"Seedy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... comparatively seedy and second-hand individuals; the scenery, with occasional exceptions, looks worn; the machinery creaks and betrays itself, no longer possessing the ars celare artem. ''Tis true, 'tis pity; pity 'tis, 'tis true.' One novelty, nevertheless, this tale can boast, and that is the very able and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... and an old double-Gloucester cheese, full of jumpers and mites; and after it a bottle of old port, at which he is often joined by the parson, and always by a queer, quiet sort of a tall, thin man, in a seedy black coat, and with a crimson face, bearing testimony to the efficacy of the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... must all be whopping good ones. Well, that was the beginning; only the beginning. After that he held on for a while, breaking the bread of life to a skedaddling flock, and then he bolted. The next known of him, three years later, he enlisted in your regiment, a smart but seedy ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon, cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have sufficient acquaintance with the language to check and reject Halliwell's ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... the Interrogation Room was named Alexis Brubitsch. The other two, who were presumably waiting separately in other rooms, were Ivan Borbitsch and Vasili Garbitsch. The collection sounded, to Malone, like a seedy musical-comedy firm of lawyers: Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch. He could picture them dancing gaily across a stage while the strains of music followed them, waving legal forms ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Wilford's intentions being as honourable as she fondly imagined them, when a gig drove up to the door, containing Wentworth and a fellow whom I recognised as one of the billiard-markers in —— Street, dressed in a seedy suit of black for the occasion; immediately afterwards Wilford arrived on horseback. The whole thing was now perfectly clear. Wilford, having made the girl believe he intended to marry her, persuaded Wentworth, who is completely his tool, to carry her off for him; ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... except in hall or chapel or at lecture, where their manners of feeding, praying and studying, were considered alike objectionable; no one knew whence they came, whither they went, nor what they did, for they never showed at cricket or the boats; they were a gloomy, seedy-looking conferie, who had as little to glory in in clothes and manners as in ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... Citizens" devoted to the town of Riverbank. The man was not as young as he appeared to be. His garments were of a youthful cut and cloth, being of the sort generally known as "College Youth Style," but they were themselves no longer youthful. In fact, the man looked seedy. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... but a narrow aperture, high up in the wall, admitted the feeble glimmer of daylight. There was an iron door, and a water-pipe, and platform on which I lay, and on which reposed several gentlemen of seedy raiment and unwholesome appearance. The place and the company, as dimly revealed by the uncertain morning light, inspired me with emotions of horror; and in my inexperience and ignorance, ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... me and lit a cigarette in his old nonchalant manner. He was dressed in the seedy frock-coat of the book merchant, but the rest of that individual lay in a pile of white hair and old books upon the table. Holmes looked even thinner and keener than of old, but there was a dead-white tinge in his aquiline face which told me that his life recently had not ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... must treat respectfully. No one divines a man's or woman's social status quicker or more unerringly than a servant. The attendant saw at once that the man did not belong to the class which paid social visits to tenants in the Astruria. He was rather seedy-looking, his collar was not immaculate, his boots were thick and clumsy, his clothes cheap ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... and all made you send that telegram? It spoiled my breakfast, and sent me off in a tearing hurry, to find Margery perfectly well. If she'd been seedy or anything I should have been delighted, but there she was, busy about her dresses and what not, and I dare say she thought me a lunatic for coming at that time in the morning. You shouldn't get into the habit of sending telegrams. A telegram is a thing that means something—at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had spent a seedy autumn. The Russo-Turkish campaign, which had been unjustifiably allowed, by foreign Powers, to drain Egypt of her gold and life-blood—some 25,000 men since the beginning of the Servian prelude—not only caused "abundant sorrow" to the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Campbell assessors and the baron bailie might have sent a man to the Plantations on that dittay ten years ago, but we live in different times, Mr. MacTaggart—different times, Mr. MacTaggart," repeated the writer, tee-heeing till his bent shoulders heaved under his seedy, ink-stained surtout coat. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... said, "I am afraid the boy isn't very fit—Jack wires that he seems seedy, and that they have got a man over from York. Don't be anxious, it's probably nothing much—but I think ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... matter though seedy his hat and his coat. That his pantaloons bagged and were ragged and frayed? Still the world by its modern, unanimous vote Says it danced to the tune that his chin-music played! At the touch of his hand, at the thrill of his thought, It leaped on the paths where the greater truths ran, ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... You have taken nothing but the beer, and we have all drunk that. No, it's the tobacco; it always makes fellows rather seedy at first, and I expect you swallowed ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... conjectured. It was the everyday tale of a heedless, inexperienced youth, suddenly cast without guide or Mentor upon the ocean of life, and striking in turn against all the shoals that strew the perilous waters. He had been bubbled by gentlemanly swindlers—none of your low, seedy rapscallions, but men of style and fashion, even of family, but especially of honour, who would have paraded and shot him, had he presumed to doubt their word, but made no scruple of genteelly picking his pocket. He had been duped by designing women, spunged upon by false ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... if you can remember how the women was dressin' as far back as two years ago, and can throw on the screen a picture of a woman who has only the reminders of her good looks left, you'll have her framed up. A pair of seedy thoroughbreds, they was, seedy and down ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... trout Mahnoomin, n. rice Mezheh, adv. everywhere Magwah, adv. while Manmooyahwahgaindahmoowin, n. thankfulness Meshejemin, n. a currant, (fruit) Mahzahn, n. a thistle Mahjegooday, n. a petticoat Menekahnekah, adv. seedy Mejenahwayahdahkahmig, n. pity Mahmahdahwechegawenebun, it was a strange custom Menesenoo, n. a hero Mesquahsin, n. brick, which signifies, red stone Mesahowh, that is Moosay, n. a worm Moong, n. a loon Meene, ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... do you do, Peter? [They shake hands.] I'm sorry to hear you are seedy, but you eat ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... the Rue des Martyrs in a melancholy frame of mind, and in a melancholy frame of mind she also was going up the Rue des Martyrs. He was already old, nearly sixty, with a bald head under his seedy, tall hat, a gray beard, half buried in a high shirt collar, with dull eyes, an unpleasant mouth and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... withering chicken or frost grapes, plump clusters of blue-black berries of the greenbrier, and limbs of the smooth winterberry bending with their flaming fruit. There were bushes of crimson ilex, too, trees of fruiting dogwood and holly, cedars in berry, dwarf sumac and seedy sedges, while patches on the wood slopes uncovered by the sun were spread with trailing partridge berry and the coral-fruited wintergreen. I had eaten part of my dinner with the 'possum; I picked a quantity of these wintergreen berries, and continued my meal with ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... barely been able to get a living from their sterile acres, had become millionaires. The whole region was alive with fortune-hunters, from every quarter of the country. Millions of dollars were in the pockets of men who were ready to purchase. Seedy, crazy, visionary fellows were working as middle-men, to talk up schemes, and win their bread, with as much more as they could lay their hands on. The very air was charged with the contagion of speculation, ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... earnestly, "I'm going off to St. Moritz next week to have a look at the Cresta; I wish you'd have a nurse. Drummond will run in and give an eye to you, of course; but you're pretty seedy, and that's a fact. I don't ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... queer fish, beyond question. How had he got into connection with Mother Toulouche and her intimates? That remained a mystery. One fine day this seedy specimen of humanity was found among the "comrades" exchanging vague remarks with one and another. He stuck to them in all their shifting from this place to that: no one had been able to get out of him what his name was, nor where he came from, for ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... suddenly into a lane, a lane with very high, unmortared walls, over which grew a variety of bramble with a particularly luscious fruit. Every connoisseur of blackberries knows what a difference there is between the little hard seedy ones that commonly flourish in the hedges and the big juicy ones with the larger leaves. Nature had been prodigal here, and a bounteous harvest hung within ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... a while longer, Bud decided to telephone Morris's home. But at that moment a thin, seedy-looking man came into the lounge. His close-set eyes and loudly striped suit combined to give ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... Another seedy one softly explained to him that he was a fellow countryman from Indiana. Gordon gave ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... had been a loafing place for seedy politicians, active and retired, who passed their time plotting for the next campaign in the free seats provided by the City Fathers. One morning these individuals found no chairs,—absolutely none except those used by the officials ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... think so," said the seedy party, trying to draw his hand away; "I did not own this ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... ruddy cheeks abounded on this typical winter day. Mr. Trotter possessed no overcoat, but presumably following the fashion set out by other wintry pedestrians, his thin sack coat was buttoned tightly and the collar turned up defiantly. His well-brushed though seedy Derby looked chilly as it topped off his shivering features. His face was blue, not ruddy. Here and there he passed companions in poverty, but their rags were worse than his, their faces more haggard. Never did he feel more like ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... whatever with the house. But there is a rusty old knocker, too— very loose, so that it slides round when you touch it—and if you learn the trick of it, and knock long enough, somebody comes. The brave Courier comes, and gives you admittance. You walk into a seedy little garden, all wild and weedy, from which the vineyard opens; cross it, enter a square hall like a cellar, walk up a cracked marble staircase, and pass into a most enormous room with a vaulted roof and whitewashed walls: not unlike ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... did him good. I thought he was a little seedy in the spring —didn't you? Wonderful man! And when I think how he's slandered and abused it makes me hot. And he never says anything, never complains, lives up there all alone, and takes his medicine. That's real ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stroll leisurely down the long incline. The whole town tips that way. A variety of more or less quaint vehicles move about—cabriolets drawn by donkeys and ponies; sedan chairs; a species of easy-chair on wheels, with a wooden apron, and propelled by a boy or a decayed footman in seedy livery with bibulous habits written on his face. Something of a similar sort was seen at the Centennial, yet utterly unlike this, notwithstanding a resemblance in principle. These invalid go-carts are very convenient at Tenby, as they may be trundled everywhere, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... "Say, 'pon my word, I'll hate to have any soldiers see me when I'm looking as seedy as I'll look at that ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... dark yesterday evening, and I let them in, of course. Said they were going to the Yosemite. They were a rough lot, but that's nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot. Mr. Emerson was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. Mr. Holmes was as fat as a balloon; he weighed as much as three hundered, and had double chins all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a prize-fighter. His head was cropped and bristly, like as if he had a wig made of hair-brushes. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... The prisoner reserved his defence. He has been seedy, however; principally sick of the family evil, despondency; the sun is gone out utterly; and the breath of the people of this city lies about as a sort of damp, unwholesome fog, in which we go walking with bowed hearts. If I understand what is a contrite ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... overheard saying to another, he followed him accidentally up a long staircase in King's Bench Walk, 'Ah, yes, I met Le Breton in the Strand yesterday, when I was walking with a Q.C., too; he's married badly, got no employment, and looks awfully seedy. So very embarrassing, you know, now wasn't it?' And the other answered lightly, in the same unconcerned tone, 'Oh, of course, dreadfully embarrassing, really.' Ernest slank down the staircase again with a sinking heart, and tried to get no further hints from ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... on the man's mind. A youth of twenty-three oughtn't to look as he did—married only a year or two also, with a pretty wife and child. I used to talk to them a good deal, and one day I said to him: 'You look seedy; what's the matter?' He flushed, and got nervous. I made up my mind it was money. If I had been here longer, I should have taken him aside and talked to him like a father. As it was, things slid along. I was up in town, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in some corking work with the gloves while I'm here. I box quite a bit at home, and I miss it travelling about like this. What say to a half-hour or so every day? I have the gloves in one of my trunks. I'm getting horribly seedy. I need ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... wild sort of way, and asked if we'd mind excusing him as he had something he wanted to see to before the steamer sailed. At five o'clock he'd never shown up, and I had to hustle our bags ashore and start out to look for him. He'd been awfully seedy for a couple of months and when he got left I knew something serious had happened. I found him late that night in the foreign hospital out of his head with a fever. It seems the letter had told him that his girl was going to ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... his coat and his hat in his hand, and was introduced. His first thought was one of extreme mortification—three days' beard was on his face. His toilet activities had been limited in number. He knew he felt wretched, seedy, groggy—and looked it. Something ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... case of red wine, hot and impulsive, belching forth "sacres" with a velocity well sustained. The phlegmatic German stirred to excitability in quest of a "small cask of lager and large box of cheese;" John Chinaman "Hi yah'd" for one "bag lice all samee hab one Melican man," while a chivalric but seedy-looking Southerner, who seemed to have "seen better days," wished he "might be—if he didn't lay a pe-yor of boots thar whar that blanket whar." Not to be lost in the shuffle was a tall canting specimen of Yankee-dom perched on a water cask that "reckoned ther is right smart chance ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... important in their place, would not, of themselves, suffice to attract young men from without. They had tried the experiment in their forlorn rooms under a machine shop, in an out-of-the-way place, furnished as a miniature chapel, and a very seedy one at that, and the result was that about six months ago the Association was in a fair way to die, and make no sign. Young men would not go to that dismal hole to spend an evening when more attractive places abounded in the city; and I would not if ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... the morning he walked into the lobby of his future workshop, and found no one yet there but two aged seedy messengers. He was shown into a waiting-room, and there he remained for a couple of hours, during which every clerk in the establishment came to have a look at him. At last he was ushered into ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... The seedy-looking stranger, whose name was Alfred Jingle, was a passenger on the same coach that day and entertained the Pickwickians with marvelous stories of his life in Spain. None of these was true, to be sure, but they were all entered in Mr. Pickwick's note-book. In gratitude, ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... II.—Greengrocer's yard at side of a seedy house in a shabby street, slimy and straw-bestrewn. Yard is paved with lumpy, irregular cobbles, and some sooty and shaky-looking sheds stand at the bottom thereof. Enter together, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... surrounded the protegee of Mrs. Burrage. This shame was possible to him even while he was conscious of what a mean business it was to practise upon human imbecility, how much better it was even to be seedy and obscure, discouraged about one's self. He had been born to the prospect of a fortune, and in spite of the years of misery that followed the war had never rid himself of the belief that a gentleman who desired ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... out? You'll let her work here, alongside of you?' said the young man eagerly. He had just met Louie, in the dark, walking up Market Street with a seedy kind of gentleman, who he had reason to know was a bad lot. John was off his head about her, and no longer of much use to anybody, and in these few days other men, as it seemed to him, had begun to hang about. The difficulties of his guardianship ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... look pretty seedy this morning. You know you really work too hard, Anstice. I assure you your predecessor didn't take half the trouble with his patients that ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... fellow," said George, "I'm glad you're back again. You're looking rather seedy, though. I suppose you knocked about ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... now. I think it's because he's seen what you've done with it. I know he hadn't the smallest idea of farming it before. It's what he ought to have been doing all his life. And when you think how seedy he was when he came down here, and ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... disorders; that all, degrees of disease and disorder are frequently confounded under the same term; that "run down" may stand for a fatigue of mind or body from which a week or a month of rest will completely restore the over-worked patient, or an advanced stage of a mortal illness; that "seedy" may signify the morning's state of feeling, after an evening's over-indulgence, which calls for a glass of soda-water and a cup of coffee, or a dangerous malady which will pack off the subject of it, at the shortest notice, to the south of France. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... The seedy man, staring with imperturbable countenance at a train which clattered overhead, interrupted in an expressionless voice—"Ah, go ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... different. We have specimens of the respectable devil in the "long-legged bondholder" who appears to his unfortunate Dutch debtor; the portly, well-dressed little man in the "Gentleman in black"; and the seedy looking old clothes dealer of "Peter Schlemihl." Quite a different devil to any of these is the devil that interviews St. Nicholas, the devil whom St. Medard circumvented, or the simple-minded and unfortunate devil that fell into the clutches ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Tommy Sharpe and Seedy Saunders had saddled their horses and gone in search of the girls as soon as the storm threatened, but not knowing in which direction they had headed, it was like hunting for a needle ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... Cadaverous, lying on a sofa-bed—Mr Seedy, the lawyer, sitting by his side, with papers on the table ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... eaten so much for years, I assure you, Mrs. Basset; but it was impossible to taste all your good things. I am not dyspeptic, thank you, but a little seedy and tired, for I've been working rather ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... latter roused her from her revery. "I say, Amanda, are we going to stay here all night? Why in thunder can't those fools go home so you can lock the door and go! And I say, Amanda, don't you think Martin Landis is letting himself grow shabby and seedy? He's certainly settling into a regular clodhopper. He shuffled along like a hecker to-night. I don't believe he ever has his ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... and in the Mitre I see (but only in imagination) Johnson and Goldsmith talking over the quaint philosophy of wine and letters till three o'clock in the morning, finishing their three or four bottles of port, and wondering why they were a little seedy the next day. ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... do, Douglas?" said Lady Tamworth, an imposing, bejewelled figure standing at the head of the galleried staircase of Tamworth House. "Saw your father yesterday and thought him looking very seedy." ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... either side of the proscenium opening bore the words: "Deputy Turn." On the stage was a gnarled old man with ruddy cheeks and a muffler, a seedy top hat on his head, a coaching whip in his hand, the old horse bus-driver of London in his habit as he had lived. The old fellow stood there and just talked to the audience of a fine sporting class of men that petrol has driven from the streets, without exaggerated humor or pathos. Desmond, ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... scorning told me: 'True, his lines were very sweet, But his clothes, so worn and seedy—scarce for me ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "You look seedy this morning, Mr. Weston," said Williams, as George entered the office on the following day. "The effect of last night's dissipation, I suppose. How did you like ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... both well and older," said May cheerfully. "Think of my responsibilities! There's the baby! And then Alexander's been seedy. And we aren't as rich as we should like to be; you of all people must know that. And there's going to be an election and our seat's very shaky. So the cares of the world are ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... Seedy," a series of eight poems, were published in this year in Punch, as well as "Songs of the Flowers;" and soon his "Ballads of the Briefless" made a considerable stir in Punch's circle. A Beckett had been called to the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... demanded Mrs. Crow, shrewdly and very quickly. She had been inspecting the man more closely than before, and woman's intuition was telling her a truth that Anderson overlooked. Mr. Hawkshaw was not only very seedy, but very drunk. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... loaned me a very seedy looking overcoat which I wrapped about me. Having deposited my hat inside the cab, I turned up the collar, drew in my chin and began surreptitiously to circle the devious paths leading to a side entrance of the grounds. My heart was palpitating, for the ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... and the sea was a waste of spindrift and low scurrying cloud. Heritage discovered a new anxiety—this time about the possibility of the brig landing at all. He wanted a complete bag, and it would be tragic if they got only the three seedy ruffians now circumambulating ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... don't care," said Tom. "But it's a bore to have been caught in so seedy an affair; if it had been a real good row, one wouldn't have minded ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... himself, failed, and came with a sickening crash against the goal-post. I blew the whistle and rushed to Aspinall; his cheek was bleeding villainously and he was deadly pale. I helped him up, and he said with his usual smile—who could mistake it for a sneer?—"Thanks, old man. Yes, I do feel a bit seedy. That back of yours is an animal, though." He tried hard to keep his senses; I saw him battling against his faintness, but the pain and shock were too much for him; he fell down ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... woman must have been talking," Miss M'Gann proceeded acutely. "I saw her around last year, looking seedy, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Italian, as you call him, has heard some of the best prima donnas in Europe. He is poor, he is seedy—for his voice left him just as he was on the eve of success—but he was the only person in the room who could tell me that I sang as well as the greatest of them." Her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... had run aground, As such young men are apt to do; His creditors swore and his mistress frowned, His breeches pockets held ne'er a sou, His boots were getting out at the toes, His hat was seedy, and so were his clothes, And, as he wandered the city around, He could not think of a single friend Slow to dun and prompt to lend, Whose purse he thought he could venture to sound; In such extremities friends are few; At least I think so, friend, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from her palatial retirement to spend a fortnight in Mayfair. She was bony, wiggy, and snuffy; wore false teeth and seedy apparel; but she was well-bred and well-informed, and Vixen got on with her much better than with the accomplished Captain. Lady Susan took to Vixen; and these two went out for early walks together in the adjacent Green Park, and perambulated the picture-galleries, before Mrs. Winstanley ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... question the justice of this part of the affair. Having been sent to gaol, however, because he could not deposit L50, Grant was treated as the commonest malefactor in all respects but one—he was allowed to retain his own clothing. The unfortunate old man made a pathetic picture with his seedy clothes, tail coat, tall white hat, and worn gloves, which he punctiliously wore whenever called upon to face the authorities—and it happened rather frequently. He objected to being classed and herded with the thieves ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... elbows on my knees, my forehead on my hands, as I sat and stared down at the bear-skin rug at my feet and saw a vision of fifth-rate existence pass before me. A suburban villa or squalid London lodgings; the hurried early breakfast served by a slavey; the tram or bus to the city; the society of seedy clerks; the pipe instead of the cigar; the public billiard room instead of the club; the omnibus instead of the hansom; the fortnight up the Thames instead of the spring at Cairo. A day of uncongenial work—but at the end ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... overboard like seals, and the sound of a gun in the bush makes them run like hares. Yet an English officer actually proposed to recruit a force of these recreants for field-service in Ashanti. He probably confounded them with the Wasawahili, the 'Seedy-boys' of the east coast, a race which some day will prove useful when the Sepoy mutiny shall repeat itself, or if the difficulties in Egypt be prolonged. A few thousands of these sturdy fellows would put to flight an army ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... northern door of the cathedral. In reply to the rap of our knuckles at the huge portals, it slowly swung back on its hinges, and a grim, surly-looking face appeared. The figure which belonged to the face was clad in a rusty and seedy black robe, from beneath which a hand was thrust forth, and the words, "two-pence each," sounded harshly on our ears. Two-pence each was accordingly paid, and then the surly janitor, or verger, as he is called, ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... emblazoned with the arms of the nations of the earth. These whirligigs of amateur crime are constantly surrounded by eager-eyed men and women, who try their luck for the amusement of the moment, or by broken-down, seedy gamblers, hazarding their last coin for a turn of fortune. Now and then, too, some sweet-faced girl, her arm in her father's, wins a louis with a franc, her childish laughter ringing ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... broad-shouldered wildcat showed himself, coming out of a grove, and crossing the river on a flood-jamb of logs, halting for a moment to look back. The bird-like tamias frisked about my feet everywhere among the pine-needles and seedy grass-tufts; cranes waded the shallows of the river-bends, the kingfisher rattled from perch to perch, and the blessed ouzel sang amid the spray of every cascade. Where may lonely wanderer find a more interesting ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... Earl's Gate, Kensington, Mr. Lancaster had made an indifferent meal of an excellently cooked and temptingly served breakfast. He was feeling dejected, limp, and generally "seedy" after the two nights in the train. He and Bullard had occupied a double sleeping berth, and Bullard had persisted in discussing many things, and thereafter slumber had proved no match against a host of assaulting thoughts. Perhaps he might have made a better meal had he been left to himself, ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... said Carson, warming up to his subject, "this is an intricate game, this life business. Pretty seedy in spots, but, after all, most people are merely victims of circumstances. And if circumstances place a five-spot in your hand to-day, accept what the gods bring you. To-morrow they ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... and child in his parish; but the squire's acquaintance was more limited. Obviously, said Mr. Ambrose to himself, the squire's best course would be to stay quietly at home until the danger was passed, and to pass word to Policeman Gall to lay hands on any particularly seedy-looking tramps he happened to see in the village. It was Gall's duty to do so in any case, as he had been warned to be on the look-out. Mr. Ambrose inwardly wondered where the man could be hiding. Billingsfield was not, he believed, ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... appropriated this peculiar portion of commercial history, and, describing it, says gravely and graphically: 'A colony of solicitors, engineers and seedy accountants, settled in the purlieus of Threadneedle Street. Every town and parish in the Kingdom blazed out in zinc plates over the doorways. From the cellar to the roof, every fragment of a room held its committee. The darkest cupboard on the stairs contained a ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... "I do feel seedy," he said, in a stronger voice with a new note in it, "but I'm not going to faint. I'm quite well able to go upstairs. I'd rather lie down on my own bed, ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... A.M., and got a miserable meal at Richmond at 12.30. At this little town I was introduced to a seedy-looking man, in rusty black clothes and a broken-down "stove-pipe" hat. This was Judge Stockdale, who will probably be the next governor of Texas. He is an agreeable man, and his conversation is far superior to his clothing. ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... wuz gone, he started frum de city. Whut a change! One shurt wuz all he had, en dat hadn' seen de wash fer two weeks. He wuz seedy en his heart wuz sore; he wuz down an' out, en clean out, en didn't even have chawin' terbacker. He look lack a turkey buzzard ez had lost his wing-feathers. He wundered on; he stop by de bridge whar de water wuz tricklin' ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... where the great square chimney projected its nicked bulk from among loosened bricks scattered on the shingles; and from knife-gnawed "deacon-seat" on the porch to window-blind, dangling from one hinge on the broad gable, the old structure was seedy indeed. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... reproaching anybody with neglect of the gentleman." She had an action, as she talked, of flinging a very seedy-looking black boa back across her neck vindictively. "Wot I mean to say is that gentleman lodgers must take their chance and e's two weeks overdue with 'is rent as it is ... but of course I'm not saying I couldn't ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... had been listening, groaned as Mr. Farrar passed through the door. "Ugh! Call that a way of doing business? Why, if it had been me, I'd have bought the book off of that old chap for a couple o' pounds, I would. Ay, or a sov, so seedy he is, and wants money so bad. And I know who'd have given twelve pound for it, in the trade too. Call that carrying on business? He may well add up his investments every day, it he can afford to chuck such chances. Ah, but he'll retire ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... the lawyer's house straight to his own in Belgrave Square. It was in the hands of a caretaker. A seedy-looking man in a rusty black coat opened the door. He did not ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... live and die in prosperity, and some of the most honest and conscientious are driven into bankruptcy. Perhaps his manner was unfortunate, and he was not really as proud as he looked to be. Some of those who carry their head erect and look imperial are humble as a child, while many a man in seedy coat and slouch hat and unblacked shoes is as proud as Lucifer. You can not tell by a man's look. Perhaps he was not unscrupulous in business, for there are two sides to every story, and everybody that accomplishes anything ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... of him, on the footpath, a man wrapped in a seedy overcoat was walking, with downcast eyes, and with such an air of dejection that Frederick, as he passed, turned aside to have a better look at him. The other raised his head. It was Deslauriers. He hesitated. Frederick fell upon ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... strictly the dancing portion. Stephen sat down on a bench that faced the inner portion, with the determination of a man who was not to be moved from his seat. At the other side of the room was a low raised platform, where some very seedy-looking musicians were sawing out a jerky tune from their feeble violins. The room was fairly full, and a more heterogeneous collection of human beings Stephen thought he had never seen. There were miners in the roughest and thickest clothing, labourers, packers, a few Indians, some youths ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... you're seedy you mightn't be able to find the way alone," he said. "It's all right ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... resided, was, "Well, how are the girls?" "Oh, gloriously. Matty is there." "Ah, indeed! poor thing." "Has Fan sported a new habit?" "Is it the old gray with the hussar braiding? Confound it, that was seedy when I saw them in Corfu. And Mother Dal as fat and vulgar as ever?" "Dawson of ours was the last, and was called up for sentence when we were ordered away; of course, he bolted," etc. Such was the invariable style of question and answer concerning them; and although some few, either ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... nor maravedi Have I got my soul to bless; And I'd feel extremely seedy, Languishing in vile duresse. Therefore listen, ruthless taylzeour, Take my steed and armour free, Pawn them at thy Hebrew uncle's, And I'll ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... the head of a certain sad-faced, seedy-looking young fellow in the piazza, or square, beneath, descended a rattling shower of bonbons, thrown by the hand of the speaker, a brown-faced Venetian lad ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... worse injustice if he married her. Why should he marry her if he doesn't want to, and if she doesn't want it? There she is, perfectly content and happy with her baby. It's been a little seedy lately, but it's absolutely sound. A very fine baby indeed, and Essy knows it. There's ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... not unexpected in spite of the Spanish landscape; for with the exception of one man who might be guessed as a bullfighter ruined by drink and one unmistakable Frenchman, they are all cockney or American; therefore, in a land of cloaks and sombreros, they mostly wear seedy overcoats, woollen mufflers, hard hemispherical hats, and dirty brown gloves. Only a very few dress after their leader, whose broad sombrero with a cock's feather in the band, and voluminous cloak descending to his high boots, are as un-English as possible. ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... mountain, a girl in an angry mood at his side, a seedy chaperon on his trail, an erring cook ahead. Good lord! He recalled that a fellow novelist, whose love scenes were regarded as models by young people suffering the tender passion, had once confessed that he proposed ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... me that if I called upon Mr. Sands Cox, at his house in Temple Row, some morning early, that gentleman would give me a letter introducing me to the great Leamington physician. I accordingly presented myself as directed, and was shown, by a somewhat seedy-looking old woman—who evidently looked upon me with considerable suspicion—into a small room in the front of the house, where, seated at a writing-table, I found the subject of ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... author—writes reviewals for eighteenpence a page—edits a Newgate chronicle. At another he wanders the country with a face grimy from occasionally mending kettles; and there is no evidence that his clothes are not seedy and torn, and his shoes down at the heel; but by what process of reasoning will they prove that he is no gentleman! Is he not learned? Has he not generosity and courage? Whilst a hack author does he ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... my lady," he said triumphantly when they were on the platform. "I suppose you thought you were comin' to Rubeville. That don't look so hay-seedy? Eh?" ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... and demands different conditions for its successful growth; in the North, at least two types of the species may be distinguished. Vines are found in the woods of New England which resemble Concord very closely in both vine and fruit, excepting that the grapes are much smaller in size and more seedy. There is also the large-fruited, foxy Labrusca, usually with reddish berries, represented by such cultivated varieties as Northern Muscadine, Dracut Amber, Lutie and others. Labrusca is peculiar amongst American ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... isn't very common. It's just as possible for a bunch of simpletons to set up an organization for one purpose, and have it turn out to be a supercharged, high-frequency k-factor amplifier. That's what's happened with this infernal S.P.N.B. A seedy little social club, dedicated to jingoists with low I.Q.'s. With the war scare they have managed to get hold of a few credits. They have probably been telling the same inflated stories for years about the discrimination against natives of this fair planet, but no one has really ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... duty in the second-hand department. But there had been so many occasions on which he had never done his duty; times when he was tempted to actual defiance of it, when a wistful calculating look in the eyes of some seedy scholar would knock all the moral fibre out of him, and a two and sixpenny book would go for ninepence or a shilling. And such was his conception of loyalty to Rickman's, that he generally paid for these excesses out of his own pocket, so that conscience was satisfied both ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... bushels of ripe fruit, to make one of dry—this when the peaches were big and fleshy. Small, seedy sorts demanded ten bushels for one. Unpeeled, the ratio fell to seven for one. But there was seldom any lack of fruit—beside the orchard, there were trees up and down all the static fence rows—the corner of a worm fence furnishing an ideal seat. Further, every field boasted ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... as far apart as ever, and even Willie could hardly have blamed prosperity for that. He had no deadly vices, but he could not stick to any job for more than a month. He was out of work at present. Having developed into a rather weedy, seedy-looking young man, he was not too proud to sponge on the melancholy maiden aunt who had brought him up, and whose efforts at stern discipline during his earlier years had seemingly proved fruitless. Macgregor was the only human being he ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... now what would he say?" asked the old gentleman, trying to hurry matters along. The pompous official had his eye on the clock. It might go hard for the little, thin clerk in his seedy coat, if he took too much time ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... path cut in the cragged side of Monroe, where a single misstep would hurl the horse and rider down a fathomless abyss, into whose depths the eye dares hardly for a moment gaze. Then appeared a crystal lakelet, and a little plain covered with a seedy-looking grass, where the horses rested and refreshed themselves ere the last desperate trial of their strength and endurance; for the weary band of adventurers had reached at last the base of the mighty Washington, whose summit ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... moral-forcing system which we call 'Protection'? Forced plants, we know, suffer in the process; and the Malay, whose proper place is amidst the conditions of the Thirteenth Century, is apt to become morally weak and seedy, and to lose something of his robust self-respect, when he is forced to bear ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... faces bronzed almost to the colour of the red soil we had walked over, beards untrimmed and grown as nature intended them, clothes showing signs of wear and tear, our heavy oaken sticks with worn ferrules, and our suspicious and seedy-looking bags; our late arrival last night, and, above all, the fact that we had entered the town by the very road on which the murder had been committed! What if we were arrested on suspicion! I had been practically arrested under far less suspicious circumstances the previous year, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... not find Katherine's note till late next morning. He read it twice over with an incredulous air, and put it into the fire. He wrote a short but grateful refusal, saying truly that he was very seedy, and not pleasant company for any ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... the broker remarked. "I was in Liverpool yesterday, and I could have sworn that I saw him hanging around the docks. I should never have doubted it, but Morrison was always so careful about his appearance, and this fellow was such a seedy-looking individual. I called out to him and he ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at his shell-bangle making, plodding on often till midnight. All this cruel toil does not earn, for himself and his family, a bare two meals a day during much more than half the year. His method of eating is to begin with a good filling draught of water, and his staple food is the cheapest kind of seedy banana. And yet the family has to go with only one meal a day for ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... gentle man of about sixty years of age (not unlike in manner and habit Professor Bush, my principal at the Cedar Valley Seminary) received his seedy visitor with a kindly smile. I liked him and trusted him at once. He was tall and very thin, with dark eyes and a long gray beard. His face was absolutely without suspicion or guile. It was impossible to conceive of his doing an unkind or hasty act, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... speculation, nor his Pen, and though amongst Plants it be in bulk one of the smallest, yet it is not the least considerable: For, as to its shape, it may compare for the beauty of it with any Plant that grows, and bears a much bigger breadth; it has a root almost like a seedy Parsnep, furnish'd with small strings and suckers, which are all of them finely branch'd, like those of the roots of much bigger Vegetables; out of this springs the stem or body of the Plant, which is somewhat Quadrangular, rather then Cylindrical, most curiously fluted or lining with small ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... been committed by some one who had got through the open window whilst the two men were out of the room had been generally accepted, for the police had found footmarks on the flowerbeds, over which the murderer must have passed. They had not, however, traced the seedy-looking personage whom Mr. Kitson had seen. This person had disappeared as mysteriously ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... the older readers and sterner critics will look for romantic and rather exaggerated events; but he thinks they will look in vain, for as we grow older we become more reasonable, and do not expect showers of gold to fall upon every seedy hero, or to see nice young gentlemen leap over lofty precipices without sometimes being dashed ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... more about it," her husband said anxiously, as she sat staring before her, trying to comprehend the tragedy. "I have arranged to take you on to-morrow. The Colonel writes that your brother Ezra is seedy,—touch of malaria, he thinks. The Colonel is looking forward a ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Pan, II. 52. (March 8, 1794).—The titular general of the revolutionary army was Ronsin. "Previous to the Revolution he was a seedy author earning his living and reputation by working for the boulevard stalls... One day a person informed him that his staff 'was behaving very badly, acting tyrannically in the most outrageous manner at the theaters and everywhere else, striking women and tearing ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Constantly employed in creeping into small holes, and daubing themselves with honey, they often lose all the bright feathers and silky plumes which once so beautifully adorned their bodies, and assume a smooth and almost black appearance; just as the hat of the thievish loafer, acquires a "seedy" aspect, and his garments, a shining and threadbare look. Dzierzon is of opinion that the black bees which Huber describes, as being so bitterly persecuted by the rest, are nothing more than these thieving bees. I call them old convicts, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... the squire's distant manner was that Mr. Temple, though a rich man according to his own account, had a somewhat seedy look. The squire was afraid he intended to ask for help on the score of old friendship. It was with a hesitating voice, ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... silence, the pretty, pleasure-loving young woman to whom life had been only a house of toys, and the rather seedy young man who had been one of the toys. The bond that held them was a slight one; a little more strain and it would have snapped. But the toy man had grown—somehow—into a real man whom she did not want to let ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... and a few small debts to settle, I found when I landed in San Francisco that once more I was flatly broke. I was arrestively seedy, literally on my uppers, for owing to my long tramp my boots were barely holding together. There was no letter for me, and perhaps it was on account of my disappointment, perhaps on account of my extreme shabbiness, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Martha to do as she does," said one neighbor to the new minister's wife. "She jilted the smartest man in town when she was young and she's kept on looking the part, as you might say, ever since. If she'd let herself run down, kind of seedy, everybody'd have said she was disappointed; but he hasn't ever married—it's Judge Trent, you know—and the way Martha holds her head up and wears gold eyeglasses sort of makes folks think he'd be glad to get her any time. It's real smart of Martha. The judge looks the seedy ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... last. Mr. Perkupp has got an appointment for Lupin, and he is to go and see about it on Monday. Oh, how my mind is relieved! I went to Lupin's room to take the good news to him, but he was in bed, very seedy, so I resolved to keep it over ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... his charms was too much even for his admirers. The mental juxtaposition of the seedy poet and the piquant actress in her frills and furbelows set the whole cafe rocking with laughter. Pinchas took it as a tribute to his ingenious method of drawing the soubrette-serpent's fangs. He ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... a seedy-looking fellow over whose whole appearance was written the word "worthless," swung a lantern so that the light fell on a pad of paper before him. Pencil in hand, he took off ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... looked pretty seedy and stupid this morning on my way in. I was up half the night; but I feel ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... something about this seedy rascal that filled me with disgust and suspicion, and he looked at me out of the corners of his evil eyes as if he knew that by some trick of fate he had me in his power and was gloating over it. Even while he was swearing to the paper he had a sickly sneer on his pimply face that ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... see it after it has grown shabby and old-fashioned. Yes, you remember, not without a dull kind of pang, that it is wearing out. You have a neighbor, perhaps, a few miles off, whose conveyance, through the wear of many years, has become remarkably seedy; and every time you meet it you think that there you see your own, as it will some day be. Every dog has his day: but the day of the rational dog is overclouded in a fashion unknown to his inferior fellow-creature; it is overclouded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... can put it all over that Osage country for straight scenery, but I never saw such a contented-looking place as that big prairie-land was that morning. I've seen it with the tears running down its face, and pretty well draggled and seedy; but when we started out with the sun shining against our cheeks and the hills looking so warm and lazy and the hollows kind of smiling to themselves over something, and the prairie-dogs gossiping worse than a ladies' self-culture meeting, I tell you, it all looked ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... to be seedy," was Dick's comment. He could not forget how the former teacher had endeavored to hypnotize the widow Stanhope into marrying him, so that he could gain possession of the money she was holding in ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... fine!—years indeed! Why, I shall be a seedy old bachelor! That would never do! And Amy Ashe, whom I have had in my eye ever since she was in pinafores, will be married to some ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... in which my grandmother, my Aunt Millie, and I lived was looking rather seedy by this time. The receding tide of fashion and wealth had withdrawn far off to another section of the rapidly growing city ... and, below and above, the Steel Mills, with their great, flaring furnaces, rose, it seemed, over ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... leaning against the side of a building, was a tall man in seedy clothes. A card on his breast bore the sad legend, "Help the Blind." The man's eyes were covered with large blue goggles, and in one hand he held his hat, and in the other a couple ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... beak-like nose, and queer slate-coloured eyes with pale lashes; his hair was thin and very fine in colour and texture, strangely like that of a yellow cat; and face, neck, and nose were mottled with patches of small purple veins. To-day he was dressed in a long seedy black coat, a short seedy black vest, and a pair of now moleskins, glaringly white, and much too long and ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... whose only costume was a flannel shirt and a pair of seedy check trousers, but whose eye was as keen as a hawk's, and whose shining "matchlock" had seventeen notches[24] along its ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... bed, at last, and went quickly to sleep, but I woke up, after about three hours, with throbbing temples, and a head which was physically sore, outside and in. I was dazed, dreamy, wretched, seedy, unrefreshed. I recognized the occasion of all this: it was that torrent. In the mountain villages of Switzerland, and along the roads, one has always the roar of the torrent in his ears. He imagines it is music, and he thinks poetic things about it; he lies in his comfortable ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on dress parade or inspection. I took great pleasure in riding around town, wherever the regiment was located, looking wise, and posing as an officer. But the time came when my uniform, which came with me as a recruit, became seedy, and badly worn, and it was necessary to discard it, and draw some clothing of the quartermaster. That is a trying time for a recruit. One day it was announced that the quartermaster sergeant had received a quantity of clothing, and the men were ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... Spencer quoted several times in the park, but one afternoon a disciple of Spencer's appeared, a seedy tramp with a dirty coat buttoned tightly at the throat to conceal the absence of a shirt. Battle royal was waged, amid the smoking of many cigarettes and the expectoration of much tobacco-juice, wherein the tramp successfully held his own, even when a socialist workman sneered, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... dowerless[obs3], moneyless[obs3], penniless; unportioned[obs3], unmoneyed[obs3]; impecunious; out of money, out of cash, short of money, short of cash; without a rap, not worth a rap &c.(money) 800; qui n'a pas le sou[Fr], out of pocket, hard up; out at elbows, out at heels; seedy, bare-footed; beggarly, beggared; destitute; fleeced, stripped; bereft, bereaved; reduced; homeless. in want &c. n.; needy, necessitous, distressed, pinched, straitened; put to one's shifts, put to one's last shifts; unable to keep the wolf from the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Why, I had to send you the three hundred and fifty dollars to bring you and your family that I might see them before I die. And look at your daughters; they are dressed in such a shabby way that I am ashamed for my neighbors to see my children's cousins. And look at you with your old seedy, worn suit and your patched shoes; I am ashamed to take you to town day after to-morrow and introduce you to my business associates. What a fool you have been! Now, John, I am not saying this to wound your feelings; for I love you, John. ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... could by no means content himself with the companionship of staid practical persons, who on account of his latent worth would have readily countenanced, and with the least opportunity even served him, but he invariably paid his court to adventurers; such creatures, for instance, as seedy 'professors' of one kind or another, who, in the inevitable shawl and threadbare suit of black, were constantly dismounting at the village tavern, with proposals either to 'lecture' on something, or ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in the narrow hall and put on his seedy-looking dark overcoat, quite unconscious that Mrs. Fletcher had had the collar mended since he had taken it off. Then he went out into the damp November night, unlit by moon or star. But to Stewart the darkness of night, on whatever ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... "that his taboo is still effective. On the platform before he arrived there were three A.P.M.'s bustling about and chasing away the few spectators. As the train came into the station one of them ran up to me and said, 'Are you the interpreter on duty? Well, there's a seedy-looking chap over there, who seems up to no good. Go and tell him from me that if he doesn't clear out immediately I'll have him arrested.' I did so. 'Arrest me!' said the man. 'Why, I'm the special commissaire de police ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... an hour after the young farmer awoke, and looking across the room saw that his friend Georgy had gone away in clothes which didn't belong to him, and had kindly left for himself the seedy ones worn by Georgy. At this he sat up in a deep thought for some time, instead of hastening to give an alarm. "The money, the money is gone," he said to himself, "and that's bad. ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... both been seedy, and Rushden wanted us to go before we play Surrey again. In my last three innings I've made seven runs, and I should think Rushden begins to wish he had never given me my blue. I don't feel as if I ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... wanderer. My parents left me a moderate fortune, and I have travelled pretty well and pretty constantly all over the world during the last twelve or fifteen years. How did I come to Needley? Well, you can call it luck, or something more than that, whichever way it appeals to you. I was feeling seedy, a little off-color, and I started down for a rest and lay-off in Maine. I happened to ask a man in Portland if he knew of a quiet place. He meant to be humorous, I imagine. He said Needley was the quietest place he knew of. I took him at ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... seven years the lady of the house descended the broad, black oak staircase to the hall. A butler of the old-fashioned type bowed to her and announced that dinner was ready. He might have been the butler of an archbishop from his mien and deportment, yet his evening dress was seedy and shiny to the last degree, his patent leather boots had long lost their lustre, his linen was terribly frayed and yellow. Two footmen in livery stood in the hall. They might have been supers playing on the boards of a travelling ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... of the late Mr. Joseph C. Neal's "Charcoal Sketches," he puts into the mouth of a very sad and seedy loafer the expression of a wish that he were a pig, and a statement of the reasons for the wish. These reasons, as I recall them, related to the freedom of the pig from the peculiar trials and troubles of humanity. Pigs do not have to work ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... travail of the historic poet has Mr. Fields known. Of the emaciated face, the seedy garment, the collapsed purse, the dog-eared and often rejected manuscript, he has never known, save from well-authenticated tradition. His muse was born in sunshine, and has only been sprinkled with the tears of affection. Every effort has been cheered to ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... the cover of a mug is left up, any individual who chooses may seize it, and drink the contents. At the Hof Brauerei I once saw a newly arrived Englishman, carrying the usual red guidebook, quit the room for an instant, leaving uncovered his just acquired mass of beer. There came along a seedy-looking old gentleman, evidently a Stammgast. A gleam of satisfaction stole over his wooden features as he espied the open mug. Pausing a moment, he lifted it to his lips and slowly drank the contents. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... you, dear, I haven't time. I only fled back to tell you I am off to Copthorne. I am a little anxious about Eleanor not having written you know. She was rather seedy and done up before she left, and those old people are ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham |
