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More "Genteel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they expressed themselves. The stiffness of Puritanism was pretty well relaxed when a Magazine conducted by clergymen could say that "The child,"—meaning the new periodical,—"shall not be destitute of the manners of a gentleman, nor a stranger to genteel amusements. He shall attend Theatres, Museums, Balls, and whatever polite diversions the town shall furnish." The reader of the "Anthology" will find for his reward an improving discourse on "Ambition," and a commendable schoolboy's "theme" on "Inebriation." ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... were not uttered by Tom, but by rather a dandified-looking young man, who came up limping. He was from Boston, and gave his name as Lawrence Peabody. He had always lived in Boston, where he had been employed in various genteel avocations; but in an evil hour he had been lured from his comfortable home by the seductive cry of gold, and, laying down his yardstick, had set out for California across the plains. He was a slender young man, with limbs better fitted for dancing than for tramping across ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... almost its solid membership, were a motley crew. Every negro type was there, from the genteel butler to the clodhopper from the cotton and rice fields. Some had on second-hand seedy frock-coats their old master had given them before the war, glossy and threadbare. Old stovepipe hats, of every style in vogue since Noah came out of the ark, were ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... we have loads of such 'strong stuff' and it is nothing; on the other side was the still more dreadful fall into sentimentality, the tear of conscious tenderness, the redeeming glimpse of 'better things' in Alf or Emmy that could at one stroke have converted their reality into a genteel masquerade. The perfection of Alf and Emmy is that at no point does a 'nature's gentleman' or a 'nature's lady' show through and demand our refined sympathy. It is only by comparison with this supreme conversation that the affair of Keith ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... mugwort planted among the hemp, which grows straight without need of twisting, and of the sand mixed with the mud, which gets black without need of dyeing,[177] and it is his having been bound to you from a boy that has made him so genteel and clever. Please always be a kind master to him." Yes, those are the things you have said of you when Hana is the speaker. As for my old vixen, she wouldn't let as much fall from her mug in the course of a century, ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... at the natural period. "And even then not a girl," she said to herself in her sensible way, as she carried this habitual thread of thought with her along the street, past the little front gardens, where there were so many mothers with their children. On the other side of the way the genteel houses frowned darkly with their staircase windows upon the humility of Grove Street; and Mrs Morgan began to think within herself of the Miss Hemmings and other spinsters, and how they got along upon this path of life, which, after all, is never lightsome ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... that would be more than an equivalent to a woman's love. In short, his very politeness, notwithstanding the advantages he must have had from his birth and education, appear to be constrained; and, with the most remarkable easy and genteel person, something, at times, seems to be behind in his manner that is too studiously kept in. Then, good-humoured as he is thought to be in the main to other people's servants, and this even to familiarity (although, as you have observed, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... voice wherein to speak of a happy marriage. Can you find among our genteel writers of this age, a figure more beautiful, tender, devoted, and in all good ways womanly than Sophia Western's? "Yes," you will say; "but the man must have been a brute who could give her to ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... busy lately in schemes for buying a velvet carpet for the new parlor that is to be, and the only points that have seemed to weigh in the council were that it was velvet, that it was cheaper than velvets usually are, and that it was a genteel pattern." ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... an amusing picture of the behaviour of gallants on the Elizabethan stage, in his "Cynthia's Revels." In this scene a child thus mimics the obtrusive beau: "Now, sir, suppose I am one of your genteel auditors, that am come in (having paid my money at the door, with much ado), and here I take my place, and sit downe. I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket, my light by me, and thus I begin. 'By this light, I wonder that any man is ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... years and still be young." But then came the thought: "'Tis harder for her to wait than it is for me to go. 'Tis mere selfishness. What can I do in the world? I have no interest in the game outside of her. No, Mart, the consumptive is right, 'tis up to you to slip away, genteel and quiet, so that your widow will not be troubled by ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... describe these innumerable and indistinguishable productions. And just as the old tunes were related to the motets and madrigals, so are these to the verse-anthems and glees of their time. These weak ditties, in the admired manner of Lord Mornington, were typically performed by the genteel pupils of the local musician, who, gathered round him beneath the laughing cherubs of the organ case, warbled by abundant candlelight to their respectful audience with a graceful execution that rivalled the weekday performances of Celia's Arbour and the Spotted Snakes. ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... banquette, was not the difficulty of climbing up, for at all the diligence offices they have convenient step ladders for the use of the passengers in getting up and down. The real reason was, she thought it was not genteel to ride there. And in fact it is not genteel. There is no part of the diligence where people who attach much importance to the fashion of the thing are willing to go, except ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... of my own as to a genteel way of gittin' him interested in this honor that we are about to bestow. Has any ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... comfortably, and not only provide for the Necessaries of Life, but likewise for those that are to succeed him; {Provisions very cheap.} Provisions being very plentiful, and of good Variety, to accommodate genteel House-keeping; and the neighbouring Indians are friendly, and in many Cases serviceable to us, in making us Wares to catch Fish in, for a small matter, which proves of great Advantage to large Families, because those Engines take great Quantities of many Sorts of Fish, that ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... affairs began the coats, which—as it is a great mistake to wear too many coats—never exceeded six. The first used generally to be a pretty old coat that had lived to moralise over the mutability of human affairs—thread-bare—napless—and what ignorant people might have called shabby-genteel. It was followed by a plain, sensible, honest, unpretending, commonplace, everyday sort of a coat—and not, perhaps, of the very best merino. Over it was drawn, with some little difficulty, what had, in its prime of life, attracted universal admiration in Princes ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... with comfort instead of stucco, and moderately thick walls instead of porches and pilasters. Most of their time is necessarily passed at home, but they undergo all manner of house discomfort resulting from this preference of cheap finery over solid structure, rather than forego their "genteel locality" and stereotyped ornamentation. A family of daughters on the one side, diligent over the "Battle of Prague;" a nursery full of crying babies on the other; more Battles of Prague opposite, diversified by a future ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... of sudden contrition for such extravagance, the passage or gutter contracts itself to its very narrowest and, diving under a printing-office shows itself in Shoe Lane. The houses in these trenches were not by any means of the worst kind. In the aforesaid expansion they were even genteel, or at any rate aspired to be so, and each had its own brass knocker and kept its front-door shut with decent sobriety and reticence. On the top floor of one of these tenements lodged Jean Caillaud and Pauline. They had three rooms between them; one was Jean's ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... of peace that followed, induced Mr Sparks to believe that his tormentors had left him, he therefore dismissed them from his mind, and gave himself entirely to business. Arrived at Conway street, he found that it was one of those semi-genteel streets in the immediate neighbourhood of Kensington Gardens, wherein dwell thriving tradespeople who know themselves to be rising in the world, and unfortunate members of the "upper ten," who know that they ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... or attempts of these modern tragedians, among which the 'Sofonisba' of Trissino (1515) was the most celebrated, belong in the history of literature. The same may be said of genteel comedy, modelled on Plautus and Terence. Even Ariosto could do nothing of the first order in this style. On the other hand, popular prose-comedy, as treated by Machiavelli, Bibbiena, and Aretino, might have had a future, if its matter ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the "amen corner" of the church sat Brother Eyer, Who persisted every Sabbath-day in singing with the choir; He was poor but genteel-looking, and his heart as snow was white, And his old face beamed with sweetness when he sang ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... is perhaps the most genteel method of reward. It entails little work, gives the beneficiary a certain distinction and pays ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... intelligent young officer. I had the good fortune to be admitted to the Court, and there I had the pleasure of seeing Mdlle. Chitroff dancing, and also Mdlle. Sievers, now Princesss, whom I saw again at Dresden four years ago with her daughter, an extremely genteel young princess. I was enchanted with Mdlle. Sievers, and felt quite in love with her; but as we were never introduced I had no opportunity of declaring my passion. Putini, the castrato, was high in her favour, as indeed he deserved to be, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... tower were the gardens of the White Conduit House, a Cockney Elysium, where Goldsmith used to figure in the humbler days of his fortune. In the first edition of his Essays he speaks of a stroll in these gardens, where he at that time, no doubt, thought himself in perfectly genteel society. After his rise in the world, however, he became too knowing to speak of such plebeian haunts. In a new edition of his Essays, therefore, the White Conduit House and its garden disappears, and he speaks of "a stroll in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... Ernest bought the tickets like a gentleman should (it says in the etiquette book), and I couldn't fight with him there and then,—you're always telling me to be more genteel." ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... English and French dances, after the newest and politest manner practiced in London, Dublin, and Paris, and to give to young ladies, gentlemen, and children, the most graceful carriage in dancing and genteel behaviour in company that can possibly be given ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... little person was the rancher's wife who brought fresh eggs and vegetables to us. She wore scant pajamas instead of skirts, because she thought it "more genteel," she explained. When a favorite horse or cow died, she carefully preserved the skull and other portions of the ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... worse still, as he thought, there was that mad son of his old friend Moggs, the bootmaker, Ontario Moggs as he had been christened by a Canadian godfather, with whom Polly had condescended already to hold something of a flirtation. He could not advertise for a genteel ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... fellow-prisoners, as well as to the British. Andrews wrote a journal which was afterwards published. 'The Seigneurs,' he says, 'received remittances from their friends or had money of their own, and were able to support themselves in a genteel manner.' They were allowed to have plays with a stage and scenery once a month, and also 'had their schools for teaching the arts and sciences, dancing, fencing, and fiddling.' He criticises them severely: 'They drink, sing ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... several good lines altogether. But after a while the watery blue eyes of the good woman were languidly raised, an insipid smile spread over her red and white porcelain face, and in a voice which she strove to make as genteel as possible, she said to Beautiful Sara, "He sings very well. But I have heard far better singing in Holland. You are a stranger, and perhaps do not know that the choir-leader is from Worms, and that they will keep him here if he will be content with four hundred florins a year. He is ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... object of which remains constantly fixed in the mind, and will not admit of any partner with it. It was in the town of Newcastle, so famous for its coal-works, which our hero visited out of curiosity, appearing there undisguised and making a very genteel appearance, that he became enamoured with the daughter of Mr. Gray, an eminent surgeon there. This young lady had charms perhaps equal to any of her sex; and we might in that style, which one, who calls himself an author of the first rate, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... unspringing power. If he could but be the wind to shake these dry reeds of custom into a semblance of life!... One by one they passed him with an air of growing preoccupation ... each step was carrying them nearer to the day's pallid slavery, and an unconscious sense of their genteel serfdom seemed gradually to settle on them. There were no bent nor broken nor careworn toilers among this drab mass...the stamp of long service here was a withered, soul-quenched gentility that came of accepting life instead of ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... pale, also, under her blue-ribboned bonnet. She courtesied on trembling knees, and spoke like a scared child, in spite of her training and genteel deportment. "Can I see your sister?" she said, in a half-whisper, and she did not raise her ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... young man, who was never regardless of the advantages of a genteel dress, his chest had arrived bringing his clothing. He was thus able to present himself before the young lady in attractive costume. And his address was always that of an accomplished gentleman. As we have mentioned, he was ever in his ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... was radiant for a moment, but the glow faded just as quickly as she said, "I forgot—mother put me inside, and maybe she'd want me to be there when I got to aunt Mirandy's. Maybe I'd be more genteel inside, and then I wouldn't have to be jumped down and my clothes fly up, but could open the door and step down like a lady passenger. Would you please stop a minute, Mr. ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... from a book of mine which I have received (and have preserved) with great pleasure. Will you accept from me, in remembrance of it, this little book? I believe it to be true, though it may be sometimes not as genteel as history ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... Marygold stopped short, it would not do, to confess to her genteel friends, that she had formerly been acquainted with the disreputable stranger. They did not heed her embarrassment, however, for every one, now that the silence was broken, was anxious to speak; all but the Mimosa, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... hopes to steal a Spark 'mongst her Admirers; I have five hundred Pounds in the fourteen per Cent, a Gentlewoman's Fortune in past Ages, but now 'twon't buy a Haberdasher of small Ware. Sir Harry offers me a genteel Settlement; Time was, when a kept Madam elbow'd the whole Drawing-Room; but now we have a virtuous Court agen, a Lord's Mistress is almost as despicable as a Citizen's Wife.—Suppose I trick the Collonel into ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... was washed, his hair curled, his hat cocked, and he was dressed in a nice suit of clothes, he was as handsome and genteel as any young man who visited at Mr. Fitzwarren's; so that Miss Alice, who had once been so kind to him, and thought of him with pity, now looked upon him as fit to be her sweetheart; and the more so, no doubt, because Whittington was now always thinking what he could do to oblige ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... horse-racing. Joseph was soon drest in the plainest dress he could find, which was a blue coat and breeches, with a gold edging, and a red waistcoat with the same: and as this suit, which was rather too large for the squire, exactly fitted him, so he became it so well, and looked so genteel, that no person would have doubted its being as well adapted to his quality as his shape; nor have suspected, as one might, when my Lord ——, or Sir ——, or Mr ——, appear in lace or embroidery, that the taylor's man wore those ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... as a kind of indemnity. About the same time he also bought with his Indian wealth the place of an officer in the Swiss Guard of Monsieur, the present Louis XVIII. Being refused admittance into any genteel societies, he resorted with Barras and other disgraced nobles to gambling-houses, and he even kept to himself when the Revolution took place. He had at the same time, and for a certain interest, advanced Madame d'Estainville money to establish her famous, or rather infamous, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Mrs. Dawkins. "I really wonder at Mr. Danforth's bad taste. There are many boys of genteel family, who would have been glad of the chance. This boy is a low ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... more—the worst of a pipe is that one can't smoke and talk at the same time. Mary, my girl, take your eyes off the Dominie's nose, and hand me that bottle of stuff. What, glass to mix it in; that's more genteel than we are on board, Tom." Tom filled a rummer of grog, took half off at a huge sip, and put it down on the table. "Will you do as we do, sir?" said he, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... pealing of the high organ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high, genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall), and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... and an elderly lady,' said Mr. Grewgious, 'wish to find a genteel lodging for a month or so. Have ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... mulatto daughter, whose features greatly resembled his; and she said there was good reason for it. I used to imagine Mrs. Fitzgerald thought so too; for she always seemed to owe this handsome Nelly a grudge. Mr. Fitzgerald had a body-servant named Jim, who was so genteel that I always called him 'Dandy Jim o' Caroline.' Jim and Nelly were in love with each other; but their master, for reasons of his own, forbade their ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... recked not of such matters. They were surrounded by the county. On every side the fields and moors of Staffordshire, intersected by roads and lanes, railways, watercourses and telegraph-lines, patterned by hedges, ornamented and made respectable by halls and genteel parks, enlivened by villages at the intersections, and warmly surveyed by the sun, spread out undulating. And trains were rushing round curves in deep cuttings, and carts and waggons trotting and jingling on the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... a subdued but perceptible flutter among the occupants of the resort. These were, at the moment, four respectable-looking men in blouses, an old gentleman in the last stage of genteel rustiness, and a couple of camelots in the second stage of drunkenness,—that of undying friendship. The four, who appeared to be worthy tradesmen of the neighborhood, occupied a far table in the small and time-begrimed ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... elderly man of shabby-genteel appearance and polite address. Miles did not quite like the look of him. In the circumstances, however, and with a strangely desolate feeling of loneliness creeping over him, he did not see his way to ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... taste and erudition, who saw him in England, we have had a description of Mr. Dwyer. He says that nature has been uncommonly bountiful to this actor. That he is very handsome, has a fine person, and might, in lively, bustling, genteel comedy, be as great as any man, if his industry were equal ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... despise one another: if there were the concert among them which there is among foreign mendicants, a man who admitted one to a conference would be plagued to death. I once gave something to a very genteel French applicant, who overtook me in the street, at my own door, saying he had picked up my handkerchief: whether he picked it up in my pocket for an introduction, I know not. {9} But that day week came another Frenchman to my house, and ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... leader leaned across the desk, and his genteel manner slipped from him like a discarded mask. His ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... course she will," interrupted the elder lady; "people of Mrs. Anderton's class always think it is more genteel to have a smattering of foreign languages than to know their own mother tongue. We may get another German—and ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... their faces, or even perhaps—for the statement of Sillar is not absolute—say cutting things of his acquaintances behind their back. At the church door, between sermons, he would parade his religious views amid hisses. These details stamp the man. He had no genteel timidities in the conduct of his life. He loved to force his personality upon the world. He would please himself, and shine. Had he lived in the Paris of 1830, and joined his lot with the Romantics, we can conceive him writing Jehan for Jean, swaggering in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... recollect, courteously beckon an offender to approach him, doffing his hat the while as if speaking to the quarter-deck; and then, begging the trembling youngster's pardon for detaining him, would proceed to inform him in the "politest and most genteel manner in the world" that he was "the d—-d son of a sea cook,"—subsequently rattaning him furiously, amidst a plethora of expletives before which the worst ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... into conversation with Shoni, endeavouring to express himself in his mother-tongue, but with that hesitation and indistinctness common to the dwellers in the counties bordering upon England, and to the "would-be genteel" of too many other parts of Wales, who, perfectly unconscious of the beauty of their own language, and ignorant of its literature, affect English manners and customs, and often pretend that English is more familiar to them than Welsh, a fatuous course of conduct ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... part,' said Mary, 'I would rather see her a good cook in a lady's kitchen, if it came to that, than leading a foolish life at some so-called genteel occupation.' ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... something of the old Arcadian life, the secure freedom of the antique age, in their way of surrendering their lips to strangers, as if there were no evil or impurity in the world. As for the young men, they were chiefly specimens of the vulgar sediment of London life, often shabbily genteel, rowdyish, pale, wearing the unbrushed coat, unshifted linen, and unwashed faces of yesterday, as well as the haggardness of last night's jollity in a gin-shop. Gathering their character from these tokens, I wondered whether there were any reasonable prospect of their fair partners ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... known to the best circles in this kingdom, as in that of Ireland, under the name of Roaring Harry Barry. He was bred like many other young sons of genteel families to the profession of the law, being articled to a celebrated attorney of Sackville Street in the city of Dublin; and, from his great genius and aptitude for learning, there is no doubt he would have made an eminent figure in his profession, had not his social ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... there! It's really shameful, I declare;— To follow servant-girls, when they Might have the most genteel ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... his whole kith and kin; many disagreeable circumstances in regimental life; Digby sells out; love in a cottage; execution in ditto. Digby had been much applauded as an amateur actor; thinks of the stage; genteel comedy—a gentlemanlike profession. Tries in a provincial town, under another name; unhappily succeeds; life of an actor; hand-to-mouth life; illness; chest affected; Digby's voice becomes hoarse and feeble; not aware of it; attributes failing success to ignorant provincial public; appears ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... rhyme so nicely. Seems almost as though it was done a-purpose! Reminds me of piece day at school. There was a mighty pretty piece I learned called the 'Wreck of the Asperus.'" And she subsided into a genteel melancholy. ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... ye, Mrs. Jenny, I know you, and I know Mrs. Flauntit; but 'tis not Beauty or Wit that takes now-a-days; the Age is altered since I took upon me this genteel Occupation: but 'tis a fine Petticoat, right Points, and clean Garnitures, that does me Credit, and takes the Gallant, though on a stale Woman. And again, Mrs. Jenny, she's kept, and Men love as much for Malice, as for Lechery, as they call it. Oh, 'tis a great Mover to Joy, as they say, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... together and began to make medicine—how to get up some lawful, genteel swindle which we might work in a quiet way so as not to excite the stupidity of the police or the cupidity of the larger corporations. We had close upon $500 between us, and we pined to make it grow, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... this time, that if I moved into a more genteel locality I might get a better class of patients, and yet keep the best of those I now had. To do this it was necessary to pay my rent, and the more so because I was in a fair way to have no house at all over my head. But here fortune ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... in my own way; but, to please Lily, I learned to sit patiently watching the most tempting buttered crust on the ground under my nose, when she said, "Trust, Captain!" never dreaming of touching it till she gave the word of command, "Now it is paid for;" when I ate it in a genteel and deliberate manner. Having achieved such a conquest over myself, I thought my education was complete; but Lily had further refinements in store. She made me hold the piece of toast on my very nose while she counted ten, and ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... smart one: then he discarded the selling of tooth-brushes and perfumery, as unworthy of a gentleman of an ancient lineage: then he shut up the shop altogether, and only had a little surgery attended by a genteel young man: then he had a gig with a man to drive him; and, before her exit from this world, his poor old mother had the happiness of seeing from her bedroom window to which her chair was rolled, her beloved John step into a close carriage of his own, a one-horse carriage ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... esteem the ordinary servants on the plantation. She was constantly chiding her children for using their expressions, and tried to keep them in the house with white people as much as possible, that they might acquire good manners. It was quite a grief to her that Bacchus had not a more genteel dialect than the one he used. She had a great deal of family pride; there was a difference in her mind between family servants and those employed in field labor. For "the quality" she had the highest respect; for "poor white people" only a feeling of pity. She had some noble qualities, and some ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... if I had not recently returned from a voyage to sea. Upon being assured that such was the case, he remarked that he liked my appearance, and doubted not I was a smart, capable lad, who would be a valuable acquisition to the crew of a good ship. I was flattered and pleased with the conduct of this genteel looking stranger, convinced that he was a person of good judgment and nice discrimination. He further informed me, with a patronizing air, that he was the captain of a fine fast-sailing vessel, bound on a pleasant voyage, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... latter athletae, and were trained fighters, whose school was the palaestra. At first frequenting the same, they afterwards became divided between two institutions. Some of the harsher sports of the prize-fighters were not thought genteel for well-nurtured youths to indulge in. Among the simpler games were the ball, played in various ways, and the top, which was as popular with juveniles then as now. The sport called skaperda can be seen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... is a dinner of far less show, where nobody need to be afraid of what they are eating; and such a one will always be genteel and respectable. If a person can give his friend only a leg of mutton, there is nothing of which to be ashamed, provided it is good and well dressed. Nothing can be of greater importance to the mistress of a family, than the preservation of its health; but there ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... it is difficult to make a nice, genteel sitting-room out of an apartment of which the principal features are a sink and a big gas stove. The gas stove, of an obsolete pattern, was fed by a tiresome, shilling-in-the-slot arrangement. It had been the property of the people from whom the Buntings had taken over the lease ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... That is a current term of certain import along the railroad." She leaned to me; a glow emanated from her. "Tell me of yourself. You have red blood? Do you ever game? For if you are not afraid to test your luck and back it, there is money to be made very easily at Benton, and in a genteel way." She smiled bewitchingly. "Or are you a Quaker, to whom life ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... familiar, salute him, not by his name, Sir such a one, or so; but call him Ned, or Jack, etc. This will set off your estimation with great men; and if, though there be a dozen companies between you, 'tis the better, he call aloud to you, for that is most genteel, to know where he shall find you at two o'clock; tell him at such an ordinary, or such; and be sure to name those that are dearest, and whither none but your ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... a man of genteel appearance was passing along Beekman Street, he was attacked by a cow, and notwithstanding his efforts to avoid her, and the means he used to beat her off, we are sorry to say that he was so much injured as to be taken up dead. The ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... they both laughed. They had dined under the trees of an old manor house, built a century ago, and now converted into an inn, and they had enjoyed themselves because it seemed to them pleasingly paradoxical that they should find in a place seemingly so shabby-genteel a cuisine and service of such excellence. Neither of them had ever been there before, and neither of them knew that the reputation of this establishment was in its own way wide—and unsavory. They ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... all so clean and neat, Both decent and genteel, And then there's something in her gait Makes any ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... a young one. He is safer in every respect, "way-wise," seasoned, steady, and reliable. He and his owner are old friends and companions and can not part but with a pang of regret. A good horse, well cared for, should work cheerfully until he is thirty years of age; yet how few are able to perform genteel service after fifteen! It is a sad sight that of the high-mettled, noble animal, once the petted darling of wealth, caressed by ladies and children, and guarded so that even the winds of heaven might not visit him too roughly, fallen through the successive ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... slums and slums in Liverpool, as elsewhere, and Sparrow street, which Bet had left, seemed by contrast to Paradise Row, which she presently entered, a thoroughly respectable, indeed genteel, place of residence. Paradise Row was not very far from the river. It was entered by a court, court of not more than twenty feet square. Under one of the houses there was an archway, and it was only through this archway that any one could approach Paradise Row, This charming and ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... "Most genteel, your grace; most like our young lord, and about his age, and dressed in the deepest mourning, your grace; and most particular anxious ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... true, infallible, "solid" food of art, like heavenly manna in their mouths, and who therefore were able to say, "I have never erred." We poor earthly worms can get only through error to a knowledge of truth, which therefore we love passionately, like a conquered bride, and not with the genteel approval with which we look upon a spouse selected for us beforehand by the dear parents. At that time when I wrote my autobiography by Laube's desire, I had, it is true, finished my "Flying Dutchman" and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... shrugging up his shoulders still higher than on the former occasion; "but I will tell you; I think, on consideration, that it is quite right and proper; why not? Let any one pay a visit to my church, and look at her as she stands there, tan bonita, tan guapita—so well dressed and so genteel—with such pretty colours, such red and white, and he would scarcely ask me why Maria Santissima should not be adored. Moreover, Don Jorgito mio, this is a church matter and forms an important part ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... world. I always say that, with all my sorrows, no one ever was more blest in their children than poor little me. Richard, my eldest, is in a lawyer's office at Leeds. Kally is employed in the art department, just as a compliment to her relation, Mr. White. Quite genteel, superior work, though I must say he does not do as much for us as he might. Such a youth as my Alexis now was surely worthy of ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with a small open colonnade, which, though out of harmony, was still not inappropriate. The only thing jarring was a pretentious modern town-hall, in the style of one of our own vestry buildings, 'erected out of the rates,' and which must have cost a huge sum. It was of a genteel Italian aspect, so it is plain that French local administrators are, in matters of taste, pretty much as such folk are with us. One could have lingered long here, looking at this charming and graceful ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... not been gone more than a few minutes when another person approached the partially revived bonfire. It proved to be a well-known and respected widow of the neighbourhood, of a standing which can only be expressed by the word genteel. Her face, encompassed by the blackness of the receding heath, showed whitely, and without half-lights, like ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... his gratitude to his friend and patron for his nomination to a situation under government (which, had he been prudent, might have sufficed for genteel support), it is said that the royal personage condescended to observe, on the colonel's expatiating on the advantages of his office, that "now he was rich, he would so far impose upon his hospitality as to dine with him;" at the same time insisting on the repast being ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... minutes. A very French and festive scene it was; for the room was small, and twenty mortals were stowed therein. One fat lady sat in the fireplace, Papa Clomadoc leaned his heavy head upon the sideboard, and the plump shoulders of Madame F. were half out of the front window. 'But it was genteel. Oh! I assure ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... the whole of the day in their several occupations; he is a man of leisure, and must either remain alone or associate with other men of leisure; and who are the majority of men of leisure in the towns of the United States? Blacklegs of genteel exterior and fashionable appearance, with whom he associates, into whose snares he falls, and to whom he eventually loses property about which he is indifferent. To be an idle man when every body ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... as a Persian pattern is elegant; not like a rich "elegant" lady out for a morning call. I should rather call that genteel. ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... qualify yourself for some other kind of employment less magnificent, but still respectable, and even genteel enough. That of a nursery-governess, for instance; you are fond of children, and could teach them their letters. Or you could be companion to a lady; some simple-minded, old-fashioned dame who stays at home, and would not ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... at one end the appearance of a hard-worked house slipping into the river, and at the other of an idle, genteel place, half- cloaked with creepers at this time of the year, and having no visible connexion with flour. It had hips instead of gables, giving it a round- shouldered look, four chimneys with no smoke coming out of them, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... sang, his grey eyes gleamed fiercely under his bushy, hairy eyebrows, his pale face with its side-whiskers had a strange lueur, his long thin hands fluttered occasionally. He had become meagre in figure, his skimpy but genteel coat would be buttoned over his breast, as he recounted his dream-adventures, adventures that were half Edgar Allan Poe, half Andersen, with touches of Vathek and Lord Byron and George Macdonald: perhaps more than a ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... to his general popularity. There was no mill owner in the neighborhood more heartily detested by his workpeople; but as these did not mingle with the genteel classes of Marsden their opinion of Mr. Mulready went for nothing. The mill owner was a man of forty-three or forty-four, although when dressed in his tightly fitting brown coat with its short waist, its brass buttons, and high ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... the inn, and over it amused myself by reading a crude fly-sheet nailed on the wall, offering a reward of fifty guineas to anyone giving information leading to the arrest of one Samuel Nixon, commonly called 'Swift Nicks,' a notorious highwayman, six feet high, of very genteel appearance, well-spoken, but a cruel, bloody ruffian with it all. The Highlander interrupted my reading by beckoning me to follow him. Upstairs we went, and he ushered me into a room where were two gentlemen seated on opposite sides of a table on which were a small ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... was safe again. He went back to the work he had neglected, drank moderately, and acted in most things as a sound, sensible being. Then, all of a sudden, he went down again, and went down badly. She kept her promise and threw him over. Then he became a hanger-on at the clubs, a genteel loafer. He used to say in his sober moments that at last he was one of the boys that Sadness had spoken of. He did not work, and yet he lived and ate and was proud of his degradation. But he soon tired of being separated from Hattie, and straightened up again. After some demur she received him ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... be glad to hear your plans of retirement. I suppose you would not like to be wholly shut out of society? Now I know a large village, or small town, about twelve miles off, where your family would have the advantage of very genteel society, without the hazard of being annoyed by mercantile affluence; where you would meet with men of information and independence; and where I have friends to whom I should be proud to introduce you. There are, besides, a coffee-room, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and that Scheherazade, in the nature of things could not finish it just then, since it was high time for her to get up and be bowstrung—a thing very little more pleasant than hanging, only a trifle more genteel. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... I'm tryin' to grow up 'spectable. I haven't been to Tony Pastor's, or the Old Bowery, for ever so long. I'd rather save up my money to support me in my old age. When my hair gets gray, I'm goin' to knock off blackin' boots, and go into some light, genteel employment, such as keepin' an apple-stand, or ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... sir, for me to go afore you; and don't you think, Mas'r Harry, now that you're a great, rich gentleman just come over from foreign abroad, that it would be more genteel-like to go round to the front and give a big knock ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... the question, and seems quite careless as to the answer. He said he would take me to Dublin "in three quarthers," as soon as we began a parley; as to the fare, he would not hear of it—he said he would leave it to my honor; he would take me for nothing. Was it possible to refuse such a genteel offer? ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... but a dear, delightful, cosy room full of faded splendours and relics of the dead and gone so dearly beloved. From the yellow silk fire-screen swinging on a rosewood pole, to the drowsy old canary chirping feebly in his brass cage at the window, all was old-world and marvellously proper and genteel. Withal, a quiet, perfumed room, delightful to make love in, to the most beautiful woman in the world, as Captain George ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... shut his ears (with his hands) and set out on the track that Rama had taken. And Lakshmana set out without casting a single glance on that lady with lips soft and red like the Bimba fruit. Meanwhile, the Rakshasa Ravana, wearing a genteel guise though wicked at heart, and like unto fire enveloped in a heap of ashes, showed himself there. And he appeared there in the disguise of a hermit, for forcibly carrying away that lady of blameless character. The virtuous daughter ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... frowns and sneers of the quality, however, and the ill-concealed disgust of the learned, Don Quixote was received with unbounded applause by the common people.[11] Those best critics in every age and country, the honest readers, who were neither bourgeois nor genteel, neither learned nor ignorant, welcomed the book with a joyous enthusiasm, as a wholly new delight and source of entertainment. Nothing like it had ever appeared before. It was an epoch-marking book, if ever there ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... of wonder and amusement Selwyn watched the spectacle of these people of more than average education and intelligence contenting themselves with a perpetual routine of small-talk and genteel insularity, and he wondered how it was that a race so gifted with the blessed quality of humour could evolve a state of society offering such a butt ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... century fermented without let or hindrance in those coarse souls. An immature civilization had overstimulated imaginations and senses without abating the brutality of the primitive passions. In Prussia people lacked the delicate taste, the genteel habits, the light wit, which in France qualified the depravity of the age. A heavy dissoluteness was paraded in Prussia. Officials, the gentry, women, all fed their minds on d'Holbach and La Mettrie, taking their doctrines seriously and applying them ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... in form; and it would be an equal mistake to suppose, that in all society of lower caste there is either a want of true refinement or an envy and distrust of all that is above it; but it is also true that there is a magic circle known as "genteel," and a perpetual antagonism prevails here between those who are within and those who desire admittance, but are refused; as there are literary circles where contentions and envyings arise between ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... you as long ago as 1915, and you know what happens to people when LENIN really starts to worry about them. He wasn't satisfied that enough violent interest was being taken in you; the mere Socialists he regarded as far too moderate and genteel. As for their First and their Second International—he wanted something thoroughgoing, something with a bit of ginger to it. So at the Zimmerwald Congress on the 5th September of that year all the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... great curse of it; that's what I deplore," Sewell broke out, "in our young people coming from the country to the city. They must all have some genteel occupation! I don't blame them; but I would gladly have saved you this experience—this knowledge—if I could. I felt that I had done you a kind of wrong in being the means, however indirectly and innocently, of your coming to Boston, and I would ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... the best. Would Miss Kathleen O'Hara take so much notice of me if I was not a very nice, lady-like sort of a girl? I am sure no one could look sweeter than I do in my pale-blue blouse. Even Tom says so. He said I looked very genteel, and that he'd like his great friend, Walter Amber, to see me. I don't want to have anything to do with Tom's friends. Poor Tom! if mother can apprentice him to somebody, that is the most that can be expected. But as for me, the very lowest position I intend to take ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... "They're usually pretty genteel up here where wimmen are concerned," he told Lida, "but they're laying it all to you. They'll let you go, Crowley, if you'll go in a hurry. Are you one of 'em, too?" he bluntly asked Miss Elsham, ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... of dogs in the street drew him to the window, out of which he looked by jumping on a chair, just as a troop of "curs of low degree" tore past after a rather genteel-looking dog with a kettle tied to his tail. They whirled rapidly by in a turmoil of dust, and clink, and cur-dog yelp, but not so rapidly as to prevent Sam from perceiving the terrible degradation to which a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... she told of the interview with her neighbor. E. Holliday had lost no time in stating his position. The High Cliff House, it appeared, was a source of annoyance to him and his. A boarding-house, no matter how genteel or well-conducted a boarding-house it may be, could not longer be tolerated in that situation. The boarders irritated him by trespassing upon his premises, by knocking their tennis balls into his garden beds, by bathing and skylarking on the beach in plain sight from his verandas. ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Portuguese duck: "your mode of expression is not exactly genteel; a fact to which I must ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... made his fortune, he may walk with his hat on. Why now there was your friend, ma'am," turning to Cecilia, "that shot out his brains without paying any body a souse; pray how was that being more genteel than standing behind a counter, and not ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... dwelt, as a matter of course, at Uphill. Lowtown was vulgar, dirty, devoted to commercial and manufacturing purposes, and hardly owned a single genteel private house. There was the parsonage, indeed, which stood apart from its neighbours, inside great tall slate-coloured gates, and which had a garden of its own. But except the clergyman, who had no choice in the matter, nobody who was anybody ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... our situation is that the quasi-genteel working class, of whom our modern complex life supports hundreds of thousands—telephone operators, stenographers, and the like—greedily devour the newspaper accounts of the American aristocracy and model themselves, so far as possible, ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... handed him a big piece of roast mutton and a dish of cucumbers, and then brought in a frying-pan a roast goose, and a little afterwards boiled pork with horse-radish cream. And how dignified, how genteel it all was! Fyodor ate, and before each dish drank a big glass of excellent vodka, like some general or some count. After the pork he was handed some boiled grain moistened with goose fat, then an omelette with bacon fat, then fried liver, and he went on eating and was ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to wear. The boat from Beaufort to Savannah will stop here in an hour to take some freight. We will go to Savannah. My colored laundress there has a chamber above her wash-room where you will be better concealed than in more genteel lodgings. I will come back here to arrange things, and in a few days I will return to you and take you to ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... purchased this estate, early in the last century for L25,000, and he will not permit any manufactories to be established upon his land which tends in a great degree to make the neighbourhood respectable and genteel. ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... was really a servants' bedroom, small and plain. Its window looked over the back garden at other back gardens, some of them old and very nice, some of them littered with packing-cases, then at the backs of the houses whose fronts were the shops in High Street, or the genteel homes of the under-manager or the chief cashier, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... unfrequently, with the Lombards, who love to make the angel appear on the flowery grass against a background of Alpine peaks, such as you see them, rising blue and fairylike from the green ricefields about Pavia. Crivelli, however, though a Lombard, prefers a genteel residence in town, the magnificent Milan of Galeazzo and Filippo Visconti. He gives us a whole street, where richly dressed and well peruked gentlemen look down from the terraces, duly set with flower-pots, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... sought far and wide to find a worthy successor to King Caesar, and that he esteems himself specially fortunate in that, after great labor and expense, he procured you. The ignorance you sometimes exhibit of the customs of genteel society is ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... coachman looked with some curiosity at the little figure before him, which certainly did not betray any signs of being neglected. On the contrary, the head, with its black curly hair, and the nice Sunday suit of clothes, gave the lad a very genteel appearance; and his delicate features and earnest eyes bore unmistakable evidence to something noble in his character, and any one who looked at him once was certain to repeat the ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... nowadays; but not the less does Leamington—in pleasant Warwickshire, at the very midmost point of England, in a good hunting neighborhood, and surrounded by country-seats and castles—continue to be a resort of transient visitors, and the more permanent abode of a class of genteel, unoccupied, well-to-do, but not very wealthy people, such as are hardly known among ourselves. Persons who have no country-houses, and whose fortunes are inadequate to a London expenditure, find here, I suppose, a sort of town and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... dedicated to St. John; rebuilt in 1770; enlarged, elaborated, and rejuvenised in 1853; plagued with dry rot for a considerable time afterwards; in a pretty good state of architectural health now; and likely to last out both this generation and the next. It looks rather genteel and stately outside; it has a good steeple, kept duly alive by a congregation of traditional jackdaws; it has a capital set of bells which have put in a good deal of overtime during the past five months, through a pressure of election ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Her lodgers said that the rooms they occupied were clean and neat, that their food was well cooked, and above all things that the house was quiet. Therefore they stayed on; year after year the same people lived in the parlours, and occupied the genteel drawing-room floor; and hard as her lot was, Mrs Franklin considered herself a lucky woman, and her neighbours ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... the Old Bailey in September, 1758, the prosecutrix, Mary Walthow, being unable to prove "that the goods charged to have been stolen (a counterpane, a silver spoon, two napkins, etc.) were her property. Bet does not appear to have lived at that time in a very genteel style; for she paid for her ready- furnished room in Meard's-court, Dean-street, Soho, from which these articles were alleged to be stolen, only ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... elbowing each other at the door of one of the front boxes, the seats of which were all full. The person who was next me was hard-favoured, had a look of audacious impudence, with that mixture of dress which forms the vulgar genteel, and spoke the brogue. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... had at last completed the final touches. 'Now, you are something like a genteel boy! Put your jacket on, and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... polite, though he had a look as if he wuzn't convinced, yet he bowed kinder genteel to Arvilly, as much as to say, "I will not dispute any further with you." And then he got up and went over and sot down ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... no earlier testimony than that of Fuller, who, writing in the lifetime of men who knew Raleigh, gives the following account of his introduction to Elizabeth: 'Her Majesty, meeting with a plashy place, made some scruple to go on; when Raleigh (dressed in the gay and genteel habit of those times) presently cast off and spread his new plush cloak on the ground, whereon the queen trod gently over, rewarding him afterwards with many suits for his so free and seasonable tender of so fair a footcloth.' The only point about this story which is incredible is that ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Others had their hour; and of lesser matters, none returned so often, or remained so long between them, as Mansfield Park, a description of the people, the manners, the amusements, the ways of Mansfield Park. Susan, who had an innate taste for the genteel and well-appointed, was eager to hear, and Fanny could not but indulge herself in dwelling on so beloved a theme. She hoped it was not wrong; though, after a time, Susan's very great admiration of everything ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... never felt the guilty caress of cold-cream or powder, and if it was mahogany in tint and deeply wrinkled, it was at least as respectable as her past. In her day that now bourgeois adjective—twin to genteel—had been synchronous with the equally obsolete word swell, but it had never occurred to even the more modern Mrs. Abbott and her select inner circle of friends, dwelling on family estates in the San Mateo valley, to change in ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... formal courtship with some refined young girl of fashion. You are also, being a college graduate, engaged in the bond business. One morning there comes into your financial institution a young lady, named Dorothy Doe, who at once attracts your attention by her genteel manners, as exemplified by the fact that she calls the president of your company "father." So many young people seem to think it "smart" to refer to their parents as "dad" or "my old man"; you are certain, as soon as you hear her say "Hello, ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... dancing began when the singing was over: A Dotterel first open'd the ball with the Plover; Baron Stork in a waltz was allow'd to excel, With his beautiful partner, the fair Demoiselle;[12] And a newly-fledged Gosling, so fair and genteel, A minuet swam with the spruce Mr. Teal. A London-bred Sparrow—a pert forward Cit! Danced a reel with Miss Wagtail and little Tom Tit. And the Sieur Guillemot[13] next perform'd a pas seul, While the elderly bipeds ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... outward pomp and the vague tales of concierges, footmen, and cooks, she pictured her boy at twenty more beautiful than an archangel, his breast glittering with decorations, in a drawing-room full of flowers, amid a bevy of fashionable ladies with manners every whit as genteel as had the actresses ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... There was the spruce young bookseller would play the same tricks; the butcher's daughters; the upholsterer's young men. Hand in glove when doing business out of sight with you; but caring nothing for a' old woman when playing the genteel away from all signs ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... their employers as in France. In England, on the other hand, it is difficult to persuade a young girl to accept domestic service; she requires what she imagines to be something higher, or—to use her own word—more 'genteel.' If she be a dressmaker, or a shop girl, or a barmaid, she assumes the title of 'young lady,' and advertises—to the disgust of all sensible people—as such. This monstrous notion, which strikes at the root of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... china bowl jumped eight feet but was not broken. However it tried again, and succeeded. Candlesticks, tea-kettles, a tumbler of rum and water, two hams, and a flitch of bacon joined in the corroboree. 'Most of the genteel families around were continually sending to inquire after them, and whether all was over or not.' All this while, Ann was 'walking backwards and forwards', nor could they get her to sit down, except for half an hour, at prayers, 'then all was quiet'. She remarked, with stoicism, 'these ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... was once on a tour, when a genteel man, apparently in earnest conversation, though alone in a wood, attracted his notice. His Grace made up to him, and, after a little previous conversation, asked him what he ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... parlez pas du people!" cried the Countess Zamoiska, with a gesture of disgust. "A set of beastly peasants, no better than their own cattle, or a band of genteel robbers, who have made it unsafe to live anywhere on Polish ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the case, not unfrequently, with the Lombards, who love to make the angel appear on the flowery grass against a background of Alpine peaks, such as you see them, rising blue and fairylike from the green ricefields about Pavia. Crivelli, however, though a Lombard, prefers a genteel residence in town, the magnificent Milan of Galeazzo and Filippo Visconti. He gives us a whole street, where richly dressed and well peruked gentlemen look down from the terraces, duly set with flower-pots, of houses ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... finer dwellings than the peasants' houses which are now the only habitations on the Lido; and I suspect that a genteel villa must formerly have stood near the farm-gate, which we found surmounted by broken statues of Venus and Diana. The poor goddesses were both headless, and some cruel fortune had struck off their hands, and they looked strangely forlorn in the swaggering attitudes ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Spike, after a few genteel sips, threw off his restraint, and finished the rest of his glass ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... me about the sheets and tablecloths she's got out a-bleachin'; and she said that the weddin' dress was to be made over to Mis' Mosely's in Portland, 'cause Moses he's so particular about havin' things genteel." ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to Bob: "Dearie boy: is it a bargain about the squiffer if I make Joe sprint for you?" "Anything you like, darling," says he: "I love you." I put on my best company manners and stepped up to the copper. "If you please, sir," says I, "can you direct me to Carrickmines Square?" I was so genteel, and talked so sweet, that he fell to it like a bird. "I never heard of any such Square in these parts," he says. "Then," says I, "what a very silly little officer you must be!"; and I gave his helmet a chuck behind that knocked it over his eyes, ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... Nightingale, looking about him with an air of great gravity, "I put it to your Honours, is it genteel behaviour to bring a nigger, in this out-of-the-way fashion, to give an opinion in the teeth of a ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... clean and neat, Baith decent and genteel, And then there's something in her gait Gars ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... to any person, of either sex, who would wish to be buried in a genteel manner, by paying one shilling entrance, and twopence per week for the benefit of the stock. Members to be free in six months. The money to be paid at Mr. Middleton's, at the sign of the First and the ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... A somewhat shabby-genteel, youngish man appeared at the head of the stairs; he was wearing a silk hat and a too ample frock-coat. And immediately, from the hidden corridor at the top, she heard the voice of Mr. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... acquitted, at the Old Bailey in September, 1758, the prosecutrix, Mary Walthow, being unable to prove "that the goods charged to have been stolen (a counterpane, a silver spoon, two napkins, etc.) were her property. Bet does not appear to have lived at that time in a very genteel style; for she paid for her ready- furnished room in Meard's-court, Dean-street, Soho, from which these articles were alleged to be stolen, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... began to dance, and tumble about, and then broke to pieces. A china bowl jumped eight feet but was not broken. However it tried again, and succeeded. Candlesticks, tea-kettles, a tumbler of rum and water, two hams, and a flitch of bacon joined in the corroboree. 'Most of the genteel families around were continually sending to inquire after them, and whether all was over or not.' All this while, Ann was 'walking backwards and forwards', nor could they get her to sit down, except for half an hour, at prayers, 'then all was ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... it to the press however, the Cambrian Briton felt his small heart give way within him: "Were I to print it," said he, "I should be ruined; the terrible descriptions of vice and torment, would frighten the genteel part of the English public out of its wits, and I should to a certainty be prosecuted by Sir James Scarlett. I am much obliged to you, for the trouble you have given yourself on my account—but Myn Diawl! I had no idea till I had read him in English, that ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... would find, that the trade was one which would not degrade either him or her. Hitherto, indeed,—in her early days,—she had looked down on trade; but of what benefit had her grand ideas been to her when she had returned to England? She had tried her hand at English genteel society, and no one had seemed to care for her. Therefore, she touched his arm lightly with her fingers that she ...
— The Chateau of Prince Polignac • Anthony Trollope
... in literature. Apples were the treasures of Pomona, but so were cherries, too, and if one wished to allude to peaches, they also were the treasures of Pomona. This decline from particular to general language was regarded as a great gain in elegance. It was supposed that to use one of these genteel counters, which passed for coin of poetic language, brought the speaker closer to the grace of Latinity. It was thought that the old direct manner of speaking was crude and futile; that a romantic poet who wished to allude to caterpillars could do so without any exercise of his ingenuity ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... mother, and told her so. A pretty fellow at the corner would suddenly double himself up with beckoning to a knot of chums; these would hasten up; recruits would come in from two or three other directions; as they reached the corner their countenances would quickly assume a genteel severity, and presently, with her mother, 'Tite Poulette would pass—tall, straight, lithe, her great black eyes made tender by their sweeping lashes, the faintest tint of color in her Southern cheek, her form all grace, her carriage ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... Charles was a genteel, accomplished young man of eighteen when he left his father's palace at Vienna, for England, where a British fleet was to convey him to Portugal, and, by the energy of its fleet and army, place him upon the throne of Spain. He was ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... intoxicated, and in that condition led them into the public halls, to show the young men what drunkenness was. They ordered them too to sing mean songs, and to dance ridiculous dances, but not to meddle with any that were genteel and graceful. Thus they tell us, that when the Thebans afterwards invaded Laconia, and took a great number of the Helotes prisoners, they ordered them to sing the odes of Terpander, Aleman, or Spendon the Lacedaemonian, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... heard Mr. Fulmer say he was a son of Marrs; he spoke as if everybody knew his father, so I suppose he must be the son of the poor gentleman who was so barbarously murdered some years ago, near Ratcliff Highway—if he is, he is uncommon genteel. At 12 o'clock we got into a boat and rowed to the packet; it was a very fine and clear day for the season, and Mr. Fulmer said he should not dislike pulling Lavinia about all the morning—this, I believe, was a naughty-call phrase—which I did not rightly comprehend, because Mr. F. ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... death of the mother, deprived the youthful orphan of her remaining parent. Her father was a merchant, just commencing the foundations of what would, in time, have been a large estate; and as both Miss Emmerson and her sister were possessed of genteel independencies, and the aunt had long declared her intention of remaining single, the fortune of Julia, if not brilliant, was thought rather large than otherwise. Miss Emmerson had been educated immediately after the war ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... Natches, a rather good-looking, genteel-appearing man came on board to purchase a servant. This individual introduced himself to Jennings as the Rev. James Wilson. The slave-trader conducted the preacher to the deck-cabin, where he kept his slaves, and the man of God, ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... less experienced than Dr. Cashmore in the secret strangenesses of genteel life in London might have been astonished by this information. But Dr. Cashmore no more blenched now than he had blenched at the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... the quality, however, and the ill-concealed disgust of the learned, Don Quixote was received with unbounded applause by the common people.[11] Those best critics in every age and country, the honest readers, who were neither bourgeois nor genteel, neither learned nor ignorant, welcomed the book with a joyous enthusiasm, as a wholly new delight and source of entertainment. Nothing like it had ever appeared before. It was an epoch-marking book, if ever there ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... university; where, I think, he had finished his studies, when he came to reside at your house; a finer man, I must say, the sun never shone upon; for, besides the handsomest person I ever saw, he was so genteel, and had so much wit and good breeding." "Poor gentleman," said Allworthy, "he was indeed untimely snatched away; and little did I think he had any sins of this kind to answer for; for I plainly perceive you are going to tell me he was ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... respect, not fear. The ugliness of his eyes prejudices you against him at first; let him, however, turn them upon you in his own benevolent way, you are sure they mean no harm: within a pair of splendid whiskers, of the finest blond, there is such a genteel nose and mouth, such a fine semi-serious forehead, that the whole is the expression of his good sound heart, that loves truth, even from devils. It was Charles Henry Hackett, ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... yields in the turn to the shinjocho [6] '('new-butterfly' style), or the shimada, also called takawage. The shimjocho style is common, is worn by women of various ages, and is not considered very genteel. The shimada, exquisitely elaborate, is; but the more respectable the family, the smaller the form of this coiffure; geisha and joro wear a larger and loftier variety of it, which properly answers to the name takawage, or 'high coiffure.' Between eighteen and twenty years ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... him in the Study of Church-Airs, in which he must lay aside all the theatrical effeminate Manner, and sing in a manly Stile; for which Purpose he will provide him with different natural and easy Motets[50] grand and genteel, mix'd with the Lively and the Pathetick, adapted to the Ability he has discovered in him, and by frequent Lessons make him become perfect in them with Readiness and Spirit. At the same time he must be careful that the Words be well pronounced, and ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... dinner poor Cap had never even smelled before. How immensely she enjoyed it, with all its surroundings—the comfortable room, the glowing fire, the clean table, the rich food, the obsequious attendance, her own genteel and becoming dress, the company of a highly respectable guardian—all, all so different from anything she had ever been accustomed to, ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... dear to an Englishman exactly in comparison as he knows, or does not know, the ways of the place. A Turk, I have no doubt, could live there in a very genteel sort of manner on what you would consider ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... vulgar little laugh at the jokes of the musical comedy; and he remembered the little finger carefully extended when she held her glass to her mouth; her manners like her conversation, were odiously genteel. He remembered her insolence; sometimes he had felt inclined to box her ears; and suddenly, he knew not why, perhaps it was the thought of hitting her or the recollection of her tiny, beautiful ears, he was seized by ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... been taught in an Edinburgh academy, yet these ears, accustomed only to rough men's voices, the song of birds, now and then a harsh fiddle grating for its life about the country-side, or the pipe of the hills, imbued the thin and lonely symphony with associations of life genteel and wide, rich and warm and white-handed. Never seemed Miss Nan so far removed as then from him, the home-staying dreamer. Up rose his startled judgment and ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Between the long-boat and the fore-hatch is the galley, where the "Doctor" (as the cook is universally called in the merchant service) is busily employed in dishing up a steaming supper, prepared for the cabin mess; the steward, a genteel-looking mulatto, dressed in a white apron, stands waiting at the galley-door, ready to receive the aforementioned supper, whensoever it may be ready, and to convey it to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... ay sae clean and neat, Both decent and genteel: And then there's something in her gait Gars ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... been in Kurt Fawzi's office a few times, always with his father, and he remembered it as a dim, quiet place of genteel conviviality and rambling conversations, with deep, comfortable chairs and many ashtrays. Fawzi's warehouse and brokerage business, and the airline agency, and the government, such as it was, of Litchfield, combined, made few demands on his time and did not prevent ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... was that these two young persons were plunged in grief. Oh, glorious grief of thwarted love! When they met now, they did not talk of the landscape. Their conversation, though no doubt as genteel as before, was all of broken hearts. But again Letty's mother found out, and went in wrath to call on Alfred's family. It was decided between them that the young man should be sent away from home. "To save ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... the girl herself this transformation also seemed the wonder of witch-work. Her early life lay so far below in a world remote and detached; a little house in a village of the Canton of Vaud with the genteel poverty that attended the slender salary of a juge d'instruction, and the weight of duties that accumulated on her shoulders. Her father's life was given over to the labors of criminal investigation, but it was a field that returned nothing in the way of material ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... perfect ease and skill of handling. The observation shown throughout is nothing short of wonderful. Things are painted literally as they are, and, whatever the picture, whether of every-day vulgar, shabby-genteel, or downright low, with neither the condescending air which is affectation, nor the too familiar one which is slang. The book altogether is a perfectly unaffected, unpretentious, honest performance. Under its manly, sensible, straightforward vein of talk there is running at the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... whether it was vegetable matter out of a swamp, or weeds out of the river, or an old porter's-knot from England, I don't think any new spectator could have said. Yet, this unfortunate old woman had a notion that it was not only vastly genteel, but that it was the correct thing as to propriety. And she really did carry herself over the other ladies who had no nightcaps, and who were forced to tie up their hair how they could, in a superior manner that ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... board and lodging might be obtained within. There was no look of well-being or wealth anywhere; the few equipages in the streets had seen hard service; the people who walked were either plainly dressed or shabby genteel; about the doors of the principal hotels there were groups of men who wore, most of them, dispirited or anxious faces. Ten years later the whole aspect of the place was changing, but at this time it was passing through a period of natural fatigue and poverty, ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... runs on oiled wheels. After the huge clatter of New York, there is something mellow and human about the drowsy hum of Chestnut Street, the genteel reaches of Walnut, and the neat frontage of Spruce Street. Ellenora, so quick to notice her surroundings, was at first bored, then amused, at last lulled by the intimate life of her new home. She had never been abroad, but declared ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... husband's decease, upon a second match. The fertile women to be wedded to those who desire to multiply their issue; and the sterile ones to such other mates, as, misregarding the storing of their own lineage, choose them only for their virtues, learning, genteel behaviour, domestic consolation, management of the house, and matrimonial conveniences and comforts, and such like. The preachers of Varennes, saith Panurge, detest and abhor the second marriages, as ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the excitement of her stealthy trips abroad, undertaken on the rare occasions when she could trump up a pretext for leaving the shop; since, as a rule, it was Evelina who took the bundles to the dyer's, and delivered the purchases of those among their customers who were too genteel to be seen carrying home a bonnet or a bundle of pinking—so that, had it not been for the excuse of having to see Mrs. Hawkins's teething baby, Ann Eliza would hardly have known what motive to allege for deserting her usual seat ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... without exposing my own life: that I have accomplished, and defy the law. Now, for the application of it. I am desperate, and must be provided for. You have it in your power: it is my business to make it your inclination to serve me, which you must determine to comply with, by procuring me a genteel support for my life, or your own will be at a period before this session of parliament is over. I have more motives than one for singling you out upon this occasion; and I give you this fair warning, because the means I shall make use of are ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... carefully considered before they were parted with. She had never known her father to possess so much as five golden sovereigns at his own disposal (unencumbered by debt) in all her experience of him. The atmosphere in which she had lived and breathed was the all-stifling one of genteel poverty. There was something horrible in the greedy eagerness of her eyes as they watched Lady Janet, to see if she was really sufficiently in earnest to give away five hundred pounds sterling with ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... Dressmaker of having a sense of humor. Now I know it. I'm the lucky one who isn't going to have to wade through the slush any more. I'm to go out to southern California and live in a nice little bungalow and be a nurse for five or ten years, and then I'm going to be left alone in genteel poverty, without an interest in the world, and too tired to make any. And I'll ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... meanwhile, that great and practical truths are more essential than the garb in which they appear. We should be more careful of our health of body and purity of morals than of the costume we put on. Many genteel coats wrap up corrupt hearts, and fine hats cover silly heads. What is the chaff to ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... countenance, Sosia, so modest, so charming, that nothing could surpass. As she appeared to me to lament beyond the rest, and as she was of a figure handsome and genteel beyond the other women, I approached the female attendants;[36] I inquired who she was. They said that she was the sister of Chrysis. It instantly struck my mind: "Ay, ay, this is it; hence those tears, hence ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... her daughters in homes of their own. It was the old story, Doctor Blecker,"—with a shivering laugh more pitiful than a cry. "I've noticed it since in a thousand other houses. Young girls like me in these poor-genteel families,—there are none of God's creatures more helpless or goaded, starving at their souls. I couldn't teach. I had no talent; but if I had, a woman's a woman: she wants something else in her life than dog-eared school-books and her wages year ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... good hotels and genteel boarding-houses. All charges included, you do not pay above two dollars a day. Little enough, when you consider the capital accommodations and the ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... had come, young Lucius Mason, and there was of course great joy at Orley Farm. The old father felt that the world had begun again for him, very delightfully, and was more than ever satisfied with his wisdom in regard to that marriage. But the very genteel progeny of his early youth were more than ever dissatisfied, and in their letters among themselves dealt forth harder and still harder words upon poor Sir Joseph. What terrible things might he not ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... the most part women not of the working class, who support with apparent earnestness the purveyors of popular fiction and biography, and even patronise poetry and genteel social philosophy. Amongst them are to be found those to whom the sterner actualities of life are unfamiliar and repugnant, for whom the practice of trifling with books is rather an ornament than an occupation, a mode of killing time rather than using it. They, too, read to be distracted, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... was called Little Weatherbury Farm, and his person was the nearest approach to aristocracy that this remoter quarter of the parish could boast of. Genteel strangers, whose god was their town, who might happen to be compelled to linger about this nook for a day, heard the sound of light wheels, and prayed to see good society, to the degree of a solitary lord, or squire at the very least, but it was only Mr. Boldwood going out for the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... side was the still more dreadful fall into sentimentality, the tear of conscious tenderness, the redeeming glimpse of "better things" in Alf or Emmy that would at one stroke have converted their reality into a genteel masquerade. The perfection of Alf and Emmy is that at no point does a "nature's gentleman" or a "nature's lady" show through and demand our refined sympathy. It is only by comparison with this supreme conversation that the affair of Keith and Jenny seems to fall short of perfection. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... were especially well content to belong to this noble class; and as we lived from our rents, and had no rank in the state, we called ourselves, not without some self-satisfaction, people of condition. We exhibited a certain genteel indifference towards the haute volee in the citizen society, not only in words but sometimes also in action; yet, nevertheless, in secret we were extremely wounded or flattered by all those who came in contact with us from this circle; ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... I pitched a noble one, sufficient to cover or entertain a numerous company, and so tight everywhere as to keep out the weather. The front of this new apartment I hung with blue cloth, which had a very genteel effect. I had almost forgotten to tell you that I contrived (by hanging one of the smaller sails across, just in the middle, which I could let down or raise up at pleasure) to divide the tent ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... was the rancher's wife who brought fresh eggs and vegetables to us. She wore scant pajamas instead of skirts, because she thought it "more genteel," she explained. When a favorite horse or cow died, she carefully preserved the skull and other portions of the ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... breathing, moving men and women out of his canvas! Sometimes he is ranting and exaggerated, as are all men of great genius who wrestle with Nature so boldly. No doubt his heroines are more expansively endowed than would be thought genteel in our country, where cryptogams are so much in fashion, nevertheless there is always something very tremendous about him, and very often much that is sublime, pathetic, and moving. I defy any one of the average amount of imagination and sentiment to stand long before ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Somebody's stocking feet! Monkey's. Steps that aren't honest. All on my ceiling. Monkey never ought to have rented a room in a respectable house like Mrs. Granady's. Nobody but genteel young fellows holding down genteel jobs ever had that room before. Monkey passing himself off as Mr. James Pollard, or whatever it is he calls himself, just for the cover of a respectable house—or of me, for all I know. You could have knocked me down with a feather the first time I met him in ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... that same night, as if it had been destined for alternate good and bad luck, I was forced, after an unexpectedly fortunate incident, to experience a teasing vexation. We met, in Auerstaedt, a genteel married couple, who had also just arrived, having been delayed by a similar accident; a pleasing, dignified man, in his best years, with a very handsome wife. They politely persuaded us to sup in their company, and I felt very happy when the excellent ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... much over two days old when they had the funeral, I can't add anything more about maw. And the history I could write of dad would make a mighty slim book. Running roller skating rinks was the most genteel business he ever got into, I guess. His regular profession was faro. It's an unhealthy game, especially in those gold camps where they shoot so impetuous. He got over the effects of two .38's dealt him by a halfbreed Sioux; but when a real bad man from Taunton, Massachusetts, ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... mistake, I mean. Fred's white hands there have just the look of a doctor's; of course Roger thought the only use of them could be to feel pulses, and Philip, for want of something better to do, is always trying for a genteel look." ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you han't come from Miss Peter Smith's! Well, she'd oughter do gret things with that 'ere meetin'-'us o' her'n for the chickens; it's kinder genteel-lookin', and I spose they've got means; they've got ability. Gentility without ability I do despise; but where 't'a'n't so, 't'a'n't no matter; but I'xpect it don't ensure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... is known as the Club House are in perhaps the best condition of any in that portion of the town, but it is certainly damaged beyond possibility of repair. On the upper floor five bodies are lying unidentified. One of them, a woman of genteel birth, judging by her dress, is locked in one of the small rooms to prevent a possibility of spoliation by wreckers, who are flocking to the spot from all directions and taking possession of everything ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... said eagerly, 'you'd on'y have to sit in the back parlour and look through the glass partition when I was away sometimes—just to keep an eye on things. The lameness wouldn't hinder that . . . I'd keep you as genteel as ever I could, dear Sophy—if I might think of it!' ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... endeavored to find out these important details. Neither hints nor questions had resulted satisfactorily. Was it possible that this was the reason, this country uncle? If so—well, if so, here was a Heaven-sent opportunity for a little genteel and perfectly safe detective work. Mrs. Dunn creakingly ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... that I said nothing against brandy but added that it was often given to children, while Gorgondy was only drunk by men of such depravity that they had abandoned sin because all the usual vices had come to seem genteel. When he asked if Gorgondy was a bad wine to drink I said that it was so bad that if a man sipped it that was the one touch that made damnation certain. Then he asked me what I had in the iron bottle, and I said it was Gorgondy; and then he shouted ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... Sereda, your wonder seems to me another wonder: for I can think of no profession better suited to a retired poet. Why, there is the variety of company! for high and low and even the genteel are pressed sometimes for money: then the plowman slouches into my shop, and the duke sends for me privately. So the people I know, and the bits of their lives I pop into, give me ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... of the old words and phrases formerly in general use in Worcestershire, and is still striving to substitute a more "genteel," but not always more correct, and a much less picturesque, form of speech. When I first went to Aldington I found it difficult to understand the dialect, but I soon got accustomed to it, and used it myself in speaking to the villagers. Farrar ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... old gentleman would feel the change more sharply than I. This was, in all probability, the only hat he had. I turned it over and scrutinized it. It was a genteel old beaver, with an air of respectability that was quite convincing. There was nothing smug about it, either. It suggested amiability in the man who had recently possessed it. It suggested also a mild contempt for public opinion, which is always ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... not going to play then," said Lina primly, "my mother wants me to be genteel, and 'bull' is ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... but an imperfect idea of what she was to endure. The punishment was to take place in the great square, and the troops were out, and a large concourse of people were assembled. She appeared on the raised platform upon which she was to suffer, in a genteel undress, which contributed still more to heighten her extreme beauty. The sweetness of her countenance obtained for her the commiseration of those who were ordered and accustomed to execute the will of the despotic and cruel emperor. Young, lively, and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was dressed in his new clothes, what a metamorphosis had he made, from the clod-hopping Dutchman to the gay, genteel and courteous citizen! I telegraphed to him that I thought success was almost in his grasp, and to keep ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... with a fine garden and extensive shrubbery, in a genteel neighborhood," were, if I remember rightly, the general terms of an advertisement which once decided my choice of a dwelling. I should add that this occurred at an early stage of my household experience, ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... and pure a being! how regardless of self! how true to duty! how obedient to parental command, is that earthly angel, a well-bred woman of genteel family! Instead of indulging in splenetic refusals or vain regrets for her absent lover, the exemplary Fatima at once signified to her excellent parents her willingness to obey their orders; though ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... achieve success if he were put in some other career. One of their greatest services will probably be to put a lot of boys into skilled trades, for which they are adapted and where they will succeed, and thus prevent them from yielding to the desire for a more genteel clerical occupation, in which they will not do more than earn a bare living. This will assist in bringing about the high correlation between merit and income which is so much ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... completed, he beheld the manager take his leave. As the door closed, the bashful Prosper felt the murky eyes of the widow fixed upon him. A gentle cough, accompanied with the resigned laying of a black mittened hand upon her chest, suggested a genteel prelude to conversation, with possible ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a card, Mr. Joles," he confided to that individual below stairs; "name Barkwick or something, says he has an appointment. Quite genteel, but—" and ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... city, and owing a part of their gusto to town usage, may be narrow enough if compared with general nature, but they are broader than the singularities whom Mr. Dickens copies or invents as representatives of genteel country life, or human nature in general. In the mere style there is frequently an improvement—less effort and greater ease, with occasional touches of the felicity of Goldsmith; but we should have thought the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... had arranged that she was to go to the select young ladies' school that Aunt Mary had attended when she was a girl. Lull secretly hoped that contact with the select young ladies would make Jane a little bit more genteel. Every morning, driving into town on the car with Andy, Jane mourned to Mick for the good days that were gone. Mick annoyed her by liking the change. His ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... good deal astonished when the first applicant presented herself. She was a tall, genteel-looking girl. Up to yesterday she had been head housemaid at Lady Stanton's, and before that she had been under- cook for two years to the ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... young officer. I had the good fortune to be admitted to the Court, and there I had the pleasure of seeing Mdlle. Chitroff dancing, and also Mdlle. Sievers, now Princesss, whom I saw again at Dresden four years ago with her daughter, an extremely genteel young princess. I was enchanted with Mdlle. Sievers, and felt quite in love with her; but as we were never introduced I had no opportunity of declaring my passion. Putini, the castrato, was high in her favour, as indeed he deserved to be, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... about it. I'm not going to stand this, whoever else is. It aint a slight thing, Alison; it aint the sort of thing that a girl can get over. There are you, only seventeen, and so pretty and like a real lady. Yes, you are; you needn't pertend you aint. Me and my people were always genteel, and you take after us. I'll see to it. You shan't be accused of theft, my dear, ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... The mere idea has always put my monkey up, and I rapped my speech out pretty big. Then Case translated it—or made believe to, rather—and the first chief replied, and then a second, and a third, all in the same style, easy and genteel, but solemn underneath. Once a question was put to Case, and he answered it, and all hands (both chiefs and commons) laughed out aloud, and looked at me. Last of all, the puckered old fellow and the big young chief that spoke first started ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her with adoring attention. They looked genteel. They looked ironed-out. They coughed politely, and crossed their legs with quietness, and in expensive linen handkerchiefs they blew their noses with a delicacy altogether ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... enlivens the performance here and there with original reflections on life, which are perfectly dignified, but become humorous from contrast with their surroundings. In spite of its comical effect, the piece has a very genteel air, for its material is taken from that general stock of information that passes current in cultivated families. The young man of fashion who had never heard of Elijah, or of Poe's "Raven," would ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... neglected, drank moderately, and acted in most things as a sound, sensible being. Then, all of a sudden, he went down again, and went down badly. She kept her promise and threw him over. Then he became a hanger-on at the clubs, a genteel loafer. He used to say in his sober moments that at last he was one of the boys that Sadness had spoken of. He did not work, and yet he lived and ate and was proud of his degradation. But he soon tired of being separated from Hattie, and straightened ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... ape gentility,' he said quietly. 'I'm glad the young lady's well again, but genteel formal ain't much in my ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... am imagining had first carried on their search in those genteel regions, which could hardly have looked their best in the last moments of preparation before the season began. The house-cleaning which went on in all of them was no more hurried than the advance of the slow English spring outside, where the buds appeared after weeks of hesitation, and the leaves ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... told Jane herself, no flesh and blood as is in livery could stand—for throw a plate of toast at Mr. Thomas, hisself, he did, not more than two days since, and if it weren't for other things being agreeable and the society below stairs most genteel, warning would have been ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that could hardly have been said to do any good either. Her report of the whole affair made him writhe, but when she had made him writhe enough she began to admit some extenuating circumstances. If Mrs. Maxwell was a country person, she was not foolish. She did not chant, in a vain attempt to be genteel in her speech; she did not expand unduly under Mrs. Hilary's graciousness, and she did not resent it. In fact, the graciousness had been very skilfully managed, and Mrs. Maxwell had not been allowed to feel that there was any condescension to her. She got on ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... listen, for a moment. No, they're gone, Well, this is Cocker's old rule, 'set down one.' I had no notion, while I was genteel, How very small indeed a man may feel. I've made what Capillaire calls a 'diskivery.' I wonder what's my value out of livery! But here comes humble little Cinderella ( R.); I feel I love her—let's see, shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... a-year—a rental which seemed wealth to provincial families, still discussing Mr. Peel's late conduct on the Catholic question, innocent of future gold-fields, and of that gorgeous plutocracy which has so nobly exalted the necessities of genteel life. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... bastis to the east and south, to deprive 'em of cover; and you may imagine the scene, Desmond—the blazing sky, the tears and screams of the women, the din of guns. We wrote to the French at Chandernagore begging 'em to lend us some ammunition, for the most of ours was useless; but they sent us a genteel reply saying they'd no more than sufficient for their own needs; yet the wretches made the Nawab a present of two hundred chests of powder, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... businesslike-looking man, short and stoutly built, with close-cropped hair, very little shirt-collar, a shabby black satin stock, and a coat buttoned tightly across the chest. He was a man whose appearance was something between the aspect of a shabby-genteel half-pay captain and an unlucky stockbroker: but Clement liked the steady light of his small grey eyes, and the decided expression of his thin ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... himself as he looked at her; "her world is the world of things immutably decreed. But how she is at home in it, and what a paradise she finds it. She walks about in it as if it were a blooming park, a Garden of Eden; and when she sees 'This is genteel,' or 'This is improper,' written on a mile-stone she stops ecstatically, as if she were listening to a nightingale or smelling a rose." Madame de Bellegarde wore a little black velvet hood tied under her chin, and she was wrapped in an old black ...
— The American • Henry James
... take these, and reviews like 'High Living,' and the 'Ladies' Genteel Guide' went into raptures over: 'Another of Miss Francie Forsyte's spirited ditties, sparkling and pathetic. We ourselves were moved to tears and laughter. Miss ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Stock Exchange is subtle enough for me. His father did not joke. Indeed he was full of useful information, and only too fond of imparting it, and he always made use of the choicest language in doing so; and Mrs. Scatcherd was immensely genteel. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Watteau-like figures,—tall damsels in slim waists and with spread enough of skirt for a modern ballroom, with bowing, reclining, or musical swains of what everybody calls the "conventional" sort,—that is, the swain adapted to genteel society rather than to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... singing, Sara observed that she made the best she could of many words, and skipped several good lines altogether. But after a while the watery blue eyes of the good woman were languidly raised, an insipid smile spread over her red and white porcelain face, and in a voice which she strove to make as genteel as possible, she said to Beautiful Sara, "He sings very well. But I have heard far better singing in Holland. You are a stranger, and perhaps do not know that the choir-leader is from Worms, and that they will keep him here if he will be content with four hundred florins a year. He is a charming ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... it is dangerous, in the persons of its advocates. If there were nothing but metaphysical wickedness in the world, how effective it would be never to allude to a wicked man! If Slavery itself were the pale, thin ghost of an abstraction, how bloodless this war would be! Fine words, genteel deprecation, and magnanimous generality are the tricks of villany. Indignant Mercy works with other tools; she leaps with the directness of lightning, and the same unsparing sincerity, to the spot to which she is attracted. What rogue ever felt the clutch of a stern ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... WILL READ IT IN THE PAPERS,' replied the dear little fashionable rogue of seven years old. She knew already her importance, and how all the world of England, how all the would-be-genteel people, how all the silver-fork worshippers, how all the tattle-mongers, how all the grocers' ladies, the tailors' ladies, the attorneys' and merchants' ladies, and the people living at Clapham and Brunswick Square,—who ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... comfortable in his new arrangements; but he supposed it was his own fault. He had fallen into rusty, old-fashioned, bachelor ways; and, like other things that are not agreeable to the natural man, he supposed his trim, resplendent, genteel house was good for him, and that he ought to like it, and by grace should attain to liking it, if he only ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... at a first-class stable," concluded Miss Belinda. "I call occasionally and leave my card in the shape of an apple, finding Madam Rosa living like an independent lady, with her large box and private yard on the sunny side of the barn, a kind ostler to wait upon her, and much genteel society from the city when ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... good-humour at his own or other people's jokes; understands the point of an equivoque, or an observation immediately; has a taste and knowledge of books, of music, of medals; manages an argument adroitly; is genteel and gallant, and has a set of bye-phrases and quaint allusions always at hand to produce a laugh:—if he has a fault, it is that he does not listen so well as he speaks, is impatient of interruption, and is fond of being looked up to, without considering by whom. I believe, however, he has ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... fatigued, and worn out—full of disgust with things in general, and himself and his own fate in particular—than he had been when he set out from the other end of Carlingford, went sulkily, and at a terrific pace, past the long garden-walls of Grange Lane, and all Dr Marjoribanks's genteel patients. When he had reached home, he found a message waiting him from an urgent invalid whose "case" kept the unhappy doctor up and busy for half the night. Such was the manner in which Edward Rider got through the evening—the one wonderful exceptional ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... in the part which he had so often played, but Spinola laboured under the disadvantage of being a far honester man than Alexander Farnese. Far from equal to that famous chieftain in the management of a great military campaign, it is certain that he was infinitely inferior to him in genteel comedy. Whether Maurice and Lewis William, Barneveld and Brederode, were to do better in the parts formerly assigned to John Rogers, Valentine Dale, Comptroller Croft, and their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Mr. Roberts was an extreme case. He had been destined to literary pursuits, became consumptive, and was obliged, by unforeseen contingencies, to take up some light employment, which proved in the end to be shaving. If it had been holding notes instead of noses, the employment would have been vastly genteel, I dare say. As it was, we thought about the French emigres and marquises who made cakes and dressed hair for a living, and concluded to admit Mr. Roberts, especially as he married a far-away Elliott, and was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... was one, to expostulate with the king. When they came, he received them in his closet. Mr. James Melvil being first in the commission, told the king his errand, upon which he appeared angry, and charged them with sedition, &c. Mr. James being a man of cool passion and genteel behaviour, began to answer the king with great reverence and respect; but Mr. Andrew, interrupting him, said, "This is not a time to flatter, but to speak plainly, for our commission is from the living ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Seminary. The Columbians occasionally came down to Muirtown and sniffed through the town. Two or three boys had been taken from the Seminary, because it was vulgar, and sent to St. Columba's, in order to get into genteel society. And those things had gradually filtered into the mind of the Seminary, which was certainly a rough school, but at the same time very proud and patriotic, and there was a latent desire in the mind of the Seminary that the Columbians should come down in snow-time and show ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... people from the window of his committee-room, facing which window I placed myself, to see and to hear all that could be heard or seen. At length, after he had been waited for, for about an hour (which, by-the-bye, is considered genteel), the worthy lawyer arrived, seated in an open barouche, with Mr. Michael Castle on one side, and Alderman Noble on the other! It was but a sorry cavalcade; and although there was some cheering amongst his partizans, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-fliers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... born so poor and genteel What could he do but pick and steal? He scorned to work for honest bread— "Better have never been hatched!" he said. So his day was the night, for he dared not roam Till sleep had ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... street, it being far from her desire to attract promiscuous trade. The parlours, indeed, were situated upon one of the "nicest" streets in Coombe and occupied a corner lot, so that a splendid view down two of the most genteel residential streets was obtainable from their windows. The only sign of business anywhere was a board of chaste design over the doorway, bearing the simple legend, "A. MILLIGAN." Even the word "Dressmaker" was considered superfluous. Also there was one window, near the door, which from time to ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... whispered entreaty. The victim of the feather of a quill pen tickling her neck dared not raise her voice. Miss Pinwell, the proprietress of the extremely genteel seminary for young ladies, Queen Square—quite an aristocratic retreat some two hundred years ago—was pacing the school-room. Her cold, sharp eyes roamed over the shapely heads—black, golden, brown, auburn, flaxen—of some thirty girls—eager to detect any sign of levity and prompt ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... walking out as all boys do walk out in decent schools, that is, in a long line, two by two, as the animals entered Noah's Ark, when a sort of shabby-genteel man passed their files. He happened to cast his eyes upon Joey, and stopped. "Master Joseph Rushbrook, I am most happy to see you once more," said he extending his hand. Joey looked up into his face; ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... "that Mary White haven't a perfect right to name her child as she chooses. I'm too fair for that, I hope. What I do say is, that now she's picked up a fancy sort of name like Lilac, she hasn't got any call to be down on other people. And if me and Greenways likes to see our girls genteel and give 'em a bit of finishing eddication, and set 'em off with a few accomplishments, it's our own affair and not Mary White's. And though I say it as shouldn't, you won't find two more elegant gals than Gusta and Bella, ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... correspondence and some interviewing, I selected at last a person who I believed would prove himself a satisfactory listener. He was an elderly man, of genteel appearance, and apparently of a quiet and accommodating disposition. He assured me that he had once been a merchant, engaged in the importation of gunny-bags, and, having failed in business, had ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... there is turned right up to the sky; and my wide mouth, and my little eyes, and my hair just standing straight up as rakish as you please. And look at you, with your elegant features and your—oh, but it's genteel you are!—and I love you, Nora alannah; I love you, and am not a bit jealous ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... but Uncle showed me that it was wiser not make genteel paupers of them, but let them pay a small rent and feel independent. I don't want the money, of course, and shall use it in keeping the houses tidy or helping other women in like case," said Rose, entirely ignoring ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... to Whitman's Leaves of Grass, a book of singular service, a book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew into space a thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion, and, having thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a strong foundation of all the original and manly virtues. But it is, once more, only a book for those who have the gift of reading. I will be very frank—I believe ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cigar-case was open in his hand in a moment, and with such a smile as a genteel perfumer offers his wares with, he presented it toward the gentleman who was built up in ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... passed our window again on their way to their customary walk. They were arm in arm. Jane looked exquisitely proud, happy, and uncomfortable, with new white cotton gloves, and William, in the silk hat, singularly genteel! ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... out the Ohio militia who occupied a post at Perrysburg, 10 M. to the south. No fighting took place in this most genteel of wars, although there were ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... perhaps, standing with unequalled grace upon the longest legs known in this world, is a troop of giant birds as wonderful as the pelican, but how opposite! The beautiful flamingo is a bird of feeble intellect, delicate appetite, and genteel tastes. It cannot eat fish, for its slender throat would scarcely admit a pea. Besides, the idea of catching anything, or even picking up food from the ground, does not occur to its simple mind. Its diet consists of certain small crustaceans, classed by naturalists with water-fleas, which ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... Miss Cotton more and more sorrowfully. She liked to have people talk as they do in genteel novels. Mrs. Brinkley's bold expressions were a series of violent shocks to her nature, and imparted a terrible vibration to the fabric of her whole little rose-coloured ideal world; if they had not been the expressions of a person whom a great ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... vision the roughness of the skin seemed to swell it to a size demanding a boxing glove. He bought her six pairs of tan kid, in a beautiful cardboard box. He could ill afford the gift, and made one of his whimsical grimaces when he got the bill. The young lady who served him looked infinitely more genteel than Mary Ann. He wondered what she would think if she knew for whom he was buying these dainty articles. Perhaps her feelings would be so outraged she would refuse to participate in the transaction. But the young ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... of you," he assured me. "He's got you booked for a quick rise." My poverty was so pressing that I had not the courage to refuse,—the year and a half of ferocious struggle and the longing to marry Betty Crosby had combined to break my spirit. I believe it is Johnson who says the worst feature of genteel poverty is its power to make one ridiculous. I don't think so. No; its worst feature is its ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... soon found a lodging too narrow for his accommodation, and removed to a house of his own, "a pretty garden-house, in Aldersgate, at the end of an entry." Aldersgate was outside the city walls, on the verge of the open country of Islington, and was a genteel though not a fashionable quarter. There were few streets in London, says Phillips, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... the Rue—say the Rue Millevoye, so that we may not interfere with possible vested interests. Was it respectable? Was it genteel? Did good country families frequent it? Were all the comforts of an English home to be had? Had Mrs. Grundy cast an approving eye into every nook and corner? Of course there were Bibles in the bedrooms; and you were not made to pay a franc for every cake of soap. Mrs. Rowe had ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... that followed, induced Mr Sparks to believe that his tormentors had left him, he therefore dismissed them from his mind, and gave himself entirely to business. Arrived at Conway street, he found that it was one of those semi-genteel streets in the immediate neighbourhood of Kensington Gardens, wherein dwell thriving tradespeople who know themselves to be rising in the world, and unfortunate members of the "upper ten," who know ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... of these spectres of soldiers, these unhappy men broken down with hunger and fatigue, the genteel National Guards, warmly clad and wrapped up for the winter, commenced to utter foolish speeches and big hopes which had been their daily food for several months: "Break the iron circle;" "not one inch, not a stone;" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... His parents being informed of the disagreeable situation into which he had brought himself, and what a shy reception he met with from all the boys in the neighbourhood, thought it adviseable, after giving him a strict caution to behave in a more peaceable manner for the future, to remove him to a genteel boarding school, at a distance from home. If he had thought proper to follow their advice, and make a diligent use of the excellent instructions he received from his new teachers, he might afterwards have cut a shining figure ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... of youth, recked not of such matters. They were surrounded by the county. On every side the fields and moors of Staffordshire, intersected by roads and lanes, railways, watercourses and telegraph-lines, patterned by hedges, ornamented and made respectable by halls and genteel parks, enlivened by villages at the intersections, and warmly surveyed by the sun, spread out undulating. And trains were rushing round curves in deep cuttings, and carts and waggons trotting and jingling on the yellow ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... purposes of young white men[483] and overseers.[484] Goodell reports a well-authenticated account of a respectable Christian lady at the South who kept a handsome mulatto female for the use of her genteel son, as a method of deterring him, as she said, "from indiscriminate and vulgar indulgences."[485] Harriet Martineau discovered a young white man who on visiting a southern lady became insanely enamored of her intelligent quadroon maid. He sought to purchase her but the owner refused to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... ideas of my own as to a genteel way of gittin' him interested in this honor that we are about to bestow. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... full of gold-fishes, and overhung by a bright-eyed, mellow-throated canary, the whole of that paradise being doubtless under the watch and care of little Laura Birch. This was the ladies' parlor,—the grand reception-room, also, of any genteel male guest, should one for a wonder appear. Little Laura, however, was no longer as little as she had been,—though just as innocent, and ten times as bewitching to most people who knew her. You could not but particularly wish her well, the moment her glad, hopeful, playful, confiding, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... full of the most delicate but veritable humor, as her allusion to the genteel and cheerful poverty of the lady who, in giving a tea-party, "now sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew; and we knew that she knew that we ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... disembodied—so strangely attired yet so careful of elementary hygiene, driven by that fierce typhoon, with that bird of portent in the skies, arriving suddenly with the salt of their Odyssey upon their brows at the beach of the genteel and respectable Sussex town, and visiting a perhaps slightly perturbed Auntie Isabel, and afterwards the fire-escape, I felt that here was the glimpse of the wild exotic adventure for which the hearts of all of us yearn. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... newest fashion, and became his chief care; he went abroad with it all the morning in papers, and drest it out in the afternoon. They could not, however, teach him to game, swear, drink, nor any other genteel vice the town abounded with. He applied most of his leisure hours to music, in which he greatly improved himself; and became so perfect a connoisseur in that art, that he led the opinion of all the other footmen at ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... Everything was done in a genteel and ordinary way, but on the other hand, there was no lingering. Anna found herself next Sydney Courtlaw, with his friend close at hand. Opposite to her was a sallow-visaged young man, whose small tie seemed like a smudge of obtusively shiny black across the front of a high close-drawn collar. ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the people were looking for a man, the hero of many battles, who had won honour for himself and for his country in foreign lands, and who was coming home. Everybody stood up and gazed, Melchior with them. Then the crowd parted, and the hero came on. No one asked whether he were handsome or genteel, whether he kept good company, or wore a tiger-skin rug, or looked through an opera-glass? They knew what he had done, and it ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... we sailed to Portree, in Sky, and then rode in wretched weather to Kingsburgh. There we were received by Mr. Allan Macdonald and his wife, the celebrated Miss Flora Macdonald. She is a little woman of a genteel appearance, and uncommonly mild and well-bred. Dr. Johnson was rather quiescent, and went early to bed. I slept in the same room with him. Each had a neat bed with tartan curtains. Dr. Johnson's bed was the very bed in which the grandson ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... R—— answered aloud, "whether they be vulgar, or whether they be genteel, I take no credit to myself; for an extra allowance was made for my education, that I should be polished brightly like a gentleman, and if you perceive a failure on that score, the fault is not mine, but the preparatory school's. Moreover, if a man has any mental, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Their manners are remarkably gentle and unassuming. They are observant, and not without curiosity, but they require encouragement to induce them to come forward, being restrained, it would seem, by a genteel self-denial, from gratifying curiosity, lest it might be thought obtrusive. Their dress is singularly graceful; it consists of a loose flowing robe, with very wide sleeves, tied round the middle by a broad rich belt or girdle of wrought silk, a yellow cylindrical ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... PRESS] Blimy! It amooses 'em, all but the genteel ones. Cheer oh! Press! Yer can always myke somefin' out o' nufun'? It's not the fust thing as 'as existed in yer ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... nicely. Perhaps when she sees everything new about her she will feel a stranger there, and think you better looking than you are, and be angelically sweet.—Oh! madame has not her match, and you may boast of having done a very good stroke of business: a good heart, genteel manners, a fine instep—and a skin, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... hand, operas and genteel comedies, which are esteemed only by the higher ranks in England, are a favourite amusement of all ranks in France. The qualities which are most highly prized in the comedies, are, interest and variety of incident and situation, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... was Enid Crofton's ideal of what a lover, even a husband, should be, and she had never liked any man as well, she knew with a painful, practical knowledge the meaning of the words "genteel poverty." Tremaine's regiment would not remain for ever in India, and then would begin the enforced economies, the weary struggle with an inadequate income she had known with Colonel Crofton. No, no—it wasn't good enough!—or at any rate not good ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... don't need that," she thought sadly. "It's possible to live just so. There are others, now, living on maintenance. And, they say, far better than if they had twirled around an altar. What's so bad about that? Peaceful, quiet, genteel ... I'd darn socks for him, wash floors, cook ... the plainer dishes. Of course, he'll be in line to get married to a rich girl some time. Well, now, to be sure, he wouldn't throw me out in the street just so, mother-naked. Although he's a little simpleton, and chatters a lot, still it's easy ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... sparingly—both from its soothing and pleasant effect, it become common, and now it is almost the only beverage used at breakfast by the farmers of Pennsylvania, and indeed, people suppose the morning repast is not genteel, unless the board is decorated with this foreign beverage. If it was used in a moderately strong well clarified state, it would be less injurious, but it is too frequently set down in a non descript state, difficult ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... proper exercise is pure, chaste, virtuous, and even an ingredient in good manners. It is this which renders men always more polite towards women than to one another, and more refined in their society, and which makes women more kind, grateful, genteel and tender towards men than women. It makes mothers love their sons more than their daughters, and fathers more attached to their daughters. Man's endearing recollections of his mother or wife form his most powerful incentives to virtue, study, and good deeds, as well ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... a mincing, apologetic gesture of her head; and then "Dear me!" Having committed the solecism, she found it necessary to draw attention to it. She may have been a Shropshire Norman, but at that relaxed hour of the night, she displayed all the signs of the orthodox genteel attitude. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... homewards. And the dog barked at Josiah almost every step of the way back, and when we got to our boardin' place, Miss Flamm shook hands with us both, and her relatives never took a mite of notice of us, further than to jump down and open the carriage door for us as we got out. (They are genteel in their manners, and Josiah had to admit that they wuz, much as his feelin's wuz hurt by ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... all right. When we get to Westminster, you skid down Adam Street until yer get to yer diggin's; an' then hup you goes and changes yer dress. Into the very genteel dark-blue costoom you gets, and down you comes to yer 'umble servant wot is waitin' ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... too, and I reckon your friends has had the best of it; and here they are ashore in the old stockade, as was made years and years ago by Flint. Ah, he was the man to have a headpiece, was Flint! Barring rum, his match were never seen. He were afraid of none, not he; on'y Silver—Silver was that genteel." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... write what others might read. From studying the bills which he carried, he soon took to original composition; and it may be said of him, that in fluency of language and richness of imagery few surpassed him. In person Mr. Robinson was a genteel young man, though it cannot be said of him that he possessed manly beauty. He was slight and active, intelligent in his physiognomy, and polite in his demeanour. Perhaps it may be unnecessary to say anything further ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... passing of this "relic of old dacincy," the shabby genteel of the earth from Rome—even if the passing is a temporary social phenomenon, has a curious symbolic timeliness, coming when the working class is rising. It leaves Rome almost as middle class as Kansas City and Los Angeles! For in Rome ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... pleased her eye like a picture. To-day the silver lettering was covered with narrow posters announcing that Jonah's red-letter sale was to begin to-morrow. And as she stared at this huge machine for coining money, she remembered, with a sudden disdain, her home with its atmosphere of decay and genteel poverty. She was conscious of some change in herself. The slight sense of physical repugnance to the hunchback had vanished since his declaration. He and his shop stood for power ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... shouted the porter. "Well, good-bye!" said the genteel man, rising and making a bolt for the door. As the train slowly clanged its way through the old town the remaining passenger settled himself back in the seat ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... comedian was pestered with applications for money for all sorts of institutions. In order to provide Russell with the means to bestow unlimited largess, Field endowed him with the touch of Midas. He would report that the matchless exponent of "Shabby Genteel" bought lead mines, to be disappointed by finding tons of virgin gold in the quartz. Like Bret Harte's hero of Downs Flat, when Russell dug for water his luck was so contrary that he struck diamonds. When ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... of genteel appearance, wearing a cotton gown, was sitting on a chair by the bed on the left. Her face was thin and yellow, and her sunken cheeks betrayed at the first glance that she was ill. But what struck Alyosha most was the expression in the poor woman's eyes—a ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... we won't have dinner till late; that will be real genteel and give us plenty of time," added Tilly, suddenly realizing the novelty of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... and pilasters. Most of their time is necessarily passed at home, but they undergo all manner of house discomfort resulting from this preference of cheap finery over solid structure, rather than forego their "genteel locality" and stereotyped ornamentation. A family of daughters on the one side, diligent over the "Battle of Prague;" a nursery full of crying babies on the other; more Battles of Prague opposite, diversified by a future Lind practicing her scales unweariedly; ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
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