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More "Decent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... jessamine had been steeped, both to drink and to bathe my temples. As soon as I began to recover, I caressed the soft hand of the dear pagan lady, and implored her, partly in Siamese, partly in English, to intercede for me with her husband, that a decent home might be provided for us. She assured me, while she smoothed my hair and patted my cheek as though I were a helpless child, that she would do her best with him, begging me meanwhile to be patient. But that I could not be; and I spared no opportunity to expostulate with the premier ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... seemed to think what it might do; but she spoke for the instant of something else. "It does provoke me a bit, you know—for of course I'm a brute. And I had thought of all sorts of things. Yet it doesn't prevent the fact that we must be decent." ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... strictly heterodox. As a part of the bargain, this fellow came to church, and behaved as well as could be hoped of a man who had received his money. He sat by a pillar, and no more than crossed his legs at the worst thing that disagreed with him. And it might have done him good, and made a decent cobbler of him, if the parson had only held him when he got him on the hook. But this is the very thing which all great preachers are too benevolent to do. Dr. Upround looked at this sinner, who was ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... have something. I'm sorry I have no whisky to offer you, but I have some rather decent port," and disregarding my repeated protests, she rang the bell, whereupon the young man who had admitted me—whom I now found to my surprise to be a ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... were at least decent. Napoleon occasionally indulged himself in amours unworthy of his character and tormenting to his wife; but he never suffered any other female to possess influence over his mind, nor insulted public opinion by any approach to that system of unveiled debauchery ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... talk of the Court; and it would not be decent of me to record even a tenth part of the gossip he told me regarding the corruption that prevailed in Whitehall. Much of it was no doubt true; and a great deal more than he told me in some matters; but it came pouring out from him, and with such evident pleasure to himself, that it was all I ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... in terror at the idea that Peer was to be taken away. And then, as the doctor was going, he looked at her more closely, and said: "You'd do well to be a bit careful yourself, my good girl. You look as if you wanted a change to a decent room, with a little more light and ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... looked ruefully at the water, as if he thought it had already done enough for health. Then we were seated in barber chairs, our beards were taken off, and the officiating artists were ordered to give each man's hair "a decent cut." We found that according to the penitentiary code, the decent way of wearing the hair was to cut it all off—if the same rule had been adopted with regard to clothing, the Digger Indians would have been superfluously ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... forget, Bryce, that affair of Grant's defeat there at Fort Duquesne," said Willie. "In my opinion, that was a very decent, respectable piece of bloodshed; and quite as good as Braddock's disaster, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... death of Christ reveals sin in its real significance, in its true perspective, outside the realm of accident and among the deepest things of God, "sub specie aeternitatia". Men count themselves very decent people; so thought the priests and the Pharisees, and they were. There is nothing about them that one cannot find in most religious communities and in all governing classes: the sense of the value of themselves, ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... roared old Powhatan, with the accumulated truculence of eighty quarrelsome years. Of course the General was intemperate; but, as the Judge observed facetiously, "it was refreshing, in these days when there was nothing for decent people to drink, to find that intemperance was still possible. With the General fuming over corruption and Benham preaching morality, there is no need," he added, "for us to despair ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... call it large? There is nothing to compare it with. It would be just as sensible to call it small. A man may say, "I like this vast cosmos, with its throng of stars and its crowd of varied creatures." But if it comes to that why should not a man say, "I like this cosy little cosmos, with its decent number of stars and as neat a provision of live stock as I wish to see"? One is as good as the other; they are both mere sentiments. It is mere sentiment to rejoice that the sun is larger than the earth; it is quite as sane a sentiment to rejoice that ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... little man we'd known, effaced, bleached, indistinct, like a poor "impression"—as unnoticeable as one of his own early finds, yet, like them, with a quality, if one had an eye for it. He told me he still lived in Rome, and had contrived, by fierce self-denial, to get a few decent bits together—"piecemeal, little by little, with fasting and prayer; and I mean the fasting literally!" ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... his knee, with one half of it killed his antagonist, and left him. The parents of the man killed, being present, laid him out on some mats, and appeared to regret their loss very much. They kept a continual drumming over the body of the deceased for two or three days; after which he received a decent burial on another Island at some distance from the ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... would do that, Myra," said Tony. "He seems an awfully decent sort of chap. If you'd heard his explanation, you would understand that he was really only paying us both a compliment by pretending to make love to you. I do hope you'll see him, my dear, and let him explain and apologise. ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... that our friend Valentin here—what am I saying?—I mean my Lord Marquis de Valentin—is in the possession of a secret for obtaining wealth. His wishes are fulfilled as soon as he knows them. He will make us all rich together, or he is a flunkey, and devoid of all decent feeling." ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... mind. Let him not be alone or idle (in any kind of melancholy), but still accompanied with such friends and familiars he most affects, neatly dressed, washed, and combed, according to his ability at least, in clean sweet linen, spruce, handsome, decent, and good apparel; for nothing sooner dejects a man than want, squalor, and nastiness, foul, or old clothes out of fashion. Concerning the medicinal part, he that will satisfy himself at large (in this precedent of diet) and see all at once the whole cure and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... coarsest materials, are patched, and threadbare, and valueless; hundreds of houses without anything in them deserving the name of furniture; hundreds of beds without clothing, and hundreds of children whose excuses for clothes are barely sufficient, with every contrivance decent poverty can suggest, to cover the body as civilized society demands. In the towns I have enumerated, in fact, if the least reliance may be placed in newspaper reports, in every town and village in the country the same want prevails to a much greater extent ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... in the fourth place, and finally, that he recognizes that this is a country of laws and not men, that it is his duty as an honest citizen to uphold the laws, to strive for honesty, to strive for a decent administration, and to do all that in him lies, by incessant, patient work in our government, municipal or national, to bring about the day when it shall be taken as a matter of course that every public official is to execute a law honestly, and that no capacity ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... would have been safe for a very child. Half the peasantry had come in from the outlying environs of Villette, and the decent burghers were all abroad and around, dressed in their best. My straw-hat passed amidst cap and jacket, short petticoat, and long calico mantle, without, perhaps, attracting a glance; I only took the precaution to bind down the broad leaf gipsy-wise, with a supplementary ribbon—and then I ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... in Calcutta at an hour which nobody can name, and endeavours to effect a sneaking entrance at the postern-gate[10] of the governor-general's palace, may be a decent man; but this we know, that he has cut the towing-rope which bound his own boat to the great ark of his country. It may be that, in leaving Paris or Naples, he was simply cutting the connection with creditors who showed signs of attachment not good for his health. But ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... What decent woman, if she knew his real character, would wish to throw herself into the arms of such a man. If she were a true women she would almost rather die than have such a man even touch her, to say nothing of being in his close embrace for the ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... and pine to set up a rival art-centre, skilled in all the methods of the Salon, in the murky north. Rose's uncle, originally a clerk in a warehouse, and a rough diamond enough, had more or less moved with the times, like his brother Richard; at any rate he had grown rich, had married a decent wife, and was glad enough to befriend his dead brother's children, who wanted nothing of him, and did their uncle a credit of which he was sensible, by their good manners and good looks. Music was the only point at which he touched ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... slowly and rather aimlessly, it seemed to me, along the street in the direction of Sixth Avenue. My curiosity was unbounded. I followed her at a decent interval to see what she was going to do. But she did not ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... Certainly nothing culpable. Some one had twisted his innocent remarks in such a way as to irritate the captain and had carried tales to the cabin. With decent officers such a thing never would have happened. Affairs had run a sad course since Captain Falk had read the burial service over Captain Whidden and Mr. Thomas, both of whom had been strict, fair, honorable gentlemen. There was a sober ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... tall enough—five feet seven last month, and growing still; I should look almost a man. Then I would go round to every office in Edinburgh and ask if they wanted a clerk. I wouldn't mind taking anything to begin with. And I can write a decent hand, and I'm not bad at figures; as for my Latin ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... any sense in educating her like a boy," declared Elizabeth. "And she can't do a decent bit of hemming. She ought to work a sampler and learn the letters to mark her own clothes. We did it before we were her age. Chilian thinks you can hire people to do these things for you, but it seems so helpless not to be able to do them for yourself. Housekeeping ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Gaudisso would have been cast out a prey to dogs and vultures, had not Sherasmin, under the character of nephew of the deceased, been permitted to receive it, and give it decent burial, which he did, but not till he had taken possession of the beard and grinders, agreeably to ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... side street, and, looking up it, saw at the other end, a more brilliantly lighted thoroughfare. Arguing rightly that he would be safer there, Joe turned up, and soon was in a more decent neighborhood. His heart was beating rapidly, partly from the run, and partly through apprehension, for he had an underlying fear that it would not have been for his good to have gone into the room ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... anxiety and alarm lest there should be no election, and anarchy ensue, a wonderful effect was produced on the mass of federalists who had not before come over. Those who had before become sensible of their error in the former change, and only wanted a decent excuse for coming back, seized that occasion for doing so. Another body, and a large one it is, who from timidity of constitution had gone with those who wished for a strong executive, were induced by the same timidity to come over to us rather than risk anarchy: so that, according to the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... bounding to the middle of the floor. It set him wild with rage. Such a thing had never happened to him in his life before, for his home was a decent and clean one. This was the crowning infamy—that they should have taken him, helpless as he was, and shut him up in a filthy hole to be ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... can be a nursery-governess, or I can sing in a chorus; I should make a very decent figurante, or I could go round with baskets. Perhaps I can get writing. There's one comfort: I sha'n't have anything more to do with Arabic numerals till the latest day I live, and needn't know whether two and two make four ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... kinds of friendships," he said, "physical and mental. The physical is a thing of the moment. Of cauce you quite like the individual, you remain quite nice with them, and so on,—to keep the thing as decent as possible. It is quite decent, so long as you keep it so. But it is a thing of the moment. Which you know. It may last a week or two, or a month or two. But you know from the beginning it is going ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... with sentiment. But at least ten thousand modern writers, with Lord Macaulay at their head, have so ravaged and despoiled the region of fairy-stories and fables, that an allusion even to the "Arabian Nights" is no longer decent. The capacity of women to make unsuitable marriages must be considered as the corner-stone ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... polo, you match them in every game, your four-in-hand takes the prize at Olympia. I have even heard that you go the length of boxing with the young officers. What is the result? Nobody takes you seriously. You are a 'good old sport' 'quite a decent fellow for a German,' a hard-drinking, night-club, knock-about-town, devil-may-care young fellow. And all the time this quiet country house of yours is the centre of half the mischief in England, and the sporting squire ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... would do that. We work hard, and we live little if any better than Jasons, who have the County Trustee in three times a winter. I'm big and strong, you're almost a man, why don't we DO something? Why don't we have some decent clothes, some money for out work and"—Kate spoke at random—"a horse ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and again exhorted a reform; but his efforts were even slighter than Morton's, and in their results equally without fruit. The maintenance of his order in its political supremacy was of greater moment to him than its moral purity: a decent veil was cast over the clerical infirmities, and their vices were forgotten as soon as they ceased to be proclaimed.[95] Henry VIII., a mere boy on his accession, was borne away with the prevailing stream; and trained from his childhood by theologians, he entered upon his reign saturated with theological ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... her son were sad over the loss of the good meals, the two pets were even more so. They were reduced to beggary and had to go forth daily upon the streets in search of stray bones and refuse that decent dogs and cats turned ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... the laws of Nature and cowering under the vengeance of the flesh. Education contains much moonshine; but not of the sort that makes mere mooncalves and idiots the slaves of a silver magnet, the one eye of the world. In this decent arena there are fads, but not frenzies. Doubtless we shall often find a mare's nest; but it will not always be ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... friend, Squire Sleekface, and requested him to read it. My friend, who is almost as broad as long, has a jolly round countenance, and when he is merry he shakes the whole house with his laughter. The Squire read with decent composure till he came to the old horse at full charge, with the paniers dancing by its sides. Here he made a full stop; the letter fell upon his knee, and his sides were convulsed with laughter. He began again, and got tolerably well through ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... have any hard feelings toward me, Mr. McTavish,' said the jailer; and a decent man he wass, for all that there wass not a drop of Hielan' blood in him. 'I hope you will not think hard of me for not being hospitable to you, sir,' says he; 'but it's against the rules and regulations for the jailer to be offering the best he can command to the prisoners. ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... mastered a man, and laid its grip upon him so that all efforts to get away from the grasp are hopeless. Now, I dare say, that some of you are half consciously thinking that this is a piece of ordinary pulpit exaggeration, and has no kind of application to the respectable and decent lives that most of you live, and that you are ready to say, with as much promptitude and as much falsehood as the old Jews did, even whilst the Roman eagles, lifted above the walls of the castle, were giving them the lie: 'We were never in bondage to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... woman was the daughter, by a concubine, of Asad Khan, a Musalman of Arab decent settled in the town of Kutana in the Meerut district. She was born about the year A.D. 1753 [see post.] On the death of her father, she and her mother became subject to ill- treatment from her half-brother, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... decent. I am her affianced husband now, and he should leave us alone. Does he think I can ever forget that he used to court her once himself, and that the favors she now shows me were once given as freely, if not as honestly, to him? He knows I cannot ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... get a peep at her. The bride and her friends were distinguished by having a sort of brass nail-head driven through the right nostril of their noses. Good big boys were running about quite naked. But the conduct of the people, old and young, was quite decent. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... about that," he answered. "Were I master of this ship I should make all snug for it; but if I were to advise Gregson to do so, he'd only crack on more sail to show his superior seamanship. I've had a talk with the surgeon, McDow, a very decent sort of young fellow, and so I know the man ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... any great previous preparation, and even without adopting any too restraining mode of life. One could even dispense with any lofty standard of morality. In the last case, of course, ten to one the student would blossom into a very decent kind of sorcerer, and tumble down headlong into black magic. But what can this matter? The Voodoos and the Dugpas eat, drink and are merry over hecatombs of victims of their infernal arts. And ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... had, with some difficulty, quieted their clamours, and confined his interrogation to one person of a tolerably decent appearance, he learned, that Justice Gobble, whose father was a tailor, had for some time served as a journeyman hosier in London, where he had picked up some law terms, by conversing with hackney writers and attorneys' clerks ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... think we might have a decent towel," thought she. "Mother used to say it cost nothing to be clean;" then looking round to be sure that no one saw her, she caught up the skirt of her dress and drying her face with it, went back to ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... know," the other said. "I think it's pretty decent of her, and she may manage it. ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... return to the spirit of the day when I had known him as a bustling, pompous man. "It is remarkable that he can be happy doing nothing. Look how restless I am with nothing to do but to play golf and read magazines. I can't understand him. And yet he seems a decent ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... state of things had not much improved twenty or thirty years later when Gibbon went up, but perhaps it had improved a little. He does not mention lawsuits as a favourite pastime of the Fellows. "The Fellows or monks of my time," he says, "were decent, easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder: their days were filled by a series of uniform employments—the chapel, the hall, the coffee-house, and the common room—till they retired weary and well satisfied ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... vicar of Elstow, prove that, like her husband, she did not, in the words of Bunyan's latest and most complete biographer, the Rev. Dr. Brown, "come of the very squalid poor, but of people who, though humble in station, were yet decent and worthy in their ways." John Bunyan's mother was his father's second wife. The Bunyans were given to marrying early, and speedily consoled themselves on the loss of one wife with the companionship of a successor. Bunyan's grandmother cannot have died before February 24, 1603, the date ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... of the room, and in less than a minute returned with the mother, carrying a babe in each arm. She was a very decent woman, the widow of a soldier, who died before his poor children were born; she now endeavoured to maintain herself and them by taking in washing, together with the pay of the parish, which, although small, she received very thankfully, and ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... seated near the table on which stood an electric lamp. He had the confession in his pocket, and smiled to think how glad Mrs. Octagon would be to read it. However, he had quite enough evidence to force her into decent behavior. He did not intend to leave that room till he had Mrs. Octagon's free consent to the marriage and a promise that she would go abroad for an indefinite period with her hopeful son, Basil. In this way Cuthbert hoped to get rid of these undesirable ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... Had he let me see it, I would first have analyzed it, and discovered its component parts. The man was mad, undoubtedly, and this may have been poison. But its effect is good. Poh! I will taste again, because of this weak, agued, miserable state of mine; though it is a shame in me, a man of decent skill in my way, to believe in a quack's nostrum. But it is ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a great deal of very vile nonsense talked upon both sides of the matter: tearing divines reducing life to the dimensions of a mere funeral procession, so short as to be hardly decent; and melancholy unbelievers yearning for the tomb as if it were a world too far away. Both sides must feel a little ashamed of their performances now and again when they draw in their chairs to dinner. Indeed, a good meal and a bottle of wine is an answer to most standard works upon the question. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... destined flight, Inhabitant of deep disastrous night; Homeward with pious speed repass the main, To the pale shade funereal rites ordain, Plant the fair column o'er the vacant grave, A hero's honours let the hero have. With decent grief the royal dead deplored, For the chaste queen select an equal lord. Then let revenge your daring mind employ, By fraud or force the suitor train destroy, And starting into manhood, scorn the boy. Hast thou not ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... that limb to sleep in a cow-barn when he's got a decent bed in the house!" and then she started to come ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... character imprinted by genius on its works is also shown by it in its private life and manners. It is modest, because nature is always so; but it is not decent, because corruption alone is decent. It is intelligent, because nature cannot lack intelligence; but it is not cunning, because art only can be cunning. It is faithful to its character and inclinations, but this is not so much because it ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... tongue had the desired effect. The chief of the guard allowed it to persuade him to convey Paula to prison in the chariot, and to promise that she should find decent accommodation there, while he also granted old Betta the leave she insisted on with floods of tears, to share ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... be, my dear? sincerity is very trying. A decent hypocrisy is the secret of good society. Your good, frank people are very rude. If I am a wicked old woman, it is nobody's business to tell ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... thought?" he demanded indignantly. "Can't you think of what's brave and worth while—of what's decent for a big thing like a soul? A soul that's going on living to eternity—do you want to blacken that at the start? Can't you forget your little moods and your ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... constitute a considerable portion of the population. It is impossible to imagine the extreme ugliness of some of the sooty gentry; a decent ourang-outang might, without presumption, vie with many of these people, even of the fair sex, and an impartial judge should certainly decide that the said ourang-outang was the handsomer animal. Many of them are wealthy, and dress remarkably well. The females, when ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking forward again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at Goodman Brown's approach and walked onward ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said the broken man, "it's no use. I've tried to be decent for your sake and the kid's, but it can't be done. I can't get honest work. They've put the mark of Cain on me. They can take the consequences. The kid's got to have some Christmas; you've got to have food and drink and clothes and fire. ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... occasioned him new anxiety. His sister wrote that Olga was bent on making a most undesirable marriage, having fallen in love with a penniless nondescript who called himself an artist; a man given, it was suspected, to drink, and without any decent connection that one could hear of. A wretched, squalid affair! Would the Doctor come at once and see Olga? Her father was away, as usual; of course the girl would not be influenced by him, in any case; she was altogether in a strange, wild, headstrong state, and one could not be ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... getting into the better surfaces again: 15.7 miles for January 28, "a fine day and a good march on very decent surface."[324] On January 29 Bowers wrote his last full day's diary: "Our record march to-day. With a good breeze and improving surface we were soon in among the double tracks where the supporting party left us. Then we picked up the memorable camp where ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... appeared slightly agitated, but he soon recovered, walked twice or thrice along the coach house, stopped to bark, staggered, and exclaimed 'Halloa, old girl!' (his favorite expression) and died. He behaved throughout with decent fortitude, equanimity and self-possession. I deeply regret that, being in ignorance of his danger, I did not attend to receive ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... own danger, but whispered, "I'm glad enough Bruno is to home." They will eat dogs and dance their war dances, but I spoze I couldn't hender 'em, so didn't try to advise 'em. Some on 'em didn't have clothes enough on to be decent unless you call the tatooin' on their naked bodies, clothes. I see Josiah looked at 'em with interest, and he wondered if common ink and diamond dyes could be used, and if ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... fleet, With features indignantly red, A poor Clerk wrote of his linen in rags, And this is what he said:— "Stitch! Stitch! Stitch! Yet I can't keep a decent shirt! The thing has reached an unbearable pitch, So—as an appeal to the poor and the rich— I sing the new Song of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... timely forethought. But in the mean time the expenses of a long journey must be defrayed; and he found it impossible now to raise money on his house or household goods. All the ready cash he could command was barely sufficient to afford a decent burial to his daughter. He was discussing this serious difficulty with Virginia, whilst preparations for Salina's funeral and their own departure were going forward simultaneously, when Toby came trotting in, jubilant and breathless, and laid a little dirty ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... however, lounging about the house as he did, that Cleo was disliked by all the company, she and the stage manager being bracketed together as a pair of bullies. He was aware he himself was better liked, for he got on very well indeed with a couple of the men and thought them "very decent fellows." Though their poverty forced them to borrow occasional half-crowns of him, that only made him sympathise with them ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... the town has grown from a little settlement of one decent hotel and a few houses, to a prosperous city with seventeen thousand inhabitants, many industries, and one of the largest steel plants in the western hemisphere. My reason for choosing Sydney as a starting point was ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... she suspected of having intentions. Ariadne was in a state of grave apprehension, because she knew that much as the earl might love her, it would be difficult for them to marry on his income, which was literally too small to keep the roof over his head in decent repair. ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... born in the East, and the Orientals are very small eaters, and are particularly sparing in the use of meat. One wonders what such an unusual display of vulgar victuals has to do with the coming of the Saviour, who arrived among us in such poor estate that even a decent roof was denied to Him. Perhaps, though, the English people read their gospels in a way of their own, and understood that the wise men of the East, who are supposed to have brought the Divine Child symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... use that for?" said he. "My trousers are all tobacco spit now, and grease won't hurt 'em any now. Halloo! Here waiter, bring me a decent fork, for Lord knows I can't eat with this here shovel and if I take my fingers Tempest'll ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... settled, let it now be remarked, that Herschel's resources enabled him to unmask many of these nebul: stars they were, and stars he forced them to own themselves. Why should any decent world wear an alias? There was nothing, you know, to be ashamed of in being an honest cluster of stars. Indeed, they seemed to be sensible of this themselves, and they now yielded to the force of Herschel's arguments so far as to show themselves ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... day's excursion from Biarritz is a matter to set one romancing. Everything helping—the admirable scenery, the charming day, my operatic coachman, and smooth-rolling carriage—I am afraid I romanced more than it is decent to tell of. You face toward the beautifully outlined mass of the Pyrenees, as if you were going to plunge straight into them, but in reality you travel beneath them and beside them; you pass between their expiring spurs and the sea. It is on proceeding beyond ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... had been a woman of fashion and an actress; and Master Rowland well disposed of elsewhere; Larks' Hall deserted by its master—the brave, generous, enamoured squire—heigho! Mistress Betty, for all her candour, good humour, and cordiality, had her decent pride, and would not have thrown herself at ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... knotted like a cord; and they were continually flickering in front of him in violent and expressive pantomime. As for Tabary, a broad, complacent, admiring imbecility breathed from his squash nose and slobbering lips; he had become a thief, just as he might have become the most decent of burgesses, by the imperious chance that rules the lives of human geese ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... up. "The son of Hereward knows how to keep his word, even when it has been passed to a Norman. But let me see thee use the dress and costume of thy English ancestry—no short cloaks, no gay bonnets, no fantastic plumage in my decent household. He that would be the son of Cedric, must show himself of English ancestry.—Thou art about to speak," he added, sternly, "and I guess the topic. The Lady Rowena must complete two years' mourning, as for a betrothed husband—all our Saxon ancestors would ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... bear to go half-dressed to the toilet-room as most men do, and stepped out of his berth fully appareled—in a natty business sack-suit of Scots-gray, a high turn-down collar, fine enamel shoes and a rather noticeable tie. Florian Amidon had always worn a decent buttoned-up frock and a polka-dot cravat of modest blue, which his haberdasher kept in stock especially for him. He felt as if, in getting lost, he had got into the clothes of some other man—and that other one of much less quiet and old-fashioned tastes in dress. It made ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... the beloved physician, throwing the rifle to the floor, disappeared amid the flame and smoke. But the body was not consumed, for a Chinese living in a neighbouring village said afterwards that he saw it lying in the ruins of the house several days later, and that he gave it decent burial in a field near by. But there are hundreds of unmarked mounds in that region, and when the foreign expedition arrived in October, he was unable to indicate the particular one which he had made ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... happen amiss? Are we to form our opinion of things by the romantic notions of a girl, who supposes that to be the greatest which is the slightest of evils? Have I not told thee our whole story? Has she not broken her promise? Did I not generously spare her, when in my power? I was decent, though I had her at such advantage.—Greater liberties have I taken with girls of character at a common romping 'bout, and all has been laughed off, and handkerchief and head-clothes adjusted, and petticoats shaken to rights, in my presence. Never man, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... breath, and with that strange cruel cunning of the shallow mind, which is the abortive twin of decent feminine intuition, she leapt at the difficulty she saw threatening, and ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... years ago would produce from twenty to twenty-five bales of cotton each year, and from 800 to 1000 bushels of corn. Now, these forty acres will not produce more than eight or nine bales of cotton and hardly enough corn to feed two horses. In fact, one small family cannot obtain a decent support from the land which twenty years ago supported three families in abundance. This farm is not on the hill-side, neither has it been worn away by erosion. It is situated in the lowlands, in the black prairie, ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... the complaints of the Belgian nation, to which his ministry had been sacrificed; for then, he said, he would be suspected of poisoning the very source of that power, whose outlets only he had hitherto been charged with corrupting. He therefore sent him to Burgundy, his native place, for which a decent pretext fortunately presented itself. The cardinal gave to his departure from Brussels the appearance of an unimportant journey, from which he would return in a few days. At the same time, however, all the state counsellors, who, under his administration, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... down there inter Mexico," wailed the woman. "No gal like her can't. 'Tain't fit. Why, them women down there don't even wear decent clo'es! I've seen pitchers of 'em with nothin' on but basket-work stuff around their ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... rent it from me, very decent people of the name of Braithwaite. The man is out all day, and won't bother you when he's in; he's not like other people, poor chap. But the woman 's all there, and would do her best for you in a humble, simple, wholesome ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... infernal larks! Thought we were on the Somme again! Ah! Mr. Lemmy, [Still rather dreamy] no end obliged to you; you're so decent. Now, why did you want to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that my father ordered the animal shot and carted away!" muttered young Ripley fiercely. "Of course the whole town knows of it by this time. Prescott's muckers and a few others will be in high glee over my misfortune, but, anyway, I'll have the sympathy of all the decent ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... is a dishonourable aim in politics; and a man who mingles in political development with no intention of taking on responsible tasks unless he gets all his particular formulae accepted is a pervert, a victim of Irish bad example, and unfit far decent democratic institutions ... ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... along in the dry ditch beside the railroad track till I get up to the station, and then trust to luck. I used to be able to do a hundred yards in pretty decent time in my Oxford days, and if I can get into the refreshment-room without being seen, I don't ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... lectured the Widow Tolmie, she bade her in all amity "Good-day," and started to reform Crazy, who had been gyrating furiously across her path, trying apparently to bite his tail out by the roots. Crazy was, it appeared, a useless, good-for-nothing beast, a disgrace to a decent Elder's house, and I was ordered to stone ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... changed from a vigorous, hopeful, kindly man to an embittered pessimist. As for herself, sound health and a good endowment of brains enabled her to make a way in the world. Luckily, she was a sole child: her father managed to give her a decent education till she was old enough to live by teaching. But teaching was not her vocation. Looking round for possibilities, Constance hit upon the idea of studying pharmaceutics and becoming a dispenser; ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... figure he made, with his decent portliness, his whiskers, the money in his purse, the excellent cigar that he now lighted, recurred to his mind in consolatory comparison with that of a certain maddened lad who, on a certain spring Sunday ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which first they do a little chaw in their owne mouths. The women haue their faces marked or painted ouer with small blewe spots: they haue blacke and long haire on their heads, and trimme the same in a decent order. The men haue but little haire on their faces, and very thinne beards. For their common drinke, they eate yce to quench their thirst withall. [Sidenote: The people eate grasse and shrubs.] Their earth yeeldeth no graine or fruit of sustenance for man, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... Master Robert. They say he does much smuggling—but I don't object to a decent bit of smuggling—and I fear that certain very fast vessels of his know more than a little about ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... England in time of profound peace in the company of a score of soldiers. If he did, he would feel that he had exposed the girl to the loss of her character. This is not merely admitted, but acted upon by all decent people who live in garrison towns or in the neighbourhood of barracks. Why, then, should they suppose that when the same men are released from all the restraints of civilisation, and sent forth to burn, ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... woman!—only a woman! It seemed incredible—impossible! For why should a woman think? Why should a woman dare to be a genius? It seemed very strange! How much more natural for her to marry some decent man of established position and be content with babies and plain needlework! Here was an abnormal prodigy in the ways of womanhood,—a feminine creature who ventured to give an opinion of her own on something else than ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... recluse of a man, furious just now at some unexpected litigation connected with his cargo and horribly inconvenienced by the loss of his stewardess. Two ladies waiting, literally, on the wharf, have been promised accommodation in the Stella by the owners, and there is not a decent, respectable woman to be found on the whole coast of South America, ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Lu-don's power increased while that of Ja-don waned. Then followed a sortie from the temple which resulted in the defeat of the palace forces, and though they were able to withdraw in decent order withdraw they did, leaving the palace to Lu-don, who was now virtually ruler ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not have any hard feelings toward me, Mr. McTavish,' said the jailer; and a decent man he wass, for all that there wass not a drop of Hielan' blood in him. 'I hope you will not think hard of me for not being hospitable to you, sir,' says he; 'but it's against the rules and regulations ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... ceremony? The bridegroom," I said to him, "he's a fine fellow, very free and easy. He's a valuer," I said, "at the Law courts, and don't you think, your excellency, that he's some rascal, some knave of hearts. Nowadays," I said to him, "even decent women are employed at the Law courts." He slapped me on the shoulder, we smoked a Havana cigar each, and now he's coming.... Wait a little, ladies and gentlemen, ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... There will be a hotel, very soon, where no attention will be spared, etc., etc. The Government will afford every facility, etc., etc. It seemed, indeed, a friendly little place, with delicious air and sky, and a good, reasonable, decent, English tone about it. Expenses moderate, ye fathers of encroaching families. Negroes abundant and natural, ye students of ethnological possibilities. Officers in red jackets, you young ladies,—young ones, some of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... life out of this woman who had slandered her dead mother, with the fury of any wild beast. For she was Pauline Felix's daughter. It was her mother's name that Mrs. Waldeaux had said could not be spoken by any decent woman. Lisa had been but a child, but she had held her mother's head close to her stout little heart as she lay dying—that awful mysterious death of which the young man had tried to make a telling story. The ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the things which made the present a source of misery to him was the fact that he was expected to behave more like a mad millionaire than a sober young man with a knowledge of the value of money. His mind, trained from infancy to a decent respect for the pence, had not yet adjusted itself to the possession of large means; and the open-handed role forced upon him by the family ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... how can you think my father's being at home or abroad could be of consequence?—The lady is of course a decent person?' ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... canst not be prowd, For age puls downe the pride of every man; In youthfull yeares by Nature tis allowde To have selfe-will, doo Nurture what she can; Nature and Nurture once together met, The soule and shape in decent order set. ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... the Sisterhood!" she said, defiantly. "I'd sooner die! You may tell Mr. Newbury I'll live my own life—and I've got my boy. John won't find me—I'll take care of that. But if I'm not fit for decent people to touch—there's plenty like me. I'll not cringe to anybody—I'll go where I'm welcome. So now you understand, don't you—what I wanted to ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Henry would take it that way, I'd rather had the wall bare, Mr. Gubb. I've cried and cried, and last night I made up my mind it was all my fault and that when Henry came home he'd find a decent paper on the wall. I don't mind telling you, Mr. Gubb, that when the paper was on the wall it looked worse than it looked in ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... him one evening when he came a-courtin', 'Jim,' says he, 'you'll never come to no good, if you act like Old Scratch as you do; you ain't fit to come into no decent man's house at all, and your absence would be ten times more agreeable than your company, I tell you. I won't consent to Sall's goin' to them 'ere huskin' parties and quiltin' frolics along with you no more, on no account, for you ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... rarely surrender to it without an inclination for the person of the lover; you are coarse enough to yield to it without taste. Constancy with us is a duty; you give way to the slightest distaste without scruple. You are scarcely decent in leaving a mistress, the possession of whom, six months before, was your glory and happiness. She may consider herself well off if she is not punished by the most ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... century or two ago, was supposed to have forfeited all claim to the ordinary decencies of life. Now I can say, and can say with real satisfaction, that I do not find any difference of creed, however vast in words, to be an obstacle to decent and even friendly treatment. I am at times tempted to ask whether my opponent can be quite logical in being so courteous; whether, if he is as sure as he says that I am in the devil's service, I ought not, as a matter of duty, to be encountered with the old dogmatism and arrogance. I shall, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... and of course shall publish the fact if your cowardice prevents you from answering it. Indeed nothing shall induce me to rest in this matter till I know that I have been the means of restoring to Margaret Mackenzie the means of decent livelihood. ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... metamorphosed into a decent, dear little room, about nine by eleven, and commanding the sun on the four sides of its quadrangle. In fact, it was a veritable sun-bath; and how dainty was the tip-drip of the icicles from the big elm-bough, upon the little roof! To this spot I used to travel down in all weathers; sometimes when ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... reddened under the scraping. Probably he would not find another cabin in which a miner would part with his beard for an Eastern trip. Probably he would have to go to the barber the next time. He also succeeded, with soap and water, in removing a stain from his collar. It was still a decent collar; not ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... didn't look for that much sense in you. If you'd shown it sooner it might have saved your employers a large wad of bills. If you'd taken the trouble to be decent when I went to you in a friendly way a very little would have been enough. But now I've got to be paid. What do you say to five thousand as ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... a brown study to hear. Presently she spoke. "I believe that love is best founded upon a degree of respect and veneration which it is decent in youth to render unto ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... my youthful eyes, confused by the naphtha glares and the violent shadows cast on the many tiers of pink faces, loomed as vast as a Roman amphitheatre. It was a noble tent, a palace of a tent, the auditorium being but an inconsiderable section. There was stabling for fifty horses. There were decent dressing-rooms. There was a green-room, with a wooden, practicable bar running along one end, and a wizened, grizzled, old barman behind it who supplied your wants from the contents of a myriad bottles ranged in perfect ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... were entertained at one place with Musick and Dancing. The Musick consisted of 3 Drums, and the Dancing was mostly perform'd by 2 Young Women and one Man, and this seem'd to be their profession. The dress of the women was such as we had not seen before; it was neat, decent, and well chose, and in many respects not much unlike a European dress; only their Arms, Necks, and Shoulders were bare, and their headdress was the Tomow stuck with Flowers. They made very little use of their feet and Legs in Dancing, but ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... and I'm not going to blame you, Mr Eames. They've made the house unfit for any decent young gentleman like you. I've been feeling that all along; but it's hard upon a lone woman like me, isn't it, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... much too far ahead, and had converted a fly into an elephant; that, so far as she had heard their story, she was persuaded that nothing of any seriousness had occurred; that it would surely be better to wait until something did happen; that the prince, in her opinion, was a very decent young fellow, though perhaps a little eccentric, through illness, and not quite as weighty in the world as one could wish. The worst feature was, she said, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... find that the same was not ordained but of a good purpose, and for a great advancement of godliness, for they so ordered the matter that all the whole Bible, or the greatest part thereof, should be read over once in the year . . . But these many years past this godly and decent order of the ancient fathers hath been so altered, broken, and neglected by planting in uncertain stories, legends, responds, verses, vain repetitions, commemorations, and synodals that commonly, when any book of the ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... "Defection," said I, "is inevitable. The soldiers are drinking in their barracks the money which you have been giving them for some days past to purchase their fidelity. They say Louis XVIII., is a very decent sort of man, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... him to the public schools," Mr. Clarke said with the air of detached paternity peculiar to American fathers. "I went to the public schools. They gave me a decent start in life; that's about all you can expect ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... the morning to Pynaar's River, which consists of a station on the railway, and a few gutted houses. A fine iron bridge over the river had been blown up, and was lying with its back broken in the water. We camped here about one, and thought we were in for a decent rest, after several very short nights. I ate something, and was soon fast asleep by my saddle; but at three "harness up" was ordered, and off we went, but only for a few hundred yards, when the column halted, and after ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... sabots made of some animal closely connected with the hippopotamus! A dernier ressort, vraiment! for my choice was that, or cooling my feet on the burning pavement au naturel; I who have such a terror of any one seeing my naked foot! And this is thanks to war and blockade! Not a decent shoe in the whole community! N'importe! "Better days are coming, we'll all"—have shoes—after a while—perhaps! Why did not Mark Tapley leave me a song calculated to keep the spirits up, under depressing ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... the influence of Noel's deposition, was shocked at this apparently unseasonable joy; although he felt the safer for it. He looked severely at old Tabaret, saying,—"Hush, sir; be decent, compose yourself." ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... prominent form; for his parliamentary and official talents made all his faults conspicuous. His courage, his vehement temper, his contempt for appearances, led him to display much that others, quite as unscrupulous as himself, covered with a decent veil. He was the most unpopular of the statesmen of his time, not because he sinned more than many of them, but because he ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his words to bear on his unfitness for death, and judg'd them very decent and properly spoken: and took occasion to hint this in my attempts to ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... easy isolation to the dangers and complications which would inevitably attend the final establishment of a just system of public law; or else it would mean that the American people believed more in Americanism than they did in democracy. A decent guarantee of international peace would be precisely the political condition which would enable the European nations to release the springs of democracy; and the Americanism which was indifferent or suspicious of the spread of ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... after he struck. The seventy-foot fall broke his neck and crushed his skull. And right there Young Dick learned death—not the ordered, decent death of civilization, wherein doctors and nurses and hypodermics ease the stricken one into the darkness, and ceremony and function and flowers and undertaking institutions conspire to give a happy leave-taking ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... which goes with it, are too much idolized by creeping sycophants, and the blind, abject admirers of power, they are too rashly slighted in shallow speculations of the petulant, assuming, short-sighted coxcombs of philosophy. Some decent, regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolitic. It is said, that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of our mouths on our sleeves. One man with a gloomy malformation of brow—a homicidal worker in white-lead, to judge from his blue tone of colour, and a certain flavour of paralysis pervading him—got his coat-collar between his teeth, and bit at it with an appetite. Several decent women arrived upon the outskirts of the crowd, and prepared to launch themselves into the dismal coach-house when opportunity should come; among them, a pretty young mother, pretending to bite the forefinger of her baby-boy, kept ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... in coming to America was to get money to go back to Italy; and the whole document had so fictitious an air that it made us doubt even the nationality of the bearer; but we were put to shame by the decent joy she manifested in an Italian salutation. There was no longer a question of imposture in anybody's mind; we gladly paid tribute to her poetic fiction, and she thanked us with a tranquil courtesy that placed the obligation ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... contrasts the inhabitants of easternmost Asia ("like such individuals, who are not wanting in clean, decent, and comfortable dwellings, clothing, and surroundings; but who never feel the necessity for a higher enlightenment") with the Greeks ("in the case of the Greeks, even among the most educated inhabitants of Attica, the contrary often happens ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to counteract somewhat the misery of this crowd of helpless women, so-called "Bettinen houses" were instituted in many cities, and placed under municipal supervision. Sheltered in these establishments, the women were held to the observance of a decent life. But neither these establishments, nor the numerous nunneries, were able to receive ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... semi-barbarians, the offscouring of society, bred in bar-rooms. Alas! for poor human nature, should this scum ever overlay the surface of American freedom! It would indeed be the nightmare of intellect, the incubus of morality. A commonwealth well managed may be a decent government for an honest man to exist under, but a loaferism, to use a Yankee term, would indeed be frightful. The recklessness of life among the least civilized portions of the States is quite sufficient already, without its assuming a power and ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... a decent end, Shrewder fellows than your friend. Fare you well, for ill fare I: Live, ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... charitable? Besides, no decent-minded fellow could be anything else here. Who told me of the League of Charity, I should like to know? Who put me into it? Who aroused my pity for these poor beggars? Who but a stout German cynic ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... infinite sadness, and he sighed even while the smile came back on the face he turned to us from the door as he said: "Sometimes I think he is studying law with old Charley Hedrick and sometimes I think he is in the bank with John Markley; but he is always with me, and was such a decent boy when I had him out to the College. But I saw him with Joe Nevison last night, and I knew he'd ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... generally received opinion, in England, that the natives of Africa go entirely unclothed; but this supposition is very unjust: they have a kind of dress so as to appear decent, though it is very slight ...
— A Narrative Of The Most Remarkable Particulars In The Life Of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince, As Related By Himself • James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw
... The Ladle; which is introduced by a preface, neither necessary nor pleasing, neither grave nor merry. Paulo Purganti; which has likewise a preface, but of more value than the tale. Hans Carvel, not over-decent; and Protogenes and Apelles, an old story, mingled, by an affectation not disagreeable, with modern images. The Young Gentleman in Love has hardly a just claim to the title of a tale. I know not whether he be the original author of any tale which he has given us. The adventure of Hans ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... shut. "You don't? And who-all might you be, young fellers?" he asked. "This here Bonbright man has come up on Turkey Track to give us a show at law. If they's persons engaged in unlawful practices on this here mountain top, mebbe he'll knock up against 'em. Them that keeps the law and lives decent has no reason to fear the law. Ain't that what you say, Blatch?" turning suddenly ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... "He'll never write a decent book in his life if he clings to that theory," said Kelly, after Harley had departed. "There's precious little in the way of the dramatic nowadays in the lives of people one cares to ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... Charities. Well it's too bad, of course, but somebody's got to take the blow, V.V., and I imagine it's going about where it belongs. Serves her right, I say, for the sort of mother she's always been, doing her best to educate all the decent feeling out of Cally, and then trying to break her when she was doing the best thing she ever did in her life. In fact—I don't want to brag, but I expect the talk I've spread around town has had a good deal to do with the way things have ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... He was not so cruel as Pedrarias, but he was {108} ruthless enough and his fame is forever stained by atrocities and treacheries from which no personal or public success can redeem it. In passing judgment upon him, account must be taken of the humble circumstances of his early life, his lack of decent, healthy environment, his neglected youth, his total ignorance of polite learning. Take him all in all, in some things he was better and in other things no worse ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... and practice, to such a pitch that they were beginning to find it rather insipid: and in the world of letters attempts were being made to support it by a new invention: the prostitution of young girls,—I mean regularized, universal, virtuous, decent, domestic, and, above all, social prostitution.—There had just appeared a book on the question, full of talent, which apparently said all there was to be said: through four hundred pages of playful pedantry, "strictly in accordance ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... preparation. The cats knew her better than I did. Their suspense was really shocking to witness. While she was rolling her sleeves up and tying on her apron—she was poor, evidently, but very neat and wholesome in her black dress and the decent cap which crowned her hair—while she unpacked the contents of the bag—two newspaper parcels full of rather distressing viands, scissors, and a pair of gloves which had done duty more than once,—while all ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... facts—atmospherically. But that John, a man of science, enlisted under the banner of truth, should back this assertion of his wife's, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, really required resignation to put up with; argued a blindness, an infatuation, which seemed to his sister hardly decent. Because after all, facts were facts, and you didn't alter them by pretending that they ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... less than—cockroaches!—called Prossaki (Prussians) by the Russians, as they are sometimes called Schwaben (Suabians) by the Germans. Possibly they may be found in the huts of the serfs, but they are rare in decent houses. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... to be more agreeable to Christian Simplicity, not to judge of any Man by his Habit, if it be but sober and decent. ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... second quality of Eau de Cologne is given, to show that a very decent article can be produced ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... girls for Kenneth with their boyfriends lolling all over the sofa. I wouldn't have an easy minute while we were away. Anyway, when we do get out I don't notice you bending over backwards to get tickets for anything decent. It's always something you want to see. Those silly Marilyn Monroe movies, ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight
... just a kid, and if you send him over the road he's a criminal for life. I believe I can make a decent man of him. I want to try, anyway. So you just leave me this deputy's badge, and make my commission regular and permanent, and I'll keep an eye on him. Give me a paper so I can get a requisition and bring him back to stand trial, ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... stay here for a few days," he said to Cuthbert, as the latter started the next morning for England. "I am quite safe for the present, and after a long course of horse-flesh I really cannot tear myself away from decent living, until Paris is re-victualled, and one can live there in comfort again. I wish you every success in your search. The more I think of it the more convinced I am that we are not far wrong as to the manner in which Brander has got hold ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... other person's, business for the annual report, and would pay his own dues promptly on the first intimation from the secretary. Members whose dues for the year are not paid will not receive the annual report and, after a decent interval, their names will automatically drop from the roll of membership and not appear in the next ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... "You're terribly decent about leaving 'em," said Jim, who knew how Julia hated to be away from Anna and George at night, "but, really, I think this'll be fun—cards, you know, and a ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... admitted thar's good men amongst ye, an' we've agreed ter punish them briggatty fellers thet kilt Pete Doane, so thar hain't rightfully no grudge left outstandin'. I takes up my stand on this side of thet line, along with Parish Thornton, an' I summonses every man thet's decent amongst ye all ter come over hyar an' stand with us. We aims ter hev our hangin' without no deefault, but with a diff'rent man ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... family resemblance. If it be true, that "the king had ever reason to be jealous," and yet that no single criminal act of the queen's has been recorded, it must be confessed that one or both of the parties were singularly discreet and decent; for the king never complained, and the queen was never accused, if we except this burthen of an ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... ab initio or intrinsically a she-fiend like Valerie or Lisbeth. She does not do harm for harm's sake, nor even directly to gratify spite, greed, or other purely unsocial and detestable passions. She is a type of feminine sensuality of the less ambitious and restless sort. Given a decent education, a fair fortune, a good-looking and vigorous husband to whom she had taken a fancy, and no special temptation, and she might have been a blameless, merry, "sonsy" commere, and have died in an odor of very reasonable sanctity. Poverty, ignorance, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... anyone so like a queen," said Fred. "No, nor anyone so beautiful, though she is so pale and thin. People say you are like her in her young days, Henrietta; and to be sure, you have a decent face of your own, but you will never be as beautiful as mamma, not if you live ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Governors and declare, according to reports in the native press, that Parliament was of no importance at all, the only important thing being for China promptly to declare war. That some sort of public investigation into Peking diplomacy is necessary before there can be any hope of decent relations between China and the Powers seems indisputable. [Footnote: Since this was written certain diplomatists in Peking have been forced ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... I'll bet anything you want to name that your men have walked back and forth across his hideout. I'll bet that decent, respectable people live within mere yards of him and do not know it. We'll get to him the second he makes a mistake of any kind. Maybe he'll make his first one when he tries to get Saret Balisle—Good Lord, I forgot something. Tyler, phone again and ask Headquarters if the coroner found anything ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... Rather than go into the workhouse he would totter round in the face of the blasts that might cover his weak old limbs with drift. There was a sense of dignity and manhood left still; his clothes were worn, but clean and decent; he was no companion of rogues; the snow and frost, the straw of the outhouses, was better than that. He was struggling against age, against nature, against circumstance; the entire weight of society, law, and order ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... the Board, I'm ex officio his enemy and persecutor. It wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be decent, for me to continue that after it was known that you were going to marry his daughter. It wouldn't be possible. I must resign, I must withdraw from the Board altogether. I haven't the stuff in me to do my official duty at such a ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... as the deepest philanthropy and benevolence. In representing such men, and in such a cause, though by the most feeble means, one would suppose that, on the floor of the Senate of the United States, order, and a decent respect to the opinions of others, would prevail. From the causes which I have mentioned, I can hardly hope for this. I expect to proceed through scenes which ill become this hall; but nothing shall deter me from a full and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... men and women that they should live a life of hopeless virtue because it is part of the divine order that they should be so held down by hard times and small earnings as to make marrying and having children an unattainable luxury. Continence and clean living as preparations for decent and reasonably early marriage and the raising of a healthy family are the highest of ideals, and ought to be preached from every housetop. Continence as a life-long punishment for the impossible demands of an oppressive social and ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... put him there because they knew they could count on him!" roared old Powhatan, with the accumulated truculence of eighty quarrelsome years. Of course the General was intemperate; but, as the Judge observed facetiously, "it was refreshing, in these days when there was nothing for decent people to drink, to find that intemperance was still possible. With the General fuming over corruption and Benham preaching morality, there is no need," he added, "for ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... good cause, they discarded you," continued Mr. Reed, without noticing the interruption, "and my father, for Kate's sake, did all in his power to win you to a decent life, but in vain. Later, in dire want and trouble, when even your worthless companions threw you off, you appealed to me, and I induced Mr. and Mrs. Hinsley to give you one more trial. But you ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... like. But you must really, though we're having such a decent month, get straight away." In pursuance of which, when she had replied with promptitude that her departure—for the Tyrol and then for Venice—was quite fixed for the fourteenth, he took her up with alacrity. "For Venice? That's perfect, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... last, just as I was again within seventy yards of the waggon, I put up an old Impala ram from behind a mimosa thorn. He ran straight for the waggon, and it was not till he was passing within a few feet of it that I could get a decent shot at him. Then I pulled, and caught him half-way down the spine; over he went, dead as a door-nail, and a pretty shot it was, though I ought not to say it. This little incident put me into rather a better ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... right, mates," I returned cheerfully. "It's across the blue water, of course, but better than the Indies. We'll fall into the hands of Englishmen out there, and they'll be decent to us." ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... your fingers, I dare say," he admitted. "I'm afraid you are too good for this rude country, and I have no use for you. I could afford to be decent? Perhaps so, but I earn my money with considerably more effort than you seem willing to make. The cook will give you dinner with the other men to-day; then you can resume your search for an easy billet. We have no room in ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... comes Mr. Edgar Lee Masters and invents vers libre. It is too early yet to judge the full effects of this man's horrid discovery, but there is no doubt that he has taken the lid off and unleashed forces over which none can have any control. All those decent restrictions which used to check poets have vanished, and who shall say what will be ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... a woman gave her an irrevocable hold over him for life. And that touching of hands, she knew, would give that woman an irrevocable claim—to be seduced. And she so despised Florence that she would have preferred it to be a parlour-maid. There are very decent parlour-maids. ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... its benevolence, its active charity, and its mission of good will, I admire. When death's unwelcome presence rests within our portals, and obedient to his call a loved one has gone hence, we should give the mortal remains of the departed brother a decent sepulture; fondly cherish the remembrance of his virtues, and bury his frailties "beneath the clods which rest upon his bosom." We should then direct our thoughts and cares to the desolate home, where the ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... and being no more to be removed than the hairs from a man's arm. At the end of that time La Trape came to me, bringing the Spaniard; who had appeared again at the gate. The stranger proved to be a small, slight man, pale and yet brown, with quick-glancing eyes. His dress was decent, but very poor, with more than one rent neatly darned. He made me a profound reverence, and stood waiting, with his cap in his hand, to be addressed; but, with all his humility, I did not fail to detect an easiness of deportment and a propriety ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... read were fully informed that the American Legion was an organization for veterans of the army, navy, and marine corp; that it was non-partisan and non-political; that it stood for law and order, decent living, decent ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... provides that the Altar be covered with a carpet of silk, or some other decent stuff; also with a fair linen cloth at the time of the ministration. It is usual in many churches to vest the Altar in different colours to mark the various seasons of the Church. Thus at Christmas, Easter, and festivals, other ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... heard her so frankly own; (and no doubt was very glad it was past and done;) besides apprehending the danger of delay, and having some little Jealousies and Fears of what Effect might be produced between the Commands of his Father and the Beauties of Juliana; after some decent Denials, she consented to be Conducted by him through the Garden into the Convent, where she would prevail with her Confessor to Marry them. He was a scrupulous Old Father whom they had to deal withal, insomuch that ere they had perswaded him, Don Mario ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... he is a dealer in "Imported and other liquors." Next door to Mr. Korner's tipsy looking grocery lives Mr. Muffin, the coffin-maker, who has a large business with the disciples who look in at Korner's. Mrs. Downey, a decent sort of body, who lives up the alley, and takes sixpenny lodgers by the dozen, may be seen in great tribulation with her pet pig, who, every day, much to the annoyance of Mr. Korner, manages to get ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... against than sinning, was his humane judgment of these unhappy outcasts, and when he could, he helped them. Many a besotted creature had him to thank when the end came and short shrift little better then that accorded a dead dog awaited her—that at least she got a decent burial. The boys knew his attitude on the woman question, and it was a tribute to the regard in which they held him that, in his hearing at least, ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... and Holloway, too. He felt freshly unhappy. When you come to consider, it was so damned unjust for one man to be thirty-five while another—just as decent a fellow in every way—was ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... cordially not to go that I stayed on; but in a little while I noticed that the beer got less and less in quantity, and one day when I ventured to ask for a second bottle at lunch he told me that it cost a great deal and that he could not afford it. Of course I made some decent pretext and left his house as soon as possible. If one has to suffer poverty, one had best suffer alone. But to get discomforts grudgingly and as a charity is the extremity of shame. I prefer to ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... of the Belgian nation, to which his ministry had been sacrificed; for then, he said, he would be suspected of poisoning the very source of that power, whose outlets only he had hitherto been charged with corrupting. He therefore sent him to Burgundy, his native place, for which a decent pretext fortunately presented itself. The cardinal gave to his departure from Brussels the appearance of an unimportant journey, from which he would return in a few days. At the same time, however, all the state counsellors, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of Browning ignores his passion for colour, it altogether scouts the suggestion that he had a peculiar delight in form. By general consent he lacked the most ordinary and decent attention to it. No doubt he is partly responsible for this impression himself. His ideals of literary form were not altogether those commonly recognised in literature. If we understand by form the quality of clear-cut outline ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... war was a little hard on us, but we're picking up,' says he. 'They're still selling hams way below a decent price over at Henshaw's. I don't see ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... his cane down on the floor with a thump. "What do you mean by sitting there staring out of the window like mad and not answering when I ask you a decent question?" ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... to the compromise, did exactly what all sincere men who agree to compromise, do. For the sake of the enormous advantage of giving the rudiments of a decent education to several generations of the people, they accepted what was practically an armistice in respect of certain matters about which the contending parties ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... not," replied Westerfelt. The corners of his mouth were drawn down and his chin was puckered. "I have fought some in my life, and sometimes I get as mad as the next one, but I still try to be decent before ladies. This is no place to settle ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... Antelopes also some mule deer; this speceis of deer seems most prevalent in this quarter. saw some gees ducks and other birds common to the country. there is much appearance of beaver on this river, but not any of otter. from the apparent decent of the country to the North and above the broken mountains I am induced to beleive that the South branch of the Suskashawan receives a part of it's waters from the plain even to the borders of this river and from the brakes visible in the plains in a nothern ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Khan, in a tone of great contempt. "The Chinese have a proverb," he added, "that such a people as they ought to have a god for their emperor; but it seems they do not know how to choose even a decent man." ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... never read The Sewer, this part of the attack was an utter waste of Billingsgate so far as he was concerned. What did surprise and annoy him was to find that The Inexpressible, which, though well-known to be a stupid, was generally considered a decent paper, had taken the enemy's side, and published some very impertinent paragraphs about him. Afterwards he discovered that he had been the victim of a principle. The Inexpressible and Blunder and Bluster had a little private quarrel of their own, and the former felt bound to attack every ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... whole, the Stevensons may be described as decent, reputable folk, following honest trades—millers, maltsters, and doctors, playing the character parts in the Waverley Novels with propriety, if without distinction; and to an orphan looking about him in the world for a potential ancestry, offering a plain and quite unadorned refuge, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... petitioners, consisting of the United Empire Loyalists and their children, took refuge in this Province after the American Revolution, under the impression that they possessed the same constitution as that of the Mother Country, which includes a decent provision for the administration of the Word and Sacraments according to the forms of the Church ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Mr. Marshall, when he had finished with it. "So Larry's knocked out at last—always thought he would be—always expected it. Sorry, too. He was a decent fellow. Well, are ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... How?—by the agents of the Committee of General Security. She and the old woman! Basta! that's all I know. Now I am going back to bed, and you clear out of the house. You are making a disturbance, and I shall be reprimanded. I ask you, is this a decent time for rousing honest patriots out of ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... any decent woman would be to whom such a thing happened. She certainly didn't encourage Maxwell; but she found an appointment already made for her to go on the river with him. No doubt she took an exaggerated view of her—of your—good ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... shouldering his treasure. He turned down the path, but after going a short distance stopped and faced about. "I say, there!" he cried. "Oh, Taylor. Just a moment. I wouldn't mind having you over any evening, you know. You are a devilish decent fellow." ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... own, than they forthwith became admirers of Wellington. And why? Because he was a duke, petted at Windsor and by foreign princes, and a very genteel personage. Formerly many of your Whigs and Radicals had scarcely a decent coat on their backs; but now the plunder of the country was at their disposal, and they had as good a chance of being genteel as any people. So they were willing to worship Wellington because he was very genteel, and could not keep the plunder of the country out of their hands. And Wellington ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... of their lives, I now saw, was merely pretended. The appearance of sanctity and heavenly mindedness which they had shown among us novices, I found was only a disguise to conceal such practices as would not be tolerated in any decent society in the world; and as for peace and joy like that of heaven, which I had expected to find among them, I learnt too well that they did ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... "There's already been rumours about, and you'll be doing a public service by going to dock with dyspepsia. Binnie will be so stricken by remorse that he'll at once start providing the Mess with decent food." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... if he's under the protection of Strickland," said Mrs. Sam. "James Strickland is the most successful of the decent lawyers in New York. One never knows when one may want his services, and he's merciless, positively merciless, if he gets down on anybody. We'll ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... manner! Don't you see how Miss Bloomfield has soiled her frock? and that Master Bloomfield's socks are quite wet? and both of them without gloves? Dear, dear! Let me REQUEST that in future you will keep them DECENT at least!' so saying, he turned away, and continued his ride up to the house. This was Mr. Bloomfield. I was surprised that he should nominate his children Master and Miss Bloomfield; and still more so, that he ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... Theodore remarked. 'But of course if you think it'll be of any use, you had better go down and tell your Prince Eugen that that million can be fixed up, if he really needs it. I expect there'll be decent security, or Sampson Levi wouldn't have ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... not anticipate the possibility of their becoming old maids, and they cannot become brides of the church. I should honestly be glad to have either of them marry almost anybody, provided he is a decent fellow. I should not even object to their marrying foreigners, but the difficulty is that it is almost impossible to find out whether a foreigner is really decent or not. It is true that the number of foreign ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... flipper, old fellow, and we will be good friends!—only, tell your people to keep decent tongues in their heads, and their hands ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... oil, and his ranch was a scene of decent revelry, of which Gow Johnson was master. But the central figure of it all, the man who had, in truth, risen like a star, had become to La Touche all at once its notoriety as well as its favorite, its great man as well as its friend, he was nowhere ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... mad," he rejoined, with a laugh. "Gulden's the mad one. He's crazy. He's got a twist in his brain. I'm no fool.... I've only lost my head over you. But compare marrying me, living and traveling among decent people and comfort, to camps like this. If I don't get drunk I'll be half decent to you. But I'll get shot sooner or later. Then ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... yer pay through the nose for yer gas and yer water, and baker's bread and ready-made togs; and you've got nothin' left out of yer bit of wages, and you're as poor as ever; and you're only a "hand" at machines in the damp and smoke, instead of bein' in your own house an' decent like. What are you fussin' about, Girard? Don't you see that we can't go back to the old times now? A woman ain't got a house now, only a little room with nothin' but a dirty bed to sleep on! And I tell you, Girard, you've got to let us earn our livin' like that now, because it's you and the ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... hurt her feelings. But, of course, I can't have those pauper children at my party—Amy and Gummy. 'Gummy!' What a frightful name! And his pants are patched at the knees. They wouldn't—either of them—have a decent ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... fatigues and a rather severe pulled-back hairdo, this was a handsome woman. He found himself liking her, and this caused him a feeling near self-loathing. She was a suspect. He couldn't afford to like her. But the Bullones were being so decent, taking him in like this. And how was their hospitality being repaid? By spying and prying. Yet, his first loyalty belonged to the I-A, to ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... fourth shearer, Susan Tall's husband the fifth, Joseph Poorgrass the sixth, young Cain Ball as assistant-shearer, and Gabriel Oak as general supervisor. None of these were clothed to any extent worth mentioning, each appearing to have hit in the matter of raiment the decent mean between a high and low caste Hindoo. An angularity of lineament, and a fixity of facial machinery in general, proclaimed that serious work was the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... She recalled her parting with Bixler McFay in the late winter, when she had left Leavenworth for the Coast, saying it wasn't decent not to know anything about the place where all your income came from, and he had left Leavenworth to rejoin his regiment in Arizona. How his voice had trembled that morning as he bade her good-bye, declaring he should always consider himself engaged to her, even if she did not consider herself engaged ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... of necessity some dusky villain with an evil eye. In Germany, says Madame Blumenthal, people play at roulette as they play at billiards, and her own venerable mother originally taught her the rules of the game. It is a recognised source of subsistence for decent people with small means. But I confess Madame Blumenthal might do worse things than play at roulette, and yet make them harmonious and beautiful. I have never been in the habit of thinking positive beauty the most excellent ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... for three rubles you can give him a decent treat. Let me have the money and I will order everything for you. I had better ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... at a quarter to 7. I was not among the lucky ones, but had to hold on for the second train at a quarter past 8, and so did not reach this city till after 10, or twenty-six hours from Paris, though, with a little enterprise and a decent boat on the Channel, the trip could easily be made in 14 hours—four for the French side, six for the Channel, two for the English side and two for Custom-House delay and leeway of all kinds. If Commodore Vanderbilt or Mr. Newton would only take compassion ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... them home; the German soil once cleared of them, much will be possible; till then nothing.' KAISER: 'Well, give me back my Bavaria; my Bavaria, and something suitable to live upon, as Head of the Reich: some decent Annual Pension, till Bavaria come into paying condition,—cannot you, who are so wealthy? And Bavaria might be made a Kingdom, if you wished to do the handsome thing. I will renounce my Austrian Pretensions, quit utterly my French ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... threshold of a new era, in which the value of personality would reappear among the things taken for granted. Strictly speaking, of course, Mahon machines were not persons. But they reflected the personalities of their owners. It might again seem desirable to be a decent human being if only because ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Sukey for me," said Dic. "I'll have nothing more to do with her. I want to be decent and worthy of Rita. I want to be true to her, and Sukey is apt to lead me in the other direction, without even the excuse on my part of caring for her. An honest man will not deliberately lead himself ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... that Gene'll give it to me good if he ever knows I let you look and told you what's what. Well, decent-like Gene is seen' them poor devils get a square meal. They're only a lot of calf-thieves in this country. Across the border they're bandits, some of them, the others just riffraff outlaws. That rebel bluff doesn't go down with us. I'd have to see first ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... until the return of Rudri. For there are, if I mistake not, many matters to attend to beyond the burial of the slain. The men of Colonsay, as I hear, have played sad havoc with your homesteads, and it were well that these were put again into decent repair." ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... there could, and did: the marvellous Czar Paul that was to be. Concerning whose exact paternity there are still calumnious assertions widely current; to this individual Editor much a matter of indifference, though on examining, his verdict is: 'Calumnies, to all appearance; mysteries which decent or decorous society refuses to speak of, and which indecent is pretty sure to make calumnies out of.' Czar Paul may be considered genealogically genuine, if that is much an object to him. Poor Paul, does not he father himself, were there nothing more? Only that Peter and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... seven discharged and four sent on to the Superior Court. Four of those convicted and transported were boys. There were brought to trial only four free Negroes, one of whom was discharged and three held for subsequent trial were finally executed. It is said that they were given decent burial.[11] ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... has seized the general's arm; and he points the other to the sails of the vessel fluttering in the breeze, while the fire of his inward enthusiasm glows through his dark complexion, and flashes in tips of flame from his eyes. Another pale and emaciated person, in neglected and scarcely decent attire, and distinguished by the abstracted fervor of his manner, presses through the crowd, and attempts to lay hold of Pepperell's skirt. He has spent years in wild and shadowy studies, and has searched the crucible of the alchemist for gold, ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... de other room. My bed on one side en Sue bed on de other side. Put chillun on quilts down on de floor in de other end of de room. Baby, whe' dem curtains you say you gwine give me? I gwine hang dese up in Sue room. Dey help me fix up de room nice en decent like." ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... manila rope and Carpenter Pete being actively employed between drinks upon a pine box about the length and breadth of Mr. Gilson. Society having rendered its verdict, there remained between Gilson and eternity only the decent formality of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... loss to know what the Tasmanian devils were and at first were led astray by a sign on a tree in the devils' inclosure. "Look, they're Norway maples," cried one curator. In the same way we thought at first that a llama was a Chinese ginkgo. These errors lead to a decent humility. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... Had she much property? She was a decent saving body. And who is to get it? Not that you can know, however, till the will ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... a centralized effort after the trials which all the people have suffered together to reconstruct the social fabric so that all the people of the country, with the exception of those who are lazy or criminal, shall have the means by which they may be able to secure a decent livelihood and need have no fear of poverty-stricken old age. I foresee the disintegration of the older political parties and the building up of new ones, in which the great contending features will be the means and methods by ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... once spread abroad that Matson has jumped into the new league, it will start a stampede of contract breakers. I tell you straight, Westland, it's dirty business. If you want to start a new league, go ahead and do it in a decent way. Get new players and develop them, or get star players whose contracts have expired. Play the game, but do it without ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... which offer to every traveller a secure night's shelter, there is in every village the Medhafe of the Sheikh, where all strangers of decent appearance are received and entertained. It is the duty of the Sheikh to maintain this Medhafe, which is like a tavern, with the difference that the host himself pays the bill: the Sheikh has a public allowance to defray ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... don't work decent," observed Step Hen. "It misses an explosion every third one, and acts like it might go out of business any minute on us, ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... at Cleveland, Horace thought that was the last of them. Miss Gerty was "decent-looking, looked some like Cassy Hallock; but he couldn't bear to see folks giggle; hoped he never should set eyes on those people again." Whether he ever did, you shall hear one ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... But to the country people this was no mystery. Kilgorman had an evil name, and for twelve years, since its late master died, had stood desolate and empty— tenanted only, so it was said, by a wandering ghost, and no place for decent Christian folk to ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... of anger, and sorrow of denunciation. Neighbors went hastily to the old tumble-down hut, in which she had secured little more than a place of shelter from summer heats and winter cold: some with grave-clothes for a decent interment of the body; and some with food for the half-starving children, three in number. Of these, John, the oldest, a boy of twelve, was a stout lad, able to earn his living with any farmer. Kate, between ten and eleven, was bright, active girl, out ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... came to pass that Eugene did not receive the letter for nearly two months and did not know of his recovered liberty all that time. For Haddington, in his joy, easily promised silence for a little while; it seemed only decent; and even Ayre could not refuse to agree with him that, though Eugene must be told, nobody else ought to be until Eugene had formally signified his assent to the lady's transfer. Ayre could not take upon himself, ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... recently been divorced? I must speak—I am speaking. It is too soon, I dare say, for you to be willing to think of marriage again—but I offer you the love and protection of a husband. My means are small, but I am able now to support a wife in decent comfort. Selma, give me some hope. Tell me, that in time you may be willing to trust yourself to my love. You wish to work—to distinguish yourself. Would I be a hindrance to that? Indeed, you must know that I would do every thing in my power to promote your ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... a place of despair. Yet there were men who managed to get along somehow, and to raise families and keep decent homes. If one had the luck to escape accident, if he did not marry too young, or did not have too many children; if he could manage to escape the temptations of liquor, to which overwork and monotony drove so many; if, ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... things—the thoughts effortless, monotonous, and soothing of a Government clerk; he regretted all the gossip, the small enmities, the mild venom, and the little jokes of Government offices. "If I had had a decent brother-in-law," Carlier would remark, "a fellow with a heart, I would not be here." He had left the army and had made himself so obnoxious to his family by his laziness and impudence, that an exasperated brother-in-law had made superhuman efforts to procure him an appointment ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... authority; and yet the Counsellor creeps up to be my Lord of the Treasury; and his son aspires to my hand, as of a Royal alliance. Well, 'honour among thieves,' they say; and mine is the first honour: although among decent folk perhaps, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... commanded crisply, "until further orders. If he is hungry, feed him; and see that he has a decent place to sleep. The petty officers' ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... beast; so don't mind him, but have a cup of tea, and go to bed. You can make your gown decent to-morrow; and, if I see the tricksy peddler, I'll ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... a Good Samaritan and tell me where to find a restaurant in Broadway, somewhere where crowds of people go but not what they call a fashionable place. I want to get some dinner—I haven't had anything decent to eat for I don't know how long—and I want to breathe the same atmosphere ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it too good that you're not satisfied. That Flora Kemble, that never has a decent thing to wear, ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... but, perhaps, the crafty Frenchman would have been equally complaisant, had I been in the habit of indulging worse feelings than those of indolence and aversion to mercantile business. As it was, while I gave a decent portion of my time to the commercial studies he recommended, he was by no means envious of the hours which I dedicated to other and more classical attainments, nor did he ever find fault with me for dwelling upon Corneille and ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and on the steps of the club; and talks about 'Bo' in all societies. It is his drag which carries down Bo's friends to the Derby, and his cheques pay for dinners to the pink bonnets. I don't believe the Perkinses know what a rogue it is, but fancy him a decent, reputable City man, like his ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... imp, for example, a sort of sucking devil, whom your friend Glena——Glenamuck there, has sometimes in his train. To look at him, he is about fifteen years; but he is a century old in mischief and villainy. He was playing at quoits the other day in the court; a gentleman, a decent-looking person enough, came past, and as a quoit hit his shin, he lifted his cane; but my young bravo whips out his pistol, like Beau Clincher in the "Trip to the Jubilee," and had not a scream ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... them a lift would not have penetrated his mind had not Elsie herself requested it. Yet the man was no worse than his fellows, and had an element of unselfish kindness in him, which was shown by his giving them the old sack to sit upon. Under happier auspices he would probably have been a very decent sort of person, but the hopeless hardship of his existence had gradually wiped out every ambition and hope, till at last he had sunk into something scarcely ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... adventures enliven your journals, are dressed 'in the height of fashion,' and enjoy 'a mild prepossessing demeanour.' Even the Cholera does not menace 'a gentleman of the better ranks;' and no bodies are burked with a decent suit of clothes on their backs. Wealth in all countries is the highest possible morality; but you carry the doctrine to so great an excess, that you scarcely suffer the poor man to exist at all. If he take a walk in the country, there's the Vagrant Act; and if he has not a penny to hire a cellar ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... betray us, because in Mazowsze every one of them deserves to be hanged. Only we must give them decent clothes so that they will be taken for Jurand's servants; and we must get the principal thing: a ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... together. Let us allow, then, frugality itself to be another and fourth virtue; for its peculiar property seems to be, to govern and appease all tendencies to too eager a desire after anything, to restrain lust, and to preserve a decent steadiness in everything. The vice in contrast to this is called prodigality (nequitia). Frugality, I imagine, is derived from the word fruge, the best thing which the earth produces; nequitia is derived (though this is perhaps rather more strained; still, let us try it; we shall only ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... striking twelve he appeared slightly agitated, but he soon recovered, walked twice or thrice along the coach house, stopped to bark, staggered, and exclaimed 'Halloa, old girl!' (his favorite expression) and died. He behaved throughout with decent fortitude, equanimity and self-possession. I deeply regret that, being in ignorance of his danger, I did not attend to receive ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... adorns my face whenever I neglect the razor for a few days, when an auto came tooting and roaring down the narrow street, and a moment later three staff officers took the stairs at a run. So far, good; that was unofficial, good-natured, human and entirely decent. The three of them burst through the bed room door, all grins, and took turns pumping with Jeremy's right arm—glad to see him—proud to know him—pleased to see him looking fit and well, and all that kind of thing. Even men who had fought all through the war had forgotten some of its red tape ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... I, almost struck dumb by my success, but letting no hint of my complacency escape me. "And I did not mean they should. You are a decent woman, Mrs. Boppert, ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... to say, but maybe it was this, that the world hasn't changed so much as folks often think. I get to watching young people sometimes—it seems as if they were like the young people in my day, and I think any young man that's steady and decent and has a good situation—what I mean is this, that he—well, it depends on the ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... his shaggy head and turned a shade yellower. "It is no place for decent folk," he growled. "I myself once passed within a mile of its outskirts at dusk, and saw the unholy little people's lanterned processions starting for the shrine of Queen Yang, who, tradition says, killed herself and a thousand babies with her ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... were completely turned upon the tormentors, and they were only too glad to drop their airs and treat Becky with the respect that pluck and superior power invariably command. But while thus constrained to decent behavior before Becky's eyes, behind her back they gave way to the resentment that they felt against her for her triumph over them, and let no opportunity slip to say slighting things of her. Good-natured Lizzie would laugh when they said these things to her,—when they told her ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... of the rain, the bo'sun called us all together, that we might make a decent burial of the unfortunate lad, whose remains had lain during the night upon one of the bottom-boards of the boat. After a little discussion, it was decided to bury him in the beach; for the only part where there was soft earth was in the valley, and ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... satisfied the crowd, already sated with eloquence. I wondered if the unfortunate man could feel the chill settling down upon the house as he spoke his random and undignified sentences, whether he could see the first stragglers slipping down the aisles. What did his decent record, his honest purpose, avail him in an hour like this? He tried to lash himself to vigour, but it was spurring a broken-winded horse. The stragglers increased into a flying squadron, the house was emptying fast, when the chairman in sheer desperation made a sign to the ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... his bruises would hardly have time to disappear. His family were staying for the summer at Scarborough, and his sisters wrote him enthusiastic accounts of the lawn-tennis parties there. How could he present himself in decent society, with one of his eyes in mourning? But he saw something comic in his own annoyance, and it did not affect him sufficiently to interfere with his studies or amusements. He neither feared the contest nor desired it. He had no wish to quarrel with ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... twenty-five dollars. Bargaining with him stood the negro-driver, a tattooed African, armed with a whip. All within the court swarmed the black bees of the hive,—the men with little clothing, the small children naked, the women decent. All had their little charcoal fires, with pots boiling over them; the rooms within looked dismally dark, close, and dirty; there are no windows, no air and light save through the ever-open door. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... saw, And built a stage, found out a decent dress, Brought vizards in (a civiler disguise), And taught men how to speak and how ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... cake up to Mis' Cass's. Some folks in this town think a storekeeper ain't got nothing to do but chase out 'phone-orders. . . . Hello, Carrie. That dress you got on looks kind of low in the neck to me. May be decent and modest—I suppose I'm old-fashioned—but I never thought much of showing the whole town a woman's bust! Hee, hee, hee! . . . Afternoon, Mrs. Hicks. Sage? Just out of it. Lemme sell you some other spices. Heh?" Uncle Whittier was nasally ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... let on. Two of 'em acted as if they thought I was nuts. The other guy-I think he was Air Force Intelligence—acted decent. He said not to get steamed up about the Aero-Medical boys; it was their job to screen ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... resident within a district of more enlightened views and higher character than his fellows. A good many thousand pounds were contributed and expended for this purpose. Absolutely no stipulation was made by the contributors to this fund, except that the aim should be for honest and decent government. The funds were placed unreservedly in the hands of well-known and highly respected men who were themselves burghers of the State, and the Uitlanders laid themselves out for one more effort to effect the reforms by peaceful means and pressure from ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... not. You look like an exceptionally decent young man. Have you had breakfast? Alexina, go and ask Maggie, if she has recovered herself, to make ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... bead industry of Venice is but a poorly-paid one; only the most skilful among the hands can manage to make a decent livelihood. Not very many of the women can earn more than about 4-1/2d. a day, so that for them all the fast-days decreed by their Church are quite superfluous; their fasts last from Ash Wednesday to Ash Wednesday. Even polenta, that very frugal Italian national dish, is for ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... "We found it fairly comfortable travelling through Wayne County. The roads are decent enough and the settlers are numerous. It was after we left Madison County that we encountered hardships. We travelled for a while with a party of emigrants who were heading for the settlement at Strawtown. There were three families of them, including a dozen children. ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... which he never got a direct reply from them, but by degrees he picked up many missing details from other sources. What he learned in this way indicated merely that they had been very poor at times, and poverty had forced them to earn a living by work that was quite honest and decent, but not "socially respectable." At one time, before her daughter was old enough to assume a share of the burden, Granny had actually had to fall back on the coarsest and humblest menial work—scrubbing and washing ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... in meeting Louis Devoe. That was easily accomplished, for the foreign colony in Mojada numbered scarce a dozen; and they gathered daily at a half-decent hotel kept by a Turk, where they managed to patch together the fluttering rags of country and civilization that were left them. I sought Devoe before I did my pearl of the doorway, because I had learned a little of the game of war, and knew better than to strike for a prize ...
— Options • O. Henry
... her son was a fool and worse because he had neither the consideration nor the silly sense of a fool's solicitude for a hard-worked mother. She appealed to the sleeping Lumai, who awoke heavily and fatly, who muttered and mumbled easy terms of Somo dialect to the effect that it was a most decent world, that all puppy dogs and eldest-born sons were right delightful things to possess, that he had never yet starved to death, and that peace and sleep were the finest things that ever befell the lot of mortal ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... taking of her part, B. A woman as has a husband as finds her with her wittels regular, and with what's decent and comfortable beside, ought to be contented. I've never said no other than that. I ain't no patience with your saucy madames as can't remember as they're eating an honest man's bread. Drat 'em all; what is it they wants? They don't know what they ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... guard the doors and keep off the inquisitive. This done, thoroughly tired out, the boys sought the hotel. Like most towns of its size and importance Meadville only boasted one hostelry worthy of the name. This place, the Fountain House, as it was called, was a decent enough looking hotel and the young aviators were warmly welcomed. After supper, for in Meadville nobody "dined," Miss Prescott and the girls sauntered out with The Wren to obtain some clothing for the waif who had so strangely ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... in too readily, and young Paul was glad enough to be set free from his unhappy home. There may be some excuse in this for the licentious living to which he now gave himself up. He was heir to a decent fortune, and of course thought himself justified in spending it before-hand. Then, in spite of his quaint little figure, he had something attractive about him, for his merry face was good-looking, if not positively ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Bert found himself standing in front of a rather shabby three-story house, in a decent, but not fashionable, street. The name Stubbs ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... are decent to the evening star. I will go at once and find your brother. When shall ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... excellent husbandman, but had resolved not to exceed such a degree of wealth; all above it he bestowed in secret bounties many years after the sum he aimed at for his own use was attained. Yet he did not slacken his industry, but to a decent old age spent the life and fortune which was superfluous to himself, in the service of his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... had heard it soon, and thought not good To venture more of royal Harding's blood; To be immortal he was not of age, And did e'en now the Indian Prize presage; And judged it safe and decent, cost what cost, To lose the day, since his dear brother's lost. With his whole squadron straight away he bore, And, like good boy, promised ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of the popular novels which preceded "Evelina" were such as no lady would have written; and many of them were such as no lady could without confusion own that she had read. The very name of novel was held in horror among religious people. In decent families, which did not profess extraordinary sanctity, there was a strong feeling against all ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... "because I rather like you, Spider. I think you could be quite a decent fellow if you tried very hard! Come, shake your grouch and let's ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... our plans," he went on, pleased with our discomfiture and our despising of him. "Next day some chap came to see me, pretending he was my brother. And I carried out my part of it by cursing him at first and then begging him to give me decent burial. So he went away, and, I suppose, received permission to get me right after I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... like a set of grinning imbeciles!" complained Lennie Chapman, "with Sausage for the arch-lunatic of us all. I wish to goodness we had a decent English teacher! I don't ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... what, young gemman," said another watchman, who was a more potent, grave, and reverend senior than his comrades, "if you do not move on instantly, and let those decent young omen alone, I'll take you all up ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them damned acting dogs," growled the baggageman to his mate. "There ought to be a law against dog-acts. It ain't decent." ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... Paddy Dorman, a humpbacked dancing master, who was there to keep order. ''Tis a pity,' said he, 'if we'd let the piper run dry after such music; 'twould be a disgrace to Iveragh, that didn't come on it since the week of the three Sundays.' So, as well became him, for he was always a decent man, says ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... the beloved name on the smooth rind of the tree makes it sweet to one who is in real touch and living fellowship with Jesus Christ to speak about Him. O brother! there is a very sharp test for us. I know that there are hundreds of professing Christians—decent, respectable sort of people, with a tepid, average amount of Christian faith and principle in them—who never felt that overmastering desire, 'I must let this thing out through my lips.' Why? Why do they not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... "A decent, sensible lad," said the Laird of Monkbarns to himself, when these particulars of Lovel had been reported to him. "He scorns to enter into the fooleries and nonsense of these idiot people at Fairport. I must do something for him—I must give him ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... things I don't want. I'm going to stop accepting invitations, and meeting people I don't like and don't want to know. I've tried your game—I've tried it hard, and I don't like it; and I'm going to get out before it's too late. I'm going to find some decent and simple place to live in; and I'm going down town to find out if there isn't some way in New York for a man to ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... I went on, "as to show me what has been subscribed so far and what you have spent. Then inform me daily of every fresh subscription in money or kind, and of every fresh outlay. You will also give me, Natalie, the list of your helpers. Perhaps they are quite decent people; I don't doubt it; but, still, it is ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... said Wilmot, "I will consent to anything. Any decent man would give his life for a woman—why not his legs? Is Dr. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... when the mate of a ship brought up a squad of his crew, burst into one of their dens, and beat and battered up the whole gang within an inch of their lives. But, in most cases, the reckless infamy of these dregs of city vice gave them an immense advantage over a decent citizen; for they could not be defiled nor made ridiculous, and ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... which are inevitable in such a state, and when no circumstance seemed to indicate the approach of any uncommon effort towards improvement, we are told that there appeared on the banks of the lake Titicaca, a man and woman of majestic form, and clothed in decent garments. They declared themselves to be children of the sun, sent by their beneficent parent, who beheld with pity the miseries of the human race, and who had commanded them to instruct and reclaim them. At their persuasion, enforced by reverence for ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... seen a decent petticoat since we took leave of Mynheer Van Winkle and his daughter, on board the good sloop St. Nicholas, I should think so ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... puzzled; then understood. "You mean to give me time to change my clothes? Thanks; but I'm used to these. And besides," with spirit, "I never could see why women couldn't wear what they choose, so long as it is decent." ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... was wasted utterly on the terrasse of the Cafe de l'Univers, with the chateau ever in view, wishing it were convenable to make one's duty call without more delay. But it wasn't; not to wait a decent interval would be self-betraying, since Duchemin had no longer any immediate intention of moving on from Nant; finally, he rather hoped to get news at Millau that would strengthen a prayer to Eve de Montalais to be sensible and remove her jewels to a place of safe-keeping ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... sent to countermand their birth-day clothes; two of them burnt all their collections of novels and romances, and sent to a bookseller's in Pall-Mall to buy each of them a Bible, and Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying." But I must do all of them the justice to acknowledge, that they shewed a very decent behaviour in the drawing-room, and restrained themselves from those innocent freedoms, and little levities, so commonly incident to young ladies of their profession. So many birth-day suits were countermanded the next day, that most of the tailors and mantua makers discharged all their ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... a beaver hat was a valuable asset which might be handed down to the second or even the third generation. A decent broadcloth suit would cost a man as much as he could earn in three months at the current rate of wages, after paying his board; consequently the early settler did not often indulge in the luxury of a new suit. Leather breeches were commonly worn, and from their lasting qualities ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... the harem, or even worse. Poor Bob, meaning to be honorable, offered to buy me in the regular way at St. George's, Hanover Square, before we came to live here; but, of course, I refused, as any decent woman in my circumstances would. Understand me now, Doctor: I dont want to give myself any virtuous airs, or to boast of behaving better than your sister. I know the world; and I know that she will ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... not forced on Rome. She had no good motive for it; not even a decent excuse. It was simply that she was accustomed to do the next thing; and Carthage presented itself as the next thing to fight,—Sicily, the next thing to be conquered. The war lasted from 264 to 241; and at the end of it Rome found herself out of Italy; mistress ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the last melancholy duties to the bodies of their unfortunate companions with all decent observances which circumstances would allow. Their return was then commenced. Boone and his brother, with some others, did not wish to forsake the undertaking upon which they had set out; but the majority against them was so great, and the feeling ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... the notion that he was improving my mind by useful information, or impressing his dogmas upon me and reforming my errors of judgment, or perhaps that he was talking down to my level, and amusing me with entertaining discourse. Yet he was a decent man enough in the main, I daresay; and if he had kept his distance, I never would have hated him. As it was, it was almost impossible to help it, for he not only bothered me with the infliction of his own presence, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... motley population. It is for the sake of their children, who ought to be, at least equally with those of the English labouring classes, since they cannot get it from their parents, provided with means of decent Christian education, that Mr. George Smith has brought this subject under public notice. The Gipsies, so long as they refrain from picking and stealing, and do not obstruct the highways, should not be persecuted; for they are a less active ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... has fixed upon the first day of the week for the exercise of his hospitality, because some of his guests could not enjoy it on any other, for reasons that I need not explain. I was civilly received in a plain, yet decent habitation, which opened backwards into a very pleasant garden, kept in excellent order; and, indeed, I saw none of the outward signs of authorship either in the house or the landlord, who is one of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... woman in a raincoat came out in the back yard and held the streaming lantern while the man arranged some sacks underneath the porch and closed and bolted the back gate. He heard them go up the back steps, heard them moving about in the house. Like a decent old fellow he licked the rain from his silken coat, smoothed out the matted strands, then curled up comfortably in his dry bed and slept ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... of your minds, friend and foe alike, to each other, so that you may all see for yourselves what depths of rottenness exist there and just how unfit your world is to associate with the decent worlds of this or any other galaxy. It would take God Himself to do anything with such material, and I am not God. Therefore, when we have rid this world of atomics we will leave and you will start all over again. If you really try, ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... hushing the children. 'Semyon Zaharovitch is tired with his work at the office, he is resting, shh!' They made me coffee before I went to work and boiled cream for me! They began to get real cream for me, do you hear that? And how they managed to get together the money for a decent outfit—eleven roubles, fifty copecks, I can't guess. Boots, cotton shirt-fronts—most magnificent, a uniform, they got up all in splendid style, for eleven roubles and a half. The first morning I came back from the office I found Katerina ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and very soon after I received from Judge Alphonso Taft, of Cincinnati, a letter informing me that he had been appointed Secretary of War, and should insist on my immediate return to Washington. I answered that I was ready to go to Washington, or anywhere, if assured of decent treatment. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... admired and run after before her marriage; and the London world to which she had belonged pitied poor Fanny Evelyn when she married the young clergyman, and went to settle in that smoky hole Turley; a very nest of Chartism and Atheism, in a part of the country which all the decent families had had to leave for years. However, somehow or other she didn't seem to care. If her husband's living had been amongst green fields and near pleasant neighbours she would have liked it better—that she never pretended to deny. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... said, bitter-like. 'As soon as a poor man's got a chance of a decent crop, the season turns against him or prices go down, so that he never ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... of the Students be neat and decent is highly proper; but that it should be very ornamental and expensive is ever needless, and oftentimes pernicious: Nor will any Student, who is solicitous to acquire knowledge, and sincerely disposed to improve his time to the best advantage, in obtaining such degrees of it, as may enable him to ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... heard of her, but he hadn't known that she was listed for this voyage. "A real beauty, so I've heard. Accursed shame for a decent girl to have ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... said Gerald, "I call this jolly decent of her. You know, governesses never have more than the meanest pittance, just enough to sustain life, and here she is spending her little all on us. Supposing we just don't go out today, but play with her instead. I expect she's most awfully bored ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... the model's consent is so seldom asked. I'm bound to say, if I were a woman, I shouldn't thank a man for telling the world ... (Sharply.) In decent society we call that ... ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... midnight, and sleeps in the glass-house across the way because he cannot get into the house. Zorzi! Zorzi! The master cannot move without Zorzi! And where is Zorzi at night? At home and in bed, like a decent young man? No. Zorzi is away in Venice, heaven knows where, doing heaven knows what! Do you wonder that he is so pale and tired in the morning? It seems to me quite natural. Eh? What do you ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... it, too. It was fair capping to listen to them. There was some women present, slatterns all, and I told them to go home and red up their houses and comb up their hair, and try to look like decent cotton-spinners' wives. And when this advice was cheered, the women began to get excited, and I thought I would be safer in Hatton ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... boy sickened at his comments and the loud laughter. Yet a few hours earlier these same half-drunken jesters had laid the man to rest with decent humanity. The boy was taking his first dose of Arizona. By no means was everybody looking at his jig. They had seen tenderfeet so often. There was a Mexican game of cards; there was the concertina; and over in the corner sat Specimen Jones, with his back to the ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... being in the whole congregation who appeared thoroughly to feel the humble and prostrate piety of a true Christian was a poor decrepit old woman, bending under the weight of years and infirmities. She bore the traces of something better than abject poverty. The lingerings of decent pride were visible in her appearance. Her dress, though humble in the extreme, was scrupulously clean. Some trivial respect, too, had been awarded her, for she did not take her seat among the village poor, but sat alone on the steps of the altar. She seemed to have survived all love, all friendship, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... out of window, shook his head. He was in one of his perverse moods—and they had been growing frequent of late— in which nothing I could say or do seemed to content him; and for this I chiefly accused the cordwainer's daughter, who in fact was a decent merry girl, fond of strawberries, with no more notion of falling in love with Nat than of running off with her father's apprentice. Whatever the cause of it, a cloud had been creeping over our friendship of late. He sought companions—some of them serious ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... share the feeling common to most Eastern countries that women should be kept in subjection and as far as possible in seclusion. Though the morality which the Heian literature reveals is anything but strait-laced, the language is uniformly refined and decent, in this respect resembling ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... not be as this financial monarch? Who would not say: "I, too, can do these things?" (That is to say, which of us would not gladly take every cent the good FISK possesses, and let him beg his bread from door to door, if we only got a decent chance?) If it were not for such shining examples of the power of wealth and the glories that it is capable of placing before our eyes, the souls of ordinary men would much less frequently be moved ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... Savonarola's preaching, between them, have taken, in few years, all the carnality out of Sandro, supposing him to have come already, by seventy-eight, to that state in which the sight of her delighted him, without provoking ulterior feelings? All decent men accustomed to draw from the nude tell us they get ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... Virgin is a close red tunic, with long sleeves;[1] and over this a blue robe or mantle. In the early pictures, the colours are pale and delicate. Her head ought to be veiled. The fathers of the primeval Church, particularly Tertullian, attach great importance to the decent veil worn by Christian maidens; and in all the early pictures the Virgin is veiled. The enthroned Virgin, unveiled, with long tresses falling down on either side, was an innovation introduced about the end of the fifteenth century; ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... said he, "to keep off the general public, who soon would ruin all the fishing here as they have almost everywhere else, but I have no desire to keep off decent fishermen like yourselves; and I know the young men who ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... Demon was the Surveillant. I have already described the Surveillant. I wish to say, however, that in my opinion the Surveillant was the most decent official at La Ferte. I pay him this tribute gladly and honestly. To me, at least, he was kind: to the majority he was inclined to be lenient. I honestly and gladly believe that the Surveillant was incapable of that quality whose ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... the possibility of her marrying one of those ingratiating, cold-hearted, and seemingly ardent noblemen." Then, as though to qualify his general statement, he continued, "My sister-in-law married a decent sort of a man, and I imagine they are happy—but she'd have done much better if she had married your uncle. He never cared for any one else, and I hoped it would be a match. But Alessandro Sansevero came along and swept her off her feet. She was a great beauty, and I believe ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... the party left Durbelliere, and Adolphe Denot joined his friend on the gravelled ring before the house; and Agatha, who had been with her brother in his room, looking from the widow saw her unmanageable lover mount his horse in a quiet, decent way, like the ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... useful word that is! It has such a decent sound, almost respectable. We are a refined people, even in our sins, and I know no word in the English language we strive harder to avoid using in any of its forms than that word of ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... has attempted to conceive of his characters as he would if they had been his own contemporaries and equals, acting, speaking in his company; and he has therefore thought himself bound to act toward them by those rules of charity and courtesy, common alike to Christian morals, English law, and decent society; namely, to hold every man innocent till he is proved guilty; where a doubt exists, to give the prisoner at the bar the benefit of it; not to excite the minds of the public against him by those insinuative or vituperative ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... dropped it into her lap; then she smoothed the bills neatly one upon another, and built little pyramids of the dimes and quarters. Fifteen dollars! It must be five years now that she had been saving that money, and she did so need a new dress! She needed it to be—why—even decent!—looking sourly at the frayed folds ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... were filled with indignation, seeing the majesty of the state overturned, its ordinances annihilated, its laws annulled, and every decent regulation set at naught; for men unaccustomed to royal pomp could not endure to see this man surrounded with his armed satellites on foot and on horseback; and having now a closer view of their disgrace, they were compelled to honor ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... also has its Index Prohibitorius and will not permit indecent books nor indecent pictures to be sold. Enough: let us again clear our minds of cant. There is a limit with regard to publications in every decent State and every decent house: it is only a question where the line is drawn. It is obvious that the Church must be permitted at least as much privilege in this matter as is claimed by every respectable ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... anxieties and schemes all cast aside, in companionship with kindred spirits similarly divested of that which troubles and makes afraid, all engaged in recreative sports, would do more to make us physically well, morally strong, and civilly decent than all the pills of the doctors, all the texts of the preachers, and all ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... householders," to whom reference must be made, the names of the most deserving applicants are to numbers of people perfectly well known. The members have now got before them a plain statement of fact as to these charges; and it is for them to say whether they are justifiable, becoming, or decent. I beg most earnestly and respectfully to put it to those gentlemen who belong to this institution, that must now decide, and cannot help deciding, what the Literary Fund is for, and what it is not for. The question raised by the ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... written laws to be administered. The place of these was taken by public opinion and tradition, that is, by the ideas handed down from one generation to another and constantly discussed around the camp-fire and the council-fire. Every decent Indian was singularly obedient to this unwritten code. He wanted always to do what he was told his fathers had been accustomed to do, and what was expected of him. Thus there was a ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... and his legs absolutely scaly with dirt, starvation, and hard living of all sorts. He might well be one of those outcasts who are in disfavor with their savage brethren, lead a precarious existence outside of the tribal organization, and are to the Apaches what the Texas Smiths are to decent Americans. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... consideration of the real merit of that inimitable master, thought it proper that his effigy should preside there, where his harmony has so often charmed even the greatest crowds into the profoundest calm and most decent behaviour." ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... any human judge or potentate in the manner provided for approaching the Lord God. It is an etiquette that involves loss of self-respect, and hence it cannot be pleasing to its object, for one cannot think of the Lord God as sacrificing decent feelings to mere vanity. This notion of abasement, like most of the other ideas that are general in the world, is obviously the invention of small and ignoble men. It is the pollution of theology by ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... indeed the trade in the article, except towards China, has altogether greatly declined, probably (says Mr. Hodgson) because its repute as a medicine is becoming fast exploded. In Sicily it is still so used, but apparently only as a sort of decent medical viaticum, for when it is said "the Doctors have given him musk," it is as much as to say that they have given ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... unaware of the fact. How numerous are those who leave out the minutia; mechanics learn a trade in a short time at least well enough to make a living by it. Many farmers have spent their whole lives upon farms and are still scarcely able to make a decent living; and the reason of it is because they have left undone those parts which would, if performed, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... in a scandalized voice, as she rose and faced her sister, "ain't you goin' to put on somethin' over your chest? That ain't decent the way you've got ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... power as hallucination, and every one of you knows it—it's an old wives' tale. I wouldn't touch this little lady with a ten-foot pole if I really thought she had the Stigma. I have a living to make around this town—and you can't handle Stigma business and get any decent ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... said the leader of the little party. "You, Tom, we can manage him.—Get out, will you, dogs!—Here, take them with you. Run to the mine hut, and get some rope to tie him. Be as smart as you can. The master'll give us something decent for a ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... disorder among divine and eternal things, as that they should sometimes move quicker and sometimes slower, and sometimes stand still; for no one would tolerate such anomaly in the movements even of a man, who was decent and orderly. The occasions of life, however, are often reasons for men going quicker or slower; but in the incorruptible nature of the stars, it is not possible that any cause can be alleged of quickness or slowness." It is seeking an argument ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... "Seem decent sort of fellows," said the water-bearer, as he turned off towards the door with his companion; and the dogs rose to follow them, sniffing at ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... ruther she'd be dead 'n married to Sandy. But that ain't sayin' a honest squatter airn't better'n a high born pup.... I wish Tess loved a decent chap." ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... himself, "oh, for a decent bench of inquisitors and a couple of bold executioners!... What a time we ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... long ago understood what she meant to convey, and finding that she had no idea how to express herself in a decent manner, she readily interrupted her with a smile. "You needn't mention anything," she observed, "I'm well aware of how things stand;" and addressing herself to Mrs. Chou, she inquired, "Has this old lady had breakfast, yes ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... words to bear on his unfitness for death, and judg'd them very decent and properly spoken: and took occasion to hint this in my attempts to ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... stand off: I'le do it, We bid ye welcom three wayes; first for your person, Which is a promising person, next for your quality, Which is a decent, and a gentle quality, Last for the frequent means you have to feed us, You can steal ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... matters were not so high as those of the present day. 'If gold ruste, what shal iren do?' The highest ecclesiastical authorities were unable to check a nominally celibate priesthood from maintaining women-housekeepers who bore them families of children and were in many cases decent and respectable wives to them in all but name; indeed in Friesland the laity for obvious reasons insisted upon this violation of clerical vows. A letter from Zwingli, the Reformer, written in 1518 when he was ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... seemed to be a reputable member of society. "Embezzle a large sum of money under singularly distressing circumstances!" I exclaimed to myself, "and ask me to go and stay with him! I shall do nothing of the sort—compromise myself at the very outset in the eyes of all decent people, and give the death-blow to my chances of either converting them if they are the lost tribes of Israel, or making money out of them if they are not! No. I will do anything rather than that." And when I next ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... gold and silver in his hand, Horses and mules, and acres of wheat-land, And him whose all is decent food to eat, Clothes to his back and shoes upon his feet, And a young wife and child, since so 'twill be, And no more years than ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the stout man. "A typical touch that black tie! A decent-minded person would have felt this appalling tragedy far too much to think of such a trifle. I hope I shall ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... said in my papa's memoirs—although my mamma went to visit her in the country. I have no pride (as I showed by complying with my mother's request, and marrying a gentleman who was but the younger son of a Suffolk Baronet), yet I own to A DECENT RESPECT for my name, and wonder how one who ever bore it, should change it for that of Mrs. THOMAS TUSHER. I pass over as odious and unworthy of credit those reports (which I heard in Europe and was then too young to understand), how this person, having LEFT HER FAMILY and ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the letter from herself at the end of a week's time greatly relieved him, and he went off as soon as possible to see her. He found her living in the house where she was engaged, apparently with decent people, and moderately contented; more than this could never be said of the girl. Since then, he had seen her at least once every week. Sometimes he visited her at the shop; when the weather was fine, they spent the Sunday afternoon in walking together. Harriet's health ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... read than done; and all came to pass as the note predicted. Gallowsworthy and Pickles grumbled, but were compelled to pay. Fitzflam and Fitzfunk became inseparable. Fitzflam was even heard to say, he thought in time Fitzfunk would make a decent walking gentleman; and Fitzfunk was always impressed with an opinion that he was the man of talent, and that Fitzflam would never have been able to succeed in "starring it" where he had been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... not look so scandalised, cousin," he retorted. "In the first place you are quite wrong to call it idolatrous, images of every kind being strictly forbidden by the Alcoran. In the second place it is a very decent, respectable religion, as religions go, and extremely convenient for seafaring men who sometimes need an excuse for ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... his steady twenty-five per on a big paper, and was on such terms with his boss that he might get other chances. Gee! but he was a fellow that luck just seemed to chase, anyhow! Look at the other chaps, lots of 'em, who knew twice as much as he did, and had lived in decent homes and gone to school and done their darned best, too, and then hadn't been able to get there! It didn't seem fair somehow that he should run into such ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... evil report to make, supposing him so disposed; but, perhaps, the crafty Frenchman would have been equally complaisant, had I been in the habit of indulging worse feelings than those of indolence and aversion to mercantile business. As it was, while I gave a decent portion of my time to the commercial studies he recommended, he was by no means envious of the hours which I dedicated to other and more classical attainments, nor did he ever find fault with me for dwelling upon Corneille and Boileau, in preference to Postlethwayte ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... in the daylight. For instance, when he uses your mouth to advance his arguments. Bickley, but this is another matter. However, if I do not appear again you will know that I died in a good cause, and, I hope, try to recover my remains and give them decent burial. Also, you might inform the Bishop of how I came to my end, that is, if you ever get an opportunity, which is ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... his taking ten pounds on account of his salary, as I told him that he must have warm clothes and make a decent figure in Canterbury. You are to deduct ten shillings a week from his pay till it is made up. The poor fellow fairly broke down when I offered it to him. There is no doubt that he is almost starved, and ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... this benevolence apparently as a matter of course. They were quiet enough; some of them looked like decent men out of work, as indeed all professed to be going somewhere in search of employment. But many of them had the air of confirmed loafers, and some I should not have liked to meet alone on the road ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... some cunning ancestor and looked after by his executors? What has become of your horses, and why are you always put to sleep in the billiard-room of an hotel, or in the pantry, when other fellows get a decent bed provided for them? Why do they give you a room over the stables when country houses are full, where the coachman's wife asks you if you would like a little hot water in the morning, and regrets that the chimney doesn't draw very ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
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