"Ill-fitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for it, and summon it suddenly, authoritatively, on the spot. No plan, no sketch, no rough model; no ready-made shoe ill-fitting the unexpected. They plunge headlong into the dark. To turn to immediate and rapid profit any circumstance that can aid him is the quality which distinguishes the able scoundrel, and elevates the villain into the demon. To strike suddenly at ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... candles, and, seizing his stick, led the way back to the highway, with Deering and Cassowary at his heels. The car had been run into an old barn, which had evidently served Hood before. Within twenty-four hours they would be touring again, he announced. The change from his dress clothes to ill-fitting rags had evidently wrought a change of mood. Between whiffs at his pipe he sought consolation in Wagner, chanting bars ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... old gentleman, although his costume consisted of nothing but a few bunches of ferns. The number of guests increased steadily; besides the real heathen in unadorned beauty, there were half-civilized Christians, ugly in ill-fitting European clothes, of which they were visibly vain, although they made blots on the beautiful picture of native life. All around the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... daily tasks and rebukes. No one cared for me. My mother sometimes wept when I was rebuked. Perhaps she was disappointed in me. But she had no power to make things better. I felt that I was a beast of burden, fed only in order that I might be useful; and the dull life irked me like an ill-fitting harness. There ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke
... old-fashioned costume of coat and breeches, ill-fitting and shiny with wear, and his freckled face and round shock head of tan-coloured hair thrown into full relief by a big, square collar of coarse tatten lace laid out on his shoulders like a barber's towel, and illustrating the great red ears that stood out at right angles above it. But Obed was ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Bert Williams makes his entrance. Yes, suh, it took that long to find just the right make-up. To get just the right kind of ill-fitting white gloves and floppy shoes and nondescript pants. But it's an important entrance. The lazy crooked grin is a bit nervous. The dolorous eyes peer sadly through the opening ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... blue plumed hat of soft Leghorn straw, in which we have seen her before, the wide brim falling lower on one side than the other, over her dark curls. As she swept up the aisle between the rows of farmers and farmers' wives, the contrast between their coarse, ill-fitting and sad-colored homespun, and her rich and tasteful robes, was not more striking than the difference between the delicate distinction of her features and their hard, rough faces, weather-beaten and wrinkled with toil and exposure, or sallow ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... savouring much of sameness, for I must read them all nearly in the same way. You will have four husbands, and it misdoubts me when you are married to the first it will be no love match. Inasmuch as you thought you had a great coif on your head and thought it ill-fitting, that shows you will love him but little. And whereas you took it off your head and cast it into the water, that shows that you will leave him. For that, men say, is 'cast on to the sea,' when a man loses what is his own, and gets nothing ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... the same. He now was in stiff, ill-fitting and exclaimingly new clothing. A new dark hat oppressed his perspiring brow, new and pointed shoes agonized his feet, a new white collar and a tie tortured his neck. He had been owner of these things no longer than overnight. He did not feel ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... obedient servant, on another magnificent horse, waited behind him. He looked the impersonation of rank and breeding—of wealth and prosperity. What a contrast, in a woman's eyes, to the shy, pale, melancholy man, in the ill-fitting black clothes, with the wandering, uneasy glances, who stood beneath him, and felt, and showed that he felt, his inferior position keenly! In spite of herself, the treacherous blush flew over Isabel's face, in Moody's presence, and with Moody's ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... stepped over to the spot, but Tom, who did not dare to join them, stood just where he was, looking uncouth and out of place in the ill-fitting white duck jacket and blue peaked service cap which had ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... A tall man in ill-fitting black clothes approached Moonson's table, interrupting his reflections with thoughts that seemed designed to disturb and distract him out of sheer perversity. So even here there were flies in every ointment, and no dream ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... wig, lorgnette and snuffbox were in the discard. The frizzled locks were gone, revealing long straight black hair which was crowned by a shabby tricorne hat. The Chevalier's elegant form was covered by an ill-fitting ragged black suit, which a pair of dusty shoes well matched. Across one shoulder he carried a pack stick, to which a thoroughly disreputable-looking ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... road above him. The archer was standing with folded arms, his bow jutting from over his shoulder, and the sun gleaming brightly upon his head-piece and the links of his chain-mail. Beside him stood his giant recruit, still clad in the home-spun and ill-fitting garments of the fuller of Lymington, with arms and legs shooting out of his scanty garb. Even as Alleyne watched them they turned upon their heels and plodded off ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... elm-tree. The hedge parting his garden from the road was green and thick, the garden itself full of trees, and flowers of more or less beauty. Mud floors are not so bad in the summer; holes in the thatch do not matter so much; an ill-fitting window-sash gives no concern. But with the cold blasts and ceaseless rain of winter all this is changed. The hedge next the road is usually only elder, and this, once the leaves are off, is the thinnest, most miserable of shelters. The rain comes through the hole in the thatch (we are speaking ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... and heart and character any husband or wife may have, no human being is perfect, and most of us are very far from being perfect. When therefore, we are closely and indissolubly joined to another life and another will, it is no wonder that sometimes the ill-fitting yoke eats into a lifelong sore. We have all many defects in our manners, in our habits, and in our constitutional ways of thinking and speaking and acting,—defects that tempt those who live nearest us to ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... taught to rise in the morning and not to lie in bed after waking up, because it is largely owing to this habit that the secret vice is contracted. One of the common causes of premature excitement in many boys is a tight foreskin. It may cause much evil and ought always to be remedied. Ill-fitting garments often cause much irritation in children and produce unnatural passions. It is best to have boys sleep in separate beds and not have them sleep together if ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... Charles, exclaiming: "Why, Tur—" The second syllable of the name was nipped off in mid-air, and the outstretched arm was dropped, as the patron of billiards took in the cut of his former friend's coat. He gazed at the ill-fitting garment with a kind of astonished animosity, and then his puzzled look shot upwards to the face surmounting it, no doubt with the feeling that he may have been deceived by a chance resemblance. Charles went past him without a sign of recognition, but he felt that ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... from Thebes. In the soft lamplight he looked like a fighting cherub, and it was a pity—in the interests of art—that the hairless pink and white face did not surmount a pair of wings rather than a rusty and ill-fitting dress suit. ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... was a "sport suit" of a large-sized green and black check. It was cheap material, and badly cut, and its ill-fitting coat hung on Azalea's slim shoulders in baggy wrinkles. Her blouse was bright pink Georgette, beaded with scarlet beads, and altogether, perhaps her costume could not have been worse chosen or made up,—at least, ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... seemed to be made of sole leather, and which scraped the skin off the ankles. O, if this government ever does go to Gehenna, as some people contend it will, sometime, it will be as a penalty for issuing such ill-fitting shoddy clothing to its brave soldiers, who never did the government any harm. I carried the lot of clothing to my tent, feeling sick and faint. The idea of wearing them among folks was almost more than I could bear to think of. I laid them on my bunk, and ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... when she "kept company" with Jake Crouthamel. "Chake," as Sibylla called him, was a sturdy, red-faced young farmer, all legs and arms. He appeared to be put together loosely at the joints, like a jumping-jack, and never appeared at ease in his ill-fitting "store clothes." He usually wore gray corduroy trousers and big cowhide boots, a pink and white striped shirt and ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... the hotel keeper. At my first visit he had not made his appearance. From the out-house, after a long wait, a big lazy Dutch man came shuffling on in a very slovenly and ill-fitting gray suit, a black silk cap, a soiled shirt in place of the missing collar and tie, an open vest full of cigar ashes, a cigar in a paper holder in his mouth, and worn, flowered, green slippers on his feet. When after some ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... his thoughts he watches the pretty foot, in its hideous disguise of patched, worn, ill-fitting leather, and he sees it as on the first day of their meeting, in its gleaming slipper and dainty ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... cruelty. The many sicknesses of children, especially diseases of the throat and lungs, may often be traced directly to gross carelessness, ignorance, or neglect with reference to undue exposure. The delicate feet of children should not be injured by wearing ill-fitting or clumsy boots or shoes. Many deformities of the feet, which cause much vexation and trouble in after years, are acquired ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... talent and stupidity. There was a full-fledged stage and footlights, and the scenery, some one said, was painted by a man from Munich. But the players were badly made up; the costumes, if correct, were ill-fitting; the stage was badly lighted, and the flats didn't 'jine.' Some of the actors had gleams of artistic perception. St. Mark was beautiful to look on, Caiaphas had a sense of elocution, the Virgin was tender and sweet, and Judas rose powerfully to his great twenty ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... people who don't trouble themselves about the affairs of another world," said Fountain in a suave voice, as he stood in the lodging-house window, a bearded, broad-shouldered person, his hands thrust wilfully into the very baggy pockets of his ill-fitting light suit. "I won't worry your sister, and I don't suppose there'll be any children. But if there are, I really can't promise to make Catholics of them. And as for myself, I don't take things so easy as it's ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... chiefly made by their own sewing machine, with the assistance of the Bourne Parva mantua-maker, superintended by Jane, 'to prevent her from making it foolish'; and the effect, I grieve to say, is ill-fitting dowdiness, which becomes grotesque from their self-complacent belief that it displays the only graceful and sensible fashion in the place. It was laughable to hear them criticising every hat or costume they have seen, quite ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... distempered walls and busts round them. That he should be forced to act, to decide, to be artful, to wrangle with maids, to make ends meet, to squeeze his long frame and explosive disposition into a Creeper Cottage where only an ill-fitting door separated him from the noise and fumes of the kitchen, was surely a cruel trick of Fate, and not less cruel because he had brought it on himself. That he should have thought he could run away as well as any man is merely a proof ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... and ill-fitting dressing gown, without a girdle and flopping about untidily. Wear long black curly hair to shoulder. Put plenty of grease on. Then knock handle off a round-bottomed saucepan, very sooty, and ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... supper. Wilhelmine rose, groped her way to the door, and turned the handle. The door remained firmly closed. She shook it gently, pushed it—the doors in her mother's house often stuck fast; but this time it was no accidental adherence of ill-fitting hinges, the door was securely fastened from outside. Her mother had locked her in! To be locked into a room had always been a terrible thing to her. When she was a child, her brother had often teased her by pushing her into a dark cupboard and turning the key, and it was ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... and every man seemingly absorbed in his job—that alone was a worth-while experience. It was a new kind of city—a city without a loafer, without a drunkard, without a parasite. The seven working-men from Leesville felt suddenly slouchy and disgraced, with their ill-fitting civilian clothes and ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... men marched out to labor, and was amazed to see their famished, wolfish looks—thin, gaunt and almost disguised out of all human resemblance by their ill-fitting, mud-covered garments and mud-splashed faces and hands. I myself was kept in, but the weary, almost ghastly spectre march I had witnessed constantly haunted me, and I said, "Will I ever resemble them?" And youthful spirit and pride rushed to ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... out, presently, dressed in his odd, ill-fitting uniform of the Legion, tunic unbuttoned, collarless of shirt, his bright, thick hair, now of ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... ascended, and directly after the ill-fitting boards which formed the ceiling of his humble living-room creaked as he stepped upon them, and then there was a faint rustling as if he were removing leaves and stems of the Indian corn that was laid in company with other stores ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... down I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. It was an unflattering glass, with a wave across the surface that divided my face into two ill-fitting halves, and a film upon it, due, I suppose, to the smoke of the wood-fire below. But the setting of this mirror and the fireplace itself were by far the most noteworthy objects in the whole room. I set myself idly ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... clothed self as a visible object, I surveyed my garmented being in mirrors and was trained to feel the "awfulness" of various other small boys who appeared transitorily in the smaller Park when Lady Ladislaw extended her wide hospitality to certain benevolent London associations. Their ill-fitting clothing, their undisciplined outcries, their slouching, their bad throwing and defective aspirates were made matters for detestation in my plastic mind. Those things, I was assured, placed them outside the ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... in the languages and his quoting of poems the miners thought the oculist infinitely wise. To them it seemed that one with such a mind must have almost unearthly knowledge concerning the eyes and the fitting of glasses and they wore with pride the cheap ill-fitting things ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... for we were escorted by the son of the sheikh of one of the subtribes of the latter country. At all events, I must have been a sore temptation for any evil disposed Fuzzy Wuzzy; for, owing to my camel being badly galled by an ill-fitting saddle, I would find myself for many hours entirely alone picking my way by the light of the moon, the poor brute I was riding not being able to keep pace with the rest. All the following day our route lay over stony plains of a bolder type than any we had yet ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... burst into the room again he saw that all he had been thinking about her was true. It might be that everybody else on earth would see her as nothing but a red-haired girl in an ill-fitting blue serge dress with an appalling tartan silk vest, but still it ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... was that of a superior and critical adversary. It was a glance of amused disdain, softened only by a smile of contempt. As it fell upon me I blushed to the rim of my sombrero. I felt as meanly as though I had been caught in a lie. With her eyes, I saw the bare feet of our negro band, our ill-fitting uniforms with their flannel facings, the swagger of our officers, glancing pompously from their half-starved, unkempt ponies upon the native Indians, who fawned ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... for example, on the hands, from the use of various tools and implements, and on the feet from ill-fitting shoes. It is, indeed, often to be looked upon as an effort of nature to protect ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... at Fougeres has left us a description of her guest: "He was a little, burly man, clad in ill-fitting garments that increased his bulk. His hands were magnificent. He wore a most ugly hat; but, as soon as he took it off, one remarked nothing else besides his head. . . . Beneath his ample forehead, on which seemed to shine the reflection of a lamp, there were brown, gold-spangled eyes which ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... not individually interesting, and this body of men looked insignificant enough upon close inspection. Yet it was a regiment; it stirred the fancy; and the boy gazed with keen interest at the small figures in the ill-fitting uniforms and at the faces, many as young as his own, that denied past him in confusing numbers. On and on the regiment wound, a coiling line of dull red and bluish-gray against the frosty background, the feet tramping steadily, the fifes ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... many of them, tattered or ill-fitting clothing, taken at random when the first supply of this character arrived, their heads covered with thin shawls or calico sun shades. They stand there in the chilly morning wind that blows through the valley along the mountains, patiently waiting their turn at the provision table, ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... lamp had been lighted, and a streak of light came from beneath the ill-fitting door which led into the other room, from which the low murmur of voices could be heard as the young ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... There followed a moment of angry controversy, during which the startled negroes rested upon their oars, while the enraged guard threatened to fire if they drifted a yard closer. In the midst of this hubbub a head suddenly popped up above the rail. Then a tall, ungainly figure, clad in a faded, ill-fitting uniform, raised itself slowly, leaning far out over the side, a pair of weak eyes, shadowed by colored glasses, gazing down inquiringly into ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... intensely black, and if Fanny had been a woman with the slightest sense of humor, she could not but have been amused at the picture which he presented in the revealing fire-light with his elfish and ape like body much too small to fill out the tattered and ill-fitting garments that hung about it. But she only wondered at him and his rags, and at ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... mendicant followed his rescuer. He entered a gorgeously mirrored and gilded hall. He stepped into an elevator chauffeured by a West Indian of the haughtiest blood. The dummy-chucker was suddenly conscious of his tattered garb, his ill-fitting, run-down shoes. He stepped, when they alighted from the lift, as gingerly as though he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... nobleman with some curiosity. Evidently Lord Bedford was no dude. His suit was of rough cloth and ill-fitting. He was barely five feet six inches in height, with features decidedly plain, but with an absence of pretension that was creditable to him, considering that he was really what he purported to be. Stuyvesant walked by his side, nearly a head taller, ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... sun-tinge which showed an out-of-doors life, was of that peculiar tint, neither blond nor brunette, which is usually found with hair of that coppery hue, and the whole artistic head but crowned a form whose grace and roundness not even her ill-fitting gown could conceal. ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street cars to the sidewalk at ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... rolled from side to side as, looking rather awkward in his ill-fitting European dress, he tried hard to emulate the dignity of his bronze followers in baju and sarong, each man with the handle of his kris carefully covered by a ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... of the drama is yet under rehearsal; the actors are still running in and out of the green-room, and hastily shuffling on their new and ill-fitting dresses; but its general scope is not far to seek. At no distant day our once timid and tearful guest will be turning up her nose at the fare provided for her. "Give me no more youths to teach," ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... perfection of the foot as that of the boot or the shoe itself. It should be large enough to allow freedom to the toes, and not so large as to wrinkle on the foot. In a well-fitting stocking the foot can be more accurately measured than otherwise, and the comfort of the foot is sadly impeded by an ill-fitting one. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... the table, and another box in the corner did duty as a washstand. There was a cake of soap and a tin basin upon the latter and a grimy hand towel hung close by from a spike driven into the unplaned boards. Facing the door was a sheet-iron camp stove, rusty and overflowing with ashes. The rickety, ill-fitting pipe was secured with ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... existence that Americans attain to, and she could see that the things in him, the things he stood for and had done, which would impress the average American or perhaps the Englishman, carried no appeal to this Russian. To him, she read, Ronald Wellington, in his great, bagging, ill-fitting clothes, was merely an embodiment of the American pig, whose only title to consideration was the daughter he had to give, and his only ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... green alders overhanging the babbling beck, but in winter bitter chill. In this dreary house of machines, the place of the ousted wheels and springs was taken by ninety hungry, growing little human beings, all dressed alike in the coarse, ill-fitting garments of charity, all taught to look, speak, and think alike, all commended or held up to reprobation according as they resembled or diverged from the machines whose room they occupied and whose regular, thoughtless movement was the model ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... hard. To make myself letter-perfect in my lessons required long hours of study, but that was my delight. To make myself at home in an alien world was also within my talents; I had been practising it day and night for the past four years. To remain unconscious of my shabby and ill-fitting clothes when the rustle of silk petticoats in the schoolroom protested against them was a matter still within my moral reach. Half a dress a year had been my allowance for many seasons; even less, for as I did not grow much I could wear my dresses ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... circulation now in farmhouses. Naturally Georgie soon began to talk about, and take an interest—as girls will do—in the young gentlemen of the town, and who was and who was not eligible. As for the loud-voiced young farmers, with their slouching walk, their ill-fitting clothes, and stupid talk about cows and wheat, they were intolerable. A banker's clerk at least—nothing could be thought of under a clerk in the local banks; of course, his salary was not high, but ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... her, inattentive, unlistening. She was not amongst those who counted. He pushed open an ill-fitting door, whose broken glass top was stuffed with brown paper. The room within was almost horrible in its meagreness. The floor was uncarpeted, the wall unpapered. In a three-legged chair drawn up to the table, with paper before him and a pencil in his hand, sat David Ross. He looked up ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the half-sad, altogether-brave lines on the young mothers' faces and their tender looks bent on the little ones we read the motive responsible for all migrations—"Better conditions for the babies." In the little fellows of seven or eight with their ill-fitting clothes and their dogged looks of determination one sees the makers of empire. Before a decade is past they will be active wheat-growers in their own right, making two grains grow where one grew before and so "deserving ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the average American of the better class is not imbued with the sporting spirit. He wears it like an ill-fitting coat. I find a singular feature among the Americans in connection with their sports. Thus if something is known and recognized as sport, people take to it with avidity, but if the same thing is called labor or exercise, it is ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... of the eventful day, uncle Needham, assisted by John, harnessed the mule to the two-wheeled cart, on which a couple of splint-bottomed chairs were fastened to accommodate Dinah and Cicely. John put on his best clothes,—an ill-fitting suit of blue jeans,—a round wool hat, a pair of coarse brogans, a homespun shirt, and a bright blue necktie. Cicely wore her best frock, a red ribbon at her throat, another in her hair, and carried a bunch of flowers in her hand. Uncle Needham and aunt Dinah were also in holiday array. Needham ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... compel the owner of a railroad to take and carry the United States mails. The only alternative provided by act of Congress in case of refusal is for the Postmaster-General to send mail forward by pony express. This is but an illustration of ill-fitting legislation, reasonable and proper at the time of its enactment, but long since ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Andrew Spooner was small, thin, and wiry, with the beak of a turkey-buzzard, the complexion of an Indian, and a set of large, white, very ill-fitting false teeth, which clicked like castanets whenever the ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... American home? Here such comfort is wholly unknown. The cold, though less severe than with us, is damp, raw and insidious, and creeps under wraps with a treacherous persistency that nothing can shut out. The ill-fitting windows, opening in the old door-like fashion, let in every breath of the chill outer air. A fire is a handful of sticks or half a dozen lumps of coal. The calorifere, a poor substitute for our powerful furnaces, is a luxury for the very rich—an innovation grudgingly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... driving in layers, one sheet above another. Occasionally there was an ominous thrashing on the iron roof as though the great hardwood tree alongside of the house meant to do us an injury. Water poured in under our ill-fitting doors, the matches were too damp to light, and the general discomfort and sloppiness gave one quite the feeling of being at sea. I wished we might reef in some of our green tree sails, which reminded me of Ah Fu's terror of the land and longing to be at sea in bad weather. Simile ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... pictures or carpets, as well as even such things as cooking utensils; and in the Queen's sudden removal back again from Tixall, many matters must have been neglected. The oak wainscoting was completely bare; and over the upper parts of the walls in many places the stones showed through between the ill-fitting tapestries. A sheaf of pikes stood in one corner; an oil portrait of an unknown worthy in the dress of fifty years ago hung over one of the doors; a large round oak table, with ink-horn and pounce-box, stood in ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... listless, and weary—the veriest drudge that ever lived under an iron rule. A thick black fringe adorned her forehead, her ears were bedecked with gaudy rings, and her waist squeezed into half its ordinary size; her clothes, bought cheaply at a second-hand shop, were tawdry and ill-fitting, yet they were her only pleasure; she watched herself gradually developing into a "fine lady" with a satisfaction and excitement that alone kept her from giving ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... bringing hopes That in their path fell flower-like. Not at ease They dwelt, though; for a slow discordancy Of temper—weak-willed waste of life in bursts Of petulance—had marred their happiness. And so the boy, young Reuben, as he grew, Was chafed and vexed by this ill-fitting mode Of life forced on him, and rebelled. Too oft Brooding alone, he shaped loose schemes of flight Into the joyous outer world, to break From the unwholesome wranglings of his home. Then once, when at some ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... in a young woman with blond hair and an ill-fitting dress. She walked as in a dream, and there was a strange look in ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... School Street, not having moved to its present larger quarters. Mr. Isaac Daaken was then Master, and had under him some eighty scholars. After all these years, Mr. Daaken stands before me a prominent figure of the past in an ill-fitting suit of snuff colour. How well I recall that schoolroom of a bright morning, the sun's rays shot hither and thither, and split violet, green, and red by the bulging glass panes of the windows. And by a strange ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... beauty. I cannot help feeling that this is a great loss. I remember the almost terrible excitement with which I saw Tennyson stalking out of Dean's Yard at Westminster, with his dark complexion, his long hair, his strange, ill-fitting clothes, his great glasses, his dim yet piercing look. I recollect the timid expectation with which I went to meet Robert Browning—and the disappointment which I endured in his presence at his commonplace bonhomie, his facile, uninteresting talk. I remember, as an undergraduate, begging and ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... boy, and, though he was dressed in a coarse, ill-fitting suit, he had an appearance of refinement and gentle nature, as if he had been brought up in a luxurious home. He looked sad and anxious, and the glances he fixed on his companion indicated that ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... speak—to fit itself to the diminishing "core" on which it lies. Slowly, but steadily, this "settlement" has gone on, and is going on. The horizontal rock layers, being now too great in length and breadth, adjust themselves by "buckling"—just as a too large, ill-fitting dress does—and the Alps, the Himalayas, and other great mountain ranges, are regions where this "buckling" process has for countless ages proceeded, slowly but surely. Probably the "buckling" has proceeded to a large extent without sudden movement, but with a lateral pressure ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... Deppingham and a familiar figure in an ill-fitting red jacket and forage cap strode firmly, defiantly between the rows of humble Japatites. Close behind them came a tall, resolute grenadier ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... Richard's lately-born optimism fell from him like an ill-fitting garment. Taking the glasses back he adjusted them once more with fingers that absolutely trembled; and when after a long and steady stare he lowered them and turned to his companion his face ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... to call, "Denasia!" He hesitated at the foot of the narrow stair and then went softly to the door. All within was still as the grave, but a glimmer of pale light came from under the ill-fitting door. He might be mistaken in the room, but he resolved to try. He turned the handle and there was an instant movement. He went forward and Denasia stood erect, facing him. She made no sound or ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... standard. You love dress too much when you care more for your outward adornings than for your inward dispositions,—when it afflicts you more to have torn your dress than to have lost your temper,—when you are more troubled by an ill-fitting gown than by a neglected duty,—when you are less concerned at having made an unjust comment, or spread a scandalous report, than at having worn a passee bonnet,—when you are less troubled at the thought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... an ordinary fence on horseback. How to saddle and bridle a horse correctly. How to harness a horse correctly in single or double harness, and to drive. How to water and feed, and to what amount. How to groom his horse properly. The evil of bearing and hame reins and ill-fitting saddlery. Principal ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... been "a stout, clumsy little fellow, who never cared how he looked. He wore an ill-fitting suit, and his luggage tied up in a handkerchief was slung over his shoulder on a cane. Sometimes he carried a small valise and an old umbrella, the handle of which he converted into a fishing rod, for Turner dearly loved both ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... in his fanning himself with it in a nervous fashion; and in his small, blue eyes, which did not twinkle behind his rimless glasses and looked unused to not twinkling. His gravity clothed him like an ill-fitting coat; or, possibly, he might have reminded the imaginative observer, just now conjured up, of a music-box set to ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... immortal fame had met and passed with scarcely a glance at each other. The young army officer was too much of a gentleman to mark the ill-fitting blue jeans of the awkward captain of militia. Great events, after all, make men great. Only the eye of God could foresee the coming tragedy in which these two ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... procession had been met and passed. It consisted entirely of elderly gentlemen in ill-fitting khaki, clumping along upon their flat feet and smoking clay pipes. They carried shovels on their shoulders, and made not the slightest response when called upon by the soldierly old corporal who led them to give Mr. Cockerell "eyes left!" On the contrary, engaged as they were in ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... in lumpish robes and long-tailed caps; ladies in stiff and foldless brocade hoops and stomachers; artisans in striped and close-adhering hose and egg-shaped padded jerkin; soldiers in lumbering armour-plates, ill-fitted over ill-fitting leather, a shapeless shell of iron, bulging out and angular, in which the body was buried as successfully as in the robes of the magistrates. Thus we see the men and women of the Renaissance in the works of all its painters; ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... up to the big blacksmith. She put her hands on the lapels of his ill-fitting coat and slid her fingers down them tenderly; then she laid her head on his chest, while his big arms went ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... to watch Bruce walk across the office and he noticed how he towered almost head and shoulders above the clerk at the desk: and he saw also, how, in spite of his ill-fitting clothes so obviously ready-made, he commanded, without effort, the attention and consideration for which, in his heart, Sprudell knew that he himself had to pay ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... thinking that they were a queer couple. They weren't like the Woodruffs, at all. They were of a different pattern. To be sure, Jim's clothes were not especially noteworthy, being just shiny, and frayed at cuff and instep, and short of sleeve and leg, and ill-fitting and cheap. They betrayed poverty, and the inability of a New York sweatshop to anticipate the prodigality of Nature in the matter of length of leg and arm, and wealth of bones and joints which she had lavished upon Jim Irwin. But the Woodruff table had often enjoyed Jim's presence, and the standards ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... lay the man she sought. He was dressed in common ill-fitting clothes; he lay as only the very weak lie, head and limbs visibly resting on the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... thin-faced youth was half-leaning on the booth's counter, trying to talk to the girl. He had curly blond hair and crystal blue eyes; his clothes consisted of an ill-fitting pair of slacks and tunic. A small traveler's kit rested on the ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... about miserable for a few days. But not they. They spattered their limp, ill-fitting garments with jest, and soon they had produced a poem in praise of the change. These are the verses which a Belgian soldier, clad in his fresh yellow, sang to us as we grouped around ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... Caleb stood at the head of the stairs, which were both steep, narrow, and in the dark hard to climb. Before him, at the end of a rickety landing, a small ill-fitting door stood ajar. There was light within the room beyond, and from it came a sound of voices. Caleb crept up to the door and listened, for as the floor below was untenanted he knew that none could see him. Bending ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... noticeable. Czerny, his pupil, has described how he found him at home on his first visit, with his shock of black hair and his unshaven chin, and his ears stuffed with cotton-wool, whilst his clothes seemed to be made of so rough a material, and were so ill-fitting that he resembled nothing so much as a Robinson Crusoe. It is related that once, when he was engaging a servant, the man stated as a reason for leaving his last situation that he failed to dress his master's hair to ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... are not uncommon as the result of wearing tight, or ill-fitting shoes. Wherever possible, they should be quickly relieved from all compression, and should under no ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... ill-fitting jacket, flung away the ugly black wig, and, in a very few moments, stood arrayed in a pretty, neatly fitting gown, glowing and lovely,—Madeline Payne ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... eighteenth century. All night a fierce northeast snow-storm had been hissing and drifting through the frozen air, pelting angrily at the shuttered and curtained windows of the rich, and shrieking with scornful laughter as it forced its way through the ill-fitting casements and loose doors of the poor, clutching at them with icy fingers as they cowered over their poor fires, and spreading over the garret-beds in which they sought to hide from him a premature shroud of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Count was dressed in a black cassock, and his hair looked somewhat like a cleric's, but his cravat was tied with a large flame-coloured bow, and he wore ill-fitting hose of the same hue. As for the two canons, they were pleasant young men, good-looking and well-made. Their light gray dress was edged with black and gold; they wore their hair long in wavy curls, and in their little black ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... letters, are received here every day. Yes, madam, I said every day. About half of these letters are orders. Last year the banking department counted one hundred and thirty millions of dollars. One hundred and thirty millions!" He stands there in his ill-fitting coat, and his star, and rubs one bony hand ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... had gone far a white apparition appeared floundering across the meadow in the direction of the goals; and a shout of derisive welcome rose, as Jeffreys, arrayed in an ill-fitting suit of white holland, and crowned with his blue flannel cap, came on ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... stood gravely regarding him (Brook, and not the steer); then he shifted his back to the fence and looked at her. He had not much to look at: a short, plain, thin girl of nineteen, with rather vacant grey eyes, dark ringlets, and freckles; she had no complexion to speak of; she wore an ill-fitting print frock, and a pair of men's 'lastic-sides several sizes too large for her. She was "studying for a school-teacher;" that was the height of the ambition of local youth. ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... shabby cap and an ill-fitting sweater which bulged in back as if something were being carried in the rear pocket. And there he stood, a poor little figure, heedless of the merry throngs that passed, his wistful gaze fixed upon a four-story chocolate cake, a sort of edible skyscraper, with a tiny dome of ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... nerve injury, the practitioner should draw the attention of the patient to it then and there, and so guard himself against actions for malpraxis should paralysis of the muscles ensue. Later, the nerve may become involved in callus, or be damaged by the pressure of ill-fitting splints. Weakness or paralysis of the extensors of the wrist and hand results, giving rise to the characteristic "wrist-drop." The actions of the muscles should always be tested before applying splints, and each time the apparatus is removed or readjusted, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... the present condition of affairs. She went out to the post-office at the first moment when she could hope to find the telegraph office at work, and just as she had turned from it, she met a girl in a dark, long, ill-fitting jacket and black hat, with a basket in ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a grief to her that her father made such a poor introduction. He was brief as ever, like a boy saying his errand, and his clothes looked ill-fitting and casual. Whereas Ursula would have liked robes and a ceremonial of introduction ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... were all lighted up within—the day when she had said to her husband afterwards: "Ah, he's an angel!" Not yet a year—the beginning of last October term, in fact. He was different from all the other boys; not that he was a prodigy with untidy hair, ill-fitting clothes, and a clever tongue; but because of something—something—Ah! well—different; because he was—he; because she longed to take his head between her hands and kiss it. She remembered so well the day that longing first came to her. She was giving ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... bed—the boisterous wind rattled clown the chimney and shook the ill-fitting casement in its rotting frame. The clothes he had last worn were thrown carelessly about, unsmoothed, unbrushed; the scanty articles of furniture were out of their proper places; slovenly discomfort marked the death-chamber. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... an old man, who had exactly that revolutionary air which has become so familiar to us by the engravings of Bonaparte and his generals that were made shortly after the Italian campaign. The face was nearly buried in neckcloth, the hair was long and wild, and the coat was glittering, but ill-fitting and stiff. It was, however, the coat of a marechal; and, what rendered it still more singular, it was entirely without orders. I was curious to know who this relic of 1797 might be; for, apart from his rank, which was betrayed by his coat, he was so singularly ugly ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... thinking of the books he would present to the War Memorial Library, if ever it came into existence. He took the path through the fields; it was pleasanter than the road. At the first stile a group of village boys, loutish young fellows all dressed in the hideous ill-fitting black which makes a funeral of every English Sunday and holiday, were assembled, drearily guffawing as they smoked their cigarettes. They made way for Henry Wimbush, touching their caps as he passed. He returned their salute; his bowler ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... an elderly man, with white hair and large rimmed spectacles. His slightly stooped shoulders were draped in an ill-fitting, though immaculate, frock coat, and a shiny silk hat added to the incongruity of his garb in ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Catholic chapel, an Episcopal mission, and a biggish residence of pretence for the chief trader. This is Fort Chipewyan. At certain seasons Indian tepees dot the surrounding plains; and bronze-faced savages, clad in the ill-fitting garments of white people, shamble about the stores, or sit haunched round the shady sides of the log houses, smoking long-stemmed pipes. These are the Chipewyans come in from their hunting-grounds; but for the most part the fort seems chiefly populated ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... Madame looked up as the door closed. Elise stood with distant eyes fixed upon the pathetically plain little woman. Never before had she noticed the lifeless hair strained from the colourless tan of the thin face, the lustreless eyes, the ill-fitting, faded calico wrapper that dropped in meaningless folds from the spare figure. Madame waited patiently for Elise to speak, or to keep silence as she chose. For a moment only Elise stood. The next instant Madame felt the strong young arms about her, felt hot, decided kisses upon her cheeks. ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... among commanders. There was greatness: there was that which lifted men to such deeds as write man's name across the firmament! And, strange to say, Lieutenant Lapenotiere recognised something of it in this queer old man, in dressing-gown and ill-fitting wig, who took snuff and interrupted now with a curse and anon with a "bravo!" as the Secretary read. He was absurd: but he was no common man, this Lord Barham. He had something of ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... which the doctor had taken in pay for a prescription. The air was filled with the mingled odor of the boiling fruit and of burning sealing-wax. The cans were acting with outrageous perversity, for they were second-hand and the covers ill-fitting. Her blood was almost up to fainting heat, and she was worried all over. She had to do all her preserving in a pint cup, as she expressed it in her contempt for the diminutive proportions of the saucepan which she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... the days for the sane complete discussion of our sexual problems come, it will give us anything at all in the way of "Liberty," as most people understand that word. In the place of the rusty old manacles, the chain and shot, the iron yoke, cruel, ill-fitting, violent implements from which it was yet possible to wriggle and escape to outlawry, it may be the world will discover only a completer restriction, will develop a scheme of neat gyves, light but efficient, beautifully adaptable to the wrists ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Catholic graveyard with high adobe wall and are at the Hospital Municipal, our objective point. A dark young man in ill-fitting clothes receives us and shows us about this primitive refuge. The floors are tiled and all the appointments are rude, ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... white, in which there was a look—as there was evidence in his walk also—of his being tired from prolonged exertion or endurance. He was decently, though not expensively, clad in black cloth, his three-cornered felt hat, wide-skirted coat, and ill-fitting knee-breeches, being all of the same solemn hue. I was to perceive later that his clothes were old and carefully mended. His gray silk stockings ill accorded with his poor shoes, of which the buckles were of steel. He carried in ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... odd figure. His worn, ill-fitting clothes, with their bulging pockets, the grasshopper slimness of his legs and arms, the peering, glancing look of his eternally restless eyes, were all of them displeasing to Enid Glenwilliam as she surveyed him. But she answered ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fanning himself absently with his white straw hat, pausing from time to time to exchange a word of greeting—secure in the affability of one who is not only a judge of man but a Bassett of Virginia. From his classic head to his ill-fitting boots he upheld the traditions of his office and ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... this moment until she carried it into her dreams with her, could not have shared it with Natalie. It was a dream already, to be wondered at and forgotten by daylight, as she stared across the schoolroom at Neil, not a romantic figure at all with his ill-fitting suit and his tumbled hair; forgotten until the next moment like it came—next in a lengthening series of dream pictures, of moonlight and candlelight and faintly heard music, a secret too sweet to share, a hidden treasure ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... his home, in an unmistakably ill-fitting suit of clothes and accompanied by a Chinaman, equally badly dressed, he caused great surprise to his family. If he had returned dressed in 'fear-noughts' and a jersey, or even in 'oilies,' they would not have been surprised, but ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... lives in a ramshackle, two-story, rooming house near the banks of the Savannah River. She is an old Negress with iron gray hair and a gingercake complexion. Her ill-fitting old dress was none too clean, and her bare feet exposed toe nails almost a half-inch long. Fannie apparently hadn't a tooth in her head, but she ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... that lay in the manger, and fingered the rough brown cord that hung from Mary's waist, and smelled the sweet breath of the cattle, and the burning oil of Joseph's lantern hung against the wall, and shivered as the night wind shrilled under the ill-fitting door and ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... of volunteers who had sauntered in to pick up points. To the former it looked odd and out of gear to see the forage-caps and broad white stripes of commissioned officers mingling with the slouch hats and ill-fitting nether garments of ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... tall, thin, and homely, when he entered this office. The other clerks were inclined to jeer at his awkwardness and his plain, home-made, ill-fitting clothes. But Henry's sharp retorts quickly silenced them, and they soon grew to respect and like him. He was an earnest student. He stayed indoors and read in the evenings, while the other young fellows were idling about the town. He was eager ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... till the very last day possible. Then he appeared, gaunt and miserable, in an ill-fitting blue serge suit which, in the wind, flapped about his lean body. He had the pathetic air of a lost child. On this occasion—Lady Auriol and he were lunching with me—she adopted a motherly attitude which afforded me both pleasure ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... another red letter day for me. On that date I had a detail to pack in supplies, and I had the great fortune to find a new pair of shoes, just my size. What a relief to get rid of those uncomfortable ill-fitting, detestable German boots. If there was one thing that made me hate Germans worse than anything else, it was those horrid German boots. The boys said they were a hoodoo and that if I continued to wear them Fritz would get me sure. However that may be, ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... but glancing apprehensively toward the crowd of women in the opposite corner that surround the bride, a pale little shop-girl with a pleading, winsome face. From somewhere unexpectedly appears a big man in an ill-fitting coat and skullcap, flanked on either side by a fiddler, who scrapes away and away, accompanying the improvisator in a plaintive minor key as he halts before the bride and intones his lay. With many a shrug of stooping shoulders and queer excited gesture, he drones, in ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... careful training of his natural gift of observation, the indifferent glance of that child of the world took in more of a fellow-creature than most men's careful scrutiny. He saw that she was frail and big-eyed, that her frock was ill-fitting and shabby, her hat shabbier, her shoes ready-made, that she wore no gloves, and that her mass of silky hair owed its unsuccessful attempts at tidiness to her own brushing. He summed her up as that archetype of ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... of Mrs. Jennings, an artist in her own right, could dress so badly, with such a careless contempt for patterns and colours, in such ill-fitting frocks and dowdy or grotesque hats! Her preference for strident aniline dyes and gigantic stripes and checks in the different articles of her costume looked very like perversity; especially when it was shown that with reference to other persons, in arranging to paint a portrait, for instance, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... An ill-fitting suit, with a blue flannel shirt and tattered cap completely transformed him. He surveyed himself with satisfaction in a cracked mirror while urging Archie to ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... other diseases concerning which the men should be instructed, but lack of space prevents further treatment of them. They should be taught the proper treatment of blistered feet, for they incapacitate a great many men; the chief causes are ill-fitting shoes and our old friend "uncleanliness." Shoes are the most important article of clothing of the infantryman; each man should have one pair well broken in for marching, and two other pairs. Socks should be soft, ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... hair-brushes, but Judith evaded the tentative suggestion. By then she was feeling that the word was a meaningless string of four letters, and the thing she supposed it stood for as fantastic and far-off as the recurring fragment of a dream, which seems so vivid in the dreaming and is a broken kaleidoscope of ill-fitting colours on awaking. She went to bed and slept soundly, better than she had ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... wenches as one could wish not to see. They all wear palm-leaf hats stuck on their heads without strings or ribbons, and their clothes are so ill-made that you cannot help thinking that each has borrowed somebody else's dress, until you see that the ill-fitting garments are the rule, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... dustless, spotless, sweet apartment as anything but beautiful. Its appearance is a little unfamiliar of course, but all the muddle of dust-collecting hangings and witless ornament that cover the earthly bedroom, the valances, the curtains to check the draught from the ill-fitting wood windows, the worthless irrelevant pictures, usually a little askew, the dusty carpets, and all the paraphernalia about the dirty, black-leaded fireplace are gone. But the faintly tinted walls are framed with just one clear coloured line, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... to his successors a remarkable collection of useful "properties." The background of his story is a Gothic castle, singularly unenchanted it is true, but capable of being invested by Mrs. Radcliffe with mysterious grandeur. Otranto contains underground vaults, ill-fitting doors with rusty hinges, easily extinguished lamps and a trap-door—objects trivial and insignificant in Walpole's hands, but fraught with terrible possibilities. Otranto would have fulfilled admirably the requirements of Barrett's Cherubina, who, when looking for ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... very quiet night, here in Turner Road: the roysterers were in the better-lighted streets, and the sober folk were at home. And there was not a footstep on the pavements outside to confuse the little drama of sound that came down to her through the ill-fitting boards overhead. She could not explain afterwards why she did not interfere. I imagine that she hoped against hope that she was misinterpreting what she heard, and also that a kind of terror seized her which she found it ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... was not content to be merely the unnoticed cub in the corner. A place in the family bob-sled no longer satisfied me, and when at the "sociable" I stood in the corner with tousled hair and clumsy ill-fitting garments I was in my desire, a ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... opinions of her own that seldom agreed with theirs. It was enough for her that he was a Booth, and knew how to behave in a drawing-room, because he belonged there and was not lugged in by the scruff of an ill-fitting dress-suit to pose as a Bohemian celebrity. Moreover, he was a level-headed, well-balanced fellow in spite of his calling; which was saying a great deal, proclaimed the mother of Vivian in opposition to her own argument that painters never made satisfactory or even satisfying husbands: ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... a small corded trunk lying on the hard dry snow, with a cheap leather bag on top of it. He looked about him in wonder and stopped, suddenly, staring in astonishment at the form of a woman, shapeless in great ill-fitting garments too big for her. She was leaning back against the great bare trunk of the old blasted pine and the dog was skulking around her, curiously. Then he hurried towards her, calling out a word of warning to Maigan, who seemed to realize that this ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... bowel) must, before putting on the truss be cautiously and thoroughly returned into the belly; and much care should be used to prevent the chafing and galling of the tender skin of the babe, which an ill-fitting truss would be sure to occasion. But if care and skill be bestowed on the case, a perfect cure might in due time be ensured. The truss must not be discontinued, until ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... of Standards scientist appraised the speaker rapidly. Keen blue eyes stared questioningly at him from a mahogany brown face, criss-crossed with a thousand tiny wrinkles. The tattooed anchor on his hand and the ill-fitting blue serge suit smacked of the sea while the squareness of his shoulders and the direct gaze of his eye ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... all the colour. It added much to the strange unpleasantness of his appearance, that he wore a jet-black wig, so that to the unnatural came the untimely, and enhanced the withered. His mouth, which was full of false teeth, very white, and ill-fitting, had a cruel expression, and Death seemed to look out every time ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... easily discerned from the true Priest. Should one of them ever appear before the Father of the faithful in these ill-fitting robes the venerable Pontiff would exclaim, with the Patriarch of old: "The voice indeed is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau." I feel the garment of the Priest, but I hear ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... dressed somewhat in a military fashion, with helmets or stiff shakos, ill-fitting uniform coats of red or blue cloth, oddly contrasting with the brown buckskin that covered their legs ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... ship Vickers was like a queer little ghost. He occupied himself with his small charge, reading and walking with her most of the days. Isabelle was conscious of the odd figure Vickers made, in his ill-fitting Italian clothes, with an old Tyrolean cloak of faded green hanging about him, his pale face half hidden by a scrubby beard, his unseeing eyes, wandering over the great steamer, a little girl's hand in his, or reading in a corner of the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... is the man I have promised to marry?" With much uneasiness she looked forward to dinner-time. Dr. Quin sent no apology; nay, was worse than punctual. He came in rather shyly, looking awkward in a new and ill-fitting evening suit, for which he had put aside his usual rough homespun. Louise, furious with herself for having blushed as he appeared, gave him a cold and ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... that her mother was a dressmaker, Mamie's clothes never looked smart or attractive—she would have felt out of keeping with herself if they had. Her shoes were rather large, and ill-fitting; her skirt hung in lifeless lines from her hips to her feet, of good material but seemingly bad design. At that time the colored "jersey," so-called, was just coming into popular wear, and, being close-fitting, looked well on those of good ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... were red-rimmed for lack of sleep. The long whip, with the fourteen-foot stock and the lash of twenty-three feet, had not smacked for a long time; the sjambok had not been used upon the long-suffering wheelers. Huddled up in his ill-fitting clothes of tan cord, he sat on the waggon-box and slept, his head nodding, his elbows on his knees. He was dreaming of the bad Cape brandy that had been in the bottle, and would be, with luck, again, when the waggon reached a tavern ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... incontestably of the class described by a witty writer to whom "a lace petticoat is as much a badge of infamy as a cigarette on the stage." The German proletariat cannot be susceptible to externals, else the universal sad-coloured skirt, the ill-fitting blouse and the ugly hat worn by his women-folk could not find ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... thin. Their beards were long and faded, and tangled like autumn corn silk. Their gaunt, gnarled, and knotted hands held the reins over their equally sad and sober teams. The women looked worn and thin, and sat bent forward over the children in their laps. The dust had settled upon their ill-fitting dresses. There were no smart carriages, no touch of gay paint, no glittering new harnesses; the whole procession was keyed down among the most desolate and sorrowful grays, ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... narrow circumstances, she had permitted to take up his residence in one of the seven gables. But, on seeing more of Mr. Holgrave, she hardly knew what to make of him. He had the strangest companions imaginable; men with long beards, and dressed in linen blouses, and other such new-fangled and ill-fitting garments; reformers, temperance lecturers, and all manner of cross-looking philanthropists; community-men, and come-outers, as Hepzibah believed, who acknowledged no law, and ate no solid food, but lived on the scent of other people's cookery, and turned up their noses at the ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... who are of most use to these normal city working girls are the mothers who develop a sense of companionship with the changing experiences of their daughters, who are willing to modify ill-fitting social conventions into rules of conduct which are of actual service to their children in their daily lives of factory work and of city amusements. Those mothers, through their sympathy and adaptability, substitute keen present ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... gold. She was dressed differently—perhaps in her ordinary every-day garments—a bright sprigged muslin, a chip hat with blue ribbons set upon a coil of luxurious brown hair. But what struck him most was that the girlish and diminutive character of the figure had vanished with her ill-fitting clothes; the girl that stood before him was of ordinary height, and of a prettiness and grace of figure that he felt would have attracted anywhere. Fleming felt himself suddenly embarrassed,—a feeling that was not lessened when he noticed that her pretty lip was compressed and her eyebrows ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... thing in the world to talk at all freely to a person with whom one desired to keep on good terms, about a young woman supposed still to cherish a tragic passion for the dead man who ought to stand at the present moment in the person's, figuratively speaking, extremely ill-fitting shoes. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hurled the snow Against the window pane, And rattled the sash with a merry clash Used not its strength in vain; For now and then a wee flake sifted Through the loose ill-fitting frame, By the warmer breezes each was lifted All melting ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... they hoped soon to call theirs in reality. They were all in civilian dress; even Walter Jenks had contrived to discard his uniform of a Confederate officer, regarding it as too conspicuous, and he was habited in an ill-fitting suit which made him look like an ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... last!" observed his spouse scornfully, and rattled on. Lawton nodded awkwardly, and perched himself on the edge of a chair. He had assumed an ill-fitting suit of store clothes, in which he unaccustomedly writhed, and evidently, to judge from the sleekness of his hair, had recently plunged his head in a pail of water. He said nothing, but whenever Mrs. Lawton was not looking he winked elaborately and solemnly at Bennington as though ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... account for the reckless radiance of her smile. The sunshine flickered down between the branches on the sweet pink and white face, the pansy blue eyes, and long slender throat; it shone alike on the ill-fitting gown, the clumsy shoes, the carelessly arranged hair. Cornelia's golden eyes travelled up and down, down and up, in earnest, scrutinising fashion. She met Elma's glance with a shake of the head, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Anne fixed her eyes on the far wall of the dining room and commenced to recite "The Raven" in a clear, musical voice that deepened as she repeated the stanzas. The girls forgot the shabby little figure in its ill-fitting black silk and saw only Anne's small, white face and glowing eyes. Not Miss Tebbs, herself, teacher of English and elocution at the High School, could have improved upon ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... woman to whom life could bring nothing more fully satisfying than a dinner invitation from a duchess, and whose nature would be incapable of sustaining deeper suffering than that caused by an ill-fitting costume." ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... she was like to Mrs. Mark, sitting there in her funny ill-fitting clothes, her anxious old-fashioned face as of a child aged long before her time. Katherine Mark, who had had, in her life, her own perplexities and sorrows, felt her heart warm to this strange isolated girl. She had needed in her own life at one time ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... all the picturesque figure which fancy has painted of his class. Instead of the red toque, which artists place on the heads of habitants, he wore a cloth cap with ear flaps coming down to be tied under his chin. His jacket was an ill-fitting garment, the cast-off coat of some well-to-do man, and his trousers slouched in ample folds above brightly beaded moccasins. When I paused, Paul fixed his eyes on an invisible spot in the snow and ruminated. Then he hitched the baggy trousers ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... been carefully closed for hours. It has happened to me more than once, on getting up in the morning, to find my clothes, which had been laid on a chair beneath my bedroom window overnight, completely covered by powdered snow, drifting in through the ill-fitting casement. This same window was within a couple of feet of my bed, and between me and it was neither curtain nor shelter of any sort. Of a winter's evening I have often been obliged to wrap myself up in a big Scotch maud, as I sat, dressed in a high linsey gown, by a blazing fire, ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... air like a little silvery cloud. There was a tiny window on his right, through which, when it was clear of frost, one looked on Terminaison; and that was cheerful, and made him whistle. But to the left, through the chink of the ill-fitting door, there was nothing to be seen but the forest, and the road dying ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various |
