"Smartness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about the warmth of the welcome. It was a characteristic Newfoundland crowd. Teamsters in working overalls, fishermen in great sea boots and oilskins, girls garbed in the smartness of New York, whose comely faces and beautiful complexions were of Ireland, though there was here and there a flash of French blood in the grace of their youth, little boys willing to defy the law and climb railings in order to get a "close up" photograph, youths ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... equal age, was a good specimen of the wide-awake New-England woman. Her face had a piquant smartness of expression, which might have been refined into a sharp edge, but for her natural hearty good-humor. Her head was smoothly formed, her face a full oval, her hair and eyes blond and blue in a strong light, but brown and steel-gray at other times, and her complexion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... sum which he claimed as being due to himself. I was much complimented by the gardener, who seemed to think that so much had been rescued out of the fire. I fancy that the ironmonger was the only gainer by my smartness. ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... well worn, he was entirely at his ease. Yet Elisabeth, who was an observant person, looked at him and wondered. He would have been more at home, she thought, out in the storms of life than in her uncle's drawing-rooms. Yet what was he? He lacked the trimness of the soldier; of the debonair smartness of the modern fighting man there was no trace whatsoever in his speech or appearance. The politicians who were likely to be present she knew. What was there left? An explorer, perhaps, or a colonial. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had heard—"ego verbum audivi"—and with greater abundance those he had said, including a great many puns. Thus it happens that certain chapters of his "De Nugis Curialium," a title that the work owes to the success of John of Salisbury's, are real novels, and have the smartness of such; others are real fabliaux, with all their coarseness; others are scenes of comedy, with dialogues, and indications of characters as in a play[286]; others again are anecdotes of the East, "quoddam mirabile," told on their return by pilgrims ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... you would forgive obvious evil. One could well pardon his unpleasant features, his strange voice, even his very foppery and grimace, if one found these disadvantages connected with living talent and any spark of genuine goodness. If there is nothing more than acquirement, smartness, and the affectation of philanthropy, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... thousand miles of the area in dispute were assigned to Great Britain and seven thousand to the United States. The award was not popular on either side, and the public seized eagerly on stories of concealed "Red Line" maps, stories of Yankee smartness or of British trickery. Webster, to win the assent of Maine, had exhibited in the Senate a map found in the French Archives and very damaging to the American claim. Later it appeared that the British Government also had found a map equally damaging to ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... which are seen, half-skulking from view, kindness, pity, and love;—Byron, with the clever Billingsgate of his earlier, and the more than Swiftian ferocity of his later satires;—and Moore, with the smartness, sparkle, tiny splendour, and minikin speed of his witty shafts. In comparison with even these masters of the art, the good Bishop does not dwindle; and he challenges precedence over most of them in the purpose, tact, and good sense which blend with the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... was raised, and he adopted, together with his regulation khaki uniform and helmet, a higher responsibility towards the army than did his brother who helped to run the transport. They have been well officered, they have been a lesson to all of us in the essential matters of discipline and smartness, they have done much of the dirty work entailed by guarding lines of communication, and now, when given their longed-for chance of actual fighting on the Rufigi, they have covered themselves with distinction. For my part, as ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... down upon them, came a strange apparition. With unsteady gait, his hand stretched out in caution before him and a watery smile upon his lips, came Uncle Buzz. An incongruously picturesque figure amidst smartness and glitter. His head was as sleek as ever and he had waxed the tips of his moustaches so that they stuck out jauntily as did the tips of his black bow tie. But his jacket was short and rusty and in need of pressing, of which fact he seemed blissfully unaware. For, having ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... in Jack's mind an impression which had begun to form, that the smart set, so-called, is not altogether lacking in, well,—smartness. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... hanged!" he said at last. "I know you, Nat, and I'm glad to my finger-tips that you've got it in the neck, in spite of all your smartness." ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... to be men of that remarkable intellect as have been usually supposed to be employed by the Court of St Petersburg. Count Orloff is stated to have but little influence, and to have lost his former activity. Prince Gortschakoff is clever in society, of easy conversation and some smartness in repartee. He is vain, a great talker, and indiscreet. It is difficult to keep him to the point. He flies about from one thing to another, and he is so loose in his talk, that the repetition of isolated phrases might lead to impressions of ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... should tumble upon the very ground and estate that had belonged to the English ancestors of one of them. It is written in a curiously tortured idiom, largely borrowed from the Bible, and all the characters are continually given to verbal smartness or peculiarity of one kind or another. The characters are not individualized. Each is a type, smoothed out by sentimental handling into something meant to be sympathetic. Moreover, the real difficulties of the narrative are consistently, though I believe unconsciously, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... heard a good deal of Mr. Chamberlain's public speaking when he first came to the front as a public man, and it was impossible not to be interested, edified, and oftentimes amused by the intelligence, point, and smartness of his speech. At the same time there was—especially in the earlier days of his public career—a certain setness and formality of style that suggested the idea that his speeches were anything but the inspiration of the moment, ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... what it is," he went on. "It's one of the latest samples of your smartness as a business man. I presume likely you know that Laban worked here in this office until three o'clock this mornin', ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... shedding some bitter tears for the loss of the dear country and friends I had left for ever, a slight tap at the door roused me from my painful reveries, and Mrs. C—- entered the room. Like most of the Canadian women, my friend was small of stature, slight and delicately formed, and dressed with the smartness and neatness so characteristic of the females of this continent, who, if they lack some of the accomplishments of English women, far surpass them in their taste in dress, their choice of colours, and the graceful and becoming ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Petrofiavlosk and signalled the Poltava and Askold—both of which, like the flagship, had steam up— to weigh at once and proceed to sea. This was done, with marvellous smartness, considering that the craft were Russian, and presently out they came, their funnels belching immense volumes of black smoke and the water leaping and foaming about their bows as they pounded after us at their utmost speed, which, after all, was ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... horse sense in his transactions gets along further and faster than the man who uses selfishness and smartness. ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... he seldom failed of performing. His scenes exhibit not much of humour, imagery, or passion; his personages are a kind of intellectual gladiators; every sentence is to ward or strike; the contest of smartness is never intermitted; his wit is a meteor playing to and fro with alternate coruscations. His comedies have, therefore, in some degree, the operation of tragedies; they surprise rather than divert, and raise admiration oftener than ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... two yaks, which I noticed had been marching with more than usual smartness, bolted while I was ordering Chanden Sing and Mansing to take down the loads, and went ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... few preferred suicide to the terrible existence on board. And although a Temeraire—as a man who had served in her was always afterward called—was now and then shown as an example of sailorlike smartness and activity, very few knew how dearly that one success had been purchased, nor by what terrible examples of agony and woe that solitary conversion ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... are destroyed by too much smartness. It gives the appearance of perpetual effort, stabs to the heart the nature that is in them, and wearies by the manner and not by the matter. It is the commonest fault in the world (as I have constant occasion to observe here), but it is a very great one. Just as you couldn't ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... busier than anybody else, and hurried and impatient in the highest degree. Every body expected a good picture in less time than was necessary to do a slovenly one. The artist saw that high finish was quite out of the question, and that all he could do was to dazzle by the facility, rapidity, and smartness of his execution. He had to content himself with catching the general expression, neglecting the more delicate details, and not attempting to attain the individuality and reality of nature. Besides this, every sitter had some fresh fancy. The ladies required that only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... their conversation had been interrupted,—and perhaps occasionally aided,—by the absurdities of the bird. How sweet it had been to be near him and to listen to his whispered voice! How great was the difference between him and that other young man, the smartness of whose apparel was now becoming peculiarly distasteful to her! Certainly it would have been better for her not to have gone to Cheltenham if it was to be her fate to become Mrs. Twentyman. She was ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... in Manchester some piece of sharp practice, about which people said, 'Ah, well, he is a clever fellow,' and all but condoned the immorality for the sake of the smartness? The lord and the steward belong to the same level of character; and vulpine sagacity, astuteness, and qualities which ensure success in material things seem to both of them to be of the highest value. 'The children of this world, in their generation'—but only in it—are ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... second time, Willems, I take you in hand. Mind it is the last. The second time; and the only difference between then and now is that you were bare-footed then and have boots now. In fourteen years. With all your smartness! A poor result ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... depict the war-worn dirty condition of his heroes, seeming to glean satisfaction from their grease-stained khaki. It must be admitted that the South African War is responsible for a somewhat changed condition of thought as regards cleanliness and its relation to smartness. No such abstraction disturbed the Devons; a Devon man was always clean. Individuals of some corps could be readily identified by their battered helmets or split boots; not so the Devons. No helmet badge was necessary for their identification, and the veriest tyro could not fail ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... herself, the Lucy Foster of Gloucester, was at your service. "And what do you think of her, people?" might just as well have been shot off her deck through a megaphone, for that was what her bearing and the unnatural smartness of her crew plainly ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... out of the water as a barn, and as weather-stained as a homeward-bound whaler. She slouched along like a crab, each roll of the hull showing streaks of marine grass and barnacles. There was little of man-o'-war "smartness" in her make-up, ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... of the needful smartness as ready as I could have wished, I tried to gain time by asking him what cottage he wanted to ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... would have succeeded, had it not been for the fact that the night was pitch-dark, and that another ship was trying that very venture with extinguished lights. And these two ships met, bow to bow, with such an energy of adventurous smartness, that both sharply sank. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... out our own damnation," said Ishmael, and then could have kicked himself for his own smartness that he heard go jarring through the night. He waited in a blush of panic for some reproof, such as "That was hardly worthy, was it?" But the Parson, ever nothing if not unexpected, did not administer it, though Ishmael could have sworn he felt ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... wax very brisk indeed, and would be kept up with a smartness rendering such an encounter as this quite tame. But the Billickin almost invariably made by far the higher score; and would come in with side hits of the most unexpected and extraordinary description, when she ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... and so nearly lost his balance that it took him all his time to parry the next stroke, which was put in with equal smartness and vigour. One blow, that might have brought down an elephant, sent Tomaso ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... were nowhere more evident than among the F.A.N.Y. Their esprit-de-corps, their gaiety, their discipline, their smartness and devotion when duty called were infectious, almost an inspiration to ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... his smartness and his quick-wittedness so long, until our pockets were empty. He thrust his hands in his pockets, as if challenging us—"Well, ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... so Strong made a brief exposition of his case—gently enough, but with considerable force—then and there, displaying the letter he carried by way of proof. He hardly expected to elicit anything but the usual laugh and comment on the Judge's smartness. But there was a marked seriousness of tone in the remarks when ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... be premised, the shyness was still in evidence, and the author became as silent and austere as the other members of the company. There was a youth, in trousers obviously pressed under his mattress, and a coat too short for him, whose air of shabby smartness brought tears to the eyes of the author, who had passed through very much the same purgatory years before. Indeed it was very much like a coffee room in purgatory, if the reader can imagine such a thing, for every one of the patrons had this distinguishing trait—they were shackled and tortured and ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... forth to put down May games and bear-baitings, so the tory McFingal goes out against the liberty-poles and bonfires of the patriots, but is tarred and feathered, and otherwise ill-entreated, and finally takes refuge in the camp of General Gage at Boston. The poem is written with smartness and vivacity, attains often to drollery and sometimes to genuine humor. It remains one of the best of American political satires, and unquestionably the most successful of the many imitations of Hudibras, whose manner it follows so closely that some of its lines, which have passed into ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... standing up, saw a rifle-muzzle pointing straight at his breast, from a corner of the crib. As quick as thought he sprang backward—but the ball was on its way. It tore across his breast, and took a piece of his breast bone. However, he had done well; the rifle had been aimed to kill, and only the smartness of his frontier training had saved his life. The children of the border days were brought up to act ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... show your smartness on me, young man. You are a new-comer, and I let you off this time. Answer me that way again, and you will remember it as long as you live." And the master glared at him like a savage bull about to toss ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... With the smartness characteristic of our navy the men were formed up in a line with their backs to the mission wall. The officer in command gave one look at them, and then almost ran up the ladder ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Margret gave no sign of interest. Once Fanny caught her looking at her with a queer saturnine glance, that made her feel all at once hot and uncomfortable, though she had felt pretty secure of her smartness before that. Margret's reception of Mrs. Jack's overtures did not satisfy that enterprising lady. When she had departed Mrs. Jack put her down as 'a flinty-hearted ould maid.' 'Her sort,' she declared, 'is ever an' ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... of the first cross-roads I saw a splendid and erect individual, flashing forth authority, gaiety, and utter smartness in the gloom. Impossible not to believe that he was the owner of all the adjacent ground, disguised as a cavalry officer ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... in the paper waxed ever greater. Banneker, with his swift appreciation of a hit, followed the lead with editorials; hired authors to write short stories glorifying the ennobled figure of the Salesman, his smartness, his strategy, his ruthless trickery, his success. And the salesmanhood of the nation, in trains, in hotel lobbies, at the breakfast table with its Patriot propped up flanking the egg and coffee, rose up to call him blessed and to add to ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... executed without reference to a model or study of nature. The use of the word in French dates from the reign of Louis XIV. and then denoted a lawyer who was master of "chicane." "Chic," in general use, now connotes "smartness," ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... the line at killing, he was still as full of mischief as a human being could well be. He had an impish turn of mind, and hastened to gratify the same. He took the two rifles and at once proceeded to draw the charges, then with a smartness and lightness of touch that was surprising, he possessed himself of their sheath-knives. He placed Antoine on its haunches between them, and threatened him with dire vengeance if he moved. He himself clambered on to a rock over their heads, at ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... swindle and gross breach of trust; many a defalcation, public and private; and enables many a knave to hold his head up with the best, who well deserves a halter: though it has not been without its retributive operation, for this smartness has done more in a few years to impair the public credit, and to cripple the public resources, than dull honesty, however rash, could have effected in a century. The merits of a broken speculation, or a bankruptcy, or of a successful scoundrel, are not gauged by its or his ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... their command, imagine that they can command obeisance and popularity. Woe betide other women who arouse their jealousy, for they will scandalise and blight the reputation of the purest of their sex in the suburban belief that the invention of scandal is the hallmark of smartness. ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... at its best and at its worst in these three years of war. Even the British press could not gainsay the resourcefulness and intelligence of the American soldier and sailor, though the phrase "Yankee smartness" conveyed also the unpleasant imputation of trickiness and moral laxity. Wherever conditions permitted a fair test, the superiority of the American gunner was incontestable. The greater losses of the British whenever the armies met on even terms proved the superior marksmanship of the American ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... years since I was first associated with the Royal Fusiliers, the regiment I have looked up to during all my service as a pattern of smartness and efficiency. I have served with you in Gibraltar, Egypt, and many stations in India; also at Aldershot, and on the Gallipoli Peninsula during the past year. There is no regiment in the service in which ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... people who have just crossed the road, and are following this happy couple down the street, are a fair specimen of another class of Sunday—pleasurers. There is a dapper smartness, struggling through very limited means, about the young man, which induces one to set him down at once as a junior clerk to a tradesman or attorney. The girl no one could possibly mistake. You may tell a young woman in the employment of a large dress- maker, at any ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... beamed and laughed over his smartness: he was conscious of having said something that, in shape at least, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... seems to have given a somewhat diplomatic character to his closing years, inasmuch as, while remaining a nonconformist, he had a good deal to do with proposed political- ecclesiastical compromises. He died on the 8th of May 1703, having preserved his "spirits and smartness'' to the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... with the dirtiest pack of cards that I ever happened to see. There was only one figure in the least military among all these twenty prisoners of war,—a man with a dark, intelligent, moustached face, wearing a shabby cotton uniform, which he had contrived to arrange with a degree of soldierly smartness, though it had evidently borne the brunt of a very filthy campaign. He stood erect, and talked freely with those who addressed him, telling them his place of residence, the number of his regiment, the circumstances of his capture, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... having given the unsuccessful experiment a fair trial, suddenly took in all his studding-sails again, reduced his canvas once more to a couple of reefs, and braced sharp up to the wind, as before. But here again we had the advantage of him through the superior smartness of our own crew, for he no sooner began to shorten sail than we did the same, handling our canvas so quickly that we were ready nearly five minutes before him, the result being that we had gained another half-mile upon him and had placed ourselves a good quarter ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... something fouler as far as mere filth, but nothing so incomparably mean and long. The brick blocks, of many shades of grimy red and fawn color, thin as paper, cheap as dishonest contractor and bad labor could make them, were bulging and lopping at every angle. Built by the half mile for a day's smartness, they were going to pieces rapidly. Here was no uniformity of cheapness, however, for every now and then little squat cottages with mouldy earth plots broke the line of more pretentious ugliness. The ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... women, and children, are fighting for their national existence, and their individual home and life, to have such evidences of Yankee smartness foisted upon them does not make for friendship. It inspired contempt. This unpleasant sentiment was strengthened by our failure to demand satisfaction for the lives lost on the Lusitania, while at the same time ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... a conjuring trick. It takes an experienced workman less than a minute to lay a sleeper and fix a rail on it. The workmen were in good form and really were working smartly and rapidly; one rascal in particular brought his hammer down with exceptional smartness on the head of the nail and drove it in at one blow, though the handle of the hammer was two yards or more in length and each nail was a foot long. Ivan Alexandritch watched the workmen a long time, was moved, and said to me with ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... before the Duke of Cambridge; at the Hyde Park Review, June, 1865, before the Prince of Wales; at the Midland Counties' Review at Derby, June, 1867; at the Royal Review at Windsor in 1868; and at every inspection since, the Birmingham corps has merited and received the highest praise for general smartness and efficiency; it is one of the crack corps of the kingdom, and at the present time (end of 1884) has not one inefficient member out of its 1,200 rank and file, but yet the town is not Liberal enough to support it properly. The first march-out of 720 to Sutton took place June 21, 1875, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... Frenchman. For that matter, we are not as a nation particularly fond of any foreigner, largely because we do not understand him, while the foreigner for his part is quite willing to return the compliment. He gives the Yankee credit for commercial smartness, which has built up America's great material prosperity; but he has the utmost contempt for our acquaintance with art, and no profound respect ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... my fellow-prisoners, and felt my anger rise, and choked upon tears, to behold them thus parodied. The more part, as I have said, were peasants, somewhat bettered perhaps by the drill- sergeant, but for all that ungainly, loutish fellows, with no more than a mere barrack-room smartness of address: indeed, you could have seen our army nowhere more discreditably represented than in this Castle of Edinburgh. And I used to see myself in fancy, and blush. It seemed that my more elegant carriage would but ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yesterday afternoon inspecting my transport. This latter, by-the-by, has been very favourably reported on as the best looked after in the division (I am told). It is flattering, but one never knows! My Brigadier also complimented me on the smartness of my guards at Brigade Headquarters. If you saw the poor dears crawling out of the trenches, caked with mud and numbed with wet and cold, you could not understand how they could turn themselves out fairly decently twenty-four hours ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... aesthetic point of view. It seemed to me, moreover, that the English tailor had not done so much as he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully exaggerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their garments; he had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out of his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned to think that this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren among ourselves, knowing how to dress his ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 4. Some vehemency, some smartness and sharpness of speech may sometimes be used in defence of truth, and impugning errors of bad consequence; especially when it concerneth the interest of truth, that the reputation and authority of its adversaries should somewhat be abased or abated. If by partial opinion or reverence ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... executed at attention and the ceremonies are disciplinary exercises designed to teach precise and soldierly movement, and to inculcate that prompt and subconscious obedience which is essential to proper military control. To this end, smartness and precision should be exacted in the execution of every detail. Such drills should be ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... were athletic, and their well-cut clothes, which fitted somewhat tightly, showed their finely developed but rather lean figures. They had a virile, decided look, and an ease of manner that indicated perfect self-confidence. Indeed, some were marked by an air of smartness that was half aggressive. A large number were employed at the Hulton factory, but there were brown-faced farmers and miners from the bush, as well as storekeepers ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... drills of a ship-of-war could be brought. Her commander, Captain Creighton, had the reputation of being the greatest martinet in the navy; and being seconded by a singularly efficient and active set of officers, the ship was made to realize the extreme ideal of a naval officer of that day in smartness, order, and spotless cleanliness.[B] "But," says Farragut, "all this was accomplished at the sacrifice of the comfort of every one on board. My experience in the matter, instead of making me a proselyte to the doctrine ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... sort of Delilah, really, with her flushed face, her too elaborately coiffured hair with its ugly ornament, her ready-made evening dress with its cheap attempts at smartness, her cleaned gloves, indifferent shoes. But ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Miss Summers gave her quite good-sized pieces of material, and there were always scraps to be gathered and utilized. And Sally was enabled to dress carefully. She became the smartest of the girls in the room, for she had a natural sense of smartness. The other girls did not like her, but they all envied her and admired her. It was not that she was unpopular; but that they felt in her the hard determination to get on, and were resentful of her manifest ability to achieve what she meant ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... noting the glance of surprise with which the boys had viewed them. "But in a country like this, with such great heat and no real occasion for more than appearances, it is hopeless to expect them to keep up the smartness which would, at home, be necessary. The natives are very docile and quiet, and give us no trouble whatever; and were it not for interference from Ternate, where the people are of a much more warlike nature, the guard which ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... they can't get fairly," said Lucy, with the smartness of a forward child; and Sylvester, laughing heartily, continued, "What would General Cromwell say to such a nest of ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... presented rather a shabby, or, at least, rusty appearance. His felt hat was not so black as it had been; his coat was creased and soiled; his boots needed a blacking. He swung a cane as he stumped along, and there was a sort of faded smartness in his bearing and a knowingness in his grim old visage, indicating some incongruous familiarity with the manners of the great world. He came to a halt in front of the house, and, after quizzing it for a moment, went up the steps and beat ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... the redundancy by which children hope in heaping words together to express accumulation of emotion. Du Maurier's children never make the nasty pert answers upon which, for their nearly impossible but always vulgar smartness, the providers of jokes about children for the comic papers generally depend. He is simply going on with his "novel"—The Tale of the House it might be called—when he affords us realistic glimpses ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... walk through the woods and glens on foot. They took the advice, and about ten miles from Dunkeld came upon a young lady, the daughter of a neighbouring proprietor, reading a novel under a tree. They entered into conversation with her, and Windham was so much struck with her smartness and talent that though he was obliged at the time, as he said, most reluctantly to leave her, he, three years afterwards, came to Sinclair in the House of Commons and said to him, "I have never been able to get this beautiful mountain nymph out of my mind, and I wish you ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... house, the long stretches of dingy streets, then cleaner ones, with their old and comfortable houses; the park, with its bare trees and shrubs, and finally the Avenue, with its smooth paving and pretentious homes, its hurrying cars of luxurious make, its air of conscious smartness. As contrast to my present home it ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... half-hearted, dilatory, aggravating way that sailors—and some shore people, too for that matter—know well how to put on when setting to a task that runs against their grain and which they do not relish; though they can be spry enough, and with ten times the smartness of any landsmen, when cheerfully disposed for the work they have in hand, or in the face of some real emergency or imminent peril, forgetting then their past grievances, and buckling to the job right manfully, ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... compliments before the subject with which he intends to deal is incidentally approached in conversation, and then more hours and days and weeks, even months have to elapse before he can make up his mind what to do. Our haste, and what we consider smartness in business, are looked upon by the Persian as quite an acute form of lunacy,—and really, when one is thrown much in contact with such delightful placidity, almost torpor, and looks back upon one's hard race for a living and one's struggle ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... assume dignity, and mingle raillery with it, and be able to laugh with her, and sometimes at her, she would not make him her sport: she would find somebody else: A butt she must have to shoot at: but I am afraid he will be too sensible of her smartness: and she will have her jest, let who will suffer ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... Sergeant Major was absent sick, and during part of the time there were but four sergeants remaining with the Battalion; but the young men specially selected to fill the vacancies, responded to the call, accepted all their responsibilities, and never was the standard of discipline or smartness higher in the Battalion. Of the many awards given to the Battalion I doubt if any were better deserved than the D.S.O. gained by the Adjutant, and the two Military Crosses awarded in succession to our two Regimental Sergeant-Majors. To these ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... she called herself, was a rosy-cheeked, black-haired, pert girl of about eighteen, who under ordinary circumstances would have found herself able to answer, with a due degree of smartness, any question which might have been addressed to her. But fright will sometimes cower the stoutest heart, and Molly, standing before the coroner at this juncture, presented anything but a reckless appearance, her naturally ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... young feller, much as I believe in you and Gus, seein' your smartness, I got to doubt all that there bunk you give them young people 'bout that there what you call radier. I been borned a long time—goin' on to seventy year now,—an' I seen all sorts of contraptions like reapers an' binders, ridin' plows, typewritin'-machines, telephones, phonygraphs, ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... the square of spectators were paraded about two thousand Girl Guides. It delighted the eye to see the companies march with precision and smartness, while the ear was charmed and the marital spirit stirred by the music of the pipes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... almost constant smile. Her hands were slender, soft, and young. They were not given to quick movements. Now they hung touching the blue-gray of her morning-dress, which, with ruffles of lace at collar and wrists, had the fresh smartness ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... I watched the orderlies who accompany these ambulances handling about forty English wounded, transferring them from the automobiles to the reception hall, and the smartness and intelligence with which the members of each crew worked together was like that of a champion polo team. The editor of a London paper, who was in Paris investigating English hospital conditions, witnessed the ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... they would catch Quacker. Now old Granny Fox is very wise in the ways of the Great World, and if Reddy could have known what was going on in her mind as she led the way to the Big River, he might not have felt quite so sure of his own smartness. Granny was doing some ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... personality. No one seeing her two or three times could have given any very accurate description of her. Lady Harriet had more than once described her as a negligible quantity. But Lady Harriet systematically neglected everyone who had no pretensions to smartness. She detested ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... departed in his precise, methodical manner, picking his way rather mincingly among the inequalities of the trail. In spite of the worn and wrinkled condition of his garments, they retained something of a city hang and smartness that sharply differentiated their wearer from even the well-dressed citizens of a smaller town. They seemed to match the refined, shrewd, but cold intelligence of his ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... of absurdly impossible hats. She bought one at last, to realise immediately as she left the shop that she would never persuade herself to wear it because she felt that it gave her an air of Gerty's "smartness" which sat like an impertinence upon her own individual charm. Glancing at her watch she found that only two hours had gone since she left the house, and turning up the street she walked on with a step which seemed striving to match in ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... comparisons—had lighted upon shoulders amply competent to bear it. But though he could manage a fight, when need was, Newman heartily disliked the business; his four years in the army had left him with an angry, bitter sense of the waste of precious things—life and time and money and "smartness" and the early freshness of purpose; and he had addressed himself to the pursuits of peace with passionate zest and energy. He was of course as penniless when he plucked off his shoulder-straps as when he put them on, and the only capital at his disposal was his ...
— The American • Henry James
... bottling them, setting them, cataloguing them, making no mistake about them, and arranging them neatly in museums for the dust to settle on. Organized alertness of that sort is only less depressing than the smartness of those Italians who pounced so promptly on the journalistic possibilities of the movement as a means of self-advertisement. All I ask for in the public is a little more intelligence and sensibility, and a more critical attitude. ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... were well under weigh, and I had done admiring the cutter's trim fittings and the smartness of her men, I turned to consider the condition of my unfortunate companions. Two of them were badly wounded, and they were ordered to be taken below to have their wounds dressed, whilst the others were now being placed in irons. They ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... teeth, and a touch of rouge on each cheek-bone. To Aunt William's extreme annoyance Lady Virginia was dressed to-day in a strange medley of the artistic style combined oddly with a rather wild attempt at Parisian smartness. That is to say, in her cloak and furs she looked almost like an outside coloured plate on the cover of Paris Fashions; while when she threw it open one could see that she wore a limp crepe de chine Empire gown of an undecided mauve, with a waist under the arms and puffed sleeves. On her head ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... High-way are grinning in applause of the ingenious Rogue that gave him the Tip, and the Folly of him who had not Eyes all round his Head to prevent receiving it. These things arise from a general Affectation of Smartness, Wit, and Courage. Wycherly somewhere [2] rallies the Pretensions this Way, by making a Fellow say, Red Breeches are a certain Sign of Valour; and Otway makes a Man, to boast his Agility, trip up a Beggar on Crutches [3]. From such Hints I beg a Speculation ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Lyly's plays," writes Dr. Landmann, "that Shakespeare owes so much in the liveliness of his dialogues, in smartness of expression, and especially in that predilection for witticisms, quibbles, and playing upon words which he shows in his comedies as well as in his tragedies." There follows a dissertation on the affected styles of Guevara and Gongora, of the Pleiade in ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... spirit of the scene, if a smart officer, has never a better opportunity for showing his smartness than when a ship is fitting for sea; all the burthen of the work then falls upon his shoulders, for he has to be here and there and everywhere, directing a hundred different jobs at one and ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... But he hasn't troubled the Pytchley for the last eight years. There was a time when he was the last thing in smartness in the German court—officer in the Guards, ancient family, rich, darned clever—all the fixings. Kaiser liked him, and it's easy to see why. I guess a man who had as many personalities as the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... all you have to think about is to do your duty with smartness, keep sober, and to avoid doing anything wrong, and with your education, which I wish I had, you ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... was wrong for him also. What had he to do with Chelsea? Chelsea was a parish; it was not the world. He had been gravely disappointed in Chelsea. Marguerite had no shimmer of romance. She was homely. And she was content with her sphere. And she was not elegant; she had no kind of smartness; who would look twice at her? And she was unjust, she was unfair. She had lacerated his highly sensitive pride. She had dealt his conceit a frightful wound. He would not think ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... an abundant stock of bear's grease to keep it in order. His face was freckled and expressionless. His eyebrows and eyelashes were of the same faded color. He was dressed, however, with some pretensions to smartness. He wore a blue necktie, of large dimensions, fastened by an enormous breast-pin, which, in its already tarnished splendor, suggested strong doubts as to the apparent ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... be employed? These men would naturally feel angry at being deprived of what they had enjoyed so long, and prized. This now unemployed time would give them ample opportunity for studying means of revenge, and some would no doubt turn their acumen in that direction. If a prisoner had any smartness, he would feel, from the circumstances, almost impelled to give vent to mischief, and thereby make as much trouble ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... Willmers take their departure. In a humorous monologue Gertrude decides to accept the Burgomaster. She is interrupted in her soliloquy by Lampe, the Beadle, who is a regular old Paul Pry, and boasts to the widow of his smartness and sagacity. According to himself he can ferret out anything, or any one, from a defrauder of the revenue to a thief, an anarchist or a murderer. Then he goes on to say that he intended to serve notice of distraint on Frau Willmers, but had found her door locked. Suddenly he catches sight ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... had no ambition to be "on time" and up-to-date, to electrify either himself or his contemporaries by an exhibition of mental smartness. He merely desired, earnestly yet humbly, to be given grace to find the road—however archaic in the eyes of the modern world that road might be—which leads to the light on the far horizon and beyond to the presence of God. The more he meditated ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... our parts,—a strange thing," Remarked a tall fellow With bushy black whiskers. 70 (He wore a round hat With a badge, a red waistcoat With ten shining buttons, And stout homespun breeches. His legs, to contrast With the smartness above them, Were tied up in rags! There are trees very like him, From which a small shepherd Has stripped all the bark off 80 Below, while above Not a scratch can be noticed! And surely no raven Would scorn such a ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... more frequently applied to the Anglo-Saxon than the word "dull." The American mind has been accused of ignorance, superficiality, levity, commonplaceness, and dozens of other defects, but "dulness" is not one of them. "Smartness," rather, is the preferred epithet of derogation; or, to rise a little in the scale of valuation, it is the word "cleverness," used with that lurking contempt for cleverness which is truly English and which ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... about him, seeming to feel that people might be watching him and trying to detect something. This conscious expression, since it was as far as possible from boyish mirthfulness, was usually attributed to insolence or "smartness." ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... turning of sentiment into satire as the following is rather jarring, and is a good specimen of that "laborious smartness," as Mr. R.H. Hutton justly calls it, which is found in ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... consequences without too much preaching. The moral should not be dragged in, the day of the sugar-coated pill in literature is past. The right books are those that teach in a straightforward way that character is better than superficial smartness, that success does not always mean the accumulation of a large amount of money and that it is not a matter of luck but that it depends upon perseverance in faithful work; books which develop the child's sympathies ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... with large shady sun helmets; and because for a long time he had not seen anything much but slipshod garments among women riders, or exceedingly warm-looking correct home attire, he appreciated their cool smartness. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page |
