"Untidy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Muses, as the poets of the period used to say, the king found M. Fouquet waiting for an audience. M. Colbert had laid in wait for his majesty in the corridor, and followed him like a jealous and watchful shadow; M. Colbert, with his square head, his vulgar and untidy, though rich, costume, somewhat resembled a Flemish gentleman after he had been overindulging in his national drink—beer. Fouquet, at the sight of his enemy, remained perfectly unmoved, and during the whole of the scene which followed scrupulously ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... was a man and his wife who had two children, a boy and a girl. The wife died, and the man married again. His new wife had an only daughter, who was both ugly and untidy, whereas her stepdaughter was a beautiful girl, and was known as Maiden Bright-eye. Her stepmother was very cruel to her on this account; she had always to do the hardest work, and got very little to eat, and no attention ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... of the Leatherskins had assembled. There were four of them, for little rosy Cousin John from next door always came in for an Indian game. They had all Indian dresses with high feathers and wooden clubs or tomahawks. Daddy was in his usual untidy tweeds, but carried a rifle. He was very serious when he entered the room, for one should be very serious in a real good Indian game. Then he raised his rifle slowly over his head in greeting and the four childish voices rang out in the war-cry. It was a prolonged wolfish howl which Dimples ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Lebedeff. Lebedeff came rather early—before ten—but he was tipsy already. Though the prince was not in an observant condition, yet he could not avoid seeing that for at least three days—ever since General Ivolgin had left the house Lebedeff had been behaving very badly. He looked untidy and dirty at all times of the day, and it was said that he had begun to rage about in his own house, and that his temper was very bad. As soon as he arrived this morning, he began to hold forth, beating his breast and apparently ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... dishevelled and untidy man I ever laid my eyes on. His hair and beard were not only long, but tangled and unkempt, and grew so far toward each other as barely to expose a strip of dirty brown skin. His shoulders were bowed and enormous. His arms hung like a gorilla's, palms turned ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... bottle, already getting empty. Abyedok lay on his belly and coughed, shaking all over his small body. The rest of the dark, silent figures sat and lay around in all sorts of positions, and their tatters made them look like untidy animals, created by some strange, uncouth deity to make a ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... off her boy Philip for Susan, who was never so untidy that she could not come at once when sent for. She had been very busy, but orderly people can be busy and neat at the same time. Putting on her usual straw hat, she set out for the Abbey. On the way she overtook Rose's mother, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... furnishing. Before me stretches as far as it can about a quarter of an acre of degraded uneven ground, enclosed in a dilapidated whitewashed wooden paling, and clothed, except in several mangy bare patches, with rank weedy grass, untended unwholesome shrubs, and untidy neglected trees.... Behind me is a whitewashed room about fifteen feet by twelve, containing a rickety, black horse-hair sofa, all worn and torn into prickly ridges; six rheumatic wooden chairs; a lame table covered with a plaid shawl of my own, being otherwise without cloth to hide its ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... uniforms. For the real idea of the cap and gown is to encourage discipline, order, and neatness. We fancy that it is the mission of woman in this generation to show the world that the tendency of woman to an intellectual life is not, as it used to be said it was, to untidy habits. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... white caps, with an immense round straw-hat flapping behind their heads like a nimbus: they are called Sisters of the Stigmata, and have a convent and school at San Massimo, a little way inland, with an untidy garden full of lavender and cherry-trees. Your protegee has already half set the convent, the village, the Episcopal See, the Order of St. Francis, by the ears. First, because nobody could make out whether or not she had been christened. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... down. The doctor's remedy was apparently successful this time, for with crimson cheeks and parted lips, Miss Blanche De Courcy had forgotten her headache in a very profound slumber. Druse gazed at her with mingled admiration and pity. No wonder the room seemed a little untidy. She would have liked to put it to rights, but fearing she might waken her new friend, who was now breathing very heavily, she only pulled the shade down, and with a last compassionate glance at the victim of a brother's intemperance, she picked up her crocheting ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... over, and they would never have found us till spring and that would be very sad. But we saw a light and made for it and it was Peg Bowen's. Some people think she is a witch and it's hard to tell, but she was real hospitable and took us all in. Her house was very untidy but it was warm. She has a skull. I mean a loose skull, not her own. She lets on it tells her things, but Uncle Alec says it couldn't because it was only an Indian skull that old Dr. Beecham had and Peg stole it when he ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hate laurels; for they are always untidy, and scattering about their yellow leaves when all the trees about them are in ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... pewee, phoebe, crested flycatcher, and kingbird. The first two prefer the woods, the phoebe generally selects a mossy rock or a bridge beam, the fourth nests in a hollow tree and often decorates its home with a snake-skin. The kingbird builds an untidy nest in an apple tree. Our American crow is, of course, a member of this little community of birds, and that in spite of persecution, for in the spring one or two are apt to contract a taste for young ducklings and hence have ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... tempestuous good-byes, but their silence was like the silence of the open grave. There were many sad-faced women, wheeling go-carts, with children holding to their skirts crying loudly for "Daddy." There were tired, untidy women, overrun by circumstances, with that look about them which the Scotch call "through-other." There were many brave little boys and girls standing by their mothers, trying hard not to cry; there were many babies held up to the car-window ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... wonder you can't find your things in such an untidy desk!" remarked Miss White. "You must stay after four o'clock and put your books in order. Be quick, girls! Ada is waiting. Are you ready? Then take your ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... It will have been inferred that he was objectionable. For the fact, he was objectionable in every way: as a human being, a man, a citizen, a member of the Slocum County bar, and a veteran of our late civil conflict. He was shiftless, untidy, a borrower, a pompous braggart, a trouble-maker, forever driving some poor devil into senseless litigation. Moreover, he was blithely unscrupulous in his dealings with the Court, his clients, his brother-attorneys, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... ashes from the table, "how can you be so untidy when you are so good-looking dressed up? I really believe you're getting fat. And there," she added, critically touching a place on the top of his head, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that my notable sister holds in especial abhorrence,—untidy housekeeping, sentimental demonstrations between married people, and crying babies; and here they all were in an avalanche, overwhelming, not only herself, but a most prepossessing young man, who, for all I knew, was ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... rumple. Adj. disorderly, orderless; out of order, out of place, out of gear; irregular, desultory; anomalous &c. (unconformable) 83; acephalous[obs3], deranged; aimless; disorganized; straggling; unmethodical, immethodical[obs3]; unsymmetric[obs3], unsystematic; untidy, slovenly; dislocated; out of sorts; promiscuous, indiscriminate; chaotic, anarchical; unarranged &c. (see arrange &c. 60)[obs3]; confused; deranged &c. 61; topsy-turvy &c. (inverted) 218; shapeless &c. 241; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... apparently nearly fifty years of age. His face and form were terribly shrunken, and his untrimmed hair and beard and generally untidy appearance made him ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... grandmother. She had never confessed such a horror to herself, but one does not love another human being whose main aim toward one is to compress, to stiffen, to make move in a step with itself. Annie folded up the untidy embroidery. As she did so, she dropped her needle and also her thimble. The needle lay glittering beside her chair, the thimble rolled noiselessly over the trailing fold of her muslin gown into the folds of Margaret's white silk. Margaret ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "fleishen" sheets, "canvas" sheets, "noggan" sheets, "towsheets," and "nimming" sheets (mentioned by Lechford in his note-book in 1640) were all of linen. Flannel sheets also were made, and may appear in inventories under the name of rugs, and thus partially explain the untidy absence, even among the possessions of wealthy citizens, of sheets. "Straken" sheets were of kersey. After spinning became fashionable, and flax was raised in more abundance, homespun sheets were made in large quantities, and owned by all respectable householders. "Twenty and one pair" ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... in the room as though it were an enemy. It didn't look finished. It didn't even look safe. But she trusted James, although she felt at that moment that she would grow old and die before she understood why and how any collection of apparatus could be functional and still be so untidy. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... was now beginning to be amused as well as surprised by his reception in Kirk Street. "Rather untidy, perhaps, as you say, Zack; but new, and not disagreeable I suppose when you're used to it. What I like about all this," continued Mr. Blyth, rubbing his hands cheerfully, and kicking into view another empty bottle, as he settled himself in his chair—"What I like ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Marjorie, dancing about in excitement, "sit in a row, children. Why, Ed, your hands are a sight! Go at once, and wash them, my boy, and never appear before me again with such an untidy appearance!" ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... drawer, and took out a bundle of folded scripts tied with a dingy blue tape. Martinson was a matter-of-fact man; he really did not understand just how much Luck's new story meant to its author. If he had, he surely would not have been quite so brisk and so frankly elated over that untidy ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... they were exchanging loud protests: 'He is mine, and I mean to keep him;' 'Not yours at all, and it is no use your saying he is.' One of them seemed to be a working woman, masculine looking, with untidy hair, horny hands, and dress kilted up; she was all powdered with plaster, like my uncle when he was chipping marble. The other had a beautiful face, a comely figure, and neat attire. At last they invited me to decide ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... not uncomfortable, but very untidy. There are no ricks, everything is stored in large barns, where it is safe from weather, but ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... No untidy church, home, or school expresses Christ—for Christ represents perfection in cleanliness and order. "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" we are told. Cleanliness shows the spiritual, the God, but dirt in any form is an expression ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... do anything of the kind, 'said Ida coolly. 'I know the state of my desk quite as well as she does. I daresay it's untidy. I haven't had time to ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... seen than she wished to see. He came nearer and nearer, and she was yet at the window, her heart beating audibly. Could her eyes deceive her, or was it indeed so? His form was erect and his step firm, and, though his clothes were the same, they did not look so untidy. ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... over the orderly closets and making solemn researches into the suspected shelters of moths. Much talk of the past was suggested by the folding of blankets; and as they set back the chairs, and brushed the floors that were made untidy by the funeral guests of the day before, they wondered afresh what would become of Israel Haydon, and what plan he would make for himself; for Mrs. Martin could only stay with him for a few days, and Mrs. Stevens was obliged to return as soon as possible to her busy household and an invalid ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... on the wainscoting in the untidy kitchen. She could hear the faint scurrying of water beetles over the oilcloth-covered floor, and then silence. She fancied myriads of tiny, watchful eyes on her, and something crunched under her foot. She felt like screaming. That ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... The size of these inland seas strike one much. We arrived at Niagara about four, and found Mr. Plumb, John's quondam friend of eighteen years ago, waiting for us in waggonette, and we drove at once to his pretty house, surrounded by peach orchards and vines, an untidy but pretty garden. He asked after Leonard and Mary. Then we had tea, presided over by his pretty daughter of sixteen, and then the train by his orders stopped for us at his garden door, and, as he informed ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... almost hidden between immense, concealing walls of rock; but to-day he merely paid his respects to the saint and quickly went his way again. Twenty minutes after parting from Lady Dauntrey, he rang the bell of her villa, and was told by an untidy servant that Miss Grant was ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... subject that it should be unnecessary to touch upon, but, unfortunately, too many bright, pretty, carefully-dressed girls degenerate into careless, fretful, untidy and illy-clad young wives, whose presence is anything but a joy forever to the individuals who must face them across the family board for three hundred and sixty-five days in every year. And it is this careless young woman who is first to complain that "John ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... of ornamentation nothing can be more untidy or more unprepossessing than the appearance of the Oraon. The ornaments are nearly all discarded, hair utterly neglected, and for raiment any rags are used. This applies both to males and females ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... door quietly and shut it after them. There was no garden; the neighborhood of Mr. Piperson's was all scratched up by fowls. They slipped away hand in hand across an untidy field to the road. "Tom, Tom the piper's son, stole a pig and away he ran! "But all the tune that he could play, was 'Over the ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... If you can go up and down London and see nothing but architecture, you'll never be an A1 architect." He spoke in a low, kindly, and reasonable tone. "I like London on Sunday mornings. In fact it's marvellous. You say it's untidy and all that ... slatternly, and so on. Well, so it ought to be when it gets up late. Jolly bad sign if it wasn't. And that's part of it! Why, dash it, look at a bedroom when you trail about, getting up! Look how you leave it! The existence of a big city while it's waking up—lethargy ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... still speaking, cutting her words off in the middle, and a man came into the room. He was dark and clean-shaven, sallow rather, with the eyes of imagination, and dark hair growing scantily about the temples. He was dressed in a shabby tweed suit, and wore an untidy flannel collar at the neck. The dominant expression of his face was startled—hunted; an expression that might any moment leap into the dreadful stare of terror and announce a total ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... untidy nest, consisting of a few bits of twigs placed one on the other without much care. There is a fable in the Iolo MSS., p. 159, in Welsh, and the translation appears on page 567 in English, ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... foliage when it is first opened out to the sun, it soon gets torn to shreds by the lightest breeze. The tattered leaves then dry up and the whole of the tree presents the most beggarly aspect imaginable. The stem is as ragged and untidy as the leaves. ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... her room with the sad, scared expression that rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly face yet plainer. She sat down at her writing table, on which stood miniature portraits and which was littered with books and papers. The princess was as untidy as her father was tidy. She put down the geometry book and eagerly broke the seal of her letter. It was from her most intimate friend from childhood; that same Julie Karagina who had been at the Rostovs' ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... first have attracted her for its own sake, and then repelled her for James's; for she would assuredly have read in it what she would have counted dangerous for him; but seeing her poorly dressed, and looking untidy, which at the moment she could not help, the mother took her for an ordinary maid-of-all-work, and never for a moment doubted that her son must see her just as she did. He was her only son; her heart was full of ambition for him; and she brooded on the honour he was destined ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... eye from the dainty boot which rested on the lowest step to the small gloved hand on the railing, to the small black hat with its blue wings airily poised, I found myself making comparisons between this daintiness and the untidy loveliness of Gladys Todd. I was almost angry with Gladys Todd because she did not dress with such simplicity, not knowing that all her wardrobe cost hardly as much as this unobtrusive gown, this masterpiece ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... asked Renee threatening Denoisel playfully with a pair of scissors. "Now if you move! Denoisel's head always looks untidy—his hair is badly cut—he always has a great, ugly lock that falls over his forehead. It makes people squint when they look at him. I want to cut that lock. There—he's afraid. Why, I cut hair very well—you ask papa," and forthwith she gave two or three clips with her scissors, and ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... to say about the valley of Trinidad. The cottagers who supply the town of Porto Praya with fruits and vegetables are extremely poor, and very uncleanly and untidy in their houses and habits. We had intended to spend the night with them, but the appearance of the accommodations determined us to return to our inn, in spite of the friendly and disinterested advice ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... turned from the window with a sigh of pity for the miserable creatures below. His glance strayed over the untidy kitchen which bore all the marks of the most extreme poverty and he gave another sigh of pity for the man who had been brought so low in the last days of his life, the man whom he had known in the time of his success ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... sailoring in an untidy school," he said—"tramp steamers, coasting schooners, collier brigs, and timber barques; and those aren't the sort of craft that rub neatness into a man. Our motto in the little drogher yonder is to keep ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... matter, my dear? You look a hundred," said Mrs. Belgrove, putting up her lorgnette with a chuckle, as if she had made an original observation. But she had not, for Lady Garvington always appeared worn and weary, and sallow, and untidy. She was the kind of absent-minded person who depended upon pins to hold her garments together, and who would put on her tiara ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... Hewlett's two girls with their hair fastened up in womanly guise, and their cousins becurled as before; but there was nothing particularly untidy, and Mary held ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scuttling Aranians, so close that their twitching legs fell in an untidy heap almost at my feet. "You go first, and protect our advance. Then the rest of you; Mr. Correy and I will bring ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... be more thoroughly and economically distributed, and they adhere to the foliage better. The best general fungicide is the bordeaux mixture. It is generally, however, not advisable to use the bordeaux mixture on ornamental plants, because it discolors the foliage and makes the plants look very untidy. In such cases it is best to use the ammoniacal copper solution, ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... flowering of bushes and shrubs. Follow the East Lyn up to Watersmeet, which is about two miles from Lynmouth through one of the most beautiful wooded gorges in England. Past the hotels you go, and a little straggle of small modern houses, past the untidy little patch which would be the suburb of a larger community, with upturned boats and washing drying in the sun, and within five minutes a turn of the road hides Lynmouth and the sea from your backward look, and you stand in the heart of ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... be cleaner or more tastefully decorated than the counting-house, and in such a business as the manufacture of cigarettes by hand litter of all sorts accumulates rapidly. The "Famous Cigarette Manufactory of Christian Fischelowitz from South Russia" is about as dingy, as unhealthy, as untidy, as dusty a place as can be found within the limits of tidy, well-to-do Munich. The room is lighted by a window and a half-glazed door, both opening upon a dark court. The walls, originally whitewashed, are of a deep rich brown, attributable partly to the ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... was a pretty, thrifty little woman, with a mass of rather untidy fair hair. She was still in the tea-gown which, apparently, she had been wearing all the day, whilst her foot-gear consisted of a pair of Japanese slippers; and yet the whole effect was charming, possibly because she ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... street we knew so well, and turned into narrow and untidy Henwood street. Shabby houses and shops were jumbled promiscuously together, and the pavement was full of holes. From the far end of it came the joyous tones of a hand-organ, vibrating on the early afternoon air. The eaves on the sunny side of the street ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... and luxury he was woefully disappointed, for he found himself in a large but bare room, with a little iron truckle-bed in one corner, a few scattered wooden chairs, a dingy carpet, and a large table heaped with books, bottles, papers, and all the other debris which collect around a busy and untidy man. Motioning his visitor into a chair, Raffles Haw pulled off his coat, and, turning up the sleeves of his coarse flannel shirt, he began to plunge and scrub in the warm water which flowed from a ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from the lower kitchen at the summons. She was young, rather pretty, and with a pleasant countenance, but unwashed, uncombed, untidy, no wonder Margery's nicety had shrunk from introducing her into her spotless upper kitchen. The unfailing Irish cloak was drawn about her, the hood brought over her head, and on the head and shoulders the snow lay ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... that there should not be. It happened some five years later and I was concerned in it from the moment that I was summoned unexpectedly to Mr. Lin Darton's office in the city, a dingy though not unprosperous menage located in the cheaper part of the down town district. I found him sitting amid an untidy litter of papers at the table, talking through the telephone to some one who later developed to be Miss Etta; and I had at once a feeling of suffocation and closeness, due not alone, I believe, to the barred windows and the steaming radiator. The family resemblance ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... door Jennings met Mrs. Pill herself, with her arms bare and a large coarse apron protecting her dress. She was dusty and untidy and cross. Nor did her temper grow better when she saw the detective, whom she recognized as having ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... the hut. She was not altogether untidy, but of course showed that she lived far from civilization. She bowed to the party, then called to the children in ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... from Accra, which runs parallel to the sea and is broad and well-kept, is in places pleasantly shaded with pepper trees, eucalyptus, and palms. The first part of it, which forms the main street of Accra, is remarkable. The untidy, poverty- stricken native houses or huts are no credit to their owners, and a constant source of anxiety to a conscientious sanitary inspector. Almost every one of them is a shop, but this does not give rise to the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Rollo stooped and rubbed the ball in the dirt until his father sharply reprimanded him, saying, "You untidy boy; that ball will not be fit to play with!" Then Rollo looked about him over the surrounding country as though admiring the pleasant view, and with the same startling abruptness as before, faced his father and shot the ball in so swiftly that Thanny ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... and dreamily scratching her ankle as she read; she was a tall, awkward girl, younger far at twenty-one than Cherry was at eighteen, pretty in a gipsyish way, untidy as to hair, with round black eyes, high, thin cheek-bones marked with scarlet, and a wide, humorous mouth that was somehow droll in its expression even when she was angry or serious. She was rarely angry; she was unexacting, good-humoured, preferring animals to people, and unconventional ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... restlessly about her. A quite little girl, aged, perhaps, eleven, dressed in blue serge, with a short frock and long legs, and a sailor hat (H.M.S. Formidable), and long hair down her back, and a mild, twinkling, trustful glance. Somewhat untidy, but ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... particulier was drawn aside, and two youths in evening-dress emerged, supporting between them the dishevelled singer, who was miserably drunk, and whose hat almost completely obscured his right eye. They were followed by three girls with untidy hair, whose flushed, rouged faces had been made grotesque by clumsy dabs ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... he drew the ramrod from his musket; then, rushing up to Terence, who was the nearest to him, administered to him a shower of blows that changed the color of his shirt from an untidy white to the darker hue ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... lean, scarecrow figure at whose heels (despite scuffling protests from the gendarme without) limped a black, untidy dog. The tramp bowed and began at once to speak in the slow correct French of a well-educated foreigner. He told of a dusty road along which he had toiled; of a coppice and its tempting shade; of the drowsiness of afternoon; of dream voices ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... her husband, had taken to drinking, and had gradually removed herself still further from the pale of fashionable society. Her house (which was situated in a back street in Montreal) was not only untidy, but positively dirty, and her children ran about the streets unclad ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... streets, patches of gravely ground, parcels of meadow land, and large vacant spaces—which will all, no doubt, be covered with buildings in good time, for it is growing daily and hourly—but which at present give it an untidy, unfinished, straggling appearance. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... had disappeared, and in his place, small, freckled, and untidy, it is true, but a gentlemanly host welcoming his mother's ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... to see me now—or rather I wouldn't have you see me for the world. I am so flushed and untidy, for I have been cooking. Is it not absurd, if you come to think of it, that we girls should be taught the irregular French verbs, and the geography of China, and never to cook the simplest thing? It really does ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... busy, binding beds with sheets, making bundles, preparing for the flitting, with a heaving breast; till, on the fifth day, a van stood loaded with their things at the hall- door, and she, with untidy hair, was helping heave the last trunk upon the backboard, when the carman said: "Mrs. Mackenzie says, mum, the things mustn't be took to the cottage, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... clear water; Plumber looking as if his credulity had been gorged beyond endurance; Daubeny, with eyes immovably fixed in the determination to know his lessons that day; and lastly, Harpour, who had just time to scuffle in hot, breathless, and exceedingly untidy, as the chaplain began ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Her face bore marks of considerable dissipation and there was a broad scar underneath her right eye. Her hair was thin, straggling and tow-colored; her eyes large, deep-set and of a faded blue. The girl's dress was as queer and untidy as her personal appearance, for she wore a brown tailored coat, a short skirt and long, buttoned leggings. A round cap of the same material as her dress was set jauntily on the back of her head, and over her shoulder was slung a fiat satchel of worn leather. There was little that was feminine ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... were the results of the 'final rally' of the canvassers on both sides. They entered the room in rapid but irregular succession, as if they were jerked forward by a hurried and inefficient machine. About half of them were women with broken straw hats, pallid faces, and untidy hair. All were dazed and bewildered, having been snatched away in carriages or motors from the making of match-boxes, or button-holes, or cheap furniture, or from the public-house, or, since it was Saturday evening, from bed. Most ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... you are tidy here, but at home your temptation is to plaster some neatly folded garment or sash over the recesses of an untidy drawer, or to use anything that comes to hand, any racquet, or croquet-mallet, or oil-can, or thimble; your own cannot be found—you take the nearest and then leave that also ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... we had arrived at the library, where a bright fire was burning in the grate. It was a fine big room, with dark oak furnishings and books in cases along one wall, but this morning it had a dishevelled and untidy look. On a little table at one side of the fireplace were the remains of a breakfast; at the other a number of wraps were thrown carelessly upon a chair. As I came in Mrs. Starkweather rose from her place, drawing a silk scarf around her ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... him a glass of water. "I know how it tastes, but I reckon it'll do the work. Now, let's see." he stood back, surveying the untidy room, a mellow smile on his lips. "'T is kind o' cluttered up," he said. "I'll jest make a path through." He gathered up a handful of shoes and slippers and thrust them under the bed, drawing the spread ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... Snuggery belonged to the jail, was always in their mouths. They had precisely the same incapacity for settling down to anything, as the prisoners used to have; they rather deteriorated one another, as the prisoners used to do; and they wore untidy dresses, and fell into a slouching way of life: still, always like the people ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... the next day, then saw her almost daily. Little by little I took to calling at all times, and sleeping with her. The more I had her, the more I liked her. She was a very nice woman in most ways, I scarcely ever found her untidy, dirty, or slammerkin. If not dressed, she had a clean wrapper on, had nearly always silk stockings on, and a clean chemise; and therefore call when I might she was ready to be fucked at a minute's notice. She was a good cook, and would cook ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... thin girl he remembered—with her untidy chestnut hair and freckles, and a rather sweet mouth—dressed in garments the only mission of which was to cover a flat chest and frail body and limbs whose too rapid growth had ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Colonel Gray as untidy dress or shabby habiliments on a member of the guard detail. One morning in making his usual inspection, he came upon a soldier who was particularly slovenly. Ordering the man to step out of the ranks, the colonel surveyed him from head to foot, then, spurning him with his foot, remarked: "That ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... little soup—macche! You will never notice it, I tell you. And the poor thing has been living on charity. Just imagine whether you are not quite as able to feed him as Gigi is!" So she persuaded me. But at first I did it to please her, for I told her our proverb, which says there can be nothing so untidy about a house as children and chickens. He was such a dirty little boy, with only one shoe and a battered hat, and he was always singing at the top of his voice, and throwing things into ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... they are not snobs at all, and give of their bounty to all who call. The sensuous jasmine is there, and the cold puritanical ceneraria and old maids' pin cushions, with fragrance of sandalwood. The red-hot-poker grows stiff and straight, but the ragged sailor goes uncombed and untidy still. ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... if you think you have found it, Mr. Traverse. I will play anything you choose from that untidy mass," and there was an amused look in her eyes as she watched the search. He was not likely to find what he wanted amongst those ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... and General though he was, dining with the Empress herself almost every week, and going about the palace as he pleased, he dressed as plainly as any peasant, and slept on straw like a common soldier. Once or twice the palace servants, seeing this untidy little fellow coming up to the grand entrance, took him for a tramp, and wanted to drive him away; but they soon found out that that ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... paused. Emily flung herself back on the pillow. Not even a sob. The candle burned like a long yellow star in the shadows, yielding only sufficient light for Julia to see the outlines of a somewhat untidy room,—an old-fashioned mahogany wardrobe, cloudy and black, upon old-fashioned grey paper, some cardboard boxes, and a number of china ornaments, set out on a small table covered with a tablecloth ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... Islam. Until the time of Danilo (1697-1737) there had been fourteen bishops. During his reign the problem of Turkish penetration was taken in hand. It was intolerable that Montenegrin families should stand well with the Sultan because one of their members had gone over to Islam. The small, untidy village of Virpazar, by the Lake of Scutari, has got a certain fame, because the chosen men who were to purge the country of this evil started out from there on Christmas Eve in 1703. Those who participated in the "Montenegrin Vespers" ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... inspection. After a time he turned away and, passing behind the boxes, made his way into the wings. Bassett's curiosity was aroused, especially when, shortly after, Gregory reappeared, bringing with him a small man in an untidy suit who was probably, Bassett surmised, the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... however, for you to go in your present untidy condition," he remarked; "go and put on your best clothes, and by that time I shall be ready to ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... militaire, for it is, in truth, an article of military attire, worn for the express purpose of giving stiffness and smartness to the figure. If we want a scarf, do not let us misconceive the nature of its form, the law of its curves, and huddle it up into an untidy, unmeaning mass, fit for nothing but to serve as a field of display for what is commonly cheap and bad jewellery. We may be wrong, but we strongly suspect that the tie-stock and the large silk scarf were brought into use by some dirty fellow, whose linens would not stand the test ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... with the house-top as a matter of course, often dropping a stray eel, small snake, or frog, intended for his young, down the chimney into the fireless grate of his astonished hosts below. He knows that nobody would be cruel enough to meddle with that untidy bundle of sticks which houses his family circle. The devotion of these beautiful birds to the fluffy youngsters on the roof is an example to those beneath it. In Turkey the stork is greatly respected, and lately he has been better thought of than ever. A small village on the Gulf of ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... "yes," for she well knew that Mrs. Horne was a careful person, and when she promised anything it was always well done. "But brush your hair, Polly," she said, "it looks very untidy flying ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... have made me what I am. If I have drunk brandy, it was out of misery. I do not love it; but it benumbs the senses. When I was happy, it was only necessary to glance into my closets, and it would have been evident that I was not a coquettish and untidy woman. I had linen, a great deal of linen. Have pity on me, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in the boat," said Miss Lentaigne, "you will be both dirty and untidy, certainly not fit to meet your cousin ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... steps, and I was in an untidy slum which might have been on another world from the neat bright Trade City which lay west of the spaceport. The Kharsa was alive and reeking with the sounds and smells of human and half-human life. A naked child, diminutive and golden-furred, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... had the impression that he had seen him before. Then he recognized him as the gardener to whom he had given the note for Maud that day at the castle. The alteration in the man's costume was what had momentarily baffled George. When they had met in the rose-garden, the other had been arrayed in untidy gardening clothes. Now, presumably in his Sunday suit, it was amusing to observe how almost dapper he had become. Really, you might have passed him in the lane and taken ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the street with a hole in her stocking. She had a hole in her stocking not because her uncle and aunt were poor (they had around them never less than eight thousand oranges, mostly in cases) but because she was then careless and untidy and totally unconscious of her personal appearance. She told me herself that she was not even conscious then of her personal existence. She was a mere adjunct in the twilight life of her aunt, a Frenchwoman, ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... examine it microscopically. A certain silent frog-like boy, a private student who plays no further part in this story, was working intently, looking more like a frog than usual—his expression modest with a touch of effort. Behind Miss Heydinger, jaded and untidy in her early manner again, was a vacant seat, an abandoned microscope ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... indifferent about serving God; when we do anything slowly and poorly and in a way that shows we would rather not do it. They are slothful who lie in bed late in the morning and neglect their duty. Slothful people are often untidy in their personal appearance; and they are nearly always in misery and want, unless somebody else takes care of them. Sloth comes under the First Commandment, because it has reference in a special manner to the way in which we serve God. How, then, shall we ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... deed that looks (and, I am assured by equally innocent victims, is) positively deadly. The friend "frits and flutters" about in a distinctly casual, not to say polygamous, mood, but has one sacred place in his untidy heart in which the wife is enshrined. He can manage to sustain life so long as he may come to triangular tea on Thursdays. But the faithful husband puts ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... twilight, secretly one by one. She went to gardens and awaked from dreaming the warm maternal earth. In little patches bare and desolate she called up like a flame the golden crocus, or its purple brother like an emperor's ghost. She gladdened the graceless backs of untidy houses, here with a weed, there with a little grass. She said to ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... it was no easy matter to bring anything like order into the St. Clare household. The slaves had been left to themselves so long, and had grown so untidy, that they were not at all pleased with Miss Feely, as they called her, for trying to make them be tidy. However, she had quite made up her mind that order there must be. She got up at four o'clock in the morning, much to the surprise of the housemaids. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin, Young Folks' Edition • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... folk, who were rough, uncouth, and went to chapel. But Philip was more comfortable in the kitchen than in the dining-room, and, whenever he could, he took his toys and played there. His aunt was not sorry. She did not like disorder, and though she recognised that boys must be expected to be untidy she preferred that he should make a mess in the kitchen. If he fidgeted his uncle was apt to grow restless and say it was high time he went to school. Mrs. Carey thought Philip very young for this, and her heart went out to the motherless child; but her attempts to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... and sensible and faithful, and Thomasina was faithful and sensible and thrifty, and they each had a tendency to claim the monopoly of those virtues. Notable people complain, very properly, of thriftless and untidy ones, but they sometimes agree better with them than with rival notabilities. And so Thomasina's broad face beamed benevolently as she bid the cowherd "draw up" to the fire, and he who (like Thomasina) was a native of the country, would ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... bowing upon her threshold, clasping with both hands his soft felt hat to his breast, that Mrs. Sand was not displeased to see him. She hastened, indeed, to give him a chair; she said she was very glad he'd dropped in, if he didn't mind the room being so untidy—where there were children you could spend the whole day picking up. They were out at present, with Captain Sand, in the perambulator—not having more servants than they could help. A sweeper and a cook they did with; it would surprise the people ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... in every possible way, and made his life almost unbearable; that she would wake him out of his first sleep, never came to the door when he knocked, but would leave him out in the rain and the cold, and that the house was always untidy. His garments were buttonless, his laces wanted tags. The linen was spoiling, the wine turning sour, the wood damp, and the bed was always creaking at unreasonable moments. In short, everything was going wrong. To this tissue of falsehoods, the wife replied ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... an undertone, I tell you that my little Jennie, as she is zealously and systematically arranging the fire, and trimly whisking every untidy particle of ashes from the hearth, shows in every movement of her little hands, in the cock of her head, in the knowing, observing glance of her eye, and in all her energetic movements, that her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... had been engaged for a very long period, and that the engagement was a quite ordinary affair. She was relieved; yet she was also grievously saddened. She lowered the gas, and in the gloom gazed for a few seconds at the vague, huddled, sheeted, faintly moaning figure on the bed; the untidy grey hair against the pillow struck ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... his pocket a small parcel wrapped in dirty tissue paper, and put it on the table. The untidy folds fell apart, exposing the missing necklace, but the diamond was missing ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Powhatan Plummer, who hadn't smelt powder for more than half a century, chuckled as he always did at the shrewd and friendly pleasantries of the Judge. He was a jocular, tiresome, gregarious soul, habitually untidy, creased and rumpled, who was always thirsty, but who, as the Judge was accustomed to reply when Corinna remonstrated, "would divide his last julep with a friend." The men had been companions from boyhood, and were still inseparable. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... the most damnable crimes and hoggish meannesses, special and general, of the feudal and dynastic world over there, with its personnel of lords and queens and courts, so well-dress'd and so handsome. But the People are ungrammatical, untidy, and their ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... little town all his life—he died before he was twenty-five. The last time I saw him, when I was home on one of my college vacations, he was sitting in a steamer chair under a cottonwood tree in the little yard behind one of the two Sandtown saloons. He was very untidy and his hand was not steady, but when he rose, unabashed, to greet me, his eyes were as clear and warm as ever. When I had talked with him for an hour and heard him laugh again, I wondered how it was that when Nature had taken such pains with a man, from his hands to the arch of ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... gone many yards from the workhouse gates before we were confronted by something like chaos. In front and on either side of us were large spaces of waste land. At some more or less remote period attempts appeared to have been made at brick- making,—there were untidy stacks of bilious-looking bricks in evidence. Here and there enormous weather-stained boards announced that 'This Desirable Land was to be Let for Building Purposes.' The road itself was unfinished. There was no pavement, and we ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... Samuel, and from that bower of warm beer and sardine tins trudged through the sun up one side of Banana and down the other. In between the two paths were the bungalows and gardens of forty white men and two white women. Many of the gardens, as was most of Banana, were neglected, untidy, littered with condensed-milk tins. Others, more carefully tended, were laid out in rigid lines. With all tropical nature to draw upon, nothing had been imagined. The most ambitious efforts were designs in whitewashed shells and protruding beer bottles. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... was not even a table in it; and only a railroad time-table and advertisements of land sales hung on its rough pine walls. Jernyngham, however, looked in keeping with his surroundings. The dirty bandage still covered his forehead, his clothes were stained and untidy, and he had an unkempt, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... of children; salary, $30." "A saleslady wants position." "A lady (good scrubber) will go out by the day; $2." When you meet these "ladies," in nine cases out of ten they are Irish from the peasant class—untidy, insolent, often dissipated in the sense of drink. When they apply for a position they put the employer through a course of questions. Some want references from the last girl, I am told. Some want one thing, some another, and ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... Word and his own soul in the face, and determined to act on that which he had found. And therefore it is that to open his works at any stray page, after these effeminate Carolists, is like falling asleep in a stifling city drawing-room, amid Rococo French furniture, not without untidy traces of last night's ball, and awaking in an Alpine valley, amid the scent of sweet cyclamens and pine boughs, to the music of trickling rivulets and shouting hunters, beneath the dark cathedral aisles of mighty trees, and here and there, above them and beyond, the spotless peaks of ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... listening, and nervously arranging the long curls that would fall uncurled and untidy, felt a renewal of her old girlish enthusiasm for all true things; her eyes brightened, and her heart warmed towards "Harrie." She would have liked to stay talking longer, but for a vision of Mr. Harper ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... fiction, intended to hide the truth and enhance the value of the new Coan material. But it is now ascertained that some of the wild silk in China is carried by the silkworm round the trees, wrapping them up, as it were, in large, untidy cocoons; so that, as usual, tradition ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... the man, evidently considering how to prepare George for the worst, 'we didn't get the call till the house was well alight, and there was three steamers and a manual a-playing on it, so—well, you must expect things to be a bit untidy-like inside. But the walls and the roof ain't ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... classic laws of architecture; but her proximates, in her phenomena as we immediately experience them, Nature is everywhere gothic, not classic. She forms a real jungle, where all things are provisional, half-fitted to each other, and untidy. When we add such a complex kind of subliminal region as Myers believed in to the official region, we restore the analogy; and, though we may be mistaken in much detail, in a general way, at least, we become plausible. In comparison ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... personage. He was a tall, heavy, dark young man, with immense sloping shoulders, a black moustache, and incandescent eyes, which he used as though he were somewhat suspicious of the world in general. If his dress had been less untidy, he would have made a perfect villain of melodrama. He smiled the unsure smile of a villain as he awkwardly advanced, with out-stretched hand, ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... minister and professor, of eccentric habits and untidy appearance, published, in 1759, "A Dream: in the Manner of Spenser," which may be mentioned here not for its own sake, but for the evidence that it affords of a growing impatience of classical restraints. The piece was a pendant to Wilkie's epic, the "Epigoniad." Walking by the Tweed, the poet falls ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... you weren't cold in that open car," Lewis Elliot said as he helped Pamela and Jean to remove their wraps. "D'you mind coming into my den? It's warm, if untidy. The drawing-room is so little used that it's about ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... Dulcibella's. Pennie often felt sorry that there was no fluffiness at all about her hair, or that of her brothers and sisters; their heads all looked so neat and tight, and indeed they could not do otherwise under Nurse's vigorous treatment, for she went on the principle that anything rough was untidy. Even Dickie's hair, which wanted to curl, was sternly checked, and kept closely cropped like a boy's; it was only Cicely's that was allowed at present to do as it liked and wave about in soft ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... them for? I should be overrun with pigeons but for putting them in pies; they make the garden very untidy as it is. I have given up keeping ducks, but I have a tame gull for the slugs. Who is this at the gate? Oh! Miss Wort with her inexhaustible physic-bottle. Everybody seems to have heard that you ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... Hazel, in the untidy room at the Callow, fed her pets and had supper in a dream of coming peace for them all. She would not have been peaceful if she had seen the meeting of the two men in the dusk, both wanting her with a passion equal in suddenness and force, but different in quality. She wanted ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... best: double-carnations are so untidy, all bursting out of the calyx as if the petals had quarrelled and could ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... would only marry me!" sighed Colonel A Pepper, as he stacked the few dishes on the cupboard shelf and surveyed his untidy little ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... had "left two days ago," said the untidy girl, whose aspect, like that of the street and house, betokened that Janet was drinking of her ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it must be. What a good memory you have! Would you care to see over the house before lunch? It's rather a charming old place, don't you think so? But of course it's terribly untidy now. I haven't started my house-parties yet, and everything's generally more or less upside down till my husband and I begin to come down regularly. Perhaps you'd prefer to wait ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... has started the stone, and no one resets it; Where the timbers are rotting away, and the house is awaiting Vainly its new supports,—that place we may know is ill governed. Since if not from above work order and cleanliness downward, Easily grows the citizen used to untidy postponement; Just as the beggar grows likewise used to his ragged apparel. Therefore I wished that our Hermann might early set out on some travels; That he at least might behold the cities of Strasburg and Frankfort, Friendly Mannheim, too, that is cheerful and evenly builded. He that has ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... fat man, a soft hat pushed to the back of his head, a bag in one hand. His face was weak and good-tempered, his eyes had once been fine but now they were dim and blurred; there were dimples in his fat cheeks; he wore on his upper lip a ragged and untidy moustache and he had two indeterminate chins. His expression was mild, kindly, now a little ashamed, now greatly indignant. It was a pity, as he often said, that he had not more control over his feelings. Maggie saw at once that he was, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... always jolly, and you never complained. You always spent a lot of money, but it was a pleasure to see you spend it; and then you never offended me. Most women offend men by coming around looking untidy and sort of unkempt, but somehow you always knew the value of your beauty, and you always dressed up. I always thought that maybe some day the fellow would come along, grab you, and make you happy in a nice way, but I thought that he'd have to ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... down if you try to do both outdoor and indoor work. Busy times will soon come, and you won't get your meals regularly; you'll be living on coffee and anything that comes handiest; your house will grow untidy and not fit to live in. If you should be taken sick, there'd be no one to do for you. Lumbermen, hunters, and such fellows can rough it alone awhile, but I never heard of a farm being run by man-power alone. Now as to selling out your stock, look at it. Grazing is what your farm's good for ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... voice touched here and there with whimsical tones. When he was absent, Mariana often thought how much she liked his voice; but whenever she saw him she consumed her friendly interest in wishing he wouldn't wear a beard. She was a fastidious woman, and a beard seemed to her untidy. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... in these wilds, where the only aristocracy that counts is nobility of endeavour. But I could not reckon myself that woman's superior, Father, because under the same circumstances I might have been even more untidy and down-at-heel ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... beautiful lady before her, jumped from the ground, and, with shame, began to shake herself from the dirt that clung to her garments; but the stranger, taking no notice of her untidy condition, clasped the child's fingers in her white hand, and told her to lead her ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous
... untidy, hardened old single man like me do with you in his house?" he said. "Oh, you little limmer, to put such a thought ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... in the barrels, and help to decay others. Although packed ever so well and pressed ever so tight, the shrinking of the fresh-picked fruit, soon makes them loose, and nothing is so bad in handling apples as this. Altogether this was a very untidy method of handling apples, and has been entirely abandoned ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... Her daily tasks become a drudgery, for she is too exhausted to have the strength to perform them. After the tasks finally are finished, she is too tired to don the afternoon dress, and so easily falls into untidy habits. This brings its train of results. The young husband, on his return from work, fails to find his wife the bright, attractive girl he married and gradually ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... come in!' she heard Peter saying joyfully as he opened the door, and then came the sound of light footsteps on the wooden stairs. Another minute, and the bedroom door opened gently, and a sunshiny face looked into the children's untidy room. ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... Music at that time absorbed all minds. Rousseau brought out a little opera entitled Le Devin de village (The Village Wizard), which had a great success. It was played at Fontainebleau before the king. "I was there that day," writes Rousseau, "in the same untidy array which was usual with me; a great deal of beard and wig rather badly trimmed. Taking this want of decency for an act of courage, I entered in this state the very room into which would come, a short time afterwards, the king, the queen, the royal family, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... chargings of long-horned cattle chased through the thoroughfares by lasso-whirling "bull-drivers" as wild as they. In the middle of the river-front was a ferry, whence Louisiana Avenue, broad, treeless, grassy, and thinly lined with slaughter-houses, led across the plain. Down this untidy plaisance a grimy little street-car, every half-hour, jogged out to the Carrollton railway and returned. This street and the water-front were lighted—twilighted—with lard-oil lamps; the rest of the place was dark. At ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Caddle, untidy condition. "In he comes when I'm all of a caddle." To stabble, to walk about aimlessly, or in the wet. "Now, Miss, don't you come stabbling in and out when I am scouring." Or, "I can't come stabbling down that there dirty lane, or I should be all of a muck." Want, mole. ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... ready-made clothing of no particular style. Cleanliness is, so far as I saw, a conspicuous virtue of the society. Dr. Keil, the president, was the only person with whom I came in contact who was not very neat. He is a snuff-taker; and he walked over the orchard with me in an untidy pair ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... room is Spartan in its simplicity, and the amount of water in the tanks depends upon the conscientiousness of a naked heathen of the lowest caste, who walks over the roofs of the cars and is supposed to fill them from a pig skin suspended on his back. You furnish your own towel and the most untidy stranger in the compartment usually wants to borrow it, having forgotten to bring one himself. You acquire merit in heaven, as the Buddhists say, by loaning it to him, but it is a better plan to carry two towels, in order to be prepared for such ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... seen. Mrs. Lessways' thin, wrinkled face, bordered by her untidy but still black and glossy hair, was upturned from below in an expression of tragic fretfulness. It was the uncontrolled face, shamelessly expressive, of one who thinks himself unwatched. Hilda moved silently to descend, and then demanded in a low tone whose harsh self-possession was a reproof ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... museums of anatomy—tickets ten cents each; boys under fourteen not admitted. The East End butcher is not only a thrifty but an inquiring soul. Until I viewed his shop I had no idea that a sheep could be so untidy inside; and as for a cow—he finds things in a cow she didn't ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... room was a cramped omnium gatherum, cluttered with the paraphernalia of daily living. It was somewhat disordered and untidy—the chamber of a man who could never see clearly how things were, or be completely sure just ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... that are now so common and so pretty a feature of the London summer were rare, as also were the coloured awnings and outside blinds now almost universal in the better-class of thoroughfares. Hyde Park was untidy and neglected, flower-beds being practically unknown. The fine open space at Hyde Park Corner did not exist, and Piccadilly Circus was a circus really, and one of very narrow extent. But though far from possessing the magnificence ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... other were the kitchen and scullery. Upstairs there were two good-sized bedrooms with a small third room in a lean-to at the back, the lower part of which was occupied by a wash-house. Through the windows could be seen a neglected bit of garden, and an untidy orchard. ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
