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More "Gaudy" Quotes from Famous Books



... a pageant of barbaric splendor, of gaudy tinsel and flaming gold to dazzle the eyes of infants. It is a land of lotus-eaters, where ambition's star is blotted from the firmament and the wild ecstasy of passion beats no longer in the blood; an Oriental heaven, a Paradise for tired people eternal ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... by him made so wretched, scorn'd a Thing. How little cause has mankind to be proud Of Noble Birth, the Idol of the Crowd! Have I abroad in Battels Honour won To be at home dishonourably undone? Mark'd with a Star and Garter, and made fine With all those gaudy Trifles once call'd mine, Your Hobby-Horses [1] and your Joys of State, And now become the Object of your Hate; But, d———'ee, Sir, I'll be Legitimate. I was your Darling, but against your Will, And know that I will be the Peoples still; And when you're dead, I and my Friends, the ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... of the Roman empire the simplicity and purity in decorative design that the Romans obtained from the Greeks, gave way to the ostentatious love of gaudy decoration taught at Byzantium. Jewellery became complicated in design; enrichment was considered before elegance. The old simple form of finger-ring varied much. Fig. 104 is given by Montfaucon. Fig. 105 is in the Londesborough collection, and was found upon the hand of ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... even notice, of the first day of the year as a "gaudy-day"—of New-Year's tides in any way—was thought by Urian Oakes to savor strongly of superstitious reverence for the heathen god Janus; the Pilgrims made no note of their first New-Year's Day in the New World, save by this very prosaic record, "We went to work betimes." ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... tradesmen of Wrykyn had jogged along in their comfortable way, each making his little profits, with no thought of competition or modern hustle. And now the enemy was at their doors. Many were the gloomy looks cast at the gaudy building as it grew like a mushroom. It was finished with incredible speed, and then advertisements began to flood the local papers. A special sheaf of bills ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... works were bulging with the population of Ironville, who had inconsequently decided to take the holiday in St. Marys. Hundreds of them were dressed in Sunday best and bent on an outing; big Slovaks and Poles whose horny fists gripped the platform rail while they smoked cheap cigars with gaudy labels and chattered volubly to each other. It was good to ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... that it might very easily be devoted to worse: and if two or three faces can be rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband. There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over- dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... a gaudy mix-up, when the outer door of the office suddenly swung open and Elaine ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... her in silence. He had not suspected her of so much intellect. He glanced about the apartment, at the cheap portiere flung over the sofa; at the gaudy sofa cushions, two of which bore the names and colours of certain colleges. The gas log was almost hidden by dried palm leaves, a cigarette stump lay on the fender; on the mantel above were several photographs of men and at the other side an open ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... moved. Deftly, swiftly, he unrolled the gaudy blanket, spread it thin upon the ground, covered it completely with his body. In lieu of a pillow his arms crossed under his head, and, leaning back, the hat brim still shading his eyes, he lay gazing up into the sky, motionless as a ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... it on the ledge That it might not be quite forlorn Of wind and sky, where o'er the edge, Some gaudy petal, slowly borne, Fluttered to earth in careless scorn, Caught, for a fallen piece of morn From kindling vapors loosely shorn, By urchins ragged and wayworn, Who saw, high on the stone embossed, A laughing face, a hand ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... Roman citadel beneath; but it is at least a harmonious desolation. There are no wire-fenced walks among the ruins, no feeding-booths and cheap reconstructions of draw-bridges and police-notices at every corner; no gaudy women scribbling to their friends in the "Residenzstadt" post cards illustrative of the "Burgruine," while their husbands perspire over mastodontic beer-jugs. There ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... it finally dawned on him, came with a rush on the second morning. He had spent two nights in the gaudy Pullman then provided—a car intended to make up for some of the inconveniences of its arrangements by an over-elaboration of plush and tortured glass—when the first lone outposts of the prairie metropolis began to ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... very early in the year, and the public gardens and boulevards were richly green. Chestnut-trees blossomed and gaudy flower-beds bloomed in every square. The Salons opened, and were thronged with an enthusiastic public, although the papers as usual denounced them as being the poorest exhibitions ...
— Different Girls • Various

... like race-horses straining against the rider. Now the spectators could make out plainly the boatmen. It could be seen that they had decked themselves out for the occasion. Their heads were bound with bright-colored fillets, their necks with gay scarves. The paddles were adorned with gaudy woollen streamers. New leggings, of holiday pattern, were intermittently visible on the bowsmen and steersmen as they half rose to give added force to ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White

... Colambre had formed, his lordship and his companions arrived at Tusculum, where he found Mrs. Raffarty, and Miss Juliana O'Leary, very elegant, with a large party of the ladies and gentlemen of Bray, assembled in a drawing-room, fine with bad pictures and gaudy gilding; the windows were all shut, and the company were playing cards with all their might. This was the fashion of the neighbourhood. In compliment to Lord Colambre and the officers, the ladies left the ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... patterns of gowns. The new, exaggerated toilettes of the actresses, their gait, even the spurious elegance of their speech, which seemed to her of the highest distinction, and with it all the tawdry magnificence of the gilding and the lights, the gaudy placard at the door, the long line of carriages, and all the somewhat unwholesome excitement that springs up about a popular play; that was what she loved, that was what absorbed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... gilt and red vehicles that held all sorts of odds and ends. In the rear of the ponies followed the camels; great, long-legged creatures that grunted at every stride as if they were indignant at being kept up so late. Gaudy band wagons, the cook's outfit and a heterogeneous assortment of vehicles came next, all of them moving slowly up the hill while the ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump

... Ifdawn Marest. In the morning sunlight they stood out pictorially. He guessed that they were from five to six thousand feet high. The lofty, irregular, castellated line seemed like the walls of a magic city. The cliffs fronting him were composed of gaudy rocks—vermilion, emerald, yellow, ulfire, and black. As he gazed at them, his heart began to beat like a slow, heavy drum, and he thrilled all over—indescribable hopes, aspirations, and emotions came over him. It was more than the conquest ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... what an alteration is sometimes made in one's appearance by a mere change of clothing. After Bob had got into the Mexican suit and exchanged his cap for the wide sombrero with its gaudy cord and tassel, it was doubtful if there was one among his brother-troopers who would have recognized him if he had chanced to meet him unexpectedly. Although he was not quite yellow enough for a Mexican, he was nevertheless pretty well tanned, and George assured him that all he needed ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon

... corridors and landings. Ottomans of downy velvet In the looms of Utrecht woven, Vases of Chinese production, Crystals, bright and burnished figures, Models made of gold and silver, Tapestry, and lace, and network, Carpets from the looms of Brussels, Woven into gaudy figures. In a certain gorgeous chamber, In apparel likewise gorgeous, Sat a mighty, pompous woman. Very high were her ideas Of her own expanded person, And her own unmeasured value; All the world would not contain them, They were so elate and soaring. Luxury and ease were round her, As she fancied ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar

... The slight knoll had been left not a mile to the southwest. I heard My Lady catch breath, felt her hand find mine as we lay almost touching. Rounding the knoll there appeared a file of mounted figures; by their robes and blankets, their tufted lances and gaudy shields, yes, by the very way they sat their painted ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... attributes, such as lyres, tambourines, Pandaean pipes, cooing doves, and hearts pierced with arrows, executed at some remote period by a pencil more remarkable for audacity than correctness of design. The mule harnessed to this gaudy car, had the upper half of his body closely clipped, bore a lofty panoply of coloured worsted upon his head, and was covered with bells from nose to tail. A ferocious-looking charioteer, stripped to his shirt-sleeves, a sheepskin jacket dangling from his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... fiancee and his supplanter, and gives more proofs of its impossibility by his conduct and speech than was at all necessary. The conversation is very flat, and the descriptions are chiefly confined to long, gaudy inventories of rich parvenus' houses, which ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... Rome grows weak with luxury, To please her appetite cram'd peacocks die: Their gaudy plumes a ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... about five miles from land. The news spread through Athens, and the whole city poured out at the gate of the Piraeus, down the roads, through the vineyards, the olive woods and plantations of fig-trees, towards the harbour. The noisy joy of the populace, the gaudy colours of their dress, the tumult of carriages and horses, the march of soldiers intermixed, the waving of banners and sound of martial music added to the high excitement of the scene; while round us reposed in solemn majesty ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... to Dorothy, whose huge scissors clipped the square of gay stuff lying before her as if to make the gaudy quilt was the one object of her life, but she ran upstairs to the bedroom she shared with Betty, and found her there, as she expected, exchanging her working gown, with its large apron, for what was called an afternoon frock, with a dainty kerchief ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall

... shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one's sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. He disappeared. I half expected the roof ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... from the top o' th' lofty Pine I Orra Moor might see, I to his highest Bough would climb, And with industrious Labour try Thence to descry My Mistress if that there she be. Could I but know amidst what Flowers Or in what Shade she stays, The gaudy Bowers, With all their verdant Pride, Their Blossoms and their Sprays, Which make my Mistress disappear; And her in envious Darkness hide, I from the Roots and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... neither sound nor movement nor scent that wrought the spell, but something far more potent. In an instant I found myself reft away from the present with its dull dangers, and looking at a world all young and fresh and beautiful. The gaudy drop-scene had vanished. It was a window I was looking from, and I was gazing at the finest landscape on earth, lit by the ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... resist him. Senor Johnson at once took things for granted, sent on to Kansas a preposterous sum of "expense" money and a railroad ticket, and raided Goodrich's store at Willets, a hundred miles away, for all manner of gaudy carpets, silverware, fancy lamps, works of art, pianos, linen, and gimcracks for the adornment of the ranch house. Furthermore, he offered wages more than equal to a hundred miles of desert to a young Irish girl, named ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... very fond of bright colors. Their dresses did not amount to much. They wore a short skirt and rebosa. Their head-dress covered their hair and came together in front under the chin and hung to the belt. What dress she wore must be very bright and gaudy and I have known a pretty Mexican girl with about $2.50 worth of dress on come in and purchase an $8.00 pair of shoes. If she wanted an extra nice pair of shoes she said she wanted a pair of shoes "made out of Spanish leather." Such a pair as would look ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear 't that th' opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy: For the apparel oft proclaims the man. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... grotesque figure clad in light-coloured garments, so cut that they exaggerated her stoutness; a large, many-coloured shawl was thrown round her shoulders; on her head was a big round hat, tied with strings in a bow under her chin. This odd head-gear was topped with a bunch of gaudy feathers, ragged and out of curl. A veil of flowery design half hid this woman's features: though far from her first youth, she no doubt wished to appear young still. The skin of her face was covered with powder and paint, so badly laid on, that daubs of white, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... look at a merry party hurrying through the snow on foot to their place of meeting, and now turned back to see a whole coachful of children safely deposited at the welcome house. At one time, I admired how carefully the working man carried the baby in its gaudy hat and feathers, and how his wife, trudging patiently on behind, forgot even her care of her gay clothes, in exchanging greeting with the child as it crowed and laughed over the father's shoulder; at another, I pleased myself with some passing ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... rain and the sun's heat. Under the leadership of the mistress of the ranch, assisted by the Mexican women, the jacal was transformed into a rustic bower; for Enrique was not only a favorite among the whites, but also among his own people. A few gaudy pictures of Saints and the Madonna ornamented the side walls, while in the rear hung the necessary crucifix. At the time of its building the jacal had been blessed, as was customary before occupancy, and to Enrique's ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... about with violent gesticulations and loud exclamations, employ themselves in their well-known and allotted tasks. By degrees graceful forms arise, and richly-tinted pavilions, with gilded summits, glitter in the sunbeams, while gaudy banners flutter in the air. Long lines of canvas sheets appear, and spacious enclosures formed of kanauts secure the utmost privacy to the dwellers of the populous camp; while the elephants, who have trodden out ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... graces married within two years of each other. Of course, they chose strangely. Matilda, whose beauty might have graced the head of the table in any one of three gaudy mansions on Nob Hill, chose Edward C. Tiffany, attorney, politician in a small but honorable way, man about town—and much older than she. Alice, following quietly, accepted Billy Gray, journalist—a clever reporter with ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... upon the day's pleasure. Most of the churches have services at all hours till noon, some of them with fine classical and military music. One could not but be struck with the devotional manner of the simple women, in their queer costumes, who walked into the gaudy edifices, were absorbed in their prayers for an hour, and then went away. I suppose they did not know how odd they looked in their high, round fur hats, or their fantastic old ornaments, nor that there was anything ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... goin', little gaudy hunts begin. It fer us to chiv His Trousers. 'n' to round the stragglers in. Cuttin' closest to the raw, 'n' swearin' lovin' all the way, Is Artie from Molinga ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... match the center table; on one end of this mantel was a blue glass vase containing a bouquet of paper roses, and on the other a plaster-of-Paris cat. Above the mantel hung a wreath of wax flowers in a glass case. In such houses were usually to be seen gaudy-colored carpets, imitation lace curtains, and a what-not in the corner that seemed ready to go into dissolution ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... My grandfather's detestation of the British redcoats must have descended to me. My childhood's antipathy to wearing red enabled me later to comprehend the feelings of a little niece, who hated everything pea green, because she had once heard the saying, "neat but not gaudy, as the devil said when he painted his tail pea green." So when a friend brought her a cravat of that color she threw it on the floor and burst into tears, saying, "I could not wear that, for it is the color of the devil's tail." I sympathized with the child and had it changed for ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... and misty shadow had settled down upon the half-seen landscape, the broad full moon came soaring up above the tree-tops, pouring her soft and silver radiance over the lovely valley, and investing its rare beauties with something of romance—a sentiment which belongs not to the gay, gaudy sunshine. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... were unique enough. They were given in a great barn of a room, gaudy with hot, soot-stained frescoes, chandeliers, walls splotched with gilt. The audience was large, always; such as a provincial town affords: not the purest bench of musical criticism before which to bring poor Tom. Beaux and belles, siftings of old ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... coverts shady, the greenwood home, the sweep of sunny fields, A butterfly befit; but where's the wit that mire-befouled to the swamp-demon yields? Oh, birds of Iris-glitter, black and bitter will be the wakening when those gaudy plumes Fall crushed and leaden, as your senses deaden In poisonous ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various

... wayside, and every now and again collected by the shrill summons of the mother; and the mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall - Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly in ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... are preparing I will mention a circumstance which every accomplished fly-fisher ought to know. You changed your flies on Saturday with the change of weather, putting the dark flies on for the bright gleams of the sun, and the gaudy flies when the dark clouds appeared. Now I will tell you of another principle which it is as necessary to know as the change of flies for change of weather; I allude to the different kinds of fly to be used in particular pools, and even for particular parts of pools. You have fished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various

... his readers and reviewers, who will use their endeavours to convince him he has not a correct knowledge of his own abilities. But if, like a well bred man at court, he enters the drawing-room of literature in good taste, neither too mean nor too gaudy, too bold or too formal, makes his bow with the air and finish of a scholar and a gentleman, and passes on to his place, unheedful of remark (because unconscious of offence), he is sure to command respect, if ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... last no stranger's hand had aught to do with this sister either in life or in death. No idle or curiously intrusive person came near, and all the surroundings, though simple, were in keeping with the solemnity of the occasion. There was no pomp or rivalry of show, no gaudy deckings, that we in our hearts despise, but which an unhallowed custom forces upon us; but all was done decently, lovingly, peacefully and well. It was a simple name she bore— ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... have come nearest perfection. But there are just a few things that bother me, and, no doubt, others like me. In the first place, must you make your covers as lurid and as contradictory to good design as they are? Really, I blush when my newsdealer hands me the gaudy thing. People interested in science do not usually succumb ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... private sitting rooms. The ten-cent stores have done a great deal of good in educating the poor, white and black alike. These stores have everywhere sold small brown art prints of many of the great paintings, to take the place of the gaudy dust-laden ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... truth that, if some people wore gaudy and costly raiment, others must dress in rags; if some ate and drank more than they needed, and wasted the good things of earth, others must go hungry; if some never worked with their hands, others ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... distinguish a dresser from which a drawer was missing, some broken chairs, a round table on which stood a beer-mug which was half empty, three glasses, some cold meat on a plate, and on the bare plaster of the wall two gaudy pictures—a bird's-eye view of the Exposition of 1889, with the Eiffel Tower in bright blue, and the portrait of General Boulanger when a handsome young lieutenant. This last evidence of weakness of the tenant of the house may well be excused, since it was shared by nearly everybody in ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee

... indignant, and said: "Well, well, what's the matter? They are not about any dirty work; they are only amusing themselves in the fine evening; there is nothing to foul their clothes. Come, doesn't it all look very pretty? It isn't gaudy, you know." ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... myself of every means within my reach to render my visit agreeable to the rajah. I carry with me many presents which are reported to be to his liking; gaudy silks of Surat, scarlet cloth, stamped velvet, gunpowder, &c., beside a large quantity of confectionery and sweets, such as preserved ginger, jams, dates, syrups, and to wind up all, a huge box of China toys for his children! I have likewise taken coarse nankeen ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... sent him on to continue his triumphant career at Cambridge. He was, I remember, extremely well connected, and even when we were all little boys together we knew that his mother's brother was Lord Holdhurst, the great conservative politician. This gaudy relationship did him little good at school. On the contrary, it seemed rather a piquant thing to us to chevy him about the playground and hit him over the shins with a wicket. But it was another thing when he came out into the world. I heard vaguely that his abilities and the influences ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... toilet was overthronged by Princes and Princesses, I fancied in the bustle that the omission proceeded from forgetfulness. Consequently, I sent the tirewoman, in the Queen's hearing, to order the jewels to be brought in. Smilingly, Her Majesty replied, 'No, no! I have not forgotten these gaudy things; but I do not intend that the lustre of my eyes should be outshone by the one, or the whiteness of my teeth by the other; however, as you wish art to eclipse nature, I'll wear them to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... I say, Loveday, have I got a part in it, That I can wear a cloak in and look smart in it? Not that I care a fig for gaudy show, dear boy— But juveniles must look well, don't you know, dear boy. And shall I lordly hall and tuns of claret own? And may I murmur love in dulcet baritone? Tell me at least, this simple fact of it— ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... has compounded in nature's mortar. The woman enters into the work with intelligent zest, and when completed the whole array of blended colours is beyond the criticism of the tribe. The back of an Indian's war-bonnet and war-shirt is always more gaudy and sumptuous than the front view and this because when Indians pass each other their salutation is brief and formal. They ride right on. But after the meeting they turn in the saddle and look back to take an inventory. The wealth of the Indian, his position in the tribe, his ceremonial ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... back to a high ridge, on the crest of which they marched and countermarched, threatening to charge down its face. Most of them were naked, and as their persons were painted in gaudy colors and decorated with strips of red flannel, red blankets and gay war-bonnets, their appearance presented a scene of picturesque barbarism, fascinating but repulsive. As they numbered about six hundred, the chances of whipping them did not seem ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... least, prevent the curses of posterity from being heaped upon your memories. If you, with united zeal and fortitude, oppose the torrent of oppression; if you feel the true fire of patriotism burning in your breasts; if you, from your souls, despise the most gaudy dress which slavery can wear; if you really prefer the lonely cottage, while blessed with liberty, to gilded palaces, surrounded with the ensigns of slavery you may have the fullest assurance that tyranny with her whole accursed train, will hide her hideous head in confusion, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... HEART. With gaudy plumes and jingling bells made proud, The youthful beast sets forth, and neighs aloud. A morning-sun his tinselled harness gilds, And the first stage a down-hill greensward yields. But, oh— What rugged ways attend the noon of life! Our ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... its origin, directly or indirectly, to these men. Cheap and tawdry enough were the commodities bartered for these wonderful beaver and otter pelts—ribbons and gewgaws, looking-glasses and combs, blankets and shawls of gaudy color. But scissors and knives, gunpowder and shot, tobacco and whiskey, went also in the traders' packs, though traffic in fire-water was forbidden. These goods, upon arrival at Mackinac, were sent out by canoes and bateaux to the different posts, where they were dealt out to the savages ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... perfect in every respect, there's still one thing wanting in the shape of a wine board; and you had better then have one made to-morrow on the very same pattern as those used outside in villages; and it needn't be anything gaudy, but hung above the top of a tree by means ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... doubt these maxims of daily life, just as there are a large number of persons who believe they are the Prince of Wales; and I am told that both classes of people are entertaining conversationalists. But the average man or boy writes daily in these great gaudy diaries of his soul, which we call Penny Dreadfuls, a plainer and better gospel than any of those iridescent ethical paradoxes that the fashionable change as often as their bonnets. It may be a very limited aim in morality to shoot a 'many-faced and fickle traitor,' but at least it is a better aim ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... dressed in black, with a good deal of lace about her; and on her ungloved hand Lady Caroline's keen sight enabled her to distinguish some very handsome diamond rings. The effect of the costume was a little spoiled by a large gaudy fan, of violent rainbow hues, which hung at her side; and perhaps it was this article of adornment which decided Lady Caroline in her opinion of the woman's social status. But about the man she was equally positive in a different way. He was a gentleman: there ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... less, before they set out upon their pilgrimage, than a pell-mell gathering of many thousands of low-caste, good for nothing, idle Indians from Hindustan—not ashamed to beg, with some amount of sentiment in their nature, as exhibited in their musical tendencies and love of gaudy colours, and except in rare instances, without any true religious motives or influences. It may be worth while to notice that I have come to the conclusion that they were originally from India by observing them entirely in the light given to me years ago ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... dingy portieres upstage C. Small panel window in side Wall L. Plain centre table with chairs drawn up about it. Gaudy calendars on wall. Battered piano against wall R. Kerosene lamp with reflector against wall ...
— Poker! • Zora Hurston

... attention to matters outside of the law, though a little to a volunteer militia company of which I was a member; for a time a lieutenant, then in 1860 brigade-major on a militia brigadier's staff. We staff officers wore good clothes, much tinsel, gaudy crimson scarfs, golden epaulets, bright swords with glistening scabbards, rose horses in a gallop on parade occasions and muster days, yet knew nothing really military—certainly but little useful in war. We knew a little of company drill and of the handling ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... for instance, the funeral procession of the Duke of Wellington, after it passed Temple Bar. All lord mayors are elected from the board of aldermen; they serve but one year, during which time they live in a very handsome residence, called "The Mansion House," and ride in a splendid, but rather gaudy and old-fashioned coach—something such as you have seen pictures of in the ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... entered the hospital door, and each time as they reappeared, bringing one of the narrow, gaudy, yellow boxes, the officers lined up at the door would salute and the soldiers in double lines at the opposite side of the road would present arms, and then, as the box was lifted upon the wagon waiting to receive it, would smash their guns down on the bouldered ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... inartistic, rough, coarse, distasteful, harsh, inharmonious, rude, deformed, fulsome, hideous, meretricious, rugged, disgusting, gaudy, horrid, offensive, tawdry. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... pageant Queen? you might from thence infer I'd fall in love with every little Actress, because She acts the Queen for half an hour, But then the gaudy Robe ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... lofty from below; By him the Archer,[203] with his bended bow; Near him the Bird, with gaudy feathers spread; And the fierce Eagle[204] ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... his arms and looking down at himself, "I do think it be somewhat of a gay, gaudy, grasshopper dress; but it is a pretty thing for all that, and doth not ill befit the turn of my looks, albeit I wear it but for the nonce. But stay, Little John, here are two bags that I would have thee carry in thy pouch for the sake of safekeeping. I can ill care for ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... crevices of coral blocks, and congregate beneath detached masses and loose stones. In these fervid and fecund waters life is real, life is earnest. Here, are elaborately armoured crayfish (PALINURUS ORNATUS), upon which the most gaudy colours are lavished; grotesque crabs, fish brilliant in hue as humming-birds. Life, darting and dashing, active and alert, crawling and slithering, slow and stationary, swarms in ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... for the butterflies took on the form of adoration. There was not a delicate, gaudy, winged creature of day that did not make so strong an appeal to my heart as to be almost painful. It seemed to me that the most exquisite thoughts of God for our pleasure were materialized in their beauty. My soul always craved colour, and more brilliancy could be found on one ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... is but three stories high, built of light red brick, and finished with white marble. All around garish millinery shops display their showy goods. Peddlers with pushcarts lit by flickering flames, vie with each other in their array of gaudy neckties and bargain shirtwaists. Blazing electric signs herald the thrills of movie shows. And, salient by the force of extreme contrast, a plain little white posterboard makes its influence felt. It is lit by two iron lanterns, and reads simply, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... the drawing-room. It was a dusty and forbidding place, with ugly furniture and gaudy walls. No piano nor any other musical instrument stood in it. The intruder turned an angry and baffled face to the old woman, who was ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie

... before I had squandered as fast as I obtained it, and had realised a considerable sum. I could not help comparing myself to a chrysalis previous to its transformation. I had before been a caterpillar, I was now all ready to burst my confinement, and flit about as a gaudy butterfly. Another week I continued my prudent conduct, at the end of which I was admitted to my superior, in whose hands I placed a sum of money which I could very conveniently spare, and received his benediction and commendations for having weaned myself from ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... Summer Roses all their glory yield To crown the Votary of Love and Joy, Misfortune's Victim hails, with many a sigh, Thee, scarlet POPPY of the pathless field, Gaudy, yet wild and lone; no leaf to shield Thy flaccid vest, that, as the gale blows high, Flaps, and alternate folds around thy head.— So stands in the long grass a love-craz'd Maid, Smiling aghast; while stream to every wind Her gairish ribbons, smear'd with ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... the long, low steps of the basilica, and wonders in what part of the palace the Pope's apartments may be, while the itinerant vender of photographs shakes yards of poor little views out of their gaudy red bindings, very much as Leporello unrolls the list of Don Giovanni's conquests. If the picture peddler sees that the stranger glances at the Vatican, he forthwith points out the corner windows of the second story and informs his victim that 'Sua ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... conspiracy now to be laid bare in all its hideous deformity, is an inhabitant of the town of Tattlesnivel—a lowly inhabitant, it may be, but one who, as an Englishman and a man, will ne'er abase his eye before the gaudy and the mocking throng. ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens

... the towns and cities scattered through New England and the Middle States, most of them on a par with those last mentioned, in all styles of print and binding, some decrepit and musty with age, others fresh and enticing, with gaudy covers and scores of illustrations; some like Sewall's History of Woburn with no table of contents or index, and so practically useless; a few like Staples's Annals of Providence, scholarly and creditable; yet none of them ideal histories. But occasionally ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... terrified gaze, with his tomahawk in one hand, and his rifle in the other. "Perfidious villain," exclaimed Ralph, "and this is an Indian's faith." An Indian of gigantic size, dressed in all the gaudy trappings of a chief, now strode, towards us. Ralph raised his gun, and closed his eye as the sight of the weapon sought the warrior's breast. "Don't shoot, and you will be treated friendly," cried the savage ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell

... raw-boned, badly dressed farmers' lads, with red hands and rough hair, she quite as snobbishly ignored as she was ignored in her turn by the well-set-up, fashionably dressed young swells of the University, with their white hands, with their thin, gaudy socks tautly pulled over their ankle-bones, and their shining hair glistening like lacquer on their skulls (that being the desideratum in youthful masculine society of the place and time). Sylvia snubbed ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... factory in the blinding mornings and back again to the Old Market at the suffocating hour of sunset. Over the doors of the negro hovels luxuriant gourd vines hung in festoons of large fan-shaped leaves, and above the high plank fences at the back, gaudy sunflowers nodded their heads to me as I went wearily by. The richer quarter of the city had blossomed into a fragrant bower, but I saw only the squalid surroundings of the Old Market, with its covered wagons, its overripe melons, its prowling dogs ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... crowd of people was pouring through the gate of the enclosure. Fully four thousand people were already on the grounds; and a gaudy array of "side shows" at once attracted our attention. There were counters and carts for cider, gingerbread and confectionery. Loud-voiced auctioneers were selling "patent medicines" and knickknacks of ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... not a new thing even among the Jews to use the worldly promises of their exoteric religion as symbols for inner spiritual revolutions; and the change of heart involved in genuine Christianity was not a fresh excitation of gaudy hopes, nor a new sort of utilitarian, temporary austerity. It was an emptying of the will, in respect to all human desires, so that a perfect charity and contemplative justice, falling like the Father's gifts ungrudgingly on the whole creation, might ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... other's hands, raised our glasses and drank together without speaking, for there was something—we knew not what—that lay behind Dutch Peter's little speech which made us think. Presently, when a big and gaudy German-made cuckoo clock in the room struck twelve, even reckless Charley de Buis forgot his old joke about Tom Denison's 'damned old squawking British duck,' as he called the little painted bird, and we ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... inconsequential. As a people, we seek to be entertained, but fail to make a nice distinction between entertainment and amusement. War, it is true, has caused us to think more soberly and feel more deeply; but the bizarre, the gaudy, and the superficial still make a strong appeal to us. We are quite happy to wear paste diamonds, provided only that they sparkle. So long have we been substituting the fictitious for the genuine that we have contracted the habit ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... girls went to the sandbank, some doing a little fishing round its rim, others bringing the washing there, all skylarking and singing. Few prettier sights have I ever seen than those on that sandbank— the merry brown forms dancing or lying stretched on it: the gaudy- coloured patchwork quilts and chintz mosquito-bars that have been washed, spread out drying, looking from Kangwe on the hill above, like beds of bright flowers. By night when it was moonlight there would be bands of dancers on it with bush-light torches, gyrating, intermingling and separating ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... seem to catch on to business principles! The prime cost of the spirit is literally nothing. I couldn't find a cheaper advertisement if I tried." Against the side post of the cabinet there leaned a gaudy umbrella, preserved there as a relic. It appears that when Pinkerton was about to place Thirteen Star upon the market, the rainy season was at hand. He lay dark, almost in penury, awaiting the first shower, at which, as upon a signal, the main thoroughfares became dotted ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... we, Glittering with efficiency. Not a button's out of place, Tons and tons of golden lace Wind about our officers. Every manly bosom stirs At the thought of killing—killing! Tommy's dearest wish fulfilling. We are gaudy, savage, strong, And our loins so ripe we long First to kill, then procreate, Doubling so the laws of Fate. On their women we have sworn To graft our sons. And overborne They'll rear us younger soldiers, so Shall our race endure and grow, Waxing greater in the wombs Borrowed of them, while ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... gaudy colours are much less in demand than formerly. Two or three colours only, with the dark and light shades of each, make ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... wife, establishing her in the palace at Greenwich under the same roof with the queen, with reception rooms, and royal state, and a position openly acknowledged,[159] the gay court and courtiers forsaking the gloomy dignity of the actual wife for the gaudy splendour of her brilliant rival. Tamer blood than that which flowed in the veins of a princess of Castile would have boiled under these indignities; and we have little reason to be surprised if policy and prudence were alike forgotten by Catherine in the bitterness of the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... ornament, if so it could be called, was a painted tambourine with a bunch of bright ribbons tied to the rim; and it was hung upon the wall between the settee and the fireplace at about the height of a man's head. Of course it might be no more than it seemed to be—a rather gaudy and vulgar toy, such as a woman like Mme. Dauvray would be very likely to choose in order to dress her walls. But it swept Ricardo's thoughts back of a sudden to the concert-hall at Leamington and the apparatus ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason

... expressed, is, to me, truly surprising. For where, in the name of wonder, should the house acquire the necessary knowledge or intelligence? Is it by turning these musty old volumes, or by rummaging these gaudy boxes which lie on your table? No! they contain none of these mysteries. How then are they to be explored? Is there any virtue or inspiration in these benches or cushions, by which they are to be communicated, or does the echo of these walls ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... for some of my salary in advance, and bought at Tchurkin's a pair of black gloves and a decent hat. Black gloves seemed to me both more dignified and BON TON than the lemon-coloured ones which I had contemplated at first. "The colour is too gaudy, it looks as though one were trying to be conspicuous," and I did not take the lemon-coloured ones. I had got ready long beforehand a good shirt, with white bone studs; my overcoat was the only thing that held me back. The coat in itself was a very good one, it kept me ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... in the comic operas to ours is, they have no refinement or colours or subtleties to please the eye—all is gaudy and blatant. The "Merry Widow," for instance, could make one weep, it is so vulgar and changed, especially the end. But if the people prefer it like that the managers are quite right to let ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... In all this gaudy attempt at show, this restless dissatisfaction with what they are, and ceaseless endeavour to appear something they are not, our middle-class ladies are doing themselves and society infinite mischief. They set the tone to the world below them, and the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... flaunting doors of a great music-hall and passed through them, though to others this would have been impossible, for the place was filled from floor to roof. In its promenades men were drinking and smoking, while gaudy women, painted and low-robed, leered at them. On the stage girls danced, throwing their legs above their heads. Then they vanished amidst applause, and a woman in a yellow robe, who pretended to be tipsy, sang a horrible and vulgar song full of topical allusions, which was received with screams ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... Souza, with a grin of content upon his unshapely mouth, exchanged his frock coat for a gaudy smoking-jacket, and, with a freshly-lit cigar in his mouth, took up the letters which had arrived by the evening post. Seeing amongst them one with an African stamp he tore it open ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... brown. He is usually caught by trolling either natural or artificial minnow; and the tackle should be mounted on gimp and fixed to a strong line, and plenty of it. We have read of a ferox rising to the fly, but never saw one so captured. There seems no reason why a gaudy fly should not attract him. After he is hooked the fun begins. A ferox of 10 to 12 lb. will give you amusement and excitement for an indefinite time; and you are never sure of him till he is in the boat. A friend of ours (a capital angler to boot) fishing with us on Loch Assynt in Sutherlandshire ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior

... things. Yet how shall man decide what he may want In four revolving weeks; what hats, what coats, How many collars and what handkerchiefs, What flannel trousers—all the articles, Shoes, scissors, waistcoats, gaudy ties and boots, Socks, safety-razor-blades and leather belts, Studs, links, dress-suit, and plain and coloured shirts, And undervests—the articles, in short, That make a man in very truth a man? Did AGAMEMNON, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various

... O best beloved of my soul, afflict you farther. Why should I thus sadden all your gaudy prospects? I have said enough to such a heart as yours, if Divine grace touches it. And if not, all I can say will be of no avail!—I will leave you therefore to that, and to your own reflections. And after giving you ten thousand thanks for your indulgent patience with ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... species, which always seemed to me probable.) The birds, plants, and insects have a desert character, and are not more brilliantly coloured than those from southern Patagonia; we may, therefore, conclude that the usual gaudy colouring of the intertropical productions is not related either to the heat or light of those zones, but to some other cause, perhaps to the conditions of existence being ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... Minister belonged to that "old gang" which it was Quisante's mission to shake up or shake out. Rich in merits, his speeches were nevertheless faulty to a critical ear; the ornate was apt to turn to the gaudy, the dignified to the pompous. To the critical, defects outweigh merits; but the mass of people, not being critical, fix on the fine things, contentedly and perhaps not unwisely ignoring the blemishes. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... had not been supplied by sheets of tin were daubed a dingy red. Numerous kegs and bottles on the outside attested the nature of the place. The front door was open, but the interior was concealed by a gaudy curtain stretched across the entrance within. Over the door was the inscription, in straggling characters, "Sander's Place;" and when he saw half-a-dozen Negroes enter, the minister knew instantly that he now beheld the colored saloon which was the frequenting-place ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... to see that you like birds, sir," said Beckendorff to Vivian; for our hero, good-naturedly humouring the tastes of his host, was impartially dividing the luxuries of a peach among a crowd of gaudy and greedy little sparrows. "You shall see my favourites," continued Beckendorff; and tapping rather loudly on the table, he held out the forefinger of each hand. Two bullfinches recognised the signal, and immediately ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... him. "Why, how d'ye do, Mr. Norman?" said she. And her friendliness and assurance of manner jarred upon him. There was not a suggestion of forwardness; but he, used to her old-time extreme reserve, felt precisely as if she were bold and gaudy, after the fashion of so many of the working girls who ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... give me words Of meadow-growth and garden plot, Of larks and black-caps; gaudy birds, Gay flowers and jewels like ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... of my professional duties, I have observed that there was an utter disproportion between the clothing and the food of these knitters. I am no judge as to the value or quality of the goods, but many of them are clothed in a very gaudy, showy manner, and in a way quite inconsistent with their position in life. I have reason to know at the same time that their food is utterly insufficient. I have known knitting girls, one might almost ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... also richly ornamented, while handsome mirrors multiply all this splendor. The general effect is that of chasteness and a certain kind of solidity. There is not much gilding, the colors used are not gaudy, and there is a degree of elegant comfort about the saloons that is sometimes wanting amid splendid fittings. There is a ladies' drawing-room near the chief saloon full of every luxury. The berths are about 150 in number, leading out, as usual, from the saloons. The most novel feature about ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... kitchen was the only room in the house. Mrs. Primkins had plenty of rooms, but they were too choice for every-day use. They were always tightly closed, with green paper shades down, lest the blessed sunshine should get a peep at her gaudy red and green carpets, and put the least mellowing touch an their crude and rasping colors. Nimpo thought of the best parlor with a sort of awe which she never felt toward any room ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various

... a person is asked to give an opinion of something which is considered vulgar—that a gaudy article of dress will look well in a country ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... rise up, an' wrench off them bars!" suggested Heman Blaisdell, pointing out one cage where a great creature, gaudy in stripes, paced back and forth, throwing us an occasional look of scorn and great despite. "I wouldn't give much for my chances! Nor for ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... and down came boxes, and very soon the small counter was littered with piles of raiment variously gaudy which Spike viewed and disparaged with such knowing judgment that the salesman's respect proportionately grew, and Mr. Ravenslee, lounging in the background, was forgotten quite, the while ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... larkspur, beloved of children, the moss-pink, and the grape-hyacinth may sometimes be seen growing in country fields and byways. The homely and cheerful blossoms of the orange-tawny ephemeral lily, and the spotted tiger-lily, whose gaudy colors glow with the warmth of far Cathay—their early home—now make gay many of our roadsides and crowd upon the sweet cinnamon roses of our grandmothers, which also are undaunted ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... made but little other preparation for his friend in the way of dressing. His long dishevelled hair came down over his neck, and his beard covered his face. Beneath his dressing-gown he had on a night-shirt and drawers, and was as dirty in appearance as he was gaudy in colours. "Sit down and let us two moralise," he said. "I spend my life here doing nothing,—nothing,—nothing; while you cudgel your brain from day to day to mislead the British public. Which of us two is taking the nearest road to ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... something French, and spelt, b-o-u-d-o-i-r,) and was waited upon by handsome pages, and took her airing on a dappled-gray palfrey, attended by trusty and obsequious grooms; when Sir Knight, followed by his sturdy henchmen, rode forth in gay and gaudy attire, with glittering helmet and cuirass, and entered the lists, and bravely fought for his fair lady's fame. She spoke with fervid eloquence, and with a glibness that betrayed a very recent perusal of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... your application," said Ev, giving his flask the coup de grace; and the lights of L.A. rushed up around them like a huge breaker—gaudy, ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds

... their religion, their institutions, their literature, and their art. Their virtues and their vices turned upon it. Hence the golden mean is eminently a Greek conception, a leading idea of the Hellenic race. The Greek hated a thing overdone, a gaudy ornament, a proud title, a fulsome compliment, a high-flown speech, a wordy peroration. Nothing too much was the inscription over the lintel of the national sanctuary at Delphi. It is the surpassing grace of Greek art of the best ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... display room, she suddenly knew she had no business there. She saw them through the big plate-glass window as she came along. It would be hard to make her arrival seem casual. And when Joe Hooper raised his head as she entered the doorway—he was wearing that gaudy suit—she ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... little apartment, very much the worse for stale tobacco smoke, and adorned with gaudy racing-prints. Here Mr. Carrington seated himself, and told his companion to take the place ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... symbolical figures The sky is too glaring; the light crude, implacable; never has this old town of Nagasaki appeared to me so old, so worm-eaten, so bald, notwithstanding all its veneer of new papers and gaudy paintings. These little wooden houses, of such marvelous cleanly whiteness inside, are black outside, time-worn, disjointed and grimacing. When one looks closely, this grimace is to be found everywhere: in ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... your commands in the meadow behind the grove, where I saw Dorinda, Dorillus his daughter, entering with a basket of cowslips for Sylvia, unnecessarily offering sweets to the Goddess of the Groves, from whence they (with all the rest of their gaudy fellows of the spring) assume their ravishing odours. I take every opportunity of telling my Sylvia what I have so often repeated, and shall be ever repeating with the same joy while I live, that I ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... me from every evil work.' Were they disappointed? Let us hear how Paul ends the same verse: 'and shall save me into His heavenly kingdom.' Ay! and he was 'saved into the heavenly kingdom' when outside the walls of Rome; where a gaudy church stands now, he died for his Master. No harm came to him. God said to Death, 'Do My prophet no harm!' and Death docilely did him good, and brought ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... and now twelve years later the young man came back in a soldier's uniform, arrayed in a thousand colours, and all over glass trinkets and fine steel chains. To-day he would appear in one gay dress, to-morrow in another; but all flimsy and gaudy, of little substance and less worth. The peasant folk, who are naturally malicious, and when they have nothing to do can be malice itself, remarked all this, and took note of his finery and jewellery, piece ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... curious fact that, while the plumage of the parrots' breasts is always gaudy and brilliant in the extreme, that of their backs is usually the colour of the general tone of the region they inhabit. In woods, where the bark of trees is chiefly bright yellow and green, their backs are of these colours. In the plains they are a mixture ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... midst of one of these bursts of hilarity Mr Hazlit entered the room. The sound seemed to grate on his feelings, for he frowned as he walked, in an absent mood, up to a glass case full of gaudy birds, and turned his back to it under the impression, apparently, that it ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... I hoped you had done with her for good. I don't like you going to the Savoy with her dressed up in that gaudy fashion. She looks quite remarkable and unladylike. Besides that fellow Quinton is always at her heels, and I have heard some strange things about him. But then he is just the style of man people ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... winter wild While the heaven-born Child All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies; Nature in awe to Him Had doffed her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize: It was no season then for her To wanton with the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... and glassy lakes of this little paradise; the Queen, with the princesses and royal suite, as they glided over the turf in a train of pony-carriages, lined and shining with the richest satins; the splendid and gaudy clusters of marquees, glittering in all the pride of Tippoo's eastern magnificence, from whom they had been rifled, with their bright crescents blazing in the sunbeams—I found all the lovely and dearly remembered fancies, conjured before ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.

... Inditos," Jacqueline mused aloud. Berthe struck her pony in a tremor of fright. The American was riding ahead. "Fire and sword," Jacqueline went on, and her voice lowered to intense scorn, "they make the final tableau, but—it's gaudy, it's cheap." ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... getting a fine reception ready for the intruder. When the time comes for him to touch the keys, there is going to break out a racket made by timbrels, drums, and horse-fiddles, so that you can't hear anything else. But hush! there's the hero of the occasion going into the church. Goodness! what gaudy clothes, what a neckcloth, what a high and mighty air! Come, hurry up, the archbishop came only a moment ago, and the mass is going to begin. Come on; I guess this night will give us something to talk about ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... high remaining piece of the ancient mudbrick wall, three Mexicans, with cigarettes and sombreros, and gaudy as tulips in their striped serapes, were gambling, sleepily, at cards: from one of the little houses came the sleepy tinkling of a mandolin—muy querida. I wandered over to the edge of the little cemetery, and, sitting down, leaned against the hot wall, under the sleepy, flickering ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase

... disparaging to the people of our valley," I protested. "He says, 'in Black Log the girls don't understand how to dress. They deck themselves out in gaudy finery. Now Edith wears the simplest things. You never notice her gown. You only see ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... Joy fastened the gaudy silver pins with a jerk into the heavy white chenille that she was tying about her throat and hair, turned herself about before the glass with a last complacent look, and walked, in her deliberate, cool, provoking way, from the room. Gypsy got up, and—slammed ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... skis and toboggans, butter scoops and log chairs from the underworld, rose-coloured mittens, clothes' rollers, foxes' skins. And here are horse-dealers and drovers mingling with drunken folk from up the valley. Jews there are, too, anxious to palm off a gaudy watch or so, for all there is no money in the town. And the watches come from that country up in the Alps, where Bocklin—did not come from; where nothing and nobody ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... boy remained for one moment with the flag in his hand looking down at the crowd below. His face was odd and elated and still. Then with the slightest gesture he threw the flag from him, and Aaron watched the gaudy remnant falling towards the many faces, whilst the noise of ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... them all at once," said a large girl from Minneapolis, "nor yet all in the gaudy eye of heaven. We'll screen off a corner for our Professor—sort of confessional business. You sit there and we'll go to you one by one with our ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... lain latent within her bosom, or burned with friendship's unconsuming flame, awakes like smoldering embers fanned by desert winds and fed with camphor wood, enveloping all her world. She longs to leave the loveless life with her sullen lord; to cast from her as things accursed the gaudy robes and glittering gems; to fly with the shepherd lad to the deep cool forests of the far east and dream her life away in some black tent or vine-embowered cot—to take his hand in hers and wander on to the world's extreme verge, listening to the music of his voice. The ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... though with some hesitation, as though he were prepared to argue even this point with the sallow-faced lawyer. He struck a match on the gaudy little paper box he carried and began to smoke thoughtfully. "Let us make a couple of steps," he said ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... had ushered in the summer of St. Martin, as it was called by the habitans,—the Indian summer,—that brief time of glory and enchantment which visits us like a gaudy herald to announce the approach of the Winter King. It is Nature's last rejoicing in the sunshine and the open air, like the splendor and gaiety of a maiden devoted to the cloister, who for a few weeks is allowed to flutter like a bird of paradise amid the pleasures and gaieties of the world, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... decked with feathers fine, His jewelled reel ran out a silken line. With kingly strokes he flogged the crystal stream, Far-off the salmon saw his tackle gleam; Careless of kings, they eyed with calm disdain The gaudy lure, and Martin fished in vain. On Friday, when the week was almost spent, He scanned his empty creel with discontent, Called for a net, and cast it far and wide, And drew—a thousand minnows from the tide! Then came the fisher ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke

... those on the left were black with shadow. What! was that the Corso then, that semi-obscure trench, close pressed by high and heavy house-fronts, that mean roadway where three vehicles could scarcely pass abreast, and which serried shops lined with gaudy displays? There was neither space, nor far horizon, nor refreshing greenery such as the fashionable drives of Paris could boast! Nothing but jostling, crowding, and stifling on the little footways under the narrow strip of sky. And although Dario named the pompous ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... broad white ribbon round her, and a small figure-head painted white, whilst the pirate-craft was painted black down to her copper, and she carried a large black figure- head representing a negress with a gaudy scarf ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... name of Kammese[*] sufficiently denotes its use, is a Peir[a]n or jacket, which amongst the higher classes is made of Bokh[a]ra cloth, or not unfrequently of Russian broad cloth, brought overland through Bokh[a]ra. This garment is generally of some glaring gaudy colour, red or bright yellow, richly embroidered either in silk or gold; it is very like the Turkish jacket, but the inner side of the sleeve is open, and merely confined at the wrist with hooks and eyes. A pair of loose trousers, gathered at the waist with a running silken cord, and large ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem

... the party amounted to eight or nine. Again the door opened, and in swam a female, who had once certainly been handsome, and who, it was equally evident, still thought herself so. She was tall, and well formed, dressed in black, with many gaudy trinkets about her: a scarlet fichu relieved the sombre colour of her dress, and a very smart little cap at the back of her head set off an immense quantity of sable hair, which naturally, or artificially, adorned her forehead. A becoming quantity of ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... no such things there; and yet they lived. Our wanton accidents take root, and grow To vaunt themselves God's laws, until our clothes, Our gems, and gaudy books, and cushioned litters Become ourselves, and we would fain forget There live who need them not. [Guta offers to robe her.] Let be, beloved— I will taste somewhat this same poverty— Try these temptations, grudges, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... Marcia! Nothing, I assure you, gaudy or striking, in the very least. He wore the ordinary dress of a gentleman, not conspicuous in any way. It was his air I meant, and the look of—of pride and joy and youth—ah! it was very beautiful. Vesta was beautiful too; you saw her travelling-dress, Aunt Marcia. ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... riderless mount galloped along with the rest. Another man held to the high horn with both hands and weaved back and forth while a comrade riding beside him strove to keep him from toppling to the ground. Drew had an impression of bright, almost gaudy uniforms. The men of the Stronghold poured out to take the horses, helping down more than one blood-stained soldier. Their leader, a slender man with dusty gold lace banding his high ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... small Durham Ranger over him without success. A number four Critchley's Fancy produced no better result. A tiny double Silver Grey brought no response. Then he looked through his fly-box in despair, and picked out an old three-nought Prince of Orange—a huge, gaudy affair with battered feathers, which he had used two years before in flood-water on the Restigouche. At least it would astonish the salmon, for it looked like a last season's picture-hat, very much the worse for wear. It lit on the ripples with a splash, and ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... recognized as art nor have they been preserved as such. I have never seen either statue or picture of a nude Japanese woman. Even the pictures of famous prostitutes are always faultlessly attired. The number and size of the conventional hairpins, and the gaudy coloring of the clothing, alone indicate the immoral character of the ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... Coral make a world of colour in the clear seas of the tropics, a gay garden inhabited by fishes of gaudy hues. In dull seas we have, as a rule, dull creatures to match. And in bright, warm, sunny seas the fishes are also brightly coloured. A dull fish would show up amid such rich colours, so it is easy to know why Coral fish wear such ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith

... about the Peacock's gaudy dress: If she prefers That gray of hers, I don't admire her taste, I must confess. 'And as for legs and feet—well, I declare, The pair she's got Are really not The kind that I'd be seen ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow

... been at "Red Chimneys" little more than a week, but already the influence of her taste could be seen in the household. Some of the more gaudy and heavy ornaments, which had been provided by a professional decorator, had been removed, and their places filled by palms, or large plain ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... no terrace upon which gaudy peacocks strutted back and forth, but in front of the Hall was a small artificial lake in which some transplanted fish led the lives of prisoners. Lady Fernborough begged the Baronet to end their miserable existence, ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... Ella—there she does reign undisputed," he acknowledged, following her glance about the library, which wore an air of permanent habitation, of slowly formed intimacy with its inmates, in marked contrast to the gaudy impersonality of ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... Frequently these prizes take the form of some coveted delicacy in the way of food. Each day when at the Institute Mr. Washington would walk through the dining-hall during the noon meal and criticise these centrepieces, and things generally. He would point out that a certain decoration was too gaudy and profuse and had in it inharmonious colors. He would then remove the unnecessary parts and the discordant colors and point to the improved effect. He would next stop at a table with nothing in the way of decoration except a few scrawny flowers stuck carelessly ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... was on him as he put the gaudy model rocketship on top of the table and stepped back. It was made of stamped metal and seemed as incapable of flying as a can of ham—which it very much resembled. Neither wings, propellors, nor jets broke through the ...
— Toy Shop • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... which have no sensitiveness and no shape (being, indeed, vegetative and deciduous), as hair and beard, partaking of colour. Wherefore the ancient Romans and Greeks, portraying their gods, chose white marble for material, and not gaudy porphyry or jasper, and portrayed them naked. Whence certain moderns, calling themselves painters, who muffle our Lord and the Holy Apostles in many-coloured garments, thinking thereby to do a seemly and honourable thing, but really proceeding basely ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... correspondent to it in detail. Is it, therefore, altogether worth the old building? Is the stone carved to-day in their masons' yards altogether the same in value to the hearts of the French people as that which the eyes of St. Louis saw lifted to its place? Would a loving daughter, in mere desire for gaudy dress, ask a jeweler for a bright fac-simile of the worn cross which her mother bequeathed to her on her deathbed?—would a thoughtful nation, in mere fondness for splendor of streets, ask its architects to provide ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... lawful objects of human efforts, are but means to higher results and nobler ends. Start not forward in life with the idea of becoming mere seekers of pleasure,—sportive butterflies searching for gaudy flowers. Consider and act with reference to the true ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... struggle to fall. He resembles an American Cacique, who, possessing in unmeasured abundance the metals which in polished societies are esteemed the most precious, was utterly unconscious of their value, and gave up treasures more valuable than the imperial crowns of other countries, to secure some gaudy and far-fetched but worthless bauble, a plated button, or ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... some herd of wild quadrupeds or flock of gaudy birds unknown to science. Legions of large and burnished insects, veritable living jewels, might be seen everywhere, and flaunting butterflies hovered about the car. So far we had not observed the least sign of human occupation, and yet, as Gazen remarked, the appearance of the country ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... measure, a plea for picturesque treatment of biography and of history; not by gaudy coloring and violent contrasts, striving after rhetorical effect, but in the observance of proportion, of grouping, of subordination to a central idea; not content with mere narration, however accurate in details. A narrative which fails in portrayal, in picturesque impression, is not accurate; ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... this mental and moral masquerade, he adopted several changes in his dress, buying some clothes of very glaring patterns, and blossoming out in particularly gaudy neckties and flashy jewelry. Lest Annie should be puzzled to account for such a sudden access of depravity, he explained that his mother had been in the habit of selecting some of his lighter toilet articles for him, but this term he was trying for himself. Didn't she ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... the aspect of the church gradually began to change. As, slowly and insensibly, ambitious man heaped the garbage of his mysteries, his doctrines, and his disputes, about the pristine purity of the structure given him by God, so, one by one, gaudy adornments and meretricious alterations arose to sully the once majestic basilica, until the threatening and reproving apparition of the pagan Julian, when both Church and churchmen received in their corrupt progress ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... going out in a punt together. Leaving Miss Comstock and the three other girls to amuse themselves as they could, he stoutly pulled forth from the landing and around a bend in the river. Thereafter his efforts relaxed, and he had Adelle to himself for two long hours. And Adelle, reclining on the gaudy cushions under an enormous pink sunshade, was not unenticing. Her air of indolent taciturnity was almost provoking. Mr. Ashly Crane quite persuaded himself that he was really in love with ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... display of all our new and valuable wealth has tempted them into a single act of dishonesty. While they have generally shared with us the little they possess, they have always abstained from begging anything from us. With their liveliness of temper, they are fond of gaudy dresses and all sorts of amusements, particularly games of hazard; and, like most Indians, delight in boasting of their warlike exploits, either real or fictitious. In their conduct towards us they have been kind and ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... laughing, giggling together as young women of any color do, their black hair sleek with oil, their cheeks red with vermilion, their wrists heavy with brass or copper or pinchbeck circlets, their small moccasined feet peeping beneath gaudy calico given them by their white lords. Older squaws, envious but perforce resigned, muttered as their own stern-faced stolid red masters ordered them to keep close. Of the full-bloods, whether Sioux or Cheyennes, only ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... admired or felt at home in such magnificence if it had been materialized for him. He would have told you that a floor of last year's brown leaves, studded with myriad flower faces, big, bark-encased pillars of a thousand years, jewels on every bush, shrub, and tree, and tilting thrones on which gaudy birds almost burst themselves to voice the joy of life, while their bright-eyed little mates peered questioningly at him over nest rims——he would have told you that Medicine Woods on a damp, sunny May morning was Heaven. And he would have added that only one angel, tall and slender, with ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... spiritual life had been nourished in the solemn mysticism of the Middle Ages, suddenly turn to embrace a gaudy paganism? The common self-respect of humanity was outraged by apostate priests who, whether under the pressure of fear of Chaumette, or in a very superfluity of folly and ecstasy of degradation, hastened ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... courage and loyalty which freedom gives. It had become rich, and enervated by luxury and ease. Solomon had civilised the Jewish kingdom, till it had become one of the greatest nations of the East; but it had become also, like the other nations of the East, a vast and gaudy despotism, hollow and rotten to the core; ready to fall to pieces at Solomon's death, by selfishness, disloyalty, and civil war. Therefore it was that Solomon hated all his labour that he had wrought under the sun; for all was vanity and ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... the place of the dead was hidden far from the haunts of the living, but the narrow, uncertain path led to it at last—a bare, sun-bleached spot, secluded but unshaded by a gaudy-blossomed hedge of cactus. A straight, single line of graves, less than a dozen in number, lay blistering in the sunshine. Some were marked with slabs of lime-worn [Transcriber's note: time-worn?] stone, upon whose faded lettering little green rock-lizards ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... flared brightly. The costumer was preparing gaudy costumes, and the make-up man sat whistling and combing a wig with ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... cannot blame thy choice," the Sage replied, "For soft and smooth are Fancy's flowery ways. And yet even there, if left without a guide, The young adventurer unsafely plays. Eyes dazzled long by fiction's gaudy rays, In modest truth no light nor beauty find. And who, my child, would trust the meteor blaze, That soon must fail, and leave the wanderer blind, More dark and helpless far, than if ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... sadly away; For the Lady Lorraine continued to say, Decidedly, certainly, stubbornly, "Nay!" She cared not for wreaths of laurel or bay, Their titles or rent rolls or uniforms gay, Their medals or ribbons or gaudy display, Their splendid equipment, demeanor, or bearing; She observed not their manners, nor what they were wearing; Their marvellous exploits for her had no charms: Their prowess in tourney, their valor at arms; Their wondrous achievements of brawn or of brain,— All, all were ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells

... thereby secure the man's invaluable services. Be sure that every motive which comes not from the single eye, every motive which springs from self, is by its very essence unheroic, let it look as gaudy or ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... was one of his quieter interludes when he laid aside the ferocious and bombastic play-acting which made it hard to discover whether he was very cunning or half-mad. The immense beard flowed down his chest instead of being tricked out in gaudy ribbons. He was idly running a comb through it when his small, rum-reddened eyes took in the two lads in dripping clothes who were shoved toward him by the ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... every pageant Queen? you might from thence infer I'd fall in love with every little Actress, because She acts the Queen for half an hour, But then the gaudy Robe ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... legalized places of devils' pastime, will lure and beckon the raw youth of the country. They will flaunt their gaudy attractions on every side, and appeal to every sense but the sense ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... sun-rays. The end of the jabul would reach nearly down to the feet, but is usually held retrousse under the arm. They have a passion for jewellery, and wear many finger-rings of metal and sometimes of sea-shells, whilst their ear-rings are gaudy and of large dimensions. The hair is gracefully tied in a coil on the top of the head, and their features are at least as attractive as those of the generality ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... Kester forgot the time as he listened; the lad's sensitive frame thrilled with passionate envy at the narrative. At last he had met a hero face to face. What were those old Greek fellows—Ajax, or Hector or any of those gaudy warriors—compared with ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... bending above a flower, and doing something to the flower's advantage with a pair of scissors. As Bess hung over the leafy object of her solicitude, with her yellow wealth of hair coiled round and round, she herself looked not unlike a graceful, gaudy chrysanthemum. This poetic reflection, which would have been creditable to Mr. Fopling, never occurred to Richard; he was too full of Dorothy to have room for Bess. However, the good Bess found no fault with his loving preoccupation; she, too, was pensively ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... Mr. Robert the gold had turned to gilt, the gorgeous to the gaudy. She was gone. The imagination moves as swiftly as light, leaping from one castle in air to another, and still another. Mr. Robert was the architect of some fine ones, I may safely assure you. And he didn't mind in the least that they tumbled down as rapidly ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... occult powers I was supposed to be gifted with. A day or two after my landing, a curious thing happened—nothing more or less than the celebration of my marriage! I was standing near my boat, still full of thoughts of escape, when two magnificent naked chiefs, decked with gaudy pigments and feather head-dresses, advanced towards me, leading between them a young, dusky maiden of comparatively ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... not empty shew, Let not the pride of gaudy dress, Thus cloud thy morn of life with woe, And ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield

... a substitute for thought in many of the lower order of French historians. It is less to history, however, than to romance, that the French public is indebted for its conceptions of the character of Gonsalvo de Cordova, as depicted by the gaudy pencil of Florian, in that highly poetic coloring, which is more attractive to the majority of readers than the cold and sober delineations ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... La Robe Noire and Little Fellow, laden with gaudy trinkets and hunting outfits, departed for the Sioux lodges, Hamilton was positively a madman. In the first place, he had been determined to disguise himself as an Indian and go instead of La Robe Noire, whose figure he resembled. To this, we would not listen. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... here, in this attention to the comfort of sick people, you will observe the usual effect of a fine art to soften and refine the feelings. The world in general, gentlemen, are very bloody-minded; and all they want in a murder is a copious effusion of blood; gaudy display in this point is enough for them. But the enlightened connoisseur is more refined in his taste; and from our art, as from all the other liberal arts when thoroughly cultivated, the result is—to improve and to humanize the heart; so ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... afternoon; hence the virulence of prohibition among the peasantry. The hard-working householder who, on some bitter evening, glances over the Saturday Evening Post for a square and honest look at his wife is envious of those gaudy drummers who go gallivanting about the country with scarlet girls; hence the Mann act. If these deviltries were equally open to all men, and all men were equally capable of appreciating them, their unpopularity would ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken

... through the foam as the fish turned in the water. At this season of the year, when summer is nearly ended, and every ouananiche in the Grande Decharge has tasted feathers and seen a hook, it is useless to attempt to delude them with the large gaudy flies which the fishing-tackle-maker recommends. There are only two successful methods of angling now. The first of these I tried, and by casting delicately with a tiny brown trout-fly tied on a gossamer strand of gut, captured a pair of ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... the Royal arm; while the children of France were indulging in their infantile hilarity in the alleys of the magnificent garden of Le Notre (from which Niblo's garden has been copied in our own Empire city of New York), and playing at leap-frog with their uncle, the Count of Provence; gaudy courtiers, emlazoned with orders, glittered in the groves, and murmured frivolous talk in the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... thoughts. And behind the view wall of Alexander's apartment Kardon's brilliant yellow sun sank slowly toward the horizon, filling the sky with flaming colors of red and gold, rimmed by the blues and purples of approaching night. The sunset was gaudy and blatant, Kennon thought with mild distaste, unlike the restful day-end displays ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone

... The lower slopes of Gairloch, of western Sutherland, of Orkney, and of the northern Hebrides generally—though, for the purposes of the agriculturist, vegetation languishes, and wheat is never reared—are by many degrees richer in wild flowers than the fat loamy meadows of England. They resemble gaudy pieces of carpeting, as abundant in petals as in leaves. Little of the rare is to be detected in these meadows, save, perhaps, that in those of western Sutherland a few Alpine plants may be found at a greatly lower level than elsewhere in Britain; but the vast profusion of blossoms borne ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... nothing so much as the rude, stark folk-song bequeathed to the world by medieval Russia. Rimsky-Korsakoff's love of brilliant, gay materials had been in generations and generations of peasant-artists, in every peasant who on a holiday had donned a gaudy, beribboned costume, centuries before the music of "Scheherazade" and "Le Coq d'or" was conceived. So, too, the temperaments and sensibilities of the others. They had but to touch these emblems and reliques and rhythms ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... serene, So like the soul of me, what if 't were me? A melancholy better than all mirth. Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect, Or at the foresight of obscurer years? Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty Superior to all its gaudy skirts. And, that no day of life may lack romance, The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down A private beam into each several heart. Daily the bending skies solicit man, The seasons chariot him from this exile, The rainbow ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one's sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. He disappeared. I half expected the roof to split in two, the little box on wheels to burst open in the manner ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... keys, there is going to break out a racket made by timbrels, drums, and horse-fiddles, so that you can't hear anything else. But hush! there's the hero of the occasion going into the church. Goodness! what gaudy clothes, what a neckcloth, what a high and mighty air! Come, hurry up, the archbishop came only a moment ago, and the mass is going to begin. Come on; I guess this night will give us something to talk about ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... the end of some long avenue of lime trees, all having their own features of beauty—and a beauty with which every object around harmonizes well. The sluggish peasant, in his blouse and striped night-cap—the heavily caparisoned horse, shaking his head amidst a Babel-tower of gaudy worsted tassels and brass bells—the deeply laden waggon, creeping slowly along—are all in keeping with a scene, where the very mist that rises from the valley seems indolent and lazy, and unwilling to impart the rich perfume of verdure with which it is loaded. Every land has ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... only the day before—even my portmanteau had disappeared. After a most diligent search, I discovered on a chair in a corner of the room, a small bundle tied up in a handkerchief, on opening which I perceived a new suit of livery of the most gaudy and showy description and lace; of which colour was also the coat, which had a standing collar and huge cuffs, deeply ornamented with worked button holes and large buttons. As I turned the things over, without ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever

... do flout us with;—but yet I love thee, Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout. Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air; But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau, Stripped of his gaudy hues and essences, And growing portly ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... impression it made on her. There was no carpet on the floor; the walls were made of mill-dressed boards which had cracked with the dryness and smelt of turpentine. The furniture consisted of a few bent-hardwood chairs and a rickety table covered with a gaudy cloth. The nickeled lamp, which diffused an unpleasant odor, was of florid but very inartistic design; the plain stove stood in an ugly iron tray, and its galvanized pipe ran up, unconcealed, to the ceiling. A black distillate had trickled down from a bend in it, and ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... bring him under notice, nor otherwise compromise him, so long as he should stay to watch it. A young jibbering ape of one of the more formidable sorts, or an ominous infant panther, smuggled into the great gaudy hotel and whom it might yet be important he shouldn't advertise, couldn't have affected him as needing more domestic attention. The great gaudy hotel—The Pocahontas, but carried out largely on "Du Barry" lines—made all about him, beside, behind, below, above, in ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... of gaudy feather to the trout "fly" he was making, before he answered. "Surely to goodness, they'll nivver be that! Sibbald Hallam, my uncle, was a varry thick Churchman when he went to th' Carolinas—but he married a foreigner; she had plenty o' brass, and acres o' land, but I never ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... lusty spring is seen; Golden yellow, gaudy blue, Daintily invite the view: Everywhere on every green Roses blushing as they blow, And enticing men to pull, Lilies whiter than the snow, Woodbines of sweet honey full: All love's emblems, and all cry, 'Ladies, if not pluck'd, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... often like a great sunflower, with a disc as big as a cheese. But the Christian beauty will be modest and unobtrusive and shy, like the violet half buried in the hedge-bank, and unnoticed by careless eyes, accustomed to see beauty only in gaudy, flaring blooms. But unless you, as a Christian, are in your character arrayed in the "beauty of holiness," and the holiness of beauty, you are not quite the Christian that Jesus Christ wants you to be; setting forth all the gracious and sweet and refining influences ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... the ground, close against the hut wall, two low-looking half-breeds in gaudy shirts, and wearing their black hair long and unkempt, were filling in the time waiting for breakfast, shooting "crap dice." The only words spoken between them were the filthy epithets and slang they addressed to the dice as they threw them, and the deep-throated ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... all, partaking of a hearty lunch of insects that infest the leaves before one's eyes, one counts the bird less rare and shy than one has been taught to consider it. Whoever looks for a warbler with gaudy yellow wings will not find the golden-winged variety. His wings have golden patches only, and while these are distinguishing marks, they are scarcely prominent enough features to have given the bird the rather misleading name he bears. But, then, most warblers' names ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy. But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man. * * * Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... supposed to be a profound secret; but it was talked about with a childish naivete in all manner of public places. The chieftain laid in uniforms of his own designing, and strolled about the Grande Rue de Pera, gaudy in a Turkish military fez, white ducks and gloves, and a blue coat beplastered with gold lace. One or two of his lieutenants followed his example; and the unfortunate tailor who had provided these sartorial splendours held the Hotel Misserie and the Hotel Byzance in siege for days in the vain hope ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... principles always prevail in my selections. For instance, as my particular friend, the Reverend George Herbert, remarked, as he looked about him on one of his visits to my castle: 'Sober handsomeness doth bear the bell.' I cannot admit anything gaudy, needlessly exotic, or impertinently obtruding the idea of dollars. Now a travelled lady, who had heard of my castle, once offered me for it a buhl cabinet, of angry and alarming redness and a huge ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... others, to be exposed to the influence of cold, frosty nights, as when the "fell destroyer" commences to exert its power all plants touched by it rapidly decay. Gladioli will now be clothed in the full glory of their gaudy, but handsome dress; they are comparatively easy to manage in well-drained spots, and being such continuous bloomers, at least three or four or even half a dozen should be in every small garden. In winter they must be covered by about six inches of litter; but in cold and ill-drained ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... left their partners, as custom demanded, and had gone to the doors, energetically mopping their brows with handkerchiefs as various in colour as the women's dresses; red and yellow silk, blue and purple, and the eternal gaudy bandana. Thornton paused at the door, losing himself among the men who had come out to stand there smoking or to wander a little away in the darkness where earlier in the evening each had hidden his personal ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... out in gutter finery of a special stamp, unmistakably betraying its shameful purpose. Sonia stopped short in the doorway and looked about her bewildered, unconscious of everything. She forgot her fourth-hand, gaudy silk dress, so unseemly here with its ridiculous long train, and her immense crinoline that filled up the whole doorway, and her light-coloured shoes, and the parasol she brought with her, though it was no use at night, and the absurd round straw hat with its flaring flame-coloured ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the field. A collection of this sort may be small and poorly kept and yet it is worth while. In later life one will search in his mother's closet or attic for the old cigar boxes which contain the remains of youthful efforts, usually a mass of gaudy wings, fragments of insect legs and bodies and a few rusty pins. This desire to make a collection is natural and should be encouraged in the child. It tends to make him observe closely and creates an interest in things about him, and if properly directed it will add a store of ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman

... a scene of another kind. They re-entered the town by the Chinese quarter. There they found grotesque-looking houses, lit up with large paper lanterns of gaudy colours, with Chinese inscriptions or monsters on them, and long rows of Chinese characters up and down the door-posts or over the windows. Crowds of people swarmed along the streets, and strange cries, in a Babel of languages, resounded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... possible from his usual sober clothes. Somehow he reminded Priscilla of a circus, and she found it extremely hard not to laugh. On his head he had a cap with ear-pieces that hid his grey hair; round his neck a gaudy handkerchief muffled well about his face; immense goggles cloaked the familiar overhanging eyebrows and deep-set eyes, goggles curiously at variance with the dapper briskness of his gaitered legs. The Princess was in ordinary blue serge, short and rather shabby, it having been ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... of his power of moral interpretation. It deals, not like Hamlet with the problems which beset one of exceptional temperament, but with mere human nature. It brings before us a group of persons, attractive, full of desire, vessels of the genial, seed-bearing powers of nature, a gaudy existence flowering out over the old court and city of Vienna, a spectacle of the fulness and [174] pride of life which to some may seem to touch the verge of wantonness. Behind this group of people, behind their various action, Shakespeare inspires in us the sense of a ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... a high plaster wall, with little booths built under its shadows, where pilgrims bought souvenirs of the Lavra—gaudy ikons, colored handkerchiefs ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce

... their fellow-brutes, and eyed with jealousy their glittering harness. In imitation of this finery, they were fond of thrums of many-colored threads; and I saw one creature, who supported the squalid rag that wrapped his waist by a suspender of gaudy worsted, which he turned every moment to look at on his naked shoulder. The greater number, however, were as unconscious of any covering for use or ornament, as a pig or ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... been so clean and genteel, a word used very much at that time, was fast changing. The lower part on the south side was rilling up with undesirable people, some foreigners who crowded three families into a house. Houston Street was growing gaudy and common with Jew stores. And oh, the children! There was a large bakery where they sold cheap bread, and in the afternoon there really was a procession ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... be blither than roses in thine eyes, Shall I not rend this raiment of pangs and fears, This Colchian cloth white flames ensorcelise, This gaudy-veil distained with blood and tears?— What praise? "O marriage-beauty garlanded For festival, O sumptuous flowery stole For rites of adoration!"—See instead A cilice drenched with torment of my soul! Nevertheless the fibres implicate Proud exultations; burning, have revealed Rich throes ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor

... comic journals of America mention may be made of Puck, the rough and gaudy cartoons of which have often what the Germans would call a packende Derbheit of their own that is by no means ineffective. Of the other American—as, indeed, of the other British—comic papers I prefer to say nothing, except that I have often seen them in houses and ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... sleek And well looking an ass As ever on common Munched thistle or grass; And—though 'twas not gaudy, That jacket of brown— Was the pet of the young And the pride ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... with calm discretion, and moving with the nice precision of a fine watchmaker, shed into the best decanter (softly as an angel's tears) liquid beauty, not too gaudy, not too sparkling with shallow light, not too ruddy with sullen glow, but vivid—like a noble gem, a brown cairngorm—with mellow depth of lustre. "That's your sort!" the tanner cried, after putting his tongue, while his wife looked shocked, to the lip ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... irresistible desire to "a-courting go." Like most other beings of his sex, he thinks his every-day suit too plain for the important business before him. It will, in his opinion, ne'er catch the eye of his lady love. So he dons one of gaudy colors and from it takes his name,—the rainbow darter,—for in it he is best known, as it not only attracts the attention of his chosen one, but often also that of the wandering naturalist who happens ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber, the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... original or of the translation, the world has but little to regret in the loss. Aristaenetus is one of those weak, florid sophists, who flourished in the decline and degradation of ancient literature, and strewed their gaudy flowers of rhetoric over the dead muse of Greece. He is evidently of a much later period than Alciphron, to whom he is also very inferior in purity of diction, variety of subject, and playfulness of irony. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... saw a garden-bed on which there grew, Low down amid gay grass, a violet, With flame of poppy flickering over it, And many gaudy spikes and blossoms new, Round which the wind with amorous whispers blew. There came a maid, gold-haired and lithe and strong, With limbs whereof the delicate perfumed flesh Was like a babe's. She broke ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... English and American, and his talk abounded in radical and rather foolish utterances. Norcross considered it the most disorderly home he had ever seen, and yet it was not without a certain dignity. The rooms were large and amply provided with furniture of a very mixed and gaudy sort, and the table ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... and scandal of Sir Norman, was that of the fastest young roue of Charles court, after him came another pompous dignitary, in such unheard of magnificence that the unseen looker-on set him down for a prime minister, or a lord high chancellor, at the very least. The somewhat gaudy-looking gentlemen who stepped after the pious prelate and peer wore the stars and garters of foreign courts, and were evidently embassadors extraordinary to that of her midnight majesty. After them came a snowy flock of fair young girls, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... themselves, under the brilliant glare of the gilt chandeliers or the subdued light of the Chinese lanterns, which were brilliantly decorated with long silken tassels. On the walls there was a lamentable medley of landscapes in dim and gaudy colors, painted in Canton or Hongkong, mingled with tawdry chromos of odalisks, half-nude women, effeminate lithographs of Christ, the deaths of the just and of the sinners—made by Jewish houses in Germany to be sold in the Catholic countries. Nor were there lacking the Chinese prints on red paper ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... went on Andy. "Give us a whiff," and before the dude could stop him the younger Racer boy had snatched it from his pocket. "Whew! Yes, this is it!" he cried, holding his nose as he handed the gaudy linen back. "How did it happen, Chet? Did you drop it somewhere? It's awful!" and he pretended to stagger back. "Better ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum

... ourselves back for awhile into the feelings of our childhood. This ballad, therefore, we read under such recollections of our own childish feelings, as would equally endear to us poems, which Mr. Wordsworth himself would regard as faulty in the opposite extreme of gaudy and technical ornament. Before the invention of printing, and in a still greater degree, before the introduction of writing, metre, especially alliterative metre (whether alliterative at the beginning of the words, as in ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... with its stones, even as Frederick quarried them out of the early Roman citadel beneath; but it is at least a harmonious desolation. There are no wire-fenced walks among the ruins, no feeding-booths and cheap reconstructions of draw-bridges and police-notices at every corner; no gaudy women scribbling to their friends in the "Residenzstadt" post cards illustrative of the "Burgruine," while their husbands perspire over mastodontic ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... a more extended taste for scholarship; not attended, however, with many incentives to originality of production. The nobles were still the patrons of literature, and they fancied old things which were grand, in new and gaudy English dresses. The age was also marked by rapid and uniform progress in the English language. The sonorous, but cumbrous English of Milton had been greatly improved by Dryden; and we have seen, also, that the terse and somewhat crude diction of Dryden's earlier works ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... with a missionary and a native, both of whom could talk both English and Chinese, and visited some 'flower-boats' on the river. Many of these boats are quite pretentious, with their rich wood-carving, fine furniture, and gaudy display of tinsel. There were whole streets of them,—floating houses moored together; we walked along the length of the street on one side, stepping from the bow of one boat to the next, the bows of the boats constituting front verandahs. We called at almost every place, but ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell

... wardrobe-trunks were parts of old costumes, scrapbooks of clippings, and a goodly collection of lithographs, some advertising the supernatural powers of "Professor Magi, Sovereign of the Unseen World," and others the accomplishments of "Mlle. Le Garde, Renowned Serpent Enchantress." In these gaudy portraits of "Magi the Mystic" no one would have recognized Phil Strange. And even more difficult would it have been to trace a resemblance between Mrs. Strange and the blond, bushy-headed "Mlle. Le Garde" of the posters. Nevertheless, the likenesses ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... best beloved of my soul, afflict you farther. Why should I thus sadden all your gaudy prospects? I have said enough to such a heart as yours, if Divine grace touches it. And if not, all I can say will be of no avail!—I will leave you therefore to that, and to your own reflections. And after giving you ten ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... his freezing hands together as he stood with his back to the snow-laden north-easter, which rattled the creaking signboards of East Twelfth Street, and covered, with its merciful shroud of wet flakes, the ash-barrels, dingy stoops, gaudy saloon porticos and other architectural beauties ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... halfe a shire, and thy father would but Dye once; Come to the Sizes with a band of Janisaries To equall the Grand Signor, all thy tenants, That shall at their owne charge make themselves fine And march like Cavaliers with tilting feathers, Gaudy as Agamemnons[237] in the play: After whome thou, like St. George a horseback Or the high Sheriff, shall make the Cuntrey people Fall downe in adoration of thy Crooper And silver stirrup, my right worshipfull. A pox a buckram and the baggage in't! Papers defil'd with ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... translation, and a translation, as you will presently see, far from faithful; he gives you not the scene, but the effect of the scene on his mind; and as Dickens started out to produce not a faithful picture, but a startling emotion, his scene is accordingly gaudy, theatrical, false. For observe, the wind is a respectable wind, and yet afflicted with pettiness of tyranny, and it wreaks vengeance; and this vengeance-wreaking wind does not come up flying, as you would expect of a wind, but it happens to come up leisurely, evidently taking an after-dinner ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... students by their books. No more than I for my poor deeds am paid, Whom none can blame, will help, or dare upbraid. "Call this our need, a bog that all devours, - Then what thy petty arts, but summer-flowers, Gaudy and mean, and serving to betray The place they make unprofitably gay? Who know it not, some useless beauties see, - But ah! to prove it was reserved for me." Unhappy state! that, in decay of love, Permits harsh truth his errors to disprove; While he remains, to wrangle and to jar, ...
— Miscellaneous Poems • George Crabbe

... thin, tense-faced Hebrew girl of eighteen or nineteen came rushing in, carrying a wire basket full of typewritten sheets. She was as gaunt as a plucked spring chicken, and her cheap, gaudy clothes might have been thrown on her. She looked as if she were running to catch a train and in mortal dread of missing it. While Miss Devine examined the pages in the basket, Becky stood with her ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... taste demands should be placed in bedrooms and private sitting rooms. The ten-cent stores have done a great deal of good in educating the poor, white and black alike. These stores have everywhere sold small brown art prints of many of the great paintings, to take the place of the gaudy dust-laden ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... solitary upon two starch-boxes, fiddle on knee, staring and waiting. Half the floor was bare; on the other half the revellers were densely clotted. At the crowd's outer rim the young horsemen, flushed and swaying, retained their gaudy dance partners strongly by the waist, to be ready when the music should resume. "What is it?" they asked. "Who is it?" And they looked in across heads and shoulders, inattentive to the caresses which the ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... whatever in our modern culture is thoroughly Christless, and therefore Godless, is unworthy of the name and can, therefore, claim from us no further consideration; it is mere naked rudeness and selfishness, ill-disguised by the gaudy rays of outward decency; a mere cherishing of the sensual nature which, left to itself, would soon degenerate into monstrous barbarism, of which we already ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... but faltered, staggered, and was obliged to lean against the mountain for support. Stains of travel were on her dress; lines of fatigue and pain, and traces of burning passionate tears, were on her face; her black hair flowed from beneath her gaudy bonnet; and, shamed out of his brutality, Rand placed his strong arm round her waist, and half carrying, half supporting her, began the ascent. Her head dropped wearily on his shoulder; her arm encircled his neck; her hair, as if caressingly, lay across his breast and hands; her grateful eyes ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... feel that it was a privilege to be allowed to trade with the company. Sometimes they were permitted to pass in their wares only through a window in the outer part of the fort. A beaver skin was the regular standard of value, and in return for their skins the savages received all manner of gaudy trinkets and also useful merchandise, chiefly knives, hatchets, guns, ammunition, and blankets. But before the end of the eighteenth century the activity of the Nor'westers had forced the Hudson's Bay Company out of its aristocratic slothfulness. The savages were now sought ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood

... adorned with gold, jewels, costly or gaudy array, or immodest clothing, we must needs look for the root in the heart. There is where the trouble lies. There is the seat of the desire. It is useless to take off the externals while the internal corruption is permitted to continue. God hates ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... her thirling[8] car From Latmus' mount up to the gloomy sky, Where, crown'd with blazing light and majesty, 110 She proudly sits) more over-rules the flood Than she the hearts of those that near her stood. Even as when gaudy nymphs pursue the chase, Wretched Ixion's shaggy-footed race, Incens'd with savage heat, gallop amain From steep pine-bearing mountains to the plain, So ran the people forth to gaze upon her, And all that ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... actual prickly pears themselves are attractively coloured. I need hardly point out, I suppose, at the present time of day, that such tints in the vegetable world act like the gaudy posters of our London advertisers. Fruits and flowers which desire to attract the attention of beasts, birds, or insects, are tricked out in flaunting hues of crimson, purple, blue, and yellow; fruits and flowers which could only be injured by ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... offered up the homage of a tranquil mind, a trusting nature, and an overflowing heart; so that the smoke from this poor chimney has gone upward with a better fragrance than the richest incense that is burnt before the richest shrines in all the gaudy temples of this world!—Upon your own hearth; in its quiet sanctuary; surrounded by its gentle influences and associations; hear her! Hear me! Hear everything that speaks the language of your ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... jasper somewhere in the world— And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? —That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line— Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! For ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... result of her own wish. The raw-boned, badly dressed farmers' lads, with red hands and rough hair, she quite as snobbishly ignored as she was ignored in her turn by the well-set-up, fashionably dressed young swells of the University, with their white hands, with their thin, gaudy socks tautly pulled over their ankle-bones, and their shining hair glistening like lacquer on their skulls (that being the desideratum in youthful masculine society of the place and time). Sylvia snubbed ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... lively expression). Let us fly, Fiesco! let us with scorn reject these gaudy nothings, and pass our future days only in the retreats of love! (She presses him to her breast with rapture.) Our souls, serene as the unclouded sky, shall never more be blackened by the poisonous breath of sorrow; our lives shall flow harmoniously as the music of the murmuring ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... of the house, attracted her attention. She rushed to the window. There was a chariot painted in gay colors, and men in scarlet and gold uniforms, and such music! The new dress was forgotten, and she flew down stairs and out of the door. With a troop of children she followed the gaudy chariot and gayly caparisoned horses from street ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... tranquil mind, a trusting nature, and an overflowing heart; so that the smoke from this poor chimney has gone upward with a better fragrance than the richest incense that is burnt before the richest shrines in all the gaudy temples of this world!—Upon your own hearth; in its quiet sanctuary; surrounded by its gentle influences and associations; hear her! Hear me! Hear everything that speaks the language of ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... leaning against trees, or seated on the fallen leaves, were a number of men, women, and children, dressed in all sorts of mats and blankets, some with tufts of feathers in their hair, others with bands and tassels of gaudy-colored wampum. One or two had a regal air, and might have stood for pictures of Arab chiefs or Carthaginian generals; but most of them looked squalid and dejected. None of them manifested any surprise at the entrance of the stranger. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... back to England, having failed to win the day. The son built him a dwelling outside the fort; and there this famous courtier of two great nations, with his noble wife, retired to pass the end of his days in a wildwood wilderness far enough from the gaudy tinsel of courts. The fate of both husband and wife ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... men were seen entering Paris on foot through the Porte St. Denis. It was a fine day in spring, and the old city looked gay with its loitering passengers and gaudy shops, and under that clear blue exhilarating ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... respectability, the objectionable house even aspired to a kind of prettiness. It was as bright, and pleasant, and rural of aspect as any house within earshot of the roar and rattle of Holborn can be. There were flowers in the windows; gaudy scarlet geraniums, which seemed to enjoy an immunity from all the ills to which geraniums are subject, so impossible was it to discover a faded leaf amongst their greenness, or the presence of blight amidst their wealth of blossom. There were birdcages within ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... nobody else's girl is going to have time to see whether you shaved to-day or last Christmas. You don't want to worry so much about your looks, none of you. I hate to say it, but you act vain, all of you kids. Honest, I'm ashamed. Look at that gaudy countenance Happy's got on—and his necktie's most as bad." He stropped his razor with exasperating nicety, stopping now and then to test its edge upon a hair ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... semester, the Fat Fox, as he is called, who has just made a leap from the strict discipline of the gymnasium to the unbounded freedom of the university, will be a gray-haired man, to whom the academic title of Juvenis Studiosus will no longer apply. Here sits, with his gaudy watch-guard, the colors of his corps, one of those students by profession who have been inscribed year after year so long that they have acquired the name of Bemossed Heads. Were his scientific attainments measured by his capacities for beer-drinking ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... years later, the young man with the gaudy waistcoats had become the leading Conservative orator of the campaign against the Liberals on their Corn Law policy and so great was the impression produced by his speeches that in 1852, when the Derby ministry was formed, he was made Chancellor ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... astonishment the king would have none of them. Indeed, he glared at them so fiercely that they were glad to leave him. So away and away he wandered, over field and through forest, so moody and thoughtful that many a fat buck and gaudy pheasant escaped without notice, and so careless was he whither he was going that he strayed without perceiving it over into the rajah's territory, and only discovered the fact when, suddenly, men stepped ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various

... hand on the green coat with its gaudy buttons, and leaned against his brother as they used to go arms over shoulders to school. Soule's big throat was full of tears; he had never felt so full of sorrowful pity as in this the foulest purpose of his life. Unselfish it seemed to him. O God! what a hard life Stephen's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... been wanted by the law, and by nobody else, for many years. Desperado, murderer, train robber and road agent, he was a man beyond the pale of human pity. He had deserved a dozen deaths, and the Los Amigos folk grudged him so gaudy a one as that. He seemed to feel himself to be unworthy of it, for he made two frenzied attempts at escape. He was a powerful, muscular man, with a lion head, tangled black locks, and a sweeping beard which ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... from the spot where he now stood. With its roses, and broad arched windows, its bell-turret, and roofs of slate, it looked as though painted in sepia against the blue of the sky. He fixed his eyes at last on the sombre depths of the Rue Montorgueil, where fragments of gaudy sign boards showed conspicuously, and on the corner of the Rue Montmartre, where there were balconies gleaming with letters of gold. And when he again glanced at the cross-roads, his gaze was solicited by other sign boards, on which such inscriptions as "Druggist and Chemist," "Flour and ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... Sir Oskatell's favour, like an April day, suddenly change its gaudy and suspicious brightness. Sir Thomas, waning in years and ready to depart, began to consider his former misdoings. His daughter and her offspring were, by the laws of nature, justly entitled to his possessions, which he, reflecting ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... really religious gods. For the old-fashioned faith of the country he entertains only the kindliest regard. The images that rise in his mind at the mention of religion pure and undefiled are not the gaudy spectacles to be seen in the marbled streets of the capital. They are images of incense rising in autumn from the ancient altar on the home-stead, of the feast of the Terminalia with its slain lamb, of libations of ruddy wine and offerings of bright ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman

... men's boats with provisions. In ten days the wan, gaunt {199} sailors were so sleek and fat that even the generous entertainers had to laugh at the transformation. Old King Terreeoboo came clothed in a cloak of gaudy feathers with spears and daggers at his belt and a train of priestly retainers at his heels to pay a visit of state to Cook; and a guard of mariners was drawn up at arms under the cocoanut grove to receive the visitor with fitting honor. When the king learned that Cook was to ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... the Juigalpa valley to the lake, with Ometepec in the distance, and some sugar-loaf hills nearer at hand. The weather had cleared up, white cumuli only sailed across the blue aerial ocean. The scene had no feature in it of a purely tropical character, excepting that three gaudy macaws were wheeling round and round in playful flight, now showing all red on the under surface, then turning all together, as if they were one body, and exhibiting the gorgeous blue, yellow, and red of the upper side gleaming in the sunshine; screaming meanwhile as they flew with harsh, discordant ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... a thousand matters, the two young men sauntered through the streets; they were now in that quarter which was filled with the gayest shops, their open interiors all and each radiant with the gaudy yet harmonious colors of frescoes, inconceivably varied in fancy and design. The sparkling fountains, that at every vista threw upwards their grateful spray in the summer air; the crowd of passengers, or rather loiterers, mostly clad in robes of the Tyrian ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... this, my child. Not under such a plebeian's roof shouldst thou have lodged, nor from a stranger's board been fed: but at Rome, my last relative worthy of the trust is dead;—and at the worst, obscure honesty is better than gaudy crime. Thy spirit troubles me already. Back, my child; I must to my closet, and watch ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... and as far up as Chinkiang, sea-going papicoes from Ningpo are to be seen in great numbers. These gaily-painted vessels of from twenty to eighty tons, with their high freeboards, wide sterns, raking masts, tanned sails and gaudy vanes, are extremely quaint ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... fruit fell beside us, and my Lord Carnal, a mass of gaudy bloom in his hand, stepped from the wood. "I returned to lay our first-fruits at madam's feet," he explained, his darkly watchful eyes upon us both. "A gift from one poor prisoner to another, madam." He dropped the flowers in her lap. ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... vain deluding Joys, The brood of Folly, without father bred! How little you bested, Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys! Dwell in some idle brain, And fancies fond with gaudy shape possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the sunbeams, Or likest hovering dreams, The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. But hail! thou Goddess sage and ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... has gone to bed, perchance to awake in the moonlight while the Nieuwe Kerk's many bells are rippling a silver tune over the old roofs and gables; who has drunk his beer full opposite the stadhuis at Leyden, and seen Haarlem's huge church across magnificent miles of gaudy tulips, and watched from a brown-sailed boat on the Zuider Zee a buoy on the horizon grow into the water-gate of Hoorn; who knows his Gouda and Bois-le-duc and Alkmaar and Kampen and Utrecht: this man does ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... orchestra stopped playing. Men jumped to their feet from the faro layouts, and then, mob-like, began to surge toward the door, while in the lead, uttering scream on scream, ran one of the dance-hall girls with her gaudy dress bursting into enveloping flame. She had the terror of a panic-stricken animal flying into the danger of the open ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... where Sir W. Pen came to me, and dined with my Lord. After dinner he and others that dined there went away, and then my Lord looked upon his pages' and footmen's liverys, which are come home to-day, and will be handsome, though not gaudy. Then with my Lady and my Lady Wright to White Hall; and in the Banqueting-house saw the King create my Lord Chancellor and several others, Earls, and Mr. Crew and several others, Barons: the first being led up by Heralds and five old Earls to the King, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... armor, the priest in his robes, the foot-soldier in his tough jerkin, the unkempt serf with his belt of rope. There were pawing horses, swearing grooms, carts full of provisions, sacks, groups of gossiping women, crowds of merry children. Under the bright sun of Asia, all was gaudy and brilliant. Spearpoints glittered, breast-plates and helmets gleamed, thousands of targets displayed their painted glories, pennons of blue, purple, and white streamed from every tent, while heavier flags flapped their sullen folds; and everywhere, on shield, flag, helmet, tunic, and ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... looked back at the stage, just as the queen was leading Florestein off, and he sees a frail-looking figure heaped in gaudy toggery, that looks as though it would drag her down with its weight; and, above it, is a pale flower-like face, with great dark, weary-looking eyes, and a heavy coronet of yellow hair twisted with tinsel ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... poised with calm discretion, and moving with the nice precision of a fine watchmaker, shed into the best decanter (softly as an angel's tears) liquid beauty, not too gaudy, not too sparkling with shallow light, not too ruddy with sullen glow, but vivid—like a noble gem, a brown cairngorm—with mellow depth of lustre. "That's your sort!" the tanner cried, after putting his tongue, while his wife looked shocked, to the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... till it could eat no more; and then Manuel filled his pipe with some terrible tobacco, crotched himself between the pawl-post and a forward bunk, cocked his feet up on the table, and smiled tender and indolent smiles at the smoke. Dan lay at length in his bunk, wrestling with a gaudy, gilt-stopped accordion, whose tunes went up and down with the pitching of the We're Here. The cook, his shoulders against the locker where he kept the fried pies (Dan was fond of fried pies), peeled potatoes, with ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... around it, were charmingly lighted—the outside lamps being those gaudy and curious forms containing lighted candles, and ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... to walk among these extensive groves of the illustrious dead, and to indulge in the speculations to which they give rise; now fitting a deceased coat, then a dead pair of trousers, and anon the mortal remains of a gaudy waistcoat, upon some being of our own conjuring up, and endeavouring, from the shape and fashion of the garment itself, to bring its former owner before our mind's eye. We have gone on speculating in this way, until whole rows of coats have started from their pegs, and buttoned ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... a joyous dance, and the dresses were bright, Such as never were known till that famous night; For the gems and the flowers that shone in the scene, O'ermatched the regalia of princess and queen. No gaudy slave to a fair one's brow Was the rose, or the ruby, or emerald now, But lighted with souls by the playful elves, The brilliants ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... the southwest. I heard My Lady catch breath, felt her hand find mine as we lay almost touching. Rounding the knoll there appeared a file of mounted figures; by their robes and blankets, their tufted lances and gaudy shields, yes, by the very way they sat their painted ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... standing a little back from the other, was Diggle; the other, a tall, powerful figure in raiment as gaudy as the painted peacocks around him, his fingers covered with rings, a diamond blazing in his headdress, was sitting cross-legged on a dais. Behind him, against the wall, was an image of Ganessa, made of solid gold, with diamonds for eyes, and blazing with jewels. At one side was his hookah, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... set out to-night after supper, and I shall send this letter by them. There are no new books, no new Plays, no new novels; nay, no new fashions. They have dragged old Mademoiselle Le Maure out of a retreat of thirty years, to sing at the Colis'ee, which is a most gaudy Ranelagh, gilt, painted, and becupided like an Opera, but not calculated to last as long as Mother Coliseum, being composed of chalk and pasteboard. Round it are courts of treillage, that serve for nothing, and behind it a canal, very like a horsepond, on which there are fireworks and justs. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... was in progress, a litter, gaudy and luxurious, borne by eight slaves clad in yellow, with others like them before and behind, came to a stop close by, and from it alighted a lady whose gorgeous costume matched the brilliance of her vehicle and retinue. She was young and beautiful, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... song of the chaffinch and their rapturous music of the thrush. Appreciation is heightened by contrast; and the buttercup—England's gift to her little children—is pronounced far brighter than the "gaudy melon-flower" which the exiled Englishman has at ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... of reeds, 8 or 9 feet high, and 300 yards square, the gateway is ornamented with about sixty human skulls; a shed stands in the middle of the road before we come to the gate, with a cannon dressed in gaudy cloths. A number of noisy fellows stopped our party, and demanded tribute for the cannon; I burst through them, and the rest followed without giving anything: they were afraid of the English. The town is on the east bank of the Lakelet Mofwe, and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... bad specimens of Cornish people that I met with in Cornwall. The streets of Helston are a trifle larger and a trifle duller than the streets of Liskeard; the church is comparatively modern in date, and superlatively ugly in design. A miserable altar-piece, daubed in gaudy colours on the window above the communion-table, is the only approach to any attempt at embellishment in the interior. In short, the town has nothing to offer to attract the stranger, but a public festival—a sort of barbarous ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... furniture belonging to many a different age. Carpets and chair-cushions worked in tent stitch and cross stitch and old-fashioned harpsichord; gaudy white and gold furniture of the Louis Quatorze time, mixed with the spindle-legged tables ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... stones. A single flower in the screen contains a hundred stones; "and yet," says Bishop Heber; "though everything is finished like an ornament for a drawing-room chimney-piece, the general effect is rather solemn and impressive than gaudy."—Elphinstone's India, p. 528; and Asiatic Researches, Vol. V, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... sunny April day. We went down the terraces and slopes; and in and out of the flower-beds, now gaudy with Spring flowers; and on to the great central point whence the three avenues diverged. Here we rested on a bench under a lime-tree, not far from the huge stone basin where the fountain played every Sunday throughout the Summer, and the sleepy ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards

... professional career? Lesser criminals, it is said, are every day convicted with ease and expedition—how is it, therefore, that the cobweb of the law holds fast the small ephemerae which chance to stray across its filmy mesh, but that the gaudy insect of larger form and greater strength so often breaks through, his flight perhaps arrested for a moment, as he feels the insidious toil fold close about him? It is, however, only for a moment; one mighty effort breaks his bonds—he is free—and flies off in triumph and derision, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... minutes after each meal to remove the odor of food, are important items in the care of the dining room. The furnishing may be simple and inexpensive,—beauty in a home is not dependent upon expense,—but let it be substantial, tasteful, harmonious in color and soft in tone, nothing gaudy or showy. Use no heavy draperies, and have no excess of ornament and bric-a-brac to catch dust and germs. A hard-finished wood floor is far superior to a carpet in point of healthfulness, and quite as economical and easy to ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... the Kerreri ridge, the invaders caught their first glimpse of Omdurman. Already the gunboats were steaming up to the Mahdist capital to throw in their first shells. They speedily dismounted several guns, and one of the shells tore away a large portion of the gaudy cupola that covered the Mahdi's tomb. Apart from this portent, nothing of moment was done on that day; but it seems probable that the bombardment led the Khalifa to hazard an attack on the invaders in the desert on the side away from the Nile. Nearer to the Sirdar's ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... dangerous ground on which, according to Goethe's profound saying, the categorical imperative and the authority of the man who pronounces it, form the last court of appeal. Or if some one, with a liking for gaudy paint and iridescent rags, should prefer a puppet show to the living figures of the piece, vital to their very finger tips, but, to be sure, going about in very simple, sometimes even slovenly garments, how could we decide the matter otherwise than in the well known manner ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... he attempted to pursue her. She had, however, the grace to restore his sight on due apologies being made. Becoming Prioress of the convent which she founded, she died therein on October 14th, 740, which day was afterwards held as a gaudy day. Possibly because her indignant lover was a king, it was held ominous for any monarch to enter the Chapel of Saint Frideswide in her convent church. King John, who was as superstitious on some points as he was profane ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... difficulty, the great difficulty, is to prune it of its thorns and to present it under a prepossessing aspect. Truth, they say, rises naked from a well. Agreed; but admit that she is all the better for being decently clothed. She craves, if not the gaudy furbelows borrowed from rhetoric's wardrobe, at least a vine leaf. The geometers alone have the right to refuse her that modest garment; in theorems, plainness suffices. The others, especially the naturalist, are in duty bound to drape a gauze tunic more or less ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... had made his obeisance to Henry, and had been presented by him to King James, Alice, standing close behind her queen, recollected that she had once heard Esclairmonde say, 'Till I came to England I deemed chivalry a mere gaudy illusion.' ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was tall and heavily built, and dressed in a more gaudy style than that usually affected by the cowboys. Bert could not remember having seen him among the employees of the neighboring ranches. His face bore traces of drink and dissipation and was seamed with evil passions. There was a lurid glow in his eyes that brought ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... up one canvas, a foot high and two feet wide, tacked over a piece of board. It was a gaudy representation of an island wrought with pathetic lack of skill. There was a conical peak at the left end smeared with a slash of purple, and over it a very red and very round sun. The land sloped away from the peak to the other end of the island, ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore

... unchangeable institutions—the novel, the baby, and the missing pocket-handkerchief There was the gaudy jacket over the long trailing dressing-gown—and the damp lady inside them, damp as ever! Receiving Oscar with a mouth drawn down at the corners, and a head that shook sadly in sympathy with him, Mrs. Finch's ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... who have a liberal father on your side, you can get provisionally your interest, and when times mend your principal. Perhaps it will not be half so well with your wives estate, for she it may be in her maiden estate, hath spent and run out more in gaudy apparel, to intice a Lover, then the interest of her estate could bear, insomuch that the principal is diminished, or the revenues thereof received and consumed ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... sinking Rome grows weak with luxury, To please her appetite cram'd peacocks die: Their gaudy plumes a modish ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... glaring effect, and we look in vain for that relief to the eye that is produced by the thatched or slated roofs. The shingles in their natural state soon acquire the appearance of slates, and can hardly be distinguished from them. What would you say to a rose-coloured house, with a roof of the same gaudy hue, the front of the gay edifice being garnished with grass green shutters, doors, and verandah. No doubt the interior is furnished with corresponding taste. There is generally one or more of these smart buildings in a Canadian village, standing forth with ostentatious ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... how much of his admiration is dependent merely upon the picture being larger than any other in the room, and having bright masses of red and blue in it: let him be assured that the picture is in reality not one whit the better for being either large, or gaudy in color; and he will then be better disposed to give the pains necessary to discover the merit of the more profound and solemn works of Bellini and Tintoret. One of the most wonderful works in the whole gallery is Tintoret's "Death of Abel," on the left of the "Assumption;" the "Adam and Eve," ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... reminds me that although this place is perfect in every respect, there's still one thing wanting in the shape of a wine board; and you had better then have one made to-morrow on the very same pattern as those used outside in villages; and it needn't be anything gaudy, but hung above the top of a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... and on the roof-ridges storks were dying. Over the branches of the trees, whose leaves were as thin as though we had had a six months' drought, the toucans and Martian parrots hung limp and fashionless like gaudy rags, and in the courtyard ground the corn-rats came up from their tunnels in the scorching earth to die, squeaking in scores ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... with two deer. from what has been said of the Shoshones it will be readily perceived that they live in a wretched stait of poverty. yet notwithstanding their extreem poverty they are not only cheerfull but even gay, fond of gaudy dress and amusements; like most other Indians they are great egotists and frequently boast of heroic acts which they never performed. they are also fond of games of wrisk. they are frank, communicative, fair in dealing, generous with the little they possess, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... heavy-ruffled garments the sacred ruffle of law or religion; the babe brought to church by his mother and kindred to have the priest-tailor sew on his new garment the ruffle of baptism; the soldier in his gaudy uniform; the king in his ermine with a crown and sceptre appended; the Nabob of Ind in his gorgeous and multi-colored robes; and the Papuan with horns in his nostrils and rings in his ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... very different now from what it had been when he first saw it. There were four little masts put up in it, on which were hoisted gay and gaudy flags. Her "hull," or body, was now coppered and neatly painted, while all the rubbish of the building-yard was cleared away, so that everything looked neat and clean. The stocks, or framework on which she had been built, ...
— The Life of a Ship • R.M. Ballantyne

... tank, the huge trees, older than the Mogul Empire, under which the village crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the peasant's hut, the rich tracery of the mosque where the Imam prays with his face to Mecca, the drums, the banners and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the air, the graceful maiden with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the riverside, the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the turbans and the flowing robes, the spears and silver maces, the elephants with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... may pass as payment, Gaudy flaars awr e'en beguile; Women may be loved for raiment, Show may blind ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... shouted in exactly the same furious way, and in the same high-pitched voice, "May all the spirits of hell sit at your heart, you abominable nonsensical Pasquale, you atrocious skinflint—you love-sick old fool—you gaudy tricked-out ass with the cap and bells dangling about your ears. Take care lest I snuff out the candle of your life, and so at length put an end to the infamous tricks which you try to foist upon the good, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... all willingly throw ourselves back for awhile into the feelings of our childhood. This ballad, therefore, we read under such recollections of our own childish feelings, as would equally endear to us poems, which Mr. Wordsworth himself would regard as faulty in the opposite extreme of gaudy and technical ornament. Before the invention of printing, and in a still greater degree, before the introduction of writing, metre, especially alliterative metre (whether alliterative at the beginning of the words, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... upon their approach. A halt was at once called, and the party went temporarily into camp, while Earle, unpacking one of his bales, produced therefrom certain small hand-mirrors, a string or two of vari-coloured beads, two gaudy-looking bandanna handkerchiefs, and three cheap pocket-knives. These treasures he entrusted to the care of Inaguy, the headman, and furnishing him with an escort of two men, dispatched him in search of ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... voices,—and lifting my eyes I saw the wide circular sweep of a vast arena crowded with people. In the centre, and well to the front of the uplifted tiers of seats, there was a gorgeous pavilion of gold, draped with gaudy coloured silk and hung with festoons of roses, wherein sat a heavily-built, brutish- looking man royally robed and crowned, and wearing jewels In such profusion as to seem literally clothed in flashing points of light. Beautiful women were gathered ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... the mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall - Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly in a ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of love, and tune my pype Unto my plaintive pleas in verses made: Tho would I seeke for Queene-apples unrype, To give my Rosalind; and in Sommer shade Dight gaudy Girlonds was my common trade, To crowne her golden locks: but yeeres more rype, And losse of her, whose love as lyfe I wayd, Those weary wanton toyes ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... of a grassy plain, with a neat masonry structure at the further side, which serves as a grand stand. Already buggies, dogcarts in single harness and tandem, barouches, and waggonettes are merrily rolling through the thick mist, past the frowning jail, and round the corner of the lake. Natives in gaudy coloured shawls, and blankets, are pouring on to ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... women lay down purple carpets on which Justice may bring him to a home which he never hoped to see. Agamemnon coldly deprecates her long speech; the honour she suggests is one for the gods alone; his fame will speak loud enough without gaudy trappings, for a wise heart is Heaven's greatest gift. But the Queen, not to be denied, overcomes his scruples. Giving orders that Cassandra is to be well treated, he passes over the purple carpets, led by Clytemnestra who avows that she would have given many purple ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... at the windows, the pink roses, and green leaves on its shiny surface looked fairly gaudy. The candles danced and flickered in the candelabra, evergreen framed ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks

... the grove, where I saw Dorinda, Dorillus his daughter, entering with a basket of cowslips for Sylvia, unnecessarily offering sweets to the Goddess of the Groves, from whence they (with all the rest of their gaudy fellows of the spring) assume their ravishing odours. I take every opportunity of telling my Sylvia what I have so often repeated, and shall be ever repeating with the same joy while I live, that I ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... Arcadian scenes which encircled the rude cottages of those men. Their humble dwellings were the abode of virtues, rarely found in the "cloud capt towers and [102] gorgeous palaces" of splendid ambition. And when peace reigned around them, neither the gaudy trappings of wealth, nor the insignia of office, nor the slaked thirst for distinction, could have added to the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... men passed me by. Mr. Elihu Sanderson has kindly taught me to distinguish some of these nations, but at the time I did not know one from another, fancying them indeed all Indians, though at a loss to account for their diversity. Also the gaudy houses of red, blue, and yellow, the number of beautiful trees that grew in the very streets, and the swarms of birds that crowded every roof-top and ventured down quite fearlessly among the passers-by, all made me gasp with wonder. Nor was I less amazed to watch the habits of this marvellous ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... A gaudy transparency in front of a cellar caught his eye, and invited him to come and enjoy the hospitalities of Madame X——'s Varieties. An inward voice bade him shun the place, but as he was only going for curiosity, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... the old minstrels becomes obsolete. Their versification, which, having received its laws only from the ear, abounds in irregularities, seems licentious and uncouth. Their simplicity appears beggarly when compared with the quaint forms and gaudy coloring of such artists as Cowley and Gongora. The ancient lays, unjustly despised by the learned and polite, linger for a time in the memory of the vulgar, and are at length too often irretrievably lost. We cannot wonder that the ballads of Rome should have altogether ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... The married women prefer gaudy colours, and keep their hair confined close to their head, by a large comb. They have also another delightful characteristic, which indeed the men share with them; I mean a beautiful voice, soft and tremulous among the women, ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... pictur'd here; Here the proud moss-rose spreads its transient pride; Close by, the willow drops a dewy tear, And gaudy ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... African birds is given them as compensation for the charm of song that is a monopoly of the European bird. That this is the case in the damp forests and swamps and reed beds along the Rufigi and other big rivers, there is no doubt. Gaudy parrots and iridescent finches flash through the foliage of trees along the Mohoro river, monkeys slide down the ropes formed by parasitic plants that hang from the tree branches, to dip their hands in the water to drink; only to flee, chattering to the tree-tops, as they meet ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... "But, say, I wish you'd stop talking about it, fellows. I'm going to be disappointed when I wake up and find it's only a bright and gaudy dream." ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... self-surrender. It was not a new thing even among the Jews to use the worldly promises of their exoteric religion as symbols for inner spiritual revolutions; and the change of heart involved in genuine Christianity was not a fresh excitation of gaudy hopes, nor a new sort of utilitarian, temporary austerity. It was an emptying of the will, in respect to all human desires, so that a perfect charity and contemplative justice, falling like the Father's gifts ungrudgingly on the whole creation, might take the place of ambition, petty morality, and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... the painter has not had recourse to any antique bas-relief, but has imagined for himself a being half human, half bestial, and yet wholly real; nor has he portrayed in Procris a nymph of Greek form, but a girl of Florence. The strange animals and gaudy flowers introduced into the landscape background further remove the subject from the sphere of classic treatment. Florentine realism and quaint fancy being thus curiously blended, the artistic result may be profitably studied for the light it throws upon the so-called Paganism of the earlier ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... hindrance. She was a disciple of the light, and was well aware that she must resolutely dwell in its full effulgence in order to escape from the blighting shadow of a life-long disappointment. Thus she sought to make her home, not gay or gaudy—not a brilliant mockery of her sorrow, which she had learned to calmly recognize as one might a village cemetery in a sunny landscape—but cheerful and lightsome like this April morning, which looked in through the curtained windows ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... generally. The missionary makes them understand the value of his counsel in their tribes. It means their raising cocoanuts for their oil, flocks of chickens and droves of hogs, for all of which they can obtain pipes, quantities of tobacco, a gun, and gaudy-colored cottons. When the chiefs find that their power is gradually passing from them into the hands of the missionaries, they only smoke more poisonous tobacco, expose themselves all the more to the weather through the cheap fragmentary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... meal, John brought out another of his store of gaudy toy books and went into the parlor. His father, following a few moments later, looked down at the little figure on the carpet before ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... be separated by death from those he loved most, he condemned his own cowardice, and broke at once those bands of friendship, which were more agreeable to him than all other sweets of life. He describes the situation of his soul under this struggle, and says, "Those who saw me, judging by the gaudy show which surrounded me, and not knowing what passed within my soul, said, speaking of me: Oh, how well is it with him! how happy is he! But they knew not the anguish of my mind; for the deep wound in my heart ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... caterpillars sometimes so beautifully and artistically coloured? Seeing that many are coloured to escape danger, I can hardly attribute their bright colour in other cases to mere physical conditions. Bates says the most gaudy caterpillar he ever saw in Amazonia (of a Sphinx) was conspicuous at the distance of yards from its black and red colouring whilst feeding on large green leaves. If anyone objected to male butterflies ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... her, helps her to lay on her rouge, and to place her patches. He attends her round the whole circle of amusements, chatters to her constantly, whistles and sings, and plays the fool with her. Whatever be his station, every thing gaudy and glittering within the sphere of it is called in to his assistance, particularly splendid carriages and tawdry liveries; but if, by the help of all these, he cannot make an impression on the fair one's heart, it costs ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... of evening a bevy of ladies approached through the dark groves of citron trees, so gaily dressed in silks of the brightest dyes of yellow, blue, and scarlet, that no bouquet of flowers could have been more gaudy. They were attended by numerous slaves, and the head servant politely requested me to withdraw during the interview. Thus turned out of my tent, I was compelled to patience and solitude ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... you are a foolish Girl, And look with too much pride upon your Beauty; Which like a gaudy flower that springs too soon, Withers e'er fully blown. Your very Tears already have betray'd Its weak inconstant nature; Alcippus, should he look upon thee now, would swear thou wert not that fine thing ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... depressions in the unbroken mass of foliage, variegated with aspiring palms so slender of shaft that their unceasing swaying in the still air seemed an act of unconscious affectation for the display of huge bunches of gaudy fruit, seductive and dulcet to the taste. Spider-webbed tree-ferns with furry, water-bespangled trunks stood in crowded groves on the brink of spray-creating cascades and along the margins of cool rivulets which murmured as ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... portraits of Tamerlane. (See Conquest by the Mogols, &c., p. 175.) I have seen, among the Wyandots of Sandusky, heads which one might suppose had been the originals of the portraits given in his plate: turban made of gaudy-coloured silk, with two short thick feathers stuck upright in front; the one red, the other white tipped with blue, the great desideratum being to have them of different colours, as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various

... my portmanteau had disappeared. After a most diligent search, I discovered on a chair in a corner of the room, a small bundle tied up in a handkerchief, on opening which I perceived a new suit of livery of the most gaudy and showy description and lace; of which colour was also the coat, which had a standing collar and huge cuffs, deeply ornamented with worked button holes and large buttons. As I turned the things over, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever

... the Ark. Coats and trousers, equipped for their last adventure with mysterious darns and patches, cheated the eye like a painted beauty at a ball. Women's finery lay in disordered heaps—silk blouses covered with tawdry lace, skirts heavy with gaudy trimming—the draggled plumage of fine birds that had come to grief. But here buyer and seller met on level terms, for each knew to a hair the value of the sorry garments; and they chaffered with crafty eyes, each ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... way. They had, to be sure, become dingy, and that which had been originally a rich and goodly ruby had degenerated into a reddish brown. Mr. Harding, however, thought the old reddish-brown much preferable to the gaudy buff-coloured trumpery moreen which Mrs. Proudie had deemed good enough for her husband's own room in the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... be let into all the secrets of their miserable shifts for dressing well on next to nothing at all, and they expected me—mother and daughters—to do the most wonderful and impossible things. I had to turn old rags into smart new costumes, to trim worn-out hats into all manner of gaudy shapes, even to patch up boots in a way you couldn't imagine. And they used to send me with money to buy things they were ashamed to go and buy themselves; then, if I hadn't laid out their few pence with marvellous result, they all but accused me of having used some of the money for myself. ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... passed by all the images and gaudy toys, only good to look at a few times, and chose a soft ball, and finding that that did not take all of his half of the money, he purchased a little morocco box with an inkstand, some wafers, and one or two short pens in it. Shallow told him that ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott

... may tell you, is not for any vegetable fashion at all. It is because these two lovely flowers are in England the two most perfect models of design, the most naturally adapted for decorative art—the gaudy leonine beauty of the one and the precious loveliness of the other giving to the artist the most entire and perfect joy. And so with you: let there be no flower in your meadows that does not wreathe its tendrils around your pillows, no ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... came in her youthful way Was a gold-featured Sunflower—gaudy and gay— Who dressed himself up in resplendent array, And gazed on the sun as an equal. "Look! look!" quoth the Vine: "He's a lover of mine: "And see how the gold round his face doth shine!" So ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... when we halted upon the outskirts of the dark forest. Hardly a ray of the hot sun penetrated the woods; all was gloomy and silent. Occasionally a parrot upon the borders of the forest uttered a shrill scream, and then spreading its gaudy wings sought shelter upon the bough of a tall tree, from whence it could watch our ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... to eat the slices of bread and bacon which Christopher had brought in his pocket. As they lay at full length in the sunshine upon the lifeeverlasting, the young man's gaze flew like a bird across the landscape—where the gaily decorated autumn fallows broke in upon the bare tobacco fields like gaudy patches on a homely garment—to rest upon the far-off huddled chimneys of Blake Hall. For a time he looked steadily upon them; then, turning on his side, he drew his harvest hat over his eyes ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... a piece of calico, in which the gaudy colors of yellow and red were contrasted on a white ground, and, after admiring it for several minutes, he laid it down with a sigh, as he ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... above all praise—the religious ceremonies affected me, like all others of that faith, as tedious and empty. Each of the cardinals, as he entered the chapel, blew a sonorous nose; and was received standing by his brother prelates—a grotesque company of old-womanish old men in gaudy gowns. One of the last to come was Antonelli, who has the very wickedest face in the world. He sat with his eyes fastened upon his book, but obviously open at every pore to all that went on about him. As he passed out he cast gleaming, terrible, sidelong ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... considerable quantities of the same metal in dust, or in crude masses, [10] numerous vegetable exotics, possessed of aromatic or medicinal virtue, and several kinds of quadrupeds unknown in Europe, and birds, whose varieties of gaudy plumage gave a brilliant effect to the pageant. The admiral's progress through the country was everywhere impeded by the multitudes thronging forth to gaze at the extraordinary spectacle, and the more extraordinary man, who, in the emphatic language of that time, which has now lost ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... chose to stop, in a very short time he would see the new-married couple arrive from the church, since the music was already come. He was right in his conjectures; for these words were scarce out of his mouth, when three uncommonly large coaches, loaded with lackeys, as tall as Swiss, with most gaudy liveries, all covered with lace, appeared in the court, and disembarked the whole wedding company. Never was country magnificence more naturally displayed: Rusty tinsel, tarnished lace, striped silks, little eyes, and full swelling breasts, appeared ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... down, and certain monthly payments, which apply on the purchase of a house. By beginning this way, when the family expenses are small, it is comparatively easy, and without any deprivations, to own the home outright in a few years. Many couples foolishly buy gaudy and unnecessary furniture, and live in more expensive homes than their means justify, in order to create an impression, when first married, which they later regret. If part of the money, which the young husband has undoubtedly saved,—or he should not marry,—was paid ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... the ingathering of the harvest, a host of customs have been kept up from time immemorial, which have been duly noticed by Brand, while towards the close of the month we are reminded of St. Bartholomew's Day by the gaudy sunflower, which has been nicknamed St. Bartholomew's star, the term "star" having been often used "as an emblematical representation of brilliant virtues or any sign of admiration." It is, too, suggested by Archdeacon ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... the scene, as you say. How can I make you understand what I feel? Nature always looks so natural to me! It awakens within me various emotions, but never surprise,—I mean that kind of surprise one has when seeing a lady dressed in colors that do not harmonize. To my eye, even in gaudy October, Nature appears to blend her effects so that there is nothing ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... something about it which made it to me the only really pleasurable nobleman's mansion that I have ever been over; the view from the top is superb, and then the row home to Arona, the twinkling lights softly gleaming in the lake, the bells jangling from the tall and gaudy campaniles, the stillness of the summer night—so warm and yet so refreshing on the water; hush, there are some people singing—how sweetly their voices are borne to us upon the slight breath of ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler

... a great sensation in its time and is still the best representative of the old-time gaudy red-and-yellow garden gladiolus, or corn flag. It was eagerly welcomed by breeders of the day, among others the accomplished French hybridizer, Mons. Souchet, of Fontainebleu, who really laid the foundation of the modern Gandavensis strain, the basis of all ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford

... of gill-netters was anchored, a Jap or two, and a Siwash Indian with his hull painted a gaudy blue. And in the middle of the Jew's Mouth, which was a scant six hundred yards across at its widest, the Folly Bay No. 5 swung on her anchor chain. A tubby cannery tender lay alongside. The crews were busy with picaroons forking salmon out of the ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... appeared at the breakfast table attired in his best. He had in some way managed a clean shave, and now his long, black hair was bound back with a gaudy handkerchief, his old shirt replaced by a new and bright one, and his old moccasins discarded for a pair of new and brilliantly beaded ones, so that in all he made a brave figure of a voyageur indeed. Alex also in a quiet way had followed the lead of Moise. The boys themselves, ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough

... the call should come to return. With them, the red-breasted meadowlarks of the pampas sang and frolicked as if constituting themselves a welcoming committee to the strangers during their annual visit. Their gaudy plumage contrasted strongly with the sombre, spotted ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... artillery and supplies. This man, a middle-aged and rather plain sort of fellow—and the youthful Virginia colonel whom he may have met then for the first time—possibly attracted very little attention in the gaudy military array. But American history could ill have spared either ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden

... shall rattle from heaven against them, as it will at death or judgment; but I wish it might do it before. But alas! these excuses are but bare pretences, these proud ones love to have it so. I once talked with a maid by way of reproof for her fond and gaudy garment. But she told me, The tailor would make it so; when alas! poor proud girl, she gave order to the tailor so to make it. Many make parents, and husbands, and tailors, &c., the blind to others; but their naughty hearts, and their giving of way thereto, that is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of sheriff is but a step in this land of the free and home of the brave; so he carried his head back and his chest out and invited insult in the fond hope of provoking assault. He was the flower of the times,—effulgent, rather gaudy, and mostly red! ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... protect the head from the sun-rays. The end of the jabul would reach nearly down to the feet, but is usually held retrousse under the arm. They have a passion for jewellery, and wear many finger-rings of metal and sometimes of sea-shells, whilst their ear-rings are gaudy and of large dimensions. The hair is gracefully tied in a coil on the top of the head, and their features are at least as attractive as those of the generality of Philippine ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... huge trees, older than the Mogul empire, under which the village crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the peasant's hut, the rich tracery of the mosque where the imaum prays with his face to Mecca, the drums, and banners, and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the air, the graceful maiden, with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the riverside, the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the turbans and the flowing robes, the spears ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... some days, surrounded by bum-boats filled with picturesque natives of all colours, chattering like parrots, and almost as gaudy in their plumage. Meanwhile the crew were hard at work replenishing the coal-bunkers, filling up wood and water, taking in fresh provisions, and effecting the necessary repairs after the late cruise. While thus employed, a visit was received from a Venezuelan, who in very good ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... saw in my vision, that there were some others who were busy in strewing the most gaudy flowers over the numerous bogs, precipices, and pitfalls, with which the wilderness abounded; and thus making danger and death look so gay, that the poor thoughtless creatures seemed to delight in their own destruction. Those ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More

... honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave. The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks ...
— Stray Birds • Rabindranath Tagore

... like a man liberated from prison; but I have reason to believe that the people are in general amazingly disappointed in my pulpit exercises. They expected great things—things gaudy, stately, and speculative,—and I gave them the simplest and most practical things I can find in the Bible, and that in the plainest way. You would be amused at the sayings of some of the plain Methodist people; they think that it is the "real pure Gospel, but ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... of nature, the daisy seems perfectly intelligible. Scattered throughout the lowly places, with meekness it seems to shed beauty over its surroundings, and compensate for gaudy vesture by cheerful contentment. Wordsworth calls the daisy "the poet's darling," "a nun demure," "a little Cyclops," "an unassuming commonplace of nature," and sums up its excellences in a verse which may fitly ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... approve it[84] with a text, Hiding the grossness with lair ornament? There is no vice so simple, but assumes Some mark of virtue on his outward parts. Thus ornament is but the guiled[85] shore To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty. Therefore, thou gaudy gold, Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee: Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge 'Tween man and man. But thou, thou meagre lead, Which rather threat'nest than dost promise aught, Thy plainness moves me ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare

... Albanian ranges. Here, as in Sicily, the old lava is overgrown with prickly pear and red valerian. Mesembrianthemums—I must be pardoned this word; for I cannot omit those fleshy-leaved creepers, with their wealth of gaudy blossoms, shaped like sea anemones, coloured like strawberry and pineapple cream-ices—mesembrianthemums, then, tumble in torrents from the walls, and large-cupped white convolvuluses curl about ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... Chief. "Put up your hands!" he said, covering him with his gun. "Quick, you dog!" he added, as Eagle Feather stood irresolute before him. Upon the uplifted hands Cameron slipped the handcuffs. "Come with me, you cattle-thief," he said, seizing him by the gaudy handkerchief that adorned his neck, and giving ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... fallen. "The gaudy bubbling and remorseful day" had "crept into the bosom of the sea." From the cross-trees the look-out man had already been able to distinguish through the glass the faint distant glimmer of Scarthey beacon, when Captain Jack knocked for admittance at ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... give in exchange for his soul?" It is not the wealth, nor the magnificence of life which will make your home happy; these are but the outward and fleeting ornaments of the world, and are too often the gaudy drapery in which demon guilt ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... livid scar, that extended from the corner of his mouth to his ear. Notwithstanding this, the fellow was a great dandy, spending many hours each day in greasing and arranging his long coarse hair, which he ornamented with plates of silver, bits of gaudy-colored cloth, bright feathers, and tinsel. Every hair was scrupulously plucked from his brows and eyelashes, and the lids of his eyes were painted a bright vermilion, giving to his face the expression of a demon rather than ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens

... gaunt forms of the hollyhocks That shower the seeds from out their withered purses; Here were the pinks; there the nasturtium nurses The last of colour in her gaudy smocks; The ruins yonder Show but a vestige of the flaming phlox; The poppies on ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... lace-makers. The women sit in the streets by groups of five or six; and the noise of the bobbins is audible from one group to another. Now and then you will hear one woman clattering off prayers for the edification of the others at their work. They wear gaudy shawls, white caps with a gay ribbon about the head, and sometimes a black felt brigand hat above the cap; and so they give the street colour and brightness and a foreign air. A while ago, when England largely supplied herself from this district with the lace called ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... caparisons of their fellow-brutes, and eyed with jealousy their glittering harness. In imitation of this finery, they were fond of thrums of many-colored threads; and I saw one creature, who supported the squalid rag that wrapped his waist by a suspender of gaudy worsted, which he turned every moment to look at on his naked shoulder. The greater number, however, were as unconscious of any covering for use or ornament, as ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... mused aloud. Berthe struck her pony in a tremor of fright. The American was riding ahead. "Fire and sword," Jacqueline went on, and her voice lowered to intense scorn, "they make the final tableau, but—it's gaudy, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... sound of a great city's distractions and with blissful unconcern of them all, partaking of a hearty lunch of insects that infest the leaves before one's eyes, one counts the bird less rare and shy than one has been taught to consider it. Whoever looks for a warbler with gaudy yellow wings will not find the golden-winged variety. His wings have golden patches only, and while these are distinguishing marks, they are scarcely prominent enough features to have given the bird the rather misleading name he bears. But, then, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... of from thirty to fifty per cent, even more, in wages, he suddenly began to revel in a wealth that he never dreamed was possible. The more he made the more he spent. He squandered his financial substance on fine cigars, expensive clothes, and excessive drinks, while his wife bedecked herself in gaudy finery and installed pianos or phonographs in her house. No one thought ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... hands for use in skinning up the tree, and one hand for scaring off the mother bird and one hand for stealing the eggs. And for hanging on behind wagons the combination positively could not be beaten. Then there would be the gaudy conspicuousness of going around with four arms weaving in and out in a kind of spidery effect while less favored boys were forced to content themselves with just an ordinary and insufficient pair. Really, there was only one drawback to the contemplation of this scheme—there'd ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb

... the winter wild While the heaven-born child All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies— Nature, in awe to Him, Had doffed her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize; It was no season then for her To wanton with ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... frozen and the hedgerows clustered with ice. But at mid-day there was spring in the air. In the courtyard of the hospital, convalescents sat on the benches and watched for robins. The fountain, which had frozen out, was being repaired. Here and there on ward window-sills tulips opened their gaudy petals ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... their young leaves and their blossoms, their sunshine and their dew, their song of the chaffinch and their rapturous music of the thrush. Appreciation is heightened by contrast; and the buttercup—England's gift to her little children—is pronounced far brighter than the "gaudy melon-flower" which the exiled Englishman has at this ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... tournament for on three sides of the meadow of battle scaffolds had been built and rows of seats had been placed. These were covered over with tapestries and hangings of divers colors—some of figured and some of plain weaving—so that the green and level meadow-land was hung all about with these gay and gaudy colors. ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... that is dainty, nice, and spare, Who never knew what belong'd to good housekeeping, or care, Who buyes gaudy-color'd fans to play with wanton air, And seven or eight different dressings of other women's hair; Like ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... fast as I obtained it, and had realised a considerable sum. I could not help comparing myself to a chrysalis previous to its transformation. I had before been a caterpillar, I was now all ready to burst my confinement, and flit about as a gaudy butterfly. Another week I continued my prudent conduct, at the end of which I was admitted to my superior, in whose hands I placed a sum of money which I could very conveniently spare, and received his benediction and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... in the height of our jubilant self-gratulation, some sweet and gracious figure, full of heavenly wisdom, could have twitched the gaudy curtain aside for a moment and shown us other things than these; who could have assured us that we all, however stupid and dreary and awkward and indolent, however vexed with low dreams and ugly temptations, yet had our share and place in the rich inheritance of life; and ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... wherever that foe was met, he seemed to reel before the mailed hand that buffeted his front. All frippery and decoration had long been stripped from the army. The fingers of war—real war—had torn off the gaudy trappings; and the grim lips had muttered, "What I want is hard muscle, and the brave heart—not tinsel!" The bands were seldom heard—the musicians were tending the wounded. The drums had ceased their jovial rattle, and were chiefly used in the ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... She was dressed in black, with a good deal of lace about her; and on her ungloved hand Lady Caroline's keen sight enabled her to distinguish some very handsome diamond rings. The effect of the costume was a little spoiled by a large gaudy fan, of violent rainbow hues, which hung at her side; and perhaps it was this article of adornment which decided Lady Caroline in her opinion of the woman's social status. But about the man she was equally positive in a different way. He was a ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... different. He was a desperado, one of the dashing, reckless kind—more famous along the Pecos and Rio Grande than more really desperate men. His attire proclaimed a vanity seldom seen in any Westerner except of that unusual brand, yet it was neither gaudy ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey

... attraction for him. The formal black or brown derby for winter and the seasonable straw hat for summer seemed necessary to tone down the frivolity of his neckties, which were chosen with a cowboy's gaudy taste. To the day of his death Field delighted to present neckties, generally of the made-up variety, to his friends, which, it is needless to say, they never failed to accept and seldom wore. Often in the afternoon as it neared two o'clock he would stick his head above ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... moment a thin, tense-faced Hebrew girl of eighteen or nineteen came rushing in, carrying a wire basket full of typewritten sheets. She was as gaunt as a plucked spring chicken, and her cheap, gaudy clothes might have been thrown on her. She looked as if she were running to catch a train and in mortal dread of missing it. While Miss Devine examined the pages in the basket, Becky stood with her shoulders drawn up and her elbows drawn in, apparently trying to hide herself ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... gravitate to the lower levels. If his spirit is not attuned to majestic harmonies, he will drift down to association with his own kind. If he cannot thrill with pleasure at the beauty and fragrance of the lily of the valley, he will seek out the gaudy sunflower. If his spirit cannot rise to the plane of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo, he will roam into fields that are less fruitful. The spirit that is rightly attuned lifts him away from the sordid into the realms of the chaste and the glorified; away from the coarse and ugly into the realm of things ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... who would exchange the rapture of such a reflexion for all the gaudy tinsel which the world ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson

... sense, and fond of an equable life. He had means, and often, if not always, the proper leisure to live well. And by living well we mean, not that he indulged in a greedy enjoyment of the good things of this life, nor yet in a profuse and gaudy display, but that, being a heathen, he lived as an upright heathen lawyer, magistrate, statesman and millionaire ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... doubly sweet to hold All gay and gleamy to the campfire blaze. The evening sky was sinister and cold; The willows shivered, wanly lay the snow; The uncommiserating land, so old, So worn, so grey, so niggard in its woe, Peered through its ragged shroud. The lone man sighed, Poured back the gaudy dust into its poke, Gazed at the seething river listless-eyed, Loaded his corn-cob pipe as if to smoke; Then crushed with weariness and hardship crept Into his ragged robe, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... and the Andhakas. At the mountain-festival of the Bhojas, the Vrishnis and the Andhakas, the heroes of those tribes began to give away much wealth unto Brahmanas by thousands. The region around that hill, O king was adorned with many a mansion decked with gems and many an artificial tree of gaudy hue. The musicians struck up in concert and the dancers began to dance and the vocalists to sing. And the youth of the Vrishni race, endued with great energy, adorned with every ornament, and riding in their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... they lie in deep and easy water, but as the season advances, they draw into the great rough streams, taking up their stations where they are likely to be least observed. But there the wily wand of the practiced angler casts its gaudy lure, and "Kinmont Willie," "Michael Scott," or "The Lady of Mertoun," (three killing flies,) darting deceitfully within their view, a sudden lounge is made—sometimes scarcely visible by outward signs—as often accompanied by a watery heave, and a flash like that of an aurora ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... to his house once," said Ransome—"had to. A lame Indian in a suit of gaudy red-and-white stripes opened the door. I knew that striped canvas. It was the awnings of the old Lily Grant, and I saw along the seams the smoke-marks of the fire that had burnt her innards out.... Then the Indian opened the jalousies with a hand ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... silently, each busy with his own thoughts. And behind the view wall of Alexander's apartment Kardon's brilliant yellow sun sank slowly toward the horizon, filling the sky with flaming colors of red and gold, rimmed by the blues and purples of approaching night. The sunset was gaudy and blatant, Kennon thought with mild distaste, unlike the restful day-end displays of ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone

... known the pomps of state, (For things unknown, 'tis ignorance to condemn;) And after having viewed the gaudy bait, Can boldly say, the trifle I contemn; With such a one contented could I live, Contented could ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... of the harvest, a host of customs have been kept up from time immemorial, which have been duly noticed by Brand, while towards the close of the month we are reminded of St. Bartholomew's Day by the gaudy sunflower, which has been nicknamed St. Bartholomew's star, the term "star" having been often used "as an emblematical representation of brilliant virtues or any sign of admiration." It is, too, suggested by Archdeacon Hare that the filbert may owe its name to St. Philbert, whose festival was ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... made so wretched, scorn'd a Thing. How little cause has mankind to be proud Of Noble Birth, the Idol of the Crowd! Have I abroad in Battels Honour won To be at home dishonourably undone? Mark'd with a Star and Garter, and made fine With all those gaudy Trifles once call'd mine, Your Hobby-Horses [1] and your Joys of State, And now become the Object of your Hate; But, d———'ee, Sir, I'll be Legitimate. I was your Darling, but against your Will, And know that I will be the Peoples ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... at work farther down the gully, she kept a sort of sly grog-shop, and passed the day in selling and drinking spirits, swearing, and smoking a short tobacco-pipe at the door of her tent. She was a most repulsive looking object. A dirty gaudy-coloured dress hung unfastened about her shoulders, coarse black hair unbrushed, uncombed, dangled about her face, over which her evil habits had spread a genuine bacchanalian glow, whilst in a loud masculine voice she uttered ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... spectacle, for in promiscuous and gay confusion were seen the splendid apparel of the noble, and the modest garb of the peasant; the shining armour and waving plumes of the Christian warrior, and the gaudy fantastic habiliments of the Moslem. With them appeared the solemn and lugubrious vestments of the ecclesiastical dignitaries, and the coarse habit and ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... noticed that "Cards" was too absorbed by the way that Dune was "taking it" to "take it" himself consciously at all. Olva's aloof surveying of the world about him, as a man on a hill surveys the town in the valley, made of "Cards'" last year and a half a gaudy and noisy thing. He had thought that his attitude had been nicely adjusted, but now he saw that there were still heights to be reached—perhaps in this welcome that he was giving to Dune's success ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole

... do. There is more than enough wealth spent in the churches in this city, for useless, gaudy display, and in trying to get ahead of some other denomination, than would be needed to clothe every naked child in warmth to-night. You claim to be God's stewards, but spend his goods on yourselves, while Christ, in the person of that boy in the cemetery, is crying for food and clothing. ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... A gaudy dress and gentle air May slightly touch the heart; But it's Innocence and Modesty ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... nothing remained of the habiliments I possessed only the day before—even my portmanteau had disappeared. After a most diligent search, I discovered on a chair in a corner of the room, a small bundle tied up in a handkerchief, on opening which I perceived a new suit of livery of the most gaudy and showy description and lace; of which colour was also the coat, which had a standing collar and huge cuffs, deeply ornamented with worked button holes and large buttons. As I turned the things over, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever

... which pass rapidly before him, and from them impresses on his fancy the germ of many a future picture; the susceptible youth opens his heart to every elevating feeling; age becomes young again in recollection; even childhood sits with anxious expectation before the gaudy curtain, which is soon to be drawn up with its rustling sound, and to display to it so many unknown wonders: all alike are diverted, all exhilarated, and all feel themselves for a time raised above the daily cares, the troubles, and the sorrows of life. As the drama, with the arts which are ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... A tunnel about 100 feet long passed under the noble terrace, reaching from Knoyle to Fonthill Bishop, at least three miles in length; the tunnel was formed to keep the grounds private. The beech trees, now arrayed in gaudy autumnal tints, seen through this archway have a lovely effect. Emerging from the tunnel, the famous wall, seven miles long, was just in front. To the left you trace the terrace, on a charming elevation, leading to Fonthill Gardens, and ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown

... limpid fluid into the vegetable vases at the extremity of its leaves. The Orchideae suspend their pendulous flowers from the angles of branches, whilst the bare roots and the lower part of the stem are occasionally covered with fungi of the most gaudy colours, bright red, yellow, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... people denied it, I suspect that they make a practice of following slave caravans and cutting off the sticks from those who fall out in the march, and thus stealing them. By selling them again they get the quantities of cloth we see. Some asked for gaudy prints, of which we had none, because we knew that the general taste of the Africans of the Interior is for strength rather than ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... nor a frill, nor a silken gown, nor a flashy waist with aurora borealis sleeves. There was not a curl paper, nor even a threat of crinoline. Raiment was an after thought, the mask of a tainted soul, born of original sin. Beauty was unmarred by gaudy rags; Eve was dressed in sunshine, Adam ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... bastard of great Mercury, Got on Thalia when she was asleep: My gaudy grandsire, great Apollo hight,[113] Born was, I hear, but that my luck was ill, To all the land upon the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... young porters' in severe cocked hats and formidable batons, into a broad hall,—threw off our furred boots and cloaks, ascended a carpeted marble staircase, in every angle of which stood a statuesque footman in gaudy coat and unblemished unmentionables, and reached a broad landing upon the top thronged as usual with servants. Thence we passed through an antechamber into a long, high, brilliantly lighted, saffron-papered room, in which a dozen card-tables were arranged, and thence into the ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... early breakfast, I set off in the carriage with Caroline in charge, and before noon, we arrived at her father's house. The servants dressed in very gaudy liveries, ushered us into the library, where we found her father and mother waiting to receive her. A first glance satisfied me that they were swelled with pride at the change in their fortunes. Caroline ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... brightness on the Sabbath. Her lamp was brimming with oil against the judgment day, and she was as one divinely appointed to be the chastener of the unrighteous. So, at least, Honora beheld her. Her attire was rich but not gaudy, and had the air of proclaiming the prosperity of Israel Simpson alone as its unimpeachable source: her nose was long, her lip slightly marked by a masculine and masterful emblem, and her eyes protruded in such a manner as to give the impression of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... stooped to add the gaudy-labeled cans to his pack that Daddy Dunnigan, of the twisted leg, volunteered the bit of advice that ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... found him on a chair drying himself by detachments. Already his upper man had been rubbed by Pierre, and clothed with a shirt, vest and velveteen coat from his wardrobe. Now he was polishing his nether extremities with a towel, preparatory to adding a pair of gaudy striped trousers to his borrowed gear. Striding up to him with a ferocious air, the lawyer presented the smoking glass, exclaiming: "Drink this down, Wilks, or I'll kill you ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... curses of posterity from being heaped upon your memories. If you, with united zeal and fortitude, oppose the torrent of oppression; if you feel the true fire of patriotism burning in your breasts; if you, from your souls, despise the most gaudy dress which slavery can wear; if you really prefer the lonely cottage, while blessed with liberty, to gilded palaces, surrounded with the ensigns of slavery you may have the fullest assurance that tyranny with her whole accursed train, will hide her hideous head in ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... certainly mixed, some very beautiful things rubbing shoulders with modern specimens of clumsy early Victorian furniture. A room at the back was given up to the Delft china, but even this was spoilt by ordinary yellow arabesque wall-paper, on which were hung the rare plates and dishes, and by some gaudy window curtains, evidently recently added. The collection itself, made by Mrs. Koopman at very moderate prices, before experts bought up all the Dutch relics, was then supposed to be of great value. Our hostess conversed in good English with a foreign accent, and was evidently a person of much ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... memoirs of a friend of Scanderbeg, which would introduce me to the man, the time, and the place. In the old and national history of Marinus Barletius, a priest of Scodra, (de Vita. Moribus, et Rebus gestis Georgii Castrioti, &c. libri xiii. p. 367. Argentorat. 1537, in fol.,) his gaudy and cumbersome robes are stuck with many false jewels. See likewise Chalcondyles, l vii. p. 185, l. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... the moss-pink, and the grape-hyacinth may sometimes be seen growing in country fields and byways. The homely and cheerful blossoms of the orange-tawny ephemeral lily, and the spotted tiger-lily, whose gaudy colors glow with the warmth of far Cathay—their early home—now make gay many of our roadsides and crowd upon the sweet cinnamon roses of our grandmothers, which also are undaunted ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... every feature in the landscape, the deeper and deepening tint of the glowing sky, the roseate hue of the mountain-peaks as they stood out against the cloudless orient, and the rich emerald shades of the woods sparkling with fruit. The fragrant rose and the chaste lily, the blushing peony and the gaudy tulip, and all the choicest flowers of that delicious clime, expanded into renewed loveliness to greet the sun: and the citron and the orange, the melon and the grape, the pomegranate and the date drank in the yellow light ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... jewellery be of the best, but the least gaudy description, and wear it very sparingly. A set of good studs, a gold watch and guard, and one handsome ring, are as many ornaments as a gentleman can wear with propriety. In the morning let your ring be a seal ring, with your ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... plants as chrysanthemums, auriculas, geraniums, and many others, to be exposed to the influence of cold, frosty nights, as when the "fell destroyer" commences to exert its power all plants touched by it rapidly decay. Gladioli will now be clothed in the full glory of their gaudy, but handsome dress; they are comparatively easy to manage in well-drained spots, and being such continuous bloomers, at least three or four or even half a dozen should be in every small garden. In winter they must be covered by about six inches of litter; but in cold and ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... looking from afar at these and a hundred similar things, lo! there came by us a gaudy, strapping quean of arrogant mien, and after whom a hundred eyes were turned; some made obeisance, as if in worship of her, a few put something in her hand. I could not make out what she was, and so I enquired. "Oh," said my friend, "she is one whose entire dowry is on show, ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... poet of nature, the daisy seems perfectly intelligible. Scattered throughout the lowly places, with meekness it seems to shed beauty over its surroundings, and compensate for gaudy vesture by cheerful contentment. Wordsworth calls the daisy "the poet's darling," "a nun demure," "a little Cyclops," "an unassuming commonplace of nature," and sums up its excellences in a verse which may fitly conclude ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... examining every thicket of bushes to see if it concealed an enemy, we made but slow progress. Yet trusting more to the dog than to ourselves, we at length came in sight of the scene of our former exploits. All was quiet and still in the vicinity. Not a twig moved, unless displaced by a gaudy-colored parrot, too lazy, under the withering influence of ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... lean against the mountain for support. Stains of travel were on her dress; lines of fatigue and pain, and traces of burning passionate tears, were on her face; her black hair flowed from beneath her gaudy bonnet; and, shamed out of his brutality, Rand placed his strong arm round her waist, and half carrying, half supporting her, began the ascent. Her head dropped wearily on his shoulder; her arm encircled his neck; her hair, as if caressingly, lay across his breast and hands; her grateful ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... voyageur when he put this question, and the voyageur gave a broad grin as he replied in the affirmative, while Antoine looked a little confused. He did not care much, however, for jesting. So, after getting one or two more articles—not forgetting half-a-dozen clay pipes, and a few yards of gaudy calico, which called forth from Peter a second reference to Annette—he bundled up his goods, and made ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... his crimson skirts, and looking with exceeding kindness and frankness on the other two tenants of the room. "You seem to like my dressing-gown, sir," he said to Mr. Tatham. "A pretty thing, isn't it? Neat, but not in the least gaudy. And how do you do, Major Pendennis, sir, and how does ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of a glorious day. The luggage was piled on the hotel omnibus. We took an open cab and rattled through the narrow flag-paved streets of the harbour quarter of the town. As we emerged into a more spacious thoroughfare, suddenly from a gaudy column at the corner flared the name of Ras Fendihook. I caught the heading of the affiche: "Music-Hall-Eldorado." Part of the mystery was solved. Jaffery had been right in his deduction that he had left London on a professional engagement; but we had not thought of an engagement ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... of organic unities to accumulate when once they are formed is absolutely all the truth I can distill from Spencer's unwieldy account of evolution. It makes a much less gaudy and chromatic picture, but what there is of ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... blue vitriol, both very poisonous, are often used on grape vines before the grapes are formed, and very gaudy vines they are for a little while after this bright poison has been ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley

... the time would come when they would enjoy them as freely as anyone. They should not be impatient to advance. Prejudice could not be overcome in a short period. He said the best way to overcome all prejudice was by elevating themselves; but not by gaudy extravagance, groans, abuse, war, or tumult of war. They had the same right to become lawyers, doctors, soldiers and heroes as the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... to copy Scripture maps, and draw small illustrations of any Biblical scene that occurred in the lesson of the day. I have a book full of his childish fancies now, all elaborately colored on week-days—"Joseph and his Brethren" in gaudy turbans, and wonderfully inexpressive countenances, reminding me of Flurry's dolls; the queen of Sheba, coming before Solomon, in a marvelous green tiara and yellow garments; a headless Goliath, expressed with a painful degree of detail, more fit for the ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... the dreary sala, with the gaudy painted ceiling, the bare dirty floor, the innumerable rattling doors and windows! Ellinor was submissive and patient in demeanour, because so sick and despairing at heart. Her maid was ten times ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell

... jumping over ditches where they were the broadest, and clapping her hands and shouting to frighten away phlegmatical crows. It was not long, however, before she gave up these outbreaks, and turned her mind to a much sedater course; and then, whenever a stiff-necked millifolium or gaudy hip came in her way, she carefully broke it off, and preserved it in her apron, for the use of the family. Henrik ran back every now and then to the wicker-carriage, in order to kiss "the baby," and give her the very least flowers he ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... left the cottage with a small pile of books, disinterred from the depths of the box which contained all her belongings—cheap books in gaudy covers of red, blue, and green cloth, lavishly gilded without, execrably printed within: The Wide, Wide World; Caspar; Poor John, or Nature's Gentleman; The Parents' Assistant. Her system of education recognised merit, but rewarded ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... sweetheart," he cried, "and the rose you wear on your heart and—and all these rings that mar your sweet, white hand with their gaudy reds and blues. Leave only mine to prove ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... was large, deep-bosomed, and comely after her kind, and in her careless gestures there was something of the fine fervour of the artist. She sang boldly, her full body rocking from side to side, her bared arms outstretched, her long throat swelling like a bird's above the gaudy handkerchief upon her breast. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... sizes, and Two Arrows admitted to himself that anything so very bright and pretty must have special effectiveness. Any of those spoons was brilliant enough to have been worn in the hat of a great chief, but the doubt remaining was as to what the trout would think of them. The gaudy assortment of artificial flies Two Arrows quite turned up his nose at. The fish of the western mountains were not in the habit of biting at such things, and could not be taught to do so. As to the hooks, however, large and small, anybody could see their superiority ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... your magazine except that there are not enough stories in each issue. The uneven edges are just fine, for it makes the pages easier to turn. The covers are not too gaudy. The covers should depict a thrilling incident in ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... beams from under archly lifted brows, and said gravely, "Don't form yourself on her, Rebecca; clover blossoms that grow in the fields beside Sunnybrook mustn't be tied in the same bouquet with gaudy sunflowers; they are too sweet and fragrant ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture 15 The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! 20 ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... now from what it had been when he first saw it. There were four little masts put up in it, on which were hoisted gay and gaudy flags. Her "hull," or body, was now coppered and neatly painted, while all the rubbish of the building-yard was cleared away, so that everything looked neat and clean. The stocks, or framework on which she had been built, sloped towards the ...
— The Life of a Ship • R.M. Ballantyne

... thou art precious to my soul; My transport and my trust: Jewels to thee are gaudy toys, ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... our usual rest day, and I stood in the open square before the huge church at Brunn, watching the motley, shifting, and clamorous crowd which had converted its very steps into a market-place. There was something strikingly Eastern in the character of the women's attire: intensely gaudy and highly contrasted; and their head-dresses the very next thing to a turban with double-frilled ends. There was also something peculiarly Catholic in the nature of the articles exposed for sale; beads, crosses, coloured pictures of saints, and tiny images of ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... A new pulse beat triumphantly every time a timber, burned through, fell in, or a crash came from a falling roof. He laughed inwardly as the flames disclosed the dismay on the faces of the Iroquois and Tories, and it gave him deep satisfaction to see Braxton Wyatt, his gaudy little sword at his thigh, stalking about helpless. It was while he was looking, absorbed in such feelings, that the warrior of the alert eye saw him and ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... drawing near the house at Asnieres. Frantz had noticed at a distance a fanciful little turreted affair, glistening with a new blue slate roof. It seemed to him to have been built expressly for Sidonie, a fitting cage for that capricious, gaudy-plumaged bird. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... might very easily be devoted to worse: and if two or three faces can be rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband. There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over- dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those about ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... precious metals, with pictured representations of human life, and perhaps with statuary of a rough kind, they must have added to the impression produced by size a sense of richness and barbaric magnificence. The African spirit, which loves gaudy hues and costly ornament, was still strong among the Babylonians, even after they had been Semitized; and by the side of Assyria, her colder and more correct northern sister, Babylonia showed herself a true child of the south—rich, glowing, careless of the laws of taste, bent on provoking ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that 's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.[551-2] ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... be a crowned king, For all his gaudy gear; I would not be that pampered thing, His gew-gaw gold to wear: But I would be where I can sing Right merrily, all the year; Where forest treen, All gay and green, Full blythely ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... morning Langaffer village presented a lively picture of bustle and excitement. Soldiers in gaudy uniforms, and with gay-coloured banners waving in the breeze, marched in to the sound of trumpet and drum. How their spears and helmets glittered in the sunshine, and what a neighing and prancing their steeds made in the little market-square! ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... the broad face of God's Word. The promptings of such sentimentalism are to permit children to do as they please, and to bring them up under the influence of domestic libertinism. Honor thy father and thy mother, is a command which explodes such a gaudy theory; and he who does not obey it, brutalizes human nature, dishonors God, subverts the principles of constitutional society, throws off allegiance to the prerogatives of a divinely constituted superior, and overthrows ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... paper-blinds. A huge fire of logs, such as Mollie had never beheld in her life before, roared gloriously in the old-fashioned fire-place, and lighted the room with a lurid glow. A four-post bedstead, the bed covered with a gaudy patch-work or counterpane, stood in one corner, a table with a white cloth stood in another, a chest of drawers in a third, and the door by which they entered in the fourth. This was ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... to the people of Puerto Rico. The coast waters and fresh water streams swarm with fishes of strange shapes and gaudy colors. ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George

... I have availed myself of every means within my reach to render my visit agreeable to the rajah. I carry with me many presents which are reported to be to his liking; gaudy silks of Surat, scarlet cloth, stamped velvet, gunpowder, &c., beside a large quantity of confectionery and sweets, such as preserved ginger, jams, dates, syrups, and to wind up all, a huge box of China toys for his children! I have likewise taken coarse nankeen to the amount of ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... a good deal about the town, and entered the cathedral with some feelings of reverence, for a part of it at least was built by Don Henry of Portugal, who founded and endowed the college adjoining. The interior of the church is in some parts gaudy, and there is a silver rail of some value. The ceiling is of cedar, richly carved, and reminds me of some of the old churches at Venice, which present a style half Gothic half Saracenic. Near the church a public garden has lately been ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... miniature green plateaus, bordered by conical hills, covered to the very summit by mimosas and huge cactuses, alive with large hordes of antelopes (the agazin), which, bounding from rock to rock, scared by their frolics the countless host of huge baboons. The valley itself, graced by the presence of gaudy-feathered and sweet-singing birds, echoed to the shrill cry of the numerous guinea-fowls, so tame, that the repeated reports of our fire-arms did not ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... Quarrel, and supported the several Pretensions of the Daughters with all that ill-chosen Sort of Expence which is common with People of plentiful Fortunes and mean Taste. The Girls preceded their Parents like Queens of May, in all the gaudy Colours imaginable, on every Sunday to Church, and were exposed to the Examination of the Audience for ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... imagination than William Roscoe, its author. There were some amongst us, however, who were already being weaned to a knowledge of life's mysterious changes, and we sought the third volume of the romance of the flitting gaudy thing in a little ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... child, pictures from worn-out books or advertisements, which Ethel was colouring—Aubrey volunteering aid that was received rather distrustfully, as his love of effect caused him to array the model school-children in colours gaudy enough, as Gertrude complained, 'to corrupt a saint.' Nor was his dilettante help more appreciated at a small stand, well provided with tiny drawers, and holding a shaded lamp, according to Gertrude, 'burning something horrible ending in gen, that would kill anybody but ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... stockades apes sat sad and listless, and on the roof-ridges storks were dying. Over the branches of the trees, whose leaves were as thin as though we had had a six months' drought, the toucans and Martian parrots hung limp and fashionless like gaudy rags, and in the courtyard ground the corn-rats came up from their tunnels in the scorching earth to die, squeaking in scores along under ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... their dimes With hasty verses hammered out in rhymes: The Muses whisper—'"Tis the age of brass." Workmen are plenty, but the masters few— Fewer to-day than in the days of old. Rare blue-eyed pansies peeping pearled with dew, And lilies lifting up their heads of gold, Among the gaudy cockscombs I behold, And here and there a lotus in the shade; And under English oaks a rose that ne'er ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... an ell, the rain was falling on the grandmother's bed and the little children's cradles. The roof and walls were repaired; we supplied the materials and paid the workmen; but no more money for gaudy aprons. In another case, an old woman had been reduced to beggary because she had listened too well to her heart, and given all she had to her children, who had turned her out of doors, or made her life so unbearable that she preferred to be a tramp. We took up the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... all day: I was amused. I marvel at my own versatility when I think how soon my quick spirits were excited by this gay, gaudy, noisy, idle place. The different appearance of the streets of London and Paris is the first thing to strike a stranger. In the gayest and most crowded streets of London the people move steadily and rapidly along, with a grave collected air, as if all had some business in view; here, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... heavens; every object smiled; innumerable gaudy flies glanced in the sunbeams that played in a clear spring by the cottage; I saw with pleasure the sultry glow of the distant cliffs and forests, whilst indolently reclined in the shade, listening to the summer hum; one hour passed after another neglected away, during my repose ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... from being a gaudy or flowery writer, that he was one of the severest writers we have. His words are the most like things; his style is the most strictly suited to the subject. He unites every extreme and every variety of composition; the lowest and the meanest words and descriptions ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... beauty appeared to him. {236} One was Vice, the other Virtue. The former was full of artificial wiles and fascinating arts, her face painted and her dress gaudy and attractive; whilst the latter was of noble bearing and modest mien, her ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... Arab sands the false mirage, which offers A lucid lake to his eluded thirst, Are gone. Around me are the stars and waters— Worlds mirrored in the Ocean, goodlier sight[ee] Than torches glared back by a gaudy glass; 70 And the great Element, which is to space What Ocean is to Earth, spreads its blue depths, Softened with the first breathings of the spring; The high Moon sails upon her beauteous way, Serenely smoothing o'er the lofty walls Of those tall piles and sea-girt palaces,[ef] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... Jerry-Jo surlily and passionately came to the conclusion that he must in some way capture his prize. Other youths were wearing gaudy ties and imperilling their Sunday bests; he was letting precious time slip. Then, too, by Farwell's advice, old Jerry was growing rigid along financial lines, and at last the States took definite shape in Jerry-Jo's mind, but he meant to have Priscilla before he heeded the lure. With all ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... Howbeit I be a stranger, yet I like brotherly love and Christian fellowship well; but drunkenness and gluttony, feasting and carousing I hate, especially now when the kirk of Scotland is going in dool-weed: therefore be sober. 1. Be sober in your apparel; I think there is too much of gaudy apparel among you. 2. Be sober in your conceits. 3. Be sober in your judgments. 4. Be sober in your self-conceiting. 5. Be sober in your speaking. 6. Be sober in your sleeping. 7. Be sober in your lawful recreations. 8. Be sober in your lawful ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... meadowlarks on the fence posts; herons stalking solemnly, or waiting like so many Japanese bronzes for a chance at a gopher; red-tailed hawks circling slowly; pigeon hawks passing with their falcon dart; little gaudy sparrow hawks on top the telephone poles; buzzards, stately and wonderful in flight, repulsive when at rest; barn-owls dwelling in the haystacks, and horned owls in the hollow trees; the game in countless numbers; ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave. The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe ...
— Stray Birds • Rabindranath Tagore

... barn, the wide threshing floor had been covered with gay rag-rugs, and strewn with tables, couches, and chairs in picturesque profusion. Roomy box-stalls had been carpeted deep with clean straw, curtained off with gaudy bed-quilts, and converted into cozy sleeping apartments. The mow and the stalls had been screened off with lace curtains and blazing counterpanes, and the whole effect was one of Oriental luxury and splendor. Alas, it was only an "effect"! The ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... has been written concerning the fact that Wagner used to wear gaudy costumes of silk and satin while he was composing, and that he had colored glass in his windows, which gave every object a mysterious aspect. He was called an imitator of the eccentric King of Bavaria, and some went so far as to declare ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... must have descended to me. My childhood's antipathy to wearing red enabled me later to comprehend the feelings of a little niece, who hated everything pea green, because she had once heard the saying, "neat but not gaudy, as the devil said when he painted his tail pea green." So when a friend brought her a cravat of that color she threw it on the floor and burst into tears, saying, "I could not wear that, for it is the color of the devil's tail." I sympathized ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... living things, men and animals, wild or tame, and fish and gaudy fowl, rush to this flame of love." ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... What has he done to thee that thus, among The seeds of reason, which he sowed unmixed, Pure in my soul, thou ever must be seeking To plant the weeds, or flowers, of thy own land. He wills not of these pranking gaudy blossoms Upon this soil. And I too must acknowledge I feel as if they had a sour-sweet odour, That makes me giddy—that half suffocates. Thy head is wont to bear it. I don't blame Those stronger nerves that can support it. Mine - Mine it behoves not. Latterly thy angel ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

... Philip's [Endnote W] brow, Or dash Octavius from the trophied car; Say, does thy secret soul repine to taste The big distress? Or wouldst thou then exchange Those heart-ennobling sorrows for the lot Of him who sits amid the gaudy herd 760 Of mute barbarians bending to his nod, And bears aloft his gold-invested front, And says within himself, I am a king, And wherefore should the clamorous voice of woe Intrude upon mine ear?—The baleful dregs Of these late ages, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... adorn, And the world looks as it were newly born. So, when your sense his mystic reason cleared, The melancholy scene all gay appeared; Now light leapt up, and a new glory smiled, And all throughout was mighty, all was mild. Before this palace, which thy wit did build, Which various fancy did so gaudy gild, And judgment has with solid riches filled, My humbler muse begs she may sentry stand, Amongst the rest that guard this Eden land. But there's no need, for ev'n thy foes conspire Thy praise, and, hating ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... too. But I hadn't any idea how much there was, until we started buying copies of everything there was on the news-stands, and then ransacking musty little stores for back issues and ones that had gone out of publication, until Paul's office was just full of teetery piles of gaudy magazines and everywhere you looked there were pictures of strange stars and eight-legged monsters and ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant

... broad-brimmed hats, which in some instances cost more than all the rest of their suits, the leggings, flannel overshirts, and gaudy handkerchiefs tied loosely ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis

... spur of the moment, and scarcely five minutes after the mad idea had entered Tommy's head the three boys stood in a dark corner of the drive with their booty, consisting of table silver, some valuable miniatures, and a collection of gold coins, securely tied up in a gaudy gold-embroidered Indian tablecloth that Tommy had taken from the drawing-room. The Colonel still ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... pretty little miss, being a very pretty little miss, being a very much-admired little miss, being a very good little miss, who always minded her book, and had passed through her sampler-doctrine with high applause; had even stitched out, in gaudy propriety of colors, an Abraham offering up Isaac, a Sampson and the Philistines; and flowers, and knots, and trees, and the sun and the moon, and the seven stars, all hung up in frames with glasses before them, for ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... other tents are of the same pattern and the same gaudy colours within: each of them contains two little iron bedsteads, two Turkish rugs, two washstands, one dressing-table, and such baggage as we had imagined necessary for our comfort, piled around the tent-pole,—this by way ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... and in their place come soft, gray tones and silence. The scarlet tanager seeks some hidden perch and soon from the same tree slips a silent, ghostly owl; the ruby of the hummingbird dies out as the gaudy flowers of day close their petals, and the gray wraiths of sphinx moths appear and sip nectar from ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... attractions the one which made the greatest appeal to Glen—and the only one he could afford, for his sole fortune was the nickel he had for car-fare—was the merry-go-round with its gaudy horses and its gurdy tunes. He bought a ticket and mounted one of the turbulent steeds with a little thrill of anticipatory pleasure. The music began, the movement gradually quickened, and he was just giving himself ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo

... plunged into the seething life of the native city. The road was crammed with an apparently impenetrable crowd of men and beasts, the latter—water-buffaloes, humpy cattle, and donkeys—strolling about and getting in everybody's way with perfect nonchalance, while men in strange raiment of gaudy hue pursued their lawful occupations with much clamour. The variety ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... notice, that the charms of gaudy inartistic colouring frequently exercise a powerful sway even over minds familiar with better things; although that sway is always indicative of the decay of intellectual or moral freshness. Thus, it is remarked by an old Greek author ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various

... faces gave faithful witness of their habitual intemperance; and men, whose threadbare and ragged garments betokened sloth and poverty; and men, whose vulgar and ostentatious display of showy clothing, and gaudy chains, and rings and breast-pins, which they did not know how to wear, indicated dishonest pursuits; and men, whose blue jackets and bluff, brown faces showed them to be sailors; and men, whose scowling brows and fiendlike countenances marked them as villains of the blackest and lowest ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown

... Winifred, in a dress of silvery velvet, and holding a gaudy bunch of flowers in her hand, waited with keen impatience in the schoolroom, looking down the drive for Gudrun's arrival. It was a wet morning. Under her nose was the strange fragrance of hot-house ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... of La Madelena, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, is a neat structure of granite and marble. Its decorations are less gaudy than those one usually sees, the most valued ornaments being a pair of massive altar candlesticks and a crucifix, all of silver, the gift of Lord Nelson, in acknowledgment of the kindness and hospitality he received from the islanders while his fleet lay in the harbour. On the base of the candlesticks ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... Fawn; she, with a few young Indian girls, half hid among the whortleberry bushes growing luxuriantly around the smaller wigwams of the camp, were dividing their attention between the stately captives and weaving the gaudy wampums to be bestowed, with the shy little weavers themselves, upon such young braves as should be deemed worthy by the great council. Their stolen glances of admiration and pity, however, were intercepted by the young brave who brought home and so suspiciously guarded the prisoners. ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah

... nor dare he return to England; he is too profligate to think of any person but himself, and the painted, gaudy creature and her children who are gone with him. But I hope my young lady will find a friend with you, Madam, for I am sure you are ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown

... a gorgeous kite, the giant butterfly of childhood, twinkling with gilding, and soaring to the sky? The children forget the string that holds it, some passer-by cuts it, the gaudy toy turns head over heels, as the boys say, and falls with terrific rapidity. Such was Esther as she listened ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... hour of evening a bevy of ladies approached through the dark groves of citron trees, so gaily dressed in silks of the brightest dyes of yellow, blue, and scarlet, that no bouquet of flowers could have been more gaudy. They were attended by numerous slaves, and the head servant politely requested me to withdraw during the interview. Thus turned out of my tent, I was compelled to patience and solitude beneath a ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... beauty faults conspicuous grow; The smallest speck is seen on snow. As near a barn, by hunger led, A peacock with the poultry fed; All viewed him with an envious eye, And mocked his gaudy pageantry. He, conscious of superior merit, Contemns their base reviling spirit; His state and dignity assumes, And to the sun displays his plumes; 10 Which, like the heaven's o'er-arching skies, Are spangled with a thousand eyes. The circling rays, and varied light, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... comic operas to ours is, they have no refinement or colours or subtleties to please the eye—all is gaudy and blatant. The "Merry Widow," for instance, could make one weep, it is so vulgar and changed, especially the end. But if the people prefer it like that the managers are quite right to let them have what ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... who, seeing malefactors in the theatres in golden tunics and purple robes with crowns on and dancing, admire them and marvel at them, thinking them happy, till they see them goaded and lashed and issuing fire from their gaudy but cheap garments.[829] For most wicked people, though they have great households and conspicuous offices and great power, are yet being secretly punished before they are seen to be murdered or hurled down rocks, which ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... the town was a large, open, shapeless space, or market-place, of black trodden earth, surrounded by the same flat material of dwellings, new red-brick becoming grimy, small oblong windows, and oblong doors, repeated endlessly, with just, at one corner, a great and gaudy public house, and somewhere lost on one of the sides of the square, a large window opaque and darkish green, which was the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... himself by detachments. Already his upper man had been rubbed by Pierre, and clothed with a shirt, vest and velveteen coat from his wardrobe. Now he was polishing his nether extremities with a towel, preparatory to adding a pair of gaudy striped trousers to his borrowed gear. Striding up to him with a ferocious air, the lawyer presented the smoking glass, exclaiming: "Drink this down, Wilks, or I'll kill ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... amaze, he looked back at the stage, just as the queen was leading Florestein off, and he sees a frail-looking figure heaped in gaudy toggery, that looks as though it would drag her down with its weight; and, above it, is a pale flower-like face, with great dark, weary-looking eyes, and a heavy coronet of yellow hair twisted ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... the branches of which were swaying and the leaves rustling cheerily in the strong sea-breeze which rushed through them. The sunlight flashed brilliantly upon the swaying foliage, and gleamed upon the plumage of the bright-winged birds and gaudy butterflies which flitted restlessly from tree to tree; while the long, luxuriant grass in the distance— where I could see it—bowed and undulated beneath the strong breeze like a billowy sea; the background of clear, pure, blue sky beyond completing a picture, ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... one of these bursts of hilarity Mr Hazlit entered the room. The sound seemed to grate on his feelings, for he frowned as he walked, in an absent mood, up to a glass case full of gaudy birds, and turned his back to it under the impression, apparently, ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... explanation. A fairly brave and skilled soldier, a vainer man than General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna never wore sword, and one of his foibles was to see himself surrounded by a glittering escort. The officers of his staff were very peacocks in their gaudy adornment, and as a rale, the best-looking of them were his first favourites. Santander, on returning to Mexico, was appointed one of his aides-de-camp, and being just the sort—a showy fellow—soon rose to rank; so that the defeated candidate for a captaincy ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... the Rich, the splendours of the Powerful, what is the pride of the Great, what are the gaudy pleasures of ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... balanced a steaming coffee-pot on a pair of crossed green sticks at one corner of the chimney. In the ashes I could see little mounds which I afterward found to be flaky, nutty com-pones, and I flew to kneel at her side with my head on her gaudy neckerchief. ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... passages resemble nothing so much as the rude, stark folk-song bequeathed to the world by medieval Russia. Rimsky-Korsakoff's love of brilliant, gay materials had been in generations and generations of peasant-artists, in every peasant who on a holiday had donned a gaudy, beribboned costume, centuries before the music of "Scheherazade" and "Le Coq d'or" was conceived. So, too, the temperaments and sensibilities of the others. They had but to touch these emblems and reliques ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... spring days. If there is anything more beautiful in the West than their gaudy Indian summer, it is the half scared spring. The wind is a bit blustery and pretentious, but otherwise Nature seems doubtful as to whether she will paint her landscape or not. Each night a grand sunset crowns the ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr

... of compasses. In his rear were to be seen a pillar and a red velvet curtain, and (distantly) a fine storm of clouds and lightning. Never was a respectable old sailorman so misrepresented; but all his descendants except one regarded this gaudy daub with almost religious veneration. Every family has its one great man; the admiral was ours. His was the distinction of being the only Pendarves who had ever managed to amass a fortune. It had dribbled through the fingers of succeeding generations; but there was a tradition that ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... prince or duke at least. He was dressed (contrary to all sumptuary laws of the time) in a suit of crimson velvet, a little the worse, perhaps, for wear; by his side were a long Spanish rapier and a brace of daggers, gaudy enough about the hilts; his fingers sparkled with rings; he had two or three gold chains about his neck, and large earrings in his ears, behind one of which a red rose was stuck jauntily enough among the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... almost to ride over them. A few sombre garbed Israelites, and occasionally the Turks, attendant on official duties of the Pashalic in this part of the government, also mingle in the passing or seated crowd; when the solemn, saturnine air of the latter, with their flowing, gaudy apparel, forms a striking contrast to the daring, dirty, independent air of the almost ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various

... delightful visit, had sent down a whole boxful of gaudy and unsuitable clothes for Leucha; but Hollyhock, with her true and rare eye for colour, would not let Leucha be so attired. She spoke privately to ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade

... place,—something higher, nobler, worthier. This something is enlightenment; and to effect the exchange we shall have to begin at the beginning, and enlighten the mothers. Follies and fripperies, in cooking or dressing, will give way before enlightenment, just as do the skin paintings, tattooings, gaudy colors, glass beads and tinsel, and other absurdities of savage tribes; just as have done the barbaric customs and splendors of the barbaric ages. Woman is not quite out of her barbaric stage yet. At any rate, she is not fully enlightened. ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz

... which was all over dirt, They did give him clean holland, this was no great hurt: On a bed of soft down, like a lord of renown, They did lay him to sleep the drink out of his crown. In the morning when day, then admiring he lay, For to see the rich chamber both gaudy ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown

... of unpretentious Hindu temples, and the Maharaja is said to be quite punctilious in his observance of religious forms. He was absent from the city, but several brothers of his were seen driving, clad in long garments of gaudy-colored striped calico, and wearing small turbans; the dress of the women was also peculiar, the skirt being so full that as they walked they resembled balloons; they are noted for wearing a profusion of jewelry,—necklaces by the half-dozen, bracelets ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... tales to the little ones, but do thou this—' His old eyes fell on the gaudy paintings of the wall, the blue and red dome, and the flames of the poinsettias beyond. 'Tell them first of those things that thou hast seen and they have seen together. Thus their knowledge will piece out thy imperfections. Tell them of what thou alone hast seen, then what thou hast heard, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... papers for the stove—flowers! paper-flowers!' She is the accredited herald of summer—a phenomenon, this year, of very late appearance. We should have seen her six weeks ago, if the summer had not declined to appear at the usual season. She is the gaudy, party-coloured ephemera of street commerce, and will disappear from view in a fortnight's time, to be seen no more until the opening summer of '53. Her wares, which are manufactured with much taste, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various

... and return suggest—was the deity, the one really existing god. Nominally, figuratively, even concretely, there were others; a whole host, a hierarchy vaster than the Aryans knew; a great crowd of divinities less grandiose than gaudy, that swarmed in space, strolled through the dawns and dusk, thronged the temples, eyed the quick, confronted the dead. They were but appearances, mere masks, expressions, hypostases, eidolons ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... the Peacock's gaudy dress: If she prefers That gray of hers, I don't admire her taste, I must confess. 'And as for legs and feet—well, I declare, The pair she's got Are really not The kind that I'd be ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow

... impression of him is apt to be less flattering to his head than to his heart. He is a person, however, that improves with acquaintance, and is probably more intelligent than he looks. He seems to be living here in a very plain and unpretentious manner; no gaudy stained glass, no tinsel, no mirror-work, no vain gew-gaws of any description impart a cheap and garish glitter to the place; no gorgeous apparel bedecks his ample proportions. Clad in the ordinary dress of a well-to-do Persian ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... cultivates his own peculiarities unhindered, Ben was considered a "character." He was a short, thick man of enormous physical strength, and he sported a beard like a quickset hedge, hence his nickname. He was clad in an entire suit of fur like an Eskimo, with a gaudy red worsted sash ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... life had been rather hum-drum, until the advent of the "gasoline gigs" as Jack, Cora's brother, slangily dubbed them. Jack, with whose fortunes we shall concern ourselves at more length presently, had a car of his own—one strictly limited to two—a low-slung red and yellow racing car, "giddy and gaudy," Cora ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose

... figure of a lady. She appeared to be nearer fifty than forty, and was dressed suitably to her age, in a handsome suit of flowered silk; she had a profusion of trinkets and jewellery about her person, and many rings upon her fingers. But although very rich, her dress was not gaudy or in ill taste. But what was remarkable in the lady was, that although her features were handsome, and upon the whole pleasing, the pupil of each eye was dimmed with the whiteness of cataract, and she was evidently stone-blind. I was for some seconds so surprised ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... Reserve. The stream of his medicine-loving patients had ceased to flow. The little room was heavy with the reek of his pipe. So he had risen from his chair and passed to the door for a breath of air. It was then that he was confronted by a gaudy coloured apparition. An Indian, whose race was foreign to him, was patiently sitting on the back of a mean-looking skewbald pony, clad in a parti-coloured blanket of flaming hues. The moment Ross appeared in the doorway the Indian produced a ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... with the varicoloured paints that he has compounded in nature's mortar. The woman enters into the work with intelligent zest, and when completed the whole array of blended colours is beyond the criticism of the tribe. The back of an Indian's war-bonnet and war-shirt is always more gaudy and sumptuous than the front view and this because when Indians pass each other their salutation is brief and formal. They ride right on. But after the meeting they turn in the saddle and look back to take an inventory. ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... came a shrill, high shriek, oaths, shouts, and the orchestra stopped playing. Men jumped to their feet from the faro layouts, and then, mob-like, began to surge toward the door, while in the lead, uttering scream on scream, ran one of the dance-hall girls with her gaudy dress bursting into enveloping flame. She had the terror of a panic-stricken animal flying into the danger of ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... daring to raise his eyes to the alluring iniquities of the painted imagery which, gaudy in crimson and blue, still blazed out upon the desolate solitude, uninjured by that rainless air. But he was young, and youth is curious; and the devil, at least in the fifth century, busy with young brains. Now Philammon believed most utterly in the devil, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... Rococo as regards artistic taste. They have forgotten the Middle Ages and have not yet found modern art. To the peasant of the Black Forest, the splendid, baroque, dome-shaped church of St. Blasien is a much greater marvel of native art than the Freiburg cathedral. Gaudy, exaggeratedly fantastic Rococo saints are generally considered by Catholic country people very much more edifying than a picture in the severe style of the Middle Ages or of the modern school. In ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... petty passion, selfishness, or care, and offered up the homage of a tranquil mind, a trusting nature, and an overflowing heart; so that the smoke from this poor chimney has gone upward with a better fragrance than the richest incense that is burnt before the richest shrines in all the gaudy temples of this world!—Upon your own hearth; in its quiet sanctuary; surrounded by its gentle influences and associations; hear her! Hear me! Hear everything that speaks the language of your ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... Dandelion, should choose and find such a different dress to wear. It was not the rarer flowers that I brought home, at first. My hands were filled with Dandelions and Buttercups. The Saint-John's-Wort delighted me, and even the gaudy Sunflower. I trained the vines which had been drooping round our old house,—the gray time-worn house; the "natural-colored house," the neighbors called it. I thought of the blind boy who fancied the sound of the trumpet must be scarlet, as I trained up the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... edge. It was as though he had plunged into a green cavern far below the sea. In slow waves, to and fro, swayed the firmament of palms; lower, flowering lianas, jewel-colored, idle as weeds of the sea, ran in tangles and gaudy mazes from tree to tree. He sat himself down in the green gloom, broke seal, unwrapped the silk, and read the letter, which he had acutely guessed could not fail of being sent by so responsible a hand as the friar's from one dignitary of the order ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... at the bottom of the ocean—or rather, at the bottom of many oceans in one. No light comes to you except through the grottos about you—grottos haunted by weird forms of the deep, from graceful to grotesque, from almost colorless to gaudy-hued. To your dilated pupils the light itself has the weird glow of unreality. It is all like the wonders of the Arabian Nights made tangible or like a strange spectacular dream. If one were in a great diving-bell at the bottom of the veritable ocean he could ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... to pursue her. She had, however, the grace to restore his sight on due apologies being made. Becoming Prioress of the convent which she founded, she died therein on October 14th, 740, which day was afterwards held as a gaudy day. Possibly because her indignant lover was a king, it was held ominous for any monarch to enter the Chapel of Saint Frideswide in her convent church. King John, who was as superstitious on some points as he was profane on others, never dared to ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... may his Joys secure, Turns Limbetham and keep some Gaudy whore, Thinks her his own—when Satan knows her his mind, Is like her Body not to be confin'd, As constant as the Moon, she plays her part, And like a Viper preys upon his Heart: Draws him so poor, till like her Slaves, Which she bestows on some smart Fop she ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various

... more to Dorothy, whose huge scissors clipped the square of gay stuff lying before her as if to make the gaudy quilt was the one object of her life, but she ran upstairs to the bedroom she shared with Betty, and found her there, as she expected, exchanging her working gown, with its large apron, for what was called an afternoon frock, with a dainty kerchief ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall

... of the mother; and the mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall - Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay, when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower; —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... high condition. During the prevalence of cold weather they lie in deep and easy water, but as the season advances, they draw into the great rough streams, taking up their stations where they are likely to be least observed. But there the wily wand of the practiced angler casts its gaudy lure, and "Kinmont Willie," "Michael Scott," or "The Lady of Mertoun," (three killing flies,) darting deceitfully within their view, a sudden lounge is made—sometimes scarcely visible by outward signs—as often accompanied by a watery ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... on the purchase of a house. By beginning this way, when the family expenses are small, it is comparatively easy, and without any deprivations, to own the home outright in a few years. Many couples foolishly buy gaudy and unnecessary furniture, and live in more expensive homes than their means justify, in order to create an impression, when first married, which they later regret. If part of the money, which the young husband has undoubtedly saved,—or ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... little gaudy metropolis the lofty tent of the queen domineered over the rest like a stately palace. The marques of Cadiz had courteously surrendered his own tent to the queen: it was the most complete and sumptuous in Christendom, and had ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... blither than roses in thine eyes, Shall I not rend this raiment of pangs and fears, This Colchian cloth white flames ensorcelise, This gaudy-veil distained with blood and tears?— What praise? "O marriage-beauty garlanded For festival, O sumptuous flowery stole For rites of adoration!"—See instead A cilice drenched with torment of my soul! Nevertheless the ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor

... midnight when he saw the lights of town, panelled in gold against a peacock sky. Acres and acres of blue darkness lay close-pressing upon the gaudy grids of light. Here one might really look at this great miracle of shadow and see its texture. The dulcet air drifted lazily in deep, silent crosstown streets. "Ah," he said, "here ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... rebellious waves in it, but her eyebrows were still dark. She was dressed in black, with a good deal of lace about her; and on her ungloved hand Lady Caroline's keen sight enabled her to distinguish some very handsome diamond rings. The effect of the costume was a little spoiled by a large gaudy fan, of violent rainbow hues, which hung at her side; and perhaps it was this article of adornment which decided Lady Caroline in her opinion of the woman's social status. But about the man she was equally positive in ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... so), and I don't know that it gives much assistance to a sober, prosaic view of the subject like the present. "O Luxury, thou curst by heaven's decree," sounds very grand; but I have not the least idea what it means. The pictures drawn in the poem of simple rural pleasures, and of gaudy city delights, are very pleasing; and the moral drawn from it all, viz., that nations sunk in luxury are hastening to decay, may be true enough; but what strikes one most is that, if Goldsmith thought that England was hastening to decay ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... imperishable glory amidst the embattled ranks of his country's foes. He lashes the cold and cruel heartlessness of the world with a noble scorn. He addresses the skeletons of departed friends with passionate longing. He finds that life and its gaudy pleasures are as dust and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various

... a low, lazy sort of whistle sounded across the lawn, so low and so slow that it was apparently an unconscious accompaniment to reverie or speculation. It was quite dark except where the light shone from the hall. All the gaudy paper lanterns had been extinguished, and when the confidential notes of "Rally 'round the flag, boys," came closer, and the whistler emerged from the deeper shadows, he could only distinguish two figures at the foot of the steps, and they could only locate him by the glow of his ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... in the woodland dell; It whispered in low, soft zephyrs That breathed o'er the lake and fell. How it glowed in the mystic star-shine Of the clear blue Northern sky; How it crmison'd and flushed in grandeur In the sunset's sweet good-bye! And gaudy birds from the South-land Made brilliant the poplar grove, And plaintiff calls came sounding, From the haunts where the ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl

... different now from what it had been when he first saw it. There were four little masts put up in it, on which were hoisted gay and gaudy flags. Her "hull," or body, was now coppered and neatly painted, while all the rubbish of the building-yard was cleared away, so that everything looked neat and clean. The stocks, or framework on which she had been built, sloped towards the water, so that when the props ...
— The Life of a Ship • R.M. Ballantyne

... race-horses straining against the rider. Now the spectators could make out plainly the boatmen. It could be seen that they had decked themselves out for the occasion. Their heads were bound with bright-colored fillets, their necks with gay scarves. The paddles were adorned with gaudy woollen streamers. New leggings, of holiday pattern, were intermittently visible on the bowsmen and steersmen as they half rose to give added ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White

... drum. The fantastic procession advances, forming a double column, composed of men and women side by side. The former are stamping and the latter tripping lightly, but all are keeping time. They certainly present a weird appearance, tricked out in their gaudy apparel and ornamented with flashy trinkets. The hair of the men is worn loose; tufts of green and yellow feathers flutter over the forehead, while around their necks and dangling over their naked chests are seen strings of porcupine quills, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... to see us through, began at his persiflage immediately, and congratulated me upon the house I should play to, speaking of box-office receipts and a benefit night. Tucson is more than half a Mexican town, and in its crowd upon the platform I saw the gaudy shawls, the ear-rings, the steeple straw hats, the old shrivelled cigarette-rolling apes, and the dark-eyed girls, and sifted with these the loungers of our own race, boots, overalls, pistols, hotel clerks, ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... in those days that far away from the dust of the grimy shelves, in the very middle of the room, there was a table with all the latest works of fiction in their gaudy bindings, a few volumes of poetry and a few memoirs. Close to this table Miss Milton sat, wrapped, in the warmest weather, in a thick shawl and knitting endless stockings. She hated children, myself in particular. She was also a ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... establishing her in the palace at Greenwich under the same roof with the queen, with reception rooms, and royal state, and a position openly acknowledged,[159] the gay court and courtiers forsaking the gloomy dignity of the actual wife for the gaudy splendour of her brilliant rival. Tamer blood than that which flowed in the veins of a princess of Castile would have boiled under these indignities; and we have little reason to be surprised if policy and prudence were ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... only when accomplishments are rendered subservient to the development of moral goodness, that they may become pursuits at all worthy of an accountable being. We were not sent into this world to flutter through life, like the gaudy butterfly, only to be seen and admired. We were designed to be useful to our fellow beings; and to make all our powers and capabilities, in some way or other conducive to the happiness and welfare of our co-journeyers on the path of time. To this end, we wish our fair countrywomen ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous

... picture being larger than any other in the room, and having bright masses of red and blue in it: let him be assured that the picture is in reality not one whit the better for being either large, or gaudy in color; and he will then be better disposed to give the pains necessary to discover the merit of the more profound and solemn works of Bellini and Tintoret. One of the most wonderful works in the whole gallery ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... she presented! She had been painted from head to hoofs in broad stripes of red, white and blue. The white was her own natural colour, but the red and blue were a gaudy, cheap paint still partly wet. Nevertheless, the work was the work of an artist. The body was done in graceful, sweeping lines, while the legs were circled red, white and blue alternately down to each hoof. Even the ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... whose circumstances placed the usual means of acquiring knowledge beyond their reach; but as books became accessible, they were no longer needed; the printing press made the Bible, from which the plots of the miracle plays were usually derived, common among the people, and these gaudy representations were swept away by the Reformation; but they were temporarily revived in Queen Mary's time, with the other abominations of the church papal, for we find that "in the year 1556 a goodly stage play of the Passion of Christ was presented at the ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... These sometimes gaudy handkerchiefs were not mere ornaments. They served the same purpose to which Babe was then devoting his, and as the eastern lads learned later, the silk or cotton squares formed very effective protection to nose and mouth while riding range in the thick, heavy dust stirred up by the feet of thousands ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... governor, was very scantily furnished: a few old chairs, a couple of tables, and the walls whitewashed and decorated with prints of the Virgin Mary and his excellency's patron saint. The house of the priests, which adjoined the cathedral, was in much better repair, and more gaudy in the inside. ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... journals of America mention may be made of Puck, the rough and gaudy cartoons of which have often what the Germans would call a packende Derbheit of their own that is by no means ineffective. Of the other American—as, indeed, of the other British—comic papers I prefer to say nothing, except that I have often seen them in houses and in ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... This quaint and gaudy spectacle so wrought upon the rejoicing people, that their acclamations utterly smothered the small voice of the child whose business it was to explain the thing in eulogistic rhymes. But Tom Canty was not sorry; for this loyal uproar was sweeter music to him than any poetry, no matter ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the parched pilgrim's On Arab sands the false mirage, which offers A lucid lake to his eluded thirst, Are gone. Around me are the stars and waters— Worlds mirrored in the Ocean, goodlier sight[ee] Than torches glared back by a gaudy glass; 70 And the great Element, which is to space What Ocean is to Earth, spreads its blue depths, Softened with the first breathings of the spring; The high Moon sails upon her beauteous way, Serenely smoothing o'er the lofty walls Of those tall piles and sea-girt palaces,[ef] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... future perils, This little, little ring. [SAV. makes awkward gesture of refusal. Angry murmurs from the crowd. Cries of 'Take thou the ring!' 'Churl!' 'Put it on!' etc. Enter the Borgias' FOOL and stands unnoticed on fringe of crowd.] I hoped you 'ld like it— Neat but not gaudy. Is my taste at fault? I'd so look'd forward to— [Sob.] No, I'm not crying, But just a little hurt. [Hardly a dry eye in the crowd. Also swayings and snarlings indicative that SAV.'s life is again not worth a moment's ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

... strangers. Two of the youngest and most attractive of these ladies advanced to within twenty yards, and received with much apparent delight, and a great deal of capering and dancing about on the sand, some strips of a gaudy handkerchief conveyed to them by a lad decorated with streamers of pandanus leaf at the elbows and wrists—evidently the Adonis of the party. Some of the men had formerly been off to the ship, and one or two carried axes of the ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... walk stands the jackdaw, looking rather a funereal object in his black suit, on this gaudy-colored day; his gray head very much on one side, his round, sly eyes turned upward in dishonest meditation. A worse bird than Jacky does not hop. His life is one long course of larceny, and I know that ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... him made so wretched, scorn'd a Thing. How little cause has mankind to be proud Of Noble Birth, the Idol of the Crowd! Have I abroad in Battels Honour won To be at home dishonourably undone? Mark'd with a Star and Garter, and made fine With all those gaudy Trifles once call'd mine, Your Hobby-Horses [1] and your Joys of State, And now become the Object of your Hate; But, d———'ee, Sir, I'll be Legitimate. I was your Darling, but against your Will, And know that I will be the Peoples still; And when you're dead, I and my Friends, ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... intimacy had been established between them. Varney was formal and distant to Ardworth, and Ardworth felt a repugnance to Varney. With the instinct of sound, sterling, weighty natures, he detected at once, and disliked heartily, that something of gaudy, false, exaggerated, and hollow which pervaded Gabriel Varney's talk and manner,—even the trick of his walk and the cut of his dress. And Ardworth wanted that boyish and beautiful luxuriance of character which belonged to Percival St. John, easy to please and to be pleased, and expanding ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the dance. The musician sat high and solitary upon two starch-boxes, fiddle on knee, staring and waiting. Half the floor was bare; on the other half the revellers were densely clotted. At the crowd's outer rim the young horsemen, flushed and swaying, retained their gaudy dance partners strongly by the waist, to be ready when the music should resume. "What is it?" they asked. "Who is it?" And they looked in across heads and shoulders, inattentive to the caresses which ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... every actor in the pageant to a bloody grave, we can scarcely believe that it is a scene of joy and festivity that we are witnessing. The angel of death seems to hover over them; there is something dreadful in their rejoicing; their gaudy robes, their mantles, their vases, their fringes of gold, assume the sable hue of the grave; and, instead of a baptismal train, it seems like a funeral procession ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... of the morning, or the beams of the morning star turned to human flesh. It was the self-possession of this happy mind, the purity of this virgin body, she would fain have perturbed, as a pledge to herself of her own gaudy claim to supremacy. King Theseus, as she knew, had had at least two earlier loves; for once she would be a first love; felt at moments that with this one passion once indulged, it might be happiness thereafter to remain chaste for ever. And then, by accident, yet surely reading indifference ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... book is so stupid. I think novels are stupid nowadays; the heroes are so gaudy, and the heroines have not a spark of spirit. You may talk to me instead, if you like. What have you been ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... embrace thy king; And, as gross vapours perish by the sun, Even so let hatred with thy sovereign's smile: Live thou with me as my companion. Lan. This salutation overjoys my heart. K. Edw. Warwick shall be my chiefest counsellor: These silver hairs will more adorn my court Than gaudy silks or rich embroidery. Chide me, sweet Warwick, if I go astray. War. Slay me, my lord, when I offend your grace. K. Edw. In solemn triumphs and in public shows Pembroke shall bear the sword ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... wonderful Gulf Stream, once a myth, still a mystery, the strange current of human existence bears each and all of us with a strong, steady sweep from the tropic lands of sunny childhood, enameled with verdure and gaudy with bloom, through the temperate regions of manhood and womanhood, fruitful or fruitless as the case may be; on to the often frigid, lonely shores of old age, snow-crowned and ice-veined; and individual ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... of the room. The rest looked too, and laughed. Turning, I saw that the plain-faced woman had unwound her comforter, and now I could see, hanging low on her chest, an immense lump wrapped in clean white linen and bound up with a gaudy yellow handkerchief. It ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? —That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line— Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... boy the chain was worthless. But Arturo was desperate. He knew better than to go to Manuel. Manuel would have spent the twenty-five cents long ago, and Arturo pleaded with the grocer. The grocer's wife was in and out, looking after her romping children. She held the worthless, gaudy chain before her black-eyed baby, who clutched it and laughed. The mother laughed, too. Her husband laughed. The baby kept the ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford

... With its roses, and broad arched windows, its bell-turret, and roofs of slate, it looked as though painted in sepia against the blue of the sky. He fixed his eyes at last on the sombre depths of the Rue Montorgueil, where fragments of gaudy sign boards showed conspicuously, and on the corner of the Rue Montmartre, where there were balconies gleaming with letters of gold. And when he again glanced at the cross-roads, his gaze was solicited by other sign boards, on which such inscriptions as "Druggist and ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... the count standing before some copies of Albano and Fattore that had been passed off to the banker as originals; but which, mere copies as they were, seemed to feel their degradation in being brought into juxtaposition with the gaudy colors that covered the ceiling. The count turned round as he heard the entrance of Danglars into the room. With a slight inclination of the head, Danglars signed to the count to be seated, pointing significantly to a gilded arm-chair, covered with white satin embroidered with gold. The ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... congregate beneath detached masses and loose stones. In these fervid and fecund waters life is real, life is earnest. Here, are elaborately armoured crayfish (PALINURUS ORNATUS), upon which the most gaudy colours are lavished; grotesque crabs, fish brilliant in hue as humming-birds. Life, darting and dashing, active and alert, crawling and slithering, slow and stationary, swarms ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... sought eventually to cover up the unfortunate escapade. He would hand you English letters—and Scotch ones too!—with an air of covert insolence that was the joy of half the village. And on Sundays he was to be seen, garbed in knickerbockers, gaudy stockings, and sometimes high, yellowish spats, walking with his peasant girl along the very road his more spirited forbear ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... afar at these and a hundred similar things, lo! there came by us a gaudy, strapping quean of arrogant mien, and after whom a hundred eyes were turned; some made obeisance, as if in worship of her, a few put something in her hand. I could not make out what she was, and so I enquired. "Oh," said my friend, "she is one whose entire dowry is on show, and yet ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... of this gaudy, pink concern. It's so brutally big. It can't live, you know, without sucking the life out of the little booksellers. They mayn't have made a great thing out of it, but they were happy enough before we ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... passed into other rooms these objects were taking different positions; but from every window there were beauties to be seen. The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune of its proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of splendour, and more real elegance, than the furniture ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... hearers the importance of bright colours and flowers instead of the ordinary habiliments and accoutrements of woe. For when a soul is on its way to paradise, he said, we should be glad. The Yokohama cortege was headed by men bearing banners; then came girls all in white, riding in rickshaws; then the gaudy hearse; then priests in rickshaws; and finally the relations and friends. The effect conveyed was not one of melancholy; but even if every one had been in black, impressiveness would have been wanting, for no one can ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... she might with her busy needle, the day was drearily long; and few genuine cuckoo-carols have been listened to with such grateful rejoicing as greeted those metallic gutturals that once in every sixty minutes issued from the throat of the gaudy automaton caged ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... one could have designed so delicate and intricate a pattern. If it was cloudy, still, glancing over the cornfields, just as you turned partly round to look, there seemed a brilliant streak of sunshine across them. This was a broad band of charlock: its light yellow is so gaudy and glaring in the mass that as it first catches the eye it seems as if the land were lit up by the sun. After it the buttercups appear of a quiet colour, like dead gold ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... about the race Porter's horse Lauzanne was in, but had hesitated for fear he should say something which might give rise to a suspicion of his errand. He heard the rolling thunder of hoof beats in the air. From where he stood, over the heads of many people he could see gaudy colored silk jackets coming swiftly up the broad straight boulevard of the race course; even as he looked they passed by with a peculiar bobbing up-and-down motion. The effect was grotesque, for he could not see the horses, could not see the motive power ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... ground with a thick carpet of palm-leaves. Ere long, a cavalcade of between thirty and forty amazons - they all rode astride - came racing up the valley at full speed, their merry shouts proclaiming their approach. Gaudy strips of MARO were loosely folded around their legs for skirts. Their pretty little straw hats trimmed with ribbons, or their uncovered heads with their long hair streaming in the wind, confined only by a wreath of fresh orange flowers, added to their irresistible charm. Certainly, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... quitted it, leaving behind him very beautiful studies strangely undervalued, and sold for little. The fact is, he was too true to the solemnity and sobriety of nature to please a public led away by gaudy display and meretricious colouring. Yet was he a man of more genius—in landscape—than any nine out of ten of our best artists that have, these last ten years, attempted to show nature or art upon our academical walls. Poor Fearnley! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... this the voice of truth and of reason would be drowned, and, with both of them on his side, he who opposed it would make many enemies and few converts—nay, I am apt to think that some of these, if he made any, would say to him, as soon as the gaudy visions of error were dispelled, and till they were accustomed to the simplicity of truth, "Pol me occidistis." Prudence forbids me, therefore, to write as I think to the world, whilst friendship ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke

... greasy jackets, the firemen, the stage manager strutting about with his hat on his head, the supernumeraries sitting among the hanging back-scenes, the ropes and pulleys, the heterogeneous collection of absurdities, shabby, dirty, hideous, and gaudy, was something so altogether different from the stage seen over the footlights, that Lucien's astonishment knew no bounds. The curtain was just about to fall on a good old-fashioned melodrama entitled Bertram, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... amazed at these manners. After a while he stepped quietly into the chart-room, and opened his International Signal Code-book at the plate where the flags of all the nations are correctly figured in gaudy rows. He ran his finger over them, and when he came to Siam he contemplated with great attention the red field and the white elephant. Nothing could be more simple; but to make sure he brought the book out on the bridge for the purpose of comparing the coloured drawing with the real thing at the ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... may be a common experience—to find S. Mark's, as seen for the first time, especially on a Sunday or fete day, when the vast red and green and white flags are streaming before it, a little garish, a little gaudy; too like a coloured photograph; not what one thinks a cathedral ought to be. Should it have all these hues? one asks oneself, and replies no. But the saint does not long permit this scepticism: after a while he sees that the doubter drifts into his vestibule, to be rather taken by the novelty ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... I will no longer attend the sale of Malvolio's busts and statues, and gaudy books. I will fly to ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... white people put an exorbitant price on the flour and trinkets they give in exchange for the Indians' work, the latter ask, when selling for money, what seems more than its full value; but many who travel that way, provided with cheap trinkets and gaudy ribbons, ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... beneath; but it is at least a harmonious desolation. There are no wire-fenced walks among the ruins, no feeding-booths and cheap reconstructions of draw-bridges and police-notices at every corner; no gaudy women scribbling to their friends in the "Residenzstadt" post cards illustrative of the "Burgruine," while their husbands perspire over mastodontic beer-jugs. There is ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... sun shining on objects quite new, and (although you have made the voyage a dozen times,) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you occupy a very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red "percale;" the windows are smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins; there are little mean strips of carpet about the tiled floor of the room, and yet all seems as gay and as comfortable as may be—the sun shines brighter than you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the palm and cocoa-tree, the rice-field, the tank, the huge trees, older than the Mogul Empire, under which the village crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the peasant's hut, the rich tracery of the mosque where the Imam prays with his face to Mecca, the drums, the banners and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the air, the graceful maiden with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the riverside, the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the turbans and the flowing robes, the spears and silver maces, the elephants with their canopies ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... fitted to them, and all these lattices were closed. Against the walls, which were as dark in colour as the mashrebeeyeh work, there were a number of carved brackets, on which were placed various extremely common things—cheap and gaudy vases from Naples and Paris, two more Swiss cuckoo-clocks, a third clock with a blue and white china face—and a back that looked as if were made of brass, a musical-box, and a grotesque monster, like a dragon with ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... liberated Africans of the highest grade, who occupy two-story stone houses enclosed all around by spacious piazzas, the rooms furnished with gaudy richness; and the whole their own property, being built from the proceeds of their ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... of a Scotch tour nowadays is to watch the pipers playing and dancing on the quays where the steamers touch. Their gay tartan attire and quaint instruments, with their gaudy bags and fringes, make a bright note of colour, and, judging by the money collected, bagpiping must be a fairly ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... are azure with bluebells, among which the brake is thrusting itself up; others, again, are red with ragged robins, and the fields adjacent fill the eye with the gaudy glare of yellow charlock. The note of the cuckoo sounds above the rushing of the train, and the larks may be seen, if not heard, rising high over the wheat. Some birds, indeed, find the bushes by the railway the quietest place in which to build ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... pine-trees, a rudely constructed, but roomy block-house. In front of the building, and between two massive perpendicular beams, connected by cross-bars, swung a large board, upon which was to be distinguished a grotesque figure, painted in gaudy colours, and whose diadem of feathers, tomahawk, scalping-knife, and wampum, denoted the Indian chief. Beneath this sign a row of hieroglyphical-looking characters informed the passer-by that he could here find "Entertainment for man and beast." On that side of the house, or rather ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... days, To turn a willing world from righteous ways! Well, Heydegger, dost thou thy master serve; Well has he seen his servant should not starve, Thou to his name hast splendid temples raised In various forms of worship seen him prais'd, Gaudy devotion, like a Roman, shown, And sung sweet anthems in a tongue unknown. Inferior offerings to thy god of vice Are duly paid, in fiddles, cards, and dice; Thy sacrifice supreme, an hundred maids! That solemn rite ...
— English Satires • Various

... wearing suits with a brightly colored metallic surface. The modern anodized aluminium coatings glisten and sparkle with an effect like he describes. If these are space-suits, there is a good reason for making them gaudy. If they were worn in space while working on and around a ship, they should be as bright and eye-catching as possible, in the case the man became detached and floated away. He would be quite visible against the blackness ...
— The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel • Arthur W. Orton

... known as subscription books, as a rule, though some valid exceptions exist. Most of such books are profusely illustrated and in gaudy bindings, gotten up to dazzle the eye. If works of merit, it is better to wait for them, than to subscribe for an unfinished work, which perhaps may ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... frowned at him as she answered. "Can't you look at me, and see? Starving!" She eyed his gaudy watch and chain greedily. "Money don't seem to be scarce with you. Have you made ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... with gaudy pride, By flowery vale and mountain side, And shepherds waste the sunny hours By cooling streams, and bushy bowers; While I, a victim to despair, Avoid the sun's offensive glare, And in sequester'd wilds deplore The perjured vows ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... gowns. The new, exaggerated toilettes of the actresses, their gait, even the spurious elegance of their speech, which seemed to her of the highest distinction, and with it all the tawdry magnificence of the gilding and the lights, the gaudy placard at the door, the long line of carriages, and all the somewhat unwholesome excitement that springs up about a popular play; that was what she loved, that was what ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... followed by a shamed-looking dog, might have been seen creeping stealthily from the boat-house at the "Swan" towards the railway station, dressed in the following neither neat nor gaudy costume: ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... during our acquaintance stooped to a slouch hat. This typical head gear of the West had no attraction for him. The formal black or brown derby for winter and the seasonable straw hat for summer seemed necessary to tone down the frivolity of his neckties, which were chosen with a cowboy's gaudy taste. To the day of his death Field delighted to present neckties, generally of the made-up variety, to his friends, which, it is needless to say, they never failed to accept and seldom wore. Often in the afternoon as it neared two o'clock he ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... two he resignedly took his belongings, and dropping into the wet and dirty boat with Bauda, he lifted an umbrella over his gaudy cap and disappeared ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... caught up a gaudy jug, and without further words, went out. When he had gone, the Princess rose and, taking the knife he had used to cut the bread and ham, she kissed the handle on the place where his fingers had grasped it. "You're a very silly girl, Virginia, my dear," she said. "But ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson

... young squaw promenading, who believed herself to be one of the sneezer-chubco-mico's last wives. The man's white and original wife and daughters made an excuse to walk by, to have a look at the aboriginal interloper. The latter had just received from my landlord a present of a pair of gaudy bracelets, for which he had paid eighteen dollars at another sneezer's,—bracelets worth about four. I was told how the man came by this red mate of his. He had taken a young chiefs wife in her husband's ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... in the shack were a source of never-ending pride and pleasure to him. Often when at work he found himself proudly comparing his place with its newly added prettiness with the more gaudy ornaments of Mrs. Sharp's or even with Gertie's more pretentious abode. And it was not altogether the pride of ownership that made them ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett

... social indiscretions and innumerable boyish jokes—and I saw nothing left of his former self, but the old tendency to vulgar smartness in his dress. The man was a wreck; but his clothes and his jewellery—in cruel mockery of the change in him—were as gay and as gaudy as ever. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... They looked out and saw the giant coming with the white feather in his hair, for he had taken the feather and put it in his own hair. They thought he was the brave warrior of whom they had heard so much. The elder sister had made her lodge look very gaudy, and had dressed herself in all her beads and quills. The younger sister had left her tent just as it was, and was dressed neatly. When the giant came along, he chose the elder sister. She would have nothing to do with the dog, but the younger sister felt sorry for it and let it ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister

... but if they are not told exactly what colors to use they employ every shade, color and tint they can secure. The Basey mats are distinguished by the multitude of colors used. In general it may be stated that the chief criticism of this product is the gaudy effect produced by the colors used. In some cases the colors are well toned and harmoniously combined, but the majority of the mats produced contain vivid colors which are not all harmonious. Through the schools, efforts have been ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller

... speak to him of her happiness, of Zanoni!—how gladly show to him her child! Poor Clarence! she had forgotten him till now, as she had all the fever of her earlier life,—its dreams, its vanities, its poor excitement, the lamps of the gaudy theatre, the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... to the number of thirty or more. The other half was used as a dining and living room. A long table, spread with oilcloth, extended down the center, with a row of chairs on either side. The walls were decorated with gaudy lithographs, circus posters and colored sheets taken from the Sunday papers that occasionally drifted out that way. On a side table were a number of well-thumbed magazines that Mrs. Melton had sent down for the men to read in their rare ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... the soul of the earth itself exhaled to the amorous air. Behind an alabaster shrine she lighted a holy-taper, slowly to waste and pale in the spreading day. We went to the window, where among the ivy-nooks day's life was just astir with gaudy wings. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... in the ordinary sense, princely. His whole being seemed to have crystallized itself into an external splendor, wherewith he glittered in the eyes of the world, and had no other life than upon this gaudy surface. He had married a lovely woman, whose nature was deeper than his own. But his affection for her, though it showed largely, was superficial, like all his other manifestations and developments; ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... with their young leaves and their blossoms, their sunshine and their dew, their song of the chaffinch and their rapturous music of the thrush. Appreciation is heightened by contrast; and the buttercup—England's gift to her little children—is pronounced far brighter than the "gaudy melon-flower" which the exiled Englishman has at ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... omission proceeded from forgetfulness. Consequently, I sent the tirewoman, in the Queen's hearing, to order the jewels to be brought in. Smilingly, Her Majesty replied, 'No, no! I have not forgotten these gaudy things; but I do not intend that the lustre of my eyes should be outshone by the one, or the whiteness of my teeth by the other; however, as you wish art to eclipse nature, I'll wear them to satisfy ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... and Holofernes" is announced by a great glaring, painted cloth, while the platform is occupied by a gentleman in Roman armor and a lady in Eastern attire, who are no doubt the principal characters of the play. A gaudy Harlequin and his brother Scaramouch invite the attention of the passers-by. In another booth rope-dancing of men and women is offered to the less tragically minded, and in yet another the world-renowned Faux displays the announcement of his conjuring marvels. A peep-show of the siege of Gibraltar ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy









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