|
|
|
More "Mincing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But O for one little spark from the fire that shone in the soul of R.L.S. Better to die young with a broken heart, if it were a heart as brave and gay as his, than beat Methuselah by means of a mincing, calculating, cold-blooded attention to ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... Royal Family'—the indispensable atom of English in the service—so that he, the expert, had held his breath while they groped and stumbled along the precipitous pass. Now the whilom Gabbai and Town Councillor found himself almost patronized—as a poor provincial—by this mincing, genteel clerical couple. He retorted by animadverting ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... draggled sealskin; while Iskender went quite unnoticed till the wife of Karlsberger—a bulky slattern, who kept shuffling in and out with plates and glasses—perceived his need, and placed a stool for him. Through confusion and annoyance he caught nothing of the conversation till Elias, in a mincing voice, announced: ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... character was simplicity. Unaided he rose to be pre-eminent as a bricklayer, but in private life he never became accustomed to the exclusive society to which by his genius he had won admittance. He never quite lost the mincing speech of the class from which he sprang, nor could he acquire facility in the vigorous mode of expression proper to his new and exalted station. "Not 'arf" and "'Strewf" ever came haltingly to his tongue, and to the last he struggled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... wife but is crying 'Give, give,' like the daughters of the horse-leech; and every woman must drive her husband out across seas to bring her home money to squander on hoods and farthingales, and go mincing with outstretched necks and wanton eyes; and they will soon learn to do worse than that, for the sake of gain. But the Lord's hand will be against their tires and crisping-pins, their mufflers and farthingales, as it was against the Jews of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... in a mincing Berlin accent. "When I require a corps of observers I usually send my aide. That being now quite perfectly understood, you gentlemen will give yourselves the trouble to descend as you have come. Further, you will place a sentry at the tower door, and inform enquirers that ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... are shipped to Europe in bags containing from one to one and a half hundredweight, and are disposed of by the London brokers nearly every Tuesday in the year at a special sale in the Commercial Sale Room in Mincing Lane. ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... stop some place, and I really can't stand that mincing Miss Mitchin and her half-baked yearners and that odious creature with the beard and ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... and leave man out," he said. All art must suggest something. Mere verbal description is not literature: it is only words, words, words; a picture must be charged with soul, otherwise a photograph would outrank "The Angelus." Music must be more than jingling tunes and mincing sounds. And thus we find Wagner at thirty years of age boldly putting forth "The Flying Dutchman," with music not written for the text, nor text written for the music, but words and music created ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... when Joqard was brought, the hamari scrupled not to give the brute a hearty cuff, whereat the fishermen shook the sails of the pavilion with laughter; then, standing Joqard up, he placed one of the huge paws on his arm, and, with the mincing step of ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... table I had an opportunity of observing at my leisure the king and queen. The king was of medium height, and though not strictly handsome had a pleasant face. His nose was very long, his voice high-pitched and disagreeable; and he walked with a mincing air in which there was no majesty, but this, however, I attributed to the gout. He ate heartily of everything offered him, except vegetables, which he never ate, saying that grass was good only for ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... angry when reminded of the privileges of the fair sex, because he will not be classed amongst 'the ladies,' and who, in my opinion, ought not to be surprised when, after his own fashion, one tells him the truth roundly, and without mincing matters." ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... to display them. For a long while it was not usual for men to carry them without incurring the brand of effeminacy, and they were vulgarly considered as the characteristics of a person whom the mob hugely disliked, namely, a mincing Frenchman! At first, a single umbrella seems to have been kept at a coffee-house for some extraordinary occasion—lent as a coach or chair in a heavy shower—but not commonly carried by the walkers. The Female Tatler advertises, "the young gentleman belonging to the custom-house who, in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... remembrance of blessed Saint Stephen, Let's joy at morning, at noon, and at even; Then leave off your mincing, and fall to mince-pies, I pray take my counsel, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... of mincing the matter? Here we are, half a dozen of the best fellows in the ship. We can't all be captain; but one of us can be ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... a proud mincing peat, and as perverse as he is officious. She dotes as perfectly upon the courtier, as her husband doth on her, and only wants the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... cowboy appeared, mincing in on his high-heeled boots, his silver spurs jingling, the fringe of his chaps impacting softly on the leather. He stood at ease, his broad hat in both hands, his dark, level brows fixed on ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... sinewy arms. He had a gypsy face, and tangled, long, black hair; and as he walked through the forest he might be heard talking to himself, with wild gesticulations. He was an itinerant cooper by trade, and made for the farmers' wives their butter-tubs and butter-ladles, mincing-bowls and coggies, and for the men, whip-stalks, axe handles, and the like. But in the boys' eyes he was guilty of a horrible iniquity. He was a dog-killer. His chief business was the doing away with dogs of ill-repute in the country; vicious dogs, sheep-killing dogs, egg-sucking ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... outward carriage, behaviour, and gesture, which is odious for Christians to be tainted with; and this pride is discovered by mincing words, a made carriage, and an affecting the toys and baubles that Satan, and every lightheaded fool bringeth into the world. As God speaketh of the daughters of Zion, 'they walk with stretched forth necks, and wanton eyes, mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet' (Isa ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... feet. It is passing strange, that any tyrant should be able—even Fashion herself—so to change the whole current of human feeling, as to make a sprightly buoyant young girl of ten years of age, become at thirteen a grave, staid or mincing young woman, unable—rather, unwilling—to move except in a certain style, and then only with an effort scarcely exceeded by the efforts of those who are suffering ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... People sinking on the one hand: on the other hand, nothing but wretched Sieur Motiers, treasonous Riquetti Mirabeaus; traitors, or else shadows, and simulacra of Quacks, to be seen in high places, look where you will! Men that go mincing, grimacing, with plausible speech and brushed raiment; hollow within: Quacks Political; Quacks scientific, Academical; all with a fellow-feeling for each other, and kind of Quack public-spirit! Not great Lavoisier himself, or any ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Enrique Valero, also a magistrate of the Court, a man of an agreeable presence, with a fine expressive face, albeit somewhat marked by the fast life he had lived. As shown by his strong accent, which was mincing and lisping, he was Andalusian, of ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... whole palace was afterwards rebuilt by the Corsini, and many parts of it were changed. Christina had been in Paris and had seen Louis Fourteenth dance as Alcibiades in Benserade's ballet, a sight to rejoice the gods of Olympus, who must certainly have laughed even louder at the bewigged King's mincing steps than they did at Vulcan's limp; for with many gifts, the Sun-King possessed no more sense of humour than Don Quixote, who stood on his head before Sancho as a proof that love was driving him ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... ATTENTION IS NECESSARY. The points which cooks should, in this branch of cookery, more particularly observe, are the thorough chopping of the suet, the complete mincing of the herbs, the careful grating of the bread-crumbs, and the perfect mixing of the whole. These are the three principal ingredients of forcemeats, and they can scarcely be cut too small, as nothing like a lump or fibre should be anywhere perceptible. To ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... his teeth bared yellow At the Dakkanese, his stable-fellow. Then Forward-Ho, then a chestnut weed, Skysail, slight, with a turn of speed. The neat Gavotte under black and coral, Then the Mutineer, Lord Leybourne's sorrel, Natuna mincing, Syringa sidling, Stormalong fighting to break his bridling, Thunderbolt dancing with raw nerves quick, Trying a savage at Bitter Dick. The Ranger (winner three years before), Now old, but ready for one try more; Hadrian; Thankful; the stable-cronies, ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... dirty. Then Winifred so ready to serve the soldier, when she repudiated the man. And this made the grit worse between his teeth. And the children running around playing and calling in the rather mincing fashion of children who have nurses and governesses and literature in the family. And Joyce so lame! It had all become unreal to him, after the camp. It only set his soul on edge. He left at dawn on the Monday morning, glad ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... granted that there was no mincing matters when an opportunity for reprisals occurred. The Spaniards had carried barbarism to such a pitch in seizing our ships and condemning their crews to the galleys, that Queen Elizabeth was never averse to meeting murder and plunder by more than the equivalent ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... had been mincing among the elect and the select and the intellectual and the poetic and the aristocratic; among the lah-di-dah and Kensingtonian accents; among rouged lips and blue hose and fixed simperings; in the centre of the universe. And he had conducted himself with considerable skill ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... station on Monday morning, he could not help feeling very sorry at having to leave Brighton. The weather was so glorious, the sea all rippling and dancing in the morning sunshine, the streets so full of merry pleasure-seekers, that going back to the office in Mincing Lane was dull enough. They Were very sorry to lose him, too: there could be no mistake about that; ever since he had so promptly declined for them all Mr. Murray's invitation, they felt a sort of respectful admiration for him, though ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the garden of oblivion," he said, still in a low voice, and speaking with a delicate refinement that was almost mincing. "In the desert one forgets everything; even the little heart one loves, and the desire ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... gone back to her room, and sat now, in the centre of it, staring toward the garden. Noon had crept upon it, devouring all shadow. Her eyes saw little but the golden blur. A fusuma opened softly, and two women, Mata and the attendant seamstress, came mincing and smirking toward her, each with an armful of white silk. Ume rose like an automaton. They began her toilet, talking the while in low voices. They robed her in white with a thin lining-edge of crimson, and threw over her shining ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... thus treated in infancy, and who hobbled about with much difficulty, but no young girls were to be seen thus hampered. When this hideous deformity has been adopted, the knee and ankle joints do not bend at all in walking; all movement is from the thigh joints, a mincing gait is imparted, and the arms swing from side to side, the whole body being at all times liable to topple over. A traveler is not competent, however, to speak of the higher classes of women, as no access is afforded to domestic life in wealthy families. Only women of the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... train we might meet—just accidentally run into one another. And you'll say, 'Why, there's Mr. Mayer! How odd. How d'ye do, Mr. Mayer.'" He bowed with a mincing imitation of Chrystie's best society manner. "'I didn't ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... to blush and be ashamed when thou rememberest thy sins and iniquities, yet do not hide them—'He that covereth his sins shall not prosper.' Do not lessen them; do not speak of them before God after a mincing way—'Acknowledge thine iniquities, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree; and ye have not obeyed my voice, saith the Lord' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... husband become a slob. That is just what I mean. It is no use mincing words. Some husbands have never acquired the habit—or if they have acquired it they quickly lost it—of regarding their wives as ladies. "She is not a lady, she is only my wife," is a well-known ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... grotesque dance with Bruin Boru, the wonderful dancing bear. Jack Fenn was very funny in his bear-skin costume, and he pawed and scraped as he ambled ludicrously about, and kept time to the music with mincing steps or ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... painted his dark eyebrows fair, and she had put rouge on his cheeks and dressed him up in her own petticoats and the clothes Mrs. Morgan had left; and she had told him not to stride like a man, but to take little mincing steps, so that the guards should not notice any difference. But there was one thing she could not hide, and that was his beard, and she had no time to cut it off; so she tucked it into his cloak in front, and told him ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... cream are prepared by mincing cold boiled potatoes fine, putting them in a spider with a little melted butter in it, and letting them fry slightly, keeping them well covered. Add a very small piece of fresh butter, season with pepper and salt, and pour over them cream or rich milk. Let them boil up once, and serve. This ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... revision which its author gave it, year after year, keeping it in his desk, and then sending it, a mere pamphlet, with no flourish of trumpets, into the world. Many an ancient figure came to lend animation to the scene. Horace Walpole in his lace coat and spruce wig went mincing by; the mother of Gray, with her sister, measured lace for the customers who came to her little shop in London; the wags of Pembroke College, graceless varlets, raise an alarm of fire that they may see the frightened poet drop from the window, half dead with alarm; old Foulis, the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... quite well, and now at Mr Pecksniff's. Don't be at all alarmed about her. She is everything you could wish. It's of no use mincing matters, or making secrets, is it?' added Mrs Lupin. 'I know all about it, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... together, to discuss and to decide together. You can teach them what political action will do when they know enough. And all the time you can drive and hammer into them the socialistic ideas. Tell them always, without mincing matters, that they are robbed as they would probably rob others if they had a chance, and that there never can be happiness until men live like mates and pay nothing to any man for leave to work. Tell ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... even going thither, Pucelle," I said, mincing in my speech; whereat she laughed, for of her nature she ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... office-boy and messenger, and, my senior tells me, has been employed by the firm in this capacity for about thirty years. He is a negro, about sixty years old, rather short and stout, with a mincing, noiseless gait, broad African features, beautiful teeth, and small, round, twinkling eyes, the movements of which are accompanied by little abrupt, sidewise turns of the head, like a bird. His manner ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... with their hand luggage, trooped down the long dock to the Lanawaxa's boarding-plank. Heavy Stone turned suddenly in the hot sunshine (for it was a glowing noon) to find two of the smaller girls mincing ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... its light, we saw a boat, not cut in any foreign fashion, but built and rigged near St Margaret's Hope. It was full of men; we could hear them cheering and shouting in our own good Scots tongue, which fell kindly on our ears after the soft mincing English which had been thrown at our ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... had risen to his feet, and was waving a white, bejewelled hand in an imperious demand for silence. When at last it came he spoke, his voice silvery and his accents mincing. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... the cause of us all. See here, M. Sarpy, this is no time for mincing words. We must stand up and take a part in this war. We did not provoke it, but it has come and we must join it. You may prefer to remain neutral. I do not say you are wrong. Your health is poor, you have a young daughter, you have large estates. But for me ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... at all for mincing words with his important confreres, when it came to vital issues. He preferred, in his grandiloquent way, to call a spade ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... saint his lady seemed, With step demure and slow, And gravely to the mantle With mincing pace ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... family," her biographer says, "had his peculiar freak." As a child she only cared for boys' games, and could never adapt herself to any woman's avocations. "She had a natural abhorrence to the tending of children." Her disposition was altogether masculine; "she was not for mincing obscenity, but would talk freely, whatever came uppermost." She never had any children, and was not taxed with debauchery: "No man can say or affirm that ever she had a sweetheart or any such fond thing to dally with her;" ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the things that diverted me; I yawn now when I think of some of them. But an artist, for instance, to whom my kindlier judgment has made permanent concessions is that charming Andrea del Sarto. When I first knew him, in my cold youth, I used to say without mincing that I didn't like him. Cet age est sans pitie. The fine sympathetic, melancholy, pleasing painter! He has a dozen faults, and if you insist pedantically on your rights the conclusive word you use about him will be the word weak. But if you are a generous soul ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... tell you, I have known my lady these thirty years; and if she were to take me by the shoulders, and turn me out of the house, I should only love her the more. So don't you think to come between us with any little mincing, peace-making speeches. I have been a mischief-making parrot, and I like her the better for being vexed with me. So good-bye to you, Miss; and wait till you know Lady Ludlow as well as I do, before you next think of telling me she will ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... any wager, When we are both accoutred like young men, I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two, And wear my dagger with the braver grace; And speak between the change of man and boy With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps Into a manly stride; and speak of frays, Like a fine-bragging youth; and tell quaint lies, How honourable ladies sought my love, Which I denying, they fell sick and died,— I could not do withal;—then I'll repent, And wish, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... pilot," said he. "There's no use in your mincing matters with me in this way. Just a moment," he added, seeing that the boy raised his hand as if he were about to speak. "I am a Union man all over, my pardner is another, and you are another. I know it as well as I know anything, and the old ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... hatred and vengeance which are characteristic of religious wars, and which add so much of the moral sufferings to the physical calamities of life. L'Hospital, when sending the seals to the queen-mother, who demanded them of him, considered it his bounden duty to give her without any mincing, and the king whom she governed, a piece of patriotic advice. "At my departure," he says in his will and testament, "I prayed of the king and queen this thing, that, as they had determined to break the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... awful, as Pope says—approach "with mincing steps and bow profound;" we are about to introduce ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... institution will be really useful and creditable. Thomson is superintending a capital edition of Sir James Melville's Memoirs.[489] It is brave to see how he wags his Scots tongue, and what a difference there is in the force and firmness of the language, compared to the mincing English edition in which he has hitherto been alone known. Nothing to-day but correcting proofs; Anne went to the play, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... scholarship there was something boyish about Joseph. He painted his eyes, dressed his hair carefully, and walked with a mincing step. These foibles of youth were not so deplorable as his habit of bringing evil reports of his brethren to his father. He accused them of treating the beasts under their care with cruelty—he said that they ate flesh torn from a living ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... crowds of castanet-players and dancers, in every variety of laughable, grotesque, and most frequently tatterdemalion costume, beating drums, and so on—making a horrible din. Sometimes, in the midst of all this wild confusion, a kind of French courtier would come mincing along, in old-fashioned costume, leading a lady, also in antique attire, and, gazing on the right hand and the left through an immense opera-glass, making, in the meantime, the most polite bows. However ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Street," continued he, as they turned the corner rather short; in doing which, somewhat animated by the description he had just been giving, Tom's foot caught the toe of a gentleman, who was mincing along the pathway with all the care and precision of a dancing-master, which had the effect of bringing him to the ground in an instant as effectually as a blow from one of the fancy. Tom, who had no intention of giving offence wantonly, apologized for the misfortune, by—"I beg pardon, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... found such a playground in talk. There he could take the curb off his prejudices, give the rein to his whimsical fancy, and better his expression as he talked. But where men must talk, as well as write, upon oath, paralysis is not easily avoided. In the little mincing societies addicted to intellectual and moral culture the creative zest is lost. The painful inhibition of a continual rigorous choice, if it is never relaxed, cripples the activity of the mind. Those who can talk the best and most compact sense have often found irresponsible ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... One feels the same disgust at the idea of opening Rimini, that impresses itself on the mind of a man of fashion, when he is invited to enter, for a second time, the gilded drawing-room of a little mincing boarding school mistress, who would fain have an At Home in her house. Every thing is pretence, affectation, finery, and gaudiness. The beaux are attorneys' apprentices, with chapeau bras and Limerick gloves—fiddlers, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... been the love scene all over again, for Alice had never seemed so adorable, but for the sudden and ominous entrance of Mother Bonneton. She eyed the visitor with frank unfriendliness and, without mincing her words, proceeded to tell him certain things, notably that his attentions to Alice must cease and that his visits ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... heard—Hers among them—and the clear tinkling of a little bell; then the door opens and a very diminutive toy terrier enters, alone. She's black and tan, seems in love with herself, and comes forward with a mincing step.) ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... because he had been skinned. When Isoult did finally lift her head and begin to look timidly about her, she found herself in a country unfamiliar, which, for all she knew, might be an hour's or a week's journey from High March, where Prosper was. Prosper! She knew that every mincing step of the donkey took her further from him, but she was powerless to protest or to pray; life scarce whispered in her yet. And what span of miles or hours, after all, could set her wider from him than discovery, the shame, the yelling of her foes, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... keener appreciator of the tendencies to a rise or fall in colonial produce—sugars more especially—than John Linden, of Mincing Lane, it would have been difficult to point out in the wide city of London. He was not so immensely rich as many others engaged in the same merchant-traffic as himself; nothing at all like it, indeed, for I doubt that he could at any time have been ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... the faint mist which hung over the farther end of the square advanced a procession of tall, dust-coloured animals, with long, delicately poised necks and a mincing gait. Even Mrs. Rapkin could not succeed in making anything ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... spirited little jade, the off-leader in the third stage, the petted belle of the route, the nervous, coquettish, mincing mare of Marshy Hope. A spoiled beauty she was; you could see that as she took the road with dancing step, tossing her pretty head about, and conscious of her shining black coat and her tail done up "in any simple knot,"—like the back hair of Shelley's Beatrice Cenci. How she ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... has always been a plain-speaking country, and the Poles, expressing themselves in the roughest of European tongues, a plain-spoken people. They spoke so plainly to Henry of Valois when he was their king that one fine night he ran away to mincing France and gentler men. When, under rough John Sobieski, they spoke with their enemy in the gate of Vienna, their meaning was quite clear to ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... tan-colored bellies. When father Bruno, on his hind legs and bare feet, waddled down the stage, he resembled a Hebrew gentleman in a brown bathing suit who had lost his waist-line. As he tripped doubtfully forward, with mincing steps, he continually and mournfully wagged his head. He seemed to be saying: "This water is much too cold for me." The mamma bear was dressed in a poke bonnet and white apron, and resembled the wolf who frightened Little Red Riding-Hood, and Ikey, ...
— The Nature Faker • Richard Harding Davis
... sentimental virtue, pretended never to have known love, talked platonics to all the men about her, and kept the prosecuting-attorney at her beck and call. She was given to caps with large bows, but preferred to wear only her hair. She danced, and at forty-five years of age had the mincing manner of a girl; her feet, however, were large and her hands frightful. She wished to be called Isaure, because among her other oddities and absurdities she had the taste to repudiate the name of Gaubertin as vulgar. Her eyes were light and her hair of an undecided color, something like ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... in rich velvets, with many furbelows and laces. He was covered with golden chains, finely wrought rings and jeweled ornaments. He walked with mincing steps and glared at all the courtiers as if he considered himself far superior to ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a bovine grunt as Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan came mincing in: "I say, you would-be funny fellows!—come over and tell Kelly Neville that he's got a pretty good thing here if he only has ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... said he, speaking well-chosen English with a curious little mincing accent. "Pray take a cigarette. And you, sir? I can recommend them, for I have them especially prepared by Ionides of Alexandria. He sends me a thousand at a time, and I grieve to say that I have to arrange for a fresh supply every fortnight. Bad, sir, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a mincing, waiting-gentlewoman's manner, and with a certain unnatural softness of voice, which again brought all the mother to my mind, assured me that if I'd forgot her mother, she had not forgot me; for that ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... who was also present, was equally anxious for butter. She had a profusion of iron rings on her ankles, to which were attached little pieces of sheet iron, to enable her to make a tinkling as she walked in her mincing African style; the same thing is thought pretty by our own ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... library—"David Grieve," "Cometh up as a Flower," "The Earthly Paradise," Ruskin's "Stones of Venice," Marie Corelli's "Romance of Two Worlds." The mantelpiece was arranged in geometrical disorder, but it had a gilt clock under a glass shade precisely in the middle. When the gilt clock indicated, in a mincing way, that Miss Kimpsey had been kept waiting fifteen minutes, Mrs. Bell came in. She had fastened her last button and assumed the expression appropriate to Miss Kimpsey at the foot of the stair. She was a tall, thin woman, with no color and rather narrow brown eyes much wrinkled round ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... speaks out from the canvas of Kneller and Jervis, Vivien and Rigaud? And withal, notwithstanding lace and brocade—the fripperies of artificial costume—still those who give interest or charm to that day look from their portraits like men,—raking or debonair, if you will, never mincing nor feminine. Can we say as much of the portraits of Lawrence? Gaze there on fair Marlborough; what delicate perfection of features, yet how easy in boldness, how serene in the conviction of power! So fair and so tranquil he might have looked through the cannon reek at Ramillies and Blenheim, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Blessed they whose sins Are cover'd." Like the wood-nymphs then, that tripp'd Singly across the sylvan shadows, one Eager to view and one to 'scape the sun, So mov'd she on, against the current, up The verdant rivage. I, her mincing step Observing, with ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... presentiment on the subject of Soames' communication as they left the Board Room together, and went out into the noise and hurry of Cheapside. They walked together a good minute without speaking, Soames with his mousing, mincing step, and old Jolyon upright and using his umbrella ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... pianissimo for the hors d'oeuvres: something gentle and soothing for the oysters; there can be an indication of heartiness in the melody that ushers in the soup, as though giving it a warm welcome. There should be a mincing minuet-like movement for the entrees, a sparkling air for the champagne, and something robust for the joint. A sporting tune for the game: sweet melody for the sweets, and a grand and grateful Chorale—a kind of thanksgiving service as it were—when the last ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... serious than sweets. After an hour in the bungalow, Chellalu would wander off, apparently because she was tired of us, but really because she was full of a new and original idea, and wanted an audience. Once she puzzled the nursery community who had not been visiting the bungalow, by mincing about on pointed toes, with shoulders shrugged like a dancing master in caricature. The babies thought this a very nice game, and for weeks they ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... safe to," continued Kate. "Now, such a girl oughtn't to be on the foundation at all. If you only knew the snubbing she gave me yesterday. I quite hate her, with all her pretty face and her mincing ways." ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... the bias and direction to the main labours of his life originated in his generosity and benevolence. His brother William, a surgeon in Mincing Lane, gave gratuitous advice to the poor, and amongst the numerous applicants for relief at his surgery was a poor African named Jonathan Strong. It appeared that the negro had been brutally treated by his master, a Barbadoes lawyer then in London, and became ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... hold their hands up to the waist, and press their arms against themselves as tightly as if they were glued there; others swing them backward and forward, as a business man walks along the street. Too short steps detract from dignity very much, forming a mincing pace; too ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... do nothing. I have heard it said that the clergy—who are always, more universally than any other class, the scholars of their day—are addressed as women; that the rough, spontaneous conversation of men they do not hear, but only a mincing[41] and diluted speech. They are often virtually disfranchised; and indeed there are advocates for their celibacy. As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is not just and wise. Action ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of music, Mr. Elsmere?' asked Mrs. Leyburn in her little mincing voice, making room for his chair beside them. 'If you are, I am sure my youngest daughter's playing will ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and when the julep appeared on a silver tray, he left the room and went upstairs to where Betty was waiting. "He's awful, there's no use mincing words, he's simply awful," he remarked in ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... same chambermaid was a pattern of town prettiness and smartness. So trim her waist, her cap, her dress—I wondered how they had all been manufactured. Her speech had an accent which in its mincing glibness seemed to rebuke mine as by authority; her spruce attire flaunted an easy scorn to my plain ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... had never heard Elsie complain of the hill before. Usually they scampered up it, and rolled down the steepest side—not, truly, when there was milk to carry, but at other times. And now Elsie was walking along in a languid, mincing fashion, as if she had no more fun in her than Robbie himself, and had never scampered bare-foot over the moor six days out of every week, no matter ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... have these tender places," said Aunt Rachel. "I never get hurt at what is said to me. No—never! To be ever picking and mincing, and chopping off your words—to be afraid to say this or that—for fear somebody will be offended! ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... date when Milly could persuade her mother to sail for England. I longed to scream at them, "Oh, you hard, unfeeling wretches!" But instead I stood outwardly patient, a good, well-behaved young girl with a little mincing smile on my face. Only the smile was frozen so hard you could have knocked it ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... preparing splendid feasts and banquets, and the cooks were busy plucking geese, killing little pigs, flaying kids, basting the roast meat, skimming pots, mincing meat for dumplings, larding capons, and preparing a thousand other delicacies, a beautiful dove came flying to ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... double the bulk of cut straw or wheat chaff. In spring, the lot of cattle which had the mixed food were in good condition, and equally well grown as others, though they had consumed in five months two tons less of roots apiece. The reporter does not advise the mincing process to be commenced when cattle are very forward in condition, as any change of food requires a certain time to accustom the animals to it, and in the meantime fat cattle are apt to fall off in condition. It ought to be begun when they are ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... world of feathers is so comical as a crow baby, with its awkward bows and ungainly hops, its tottering steps on the fence and its mincing, tight-boot sort of gait on the ground, its eager fluttering when it has hopes of food, and its loud and ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... the buyers some days beforehand, so that they were able to decide what they wished to purchase and the price they were willing to pay. The sales always took place at 11 o'clock on Tuesdays in the Commercial Sale Room in Mincing Lane, that narrow street off Fenchurch Street, where the air is so highly charged with expert knowledge of the world's produce, that it would illuminate the prosaic surroundings with brilliant flashes if it could become ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... must have a life work and economic independence. She must have knowledge. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion. The present mincing horror at free womanhood must pass if we are ever to be rid of the bestiality of free manhood; not by guarding the weak in weakness do we gain strength, but by making weakness ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... as good a man as there is at Mincing Lane over a tea bargain; but a job like this knocks the wind out of me, makes me feel a damaged lot where the sea-water's got in, or a Maloo mixture. Can't do ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... —"It's not our fault; we didn't want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was boy's business; he might have known me before this; I told him not to prick the buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw; ain't those mincing knives down in the forecastle there, men? look to those handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the word; don't be a fool; forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treat us decently, and we're your men; but we won't be flogged." ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... second drawing of the curtain, ten dainty Japanese ladies fluttered upon the stage with mincing steps, waving gay fans and bowing low as they drew up in line before the audience. So much did the flowing garments, the fan-bedecked hair and the slanting eyebrows change the girls that even some of the mothers failed at first to recognize ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... would be some system of domestic education, which the experimenter thinks will do the work exactly. I am somewhat suspicious of systems. I am more than suspicious of any constrained formal method, bringing up children in a mere manual drill, crimping them into a mould of mincing proprieties, and making them speak with an automaton click. Perhaps the most headlong young men that can be found, are those who spent their early days in a sort of strait jacket with a clock-work movement. They were wound ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... school for gentlemen.") "Honestly," said Sylvia, "he was the queerest little mannikin—like the tiny waiter's assistants you see in hotels on the Continent. He wore his Eton suit, you understand—grown-up evening clothes minus the coat-tails, and a top hat. He sat at tea and chatted with the mincing graces of a cotillion-leader; you expected to find some of his hair gone when he took off his hat! He spoke of his brother, the duke, who had gone off shooting seals somewhere. 'The jolly rotter has nothing to do but spend his money; but ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... be fuller and his voice to lose for the time its tricks of mincing affectation. Here, indeed, there can be no question of insincerity. Pope's scorn of folly is to be condemned only so far as it was connected with too bitter a hatred of fools. He has suffered, as Swift foretold, by the insignificance ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... adventure. Life in the court of His Most Christian Majesty is one of the most artificial possible. The women hide their faces with powder and patches, lace themselves until they are ready to faint, walk with a mincing air, and live chiefly upon scandal; but they are women, after all, and every woman has a spice of romance in her nature, and such an adventure as yours is the very thing ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... to see the mysterious stranger, and hastily throwing on her royal mantle, popped her second-best diamond crown over her night-cap, put a liberal dab of rouge upon each cheek, and holding up her largest fan before her nose—for she was not used to appearing in broad daylight—she went mincing into the great hall. The Enchanter waited until the King and Queen had seated themselves upon their throne, and then, taking his place between them, ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... these privileged creatures ferreted about for monstrous crimes with which to horrify their stay-at-home countrymen; how the rich young lords, returning home with mincing steps and high-pitched lisp, surrounded by a train of parti-coloured, dialect-jabbering Venetian clowns, deft and sinister Neapolitan fencing masters, silver-voiced singing boys decoyed from some church, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... life long enough to serve them to acquire a complete knowledge of one single subject, such as the human body; and then they want to comprehend the mind of God in which the universe is included, weighing it minutely and mincing it into infinite parts, as if they had to ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... needles, files, knives, I climbed over the cliffs with him to his hut. Down on the floor we sat. Wilfrid put his treasures between his knees before him, I sat opposite, and the barter began. "What for this fellow, huh?" and he held up a piece of carved ivory, a little triangular mincing-knife, a fur mat that his wife had made, or the skin of a baby-seal. The first thing he asked for was scented soap, the ring that I was wearing, and my porcupine-quill hat-band which looked good to him; every ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... of angry chagrin. A great lady asked him how it was that she had not seen him for an age. "Because when I wish to see you, I wish to see no one but you. What do you want me to do in the midst of your society? I should cut a sorry figure in a circle of mincing tripping coxcombs; they do not suit me." We cannot wonder that on some occasion when her son's proficiency was to be tested before a company of friends, Madame d'Epinay prayed Rousseau to be of them, on the ground that he would be sure to ask the child outrageously absurd questions, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... approached the fire with mincing steps. The boys had to force them continually onward, for no beast will go toward fire willingly. A few more steps and ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... handsome, a tall, long-limbed sapling of a girl, with a flaming crest of copper-colored hair and movements as lithe and supple as a cat's. She danced buoyantly, without losing breath, advancing and retreating with mincing steps, her face grave as though the performance had its own dignity and was not to be taken lightly. Her partner, a tanned and long-haired man, took his part in a livelier spirit, laughing at her, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... I'm sure," said Mr Moffat, again putting out his hand, and allowing it to slip through Frank's grasp, as he spoke in a pretty, mincing voice: "Lady Arabella quite well?—and your father, and sisters? Very warm isn't it?—quite hot in town, I do ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... sicken and disgust a man, it is the affected, mincing way in which some people choose to talk. It is perfectly nauseous. If these young jackanapes, who screw their words into all manner of diabolical shapes, could only feel how perfectly disgusting they were, it might induce them to drop it. With many, it soon becomes such a confirmed ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... or two went by before he saw her, and then she was carrying a great fan for her young mistress, who was walking with a Cavalier, as gay as Cavaliers ever ventured to be, and another young lady, whose waiting woman had paired with Emlyn. They were mincing along, gazing about them, and uttering little contemptuous titters, and Stead could only too well guess what kind of remarks Emlyn's companion might make ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... expression that is not easily described, but which, while it blends well enough with the style of the face, is rather pleasing than captivating. It marks the peculiar beauty of the grisette, who, with her little cap, hands stuck in the pockets of her apron, mincing walk, coquettish eye, and well-balanced head, is a creature perfectly sui generis. Such a girl is more like an actress imitating the character, than one is apt to imagine the character itself. I have met with imitators ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... every one immediately gives you especial attention and the benefit of his judgment. If you should happen to serve in the right wing of Orthodoxy, you will have the inestimable boon of the freest criticism from the left wing. And it is the religious newspapers for not mincing matters. Between Jew and Gentile hostility is the normal condition of things; and is carried on peaceably enough; but when Jew meets Jew, then comes the tug of war! These people obey to the letter the Apostolic injunction, and confess your faults one to another with a relish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... for commonplace people, for the narrow-minded Gobenheims, who measure life with a square rule. Please let us keep to the artistic and poetic life, papa. We young girls have only two ways to act; we must let a man know we love him by mincing and simpering, or we must go to him frankly. Isn't the last way grand and noble? We French girls are delivered over by our families like so much merchandise, at sixty days' sight, sometimes thirty, like Mademoiselle ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... had a dreadful time. She began with: "Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Dill. I know so very few persons in service." Alice imitates her mincing way of talking, but I can't do it. And then she went on to talk about her family, how they had farmed their own land for five hundred years—such stuff! George had told Alice all about it: they had had an old cottage with a good strip of garden and two fields somewhere in Essex, and ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... Stewart's last night; a party; saw a vulgar-looking, fat man with spectacles, and a mincing, rather pretty pink and white woman, his wife. The man was Napoleon's nephew, the woman Washington's granddaughter. What a host of associations, all confused and degraded! He is a son of Murat, the King of Naples, who was ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... us, fellow?" asked one of them, a mincing Greek captain whom I had seen running like a hare upon ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... cocked his hat considerably more to the side, and with a wave of his hand, caught from the Major, took ten little mincing steps; and without turning, glanced back over his shoulder and inquired, "Ain' dat mighty ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... way with a mincing gait around the whole system of desks to a tall and important-looking door, which he opened with a deferential action of ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... be shot out of the school," said Jasper desperately; "there's no use in mincing matters. Mr. Faber has utterly lost patience; and the other ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... much I might have said, but that my zone Unmanned me: then the Doctors! O to hear The Doctors! O to watch the thirsty plants Imbibing! once or twice I thought to roar, To break my chain, to shake my mane: but thou, Modulate me, Soul of mincing mimicry! Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat; Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet Star-sisters answering under crescent brows; Abate the stride, which speaks of man, and loose A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek, Where they like swallows coming out of ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... head he says, "Very much would I prefer that our literature should appear even in the guise of the awkward, speculating, guessing, but still original, strong-minded American Yankee, than to see it mincing in the costume of a London dandy. I would rather see it, if need be, showing the wild rough strength, the naturalness and fervour of the extreme West, equally prepared to liquor with a stranger or to fight with him, ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... no use mincing matters. At this very moment Reginald might be standing defenceless within, with his last chance of liberty ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... a halt, while I stood uncertain whether to brave them or make a bid for escape. I heard the negress cry aloud in a foreign tongue, at the same time flinging up her hands; but the other pushed past her and walked straight down upon me, albeit with a mincing, tripping motion, as if she was pacing ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... with the gloves and stick I had purchased for him that very morning. As I stared aghast at this faux pas the navvy, with his new hat at an angle and twirling the stick, proceeded down the street with mincing steps and exaggerated airs of gentility, to the applause of the ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... for one dozen: One-quarter pound macaroni; one pound filet of veal; one ounce butter; one ounce flour; one gill of white stock or milk; three eggs; pepper; salt, and a little cayenne to taste. Chop the veal and then pass it twice through a sausage cutter or mincing machine. Cook the butter and flour together for about ten minutes; then add the milk or stock; then turn on a plate to cool; then add the minced veal; then add the seasoning; break the eggs in one by one; stir well. Boil the macaroni in salt and ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... numerous quadroons and mulattoes along with certain exceptional blacks. The men among these had a pride of place as butlers and coachmen, painters and carpenters; the women fitted themselves trimly with the cast-off silks and muslins of their mistresses, walked with mincing tread, and spoke in quiet tones with impressive nicety of grammar. This element was a conscious aristocracy of its kind, but its members were more or less irked by the knowledge that no matter how great their merits they could not cross the boundary into white society. ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... abjured the vanities of the world in general, and of being the sort of person to whom it was no novelty at all to be a mother; yet in the same breath, they showed her, laughing at the Carrier for being awkward, and pulling up his shirt-collar to make him smart, and mincing merrily about that very room to ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... there was something boyish about Joseph. He painted his eyes, dressed his hair carefully, and walked with a mincing step. These foibles of youth were not so deplorable as his habit of bringing evil reports of his brethren to his father. He accused them of treating the beasts under their care with cruelty—he said that they ate flesh torn from a living animal—and ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... mannikin—like the tiny waiter's assistants you see in hotels on the Continent. He wore his Eton suit, you understand—grown-up evening clothes minus the coat-tails, and a top hat. He sat at tea and chatted with the mincing graces of a cotillion-leader; you expected to find some of his hair gone when he took off his hat! He spoke of his brother, the duke, who had gone off shooting seals somewhere. 'The jolly rotter ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... his lordship. "The Fenians threatened to make mince-meat of it, but they're done up and knocked down. Now, this Livingstone proposes a new form of mincing, worse than the Fenians a ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... to her mind a dainty young woman clad in an Empire gown, taking mincing dancing steps as she came down a long avenue between tall hedges. Again, another reminded her of children at play, and still another of nothing on earth but a ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... reincarnation, that if we married, those things you would have to do to keep your heart up would cause your next showing to degenerate into a slight motion of slime at the base of mountains. Think of the distance lost, Charles, for such a little mincing forward step. Come, the morning wanes. Fortunately there are things to do, no matter what cannot be done. I shall return you half of your fortune, which, you will remember, is wholly confiscate to the Crown, but ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... Irish ladies, who, ashamed of their country, betray themselves by mincing out their abjuration, by calling tables teebles, and chairs cheers! To such renegadoes we prefer the honest quixotism of a modern champion[55] for the Scottish accent, who boldly asserted that "the broad dialect rises above reproach, scorn, and laughter," enters the lists, as he ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... in the eastern part of Coorg in what is known as the Bamboo district (because the jungle lands there consist very largely of forest trees interspersed with clumps of bamboos), they persisted in carrying their fatal Ceylon system with them, and Mr. Donald Stewart, called the Coffee King in Mincing Lane, who was a warm supporter of planting in the open, even issued, it is said, an order to his managers saying that if he found a single forest tree standing (the coffee around even a single tree would have proved him to be wrong) dismissal would follow. But nature proved to be too strong ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... even to go to College, without light French kids and a gold-headed cane; and his stock of enamelled chains, opal studs, diamond pins, and the like vanities, would nearly have fitted up a bride's corbeille. To see him fully got up—polished boots, palm-leaf waistcoat, gorgeous cravat, and all—mincing over the gutter, you would take him for a regular man-milliner, and say that the greatest exertion he was capable of, would be holding a trotter, and that only with the aid of a pair of pulleys. But scrutinize him ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... heaven-sent alternative was delivered into their hands, they found themselves hampered by the coils of a cast-off lie. No shade, however, of hesitancy appeared on the open countenance of the friend. He approached Miss Fitzroy with a mincing step, a deprecating wave of the hand, and a deeply respectful ogle. He was going to adopt the desperate resource of telling the truth, but to tell the truth profitably was a part that required rather ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... private maps or sketches; also writing materials, diary and order books, can be carried in a flat waterproof sponge bag case. As luxuries which can be done without:—A collapsible india-rubber bath basin and waterproof sheet, very compact as got at the Army and Navy Stores; a small mincing machine (the only means of digesting a trek ox), and sparklet bottle and sparklets are very handy. Such other luxuries as cigars, cigarettes, pipes, etc., can always be stowed in some corner of the valise or bag. Carry brown leather polish, ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... khaki. He felt as if the hideous cloth went into his blood and made it gritty and dirty. Then Winifred so ready to serve the soldier, when she repudiated the man. And this made the grit worse between his teeth. And the children running around playing and calling in the rather mincing fashion of children who have nurses and governesses and literature in the family. And Joyce so lame! It had all become unreal to him, after the camp. It only set his soul on edge. He left at dawn on the Monday morning, glad to get back to the ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... until reduced to one pint. Remove fish-heads and herbs, then strain the stock, and set aside until needed. Meantime rub the fish over very well with salt and pepper, then with a mixture made by mincing very fine three bay leaves, three sprigs each of thyme and parsley, three cloves of garlic, and six allspice pounded to powder. Rub the mixture in well and thoroughly—here is the key to success. The seasoning must go through and through the fish. Put ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... without any mincing of words. The Gayety is a mere adjunct to the Poodle-Dog saloon and the gambling hell up-stairs. They are so closely connected that on the stage last evening I could easily hear the click of ivory chips and the clatter of drinking ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... saw the people pretty well cured of their diffidence, and not so zealous as they were for M. d'Elbeuf, I was for mincing the matter no longer, and thought that ostentation would be as proper to-day as reserve was yesterday. The Prince de Conti took M. de Longueville to the Parliament House, where he offered them his services, together with all ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... though my impressions are often wrong and my memory always weak, that yonder cavalier who sits haughtily in the boat as if he were sole proprietor of the Mississippi, is your good friend, Don Francisco Alvarez," said Lieutenant Bernal in his mincing way. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his arm with a mock fine-lady air, and walked beside him with mincing steps across ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... included two very recent additions. Also, Finn brought a baffling mixture of scents with him, including those of men and of wild creatures such as the stallion had never seen and did not wish to see. So he continued his threateningly mincing progress toward Finn, and whinnied out a declaration to the effect that this could be no resting-place for dingoes, however huge and diversified in their smells. Finn was not in the least like a dingo; but, on the other hand, he was not like ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... seem to be fuller and his voice to lose for the time its tricks of mincing affectation. Here, indeed, there can be no question of insincerity. Pope's scorn of folly is to be condemned only so far as it was connected with too bitter a hatred of fools. He has suffered, as Swift foretold, by the insignificance of the enemies ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... a pirate—there is no need of mincing matters between friends. Read that, Deerslayer, and you will see that he told you no more than the truth. This Thomas Hovey was the Thomas Hutter you knew, as is seen by ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... And little Dagonet mincing with his feet, "Knight, an ye fling those rubies round my neck In lieu of hers, I'll hold thou hast some touch Of music, since I care not for thy pearls. Swine? I have wallow'd, I have wash'd—the world Is flesh and shadow—I have had my day. ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock in one of them. From Rood Lane to Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was sometimes a subtle flavour of wine; sometimes of tea. One church, near Mincing Lane, smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument, the service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little further down the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the exact counterpart ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... to Europe in bags containing from one to one and a half hundredweight, and are disposed of by the London brokers nearly every Tuesday in the year at a special sale in the Commercial Sale Room in Mincing Lane. ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... not our fault; we didn't want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was boy's business; he might have known me before this; I told him not to prick the buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw; ain't those mincing knives down in the forecastle there, men? look to those handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the word; don't be a fool; forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treat us decently, and we're your men; but we ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... eagerness to see the mysterious stranger, and hastily throwing on her royal mantle, popped her second-best diamond crown over her night-cap, put a liberal dab of rouge upon each cheek, and holding up her largest fan before her nose—for she was not used to appearing in broad daylight—she went mincing into the great hall. The Enchanter waited until the King and Queen had seated themselves upon their throne, and then, taking his place between them, he ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... yellow At the Dakkanese, his stable-fellow. Then Forward-Ho, then a chestnut weed, Skysail, slight, with a turn of speed. The neat Gavotte under black and coral, Then the Mutineer, Lord Leybourne's sorrel, Natuna mincing, Syringa sidling, Stormalong fighting to break his bridling, Thunderbolt dancing with raw nerves quick, Trying a savage at Bitter Dick. The Ranger (winner three years before), Now old, but ready for one ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... this most effective blow, the ram stepped back a pace or two, mincing on his slender feet, and prepared to repeat it. The lynx was struggling frantically among the branches, which stuck into him and tore his fine fur. Just in time to escape the second assault he got free,—but free not for fight but for flight. One tremendous, wildly contorted ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... characteristic of religious wars, and which add so much of the moral sufferings to the physical calamities of life. L'Hospital, when sending the seals to the queen-mother, who demanded them of him, considered it his bounden duty to give her without any mincing, and the king whom she governed, a piece of patriotic advice. "At my departure," he says in his will and testament, "I prayed of the king and queen this thing, that, as they had determined to break the peace, and proceed ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Miss Brown who, from her place in a corner of the room, ran over the cheap attractions of this unwelcome visitor with an expression of scornful wonder—who understood the tinsel of her jewellery, the cheap shoddiness of her ready-made gown; who appreciated, with merciless judgment, her mincing ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... says he, in his mincing way (for Londoners are mostly all tongue-tied, and can't say their a's and i's properly, 'and it's our business to keep you from molesting the ladies and gentlemen going to her ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Binks! You surely would not have us a couple of mincing girls peacocking round in this fashion, would you now?' And the captain's boys affectedly pirouetted up and down on the shingle below the low wall of the Vicarage garden, laughing ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... lascivious meaning, they are indignant and scornful expostulations with the defenders and practisers of vice that flaunted its shame in the face of the public. Righteous anger will give a person the courage to speak out boldly and in no mincing words about things which otherwise nauseate him. When Catholic writers cull from Luther vile and disgusting remarks about sexual affairs, it should be investigated to whom Luther made those remarks, and what reason he had for making them. ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... those retreats. What more alluring to the man who pursues than the woman who flees? What more inflaming than the pose of white, idiotic innocence? You did not know. You did not understand—" fiercely, in a mincing voice, she mimicked a supposed exculpation. "You are so young, so ignorant of life—so immer kindlich! Ah!" she laughed, half strangled, "until the man seizes you in his arms you are quite unaware—but quite, quite unaware—of what he seeks from you. Little fool! And more than fool. Have ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... He had caught their interest, and the audience urged the chairman by acclamation to extend Martin's time. They appreciated him as a foeman worthy of their intellect, and they listened intently, following every word. He spoke with fire and conviction, mincing no words in his attack upon the slaves and their morality and tactics and frankly alluding to his hearers as the slaves in question. He quoted Spencer and Malthus, and enunciated the biological ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Tea are not all the Mischiefs it occasions. Did it cause none of them, but were it entirely wholesome, as Balm or Mint, it were yet Mischief enough to have our whole Populace used to sip warm Water in a mincing, effeminate Manner, once or twice every Day; which hot Water must be supped out of a nice Tea-Cup, sweatened with Sugar, biting a Bit of nice thin Bread and Butter between Whiles. This mocks the strong Appetite, relaxes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... cause, the cause of us all. See here, M. Sarpy, this is no time for mincing words. We must stand up and take a part in this war. We did not provoke it, but it has come and we must join it. You may prefer to remain neutral. I do not say you are wrong. Your health is poor, you have a young daughter, you have large estates. But for me ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... sight That he, whose spirit was so strong To lead the blind world to the light, Should look so like the mincing throng Who advertise the tailor's art. It angered me—I did him wrong— I grudged my groat and shut ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... he was very insolent to wish to hinder him from seeing the King, and perform his duties. The Cardinal, stronger than his adversary, turned the Marquis round, hurried him towards the door, both talking the while, the Cardinal with measure, the Marquis in no way mincing his words. Tired of being hauled out in this manner, the Marquis struggled, called Alberoni a "little scoundrel," to whom he would teach manners; and in this heat and dust the Marquis, who was weak, fortunately fell into an armchair ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Pride is discovered {129e} by a stretched out Neck, and by mincing as they go. For the wicked, the Proud, have a proud Neck, a proud Foot, a proud Tongue, by which this their going is exalted. This is that which makes them look scornfully, speak ruggedly, and carry it huffingly ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... great deal for Mr. Blithers. A certain bombastic confidence in himself gave way to mellow timidity. He was in a new world. He was cognisant of a distinct sensation of awe. His ruthless Wall Street tread became a mincing, uncertain shuffle; he could not conquer the absurd notion that he ought to tip- toe his way about these ancient halls with their thick, velvety rugs and ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and trust by the discretion of his movements when she was near. As soon as the days grew warm enough, she was always out on the front piazza when Van and I came home from our daily gallop, and then she would trot out to meet us and be lifted to her perch on the pommel; and then, with mincing gait, like lady's palfrey, stepping as though he might tread on eggs and yet not crush them, Van would take the little one on her own share of the ride. And so it was that the loyal friendship grew and strengthened. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... theory: An animal which has been at rest in his stable is taken out to work, and it will be presently noticed that there is something unusual in his movement. His gait is changed, and he travels with short, mincing steps, without any of his accustomed ease and freedom. This may continue until his return to the stable, and then, after being placed in his stall, he will be noticed shifting his weight from side to side and from one leg to another, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... never heard Elsie complain of the hill before. Usually they scampered up it, and rolled down the steepest side—not, truly, when there was milk to carry, but at other times. And now Elsie was walking along in a languid, mincing fashion, as if she had no more fun in her than Robbie himself, and had never scampered bare-foot over the moor six days out of every week, no matter ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... am not. I wish I could say I was! It is very horrid, I know, but where's the good of mincing matters? If I did not call the thing by its name, the thing would be just the same. You know, people in our world have to do as they must; they can't pick and choose like you happy creatures. I dare say, now, you are ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... chair was torture. It hung from the centre of a stout pole, each end of which rested upon the calloused shoulder of a coolie; an ordinary Occidental chair with a foot-rest. The coolies proceeded at a swinging, mincing trot, which gave to the suspended seat a dancing action similar to that of a suddenly agitated hanging-spring of a birdcage. It was impossible ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... By turns coquettish, affected, simple, languishing, accordingly as she feared she was too like her natural self—the Netta of the Farm was no more, and her representative was, to Owen at least, an anomaly. How she could have acquired such an amount of small talk, and such a mincing speech in nine months, was an enigma to him. London, Paris, the opera, the fashions, even the picture galleries, were alternately in her mouth; and she poured out tea and coffee, and laughed a silly laugh, much to her own satisfaction, and Owen's disgust, whilst all ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... unnoticed till the wife of Karlsberger—a bulky slattern, who kept shuffling in and out with plates and glasses—perceived his need, and placed a stool for him. Through confusion and annoyance he caught nothing of the conversation till Elias, in a mincing voice, announced: ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... type distinct from any he had formerly observed. Others were antipathetic to him. Their aggressive gentility conflicted with the wariness of his self-esteem; such a one, for instance, as Bruno Chilvers, the sound of whose mincing voice, as he read in the class, so irritated him that at times he had to cover his ears. Yet, did it chance that one of these offensive youths addressed a civil word to him, on the instant his prejudice ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... difference there is between the styles. Or read Paul's noble praise of charity in the two versions. By substituting love for charity, the revisers have vitiated the sense, and destroyed the balance of the style. Their mincing monosyllable is too weak to bear the structural weight of the clauses. A closer analysis shows that they have spoiled the passage throughout. They had no ear: in other words, no style. The old translators had ears, and knew other people ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... Yes, it is no use mincing words. The moment he saw you, he gave his life to you. He told me ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... like people who have these tender places," said Aunt Rachel. "I never get hurt at what is said to me. No—never! To be ever picking and mincing, and chopping off your words—to be afraid to say this or that—for fear somebody will be offended! I ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... to make. But print it and every one immediately gives you especial attention and the benefit of his judgment. If you should happen to serve in the right wing of Orthodoxy, you will have the inestimable boon of the freest criticism from the left wing. And it is the religious newspapers for not mincing matters. Between Jew and Gentile hostility is the normal condition of things; and is carried on peaceably enough; but when Jew meets Jew, then comes the tug of war! These people obey to the letter the Apostolic injunction, and confess your faults one to another with a relish that is marvellous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... in their more humble quarters, surrounded her with a certain amount of luxury, there was a laxity in his manners and conversation that jarred upon her. Geoffrey, she remembered, had not been addicted to mincing words, but, at least, he had lived in accordance with a Spartan moral code. Millicent was not a scrupulous woman, and her ideas of ethical justice were rudimentary, but she possessed in place of a conscience a delicate sense of refinement which her ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... of dancing, and danced very gracefully in her slow, Southern way, but she was utterly unfamiliar with the mincing steps and elaborate contortions attempted by the Elmbridge young people. However, she enjoyed it all from its very novelty, and she was pleasantly impressed with some of the boys and girls to whom ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... her resources within herself were not particularly strong, thought about little or nothing else than ensnaring the hearts of the younger Cowfold males—that is to say, the hearts which were converted, and yet she encouraged none of them, save by a general acceptance of little attentions, by little mincing ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... to; we understand that. But tell me! Bluntly, without mincing matters, if necessary. You know that I have no objection to that sort of thing, so go on. Do not keep me in suspense like this. I am burning with curiosity. What does ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... breeding which speaks out from the canvas of Kneller and Jervis, Vivien and Rigaud? And withal, notwithstanding lace and brocade—the fripperies of artificial costume—still those who give interest or charm to that day look from their portraits like men,—raking or debonair, if you will, never mincing nor feminine. Can we say as much of the portraits of Lawrence? Gaze there on fair Marlborough; what delicate perfection of features, yet how easy in boldness, how serene in the conviction of power! So fair and so tranquil he might have looked through the cannon reek at Ramillies and Blenheim, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... only the casual result of Grace's apprenticeship to what she was determined to learn in spite of it—a consequence of one of those sudden surprises which confront everybody bent upon turning over a new leaf. She had finished her lunch, which he saw had been a very mincing performance; and he brought her out of the house as ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Santafior had risen to his feet, and was waving a white, bejewelled hand in an imperious demand for silence. When at last it came he spoke, his voice silvery and his accents mincing. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... with a pompous, mincing gait, leading the Princess Martha by the tips of her fingers. He wore a caftan of green velvet laced with gold, a huge vest of crimson brocade, and breeches of yellow satin. A wig, resembling clouds boiling in the confluence of opposing ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... being pinched; so we "hollered," but were afraid to tell mother the reason before the ministers. We had to bear it, but we snickered ourselves when the man Will called "Elder Green Persimmon," because when he prayed his mouth went inside out, came mincing into the room, and as he passed the valance and got a pinch, jerked ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... Bartholomew's, and would have qualified, but that the sudden death of his father compelled him to abandon the hope and to assume the responsibilities of the head of the house of Morford & Morford, tea importers, of Mincing Lane." ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... he walked with a curiously quick, mincing gait, as well as had a habit of hitching one of his shoulders. His eyes were small and perpetually twinkling, his nose large and aquiline, his lips irregular and rather oddly (though pleasantly) compressed, his articulation slightly defective ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... he would take little mincing steps, and toss his head from side to side, and pretend to be fanning with ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... says Hardenberg, mincing an' silly like a chessy cat lappin' cream. 'Very good, ma'am; your orders shall be obeyed.' He sure said it just like that, as if he spoke out o' a story-book. An' I kicked him ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... slim man, uncovering and saluting obsequiously, and then seeing that my aunt rested dumb-stricken, the rod which had been in pickle fallen to the floor behind her, he added with a little mincing smile and a kind of affected heel-and-toe dandling of his body, "I am Mr. Wrighton Poole, of the firm of Smart, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... than Miss Emmeline. Taken altogether, she was an absurd compound. Personally, she was thoroughly American, very pretty and delicate in form and features, and thus far appeared to great advantage; but she had, also, an affected mincing manner, and drawling voice. Of course, her dress was as Parisian as possible; everything she wore was a faithful copy from "Le Courier des Dames." Her feelings and opinions; Mrs. Hilson was proud to call English in the extreme, for she had chosen to imbibe ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... gets sometimes a little faint when—it was the old, old story of privation and want that now fell with seeming reluctance from her lips. Mr. Heatherbloom had become all attention. More than that he seemed greatly distressed. A woman actually in need, starving—no use mincing words!—in Central Park, the playground of the most opulent metropolis of the world. It was monstrous; he tendered her his purse, with several weeks' pay in it. Her reply had a spirited ring; he felt abashed and returned the money to his pocket. She sat back with eyes half-closed; ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... at the mincing accent. "Yes, yes, Maximin let it be. To all the world you are Maximin, the body-guard of Severus. When we have reached Rome, we will soon see that your dress shall correspond with your office. Meanwhile march with the guard until you ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... high-pitched voice of the balmy weather and the sweet profusion of birds and flowers, when there was more like to be a "sweet profusion" of Indians; and I nigh stifled with laughter to see this lumbering, free-voiced forest-runner transformed to a mincing, anxious, backwoods macaroni at the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... her coming; and what d'ye think she'd gone back for? By the powers, for her doll, which she held in her hand! And just as she came to the chaise, who should come round the corner but her father, who had walked from Mincing Lane. He caught my mincing Miss by the arm, with her doll and her bundle, and bundled her home, leaving me and the postchaise, looking like two fools. I never could see her again, or her confounded ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... form of introduction, the journalist—so Mr. Keene described himself—stood in a bowing attitude, one hand to his glasses, seeming to inspect Richard with extreme yet respectful interest. When he spoke, it was in a rather mincing way, with interjected murmurs—the involuntary overflow, as it were, of ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... the arm and with high, mincing steps, simulating the utmost caution in his advance, he led them a little way down the veranda out of hearing of ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... in New York; his daughter and Diana chatted about the earliest date when Milly could persuade her mother to sail for England. I longed to scream at them, "Oh, you hard, unfeeling wretches!" But instead I stood outwardly patient, a good, well-behaved young girl with a little mincing smile on my face. Only the smile was frozen so hard you could have knocked it ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... from a salver—two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect! And here the same lady, or another—for likeness is identity on tea-cups—is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead—a furlong off on the other side of the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... a tendency to peculiar impulses. But I am a mother and you are an impartial spectator, and therefore qualified with your intelligence to form a more impartial opinion. I implore you, in fact' (yes, that word, 'implore' was uttered!), 'to tell me the whole truth, without mincing matters. And if you will give me your word never to forget that I have spoken to you in confidence, you may reckon upon my always being ready to seize every opportunity in the future to show my gratitude.' Well, what do ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Go back again and never mind me; I've nothing to do with it! I can easily understand how this life can have a certain fascination for you, but only for a time; it can't last. The more I see of it, the more I'm convinced that I'm right. What's the use of mincing words, fencing about the truth any longer? I understand—I've seen it from the first. It's not this life, but the woman that holds you!" she cried abruptly and passionately, almost fiercely, ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... unknown world—little, wild, ignorant Irish girl, bound for a strange land among strange people! Would those fine English girls laugh among themselves and jeer at her untamed ways? Would they imitate her brogue in their thin mincing voices, and if so, how, oh, how would Pixie conduct herself in return? Bridgie was barely twenty years old, but since her mother's death she had grown into a woman in thoughtfulness and love for others, and now it weighed ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to the buyers some days beforehand, so that they were able to decide what they wished to purchase and the price they were willing to pay. The sales always took place at 11 o'clock on Tuesdays in the Commercial Sale Room in Mincing Lane, that narrow street off Fenchurch Street, where the air is so highly charged with expert knowledge of the world's produce, that it would illuminate the prosaic surroundings with brilliant flashes if it could become visible. On the morning of the sale samples ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... after the couple with keen appreciation of the picture they presented. Miss Slocum had a queer, mincing gait which her long limbs appeared averse to, and the result was a little hitchy. But she kept up with Overton, and surveyed him with weak blue eyes of gratitude. He appeared to her a very admirable personage—a veritable knight of the ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... fact recognised by the country people, who, when buying their shoes at fairs—which were the usual mart—might have been seen thrusting in their hand to try the breadth, when they had ascertained that the length was suitable. A short foot gives a mincing walk, while a long one requires the person to bring his body aplomb with the foot before taking the step, which thus resembles a stride. Good dancers have the limbs short as compared with the body, which has thus the necessary power over them; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... notice the ocean. Philip was some yards away with his back to me, bending over his net. The stranger came on till he stood within two yards of me, the water washing half-way up to his knees. Then he said, with a clearly modulated and rather mincing articulation: 'Would it discommode you to contribute elsewhere a coin ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... in the other half of this place—the old infirmary, Mr. Harewood calls it. Such a contrast! He is a tremendous old Turk in his house, and she is a little mincing woman; and they've made Gus—he's one of us, you know—a horrid sneak, and think it's all my bad company and Bill's. By-the-by, Cherry, Gus Shapcote asked me if my ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gloves and boots. But within all these he was hopelessly and absolutely French. The English boots trod the pavement—they knew no other path in life—in a manner essentially Gallic. The check trousers, of a pattern somewhat loud and startling, had the mincing gait in them of any "pantalon de fantasie," purchased a prix fixe in the Boulevard St. Germain, across the water. It is useless to lift a Lincoln and Bennett from a little flat-topped head, cut, as they say, to the rat and fringed all over ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... awakening, as it were, from a reverie. The twins, a little heated from their exertions, were quite ready, and, holding their card-cases—envelopes filled with cards of home manufacture—in young-ladyish fashion, they started off, copying, as best they could, the mincing ...
— The Hickory Limb • Parker Fillmore
... she insisted, in a mincing whisper, as if she were laying claim to a distinction. "A little flighty. You do no credit to your own penetration, dear Mr. Ferdinand, if you deny it. That person is the cause. I suffered a great wrong at that person's hands. ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... the fire with mincing steps. The boys had to force them continually onward, for no beast will go toward fire willingly. A few more steps and ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... wife in the second place. So curious did this blindness seem in a man of jealous temper, that his greatest friends used to draw him out on the topic for the amusement of others who did not know of the mystery. M. du Hautoy was a finical dandy whose minute care of himself had degenerated into mincing affectation and childishness. He took an interest in his cough, his appetite, his digestion, his night's rest. Zephirine had succeeded in making a valetudinarian of her factotum; she coddled him and doctored him; she crammed him with delicate fare, as if he had been a fine lady's lap-dog; she ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... she was determined that she would act as differently as possible from her usual manner and so fool everybody. After she was blindfolded and turned round, she took the stick and with little mincing steps, imitated exactly the gait of Josie Holmes. She made a wild dash with the stick, but failed to hit a bag and Maisie Norris called out at once, "You're Josie ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... the boy a glance to cast Swept careless by the gorgeous Queen of Gain. More scornful still, the Queen of Fashion passed, With mincing gait and sneer ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... could not help feeling very sorry at having to leave Brighton. The weather was so glorious, the sea all rippling and dancing in the morning sunshine, the streets so full of merry pleasure-seekers, that going back to the office in Mincing Lane was dull enough. They Were very sorry to lose him, too: there could be no mistake about that; ever since he had so promptly declined for them all Mr. Murray's invitation, they felt a sort of respectful admiration for him, though ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... or four plays, in which he showed a young and ardent zeal for setting the world to rights, together with that high sense of the poet's calling which put lasting force into his work. He poured contempt on those who frittered life away. He urged on the poetasters and the mincing courtiers, who set their hearts on top-knots and affected movements of ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... Mr. Elsmere?' asked Mrs. Leyburn in her little mincing voice, making room for his chair beside them. 'If you are, I am sure my youngest daughter's ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... done without veil or possible concealment, a lamentable and wretched sheaf of verbiage, worse, it seemed, than the efforts of his boyhood. He was not longer tautological, he avoided tautology with the infernal art of a leader-writer, filling his wind bags and mincing words as if he had been a trained journalist on the staff of the Daily Post. There seemed all the matter of an insufferable tragedy in these thoughts; that his patient and enduring toil was in vain, that practice went for nothing, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... me how the sight had affected me, without mincing or hiding the pleasurable emotions it had inspired me with, I told her at the same time that one remark had perplexed me, and that very considerably. "Aye!" says she, "what was that?" "Why," replied I, "having very curiously and attentively compared the size of that enormous ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... your words are good, your thoughts are ill. Each milkwhite hair amid this mincing beard, Compar'd with millions of thy treacherous thoughts, Would change their hue through vigour of thy hate. But, did not pity make my fury thrall, This sword should finish hate, thy life, and all. I prythee, Granius, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... months' child of fashion—one who had been left an orphan by manliness and taste, and no longer remembered his lost parents. Never can I forget the stare of Baron Pougens, (a Swiss by birth, but a Russian noble) as this specimen of elegance, with mincing step and gait, moved onward, something like a new member tripping it to the table to take his oaths. How he had got so far from Grange's, I really cannot say; but he had the policy of assurance in his favour; and in his own idea, at the least, was what I heard a poor devil of a candle-snuffer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... face and a pair of chubby hands, which he constantly held crossed or clasped upon his breast. His long irregular-mouth seemed to fold over at the corners above his very small and childish chin. The mouth and the light blue eyes wore an expression of rather mincing gentleness. His short figure, though bent a little with years, was still vigorous, and his gait ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said to Sir Charles, 'I think you will lose the widow, after all,—'Gad I do.' 'Upon what principle of science, Sir William?' said he. 'Why, faith, man, she is so modest, you see, and has such a pretty way of blushing.' 'Hark ye, friend Devereux,' said Sir Charles, smoothing his collar and mincing his words musically, as he was wont to do,—'hark ye, friend Devereux, I will give you the whole experience of my life in one maxim: I can answer for its being new, and I think it is profound; and that maxim is—,' no, faith, Morton—no, I can't ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... attract half the attention that will fall to you as a consequence of this adventure. Life in the court of His Most Christian Majesty is one of the most artificial possible. The women hide their faces with powder and patches, lace themselves until they are ready to faint, walk with a mincing air, and live chiefly upon scandal; but they are women, after all, and every woman has a spice of romance in her nature, and such an adventure as yours is the very thing ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... it; there were miles of it. The nearer the open sea the more widespread was the floe. Beyond—hauling down the Spotted Horses, which lay in the open—the proportion of new ice would be vastly greater. At a trot for the time over the pans, which were flat, and in delicate, mincing little spurts across the bending ice, Doctor Rolfe proceeded. In a confidence that was somewhat ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... worn, drawn as tight as possible. One cut from the body of a man twenty-seven years old measured only sixty-five centimeters.[398] The women of the Barito valley wear the sarong around the thighs so tight that it restricts the steps and produces a mincing gait which they think beautiful.[399] The Rukuyenn of Guiana have an ideal of female beauty which is marked by a large abdomen. They wind the abdomen with many girdles to make it appear large. "The women of the Payaguas, in Paraguay, from youth up, elongate the breasts, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Inquisitive fingers would no longer clutch at the long sleeves of, crinkled silk, or try to probe the secret of the huge butterfly bow on her back. She could step out fearlessly now like English women. She could give up the mincing walk and the timid manner which she felt was somehow inseparable ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... particularly how Mary looked, ten to one you will see a face like hers in the crowded street to-morrow, if you are there on the watch: she will not be among those daughters of Zion who are haughty, and walk with stretched-out necks and wanton eyes, mincing as they go: let all those pass, and fix your eyes on some small plump brownish person of firm but quiet carriage, who looks about her, but does not suppose that anybody is looking at her. If she has a broad face and square brow, well-marked eyebrows and curly dark hair, a certain expression ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... a little soldier, who ran with the mincing steps of an athlete towards his horse, and landed standing uip on his hind quarters, whereupon he settled down ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... a tall, long-limbed sapling of a girl, with a flaming crest of copper-colored hair and movements as lithe and supple as a cat's. She danced buoyantly, without losing breath, advancing and retreating with mincing steps, her face grave as though the performance had its own dignity and was not to be taken lightly. Her partner, a tanned and long-haired man, took his part in a livelier spirit, laughing at her, bending his body grotesquely and ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet In wistful April days, when lovers mate And wander through the fields in raptures sweet. The thought of violets meant florists' shops, And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine; And garish lights, and mincing little fops And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine. So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed, I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams; The perfect loveliness that God has made,— Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams. And ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... if all were like others, the veriest torment. It was an excellent place to study human nature, but made me somewhat cynical. My sewing-machine had fits and gave me a back-ache, so I've locked it up until some one invents a motive-power that can be applied to house-work, washing, churning, mincing meat and vegetables, driving sewing-machines, and—if it only could—kneading bread, sweeping floors, washing dishes, ironing clothes, and making beds. My book agency was undertaken for the sake of travel,—of learning something, not only of the land we live in, but of its people ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... and wrote about A.D. 90, expressly mentions it as abounding in merchants and business. Dr. Guest was of opinion that the Roman fort was made in A.D. 43. It stood above the outfall of the Walbrook, its western wing being where Cannon Street terminus is now, and its eastern extremity reaching to Mincing Lane. These limits were determined in a paper by Arthur Taylor in Archaeologia in 1849, and were confirmed during the building of Cannon Street Station. The road from the bridge divided in East Cheap ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... of which there are but few, will tell you a lie and look straight at you with a chuckle and grin; the so-called Gipsy now will tell you a lie and look a thousand other ways while doing so. In their own interest, and without mincing matters, it is time the plain facts of their dark lives were brought to daylight, so that the brightening and elevating effects of public opinion, law, and the Bible may have their influence upon the character of the little ones about to become in our midst the men and women of the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... and you have probably heard of me before. Even if you never had until tonight, it is pretty safe to bet that you do now. Donaldson, or his man, told you, so there is no use of my mincing matters any, nor of ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... dignity with her heather and bluebell crown as she sits on the rock, as stately as jewels could make her! See her gesture with her hands, to mark where the standing ruff ought to be. She hath the true spirit of the Comedy—ah! and here cometh young Antony with mincing pace, with a dock-leaf for a fan, and a mantle for a farthingale! She ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... born in 1863 of poor parents, and by reason of his native genius and stubborn will power he became what he is—the painter of vibrating sunshine without equal. Let there be no mincing of comparisons in this assertion. Not Turner, not Monet painted so directly blinding shafts of sunlight as has this Spaniard. He is an impressionist, but not of the school of Monet. His manner is his own, cunningly compounded as it is of the proceeds of half a dozen artists. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... figure Gordon refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes. The thing was too utterly absurd—yet Gordon was positive that the strong oak floor of the dancing space was visibly swaying and creaking beneath the stranger's mincing tread! ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... I'll have a smoke,' says he—here Pat assumed an aristocratic air and spoke in refined and mincing tones—'before I go to bed. William,' says he to one of the futmen, 'bring me me slippers.' Well, the gentleman sat down in a grand soft armchair, an' the futman brought his slippers—an' if the Gout didn't take the opportunity an' pop ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... and messenger, and, my senior tells me, has been employed by the firm in this capacity for about thirty years. He is a negro, about sixty years old, rather short and stout, with a mincing, noiseless gait, broad African features, beautiful teeth, and small, round, twinkling eyes, the movements of which are accompanied by little abrupt, sidewise turns of the head, like a bird. His manner is a curious mixture ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... had rather be a kitten, and cry, mew, Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers; I had rather hear a brazen can stick turned, Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree; And that would set my teeth nothing on edge, Nothing so much as mincing poetry: 'T is like the forced gait of a shuffling nag. King Henry IV., Pt. I. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... correctly. One stone was "small," another was "very small." When she touched her little sister, she said: "Baby—small. Puppy- very small." Soon after, she began to vary her steps from large to small, and little mincing steps were "very small." She is going through the house now, applying the new words to all kinds ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... boy, under the impression that he was the nigger in question; but at the same moment he caught sight of a full-blooded, woolly-headed West Coast African leading a very large camel by a rope, the great ungainly beast mincing and blinking as it gently put down, one after the other, its soft, spongy feet, which seemed to spread out on the gravelled road, while their high-shouldered owner kept on turning its bird-like head from side to side, muttering and ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... may have been her distorted fancy, but down the long perspective, that figure looked more mincing, more waspish, more unreal than ever. And she was conscious of that swift rising of dislike, of antagonism touched with ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... But the prime instigator is the German Emperor, whose Chancellor, with bitter irony, claims for his master the title of protector of the small nationalities of Europe. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg can on occasion affect the mincing accents of the wolf when that beast seeks to lull the cries of the lamb in its clutches. The German method of waging war has rendered "dreadful objects so familiar" that the essential brutality of the enemy's activities runs a risk ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... you mincing Nanny-hen!—every blessed child that walks. And I just 'ope," said Mrs. Beamish, as she marched off herself with brush and scrubber: "I 'ope, now you know it, you'll 'ave a little more love and gratitoode for your own mother than ever ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... lay that kind a' financerin aside, Colonel. What's the use of living in a free country, where every man has a right to make a penny when he can, and talk so? Now, 'pears to me t'aint no use a' mincing the matter; we might a' leaked ye in for as many thousands as hundreds. Seein' how ye was a good customer, we saved ye on a small shot. Better put the niggers out: ownin' such a lot, ye won't feel it! Give us three prime chaps; none a' yer old sawbones what ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... continued the unaffected youth, "but you bet your life you'll never beat our Cora-lee when there's a person in pants on the premises! It's sickening." He rose, and performed something like a toe-dance, a supposed imitation of his sister's mincing approach to the visitor. "Oh, dear, I am such a little sweety! Here I am all alone just reeking with Browning-and-Tennyson and thinking to myself about such lovely things, and walking around looking for my nice, pretty rose. Where ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... Lady Joan! Here be no courtly swains, no perfumed, mincing lovers, to sigh and bow and languish for you. Here is Solitude, lady. Desolation hath you fast and is not like to let you go—here mayhap shall you live—and die! An ill place this and, like nature, strong and cruel. An ill place and an ill rogue for company. You named me rogue once and rogue ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... hour in the bungalow, Chellalu would wander off, apparently because she was tired of us, but really because she was full of a new and original idea, and wanted an audience. Once she puzzled the nursery community who had not been visiting the bungalow, by mincing about on pointed toes, with shoulders shrugged like a dancing master in caricature. The babies thought this a very nice game, and for weeks they ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... Pucelle," I said, mincing in my speech; whereat she laughed, for of her nature she ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... distance seems to set off respect! And here the same lady, or another—for likeness is identity on tea-cups—is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty, mincing foot, which is in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) that must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead—a furlong off on the other side of the ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... speak another word till they reached the top of Mincing Lane; there the carriage stopped and Bertie got out, but in spite of all the kind things the old gentleman had said, in spite of the consciousness of having done quite right from one point of view, in spite ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... mother's white board and rolling-pin, the pudding-cloth wrung into a twist out of the scald, and waiting upon a plate, and a pitcher of cold water with ice tinkling against its sides. Mother sat with the deal bowl in her lap, turning and mincing with the few last strokes the light, delicate dust of the pastry. The sunshine—work and sunshine always go so blessedly together—poured in, and filled the room up with life ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
