone to forget that nothing ready-made will do as poetry, and that you can no more take a short cut to Parnassus by spelling good "guid" and liberally using "ava," than you can execute the same journey by calling ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... endowed you with much! Though not adjusted with nicety, at least you are strongly built. I wonder whether you were born a bear or whether you have come to it through your rustic life, with its tilling of crops and its trading with peasants? Yet no; I believe that, even if you had received a fashionable education, and had mixed with society, and had lived in St. Petersburg, you would still have been just the kulak [26] that you are. The only difference is that circumstances, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... caused him, in order to safeguard himself in his palace, to secure all the lower windows on the first floor (where to-day is the Sala de' Dugento) with iron bars, square and very strong. The said Duke also added, opposite S. Pietro Scheraggio, the walls of rustic work that are beside the palace, in order to enlarge it; and in the thickness of the wall he made a secret staircase, in order to ascend and descend unseen. And at the foot of the said wall of rustic work he made ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... had finished prosing about his colonnade, I turned to Mr. L——, and asked if he remembered the account which Coxe the traveller gives of the Polish princess Czartoryski's charming fete champetre and the illuminated rustic bridge of one arch, the reflection of which in the water was so strong as to deceive the eye, and to give the whole the appearance of a brilliant circle suspended in the air. Mr. L—— seemed enchanted with my description, and eagerly said that he would some night have ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... a cause more deep, More solemn far the rustic doth assign, To the strange restlessness of those wan leaves; The cross, he deems, the blessed cross, whereon The meek Redeemer bowed His head to death, Was formed of Aspen wood; and since that hour Through all its race the pale tree hath sent down A thrilling consciousness, a secret awe, Making ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... master-work, it fired the ambitions of the Felibres, enlarged the horizon of possibilities for the new speech, and earned for its author the admiration of critics in and out of France. Original in language and in conception, full of the charm of rustic life, containing a pathetic tale of love, a sweet human interest, and glowing with pictures of the strange and lovely landscapes of Provence, the poem charmed all readers, and will doubtless always rank as a work ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... softly blow, That, cold and famine scorning, even now The feather'd warblers still delight the ear, And all of Summer, but her leaves, is here. Here, on this winding garden's sloping bound, 'Tis sweet to listen to each rustic sound, The distant dog-bark, and the rippling rill, Or catch the sparkling of the water-mill. The tranquil scene each tender feeling moves; As the eye rests on Holwood's naked groves, A tear bedims the sight for Chatham's son, For him whose god-like eloquence could stun, Like ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... from the Holy Land, and fill the area of the Campo Santo with that sacred soil! The old house stood upon about as perverse a little patch of the planet as ever harbored a half-starved earth-worm. It was as sandy as Sahara and as thirsty as Tantalus. The rustic aid-de-camps of the household used to aver that all fertilizing matters "leached" through it. I tried to disprove their assertion by gorging it with the best of terrestrial nourishment, until I became ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the gate, prowled toward the house. Flabby from the intensity of study, he longed for the stimulus of Claire's smile. But as he stared up at the great squares of the clear windows, at the flare of white columns in the porch-lights, that smile seemed unreachable. He felt like a rustic at court. From the shelter of the prickly holly hedge he watched the house. It was "some kind of a party?—or what would folks like these call a party?" Limousines were arriving; he had a glimpse of silken ankles, frothy underskirts; heard easy laughter; ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the patriarchal age of the world still surviving in the desert tents of the Arab,—while the mythic, anthropomorphic period is still extant in Persia, China, and India, and even among the nations of the West, in the rustic nooks and corners of the Roman Catholic countries of Europe. But the existing nations, which still preserve that old ethnic worship and the mediaeval superstitions, are mere lingerers and camp-followers in the march of humankind. Under the ample skirts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... disputants. The wide forests of the country had hitherto been the hunting-grounds of the prince, and not a gun could be fired there without his permission. To give up these "happy hunting-grounds" was a severe demand upon the eager sportsman who occupied the Rudolstadt throne, and the rustic population would gladly have spared him had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... covered with a white cloth, held a brush and comb, and supported a tiny looking-glass; small paraphernalia of vanity. No essences or perfumes or powders; no curling sticks or crimping pins; no rats or cats, cushions or frames, or skeletons of any sort, were there for the help of the rustic beauty; and neither did she need them. So you would have said if you had seen her when her toilette was done. The soft outlines of her figure were neither helped nor hidden by any artificial contrivances. Her abundant dark hair was in smooth ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... entered through the gate and advanced toward Eve, who with anxious solicitude cautioned him against colliding with the trees or walking over the flower-beds. Things had changed in the cedars' shade, and now there were three rustic chairs and an ancient iron table there. The Doctor sat himself straightly in one of the chairs ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a most artful interchange and blending of romantic beauty and comic drollery. The lost Princess and the heir-apparent of Bohemia, two of the noblest and loveliest beings that ever fancy conceived, occupy the centre of the picture, while around them are clustered rustic shepherds and shepherdesses amid their pastimes and pursuits, the whole being enlivened by the tricks and humours of a merry pedler and pickpocket. For simple purity and sweetness, the scene which unfolds the loves and characters ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... things as well as they could, looking to a bad turn in the weather. If it did come they would have a sort of rustic shelter under which they could manage to keep their fire going, and in that way get some ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... Earl of Surrey's Lyrics, many things tasting of a noble birth, and worthy of a noble mind. The "Shepherds' Kalendar" hath much poesy in his eclogues, indeed, worthy the reading, if I be not deceived. That same framing of his {82} style to an old rustic language, I dare not allow; since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sannazaro in Italian, did affect it. Besides these, I do not remember to have seen but few (to speak boldly) printed that have poetical ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... Creator; Of its innocence and quiet, Ere the foot of man had pressed it; We have sung its days of progress Since the first rude cot was fashioned; We have sung its days of pleasure 'Mid its households and its people; We have sung its days of profit In the gain of cents and dollars; Days of rustic simple manners, Days of industry and labor, Days of glory and of triumph, Days of pride and exultation. Now, there came a fatal era, When the busy hum of traffic Filled no more the stirring places; When the noisy roll of carriage Ceased to sound along ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... time before 1680, when his manuscript was completed. Of the attorney's clerk hypothesis, on the other hand, there is not the faintest vestige of a tradition. It has been evolved out of the fertile imaginations of embarrassed Stratfordians, seeking for some explanation of the Stratford rustic's marvelous acquaintance with law and legal terms and legal life. But Mr. Churton Collins has not the least hesitation in throwing over the tradition which has the warrant of antiquity and setting up in its stead this ridiculous invention, for which not only is there no shred of positive evidence, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... over the hatch-door, her rosy cheek half-resting on the rough shoulder of her rough husband, was the pretty Mistress Maud, the personification of rustic English beauty; then the picturesque grouping of the old and worn, but still gallant and manly sailors—our friend of the wooden legs a little in the fore-ground, supported by the quizzical seaman, and a tall stiff bony-looking "Black Sal" of a woman on the other, whose complexion ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Eclogue, Virgil represents a rustic maid, Thestylis, preparing for the reapers a salad called moretum. He wrote, also, a poem bearing this title, in which he describes the composition ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... moss stuffed into the interstices. Instead of the clapboards, wherewith, to the west of the Alleghany range, the dwellings of the poorer class of country people are usually roofed, the palmetto reed had been made use of, a selection that gave the hamlet a peculiar air of rustic simplicity. The houses were for the most part without windows, and their interior received light through the chimney or door, which latter, instead of being of wood, consisted of a buffalo hide suspended ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... to complete his doom, his tender susceptible heart begins to flutter with right serious ado at the sight of a dame of high social position who hardly deigns to cast even a glance at the moneyless, ill-clad, clumsy, rustic lad,—sorrows enough for a soul far better equipped for battle with Fortune than this poor Cossak lad. Total ruin is now dangerously nigh. And here Gogol becomes high-handed. He must be off, away from this suffocation of disappointment ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... the lawns in the sunshine, saw him come careering past, making heavy weather of it, and smiled in salute; Shiela on a rustic ladder, pruning-knife in hand, gazed over her garden wall until the woods swallowed rotund rider and steed. As she turned to descend, her glance fell upon Hamil who was crossing the lawn directly below. For a moment they looked at each other without sign of recognition; then scarcely aware of ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... Rogue Magister,' he said, and he adopted a canonical tone that went heavily with his rustic pose. 'A marriage made and consummated and properly blessed by holy friar there is no undoing. You are learned enough to know that. Rogue that you be, I am very glad that you are trapped by this marriage. Well I know that you have dangled too much with petticoats, to the great scandal of this ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... contented with less than the whole world. No one but a woman could have composed this scandal on the sex. Sometimes the green lanes are crossed by gates, over which the trees in the hedges each side form a leafy arch. On the top bar of such a gate, rustic lovers often write love messages to their ladies, with a fragment of chalk. Unable from some cause or other to keep the appointed rendezvous, they leave a few explanatory words in conspicuous white letters, so that the gate answers the same ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... house, the oldest in the village, was several hundred years old; and out of all the crevices between the stones hung harebells and other wild flowers; one side of it and much of the roof were covered with ivy. This house was only about ten feet square, and it looked to me like a great rustic flower pot. ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... usual decision. It was abrupt and unhesitating. My demand had evidently taken his "lordship" by surprise. He started from the magisterial chair, in which he was yet to awe so many successions of rustic functionaries, and with a flushed cheek asked "Whether I was lunatic, or supposed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... enemy!); Thus equally I grieve thee, Thus evil do whether I take or leave thee; And so 'tis better thus, That I a wretch, cruel and infamous, False, impious, fierce, abandoned, wicked, banned By God and man, should slay thee by my hand, Since buried here, Within the rustic entrails dark and drear Of this rude realm of stone, My worst misfortune shall remain unknown. My fury, too, shall gain A novel kind of vengeance when thou'rt slain, Remaining satisfied That Philip, too, by the same stroke has died, If in ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Lincoln had ever seen, even among the log shacks of the west. He knew now that he had been misdirected, but as there seemed to be nobody about the forge he concluded that he had better go to the yellow house and inquire within. He passed down the lane and over the little rustic bridge that spanned the brook. Just beyond was another home-made gate ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... pleasant. We were all dressed as peasants, and the costumes were taken from a special wardrobe of the prince's. It would have been ridiculous to choose any other dresses, as the Elector wore one of the same kind himself. General Kettler was the best disguised of us all; he looked the rustic to the life. My mistress was ravishing. We only danced quadrilles and German dances. There were only four or five ladies of the highest rank; all the others, who were more or less pretty, were favourites of the prince, all his days a great ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... other garments belonging to a certain Mrs. Walton, so called, and perhaps a miner's suit that would fit Mr. Louis Hamblin, alias Jake Walton, who in St. Louis recently tried to dispose of costly diamonds which he had brought all the way from Australia, for his rustic sweetheart—eh? Ha, ha, ha!" and the jubilant man burst into a ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Transfiguration" is unique in that it is an open air building, the altar only being roofed. Towering pines stand as aisles and the vaulted ceiling is the clear blue dome of heaven. Rustic and simple, it harmonizes exquisitely with its surroundings, and strangely insensible must that worshiper be who, as he kneels in this Nature shrine, and the organ peals forth its solemn notes, with a wonderful accompaniment ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... remember. But when the nightingale set up his song every other bird stopped. They seemed as much spellbound by the singing as he was, and Philomel had the field to himself till the song was over. It was as if Jenny Lind had come into a country church when the rustic choir of boys ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... rustic life is the child's form of caste-feeling. The country child is the aristocrat; he has des relations suivies with game-keepers, nay, with the most interesting mole-catchers. He has a perfectly self-conscious joy that he is not in a square or a suburb. No essayist ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... 'scape the queen of funerals. Ever new My after fame shall grow, while pontiffs climb With silent maids the Capitolian height. "Born," men will say, "where Aufidus is loud, Where Daunus, scant of streams, beneath him bow'd The rustic tribes, from dimness he wax'd bright, First of his race to wed the Aeolian lay To notes of Italy." Put glory on, My own Melpomene, by genius won, And crown me of thy grace with ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... a rustic knife, With this their feeling task they plann'd, And often in a friendly strife, They claim'd it ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... of the old village games and sports have survived. The village green, the source of so much innocent happiness, is no more; and with it has disappeared much of that innocent and light-hearted cheerfulness which brightened the hours of labour, and refreshed the spirit of the toiling rustic, when his daily task was done. Times have changed, and we have changed with them. We could not now revive many of the customs and diversions in which our fathers took delight. Serious and grave men no longer take pleasure ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... the only expression on the rustic's face as he rose and peered furtively round to calculate his chances of escape. A little ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... Payne is not of the traditional southern peculiarities. He resembles rather a Pennsylvania mountaineer than a Kentucky rustic. ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... the most skilful artists were procured from the adjacent cities; [12] a considerable share of the revenue was devoted to the public amusements; and the magnificence of the games of the theatre and circus was considered as the happiness and as the glory of Antioch. The rustic manners of a prince who disdained such glory, and was insensible of such happiness, soon disgusted the delicacy of his subjects; and the effeminate Orientals could neither imitate, nor admire, the severe simplicity which Julian always maintained, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... up the glen At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze, Sees full before him, gliding without tread, An image with a glory round its head; The enamoured rustic worships its fair hues, Nor knows he makes the shadow, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her husband approached ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... road led. Great clusters of ferns grew in the swampy meadows, and many brilliant colored swamp flowers were in blossom, giving the otherwise desolate scene a touch of color. Stone fences bordered some of the meadows and now and then a rustic cottage with its brown-stained sides appeared. For a number of miles we passed through a country where on both sides of the road grew thickets of oak, yellow and white birch and fragrant pine. Interspersed among this growth were numberless chestnut, ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... at a distance, had the appearance of a rustic temple.[425] The form, though a little capricious, was picturesque; and it stood so completely embosomed in rich and variegated foliage, and commanded so fine a swell of landscape, that the visitor must be cold indeed who could approach it with the compass of Palladio in one ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... green and yellow crust. The paths were bounded on one side by the slope of the hill, from the top of which came the invisible tinkling of a bell, and where from time to time there appeared on the blue background of the sky the massive outline of a slowly moving cow. On the other, a rustic railing of branches painted white bounded the path and, beyond it, in the valley, lay the dark flower beds with their melancholy solitude and their fountains that wept day and night in an atmosphere of old age and abandon. The closely matted brambles stretched from tree to tree ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... we place him first as a poet. We think, too, of that book so unique in influence, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," nor forget that, besides producing it, Mrs. Stowe, in such a work as "Old Town Folks," started the long line of studies of New England rustic life which, not confined to that section, have become so welcome a phase of later American art in fiction. Among younger authors called untimely from their labors, it is hard to resist the temptation to ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... renaissance of art, and by a sort of evolutionary process developed cards monochrome and coloured, "Christmas Bell" cards, palettes, scrolls, circular and oval panels, stars, fans, crescents, and other shaped novelties; embossed cards, the iridescent series, the rustic and frosted cards, the folding series, the jewel cards, the crayons, and private cards on which the sender's name and sentiments are printed in gold, silver, or colours; hand-painted cards with landscapes, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... the house, when, emerging upon a clearing, they came to a rustic bench looking across a short field lined ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... colonel's example encouraged the daily practice of hard and even excessive drinking, which gave him the gout. "The loss of so many busy and idle hours were not compensated for by any elegant pleasure," says he; "and my temper was insensibly soured by the society of rustic officers, who were alike deficient in the knowledge of scholars and the manners of gentlemen." The picture of Gibbon flushed with wine at the mess-table, with these hard-drinking squires around him, must certainly ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... still belonged to a member of his family. That line of gray heights seen from the door was what Burns alluded to when he facetiously dubbed his friend 'Illustrious lord of Laggan's many hills.' This cottage had been the retreat of the High School master in his hours of rustic vacation. There was a difficulty, which we discussed over a glass of most welcome spirits and water furnished by the farmer: Did this neat room form a part of the dwelling of Nicol? It appeared not. It was a modern addition. The original ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... Gonerilla is no longer a stranger," added Madame Petrucci, "we will leave her to the rustic society of Angiolino while we show Miss Hamelyn ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... him that flaccidity, that pallor of the cheeks where the skin was once as tight as a drum and bursting with the good sound health of a man without a care? What has put those black circles round his eyes and dulled their rustic vivacity? Did you ever expect to see lines of care on that forehead? Who would have supposed that the brain of that colossus could be excited? The man has felt his heart! I am a judge of remorse, just as you ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... forward with a degree of diffidence, which, if it did not deserve the epithet of modesty, could incur nothing harsher than that of bashfulness. It was printed at the obscure market-town press of Newark, was altogether a very homely, rustic work, and no attempt was made to bespeak for it a good name from the critics. It was truly an innocent affair and an unpretending performance. But notwithstanding these, at least seeming, qualities of young doubtfulness and timidity, they did not soften the austere nature of the bleak and ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... operations of nature. The type of all is that very ancient Phrygian cult in which by the side of Ma, mother of mountains and mistress of herds, stood Papas, father of the race of shepherds and inventor of the rustic pipe.[183-1] Quite characteristic was the classification of the gods worshipped by the miners and metal workers of Phrygian Ida. This was into right and left, and the general name of Dactyli, Fingers, was given them. The right gods broke the spells which the left wove, the right ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... (partly magical or religious) performed at rustic and agricultural festivals, like the Epilenios, celebrated in Greece at the gathering of the grapes. (1) Of such a dance we get a glimpse in the Bible (Judges xxi. 20) when the elders advised the children of Benjamin to go ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... bosom of the waves, added still more to the magic of the picture and the charms of the illusion. To this spectacle succeeded scenes of another kind, taken from rural life,—a Flemish living picture, with its pleasant-faced, jolly people, and its rustic ease; and groups of inhabitants from every province of France, giving an impression that all parts of the Empire were convened at this fete. In fine, a wonderful variety of attractions in turn arrested the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... with assurance, "why are you so excessively dull? The dynasties recorded in the rustic histories, which have been written from age to age, have, I am fain to think, invariably assumed, under false pretences, the mere nomenclature of the Han and T'ang dynasties. They differ from the events ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... thy rustic flute Kept not for long its happy, country tone; Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note Of men contention-tost, of men who groan, Which task'd thy pipe too sore, and tired thy throat— 225 It fail'd, and thou wast mute! Yet hadst thou alway visions of our light, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... Castle. The church is "on a little level space about four miles north of the Thames at Eton. From the neighborhood of the church no vestige of hamlet or village is visible, and the aspect of the place is slightly artificial, like a rustic church in a park on a stage. The traveler almost expects to see the grateful peasantry of an opera, cheerfully habited, make their appearance, dancing on ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... very simple. The living room occupied the center, with a sort of winter kitchen and entryway behind it. To each side of the living room were located two bedrooms, one in the front and the other in the rear. Above the living room was a loft which could be reached by a rustic pair of stairs, a loft which could be used only for a storeroom, since it was less than five feet high in the center, sloping to the eaves, front and back. The big chimney was in the rear of the living room, and behind it, in the kitchen, ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... "The rustic Royal Retreat. Princess Lyla will be our hostess. Her mother and father were killed in an airplane accident a year ago and she was the only child. You will also get to meet Lord Narf of the Sea Islands, her husband-by-proxy, who regards ...
— —And Devious the Line of Duty • Tom Godwin
... it seems all at once to become a flower, glowing with scarlet and maroon of varying shades, with here and there a touch of bronze to afford contrast and heighten the intensity of the other colors. This vine is perhaps the best of all vines for use on rustic structures, because it takes hold of rough poles and posts with stout little tendrils or sucker-like discs which ask for no assistance from us ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... him as cleaving firewood. He did his duty with a stupid unconcern which successfully imposed on the soldiers; and as soon as they allowed him to go, he fell to his wood-chopping with the same stolidity and rustic boorishness that had marked ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... Peggotty's, and walked with him to a leafy little summer-house there was at the bottom of the garden, where she sat down on a bench, and I beside her. There was a seat for Mr. Peggotty too, but he preferred to stand, leaning his hand on the small rustic table. As he stood, looking at his cap for a little while before beginning to speak, I could not help observing what power and force of character his sinewy hand expressed, and what a good and trusty companion it was to his honest brow ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... determined resolution rose from the peasants, mingled with pious ejaculations and little scraps of hymn or of prayer. They had all produced from under their smocks rustic weapons of some sort. Ten or twelve had petronels, which, from their antique look and rusty condition, threatened to be more dangerous to their possessors than to the enemy. Others had sickles, scythe-blades, flails, half-pikes, or hammers, while the remainder ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... books and broadsheets. As soon as Patience could venture to leave her brother, she was forced to go to market herself; and there was a staidness and sobriety about her demeanour that kept all impertinence at a distance. Poor Patience, she was not at all the laughing rustic beauty that Emlyn would have been at market. She would never have been handsome, and though she was only a few years over twenty, she was beginning to look weather-beaten and careworn, like the market women about her, ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about to seat himself by the side of Mr. Sheppard, on a rustic bench, when a Negro maid appeared in the doorway carrying a smiling, black-eyed baby. Colonel Zane took the child and, holding it aloft, ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... classical period ae ceased to be sounded as a diphthong by the rustics and by the provincials generally. This is expressly stated by Varro in his treatise on the Latin language (iv. 9, and vii. 96 and 97), in which he gives Mesius and hedus as rustic ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck
... ripe. These palms are not indigenous, but flourish here. The main highway of Banana is a path of clean yellow sand about ten feet wide, shaded by an avenue of these palms and crosses at intervals small tidal streams by rustic wooden bridges. Many tropical trees and shrubs grow on each side of the avenue, and in the bright sunshine the whole forms a very beautiful picture. It is unfortunate that the effect reminds one somewhat forcibly of a transformation scene of a pantomime and thus ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... play the part of a rustic cavalier, if that is what you meant," Osborn said to Kit with a sneer, and then turned to Peter. "I am forced to own that the girl deserves some blame. Although she's impulsive and unconventional, she ought to have seen it was ridiculous to let ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... of a "scornful lady;" and, as Johnson observed, "polluted his will with female resentment." JOHNSON himself, we are told by one who knew him, "had always a metaphysical passion for one princess or other,—the rustic Lucy Porter, or the haughty Molly Aston, or the sublimated methodistic Hill Boothby; and, lastly, the more charming Mrs. Thrale." Even in his advanced age, at the height of his celebrity, we hear his cries of lonely wretchedness. "I ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... competency. In a few weeks he quitted the London suburb where of late he had been living, and, turning to the part of England which he loved best, he presently established himself in a cottage near Exeter, where, with a rustic housekeeper to look after him, he was soon thoroughly at home. Now and then some friend went down into Devon to see him; those who had that pleasure will not forget the plain little house amid its half-wild garden, the cosy book-room with its fine view across ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... time the fellow looked away from Janice, fixing his eyes on Mrs. Meredith. Then he bowed easily and gracefully, saying, "Thank you." Apparently unconscious that for a moment he had left the Somerset burr off his tongue and the rustic pretence from his manner, he ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... run the risk," he said gravely, "if you will share it. Seriously, though, these rustic seats are rather a delusion, aren't they, from the point of view ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... having reference to the formation of the skilful warrior, were put to the test of practice in actual service. There are reliable accounts of Circassian boys who at the age of ten years have gone to the wars, as unable to eat or sleep on the approach of the enemy as in occidental countries are the rustic lads on the eve of a muster of the county militia, at which in addition to the show of red-coats and cocked hats there will be cakes, pop-beer, tumbling, and monkeys. Many a young mountaineer before he has got a beard has "bagged his five Russians." At first, ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... of the simple rustic members at this unbending of a great man may be imagined. To tell the truth, they had looked with little favour upon the intimacy which had sprung up between him and those tyrannical potentates, Messrs. Botcher and Bascom, and many who had the courage of their convictions expressed then ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a mile through a beautiful lawn, whose surface, gently undulating, and studded with young clumps, was dotted over with sheep. At length, descending by a very steep road, I reached a beautiful little stream, over which a rustic bridge was thrown. As I looked down upon the rippling stream beneath, on the surface of which the dusky evening flies were dipping, I made a resolve, if I prospered in his lordship's good graces, to devote a day to the "angle" there, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... hand-to-hand struggle; meanwhile the flock of its own accord returned again to the shepherds. Now one of the Huns who was fighting before the others was making more trouble for the Romans than all the rest. And some rustic made a good shot and hit him on the right knee with a sling, and he immediately fell headlong from his horse to the ground, which thing heartened the Romans still more. And the battle which had begun early in the morning ended at midday, and both sides ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... light her bright lamp in the star-spangled heavens, and shed her silvery rays across the plain, the hunter may lead forth the village belle, and foot it merrily on the mossy greensward, to the sound of the bagpipe and the rustic flute, by fountains which never cease their monotonous but soothing plaint, and under the long shadows of the ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... translator of Daphnis and Chloe, wearied by war and wanderings in Italy, lived under the Restoration among his vines at Veretz, in Touraine. In 1816 he became the advocate of provincial popular rights against the vexations of the Royalist reaction. He is a vine-dresser, a rustic bourgeois, occupied with affairs of the parish. Shall Chambord be purchased for the Duke of Burgundy? shall an intolerant young cure forbid the villagers to dance? shall magistrates harass the humble folk? Such are the questions agitating the country-side, which the vine-dresser ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... combined the attractions of the pleasure garden or public square, with the ornaments and graces of the ball-room and the opera. It is a magnificent parlor abounding in trees, fountains, statuary and rustic retreats. Gilmore's large band of seventy-five to a hundred pieces, occupying an elevated platform in the centre, render excellent music. Fifteen hundred to two thousand gas jets, eveloped by globes of different colors (red, white, blue, yellow and green) and blazing from the curves of immense arches, ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... waiting for her under an enormous fig-tree, a tree so large that the space it shadowed made a pretty parlor, with roof and walls of foliage so dense that not even a tropical shower could penetrate them. He sat in a large wicker-chair, and on the rustic table beside him was a cup of coffee, a couple of flaky biscuits, and a plate of great purple figs, just gathered from the branches above him. When Phyllis came, he pulled a rocking-chair to his side, and touched a little hand-bell. "You shall have some coffee ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... was; the redwood board flaunted the assertion before the eyes of the public (which was a rather limited one, to be sure) in less than half an hour, and the artist, after painting the words in rustic letters a foot long, cut branches of the stiff, ungracious bushes and nailed them to the tree in confirmation and illustration of the fact. He then carefully deposited the paint- pot in a secret place, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... castanets and cymbals, and, in the midst of a rustic crowd, men clad in white tunics, with red bands, lead out an ass, richly harnessed, his tail adorned with ribands and his hoofs painted. A box, covered with a saddle-cloth of yellow linen, sways to and fro upon his back, between two ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... as neither of themselves can sing, Nor yet are sung of others for reward, 345 Die in obscure oblivion, as the thing Which never was; ne ever with regard Their names shall of the later age be heard, But shall in rustic darknes ever lie, Unles they mentiond be ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... pursue a steady system of policy. A class of female religious officials—prophetesses—joined in the ceremonials. These holy women, who were held in very great esteem, prepared the way for the reception of Mariolatry. Instead of temples—rock-altars, cromlechs, and other rustic structures were used among the Celtic nations by the Druids, who were at the same time priests, magicians, and medicine-men. Their religious doctrines, which recall in many particulars those of the Rig-Veda, were perpetuated from generation to ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... which it is capable of receiving, to admire the pedigree of the Pontos hanging over the chimney, and the Ponto crest and arms emblazoned on the wash-hand basin and jug, but to make a thousand reflections on the happiness of a country life—upon the innocent friendliness and cordiality of rustic intercourse; and to sigh for an opportunity of retiring, like Ponto, to my own fields, to my own vine and fig-tree, with a placens uxor in my domus, and a half-score of sweet young pledges of affection sporting round my ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... necessary to respect the customs of the country.' But he, answering nothing to Baldwin, stared yet more fixedly upon the Emperor, and muttered to himself something in his own dialect, which, being interpreted, was to this effect—'Behold, what rustic fellow [Greek: choritaes] is this, to be seated alone while such leaders stand around him!' The movement of his lips did not escape the Emperor, who called to him one that understood the Latin dialect, and enquired what words the man had spoken. When he heard them, the Emperor ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... her to supper, and was very desirous to outdo her as well in magnificence as contrivance; but he found he was altogether beaten in both, and was so well convinced of it, that he was himself the first to jest and mock at his poverty of wit, and his rustic awkwardness. She, perceiving that his raillery was broad and gross, and savored more of the soldier than the courtier, rejoined in the same taste, and fell into it at once, without any sort of reluctance or reserve. For her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... always musette players[17] at the French court, and we find the instrument fully developed at the beginning of the 17th century when Mersenne[18] gives a full description of all its parts. The chief characteristic of the musette was a certain rustic Watteau-like grace. The face of the performer was no longer distorted by inflating the bag; for the long cumbersome drones was substituted a short barrel droner, containing the necessary lengths of tubing for four or five drones, reduced to the smallest ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... a moment the interior of the city to follow between two hedgerows of mastics or aloes, one of those capricious paths which lead one, now up to the summit of a hill, now to the depths of some ravine, very soon the tones of a rustic flute, the modulations of the Djou-wak, will betray some cool and peaceful retreat, some rustic cafe, easily recognized by its facade, pierced with large openings. To my eyes, nothing equals the charm of these little buildings scattered here and there along the edges of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... considered as a horde of thieves and bandits. Magic and astrology were in those days the only fashionable sciences; and as Moses was, it is said, instructed in the wisdom of the Egyptians, it was not difficult for him to inspire veneration and attachment for himself in the rustic and ignorant children of Jacob, and to induce them to accept, in their misery, the discipline he wished to give them. That is very different from what the Jews and our Christ-worshipers wish to make us believe. By what certain rule can ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... each lot, as sold, as wild and nearly as active as deer, had been turned into the field. A joint-stock company of pony-catchers, headed by the champion wrestler of the district—a hawk-nosed, fresh-complexioned, rustic Don Juan—stood ready to be hired, at the moderate rate of sixpence per pony caught and delivered. One carried a bundle of new halters; the others, warmed by a liberal distribution of beer, seemed as much inspired by the fun as ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... afternoon of the third day after the capture, we came up to where a party of rustic belles were collected at "quilting." The "Yankees" were instantly objects of greater interest than the parade of a menagerie would have been. The Sergeant told the girls we were going to camp for the night a mile or so ahead, and if they would be ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy |
