"Prim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by which gay villains rise And reach the heights which honest men despise; Mute at the Bar and in the Senate loud, Dull 'mong the dullest, proudest of the proud, A pert prim prater of the northern race, Guilt in his heart, and famine in ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... chose to express the wisest thought in the most indecent fooling; why every genius does not look out upon life and the world with the same eyes and find the same method to record what he sees. Some men can only marvel with Louis Stevenson at the wide contrast between the "prim obliterated polite face of life" and its "orgiastic foundations"; others are only reconciled to it by the humour in the contrast or by the pity invoked by its victims. What makes the genius is just the fact that he looks out upon life, that he feels, that he uses his eyes, in his own way; ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... stood here now, a leader in the debate, there was nothing grand or imposing in his appearance. He was small of stature and slight in frame, like Hamilton, but he had none of Hamilton's personal magnetism. His manner was shy and prim, and blushes came often to his cheeks. At the same time, he had that rare dignity of unconscious simplicity which characterizes the earnest and disinterested scholar. He was exceedingly sweet-tempered, generous, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... moonlight, leaving me bewildered. This was a queen of cannibals; she was tattooed from hand to foot, and perhaps the greatest masterpiece of that art now extant, so that a while ago, before she was grown prim, her leg was one of the sights of Tai-o-hae; she had been passed from chief to chief; she had been fought for and taken in war; perhaps, being so great a lady, she had sat on the high place, and throned it there, alone of her sex, while the drums were going twenty strong and the priests carried ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their account he had thought of not marrying her. The revealed whiteness of her wrist, the intimacy of her relaxed posture, for though her mind had played into his as freely as a child in a meadow, she had been always, as regards her person, a little prim with him, had lent to their errand of house visiting a personal note in which it was absurdly apt for them to have run across Captain Dunham of the Merrythought at the door of the Consulate. Mr. Weatheral had some papers ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... flax into Ireland, emigration, the condition of the poor: these and such-like stupendous subjects for reflection—all branching more or less intricately from the single idea of the Castleton property—the young lord discussed and disposed of in half a dozen prim, poised sentences, evincing, I must say in justice, no inconsiderable information, and a mighty solemn turn of mind. The oddity was, that the subjects so selected and treated should not come rather from some young barrister, or mature political ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... spoke, in his prim, old-fashioned way, he began to descend the stairs, taking off his hat, as if to join the girl whom in thought he had wronged for an instant. "Nelson Smith" followed, smiling at Annesley over the elder man's high, narrow head sparsely covered with ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... shall meet Garrick and Quin, and stop a moment at Tom King's, close to St. Paul's portico, to watch Hogarth's revellers fight with swords and shovels, that frosty morning that the painter sketched the prim old maid going to early service. We shall look in at the Tavistock to see Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller at work at portraits of beauties of the Carolean and Jacobean Courts; remembering that in the same rooms Sir James Thornhill afterwards painted, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... iv thim min, women an' childher rowlin' on th' flure, hands an' feet goin', icepicks an' hurlin' sticks, clubs, brickbats an' beer kags flyin' in th' air. How manny iv thim was kilt I'll niver know, f'r I wint as daft as a hen an' dhreamt iv organizin' a Mickrobe Campaign club, that'd sweep th' prim'ries an' maybe go acrost an' free Ireland. Whin I woke up me legs was as weak as a day-old babby's an' me poor head impty as a cobbler's purse. I want no more iv thim. Give me anny bug fr'm a cockroach to an aygle save an' excipt thim wist iv ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... leading him straight into the study of the grave Doctor, to whom she unfolds the story, begging him not to punish the lad, believing that he is penitent. And the meekness and kindliness of the good woman make a Christian picture for the mind of Reuben, in sad contrast with the prim austerity of Aunt Eliza,—a picture that he never loses,—that keeps him meekly obedient for the rest of the quarter; after which, by the advice of Miss Onthank, both Phil and Reuben are transferred to the boys' academy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... peoples no can understand hims too. He makee much policee with his Foreign Relations. I ask a much people to tella me who are his Foreign Relations. They laugh great deal and tella me Spain and General PRIM. No knowee Spain countree in Japan. I no tink it much of a countree, no havee muchee—how you call—Commerce. One ting puzzle me great deal. Here much freedom. Sometimes I tink, too much. But that Island—how ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... one would suppose, as hideous as human half-wittedness could invent or endure. But they are different. They are complete; they are, in their way, compact; rounded and finished with an effect that may be prim or smug, but is not raw. The surroundings of them are neat, if it be in a niggling fashion. But American ugliness is not complete even as ugliness. It is broken off short; it is ragged at the edges; even its worthy objects have around them a sort of halo of refuse. Somebody said of the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... PRIM, JUAN, a Spanish general; distinguished as a statesman; rose to be Minister of War, but aspiring to dictatorship, was shot by an assassin; he was the leader of the movement that overthrew Isabella in 1868 and installed Amadeo ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... away down the hall, Helen following her, feeling extremely old and prim. Grandma Armstrong's bedroom was at the back of the house overlooking the orchard and kitchen-garden. She was sitting up in bed, a very handsome little old lady in cap and ribbons. She gave the strange girl's hand a ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... determined that there was neither rest nor health in all the arid waste of streets about him. It seemed as if in those dull rows of dwellings, in the prim new villas, red and white and staring, there must be a leaven working which transformed all to base vulgarity. Beneath the dull sad slates, behind the blistered doors, love turned to squalid intrigue, mirth to drunken clamor, and the mystery of life ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... and the Tories, and considered that the presumption of the colonists must be put down with a high hand. They little knew of what stuff the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers—the sturdy Puritans, the dashing Cavaliers, the prim Quakers, and of many other classes whom persecution, poverty, or their crimes, had driven from Europe—were made, as I had full many opportunities afterwards of discovering. A just and judicious policy which at once would have granted all the rights the colonists demanded would ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... club all the morning), I, sauntering upon the sidewalk, see her pass, I pay homage to her beauty, and her lover can do no more; and if, perchance, my garments—which must seem quaint to her, with their shining knees and carefully brushed elbows; my white cravat, careless, yet prim; my meditative movement, as I put my stick under my arm to pare an apple, and not, I hope, this time to fall into the street,—should remind her, in her spring of youth, and beauty, and love, that there are age, and care, and ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... white-stone gate surmounted with stone lions, which led from the yard into the field, stood two girls. One of them, the elder, thin, pale, very handsome, with masses of chestnut hair and a little stubborn mouth, looked rather prim and scarcely glanced at me; the other, who was quite young—seventeen or eighteen, no more, also thin and pale, with a big mouth and big eyes, looked at me in surprise, as I passed, said something in English and looked confused, and it seemed to me that I had ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... nursery till it was finished. Lucy came, with her books, to sit with me. She always follows like my shadow. After a while Mrs. Embury called. I hesitated a little about trusting the child to Lucy's care, for though her prim ways have given her the reputation of being wise beyond her years, I observe that she is apt to get into trouble which a quick-witted child would either avoid or jump out of in a twinkling. However, children are often left to much younger girls, so, with many ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... walls which had once supported them, and now spread abroad in wild confusion, freed from the trammels of trellis work, broken fragments of which still adhered to some of their branches. They grew just as they listed, and resembled well-bred trees, once neat and prim, which, having gone astray, now flaunted but vestiges of whilom respectability. And from tree to tree, and from bough to bough, vine branches hung in confusion. They rose like wild laughter, twined for an instant round some lofty ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... the city, imagine yourself in some quarters of Dieppe or Calais, or any other of the busier towns in the north of France. The peaked roofs, the unexpected balconies, the ill-regulated gables, and the general individuality of the houses are pleasing to the eye wearied with the prim monotony of ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... betray the secret of Christal's history, yet seemed at times to bear a secret grudge against her, as an interloper. "There she comes, riding across the country like some wild thing—she who used to be so prim and precise!" ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... slipping, slipping over that horrible ledge and I just couldn't help actually putting out my hand to draw him back. They say that college graduate young women don't know how to fall in love and that they don't get married because young men are afraid of them, they are so prim and intellectual and superior, but, oh, Helen, I am almost ready to propose to Elijah myself. I love him so much. Isn't that dreadful for a schoolma'am and a college graduate, and especially after she has refused him twice? What ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... not boys, you see, and so the same rules do not apply to us, for girls always have to observe the conventions," said Nealie, with the prim little air which she sometimes put on for ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... still lingering in the long dark lashes that veiled her sad and downcast eyes. The Captain was rocking to and fro in an easy chair, smoking his pipe and glancing first towards his daughter, and then at her starch prim-looking aunt, with no very ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... on the successful revolution inaugurated by Prim is worth relating, as it deals with an episode of Spanish politics which is repeated almost every other year with slender variations. The play is the same; the scene and the dramatis personae are merely shifted. One of the stereotyped military risings was to be initiated at Algeciras on the ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... eye every morning when he opened the door of his bedroom; it was there when he came home late at night, and seemed to be sitting up for him, in the reproachful, feminine fashion. When he was writing his letters, there it was, with a prim, furtive air of looking on. It was not like a mere slipper; it had traits and an individuality of its own; there were moments when the jet beads in the buckle sparkled with a sort of intelligence. Sitting at night, ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Beaubocage secured him a competence, so prudently had the small estate been managed by the kindred who adored him. His marriage had given him fortune. He had no need of trade or profession. His life was laid out for him like a prim Dutch flower-garden. He was to live at Cotenoir, and look after his estate, and smoke his pipe, as Baron Frehlter had done, and be a good husband to his wife, a kind father to his children. This latter part of his duty came natural to M. Lenoble. It was not in him ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... most charming people in the world live in them, but their collective effect is below the quality of any individual among them. Cambridge is a world of subdued tones, of excessively subtle humours, of prim conduct and free thinking; it fears the Parent, but it has no fear of God; it offers amidst surroundings that vary between disguises and antiquarian charm the inflammation of literature's purple draught; ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... in this book, only, of course, if they do nasty things, I shall have to tell, or it won't be true. She isn't much with father, anyway, and he likes to be made a fuss of, because he's so quiet himself. Isn't it funny how people are like that! You'd think they'd like you to be prim and quiet too, but they don't a bit, and the more you plague them ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... formed the feudal aristocracy of the island; but the agent had the most imposing mansion, and often have I seen the old house shining with lights across its whole broadside of windows, and gay with the sound of a dozen French violins. The garden, now a wilderness, was the pride of the island. Its prim arbors, its spring and spring-house, its flowerbeds, where, with infinite pains, a few hardy plants were induced to blossom; its cherry-tree avenue, whose early red fruit the short summer could scarcely ripen; its annual attempts at vegetables, which never came to maturity,—formed topics ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... whom he had bestowed the priceless boon of his society for life? How did he know what she was—he could not find the exact adjective to express his meaning, but he knew what he meant. Was she worthy of the boon? That was what it amounted to. All his life he had had a prim shrinking from the section of the feminine world which is connected with the light-life of large cities. Club acquaintances of his in London had from time to time married into the Gaiety Chorus, and Mr. Carmyle, though he had no objection to the Gaiety Chorus ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... longer empty. Looking down its dusty length from beneath the shelter of his palmleaf fan, Judge Priest saw here and there groups of children—the little girls in prim and starchy white, the little boys hobbling in the Sunday torment of shoes and stockings; and all of them were moving toward a common center—Sunday school. Twice again that day would the street show life—a little later when grown-ups went their way to church, and again just ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... However, women, for comfort's sake, having got an awkward article to deal with, preferred the latter alternative—tied down their hats with ribands, (men, be it remembered, at the same time, tied up their brims into the prim, high, cocked shape,) and called these ugly coverings "gipsy hats." We remember something ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... captain; the footmen forgot their usual smirk when he alighted. Captain Delmar was ushered in solemn silence into the drawing-room, and his aunt, who had notice of his arrival received him with a stiff, prim air of unwonted frigidity, with her arms crossed before her ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... the tower door. Kindly tell her, Augustina, that I will let her have the key of it. And kindly tell her also—as from yourself, of course—that she will be treating us all with courtesy if she does come home at a reasonable hour. We have been a very quiet, prim household all these years, and Mrs. Denton, for all her virtues, has ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has not escaped comment, in offering to the Commander-in-Chief his services as second in command of the army. He did right. Battalions and brigades could hardly have strengthened the hands of the general, and invigorated the spirits of the troops, so much as the active accession of Hardinge. Prim etiquette may pucker its thin lips, and solemn discretion knit its ponderous brows; but neither discipline nor prudence ran any risk of being injured or affronted by the veteran of the Peninsula. What the exigency required, he knew; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... before Bessie came down. She was a great invalid, although her prim and rigid countenance forbore any expression save of severity. She had no pathos about her, not a touch. Whatever her bodily sufferings may have been—and Bessie dimly hinted that they were severe to ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... deep emotional nature in the lad, which, by the time he has reached his eighth year,—Miss Eliza having now been in the position of mistress of the household a twelvemonth,—works itself off in explosive tempests of feeling, with which the prim spinster has but faint sympathy. No care could be more studious and complete than that with which she looks after the boy's wardrobe and the ordering of his little chamber; his supply of mittens, of stockings, and of underclothing is always of the most ample; nay, his caprices of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Frank? What am I to do? Think how desolate I am, how unfriended, how much in want of some one whom I can call a protector! I cannot have you always with me. You care more for the little finger of that prim piece of propriety down at the old dowager's than you do for me and all my sorrows." This was true, but Frank did not say that it was true. "Lord Fawn is at any rate respectable. At least, I thought he was so ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... but a poor devil," said Val; "a poor pitiful scoundrel, that can't understand what full, deep-seated, and lasting vengeance means. You are only fit to sneak, and peep, and skulk about after a sly, prim, sweet-faced—but I am losing my breath to speak to you. Gordon, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... perverse, and "pestering," like all children who have any great and positive elements in them. I dare say she was disposed, like any other "only child," to be self-willed and selfish, and that she required a fair amount of wholesome discipline, and that she got it. Had she been the prim and pious little precocity which some biographers have painted her, she would have died young, like the "Dairyman's Daughter"; we might have had an edifying tract, and ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... in execution, a plan for the torment and vexation of his antagonist of the yard-stick. He promised the sable handmaid of his Mary a half dollar, if she would personate her mistress for a few minutes, which he imagined easily enough done in the dark, and instructing her "to behave prim and lady-like," went in quest of the boy Jim, whom he stationed in the entry to open the door for Mr. Millinet, and show him into the front parlor, and then went to the room where the fair lady herself was sitting. She was just on the point of coming to the front room with a light, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... by chance this afternoon, and Mrs. Walker, the vicar's wife, with two of her countless daughters, had come by invitation. Mrs. Walker was a middle-aged, careworn, rather prim-looking woman. Lady Engleton was handsome. Bright auburn hair waved back in picturesque fashion from a piquant face, and constituted more than half her claim to beauty. The brown eyes were bright and vivacious. The mouth was seldom quite shut. It scarcely seemed worth while, the loquacious ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... beautiful home of the mother who had adopted him and went to his own people. His Own People," she repeated slowly. "Do you understand that?" The class sat stolidly silent. Desire's eye rested again upon the little girl with the prim mouth. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... more. Mantels, mantles. Mar, more. Maun, must. Maut, malt. Mees, meadows. Meikle, big. Melder, grinding of grain. Melvie, soil with meal. Mim, prim. Mirk, dark. Misca'd, miscalled. Mist, poor. Mittie, mighty. Moe, more. Mole, soft. Moneynge, moaning. Monie, mony, many. Mou, mouth. Muckle, much, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... you, for you are my sister. I daresay I have done many things to displease you, but I love you, old woman, I do indeed. And whatever I may have said in the past I 'take back' as we bushmen say, and I want you to give me some of your affection. I know you have tons of it concealed under that prim little manner of yours, but you are too proud to show it. And see, Lizzie, old girl, I'm not really the reckless scallawag you think me to be," and he stroked her hair, and looked so earnestly and pleadingly into her eyes, that her woman's heart triumphed, ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... brothers, sisters, and even the domestic brutes whom they first played with." That eloquent trait, her love of animals and her hatred of cruelty, helps to define her character. She was, says Godwin, "a worshipper of domestic life," and, for all her proud independence, in love with love. In Godwin's prim phraseology, she "set a great value on a mutual affection between persons of an opposite sex, and regarded it as the principal solace of human life." Indeed, in the Letters to Imlay, which appeared after her death, it is not so much the strength and ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... noise of the sentry, on the quarter-deck below him, grounding arms, turned the current of his thoughts. A thin, tall, soldier-like man, with a cold blue eye, and prim features, came out of the cuddy below, handing out a fair-haired, affected, mincing lady, of middle age. Captain Vickers, of Mr. Frere's regiment, ordered for service in Van Diemen's Land, was bringing his lady on deck to get an appetite ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... impossible things can happen. I'm going to write a book some day—from a girl's point of view—and I intend to make all parents and guardians and governesses, et cetera, sit up. Why should boys have everything jolly, while girls are made to be so prim and proper? Read a boys' book and you will find it full of fun and adventures and excitement, but girls are supposed to care about nothing but wish-wash, about self-denial and being good, and all that. Course I know we ought to try to be good, keep our promises, and never do ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... yet considered the spiritual significance of slang? The dictionaries inform us that "slang is a conversational irregularity of a more or less vulgar type;" but that is not all. The prim definition refers merely to words, but I am rather more interested in considering the mental attitude which is indicated by the distortion and loose employment of words, and by the fresh coinages which seem to spring up every hour. I know of no age or nation that has been without ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... between shrubs and arbor lies a small pool of water flowers and goldfish. On the arbor's right, in charming privacy, masked by hollyhocks, dahlias and other tall-maidenly things, lie beds of strawberries and lettuce and all the prim ranks and orders of the ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... housekeeping. It was a sin to gorge the body, and godly conversation was better than abundance. Yet the pastor's tea-table arises with a halo around it. The rye and Indian bread, the doughnuts fragrant as flowers, the sparing tea, the prim mats which saved the cloth, the wire screen covering sponge cake—how sacred ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Ever-green Oak, two sorts; Gall-Berry-Tree, bearing a black Berry, with which the Women dye their Cloaths and Yarn black; 'tis a pretty Ever-green, and very plentiful, growing always in low swampy Grounds, and amongst Ponds. We have a Prim or Privet, which grows on the dry, barren, sandy Hills, by the Sound side; it bears a smaller sort than that in England, and grows into a round Bush, very beautiful. {Yaupon.} Last of Bushes, (except Savine, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... which pointed to anything but a prosperous trade in wood and sea-coal. Faggots, but not the treasonable kind! Try as he might, he could-get no farther with that pillar of the magistracy, my Lord Danly's friend, the beloved of Aldermen. He hated his solemn face, his prim mouth, his condescending stoop. Such a man was encased in proof armour of public esteem, and he heeded Mr. Lovel no more than ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... the advance of the Right Wing with the First Division. He moved from camp at 6 A.M. on the Edmondson pike, on which he was ordered to move to Prim's blacksmith shop, from whence he was to march direct on a country road to Nolinsville. The Third Division under Sheridan moved on the Nolinsville pike, followed by the Second under Johnson. The advance of both these columns encountered ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... willingly believe in the immortality of the soul: the characters which he can never learn to comprehend, are precisely those in which dwell the intuitions of the infinite. He piques himself upon the precision of his language, not perceiving it has gained this boasted prim exactitude at the expense of breadth and depth. All honor to the savant! but let him keep the lamp of spontaneity ever burning in his soul. By its light the savage and the woman divine God; without it, he may ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... make his career, and it might have been as many thousand for any chance there seemed to be of his obtaining it. He was roused from his black meditation by the entrance of Dr. Oldacre himself, a large, clean-shaven, respectable man, with a prim manner and an austere face. He had prospered exceedingly by the support of the local Church interest, and the rule of his life was never by word or action to run a risk of offending the sentiment which had made him. His standard ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... any other plans for me to-morrow morning?" inquired Miss Welland in a prim and social tone, belied by the dancing light ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... did not ignore him altogether. If Amy had but been rescued by him, George F. Pearson, instead of by this Bertram Cope, and if she had been snatched from a disorderly set of breakers at the foot of those disheveled sandhills instead of from the prim, prosy, domestic edge of Churchton—well, wouldn't the affair have been better set and better carried off? In such case it might have been picturesque and heroic, instead of ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... face over the threshold—Clytemnestra, of a matronly circumference, yet with a certain prim consciousness of herself, which despite the gray hair and the excellent maturity of her face, was unmistakably maidenish—Clytie of the eyes always wise to another's needs and ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... little drawing-room and found Miss Grayson, sitting in prim and dignified silence, in front of the feeble fire that burned on the hearth. It looked to Prescott like the same fire that was flickering there when first he came, but he believed now it ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... eagerness of all onboard the frigate to take part in the work. The crews of the boats, and those who were to go on the expedition, stood in readiness, with pistols in their belts, and cutlasses at their sides; the marines drawn up, stiff and prim, ready to step into the boats, offering a strong contrast to the blue-jackets, with their rolling, somewhat swaggering movements, while several not told off to go were stealing round in the hopes of being able to ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... wrote "Some d——d people have come in, and I must stop;" and then recollecting that he was writing to a "proper" person, making a postscript which says, "when I wrote d——d I only meant deuced." But one would as soon think of dropping out Shakspeare's adjective, and saying (as a very prim lady we once knew did in reading Lady Macbeth's soliloquy), "Out, spot!" as to drop out any of Lamb's qualifying words. He was sometimes accused of being irreverent, as in his article upon "Saying Graces," where he affirms that he is more disposed ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... come from Aunt Winnie,—a Government boat brought weekly mail to the lighthouse on Numskull Nob. They were prim little letters, carefully margined and written, and spelled as the good Sisters had taught her in early youth. She took her pen in hand—so letters had always begun in Aunt Winnie's schooldays—to write him a few lines. She was in good health and ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... more words about the "English" question: As I said, it seems to me, academical correctness, among the higher characters, will give a prim, old-fashioned tone: and you can look after this, as all my own work has been in the opposite direction in art. I have given it no thought in writing ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... works, all faultlessly done up in the best style of binder. No—we love to pass long solitary hours in one of those old depositories of choice literature made venerable by the rich mellowing of time, and the sombre tapestry of cobwebs which are undisturbed by the intrusive visitation of prim housemaids. There, amid antique volumes, caskets of thought more precious than gems, how delightful to commune with the bright spirit of dead authors, whose inspired pens have left behind them the glorious ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... treasure. One day Harriet called at the little house. It was in summer and the door stood open; she presumed on the privilege of friendship and walked straight in. There she saw, sitting at the table, her head on her arm in a curious girlish abandon unlike the prim Miss Aiken we knew so well, our Old Maid. When she heard Harriet's step she started up with breath quickly indrawn. There were tears in her eyes. Something in her hand she concealed in the folds of her skirt then ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... the commissions which he received after he set up at Amsterdam, and are therefore less interesting as self-revelations. Prosperity is not always the best condition under which to produce the highest work, and the temperament of Rembrandt was so peculiar that there is little wonder that the prim Dutchmen were not entirely captivated by his exuberant sensuality, or that we ourselves reserve our admiration principally for the more sombre and mysterious products of his later years after misfortune began to fall ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... part of the world. I was one who could never be still, nor settle down to a quiet existence. After I came to own my own ship there is hardly a port from Archangel to Australia which I have not entered. I was rough and wild and free, but there was one at home, sir, who was prim and white-handed and soft-tongued, skilful in little fancies and conceits which women love. This youth by his wiles and tricks stole from me the love of the girl whom I had ever marked as my own, and who up to that time had seemed in some sort inclined to return my passion. I ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... caught his eyes as he entered the drawing-room before dinner was Argemone listening in absorbed reverence to her favourite vicar,—a stern, prim, close-shaven, dyspeptic man, with a meek, cold smile, which might have become a cruel one. He watched and watched in vain, hoping to catch her eye; but no—there she stood, and ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... so doggone good himself that he has to pry into other people's business and get them in wrong. It beats me how he ever got to be a captain—a prim old ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... also, though it was a small matter—a common little word of three letters. In all the messages sent him by the schoolma'am, it was the precise, school-grammar wording of them which had irritated him most and impressed him insensibly with the belief that she was too prim to be quite human. The Happy Family had felt all along that they were artists in that line, and they knew that the precise sentences ever carried conviction of their truth. Weary mopped his perspiring face upon a white silk handkerchief and ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... went, And while he slept, surpris'd the darling rent: Where yawn'd the frieze is now become a doubt; And glory, at one entrance, quite shut out.(12) He scorns Florello, and Florello him; This hates the filthy creature; that, the prim: Thus, in each other, both these fools despise Their own dear selves, with undiscerning eyes; Their methods various, but alike their aim; The sloven and the fopling are the same. Ye whigs and tories! thus it fares with you, When party rage too warmly ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... cursed shame that, when you feel a continual propensity to quarrel with a man, he should be such a prince Prim as never to give you an opportunity? And why have I this propensity?—I know not!—Confound the fellow, why does he make himself so great a favourite? Why does he not contrive to be hated a little? And then perhaps I might be induced to love him. I dislike to have friendship or affection ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... before Louise he scarcely recognized her in the prim, comely change of apparel. The atmosphere of the Yellow Mine had vanished. She had managed to eat some breakfast. Blinky discreetly found a task that took ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... is that of the present biographer, century, reader? And as for your objection that Mr. Warrington, in the above communication to his mother, showed some little hypocrisy and reticence in his dealings with that venerable person, I dare say, young folks, you in your time have written more than one prim letter to your papas and mammas in which not quite all the transactions of your lives were narrated, or if narrated, were exhibited in the most favourable light for yourselves—I dare say, old folks! you, in your time, were not altogether more ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him the danger to which he's exposed from himself?" I asked. "Look out sharp, if he has lately been too prim. He'll presently take a day off, treat us to some exhibition that will make an ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... little Miss Prim hath become a belle. And I must have another clerk now to copy out my briefs, and a housekeeper soon, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... la Valliere," Saint-Aignan continued, "she was brought up under the care of the Dowager Madame, that is to say, in the greatest austerity and formality. This young engaged couple coldly exchanged their little vows in the prim presence of the moon and stars; and now, when they find they have to break those vows asunder, it plays the very deuce ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... article, over the little iron stove, the bed-lounge, the marble-topped centre table, the whatnot in the corner, the bound volumes of "Allen's Practical Dentist," the rifle manufacturer's calendar, and the prim, military chairs. A veritable scene took place between him and his wife before he could bring himself to part with the steel engraving of "Lorenzo de' Medici and His Court" and the stone pug dog with ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... cavalcade approaching. To her surprise they seemed to be returning from the ball, and she had just time to hide from them by bending her knees and holding out her arms and pretending to be a garden chair. There were six horsemen in front and six behind, in the middle walked a prim lady wearing a long train held up by two pages, and on the train, as if it were a couch, reclined a lovely girl, for in this way do aristocratic fairies travel about. She was dressed in golden rain, but the most enviable part of her was her neck, which was blue ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... is a pity if I may not have my own way, don't you think so? I have had it, at any rate; I don't say that it has always been a sensible way; I detest sensible things and people. I can't imagine how I have endured you so long. I should not, if you were not pretty and prim." ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... housekeeping, but the rare habit of doing all things with regularity, neatness, decorum, and quietness. The writer of the above letter has also described one of these Pennsylvania schools with its prim teachers and commendable mingling of the practical and the artistic. "The first was merely a sewing school, little children and a pretty single spinster about 30, her white skirt, white short tight waistcoat, nice ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... lady was very aristocratic, but somewhat prim and precise. Nevertheless, when the company had been telling of college pranks, she relaxed slightly, and told of a lark that had caused excitement in Cambridge when she was a girl there. This was to the effect that two maidens of social standing ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... man," Phoebe replied, with her prim New England manner, "if you want to marry me, you'll have to come and live in a country where they don't have queens, and you'll work in your shirt-sleeves like an honest man. You might just's well ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... aunt, prim, proper and worldly-wise, was as much Aunt Sally to Filmer as she was to her niece and nephew. Jock jollied the aristocratic lady as freely as he did Drew, toward whom he held the tolerant admiration that he had given him from the beginning. But poor Jock was not to have his own easy planning ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... of the day, the go-ahead lads of that time, had let down the flaps of their cocked hats into slouching, and we must say, most slovenly circular brims. There was a sort of free-and-easy look affected in that day about the head, totally at enmity with the prim rigidity of the cocked beaver; you might have taken off your chapeau rond, as it then came to be called, and you might have sat on it—it would have been never the worse; but not so with its stiff old father—no liberties were to be taken with him; once sit upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... behaviour, and such a laughing hoyden! Pastorella had with him the allowance of being blameless; but what was that towards being praiseworthy? To be only innocent is not to be virtuous! He afterwards spoke so much against Mrs. Dipple's forehead, Mrs. Prim's mouth, Mrs. Dentifrice's teeth, and Mrs. Fidget's cheeks that she grew downright in love with him; for it is always to be understood that a lady takes all you detract from the rest of her sex to be a gift to ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... ran the slim, straight causeway, which was the King's highway of the district—a trim, prim line of white above the picturesque disorder of the marshes. It skirted the low-lying fields at the foot of the uplands and slipped through an iron gate to end in the far distance at the gigantic portal of The Fort. This was a squat, ungainly pile of rugged gray stone, symmetrically ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... fact of lives it would be difficult. But in view of the experience of Adele, and of that fateful mystery overhanging her,—well, think for yourself,—you who touch upon a score of years, with their hopes,—you who have a passionate, clinging nature, and only some austere, prim matron to whom you may whisper your confidences,—what would you have thought, as you twirled your muff, and sauntered up the path to a home that was yours only by sufferance, and yet, thus far, your ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... doesn't it? But he isn't." And then more slowly, "Shad's all right. He's just a plain woodsman, but he doesn't know anything about making the trees grow," she put in with prim irony. "You'll be his boss, I guess. He won't care ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... him, Yet he most Christian-like laments his death: And for my selfe, Foe as he was to me, Might liquid teares, or heart-offending groanes, Or blood-consuming sighes recall his Life; I would be blinde with weeping, sicke with grones, Looke pale as Prim-rose with blood-drinking sighes, And all to haue the Noble Duke aliue. What know I how the world may deeme of me? For it is knowne we were but hollow Friends: It may be iudg'd I made the Duke away, So shall ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... nature. Then follows a section on Children, which explodes not a few educational fallacies, and propounds certain articles of faith and practice wholesome for these times, though it will probably wear a prim and quakerish aspect to the admirers of Jean Paul's famous tractate[10] on the same theme. The concluding paper in this series, entitled The Life Poetic, is the liveliest, if not the most valuable of the six: it has, however, been charged, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... had said about his family, and he on the last leg of the mountain. That he was his father's son puzzled him more than that he was his uncles' nephew, for there was little mention of his father in the house. At the dead man's name his prim Huguenot mother from Nantes pursed her mouth, and in her presence even his uncles were uncomfortable, those great, gallant men. All he knew was that his father, Colquitto Campbell, had been a great Gaelic poet, and that his father and mother ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... paved courtyard in front, where the rose-bushes grew and clambered up to the windows of the upper story. Behind lay a little country garden, with its box-edged borders, shut in by damp, gloomy-looking walls. The prim, gray-painted street door, with its wicket opening and bell attached, announced quite as plainly as the official scutcheon that "a notary ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... After a while she said in a prim little voice, which she adopted now and then when she wanted to ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... good, and when I take the children away for a change I don't forbid any innocent pleasures." My darling Father, I had to keep a tight hand on myself so as not to kiss him then and there. They were all so prim, with their eyes glued to their plates as if they had never eaten rum pudding before. It is true that Ferdinand winked at Marina, but of course she noticed nothing. They soon put away their first ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... you were much sought after," said Clelia, with a prim shyness not like her own stormy confession. Sabrina, with her white hair and her young face seemed somehow set apart from love and the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... to speak before your elder sister," said Miss Davis, who, though an excellent lady, was rather prim in her ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... particular variety (Pinus lancio, var. Calabra), known as the "Pino della Sila"—it is found over this whole country, and grows to a height of forty metres with a silvery-grey trunk, exhaling a delicious aromatic fragrance. In youth, especially where the soil is deep, it shoots up prim and demure as a Nuremberg toy; but in old age grows monstrous. High-perched upon some lonely granite boulder, with roots writhing over the bare stone like the arms of an octopus, it sits firm and unmoved, deriding the tempest and flinging fantastic limbs into the air—emblem of tenacity in ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... long windows, beyond which large greenish flies were buzzing around the branch of a mulberry tree in the alley, Gabriella was trying a purple hat on a prim-looking lady who regarded herself in the mirror with a furtive and deprecating air as if she were afraid of being unjustly blamed for her appearance. "I'm not sure—but I don't think it suits me exactly," she appeared ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... repelling effect on the eye, and the depressing influence on the mind, of an English country town in the first stage of its existence, and in the transition state of its prosperity? I asked myself that question as I passed through the clean desolation, the neat ugliness, the prim torpor of the streets of Welmingham. And the tradesmen who stared after me from their lonely shops—the trees that drooped helpless in their arid exile of unfinished crescents and squares—the dead house-carcasses that waited in vain ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... it has no effect on the skin—no, I really dare not." As she said this she looked as prim as a vestal. "It is the first time, do you know, that I ever used this liquid white, ah! ah! ah! What a baby I am! I ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... changed; the small, tall, thin, narrow-chested, stooping figure—the same long, fair, freckled, sharp set face—the same prim cap, and clean, scant, faded gown, or one of the same sort—made up her personal individuality. Miss Nancy now had charge of the village post-office; and her early and accurate information respecting all neighborhood ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... venisse insistere saxo, Quarum prim abeunte superstitit inde secunda: Illa autem fugiens jam vix vestigia liquit, Et saxum m[oe]rens ...
— Chenodia - The Classic Mother Goose • Jacob Bigelow
... momentarily. Standing at the gate, an astonishing figure, still in her evening frock, looking haggard and old in the gray, disillusioning light of early morning, was Lydia Sessions. Upstairs, her white bed was smooth; its pillows spread fair and prim, unpressed by any head, since the maid had settled them trimly in place the morning before; but the long rug which ran from her dressing table to the window might have told a tale of pacing feet that passed ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... The prim little lady, who had been standing beside Mrs. Ford, appeared not to hear the gentleman's question, but turned with an air of anxiety to ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... so short a date, While villains ripen grey with time? Must thou, the noble, gen'rous, great, Fall in bold manhood's hardy prim Why did I live to see that day— A day to me so full of woe? O! had I met the mortal shaft ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... great procession came up the street, With a wagon of virgins, sour and sweet; Each bearing the bloom of recent date, Each misrepresenting a single State. There was California, pious and prim, And Louisiana, humming a hymn; The Texas lass was the smallest one— Rhode Island weighed the tenth of a ton; The Empire State was pure as a pearl, And Massachusetts a modest girl; Vermont was red as the blush of a rose— And the goddess sported a turn-up nose; And looked, free sylph, where ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... hands and cheeks fall Lucie's blessed tears. The story is filled with lights and shadows, with the tragic and grotesque. While the woman knits, while the heads fall, Jerry Cruncher gnaws his rusty nails and his poor wife "flops" against his business, and prim Miss Pross, who in the desperation and terror of love held Mme. Defarge in her arms and who in the flash and crash found that her burden was dead, is drawn by the hand of a master. And what shall I say of ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... imagine. Our place is about a mile from the city, so the dirt will not annoy you; and you will meet such pleasant people there that you will not mind the smoke. I am sure, Mary, you will come away quite in love with Limeton, and prefer it to this prim old place.' ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... see that plumber's shop next to the corner saloon?" I pointed to the Avenue whose ceaseless stream of humanity flows past Our Square without ever sweeping us into its current. "That was once a tea-shop. It was started by a dear little, prim little old maiden lady. The saloon was run by Tough Bill Manigan. The little old lady had a dainty sign painted and hung it up outside her place, 'The Teacup.' Tough Bill took a board and painted a sign and hung it up outside his place; 'The Hiccup.' The dear little, prim little old maiden ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... she had borne the seal of meekness. But there was a distinction about her that neither grief nor poverty could destroy. She was so unmistakably the gentle-woman. In the simple, but dainty white cap, with its floating strings, which modestly covered her dark waving hair, the plain black dress and prim collar fastened with its mourning pin, she made a reposeful picture of the old-fashioned conception ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... looked round, and her eyes fell upon the last of the photograph-albums—the one she had yawned over. She picked it up, propped it on her knees, and, lying back against the cushions, turned the pages over. These were all children, prim children with tidy hair and solemn faces. Mollie stopped at the picture of a girl dressed in a wide-skirted, sprigged-muslin frock. Her hair fell in plump curls from beneath a broad-brimmed hat with long ribbons floating over one shoulder. Her legs were very conspicuous ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... conveyed him from the station to the house, a "S'long, Uncle!" pregnant with the friendliness of a conversational ride. He had scraped away his snow-heels with a somewhat sustained noise, born perhaps of shyness, and now, as he stood in the center of the prim, old-fashioned room, a thin, eager youngster not too warmly clad for the bite of the New England wind, Abner Sawyer felt with a sense of shock that this city urchin whom Judith had promised to "Christmas," detracted, in some ridiculous manner, from the respectability of the room. ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... Pasa sat by the window in the room next to the one where they drank, and strummed dreamily upon her guitar. And then, by twos and threes, would come visiting young caballeros and occupy the prim line of chairs set against the wall of this room. They were there to besiege the heart of "La Santita." Their method (which is not proof against intelligent competition) consisted of expanding the chest, ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... volume called Woman, and had easily found out this fact: that the wildest and most careless young girls are often far more delicate, feminine, and innocent than those whose eyes are always demurely cast down, and whose lips are drawn habitually into a prudish and prim reserve. Do you understand my ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... that haven for gents only. There were other landladies—landladies fat and German; landladies lean and Irish; landladies loquacious (regardless of nationality); landladies reserved; landladies husbandless, wedded, widowed, divorced, and willing; landladies slatternly; landladies prim; and all hinting of past estates wherein there had been ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... had been fitted up as a kind of chapel, with ecclesiastical candles and other properties on a table at the farther end, with portraits of Mazzini, Gambetta, Prim, and other worthies of the Red Kidney on the walls, and with orderly pews on either side of the central aisle. In this cellar temple a preacher was just winding up a fervid discourse on the comparative merits of melinite ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... was now nearly north, leaving behind us the island of Prim as well as Aden, the former being also a British stronghold at the mouth of this inland sea, close to the Arabian coast, and less than ten miles from the African shore, which facts will show the reader how narrow is the southern entrance ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... that Canaan was coextensive with the World,—the descendants of Abraham with the posterity of Noah! This amiable writer is inexcusable for excluding from the corporate entity of the Human Race the four great Empires of the world, (to say nothing of primval Egypt and mysterious India;) and for the sake of elaborating a worthless allegory, identifying the least of all people with the Colossal Man, who, (according to his own account of the matter,) represents the aggregate ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... in the other stockings. Some of them Julia had no use for, such as silk for dresses, China crape shawls and fans, but they were just the things for his Grandmothers, who, after this, sat beside the fireplace, very prim and fine, in stiff silk gowns, with China crape shawls over their shoulders, and Chinese fans in their hands, and queer shoes on their feet. Julia liked their presents just as well as he did his own, and probably the ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... humor to see the little eccentricities of the people among whom she lived and a sympathetic understanding of their heroic qualities, she has created real men and women,—farmers, school teachers, prim spinsters, clergymen, stern Roman matrons,—all unmistakable types of New England village life. Her unfailing ability to transplant the reader into rock-ribbed, snow-clad New England, with its many fond associations for most ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... is complete without one? It gives a spicy flavor to the story. People of propriety like it. Prim ladies of an uncertain age always 'dote' on the gallant, gay Lothario, and wish that he wasn't ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich |
