"Gossip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... civilly, that she could not undertake to go backwards and forwards to a room half a mile off. It would be a waste of time. Besides, though it was probably not the case in that particular meeting, she had heard that there was often a great deal of gossip going on at such places. The visitor was determined not to be offended, and she replied, gently, that there was no chance of gossip, for, after a certain time had been given to the actual business of the meeting, such as planning, cutting out, and apportioning work, one of the ladies ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... their purpose. The old librarian of the town library had taken note of all the books he carried to his master, and asked about his studies and pursuits. Paolo found it hard to understand his English, apparently, and answered in the most irrelevant way. The leading gossip of the village tried her skill in pumping him for information. It was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in the house," said Sarah, in a cold, low voice. Then John Mangam looked up with some show of animation. He had heard the gossip. ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... Then as he spoke to the doctor, requesting him to hurry at once to Mrs. Dempster's, the curiosity of the bystanders became intense. They would have something to discuss among themselves, and a choice bit of gossip would soon be in circulation ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... the little crowd dispersed, and the baby, with its brace of mothers, gone to bed, the new friends sat cozily down and enjoyed an hour or two of feminine gossip, exchanged kisses, cards, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... refuted all these charges—gossip travels in circles in small towns and sooner or later reaches those most concerned—"Aaron lazy! I-to-goodness no! Why, he's old and what for should he go out and work every day, I wonder. He helps me with the garden and so, and when I go out to help somebody for a day or two he gets ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Napoleon's instructions, his brothers were to prevent the empress and the King of Rome from falling into the hands of the enemy. De Baussue narrates this scene in his memoirs, and it is self-evident that it was not so stormy as the gossip of Paris portrayed it.] ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... out a definite time. When it was not too cold she sat in St. James' Park. But the rest of the day she spent quite happily on her sofa, reading one novel after another or chatting with the landlady; she had an inexhaustible interest in gossip, and told Philip with abundant detail the history of the landlady, of the lodgers on the drawing-room floor, and of the people who lived in the next house on either side. Now and then she was seized with panic; she poured out her fears to Philip ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... to come here and look after him in this emergency. She would have done this anyway, but she knew how Marcellin and his assistant and even Nurse Duval would have made her pay for her act—an act based upon nothing but decent loyalty and honest responsibility. Raised eyebrows—gossip in the air—covert smiles—the whole detestable atmosphere of intrigue with which they would have surrounded her, had vanished as by a spell before the magic word fiancee. She was breathing ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... shall be generous too. If thou hast any little fancies that way, thou must write and tell me. Oh, mon fils, thou wilt write often, and I must know all the news. I do hear that Darthea Peniston is in thy aunt's house a good deal, and Madam Ferguson, the gossip, would have me believe thou carest for her, and that Arthur Wynne is taken in the same net. I liked her. I did not tell thee that thy Aunt Gainor left her with me for an hour while she went into King street ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... began to gossip. "Why, to Huntercombe Hall. What! haven't you heard, Mrs. Meyrick? Master caught a robber last night. Laws! you should have seen him: he have got crape all over his face; and master, and the constable, and Mr. Musters, they be all gone with him to Sir Charles, for to have him ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Anderson, "I'll go, Tom; but, to be plain with you, I do not think that I can be of much use there. I have been several times: she will gossip as long as you please; but if you would talk seriously, she turns a deaf ear. You see, Tom, there's little to be gained when you have to contend with such a besetting sin as avarice. It is so powerful, especially in old age, that it absorbs ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... did not care to talk about individual cases, and I felt that the rule was a safe one, to prevent Eugenics from becoming Gossip. Kennedy thanked him for his courtesy, and we left apparently on the best of terms both with Crafts and ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... it portended success, except one Lysimachus, who said that he feared that, as places struck by thunderbolts may not be walked over, Heaven might mean to signify to Pyrrhus by this that he never should set foot in the city. Pyrrhus however answered that this was mere empty gossip, and that they had better take their arms in their ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... have two clear purposes: Their first purpose is to make certain that this Nation's security is not jeopardized by false servants. Their second purpose is to clear the atmosphere of that unreasoned suspicion that accepts rumor and gossip as ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... importance of private recollections. The gossip of one epoch forms part of the history of the next. It is therefore to be deplored that those whose more or less obscure lives run their course in the shadow of some public career are seldom ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... gossip, 'I thought you might be a little troubled if you went, John. Sometimes your mind—not often, but sometimes if you are agitated—and then you think you see—people who aren't here any longer. Oh dear, oh dear, help me ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... I know he can't bear me, nor any one else, even you, though you fancy that he has a high opinion of you. Worse still with Alyosha, he despises Alyosha. But he doesn't steal, that's one thing, and he's not a gossip, he holds his tongue, and doesn't wash our dirty linen in public. He makes capital fish pasties too. But, damn him, is he worth talking ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Wingfield, heard the news to-day on this very Thursday in the Bungay market-place, whither I went to gossip and to sell the apples which these dreadful gales have left me, as they hang upon ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... Fra Rinaldo lies with his gossip: her husband finds him in the room with her; and they make him believe that he was curing his godson of worms by ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... sent to the wrong pay-clerk. It had really come, but through some mistake, had been sent to Mr. Notter, and was by him expended in payment of his own district, when it should have been paid on the Caharagh line. "But these stories," he added, "received in gossip, are turned against the Board of Works." It is not very clear what this official meant by stories, but there is one thing plain enough in the matter: Mr. Notter's men must have been in arrear of their ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... smoking-room; Dolores and Ethel were in the state-room of the latter, holding one of those long important feminine conferences—most delightful, I understood, to themselves—in which dress was the piece de resistance, with perhaps a little gossip about Ethel's conquests in Aquazilia; they were legion! Mrs. Darbyshire was asleep in her state-room, and as for the dear old man, Don Juan, whom I looked upon now as my future father-in-law, he was studying assiduously a book he had picked up in the ship's library, ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... knew what she meant, and to a certain extent I could understand, if not sympathize with her. Her husband, Martin Ogleby, club-man and man about town, had a reputation none too savoury. But, man-like, I knew, he would condone not even the appearance of anything that caused gossip in his wife's actions. I could understand ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... my speech. I, as you know full well, do not care for gossip in the bath nor for reclining long over a banquet. In the pauses of my work I am alone, with myself and with you, my very worthy Leukippe. So the hours of rest are not for me the fairest scenes, but empty waits between the acts of the drama of life; and no reasonable man can find fault with me for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... away industriously under Mr. Strather's supervision, until the Academy sitting was suspended. It would have been well for him if he had gone home as soon as he laid down his brushes. But in an evil hour be lingered after the studies of the evening were over, to have a gossip with the prize-fighting Model; and in an indiscreet moment he consented to officiate as one of the patrons at an exhibition of sparring, to be held that night in a neighboring ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... had come into his own at last, and was a hero, for the story of his long ill-luck was common gossip now, and men praised him for his courage. He had never been praised for anything before and was uncertain ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... matronly monkeys, chattered and gossiped about her private affairs. And, as she clasped her little son to her, with her mother's heart swelling with love and pride, she thought, with pleasurable anticipation, of the surprise and gossip there would be in the morning when the wonderful ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... he said at last, 'it was a foolish woman's gossip that Henry ought to have quashed; but that is no reason you ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... instant to grasp the meaning of this piece of eloquent information, invited the urchin to repeat it, which he did with the sly unction of one proud of his secret. Mary laughed to herself. Some girls would have repressed the youthful gossip, but she was human. Somehow, too, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... dinners, those ambrosial nights! If the weather was kind, of course, we would begin our session on the terrasse, sipping our vermouth, puffing our cigarettes, laughing our laughs, tossing hither and thither our light ball of gossip, vaguely conscious of the perpetual ebb and flow and murmur of people in the Boulevard, while the setting sun turned Paris to a marvellous water-colour, all pale lucent tints, amber and alabaster and mother-of-pearl, with amethystine shadows. Then, one by one, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... good work, if we would, selecting one, give it a little attention, and by easy process proceed to learn it. As it is, in general society the man or woman who has any special pursuit, accomplishment, or real interest for leisure hours, beyond idle gossip and empty time-killing, is a great exception. And yet I sincerely believe that in perhaps a majority of cases there is a sincere desire to do something, which is killed by simple ignorance of the fact that with a very little trouble ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... it is customary for the daily papers to publish a column or so of society gossip. They generally head it "Chit-Chat," or "On Dit," or "Le Boudoir," or something of the sort, and they keep it pretty full of French terms to give it the proper sort of swing. These columns may be very interesting in their way, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... friend does understand that he has wronged me; that the gossip he repeated or the construction he put upon my actions was not fair or true. And immediately that I become aware of this, from him or from another, my resentment goes, if I have any natural virtue ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... 'Gossip Ass,' replied the Dog, 'leave me alone to guard the premises. I can do it, if I choose; but the truth is, this master of ours thinks himself so safe lately that he clean forgets me, and I don't find my allowance of food ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... she had explained to the officers, that she was alone on the premises—her mistress had been called away upon sudden business—but if they would take the ups with the downs. . . . Then, her curiosity overcoming her—for, of course, she had heard gossip of the doctor's intentions—"And which of you," she asked, "is he going to marry, ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... losses up and down the line. All this was bad enough, but by the end of five weeks of Murphy's attachment to the payroll he had demonstrated that he was not only incapable, indolent, careless, and unreliable, but that he was a disorganizer, a gossip, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... whose wives were "in the States," or responsible middle-aged leaders of the town. In the elaborate toilettes of the women, as compared with the less formal business suits of the men, there was an odd mingling of the social attitude with perhaps more mysterious confidences. The idle gossip about them had never affected Barker; rather he had that innate respect for the secrets of others which is as inseparable from simplicity as it is from high breeding, and he scarcely glanced at the different couples in his progress through the room. He did not even notice ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... hat and blew a kiss to her. A thrill of exultation ran through him. He had not expected her to meet him at the landing. Her mere presence there was evidence of a determination to defy not only her mother but also to brave the storm of gossip that was bound to attend this public demonstration of loyalty on her part, for none knew so well as he how the townspeople looked upon their attachment. A most satisfying promise for the future, he gloated; here was the proof that ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... hours. Sacobie Bear was a great gossip for one of his race. In fact, he had a Micmac nickname which, translated, meant "the man who deafens his friends with much talk." Archer, however, was pleased with his ready chatter ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... due to his being, for several years, the president of the Royal Society. I would willingly say much more, but I am unable to write authoritatively upon the life and work of such a man, and must leave gossip to the daily press. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... The explosion of the hand-grenade; shattered hopes and happiness.—A winter evening's gossip at the Aubrey Arms, among Yatton villagers, and ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Ere Jane's long gossip was ended, her favorite's fears were wholly banished. With a hug for thanks and farewell, Glory was off and away, and the tired eyes of the toilers in the Lane brightened as she flitted past their dingy windows, waving ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... thing is certainly true. It is not a mere bit of gossip. We have it from Frederick himself. His sister had a letter from him yesterday, in which he tells us of it, and he had just had it in a letter from Harville, written upon the spot, from Uppercross. I fancy they ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... worth while to dress, if you shall meet Macaulay, or Hallam, or Guizot, or Thiers, or Landseer, or Delaroche,—Mrs. Norton, the Misses Berry, Madame Recamier, and all the brilliant women and famous foreigners. But why should we desert the pleasant pages of those men, and the recorded gossip of those women, to be squeezed flat against a wall, while young Doughface pours oyster gravy down our shirt front, and Carolina Pettitoes wonders ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... people's mere gossip and idle talk pass into history. In all the memoirs of the time if you read them you will find it stated that our envoy had a warning from some highly placed woman who was in love with him. Of course it's known that he had successes with women, and in the ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... resent these intrusions of the Mexican woman, but of late she had begun to tolerate them. Her day was long and cheerless at the best, and there was no one to talk to. Trina even fancied that old Miss Baker had come to be less cordial since their misfortune. Maria retailed to her all the gossip of the flat and the neighborhood, and, which was much more interesting, told her ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... the insatiable gold fountain-pen from whence our indefatigable Lady Correspondent derived her literary pseudonym, was employed in recording merest gossip, in the absence of the longed-for opportunity for its wielder to prove herself the equal, if not the superior, of Dora Corr. Dora was the woman Lady Hannah admired and envied above all others. Colonial ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... had foreseen, tongues did wag—those tongues of the countryside, avid of anything that might spice the tedium of dull lives and brains. And, though no breath of gossip came to Winton's ears, no women visited at Mildenham. Save for the friendly casual acquaintanceships of churchyard, hunting-field, and local race-meetings, Gyp grew up knowing hardly any of her own sex. This dearth developed her reserve, kept her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... distraught, and the Hardwick servants had seized the occasion to run out for a bit of delectable gossip in which the least of the horrors included Gray Stoddard's murdered and mutilated body washed down in some mountain stream to the ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... of Spain from their necks," and when they were not fighting men they fought the waters. Truly the history of their struggles is a wondrous one! None of these was in sight, however, as we strolled the streets, but we did disturb the chat or gossip of two delightful, apple cheeked old ladies in white caps, who became dumb with astonishment at the sight of two foreigners who walked about gazing up at the roofs and windows of the houses, and at the mynheer ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... worthy Peechy Prauw paused to take breath, and to take a sip of the gossip tankard that stood at his elbow. His auditors remained with open mouths and outstretched necks, gaping like a nest of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... yet I am just as well pleased that my son and heir should be born in England. Doctor, there is another thing I wish to say. I know perfectly well what these little country towns are—everything is a source of gossip and sensation. If it were known that such an incident as this had happened to me, the papers would be filled with it; and it might fall out that my father, the earl, would come to know of it before ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... steps of the church and at the horse sheds back of it. Particularly did the women gather about Aunt Prudence and Sheila. As for the men, both young and old, the newcomer's city ways and unmistakable beauty gave them much to gossip about. Several of the younger masculine members of Elder Minnett's congregation came almost to blows over the settlement of who should take the fly cloth off Queenie, back her around, and lead her out to the front ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... the whole shameful story, every word, from my lightning vision to my gossip with Marcel in the antechamber, he listening in hopeless silence. At length I finished. It seemed hours since he had spoken. At last he said, "Then it is true." The grayness of his face drew the cry ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... Hill. Every inhabitant, or at least every householder, had to contribute his share of straw to the pile; a recusant was looked at askance, and if in the course of the year he happened to break a leg or lose a child, there was not a gossip in the village but knew the reason why. At nightfall the whole male population, men and boys, mustered on the top of the hill; the women and girls were not allowed to join them, but had to take up their position at a certain spring ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... cataloguing people, I should like to get our doctor tabulated. If Jervis knows any gossip about him, write it to me, please; the worse, the better. He called yesterday to lance a felon on Sammy Speir's thumb, then ascended to my electric-blue parlor to give instructions as to the dressing of thumbs. The duties of ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... that there must have been, judging from this example, in "high places" some "indiscretions" and "unpleasant" gossip early in our history. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... worn-out clothes of their husbands, or fabricated petticoats for themselves and such of the children as had grown old enough to require such garments. But besides these occupations, they spent a portion of their time in prattling gossip, which, whatever the subject might be, was always accompanied with a great deal of merriment and hearty laughter. They also spent no small portion of their time in the sea, for bathing was one of the favourite amusements of ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... the squire more carefully, and suddenly cried out: "Holy Mary be good to me! Isn't it Tom Cecial, my neighbor and gossip!" ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... had been busy with the wife of the Richest Trustee—as the widow she did not relax her hold. What the trustees said that day they only repeated from gossip: the little gray wisp of a woman was a nonentity—nothing more—with the spirit of a mouse. She held no position in society, and what she did with her time or her money no one knew. The trustees smiled ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... we'll scare up a ghost or something." Then she looked around the room—four girls and Nolan—Nolan, who had edged with alacrity toward Eveley on the telephone desk—and Kitty shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, what's the use? Never mind. Go on with the gossip, Eveley. I can think with ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... he was a kind of travelling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house, so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, [Footnote: Erudition: learning, scholarship.] for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... you believe it!" (addressing the general group) "this ridiculous fellow kindly offered to see me up the hill and gossip along the way—gossip! though he refused point-blank to come in and watch the rehearsal. But when he found there wasn't to be any, he changed about like a weather-vane. So here he is, claiming to have been away ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Local gossip suggests perceptible rivalry between the stately palace of the King and the pink palace on the hill, in which Margherita holds her state with not less ceremony than that observed at the Court of the Quirinale. It is a beautiful thing for a country to have in it a woman of high position, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... in heaven, ma'am, that's not true. I made no pretence; and I thought in reason you would know why I had come. This gossip—" ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... gods, has been recognised in many a dream, or message, or opportune succour. The Dioscuri and Saint James the Apostle have appeared—preferably on white horses—in sundry battles. Spirits duly invoked have repeated forgotten gossip and revealed the places where crimes had been committed or treasure buried. More often, perhaps, ghosts have walked the night without any ostensible or useful purpose, apparently in obedience to some ghastly ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... and no one outside the Zaouia knew of the great man's death until days afterwards, when he was already buried. Even in the Zaouia it was not known by many that he had gone away or returned from a journey, or that he lay ill. In spite of this secrecy and mystery, however, there was no gossip, but only wild wailing, of mourners who refused to be comforted. And if certain persons, to the number of twenty or more, were missing from their places in the Zaouia, nothing was said, after Si Maieddine had talked with the ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... strolling by the window at evening, and strumming on the banjo,—the only vestige of tropical life that haunts our busy Northern zone. But he liked just as well to note the ways of well-dressed girls and boys at croquet parties, or to sit at the club window and hear the gossip. He was a jewel of a listener, and was not easily bored even when Philadelphians talked about families, or New Yorkers about bargains, or Bostonians about books. A man who has not one absorbing aim can get a great many miscellaneous ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... thanks, dear," Mrs. Linden would say, and, thinking remorsefully of that little feminine gossip at the Crane mansion, would redouble her efforts in the young girl's behalf. Mrs. Linden had a fear which amounted to presentiment, that the aforementioned clique, of which Mrs. Crane was the acknowledged leader, would learn, by some means, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... good gossip," said Miss Mapp effusively. "Such an interest she has in other people's affairs. So human and sympathetic. I'm sure our dear hostess told her all about her adventures ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... was not quite so private as it might have been, for Mrs. Carlyle found in her grievances abundant food for her sarcastic tongue. Whatever she talked about she made interesting, and her relations with her husband became a common subject of gossip. It was said that the marriage had never been a real one, that they were only companions, and so forth. Froude was content to enjoy the society of the most gifted couple in London without troubling himself to solve mysteries which ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... to the cardinal that she was fast getting into the Queen's good graces, by virtue of being a capital gossip and story-teller; and that she had frequent private audiences. Soon she added intimations that the Queen was far from being really so displeased with the cardinal, as he supposed. At this the old fool bit instantly, and showed the keenest emotions ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... pleasantly, whether we read them in the quaint French of the fourteenth century, or in the more modern French in which they have just been clothed by M. Natalis de Wailly. So vividly does the easy gossip of the old soldier bring before our eyes the days of St. Louis and Henry III., that we forget that we are reading an old chronicle, and holding converse with the heroes of the thirteenth century. The fates both of Joinville's "Memoires" and of Joinville himself suggest in fact many reflections ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... warehouse was built by Major Carter, on the bank of the lake, between Meadow and Spring streets, and this was speedily followed by another, built by Elias and Harvey Murray, which became the centre of business and gossip for the village and the country round about. Of course a full supply of the great ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... relieved"—from the command of the Department of the South, there was a report current in those parts of a conversation, perhaps imaginary, between President Lincoln and the relieved General, on his arrival at Washington. The gossip ran, that on General Hunter's inquiring the cause of his removal, the good-natured President could only say that "Horace Greeley said he had found a man who could do the job." The job was the taking of Charleston, and the "coming man" was Brigadier-General (now Major-General) Gillmore. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... consented to see him, and, though she has told him, generously—for she thinks of me, dear creature—that he may come, that he may stay, for my sake, he spends most of his time only hovering at her door, prowling through the rooms, trying to entertain me, in that ghastly saloon, with the gossip of Venice, and meeting me, in doorways, in the sala, on the staircase, with an agreeable intolerable smile. We don't," said Susan Shepherd, "talk ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... are above the chatter of a wretched spot, a narrow life. Down there, nothing is not ridiculed that is not some phase of a provinciality. The dances in certain houses, the faces of some conceited club, long-spun names, business or gossip, or to drive a double carriage, are the gaslight boundaries of existence! Pah! it is a courtyard, bounded by four square walls, a path or two to walk in, and the eyes of busybodies to order our doings and sneer us out of our souls. How they deny us that ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... one must meet in doing as I advised? This is my Red Sea. It can be no more terrible than the one which confronted Israel. Duty lies on the other side, and I am going over! 'Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward.' The crimson waves of scandal, the white foam of gossip, shall part before me and heap themselves up as walls ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... a word which, as commonly used, includes books of very various kinds, ranging from St. Augustine's Confessions to the gossip of Lady Dorothy Nevill. Such books, however, have all one family likeness. They all of them represent life as seen by the writers from a personal point of view; and in this sense it is to the family of Memoirs that ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... seen. Mr. Fairweather had been settled in the place only about ten years, and, if he had heard a strange hint now and then about Elsie, had never considered it as anything more than idle and ignorant, if not malicious, village-gossip. All that he fully understood was that this had been a perverse and unmanageable child, and that the extraordinary care which had been bestowed on her had been so far thrown away that she was a dangerous, self-willed girl, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Capistrano nearly fifteen years after this episode in his life there. Two years after the robbery he heard that his loss was known to the mission. Pablo, while under the influence of too much aguardiente, had told of it. Father Zalvidea at once set to work to silence the gossip, and did so effectually, for he heard nothing more of it while he remained at the mission. But the rumor, lived, although repressed, and for years after his departure, searches were made for the money which many believed had never been stolen, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... bearing the title of The Mason's Arms, and is kept by Master Edward Honeyball, the "bully-rock" of the establishment. It is one of those little taverns which abound in the heart of the city and form the centre of gossip and intelligence of the neighborhood. We entered the barroom, which was narrow and darkling, for in these close lanes but few rays of reflected light are enabled to struggle down to the inhabitants, whose broad day is at best but a tolerable twilight. The room was partitioned into boxes, each ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... are certain, that she could then have had little idea that her chief home would be within its bounds. Even in 1831 transport and communication by land and water continued a tedious and troublesome business. However, the visit to the Isle of Wight was repeated in 1833. Perhaps to dissipate the gossip and calm the little irritation which had been created by the Princess's absence from the coronation, she made her appearance twice in public, on the completion of her thirteenth year, in 1832. That was a year in which there was ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... at breakfast he learned from his hostess that the presence of the strange gentleman lodging with her had been remarked by several young women, and that it was already the gossip of the Upper Town. In the course of her stream of news she mentioned Monsieur de Lery. The hand with which he was about to lift his cup to his lips stopped, and ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... people. Schiller is always in pursuit of the intense, the extraordinary, the ecstatic, and sometimes fails to impress through sheer superabundance of the impressive. His imagination wanders between a wild sensuality,—so lubricious in its suggestions, now and then, as to occasion gossip to the effect that he had become a libertine,—and a sublimated philosophy based on Platonic conceptions of a prenatal existence, or upon Leibnitzian conceptions of a pre-established harmony. But while the Laura poems are sufficiently sensual, they ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Tower of London. The names of several Volunteer Leaders are mentioned as being dead. But the surmise that steals timidly from one mouth flies boldly as a certitude from every mouth that repeats it, and truth itself would now be listened to with only a gossip's ear, but no person would believe a ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... aught that should do me a pleasure!" said Mistress Winter crustily. "Gossip Flint might have told me so much.— Take that, thou lither hussy! I'll learn thee to ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... face to point the way, Pendulous, blanched with longing, shedding flame Of silver on the brown grope of the flood. The stars are for me; the horizon wakes Its pilgrim chanting; and the little sand Grows musical of hope beneath my feet. The waves that leap to meet my swimming breast Gossip sweet secrets of the light-drenched way, And when the deep throbs of the rising surge Pulse upward with me, and a rain of wings Blurs round the moon's pale place, she stoops to reach Still welcome of bright hands across the wave, And sings low, low, globed ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... at once to whom she was referring, for he had heard the gossip of the youth of Monypenny, and he ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... behind him. When he sat down in a corner of the tavern office and lighted his pipe his subalterns showed him deference by leaving him to himself. That isolation gave Landlord Brophy his opportunity to indulge his bent in gossip ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... in the Emperor; for only by diminishing the dignity of the monarch could the revolutionary cause make headway. And during and after the change all the official documents, school textbooks, press views and social gossip have always coupled the word monarch with reprobation. Thus for a long while this glorious image has been lying in the dirty pond! Leaving out the question that it is difficult to restore the monarchy at ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... several botanists. It is probable that oxlips may be produced either from the cowslip or the primrose as the seed- bearer, but oftenest from the latter, as I judge from the nature of the stations in which oxlips are generally found (2/13. See also on this head Hardwicke's 'Science Gossip' 1867 pages 114, 137.), and from the primrose when crossed by the cowslip being more fertile than, conversely, the cowslip by the primrose. The hybrids themselves are also rather more fertile when crossed with the primrose than with the cowslip. ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... sooth, and had the donkey been in his house assuredly he would have lent it to me." But the owner of the animal said to himself, "Certainly Such-an-one begged it of me, but the rest is a lie, for the beast is shut up in the stable." However the Syrian who owned the beast went to his gossip, the man who had begged a loan of it, and entering the house salam'd to him and said, "Give me the donkey, O Such-an-one;"—And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and fell silent and ceased to say her permitted say. Then quoth her sister Dunyazad, "How sweet ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the representative of Pickle in Scott's generation, was a Highlander, and Pickle was not only a traitor, a profligate, an oppressor of his tenantry, and a liar, but (according to Jacobite gossip which reached 'King James') a forger of the King's name! Moreover he was, in all probability, one fountain of that reproach, true or false, which still clings to the name of the brave and gentle ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... of any age, with ready knowledge for whatever turn the conversation may take, and so abounding in resources as not even to be open to the temptation of making a display of them. The one can talk only so long as the conversation turns on dress, gossip, or the discussion of private character. In listening to the talk of such a woman, you hardly hear a sentence which is not based upon personalities. Her mind has not been fed and nurtured from day to day with beautiful and ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... presents the Chancellor in company with another port-loving lawyer, William Pitt, from whose fame, by-the-by, Lord Stanhope has recently removed the old disfiguring imputations of sottishness. "Returning," says Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, a poor authority, but piquant gossip-monger, "by way of frolic, very late at night, on horseback, to Wimbledon, from Addiscombe, the seat of Mr. Jenkinson, near Croydon, where the party had dined, Lord Thurlow, the Chancellor, Pitt, and Dundas, found the turnpike gate, situate between Tooting and Streatham, thrown open. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... for a minute. "No, I didn't mean that, only Pratt isn't the man to tell anything which isn't true, he's such a gossip," he answered. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... meant for girls; just to give them an opportunity of hobnobbing together, and talking gossip, and making ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... When I visit people whom I like, such as Madame de Sallus and yourself, I do not expect to meet the Paris that flutters from house to house in the evening, gossiping and scandalizing. I have had my experience of gossip and tittle-tattle. It needs only one of these talkative dames or men to take away all the pleasure there is for me in visiting the lady on whom I happen to have called. Sometimes when I am anchored perforce upon my ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... words into Anne's ears—swinging her parasol to and fro, and looking as if the merest gossip was dropping from her lips—with the dexterity which rarely fails a woman when she is called on to assist a deception in which her own interests are concerned. Cleverly as it had been done, however, Geoffrey's inveterate distrust was stirred into action by it. ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... church services than the busy people of "the world." The sight of these little houses always oppressed me with a sense of my inferiority in the matter of devoutness. I could not imagine myself living in one of them, until I came across a group of their occupants engaged in discussing some racy gossip with the nuns on one of the doorsteps. Gossip is not my besetting weakness, but I felt relieved. Convents are not aristocratic institutions in Russia as they are in Roman Catholic countries, and very few ladies by birth and education ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... or genius has no sort of connection or kindred. It may be some oddity in the manner, or incident in the life, of the author that is whispered over before his book comes out. This often macadamizes the way to popularity, for gossip is a mighty spell in the literary world, and a concealment of the author's name often creates an anxiety in the public mind, for it leaves room for guesses and conjectures, and as some are very fond of ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... for yersel'. It's NO! And it's sae, I'm thinkin', wi' most of you who read the words I've written. Ye'll mind yer own affairs, and sae muckle o' yer neighbors as he's not able to keep ye from findin' oot when ye tak' the time for a bit gossip! ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... ——. We sat talking on the porch, watching the moon rise and flood the dew-wet fields with a tide of white radiance. Occasionally we heard Mr. or Mrs. Hopper in the lamp-lit sitting-room making brief comments on neighborhood gossip, or the crops, and then Mrs. Hopper would go on silently sewing, and "Pa," his white head bent over a "Farmer's Almanac," made long and painful calculations on a scrap of paper in which he seemed to get much mysterious assistance from ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... shoulders derisively, and hurried off to their associates, to gossip with them about ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... authors and 23 English, on his subject, and he was under considerable obligation to some of them, notably Weyer. But he endeavored to make first-hand observations, attended witch trials and traced gossip to its source. He showed, none better, the utter flimsiness and absurdity of the charges on which poor old women were done to death. He explained the performance of the witch of Endor as ventriloquism. Trying ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... so keenly and so well could paint The village-folk, with all their humors quaint,— The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan, Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown,— The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown,— The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale, And the loud straggler levying his black mail,— Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, All that lies buried under fifty years. To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay, And, grateful, own the debt I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... daughter of the Countess Voig, whose name chances to be Elizabeth. She was educated at a convent in Antwerp, and the countess has lived in that city for several years, in order to be nearer her daughter. There was some gossip here that the young lady had married in Antwerp, just after leaving the convent; but we know little of the life of the Voigs because they are very reserved. Two or three months ago they returned to their castle, which is four miles to the north of Charleroi, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... bridge the Jhelum broadens out into a stately river, controlled at one side by the banked walk known as the Bund, with the Club House upon it and the line of houseboats beneath. Here the visitors flutter up and down and exchange the gossip, the bridge appointments, the little dinners that sit so incongruously on the pure ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... sigh, "for she is just the companion for life that I longed for. Where could I find so intelligent an intellect and so pure a mind, united with such radiant beauty, so different from the women of society, who live but for dress and gossip. Has Sabine anything in common with those giddy girls who look upon life as a perpetual value, and who take a husband as they do a partner, because they cannot dance without one? How her face lighted up as she spoke of him, and how thoroughly she puts ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... Do any of us? God forbid! It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it—if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown toward which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... know and he's always been an unusually dependable boy, especially to us who know him well. He'll come back all right. What? Oh, Mrs. Carter! No, I haven't heard any such reports, but I'm sure they're just gossip. You know how people will talk. What do you say? They phoned you from Economy? Who? The police? They asked for Mark? Well, I wouldn't let that worry you. Mark always was helpful to the police in finding people, or going with them after a lost car, you know. I wouldn't worry. Who? Billy? ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... don't really see why you should be so severe on him for going his own way. You are yourself doing so without, I fancy, much deference to your parents' opinions, and besides I have heard you many a time rail against the soullessness of the conversation and the gossip and tittle-tattle of society in country towns, meaning in your case in Abchester, and should, therefore, be the last to blame him for revolting ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... the room of the old War Department, second floor, next to the corner room occupied by the Secretary of War, with a door of communication. While we were at work it was common for General Grant and, afterward, for Mr. Stanton to drop in and chat with us on the social gossip of the time. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... offices were filled with scouts; boys cleaning boots and knives; bed-makers emptying slops and tattling scandal; scullions peeling potatoes and listening; and the butchers' and green-grocers' men who supply the college, and loitering about to gossip and get a taste of the college ale before going about their business. The room was large, but low and close, and the floor uneven. The furniture did not add to the cheerfulness of the apartment. It consisted of one large table in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Recovering himself, he laid a large hand on the priest's shoulder, and, his face assuming its wonted smile, said in his usual low tone, "Amigo, it seems that you have a penchant for spreading gossip. Think you I am ignorant of the fact that because of it Rome spewed you out for a meddlesome pest? Do you deceive yourself that Cartagena will open her ears to your garbled reports? The hag, Marcelena, lies! She has long hoped to gain some advantage from ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... country, and was a kind father to his boys.... 'What more should a woman expect?' Margaret asked herself, thinking of her father's words and enumerating her blessings. Three healthy children, a home and enough to eat and wear, a husband who (in spite of Conny's gossip) neither drank to excess nor was unfaithful nor beat her,—who had none of the obvious vices of the male! Good God! Margaret sighed with a bitter ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... he became editor of the Ladies Home Journal, was conducting a weekly syndicate column under the title of "Bok's Literary Leaves." It usually consisted of news and gossip of writers, comment, etc., literary odds and ends, and occasional interviews with distinguished authors. He went up to Hartford one day to interview Mark Twain. The result seemed satisfactory to Bok, but wishing to be certain that it would be satisfactory to Clemens, he sent him a copy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... set her mind on this apartment," George explained. "She's got some old cronies there, and I guess she's been looking forward to the games of bridge and the kind of harmless gossip that goes on in such places. Really, it's a life she'd like better than anything else—better than that she's lived at home, I really believe. It struck me she's just about got to have it, and after all she could ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... "we're not in the least like people in a book. I often wonder why Priorsford is so unlike a story-book little town. We're not nearly interested enough in each other for one thing. We don't gossip to excess. Everyone goes his or her own way. In books people do things or are suspected of doing things, and are immediately cut by a feverishly interested neighbourhood. I can't imagine that happening in Priorsford. No one ever does anything very striking, but if they did I'm sure ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... may be observed here that there are few who know so little as to the sexual morality of the people around them as clergymen. It does not become them, of course, to enter into the gossip of the village, nor does anyone care to broach such subjects in the first instance; and I may mention here that a relative of my own, a clergyman in a country parish, told me that if anything went wrong in these respects he was ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... why did not those wretches say in which month Yram was married? If she had married soon after he had left, this was why he had not been sent for or written to. Pray heaven it was so. As for current gossip, people would talk, and if the lad was well begotten, what could it matter to them whose son he was? "But," thought my father, "I am glad I did not meet him on my way down. I had rather have been ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... junction with the army of the brilliant admiral and Petersburg hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the gossip of the staff reached their maximum. Kutuzov saw this and merely sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Only once, after the affair of the Berezina, did he get angry and write to Bennigsen (who reported separately to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... about the matter. Farrant respectfully solicited the lease, and made the significant request that he might "pull down one partition, and so make two rooms—one." Neville, in a friendly letter beginning with "hearty commendations unto you and to Mrs. More," and ending with light gossip, urged Sir William to let the rooms to Farrant, and recommended Farrant as a desirable tenant ("I dare answer for him"). Neither letter mentioned the purpose for which the rooms, especially the large room referred to by Farrant, were to be used; but More doubtless understood that ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... returned the perfume-seller. He was a Turk, dignified and gracious, and of no mind to listen to gossip from the harem, of which it was little short of scandalous to speak so publicly. He had other customers in his shop who could hear, amongst them a black-browed Druze in a green turban, who was waiting patiently his turn, and who seemed to listen intently to this most improper gossip. The slave ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... and pleased Miss Ethel. She came and reposed in Madame de Florac's quiet chamber, or sate in the shade in the sober old garden of her hotel; away from all the trouble and chatter of the salons, the gossip of the embassies, the fluttering ceremonial of the Parisian ladies' visits in their fine toilettes, the fadaises of the dancing dandies, and the pompous mysteries of the old statesmen who frequented her grandmother's apartment. The world began for ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... trumpet-blasts, and were as utterly gone as those echoes of their deeds which he sang, and which faded with the last sound of his voice and the last tremble of his lyre. History relating outward events alone was an unmeaning gossip, with the world for a village. This life could only become other than phantasmagoric, could only become real, as it stood related to something that was higher and permanent. Hence the idea of Fate, of a higher ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... mischievous as little imps, sported about, rolling on the grass and throwing handfuls of sand into the other's eyes, heedless of the risk of blinding, while their mothers were engrossed in that grave gossip which marks the dwellers in villages. These gatherings occurred daily before the fisherman's house; they formed a tacit and almost involuntary homage, consecrated by custom, and of which no one had ever taken special account; the envy that rules in small communities would soon have suppressed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... No! not to Mr. Brodfresser,[47] nor to Mr. Commissioner:—but to Marton, to old Marton? Has old Marton ever let out anything? Old Marton knows much that would be worth his while to tell tales about: have you ever heard of old Marton being a gossip? Has old Marton ever told tales against you or anyone else? And if I could help you ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Degrees to repeat the Heads of Sermons, which she heard, and to accomplish her with other Things, which would afterwards be of Use to her. Now these Things being wholly new to the Girl, which had been brought up at Home, to do nothing but gossip and play, she soon grew weary of this Life, she absolutely refus'd to submit to what her Husband requir'd of her; and when her Husband press'd her about it, she would cry continually, sometimes she would throw herself ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... always brings with it, to the idler and the man of leisure, a longing for the leafy shade and the green luxuriance of the country. It is pleasant to interchange the din of the city, the movement of the crowd, and the gossip of society, with the silence of the hamlet, the quiet seclusion of the grove, and the gossip of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... appeal case going on—and an appeal was too expensive an amusement to be indulged in often—there was always a good deal of exciting litigation to keep up the interest of the convent, and to give them something to think about and gossip about nearer home. We have the best authority—the authority of the great Pope Innocent III.—for believing that Englishmen in the thirteenth century were extremely fond of beer; but there was something else that they were even fonder of, and that was law. Monastic history ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... acting the star role on a similar happy occasion. Complacent matrons, in their Sunday best, exchanged voluble comments. The wedding party was a trifle late, and the guests were all early which gave opportunity for soul-satisfying gossip. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... would gossip, and I should not like that,' said she; 'only it is very hard to make out for myself, and those ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sheet, which had existed one hundred and ten years, when it was merged, in 1874, by purchase of the copyright, into the Morning Chronicle, in its early days, was nearly the sole exponent of the wants— of the gossip (in prose and in verse)—and of the daily events of Quebec. As such, though, from the standard of to-day, it may seem quaint and puny, still it does not appear an untruthful mirror of social life in the ancient capital. Its centenary number ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... allegations may have been untrue or exaggerated, but individuals were pointed out who in a mysterious manner had suddenly become affluent; it would at any rate have been as well if the I.N.C. had ordered some investigation. Since they failed to do so, it is natural that gossip flourished. In Triest, by the way, even the Italian population is reputed to have been disgusted when about forty waggon-loads of flour and twenty of sugar were taken from the stores of the former Austrian army ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... English opinion to that of the English minister. Earl Clarendon and Lord Palmerston held back from the British parliament and public a correct knowledge of the facts, until it transpired, through Parisian gossip, that the French, English, and Austrian ministers were willing to accept peace on the condition of Russia and the allies keeping an equal naval armament in the Black Sea. The way in which Austria had hoodwinked ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... myself," remarked Sanderson; "Stewart knows something about everybody. It's sickening the way he spends his time reading gossip and ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... at the Chateau des Noires-Fontaines and keep on the watch, but could he trust the servants? Michel and Jacques would hold their tongues, Roland was sure of them; but Charlotte, the jailer's daughter, she might gossip. However, it was three o'clock in the morning, every one was asleep, and the safest plan was certainly to put himself in communication with Michel. Michel would find some ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... sir," said the frightened clerk,—"nothing new as I hear of but gossip, and that aint a thing to interest a clergyman. There's always one report or another flying about, but them follies aint for your hearing. Nothing more," continued Mr Elsworthy, conscious of guilt, and presenting a very tremulous countenance to the inspection ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... heavens!" said Sam. He had heard of hazing before, but he had been living in such a realm of imagination for the past weeks that the gossip had never really reached his consciousness, and now that he was confronted with the reality he hardly knew how to ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... the big room where men were already foregathering to gossip between drinks of the trial and of the man who was to die. Bill bethought him of the young stranger; made some inquiries of certain inoffensive individuals among the crowd, and sent Jim out with instructions to find the kid and bring ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... there is any. I never yet lived in a cow-country where there wasn't more or less talk of—rustling. You don't want to take gossip like that too seriously. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... tokens," said Father Shoveller. "See my young foresters, ye be new to the world. Take an old man's counsel, and never show, nor speak of such gear in an hostel. Mine host of the White Hart is an old gossip of mine, and indifferent honest, but who shall say who ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... cold looks, averted eyes and peculiar nods and gestures which perplexed her beyond measure; but presently the pervading gossip found its way to her, and she understood them—then. Her pride was stung. She was astonished, and at first incredulous. She was about to ask her mother if there was any truth in these reports, but upon second thought held her peace. She soon gathered that Major Lackland's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Stephen gazed at her in silence. Was it possible that she had not heard the gossip about Benham and Mrs. Rokeby? Was she trying to mislead him by an appearance of flippancy? Or was there some deeper purpose, some serious attempt to learn the truth ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... not very easy to procure a direction to the fold in question, as none of the neighbours were of the flock that resorted thither, and few knew anything more of it than the name. At last, a gossip of Mrs Nubbles's, who had accompanied her to chapel on one or two occasions when a comfortable cup of tea had preceded her devotions, furnished the needful information, which Kit had no sooner obtained ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... now knew of the feud between Banion and Woodhull, and the cause underlying it. Woman gossip did what it might. A half dozen determined men quietly watched Woodhull. As many continually were near Banion, although for quite a different reason. All knew that time alone must work out the answer to this implacable quarrel, and that the friends ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... since confirmed her faith in his judgment by much silent inquiry of the newspapers. They had the Sunday edition of the Lakeland Light at Pymantoning, and Cornelia had kept herself informed of the "Gossip of the Ateliers," and concerning "Women and Artists," "Artists' Summer Homes," "Phases of Studio Life," "The Ladies who are Organizing Ceramic Clubs," "Women Art Students," "Glimpses of the Dens of ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... always forecasting good," retorted Ada, with a smile, "so that things are pretty well balanced after all. Come now, Ingeborg, don't be cross, but leave the dough, and let us go to thy room, for I want to have a little gossip with ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... laugh, and crimsoned all over. She knew perfectly well what he was about. He was determined to perform all that could possibly be required of him. He would put down invidious comments, disarm gossip, in short cut off the gorgon's head at the first struggle. They might term it unnatural, overdone, but at least it would not be to do again; and Harry Jardine's was the temper, that, if you presented an obstacle to it, it itched the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... talks upon paper, of the trifling affairs of every-day life, adding here and there a sparkling anecdote, a bit of gossip, a delicate characterization, a trenchant criticism, a dash of wit, a touch of feeling, or a profound thought. All this is lighted up by her passionate love of her daughter, and in this light we read the many-sided life ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... making his own plans as he went along. "If I tell these villagers outright that Mother Huldah is in need, each person will think, 'O well, Neighbor Jude, or Gossip Dorcas has more to spare than I. Someone else will take care of the poor old lady, I am sure.' And it will end in her getting nothing at all. I will not talk about her, but to each person I will talk about himself, for that is the way ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... Chateaurien looked him in the eye, and apologized pleasantly for being so much in the way. Thereupon Rohrer procured an introduction to him, and made some observations derogatory to the valor and virtue of the French. There was current a curious piece of gossip of the French court: a prince of the blood royal, grandson of the late Regent and second in the line of succession to the throne of France, had rebelled against the authority of Louis XV, who had commanded him to marry the Princess Henriette, cousin to both of ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... in his balance, and found them wanting. In a letter to his wife, he writes: "Nothing but miserable trifles do these people trouble themselves about. They strike me as infinitely more ridiculous with their important ponderosity concerning the gathered rags of gossip, than even a member of the Second Chamber of Berlin in the full consciousness of his dignity.... The men of the minor States are mostly mere caricatures of periwig diplomatists, who at once put on their official visage if I merely beg of them a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... country roads. Falsehood thrust itself forward and played the hypocrite; the bells on the fool's cap jingled, and declared they were church-bells, and the noise became so bad for the Hearer that he thrust his fingers into his ears. Still, he could hear false notes and bad singing, gossip and idle words, scandal and slander, groaning and moaning, without and within. "Heaven help us!" He thrust his fingers farther and farther into his ears, till at last the drums burst. And now he could hear nothing more of the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... ails you?" exclaimed Madeleine, perceiving that Emma paid no attention to her idle gossip. "When I ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... forward and tapped the Lord Chamberlain on the shoulder. "Let the gentleman remain, gossip, and see you that remaining he goeth not like a fly with his feet in the porridge." With a flippant step before the Seigneur, he shook his bells at him. "Thou shalt stay, Nuncio, and staying speak the truth. So doing you shall be as noted as a comet with three tails. You shall prove that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... three or four dinners to our good political friends," said M. Martin-Belleme. "We shall invite some of the ancient radicals to meet the people of our circle. It will be well to find some pretty women. We might invite Madame Berard de la Malle; there has been no gossip about her for two years. What ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... in his chair, and with a benign glance round, which, his scapegrace son said, meant: "Bless you, my children! Be happy and good in your own way, but don't make a noise!" he sank into a gentle doze, and the rest of the party relapsed into trivial gossip, some of which I give for what it is worth by way of illustration. It shows Ideala at about her worst, but marks a period in her career, a turning-point for the better. She was seldom bitter, and still more ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... high antiquity. But what possesses the Rhine tourist to moralize? He is a restless creature in general, more occupied in staring than in seeing—a gregarious creature too, who enjoys the evening table d'hote, the day-old Times and the British or American gossip as a reward for his having conscientiously done whatever Murray or Baedeker bade him. Cook has only transformed the tourist's mental docility into a bodily one: the guidebook had long drilled his mind before the tour-contractor thought of drilling his body and driving willing gangs ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various |
