"Gossiping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there's naught I take delight in, Like gossiping of war, and war's array, When down in Turkey, far away, The foreign people are a-fighting. One at the window sits, with glass and friends, And sees all sorts of ships go down the river gliding: And blesses then, as home he ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... fro on their miserable errands. But there were very few children in Minerva Court, thank God!—they were not popular there. There were frowzy, sleepy-looking women hanging out of their windows, gossiping with their equally unkempt and haggard neighbors; apathetic men sitting on the doorsteps, in their shirt-sleeves, smoking; a dull, dirty baby or two sporting itself in the gutter; while the sound of a melancholy accordion (the chosen instrument ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Here she kissed him and was silent. "It won't do," he said. "There's no logic in a kiss, Miss Grey. First comes Ann Grey and says, too much army discipline; and then you tell me what that gossiping old darkey says, and then you try the final argument—a kiss. Can't do it. There will be an end of all discipline. I hate ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... listened. It was going to be easier than he had thought. Clearly, he would know as soon as the Founder appeared. These people, so suspicious of anything different, would be buzzing and gossiping and spreading the story. All he had to do was lie low and listen, down at the general store, perhaps. Or even here, in ...
— The Skull • Philip K. Dick
... drank at feasts. Drinking is no sin; it is a sin, sure enough, to swill like a pig or to sit without talking when good folk are gossiping, but not to drink the gift of God to the bottom. You just drink my health,' he ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... Divine guidance as he had in the honor of man or the chastity of woman. The Queen's devotional exercises were nothing but a mere performance carried on sometimes through a half-opened door, the attendant minister on one side of the door and the gossiping, chattering ladies on the other. The leading statesmen of the age were avowedly indifferent or professedly unbelieving. Bolingbroke was a preacher of unbelief. Walpole never seems to have cared to turn his thoughts for one moment to anything higher than his own political career, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... accompanying cue rack, and there is almost sure to be a little hole in the ceiling through which the proprietor's wife, who resides above, can peep down and watch the card games. It is a genuine family resort, too, for between four and seven all the town is likely to drop in, the women chaffering or gossiping while their lords enjoy a glass of beer and ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... outside garment in our dreadful winters, with a perseverance which leads the good woman of the house to suspect her neighbor of being better off than herself, in one particular at least, for the coming Sabbath. But just now the door opens—the gossiping neighbor springs up with a laugh—the bundle is untied—the children scream, and the wife jumps about her husband's neck as if he had ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... energies, and a tenacity arising from devotion to a noble dream, which was not apparent in the youths who pitied him in the aimless effeminacy of clubs, nor in the clever gentlemen who cracked their thin jokes upon him over a gossiping dinner. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... supper of half-cooked corn meal and tea, she went instantly to work at washing out clothes. Mrs. Tucker spent the evening gossiping with the janitress, came in about midnight. As usual she was full to the brim with news of misery—of jobs lost, abandoned wives, of abused children, of poisoning from rotten "fresh" food or from "embalmed" stuff in ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... lieutenant in the garden to the rear of the house, gossiping in familiar style with his half-dozen men, and drew him aside for some private words. He was sensible enough, at bottom, and when I had pointed out to him that his prisoner was a good and kindly soul, who had been, through no fault of her own, nurtured ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... with importance. Bessie was thirteen, in spite of her diminutive height. Bessie's mother was dead, and Bessie's caretakers were gossiping nurses and servants, who frequently left in her way books that were much too old for Bessie to read—but she ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... burly spiker or teamster out on the line. Each class was necessary to this task. These Easterners talked of money, of gold, as a grade foreman might have talked of gravel. They smoked and conversed at ease, laughing at sallies, gossiping over what was a tragedy west of North Platte; and about them was an air of luxury, of power, of importance, and a singular grace that Neale felt ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... "Now, to conclude this gossiping discourse of mine, I say that it is my opinion that in painting and sculpture nature bestowed all her riches with a full hand upon Michelangelo. I do not fear reproach or contradiction when I repeat that his statues are, as it were, inimitable. Nor do I think that I have ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... this matter straight. She did not know that she was about to do a cruel thing; was about to stretch a soul on the rack and turn the screws. That fine reserve which infolded the Masons like a veil precluded gossiping about themselves or their affairs. Blanche had never heard of Jim as the lover of Pocahontas—or if she had, it had been in an outside, intangible way that had made ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... Church fail to meet at the Lord's house for Christian worship on the Lord's day, and to what snares and temptations do they not subject themselves and their children? What temptations to idleness and to wasting the Lord's day in visiting and gossiping, or in ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... silly subjects that were discussed here, worldly babblings, or gossiping about absent friends, but the great questions that ruled humanity: philosophy, politics, ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... of conversation which may not be ill-natured and yet does harm. Idle gossiping, talking about things that are not worth while or speculating about affairs which are not our business and of which we know little or nothing. Akin to this is fashionably slangy conversation concerning the latest thing in books, magazine articles, trivial plays. For ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... A volume of the Faery Queen lay open beside him, but he had for some time ceased to pore over its pages, being engaged instead in chasing Fancy as she flitted hither and thither through the vast green woodland, dallying with the shadows and gossiping with ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... egotism, and arrogance in a letter to his intimate friend Dr. John Fergusson, of Kelso Grammar School, which, despite the mark "private and confidential," was yet published, several years after the death of the recipient and shortly after that of the writer, in a gossiping memoir. We are therefore at liberty to select from the letter ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... him. Nor did he doubt the discretion of his friend Fitzgibbon;—if only his friend might not damage the secret by being too discreet. Of the silence of the doctor and the captain he was by no means equally sure; but even though they should gossip, the gossiping would take so long a time in oozing out and becoming recognised information, as to have lost much of its power for injuring him. Were Lady Laura to hear at this moment that he had been over to Belgium, and had fought a duel with Lord Chiltern respecting ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... be there presently, Esmerelda," I said, turning away. It was certainly not my place to allow her to stand there gossiping about her employer. ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... sorts of association with this summit in the daytime. All her life she had been used to come here berrying. Here she came, too, with Polly Wilson and other girl-friends—when she had any—for strolls and gossiping. Here, too, Jim Breen had made love to her, and Matt's companion of the grocery. The spot being therefore not wholly dedicated to memories of Claude, ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... whisper, and he glanced apprehensively about the buffet of the Western Star which was due now in three days at the Martian city of Nurm. Penrun's eyes followed his anxious glances curiously. The buffet was partly filled with passengers, smoking, gossiping women, and men at cards, or throwing dice in the Martian gambling game of diklo, which was the universal fad of the moment. No place could have been safer, Penrun reflected. Doubtless the old man's caution was a lifelong habit acquired in his youth, if he had actually ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat
... A gossiping old nun, who hospitably filled my plate with everything, gave me the enclosed flag cut in gilt paper, which, together with her custards and jellies, looked less unreal. They asked many questions in regard to Spanish ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Burke, of John Wilkes (of the NORTH BRITON), of the author of THE LETTERS OF JUNIUS and of JOHN GILPIN, and many others of credit and renown. The First Earl Sandwich of Hinchinbrook was the "my lord" of the gossiping Pepys. Through him Dunk Island possesses another strand in the bond with the immortals, and is ensured connection with remote posterity. He gambled so passionately that he invented as a means of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... show-case, the background of boxes, each with a button looking mischievously at him, or a glove shaking its forefinger, or a shapely pair of hose making him blush, and the daintiest child in the world, flushing and flirting and gossiping before him; but the sketch recalls matters which he would forget, his hands lose command, something makes his eye very dim, and he lays aside his implements, and takes a long walk, and wears a ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... exorcism the youngest imp was "delivered." The poor woman, crazed with all this pother,—if in her right mind before,—and defending herself unskilfully in her foreign gibberish and with the volubility of her race, was interpreted as making some confession. A gossiping witness testified that six years before she had heard another woman say that she had seen the accused come down a chimney. She was required to repeat the Lord's Prayer in English,—an approved test; but being a Catholic, she had never ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... so long there a-gossiping?" shouted a shrill voice from above. It was the vocal substitute of Mistress Dauber, who, resolutely determined not to budge at her husband's bidding, had, as she lay, listened, but to little purpose. Finding ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... this little Instrument, that I would by no Means discourage it. All that I aim at by this Dissertation is, to cure it of several disagreeable Notes, and in particular of those little Jarrings and Dissonances which arise from Anger, Censoriousness, Gossiping and Coquetry. In short, I would always have it tuned by Good-Nature, Truth, Discretion ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Magazine. It is intended to furnish, in a popular form, a few archaeological truths which may foster a love of our national antiquities among those who are less likely to be attracted by dry dissertations: and its gossiping character and pretty woodcuts are well calculated to promote ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... and reform their lives; but he believes that the hope of humanity was potentially shut in an egg, and never in an ark. And there is the "reader upon the sofa,"—church-member he may be,—who tosses aside "Vanity Fair" with the reflection that a gossiping of London snobs is human life, and that the best thing to be done is to pay pew-rates and lie still and gird at it. Which of these two, think you, is the modern representative of King ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... I grant; but you have not written a drama. A novelist should be a comfortable, garrulous, communicative, gossiping fortune-teller; not a grim, laconical, oracular sibyl. I like a novel that adopts all the old-fashioned customs prescribed to its art by the rules of the Masters,—more especially a novel which you style ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suppose I was going to run about the town gossiping about it, before I had absolute proof? No, thank you. I am not such ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... the conversation Richard passed the gossiping squires. He raised his hat, but none returned the courtesy. A Yorkshireman has, at least, the merit of perfect honesty in his likes and dislikes; and if Richard had cared to ask what offense he had given, he would have been told his ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... taken away by mistake (soon after the formation of the Abolition Society) from the Servant Girls of this town, all inclination to do any kind of work;—and left in lieu thereof, an impudent appearance, a strong and continued thirst for high wages, a gossiping disposition for all sorts of amusement, a leering and hankering after persons of the other sex, a desire of finery and fashion, a never ceasing trot after new places more advantageous for stealing—with number of contingent accomplishments that do not suit the wearers. Now if any person ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... an overweight adolescent," she told him archly, "I daydreamed about my school's best athlete. Presently I found that my shocked fellow-students were gossiping to each other that he'd acted as I daydreamed. Other girls wouldn't look at him because they said he was madly in ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... prepare for the night's business. But first he connected up his detector and snapped the receivers against his ears, just to see what might be going on. The operator on the Adriatic, a hundred miles behind them, was gossiping with Poldhu, and far ahead two boats were exchanging information about the weather. Then Ludwig glanced up quickly, for a step had sounded at the door, and he saw a man just ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... increased, a roofless house every here and there seems to protest the contrary. The women are more than well- favoured, and the men fine tall fellows; but they look slipshod and dissipated. As they slouched at street corners, or stood about gossiping in the snow, it seemed they would have been more at home in the slums of a large city than here in a country place betwixt a village and a town. I heard a great deal about drinking, and a great deal about religious revivals: two things in which the Scottish ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a moment to realize how rash this was; then hurried, as if wishing to get through as quickly as possible with the disagreeable, if not disgraceful, task of criticizing his friends and of gossiping: ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... use of my being cautious when you are so reckless? I tell you what it is, Belle. We are talked of all over this gossiping town, and I don't like it, and what is more, once and for all, I won't have it. If you will not be more careful, I will break with you altogether, and that is the long ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... stretched and twisted or hacked and hewed by dogmatists. Most of the critics are too busy gossiping about plots and the private lives of authors to devote much attention to principles. But the noble few who still can write about a book without falling into it, or criticize an author's style without dragging in his taste in summer resorts, are chiefly concerned with classifications. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... her misery. Well, you know—you are a man of the world, M. Montaiglon—you know the dangers of such a correspondence between a person of my reputation, that is none of the best, because I have been less a hypocrite than most, and a lady in her position. It's a gossiping community this, long-lugged and scandal-loving like all communities of its size; it is not the Faubourg St. Honore, where intrigues go on behind fans and never an eye cocked or a word said about ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... the day was over, and with it the visit of the widow, who had gathered enough gossiping materials to last her until the Monday following, when the arrival in the neighborhood of George Moreland, threw her upon a fresh theme, causing her to wonder "if 'twan't Mary's beau, and if he hadn't been kinder courtin' her ever since the time ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... schoene Fest, Johannis-Tag"), in which he promises the hand of Eva, "with my gold and goods beside," to the successful singer on the morrow, which is John the Baptist's Day. After a long parley among the gossiping masters, Pogner introduces Walter as a candidate for election. He sings a charming song ("So rief der Lenz in den Wald"), and as he sings, the marker, concealed behind a screen, is heard scoring down the faults. When he displays ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... this ever-so-long," says the Countess, "gossiping with cousin Theo, while you have been away at the coffee-house, I dare say, making merry with your friends, and drinking your punch and coffee. Guess she must find it rather lonely here, with nothing to do but work them little caps and hem them frocks. Never mind, dear; reckon you'll soon have a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a description of her cares and anxieties and maternal sentiments. Lavretsky listened in silence, turning his hat in his hands. His cold, weary glance embarrassed the gossiping lady. ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... faith of the race. It was a domestic sanctuary, very native to the soil; the folks would hold converse with the Black Virgin standing there on an altar, tell her all their little concerns, make themselves at home there in confidential gossiping prayer, quite without ceremony. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... would have been the brightest page in the annals of a great people. We depend for our knowledge of the steps by which England then made a most wonderful stride to prosperity and power, not upon official and authoritative records, but upon the desultory and sometimes merely gossiping memoirs of particular persons, and such other miscellaneous materials as can be picked up. The only consequence of an attempt to extinguish the memory of republicans, radicals, reformers, and regicides has been, that the history of England's ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... pause between the close of Sunday-school and the commencement of morning service, congregation and scholars darkened the chapel yard in gossiping groups, each on the tiptoe of curiosity to catch a first glimpse of the bride of their pastor. All eyes were turned towards the crown of the hill which led up from the manse, and on which Mr. Penrose and his wife would first be seen. More than once an approaching couple were mistaken for them, ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... our aims are different, or we have no aims whatever, we know each other little or not at all, and so there is nothing on to which this solidarity could be securely hooked.... And is there any need for it? No, in order to help a colleague, to respect his personality and his work, to refrain from gossiping about him, envying him, telling him lies and being hypocritical, one does not need so much to be a young writer as simply a man.... Let us be ordinary people, let us treat everybody alike, and then we shall not need any artificially worked ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... transepts. But she was pleased when Neith told her of the temple of the dew, and of the Caryan maidens bearing its frieze: and then she thought that perhaps Neith would like to hear what sort of temples she was building herself, in the French valleys, and on the crags of the Rhine. So she began gossiping, just as one of you might to an old lady: and certainly she talked in the sweetest way in the world to Neith; and explained to her all about crockets and pinnacles: and Neith sat, looking very grave; and always graver as St. Barbara ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... which are generally to be found in similar places in Europe. One would almost believe that he was among a crowd of school-girls who had given the sour moral lessons of their governess the slip, and were thinking of nothing else than innocently gossiping away some hours. After a while the dance begins, accompanied by very monotonous music and singing. The slow movements of the legs and arms of the dancers remind us of certain slow and demure scenes from European ballets. There is nothing indecent in this dance, but we learn ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... word he says, but I do go as far as this: I'll believe you when I see you making the sketch. And as for earning extra money, I should have thought Sir Samuel paid good enough wages for you to be willing to smoke a pipe and rest when your day's work was done, instead of gadding about corridors gossiping with lady's-maids who've no business to be outside their own room. But if you're so greedy after money—and if you want me ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... child went on in front, and they followed her in silence down the village street. It was already evening, the sun had sunk behind the hills; the men were returning from their work; the children were playing and shouting, and the women stood gossiping before their doors. All was life and animation in the little village, where a strange, silent woman had once passed to and fro, with deeds and words of kindness for the suffering and sorrowful, but who would be seen ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... hesitate to subject gossiping women to the harsh punishment of the ducking stool. In 1662 the Assembly passed an Act requiring wives that brought judgments on their husbands for slander to be punished by ducking.[87] In 1705 and ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... silence there during work. Yet all the girls were gossiping. As soon, however, as the master's approach was signalled the chatter abruptly ceased. There was but one girl who, having her head turned, and thus seeing nothing of Beauchene, went on furiously abusing a companion, with whom she had previously started a dispute. She and the other were sisters, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... audible, carried on by two persons in the crowd beneath the open windows. Their dress being the native one, and their tongue unfamiliar, they seem to the officers to be merely inhabitants gossiping; ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... and confidential communication that passed into Brand's hand, but a frank, gossiping, sisterly note, stretching out beyond its initial purpose. And there was no doubt at all that it was mostly about Brand himself; and the reader grew red as he went on. He had been so kind to them ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... now a well known figure in town, consorting with men of the highest quality and parts, and gossiping with wits and players who frequented Will's coffee-house. Here, indeed, a special chair was appropriated to his use; which being placed by the fire in winter, and on the balcony in summer, he was pleased to designate ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... honest, your Highness, that he is!" exclaimed the girl. "And Fritz is as honest as he. And as for all they said, it was just talk and nonsense. When countryfolk get gossiping, they go on, I do assure you, for the fun; they don't as much as think of what they say. If you went to the next farm, it's my belief you would hear as much against ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one at the desk where the floor clerk usually kept vigil, gossiping affably with such employees as passed. The place seemed deserted; no doubt all the guests were downstairs. Treading lightly on the thick carpet, I went down the hall to Room four hundred and three, and found the door ajar ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... place of execution elevated through Byron's song to the world of poetry. Rudy was sad, he lent over the broad stone sill of the window, gazed into the deep blue water and over to the little solitary island with its three acacias and wished himself there, free from the whole gossiping society. Babette was remarkably merry, she had been indescribably amused. The cousin ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... Miss Bella Farragut, in a calico frock, had been crouched on the front stoop, gossiping at long range, but she espied her approaching caller at a distance. She dashed around the corner of the house, galloping like a horse. Henry saw it all, but he preserved the polite demeanor of a guest when a waiter spills claret ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... and glorious and free, it seems strange that the corn crop should be so superior to the people. I suppose it is because each perfect stalk of corn turns its face to God and Heaven, and the people are so busy gossiping they haven't the time to worship. When we pass them on the street we feel like saying: "Our reputations are in your hands. In ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... was not a bad room, that room of Mrs. Watkins's, seen just now in the November dusk, with its bright fire and neat hearth, with the kettle gossiping deliciously to itself; there was at once something comfortable and homelike about it; especially as the red curtains were drawn across the two windows that look down into High Street, and the great carts that had been rumbling ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in the formation of his famous collection by his librarian, the well-known Dr. Thomas Frognall Dibdin, the author of Bibliomania, The Bibliographical Decameron, and other pleasant and gossiping, but somewhat verbose and not particularly accurate, works on books, their printers and owners. Dibdin's services were liberally rewarded; and Edwards, in his work Libraries and Founders of Libraries, states that in addition to his stipend as librarian, 'Lord Spencer ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... there was the pretty pink-stuccoed village, with its hill-top church, its odd little shrines, its grim-grotesque ossuary, its faded frescoed house-fronts, its busy, vociferous, out-of-door Italian life:—the cobbler tapping in his stall; women gossiping at their toilets; children sprawling in the dirt, chasing each other, shouting; men drinking, playing mora, quarrelling, laughing, singing, twanging mandolines, at the tables under the withered bush of the wine-shop; and two or three more pensive citizens swinging their legs from ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... at Frostyface, who forthwith gave the office to the hounds; whereupon all was commotion. Away the cavalcade went, and in less than five minutes the late bustling village resumed its wonted quiet; the old man on sticks, two crones gossiping at a door, a rag-or-anything-else-gatherer going about with a donkey, and a parcel of dirty children tumbling about on the green, being all that remained on the scene. All the able-bodied men had followed the hounds. Why the hounds had ever climbed the long hill seemed a mystery, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... sat down on the top step of the ladder again. A whole rush of memories came upon him. He remembered vaguely how, long ago, in his childhood, he had heard legends of this same curse. Staying here at Brockhurst, as a baby-child with his mother, maids had hinted at it, gossiping over the nursery fire at night; and his mind, irresistibly attracted, even then, by the supernatural, had been filled at once by desperate curiosity and by panic fear. He paused, thinking back, singularly moved, as one on the edge of the satisfaction ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to the dispersing, gossiping crowd: "Hold on—hold on, you people! I've got news for you. Folks, this is O'Ryan's night. It's his in the starry firmament. Look at him shine!" he cried, stretching out his arm toward the heavens, where the glittering galaxy hung near the zenith. "Terry O'Ryan—our O'Ryan—he's ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... of French sailors were smoking, and gossiping upon a subject which caught his attention as soon as he heard a ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... remark Benny would make when anyone insisted on talking with him was that he couldn't waste his time gossiping, because he had to save ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... headstrong, impatient; the second is calmer, stronger, more obedient. He watches the mother; he heeds her signals. Five minutes later he makes a clean, beautiful swoop and comes up with his fish. The mother whistles her praise as she drops beside him. My eyes follow them as, gossiping like two old cronies, they wing their slow way over the dancing whitecaps and climb the slanting tree-tops ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... gossiping as usual, eh?" he remarked in a hard, dry tone. "Up here in the Highlands they are ridiculously superstitious. Who's been telling ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Vasari has a gossiping story that Pietro, "who trusted no one, and, in going and returning from Castello della Pieve, carried all the money he had about him always on his person," was robbed on the way, and lost his money and nearly his life. And he adds next: "Pietro was a person of very little religion, and ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... patriotic emperors who succeeded them, we know less of the Roman princes through centuries after the Christian era, than of the Roman Consuls through a space of three centuries preceding the Christian era. In fact, except for a few gossiping and merely personal anecdotes communicated by the Augustan History and a few other authorities, we really know little of the most illustrious amongst the Roman emperors of the West, beyond the fact (all but invariable) that they perished by assassination. But still this darkness ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... when the packets sailed, has apparently driven them frantic with joy. They are yelling 'Ca ira,' bonfires are flaring everywhere, and bells ringing. All of the men are drunk, and some of the women. And yet the statesman who must grapple with this portentous problem is gossiping with his wife, and looking as if he had not a care in the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... beating, the swans passed over like angels; and like angels passing, hailing each other as they winged their way, drifting on broad, white pinions, they called, each to the other in their sweet, unreal voices, gossiping, garrulous, high in the sky. And far away they floated on until they became only a silver ribbon undulating against the azure; and even then Marche could hear the soft tumult of their calling: Heu! Heu! Hiou! Hiou-oo! until sound and snowy flecks ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... which at first had been a one-sided affair, began to assume a more serious form; the rector went oftener to Prospect Hill, while the carriage from Prospect Hill stood daily at the gate of the rectory, and people said it was a settled thing, or ought to be, gossiping about it until old Captain Humphreys, Anna's grandfather, conceived it his duty as senior warden of St. Mark's, to talk with the young rector and know ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... has kept me so long, and it is so very late, that you will forgive me if I only skim over the gazette part of my letter—my next shall be more in my old gossiping style. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... shrill voice cried from inside the house, "how often have I told you not to be gossiping on public affairs with strangers? Your tongue will cost you your head presently, as I have told you ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... apron and established himself on a beer-barrel which stood outside before the gate. On the bench opposite sat the older inhabitants of the street, puffing at their pipes and gossiping about everything under the sun. Now the bells sounded the hour for leaving off work. Madame Rasmussen was beating her child and reviling it in time with her blows. Then suddenly all was silent; only the crying of the child continued, like a feeble evening hymn. Old Jeppe ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... on her way to Dolores's room, and declared she would have no messing and gossiping in one another's rooms. Miss Mysie was ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brief epistle Mary O'Gara had said to herself that it was lucky there was distance enough between Inch and Castle Talbot; also that though she considered herself a truthful woman there was nothing she would not say in order to shield Stella from gossiping tongues. She was bitterly angry with Grace Comerford for the cruel and evil temper which had done so much hurt ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... secure in the consciousness that no bobbed haired young poacher was daring to dance with their husbands, if they had just let prohibitions enough alone—if they had only not been swept away by the high sport of gossiping about our Wild Young People, which struck the country in the summer of 1920. This gossip was an intrinsic phase of the virtue wave which always immediately precedes ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... by a large bow window, and which, though at the furthest end of the room, was admirably fitted for a looker-on, commanding, as it did, a view of the whole, two ladies were seated, busily engaged in that most delightful of occupations, gossiping, for which they found ample material, as guest after guest paid their respects to ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... whilst she listened attentively. In the vestibule it was the night watchmen who were talking, discussing, no doubt, the many events of the day: and that sound—like the buzzing of bees—showed that the women were awake and gossiping, and that up in the slaves' quarters tongues were still wagging, despite Blanca's assurance and the overseer's sharp discipline. But on the other side of the atrium, where were the reception halls and ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... husband occupied. Madame Toussaint was a portly woman, whose corpulence increased in spite of everything, whether it were worry or fasting. She had a round puffy face with bright little eyes; and was a very worthy woman, whose only faults were an inclination for gossiping and a fondness for good cheer. Before Madame Theodore even opened her mouth she understood the object of her visit. "You've come on us at a bad moment, my dear," she said, "we're stumped. Toussaint wasn't able to go back ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... world, with its saloons and baths and music-rooms and elevators, now suddenly shattered into darkness, only one utterance came. Phillips, the wireless operator, seized his key and telegraphed in every direction the call "S O S!" Gossiping among telegraphers hundreds of miles apart, messages of business import, all the scores of things that fill the ocean air with tremulous whisperings of etheric waves, began to give over their chattering. Again and again Phillips repeated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... got into a pretty composed easy way; Sir George writes very agreable, sensible, sentimental, gossiping letters, once a fortnight, which Emily answers in due course, with all the regularity of a counting-house correspondence; he talks of coming down after Christmas: we expect him without impatience; and in the mean time amuse ourselves as well as we can, and ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... his thin lips together for a silent moment and then retorted. "You've got nothing of the sort, nothing of the sort. You've got to do your duty like everybody else in the world, and your duty is to be in this house controlling it—and not gossiping about London just where any silly fancy ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... religion. I think it is perfectly safe to say that no one would have taken knowledge of him that he had been with Jesus. As to pastoral calls he expressly disavowed any intention of making any. "I have no time," said he, "for gadding about and spiritual gossiping. It's as much as I can do to get up my ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... As we sat gossiping over our port after the ladies had left the table, I began to wonder why the grey-eyed master-crook, whom not a soul suspected, was so eager to ingratiate himself with Edward Blumenfeld. The motive was, however, not far to ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... seen by a small knot of wagoners and farm-hands, who were drinking and gossiping on the benches before the Fish and Anchor, to wile away the time of waiting for the King's arrival. At first they thought the royal cavalcade must be in sight, though not expected for an hour or more; and hurried up ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... back to his office. Kendrick must have been gossiping with a vengeance! What would the insurance offices on the street think when they received their checks direct from the Hilmer company? It was insulting! And now he would have to trail about collecting his commissions instead of merely withholding them from the remittance that should have been ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... to be lurking in a neighboring gulch. On the upper plains, not far away, were her young companions, all busily employed with the wewoptay, as it was called—the sharp-pointed stick with which the Sioux women dig wild turnips. They were gayly gossiping together, or each humming a love-song as she worked, only Snana stood somewhat apart from the rest; in fact, concealed by ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... the hospital you'd better stay there," the woman said with a laugh. "We don't let lodgings at this time of night, and besides, I settled with a party to-day. I'm not going to stand gossiping here all night. Be ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... converting the coin of the realm into beer and whisky as speedily as possibly. The night was calm and comparatively cool with the spreading darkness, and the majority of the inhabitants were seated outside their doors gossiping and taking the air. Children were playing in the street, their shrill voices at times interrupting the continuous chatter of the women; and The Derby Winner, flaring with gas, was stuffed as full as it could hold ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... it would not have caused you to escape the suspicion of being an accomplice, while at the same time it would have attached to you the odium of dastardly treachery. Notwithstanding all I have just said, you can easily imagine that, in spite of my utter contempt for all gossiping fools, I cannot openly defy them. I therefore feel myself compelled to ask you not only to quit my service, but even to leave Rome. I undertake to supply you with an honourable pretext for your departure, so as to insure you the continuation of the respect which you may have secured ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... still surrounded Bigot on the terrace stair. Some of them stood leaning in graceful pose upon the balusters. The wily girls knew his artistic tastes, and their pretty feet patted time to the music, while they responded with ready glee to the gossiping of the gay Intendant. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Kuzma Kuzmitch, you have no doubt heard more than once of my disputes with my father, Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, who robbed me of my inheritance from my mother ... seeing the whole town is gossiping about it ... for here every one's gossiping of what they shouldn't ... and besides, it might have reached you through Grushenka ... I beg your pardon, through Agrafena Alexandrovna ... Agrafena Alexandrovna, the lady for whom I have the highest ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... out of Homeburg. It had fourteen subscribers and every one was hitched on the same wire. For a month everything went nicely. Then old man Miller got mad at two neighbors who were sort of sizing him up over the wire, and quit speaking to them. And Mrs. Ames was caught gossiping, and a quarrel ensued in which about half the line took part, all being on the wire and handy. Young Frank Anderson heard Barney DeWolf making an engagement with his girl and licked Barney. One thing led to another until not a subscriber would speak ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... say the inhabitants of the British Islands, are congenitally incapable of producing a work of pure art. Our novelists—Fielding, Thackeray, George Eliot—have been sufficiently, though perhaps not unjustly, called over the coals for their habit of coming in front of their canvas, and either gossiping with the reader or preaching at him. But, if it be a sound maxim that the novelist should not obtrude his personality on his reader, how much more is this true of the dramatist! When the dramatist steps to the footlights and begins to lecture, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... in thirteen folio volumes, contains with much that is valuable a large proportion of fables and inutilities. In particular he is so ample on the subject of the cock and the bull that from his practice, all rambling, gossiping tales of doubtful credibility are called COCK AND BULL STORIES. Aldrovandus, however, deserves our respect and esteem as the founder of a botanic garden, and as a pioneer in the now prevalent custom of making scientific collections for purposes of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... a lady's journal I've very often read with care, The news, the gossiping eternal, You're always sure of getting there. Of how you ought to bind your tresses, The latest styles, the tint in hair, And there I've seen the kind of dresses It's right for growing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... have poured itself out in the open air on this sunny day; even the shopkeepers had brought chairs out of their shops and sat on the pavement, gaily laughing and gossiping together in the eager way Parisians have. As the two foreign ladies, both young, both in their very different fashion good-looking, walked past the sitting groups of neighbours—men, women, and children would stop talking and stare intently ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... minister. But his chiefest guest is a customer, which is the greatest relation he acknowledges, especially if you be an honest gentleman, that is trust him to cozen you enough. His friendships are a kind of gossiping friendships, and those commonly within the circle of his trade, wherein he is careful principally to avoid two things, that is poor men and suretyships. He is a man will spend his sixpence with a great deal of imputation,[85] and no man makes more of a pint of wine than he. He is ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... if you were thirty, I should veto it, and you are but a little more than twenty. How do you know that this stranger will not show your letter to anybody or everybody? How do you know that he will not send it to one of the gossiping journals like the 'Household Inquisitor'? But supposing he keeps it to himself, which is more than you have a right to expect, what opinion is he likely to form of a young lady who invades his privacy with such freedom? Ten to one he will think curiosity is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... for a moment that Shiela was there within ear-shot; and eyes on my knitting, I began talking about you to Mrs. Cardross; and I had been gossiping away quite innocently for almost a minute when I chanced to look up and notice the peculiar expressions of Mrs. Cardross and Cecile. They weren't looking at me; they were watching Shiela, who had slipped down from the parapet where she had been perched ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... mightily and then into the garden with my wife, and to Sir W. Batten's with [Sir] W. Pen and [Sir] J. Minnes, and there eat a melon and talked, and so home to supper and to bed. My wife, as she said last night, hath put away Nell to-day, for her gossiping abroad and telling of stories. Sir W. Batten did tell me to-night that the Council have ordered a hearing before them of Carcasses business, which do vex me mightily, that we should be troubled so much by an idle rogue, a servant ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... woman's art. "Man's love is from man's life a thing apart"—you know the quotation from Byron, "Tis woman's whole existence." The natural affections fill a woman's whole life, and her art is only so much sighing and gossiping about them. Very delightful and charming gossiping it often is—full of a sweetness and tenderness which we could not well spare, but ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... ancient and modern, may be considered as the worshippers of water. The old fountain, at which the nymphs of the island assembled in the earliest ages, exists in its original state; the same rendezvous as it was formerly, whether of love and gallantry, or of gossiping and tale-telling. It is near to the town, and the most limpid water gushes continually from the solid rock. It is regarded by the inhabitants with a degree of religious veneration; and they p reserve a tradition, that the pilgrims of old time, in their ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... on earth did you keep him gossiping all that time? Now then—'Who can number the clouds ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... not a very gossiping place. For the most part the people had too much to do, and were too intent upon their own business, to take much trouble to retail what they chanced to hear; but there are some things which, as the facetious man observed, the dead in their graves ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... old Tibby," smiled the Duchessa, "I'm sure he didn't. Nobody thinks you're a gossip. Gossiping is talking about things people don't want known, and generally things that are rather unkind, to say the least of it. You're the soul of honour and charity, and Father Dormer knows that ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... Silvia Molina, of whom I have already spoken, and who had got complete control over her character. Instead of tranquillising her, and so making her happy, Donna Silvia thought to become more entertaining, and above all, more necessary to her, by gossiping to her about the King's amours. She ferreted out all the secret details, all the petty circumstances, and with such dangerous material troubled the mind and destroyed the repose of her mistress, who wept unceasingly, and became ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... control these desires, you can wonderfully strengthen your powers of concentration. Remember, you have all you can do to attend to your own business. Do not waste your time in thinking of others or in gossiping about them. ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... morning—the cool of the morning. The pigeons were gossiping under the barn eaves. In the apple-tree a robin's song thrilled at intervals, and the jays were chattering incessantly in the cherry-trees by the fence. The dew was still on the grass that lay in the ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... cigars and fell to gossiping, evidently in some argument, for their gestures betrayed their vehemence, although I could not make out what they were saying. They continued the conversation until I lost my patience, and began to begrudge the time I ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... said confidentially, "Em'ly-Alice has gone to the surgery for my cough mixture and some embrocation, and she takes such a time. I'm certain she's loitering and gossiping, and she knows I like my cup of tea at four, and you here, and all; if it wasn't that my leg's seem to crumble up under me I'd go and get ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... further acquaintance with him at Halgrave. Johnny was the member of the party who went most often to the village shop; he liked the expedition, it gave him a feeling of importance; he also liked gossiping with the woman who kept the shop, and he dearly loved meeting the village children. On one of these occasions, when Johnny was engaged in making peace between two little girls—little girls were his specialty—the rector met him and it was then it occurred to ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... E. I. H. has been thrown into a quandary by the strange phenomenon of poor Tommy Bye, whom I have known, man and madman, twenty-seven years, he being elder here than myself by nine years and more. He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half-headed, muzzy, dozing, dreaming, walk-about, inoffensive chap, a little too fond of the creature,—who isn't at times? But Tommy had not brains to work off an overnight's surfeit by ten o'clock next ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... at the word. "Prying, interfering, gossiping! That's what it is. I guess I know. You're all wrong, Mary Rose, all wrong. If you should go back you'd see. You're nothing but a kid. You don't know. But take it from me you've got entirely the wrong idea of your ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... second place. And Jonathan Walker is a sinner, because he is sent to prison. But here am I, half way, having but a poor kind of disposition at best, and yet hating sin, and all that leads to it, such as wasting, and extravagance, and gossiping,—and yet all this lies right under my nose in the village, and I am not saint enough to be vexed at it; and so I scold. And though I had rather be a saint, yet I think I do good ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... who filled the Logen in the Erster Rang—hardened theater-goers, who came as regularly every night in the week during the eight months of the season as they ate their breakfasts and went to their beds, were gossiping with the utmost violence, exchanging nods and odd little old-fashioned bows with other ladies in all parts of the house, leaning over to look whether the parquet was well filled, and remarking that there were more ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... have you to be doing oratorio?" Bobby demanded, as soon as they could struggle a little apart from the gossiping, gushing ranks of the chorus which surrounded them, pulling surreptitious bits from ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... and as for a living, she was content to play plays with her husband. This frightened the old lord, and 'a gie'd 'em a house to live in, and a great garden, and a little field or two, and a carriage, and a good few guineas. Well, the poor thing died at her first gossiping, and her husband—who was as tender-hearted a man as ever eat meat, and would have died for her—went wild in his mind, and broke his heart (so 'twas said). Anyhow, they were buried the same day—father and mother—but the baby lived. Ay, my lord's family made much of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... replied Ulrich, guessing the lansquenet's purpose. "But it has grown late while we've been gossiping; let us go!" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in spite of efforts to confine himself to the Duchess, had been once more drawn into the orbit of Mrs. Fairmile, as she sat fingering a cigarette between the two men, and gossiping of people and politics, the butler entered, and whispered ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... customs of Richard's boyhood into which Katherine, at this happy period, drifted back was that of going, now and again, to his room at night, and gossiping with him, for a merry, yet somewhat pathetic half-hour, before herself retiring to rest. It fell out that, towards the middle of June, there had been a dinner party at the Barkings on a scale of magnificence unusual even in that opulent house. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... that I'll submit to be made a fool of?" he asked in a voice of intense anger. "To be made a fool of by your rushing away from my house in my absence—to have the servants gossiping—not to know what ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Gossiping scenes breed gossips. Who so chatty as hotel-clerks, market women, auctioneers, bar-keepers, apothecaries, newspaper-reporters, monthly-nurses, and all those who live in bustling crowds, or are present ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... chair, the judge who through his wife accepts bribes from the Jews, the rhetorical goldsmith, the usurer (onzeneiro) with his heart in his cassette (arca)[127]. There too the pert servant-girl, the gossiping maidservant, the witch busy at night over a hanged man at the cross-roads, the faithless wife of the India-bound lisboeta, the Lisbon old woman copious in malediction, her genteel daughter Isabel, the wife who in her husband's absence only leaves her house to go to ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... exclaimed impatiently, "I have made up my mind to come and spend my last evening with you—and when I have made up my mind to a thing, I am not likely to change it because of a lot of gossiping peasants, because of old Rezi, or the whole lot of them. So if you don't want me to come in by the front door, which is open, or to knock at the back door, which is locked, how am I ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... moment there was a knock at the door, and Bessie's tearful face appeared. Mistress Mabel had found it impossible to settle down to her usual spinning to-day, and telling the children she must look after the maids, to see they did not get gossiping about the family affairs, she had ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie
... talking to two gentlemen, and, their volubility being greater than his own, he fell into the position of observer. Instead of the profound questions he had somehow expected to hear raised, everybody seemed gossiping, or searching the heart of such topics as where to go this summer, or how to get new servants. Trifling with coffee-cups, they dissected their fellow artists in the same way as his society friends of the other night had dissected ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to lose any part of the fair wind, is at length heard, giving the reluctant order, "Turn the hands up, shorten sail!" The ready clatter of feet, and the show of many heads at all the hatchways, and perhaps the sound of a suppressed laugh amongst the men who have been gossiping and wagering about the gale, give sufficient indication that this evolution has been expected ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... loud, long buzzing heard outside, and the house of God turned into a gossiping fair. "Talk of money changers," said Satan that day, "give me the exchangers of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Do you know you are in high favor here, and any one who belongs to you gets good quarters? Your grandmother just now is at supper, I doubt not, with my mother; and a jolly time they will have of it, gossiping together." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... gossiping old chronicler describes a conversation between the governor of Tierra Firme and Almagro, at which the writer was present. It is told with much spirit; and is altogether so curious, from the light it throws on the characters of the parties, that I have thought the following ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... eight-day fiesta. Another was held at the port of Cavite, in which, as in Manila, all the orders took part—except one, which during all this time did not leave its house, enter the cathedral, nor display illuminations. About this there was no lack of gossiping in the city. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... irrepressible youngsters. "Calm was all nature as a resting wheel." The crows, instead of making wing, were impudent and sat still; the cart-horses were standing, knowing the day, at the field-gates, gossiping and gazing, idle and happy; the moor was stretching away in the pale sunlight—vast, dim, melancholy, like a sea; everywhere were to be seen the gathering people, "sprinklings of blithe company;" the country-side seemed moving ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Tomkins. "Why, if that man knows a Kendal frieze from a piece of black satin, it's all you can look for. Never bred up to the business, he wasn't. And his wife's a poor good-for-nought that wouldn't know which end of the broom to sweep with, and his daughters idle, gossiping hussies that'll drive their husbands wild one o' these days. Don't ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... traditions, customs, marriage One of the feeblest! Then the man, the woman, Following their best affinities, will each Bid their old bond farewell with smiles, not tears; Good wishes, not reproaches; with no fear Of the world's gossiping clamour, and no need Of veiling their desires. Conventionalism, Who shrieks by day at what she does by night, Would call this vice; but one time's vice may be The virtue of another; and Vice and Virtue Are but two masks of self; ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the gossiping abilities of most people, she drove up the long driveway and entered the house. The long hall with its wide staircase and large, splendidly furnished rooms opening on either side, struck her as being cold and gloomy. The polished chairs and tables shone dully in the fast ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... shone by his absence; he was at the ramparts, or was supposed to be there; but his wife, his children, his bonne, and his kitchen wench issued forth, oblivious alike of dull care and of bombarding Prussians, to enjoy themselves after their wont by gossiping and lolling in the sun. The Strasburg fetish had its usual crowd of admirers. Every bench in the Champs Elysees was occupied. Guitars twanged, organs were ground, merry-go-rounds were in full swing, and had it not been that here and there ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... peasant began to be anxious. If it had been Kathi alone, it would have been easy enough to guess at the delay. She was gossiping with Valentine, and forgetting that she had father or sister, home or dinner. But Marianne was along, and she never flirted or loitered. What could be the matter? But—what was that coming up the road? ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the poor little woman's penance may be over, for though she makes no complaints, there is no doubt that it is a heavy one, as her thorough enjoyment of a book, and an hour's freedom from that little gossiping flow of plaintive ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Landlord's tale was one of arms, Only a tale of love is mine, Blending the human and divine, A tale of the Decameron, told In Palmieri's garden old, By Fiametta, laurel-crowned, While her companions lay around, And heard the intermingled sound Of airs that on their errands sped, And wild birds gossiping overhead, And lisp of leaves, and fountain's fall, And her own voice more sweet than all, Telling the tale, which, wanting these, Perchance may ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... overhanging it, and rowed a little in a very safe boat, and stood on the little bridges, and watched the rushing water, and then walked slowly beside the still stream higher up as the light began to fade, and surprised the water-rats feeding or gossiping on the banks—none of which things could they have done had Moses had the poor sense to retain ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... Mississippi is by no means of a curious disposition—malgre the statements of gossiping tourists—the unexplained and forlorn appearance I presented on my return was enough to excite a degree of interest even among the most apathetic people; and a number of the guests of the hotel had gathered in the lobby around the door of ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... great force of character and magnetic personality: "She was a great manager of her time and always contrived to create leisure hours for reading; for that kind of conversation which is properly styled gossiping she had the utmost contempt.... Questions in religion and morality, too weighty for table talk, were leisurely and coolly discussed [In ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... think I saw to-day when I arose at dawn? Blue Wrens and Yellow-tails dancing on the lawn! Bobbing here, and bowing there, gossiping away, And how I wished that you were there to see the ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... execution arrived. It followed of consequence, that, having unburdened her mind freely both to Deacon Enos and to Susan, she began to feel very much more comfortable and good-natured; and consequent upon that came divers reflections upon the many gossiping opportunities and comforts of a quilting; and then the intrusive little reflection, "What if she should go, after all; what harm would be done?" and then the inquiry, "Whether it was not her duty to go and look after ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the drum! Word from the Mahatma's come. Straight from Hoomi Koot & Co. Comes the note to us below, Full of joy and gossiping. Hoomi Koot is summering In the desert waste of Gobi, In a cottage of adobe. All the little Koots are well. Tommy Koot has learned to spell. Mrs. Koot is busy on Papers on "The Great Anon," Which by special cable soon, From her workshop in the ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... here,—it seldom does. A chance remark,—still the product of the hasty opinion,—made to some other woman regarding this lady, will give this other woman an unfavorable impression of the person, and if you could trace all the little gradations of the first unjust opinion, through all the stages of a gossiping community, you would be astonished at the growth, and the evil accomplished by the thought, born amidst the apparently innocent and commendable surroundings of an hour's sewing. If you educate your mind to create bad thoughts you will become ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... circles—'your country first and then the human race'—and, indeed, we get little news from home on the subjects which especially interest us. My sister sends me heaps of near things, but she is not in the magnetic circles, nor in the literary, nor even in the gossiping. Be good to us, you who stand near the fountains of life! Every cup of cold water is worth ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... affliction, which has baffled the best physicians in the country; but this ignorant farmer's wife considers that she knows all about it. She proceeds to discuss it with every one—sending your poor aunt almost into hysterics, setting the nurses to gossiping—God knows what else she has done, or what she will do, before she gets through. I don't pretend to know her ultimate purpose—blackmail, ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... too, ennui, a gloomy ennui, the ennui of seeing the same faces always in the same places, with their defects or their poses, that uniformity of fashionable gatherings which ends by establishing in Paris each winter a spiteful and gossiping provincialism more petty than ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... visited Block D. with Christopher, and lingered behind gossiping to Mrs. Sartin while the boy went to meet Sam, expected home to tea. Sam got nothing out of his mother anent that conversation except the information that Mr. Aston was "a real Christian gentleman, who knew what trouble was, and don't you make any mistake, but as 'ow Mr. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... outside and shouted the girls' names at the top of his voice, but he and Stella were bringing their last load before he saw them coming in at the yard gate. They had been down to the hind's cottage, gossiping ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... faces, and again begged her to try the refreshment of tea. But Fleda would not go down, so they served her up there with great zeal and tenderness. And then she waited patiently and watched the people in the cabin, as they sat gossiping in groups or stupefying in solitude; and thought how miserable a thing is existence where religion and refinement have not taught the mind to live in somewhat beyond ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... admirer of Fronto is AULUS GELLIUS (l25?-175 A.D.), author of the Noctes Atticae, in twenty books, a pleasant, gossiping work, written to occupy the leisure of his sons, and containing a vast amount of interesting details on literature and religious or antiquarian lore. Gellius is a man of small mind, but makes up by zeal for lack of power. He was trained in philosophy under Favorinus, in ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... 'I hate affectation, my dear. It's very grand, I dare say, for a young man's services to be in such request that he cannot find time to say his prayers. He'll find plenty of time for gossiping by ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... The thought of these hounds, these demons, coolly gossiping and speculating below stairs about Elsa, making her the subject of little sporting flutters to relieve the monotony of country ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... various were the suggestions and suppositions of the congregation touching the nature of the preacher's personal allusion to the jeweller, and some dozen of little gossiping stories got into circulation; but the truth did not find its way to the light. And not until the day on which he was leaving the station for a new field of labour, did the preacher himself understand the matter; and then he had it ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... it with the tears running down its face, and pretty well draggled and seedy; but when we started out with the sun shining against our cheeks and the hills looking so warm and lazy and the hollows kind of smiling to themselves over something, and the prairie-dogs gossiping worse than a ladies' self-culture meeting, I tell you, it all looked good to me, and ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... old grandfather, as white as a lun, who had lived a hundred years and a bit. The Soldier was gossiping with him, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston |
