"Prim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... belonged to her sex a ludicrous exaggeration of its weaknesses. But meanwhile, they overlook the fact, that not the woman Elizabeth, but the Virgin-queen, the royal heroine, is the theme of admiration. Not the petty virtues, the pretty sensibilities, the cheap charity, the prim decorum, which modern flatterers dwell upon, degrading royalty, while they palaver its possessor, but Britannia's sacred majesty, enshrined in chaste and lofty womanhood. Our ancestors paid their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... so," said Valerie demurely. Her little heart was beating confidently again and she seated herself beside Helene d'Enver in the prim circle of delegates intent upon their chairman, who was calling the ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... yet tried—to Love. Let it be remembered that the thought has the cast of a strictly pessimist quietism—that the style aims, if it aims at any single thing, at the reproduction of the simpler side of classicalism, at an almost prim and quakerish elegance, a sort of childlike grace. There is, however, by no means any great austerity in the tone: on the contrary, the ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... trim, having a square of green lawn in front and another in back enclosed with a rail fence, gay flowers in the corners, rubber plants in pots on the porch, and grape arbor down one side of the back yard. Inside, rust-colored mohair overstuffed chairs and davenport look prim with white, crocheted doilies, a big clock with weights stands in one corner on an ornately carved table, and several enlarged framed photographs hang on the wall. The other two rooms are the combined ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... old gardens, with their formal walks and prim parterres; I like also the company by which they are chiefly frequented, consisting of old people and ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... failed to steal about her waist, nor had he dared to touch his lips to hers, beneath the hooded shelter of the great buffalo robe which curled protectingly around them. He would as soon have dared such familiarity with the minister's maiden sister, aged forty-two and prim as a Bible book-mark. Yet Jennie was just the sort of girl whom a cold-blooded expert must have declared as really meriting a kiss, when prudent and fairly practicable for the kisser and kissee, and as possessing just ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... soul sickening under the crushing truth of what Dill in his prim grammatical way was saying, did not answer at all. He was picking blindly, mechanically at the splinter, his face shaded by his worn, gray hat; and he was thinking irrelevantly how a condemned man must feel when they come to him in his cell and in ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... esteeming it a sin. Some of these were in town, coming in on horseback or in their white-covered wagons, and bringing wife or daughter. The men were long-bearded and venerable of aspect; the women had peaceful Quaker faces, framed by the prim close bonnet of their peculiar garb. These quiet folk, too, were anxious-eyed. They would not resist evil, but their homes and barns were dear ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Street, and thence by cab, with her two boxes, to Rutland Street, Hampstead Road—an uphill little street of small houses. When the cab stopped, the door of the house she sought at once opened, and on the threshold appeared a short, prim, plain-featured girl, ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... Hannah More as a prim maiden lady of the conventional type, with a pious and literary turn of mind, will be obliged to change their views should they read Mrs. Walford's admirable sketch of the authoress of Percy. Hannah More was a brilliant wit, a femme d'esprit, passionately fond of ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... family to housekeeping. She was very fond of her dolls. The mother instinct in her was developed very early. She had wax dolls and china dolls and rag dolls. Mrs. Marsden painted features on the rag dolls, and they looked very natural. There was Miss Prim and Miss Slim, Mrs. Jolly and Mrs. Folly, Miss Snappy and Miss Happy, named from their different expressions. Roberta had the quaintest way of talking to her dolls. She had caught some of ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... went out in the shed and came back with a round, low basket in which lay two black kittens, which she placed in Anne's lap saying: "There, little girls and little kittens always like each other; so you can have Pert and Prim for your own while you stay ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... hour the young music-master arrived in Standon Square. It was for the last time, as Judith had said. Miss Crawford looked older, and Miss Crawford's cap looked newer, than either had ever done before. She put her weak little hand into Bertie's, and said some prim, kindly words about the satisfaction his lessons had given, the progress his pupils had made and the confidence she felt in his sister and himself. As she spoke she was sure he was gratified, for the color mounted to his face. Suddenly she stopped in the midst of her neatly-worded sentences. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... could see, in his shirt sleeves, cigar in mouth, bent over his microscope: but instead of the unexpected prim voice, he heard a very gay and arch one answer, "Is that a proper way in which to come peeping into an old bachelor's sanctuary, ma'am? Go away this moment, till I make ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... liked the rector, because he had discovered that, notwithstanding his rather prim exterior and most approved clerical drawl, he was nevertheless a man of the world. In the pulpit he preached forgiveness, and, unlike many country rectors and their wives, was broad-minded enough ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... of the Right Wing with the First Division. He moved from camp at 6 A.M. on the Edmondson pike, on which he was ordered to move to Prim's blacksmith shop, from whence he was to march direct on a country road to Nolinsville. The Third Division under Sheridan moved on the Nolinsville pike, followed by the Second under Johnson. The advance of ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... a very lovely vignette, taken when she was joyous and round-faced, and with the curls falling about her cheeks and neck, instead of the prim little widow's cap she wore now. And instead of the still, self-contained, suffering look, there was great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... almost smothered under a shower of dust. This was a fatal movement for him, for his eyes received part of the libation destined for his hair. He closed them with a disagreeable sensation, after seeing Mademoiselle Reine Gobillot's fresh, chubby face, her figure prim beyond measure in a lilac-and-green plaid gingham dress, and carrying a basket on her arm, a necessary burden to maidens of a certain class ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... lawns, no twisted yews, no weeping willows; the few fir trees hold themselves stiffly up, as though in pride at this triumph of the vegetable over the animal; and the great bushes of faded geranium only throw into relief the regular lines of limestone mounds, each with its prim wooden cross of advertisement. Always an ugly and a dreary place, it was, when I saw it a few days after the relief, more dreary than ever; for the sun, whose presence makes the difference of a season in this bare ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... and trim, You begin your steps demurely— There's a spirit almost prim In the feet that move so surely, So discreetly, to the chime Of the music that ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... so doggone good himself that he has to pry into other people's business and get them in wrong. It beats me how he ever got to be a captain—a prim old ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... detected the remains of its once gorgeous embellishment in the faint forms of faded deities and the traces of murky gilding. The walls of this apartment were crowded with pictures, arranged, however, with little regard to taste, effect, or style. A sprawling copy of Titian's Venus flanked a somewhat prim peeress by Hoppner; a landscape that smacked of Gainsborough was the companion of a dauby moonlight, that must have figured in the last exhibition; and insipid Roman matrons by Hamilton, and stiff English heroes by Northcote, contrasted with a vast quantity of second-rate ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Tell me, ye prim adepts in Scandal's school, Who rail by precept, and detract by rule, Lives there no character, so tried, so known, So deck'd with grace, and so unlike your own, That even you assist her fame to raise, ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... down to the river are all the more delightful as you seem to come upon them by surprise. The general aspect of the high ground above the river is that of a highly cultivated undulating country with prim and rather uninteresting-looking clusters of white-washed cottages gathered round the church-tower with its quaint bulbous top-hamper which, to my thinking, recalls the Dresden china Zwiebel Muster of one's ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... comment, in offering to the Commander-in-Chief his services as second in command of the army. He did right. Battalions and brigades could hardly have strengthened the hands of the general, and invigorated the spirits of the troops, so much as the active accession of Hardinge. Prim etiquette may pucker its thin lips, and solemn discretion knit its ponderous brows; but neither discipline nor prudence ran any risk of being injured or affronted by the veteran of the Peninsula. What the exigency required, he knew; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Miss Walbrook was not prim. She knew too much of the world to be easily shocked, in the old conventional sense. Besides, her Bleary Street work had brought her into contact with girls who had gone to the bad, and she had not found them different from other girls. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... vulgar. You can't sell a sweet-scented, prim old-maidy newspaper to enough people to pay for the z's in one font of type. People are vulgar. Don't forget that. And you've got to make a newspaper to suit them. Lesson ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... night but I am afraid mother will tell him when she sees him to-day. It would not surprise me if they bury the hatchet and join hands and try to make a good little girl out of me. I think he is quite a prim young man. He spent the night at Striker's and I saw him there. I must say he is good-looking. He is so good-looking that nobody would ever suspect that he is related to me." She signed herself, "Your loving and devoted and ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... not expect to invade the Castle in search of the crumb of comfort he so ardently desired; he did not, however, dream that Vos Engo would deny him the privilege of staring at a certain window from a rather prim retreat in a far corner ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... any other plans for me to-morrow morning?" inquired Miss Welland in a prim and social tone, belied by the dancing light in ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... forsaken you and you've no friend left to you. It's often the case that you know your true friends in trouble," she continued sententiously. "And if only you could find the best Friend of all now when you need Him most." Her prim phrasing changed to earnestness. "There was a woman once that they dragged out in front of everybody for evil-doing. But He wouldn't have it. He put them to silence, and then when she was all alone with Him He showed her how tender He was to them that do wrong. If you only knew Him and ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... laid aside her fan, lifted her mantilla from her head with both hands, and, drawing it around her shoulders and under her lifted chin, had crossed it over her bosom with a certain prim, automatic gesture, as if it had been the starched kerchief of some remote Puritan ancestress. With her arms still unconsciously crossed, she stooped rigidly, picked up her fan with three fingers, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... cried, impatiently, "I am to stay there for at least six weeks, and I know nothing about them, not what age they are, nor if they are tall or short, jolly or prim, pretty, or ugly, not even ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... spare him. "Do you think you can make your child and hers into a prim miss, to sit at home and work embroidery?" she demanded. "Upon my word, if I were a boy I believe you'd suggest putting me ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... triumphantly to see her husband die. He had played the widower in sight of all Edinburgh, and now it would be seen how great was the lie, and nobody could dispute that the widowhood was hers. She hoped that he would turn his prim figure and formal face her way, that she might make him, too, an easy bow, showing how she despised the hypocrite, and how completely he had failed in breaking her spirit. She hoped she should be in good looks at that time, not owning the power of her enemies by looking worn and haggard. ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... she is putting Primrose to bed. Oh, it's so delicious to see Prim in her bath,' said Mysie, with a little skip. 'Make haste, or we ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in a little stiff salon with glass doors, prim furniture, and an elaborately ornamental French clock. It was silent, of course. One wonders sometimes whether ornamental French Ormolu clocks have any works, or are solid throughout. For no one has ever seen one ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... seniors, the lower ones were accurately divided into living, dining and reception rooms. In one wing were the model recitation rooms and Miss Woodhull's office; in another the undergraduate's rooms. Nor had the grounds been overlooked. They were very trim, very prim, very perfectly kept and made one realize this at every turn. It also made one wonder how the old owner would feel could he return from his nameless grave at Appomatox and be obliged to pace along the faultless walks where formerly he had romped with his children across the velvety ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... from some unnamed medieval writer; she and her father had a discussion as to whom it could be, Raeburn maintaining that it was Thomas a Kempis. Wishing to verify it, Erica went to a bookseller's and asked for the "Imitation of Christ." A rather prim-looking dame presided behind ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... tight and tubby, with his chest out and his head back, went the prim figure of Mr. May, reminding one of a consequential bird of the smaller species. His plumbago-grey suit fitted exactly—save that it was perhaps a little tight. The jacket and waistcoat were bound with silk ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... day Fanny Hutton Her last dress has put on; Her fine lessons forgotten, She died, as the dunce died: And prim Betsy Chambers, Decay'd in her members, No longer remembers Things, as she ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... lawn. "I like her," she answered, "but she is funny. I suppose it is because she hasn't gone much to school. She isn't like Charlotte, or Katherine, or me. She isn't prim, and yet—it is queer, father, but she makes me feel as I do when I am ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... as other ventures, brought him, so that he might move out Hammersmith way where William Mortis and Cobden Sanderson have lived in our day, and have a fine house wherein to receive those same lady callers, who came in increasing flocks to his impromptu court where sat the prim, cherub-faced, elderly little printer. It is all very quaint, like a Watteau painting or a bit of Dresden china, as we look back upon it through the time-mists of a century and ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... dinner. I scarcely think that the Spanish question was discussed at table. If the Duke of Gramont[35] labors to adduce proof that I did not stand aloof from and averse to the Spanish proposal, I find no reason to contradict him. I can no longer recall the text of my letter to Marshal Prim, which the Duke has heard mentioned; if I drew it up myself, about which I am equally uncertain, I should hardly have called the Hohenzollern candidature "une excellente chose": the expression is not natural to me. That I regarded it as "opportune," not "a un moment donne," ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... church of my boyhood and the tall dyspeptic preacher looming above the pulpit, the peculiar way the light came through the coarse colour of the windows, the barrenness and stiffness of the great empty room, the raw girders overhead, the prim choir. There was something in that preacher, gaunt, worn, sodden though he appeared: a spark somewhere, a little flame, mostly smothered by the gray dreariness of his surroundings, and yet blazing up ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... my first visit to the scene of the crime—a high, dingy, narrow-chested house, prim, formal, and solid, like the century which gave it birth. Lestrade's bulldog features gazed out at us from the front window, and he greeted us warmly when a big constable had opened the door and let us in. The room into which we were shown was that ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Iuuenal noteth excellentlie well in these words, [Sidenote: Iuuen. sat 13.] Credebant hoc grande nefas, & morte piandum, Si iuuenis vetulo non assurrexerat, & si Barbato cuicunq; puer, lict ipse videret Plura domi farra, & maioris glandis aceruos, Tam venerabile erat prcedere quattuor annis, Primq; par ade ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... next moment an exceedingly astonished, irate cat was taking an unusual amount of exercise in the prim little garden, urged cheerily on by a small, curly dog, whose three legs seemed quite as effective as most dogs' four. While down the path from the house came Miss Jane and Miss Susan, also stout, elderly, and unaddicted to overmuch ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... maiden aunt, who had never before been at the Black Islands, and whom Ormond had never seen, was to accompany Dora on her return to Corny Castle: our young hero had settled it in his head that this aunt must be something like Aunt Ellenor in Sir Charles Grandison; a stiff-backed, prim, precise, old-fashioned looking aunt. Never was man's astonishment more visible in his countenance than was that of Harry Ormond on the first sight of Dora's aunt. His surprise was so great as to preclude the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... nursery till it was finished. Lucy came, with her books, to sit with me. She always follows like my shadow. After a while Mrs. Embury called. I hesitated a little about trusting the child to Lucy's care, for though her prim ways have given her the reputation of being wise beyond her years, I observe that she is apt to get into trouble which a quick-witted child would either avoid or jump out of in a twinkling. However, children are often left to much younger girls, so, with many cautions, I went down, resolving ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... opened softly and a charming vision appeared, to wit, Mistress Betty Carrington, rosy from sleep and hastily clad in a dressing-gown of sombre silk. Her little white feet were bare, and her dark hair had escaped from its prim, white night coif. She started when she saw a visitor, and her feet drew demurely back under the hem of her gown, while her hands went up to her disheveled hair; but a second glance showing her his quality, she recovered her composure and spoke to her ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... the noise of the sentry, on the quarter-deck below him, grounding arms, turned the current of his thoughts. A thin, tall, soldier-like man, with a cold blue eye, and prim features, came out of the cuddy below, handing out a fair-haired, affected, mincing lady, of middle age. Captain Vickers, of Mr. Frere's regiment, ordered for service in Van Diemen's Land, was bringing his lady on deck to ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... may roses divinely blow, And wine-dark pansies charm By the prim box path where I felt the glow Of her dimpled, trusting arm, And the sweep of her silk as she turned and smiled A smile as pure as her pearls; The breeze was in love with the darling Child, As it ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... to have a look at her stock and to buy what we wanted, and the prim dame spared me the rest of ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... to think otherwise. Nevertheless, it was just such men as Hurd who tended to keep the Church of the eighteenth century in its apathetic state. Hurd was a religious-minded man; but his religion was characterised by a cold, prim propriety which was not calculated to commend it to men at large. Like his friend Warburton, he could see nothing but folly and fanatical madness in the great evangelical revival which was going on around him, and which he seems to have thought would soon be stamped out. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... passionate discussion under Miss Hatchard's roof. The incentive to the celebration had come rather from those who had left North Dormer than from those who had been obliged to stay there, and there was some difficulty in rousing the village to the proper state of enthusiasm. But Miss Hatchard's pale prim drawing-room was the centre of constant comings and goings from Hepburn, Nettleton, Springfield and even more distant cities; and whenever a visitor arrived he was led across the hall, and treated to a glimpse of the group of girls deep ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... the easy-going, lavish house, and Meg, with pretty frocks, abundant leisure and deliriously prim Ribston-Hallish manners, came in for her full share ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... for her age, nor did she seem in the least inclined to wish to be admired, nor ever to have been a flirt. The word 'fast', for example, would have been quite grotesque as associated with her, though she was by no means prudish as to subjects of conversation, nor prim in the middle-class way. Yet somehow it would not have seemed incongruous or surprising if one had found out that there was even now some romance in her life. But, doubtless, the most striking thing about her—and what made her popular—was her intense interest in other people. ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... means to be just," defended Dorothy. "She has rather prim ideas about things, but she's a stickler for principle. I am glad she's over her prejudice ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... of three letters. In all the messages sent him by the schoolma'am, it was the precise, school-grammar wording of them which had irritated him most and impressed him insensibly with the belief that she was too prim to be quite human. The Happy Family had felt all along that they were artists in that line, and they knew that the precise sentences ever carried conviction of their truth. Weary mopped his perspiring face upon a white silk handkerchief ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... of discipline had never been known before in our prim household, where there was a place for everything, and everything ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... all the morning), I, sauntering upon the sidewalk, see her pass, I pay homage to her beauty, and her lover can do no more; and if, perchance, my garments—which must seem quaint to her, with their shining knees and carefully brushed elbows; my white cravat, careless, yet prim; my meditative movement, as I put my stick under my arm to pare an apple, and not, I hope, this time to fall into the street,—should remind her, in her spring of youth, and beauty, and love, that there are age, and care, and poverty, also; then, perhaps, the good fortune ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... Apart from this valuable knowledge, he was a cunning and crafty lawyer, picked in the present case to supply the brains to Sir Herbert Templewood's brilliance, and do the jackal work which the lion disdained. The pair were supported by a Crown Solicitor well versed in precedents—a little prim figure of a man who sat with so many volumes of judicial decisions and reports of test cases piled in front of him that only the upper portion of his grey head was ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... lore of the woods, the ways of "wild critters," and the most efficacious means both to woo and kill them. Prim spinsters eye him acridly, as a man given over to "shif'less" ways, and wives set him up, like a lurid guidepost, before husbands prone to lapse from domestic thrift; but the dogs smile at him, and children, for whom he is ever ready to make kite or dory, though ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... no dryad, no distressed pagan clad maid we saw as we passed back into the room of the pool. In knickerbockers and short skirt, prim and self-possessed, rebellious curls held severely in place by close-fitting cap and slender feet stoutly shod, Ruth hovered over the steaming kettle swung above the ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... but, two years later, left Italy to ascend the Spanish throne, his reluctance to accept the invitation of the Cortes having been overridden by the Italian cabinet. On the 16th of November 1870 he was proclaimed king of Spain by the Cortes; but, before he could arrive at Madrid, Marshal Prim, chief promoter of his candidature, was assassinated. Undeterred by rumours of a plot against his own life, Amedeo entered Madrid alone, riding at some distance from his suite to the church where Marshal Prim's body lay in state. His efforts as constitutional ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in the background of Hogarth's print of Morning where the prim maiden lady, walking to church, is soured with seeing two fuddled beaux from King's Coffee-house caressing two frail women. At the door there is a drunken row, in which swords and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... toilet-table; and lifted out a fantastic-looking blond peruke, constructed after "his excellency's own design." Kaunitz was not aware of it, but this wig of his, with its droll mixture of flowing locks before, and prim purse behind, was an exact counterpart of the life and character of its inventor. He had had no intention of being symbolic in his contrivance; it had been solely designed to conceal the little tell-tale lines that were just about to indent the smooth surface of his white forehead. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... was a drain pipe under the curb. At the top of the windows there were shallow white boxes filled with trailing ivy that hung down and screened the glass, making the window as delightful to the passer-by without as to us within. There were several pots of rose-colored flowers standing in a prim row on ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... when she was about fourteen, and I saw her, and was not favourably impressed. She was quiet and prim and proper, as cold as an icicle: a very pretty little girl, I owned that; but then I had thought to find something of my Janet, and was disappointed. Her eyes were indeed blue, but looked one in the face calmly as though they had belonged ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... of their attire there was still a formal suggestion of the sect to which their father belonged, their summer frocks—differing in color, yet each of the same subdued tint—were alike in cut and fashion, and short enough to show their dainty feet in prim slippers and silken hose that matched their frocks. As the afternoon sun glanced through the leaves upon their pink cheeks, tied up in quaint hats by ribbons under their chins, they made a charming picture. At least Paul thought ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... Phoebe replied, with her prim New England manner, "if you want to marry me, you'll have to come and live in a country where they don't have queens, and you'll work in your shirt-sleeves like an honest man. You might just's well ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... a duet in which we always claimed the house, and this evening when our number came Mr. Gilder began his quaint Quaker march and Reuben was to come from one side of the stage and Rachel, on the other, and meet in the center of the stage like two prim Quakers. I took the steps with Mr. Gilder's tom tom of quaint chords and I arrived in the front of the stage and no Walter. I was in dismay and the people began to laugh, especially a portly individual sitting directly in front of the orchestra. ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... young men fond of natural science. One of these was Ainsworth, who afterwards published his travels in Assyria; he was a Wernerian geologist, and knew a little about many subjects. Dr. Coldstream was a very different young man, prim, formal, highly religious, and most kind-hearted; he afterwards published some good zoological articles. A third young man was Hardie, who would, I think, have made a good botanist, but died early in India. Lastly, ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... 1 offered him no explanations. It stood as usual, large and prim and precise, the very acme of solid, sober wealth and assertive moral rectitude. He was strongly tempted to call and ask for Miss Brandt, but it was only ten o'clock in the morning, and the house looked so truly an embodiment in stucco of Mrs. Grundy and Jeremiah Pixley, that he ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... can sympathize with children's little cares and joys, make them feel at home, and can hide wise lessons under pleasant plays, giving and receiving friendship in the sweetest way. But Aunt March had not this gift, and she worried Amy very much with her rules and orders, her prim ways, and long, prosy talks. Finding the child more docile and amiable than her sister, the old lady felt it her duty to try and counteract, as far as possible, the bad effects of home freedom and indulgence. So she took Amy by the hand, and taught ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... "I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits! I'm not a young lady; and if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails till I'm twenty. I hate to think I've got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a china-aster! Its bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boy's ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... gal." The Pilot laid his great brown hand on his daughter's shoulder. "Don't be ruffled. Let an old sailor have his joke: it won't hurt, God bless us; it won't hurt more'n the buzzing of a blue-bottle fly. But you're that prim and proper, that staid and straight-laced, you make me tease you, just to rouse you up. Oh! them calm ones, Mr. Scarlett, beware of 'em. It takes a lot to goad 'em to it, but once their hair's on end, it's time a sailor went to ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... lines of game travelling down the ridges to the water. The ruling passion is strong in death, they say, and my heart was dead that night. But, independently of my trouble, no man who has for forty years lived the life I have, can with impunity go coop himself in this prim English country, with its trim hedgerows and cultivated fields, its stiff formal manners, and its well-dressed crowds. He begins to long — ah, how he longs! — for the keen breath of the desert air; he dreams of the sight of Zulu impis breaking on their foes like surf upon the rocks, and his ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... United States Government must have "corralled" lots of youngsters, without regard to their fitness or capacity, to send on board the ships of war during our civil conflict. The "noble commander" of the Rhode Island most of us had known of old as a prim little precisian, and a great stickler for etiquette, and by no means a bad fellow; but so strict a constructionist that he would probably have refused to recognize his grandfather, if it were against orders. But he had a humane disposition under ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... and the logs roosting upon the andirons, and are devoid of all the camp-fire sentiment, have some asbestos gas-logs. There will be no dust or dirt, no covering up at night with ashes, no bill for cord-wood, and it will look as stiff and prim as any New England old maid and be as devoid of sentiment and art as a department-store bargain ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... think she talks outside of school," said Suzanna, her voice falling. She fell into prim step as they neared ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... garden, a hammock swung between two grevillea trees, whose orange flowers made a gay canopy overhead; and in the hammock Norah swayed gently, and knitted, and pondered. The shining needles flashed in and out of the dark blue silk sock. Outsiders—mothers of prim daughters, whom Norah pictured as finding their wildest excitement in "patting a doll"—were wont to deplore that the only daughter of David Linton of Billabong was brought up in an eccentric fashion, less girl than boy; but outsiders are apt to cherish delusions, and ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... smiled in prim sweetness, and noting that Mrs. Jackson's hands looked reasonably clean, extended one of the first two white kid gloves in Crowheart which Mrs. Jackson shook with heartiness before bouncing back ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... with formality, and the foresters of the place had lopped away every unsightly branch from the beeches and oaks. Probably there may have been homely corners in the gardens and grounds which Peter had discovered as a child; but Mrs. Ogilvie, when she walked, kept to the prim paths of the terrace and the garden, where every pebble seemed to have its proper place, in full view of the ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... across. The town itself is beautiful, and pleases most when one's back is turned to it. It must be very ancient, for I well remember that five years ago, when I matriculated there (and shortly after received notice to quit), it had already the same gray, prim look, and was fully furnished with catch-polls, beadles, dissertations, thes dansants, washerwomen, compendiums, roasted pigeons, Guelphic orders, graduation coaches, pipe-heads, court-councilors, law-councilors, expelling councilors, professors ordinary and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the throne of Spain had been vacant in consequence of a revolution in which General Prim had been the leading actor. It was not easy to discover a successor for the Bourbon Isabella; and after other candidatures had been vainly projected it occurred to Prim and his friends early in 1869 that a suitable candidate might ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... she was asking herself, "on a platform like this, and before a lot of people? She might think it silly;" and while she was still debating the point, she had held out her hand and shaken Anna's stiffly, with a prim "How do you ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... are green on the Linden tree, And flowers are bursting on the lea; There is the daisy, so prim and white, With its golden eye and its fringes bright; And here is the golden buttercup, Like a miser's chest with the gold heap'd up; And the stitchwort with its pearly star, Seen on the hedgebank from afar; And there is the primrose, sweet, though wan, And the cowslip dear ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... principal shop, we passed through it and down a passage to a sitting-room heavily furnished with solid horsehair-seated chairs and a sofa. In the exact centre of this sofa, reading by the light of a lamp with a pink shade which was placed on a table behind her, sat a prim grey-haired woman dressed in a black silk dress and apron and a lace cap with lappets. I noticed at once that the right lappet was larger than the left. Evidently it had been made so with the design of hiding a patch of affected ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... so liked him—indeed, he liked her enormously, he considered—assured Haldane in his moments of misgiving. The very largeness in her ample effect of good looks, her genius for managing his affairs and hers, her prim neatness of dress, her utter freedom from any sort of weak dependence on him, her uncompromising rigidity of moral attitude, and, above all, her goodness to him—this convinced him of her ultimate ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... already Negro dolls on the market, but they were for white children and represented the white man's conception of the Negro and not the Negro's ideal of himself. The new Negro doll was a mulatto with regular features slightly modified in favor of the conventional Negro type. It was a neat, prim, well-dressed, well-behaved, self-respecting doll. Later on, as I understand, there were other dolls, equally tidy and respectable in appearance, but in darker shades, with Negro features a little more pronounced. The man who designed these dolls was perfectly clear in regard to the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the most trampish manner, and poppies, because they are privileged characters, spring up as they please. Then, as though the two of them were not sufficient California gold, there is the faithful gaillardia with its prim little sunflower-faces smiling ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... wide gateway and had come from suburban America, at a step, into rural Holland. The prim gravelled drive led between acres of prosaically regular flower-beds, flanked on one side by a domed green house and on the other by a creaking Dutch ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... These ladies, though not elderly, were middle-aged, and perhaps, a few years older than their brother. They were austere and prim, of aristocratic features and ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... J. Wright's English Dialect Dictionary. "Mim-mouthed" means "affectedly prim or proper ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her small hand stiffly to the tall girl in blue who bent to greet her. But the new sister had heard too much of Chicken Little to stand on ceremony, and putting both arms around her, kissed her twice, once between the wondering eyes and once on her prim little mouth. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... was a sight to be seen—crumpled, infinitely prim, crow-footed like an ivied wall; but extraordinarily wise; with that tempered resolve which says, "I know Evil and I know Good, and dare be just to either." He was thinking profoundly; every one could see it. Best of the company before him Angioletto, the little Tuscan, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... mixed jonquils and gowans grow And roses midst rank clover grow Upon a bank of a clear strand, In wrimplings made by Nature's hand Though docks and brambles here and there May sometimes cheat the gardener's care, Yet this to me is Paradise, Compared with prim cut plots and nice, Where Nature has to Act resigned, Till all ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... do you think of Miss Patricia? I'm afraid of her. The night we came home she met us in the hall, looking so tall and severe in her black gown, with those prim little bunches of gray curls on each side of her face, that I went under a chair. Then I thought I must have misjudged her, for there were tears in her eyes when she kissed the children, and I heard her whisper as she turned away, "poor little motherless lambs!" Still I have seen ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... nymph 180 Come with a tune he knows so well. And how your statues' hearts must swell! And how your pictures must descend To see each other, friend with friend! Oh, could you take them by surprise, You'd find Schidone's eager Duke Doing the quaintest courtesies To that prim saint by Haste-thee-Luke! And, deeper into her rock den, Bold Castelfranco's Magdalen 190 You'd find retreated from the ken Of that robed counsel-keeping Ser— As if the Tizian thinks of her, And is not, rather, gravely bent On seeing for himself what toys Are ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... the garden showed cleared and scarred patches where the children had 'worked,' which meant that they had begun to 'tidy' by pulling up everything that grew, after which they would scrape the bed over with a rake and replace in a prim row as many of the plants as they could get in, and a day or two later the eye would be caught by a square of brown earth, broken by a row of sorry-looking dead or dying plants standing conspicuous and solitary against the wild, untrained ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... emotional nature in the lad, which, by the time he has reached his eighth year,—Miss Eliza having now been in the position of mistress of the household a twelvemonth,—works itself off in explosive tempests of feeling, with which the prim spinster has but faint sympathy. No care could be more studious and complete than that with which she looks after the boy's wardrobe and the ordering of his little chamber; his supply of mittens, of stockings, and of underclothing is always ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Harriet, do take off that bonnet, and let me see thee as thou art really; with thy hair about thy face. So." Peggy reached over and untied the bow as she spoke, then removed the prim little bonnet from her cousin's head. "How beautiful thee is," she commented gazing at the maiden with admiring eyes. "I think thee grows more so every time I see thee. That ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... I tried, and directed my attention to a middle-aged, angular-looking woman, whose strong, sharp-featured face betokened a prim spinster, probably at the head of a girls' school, or engaged in some clerical work. However, as I passed her on my way to leave the train I noticed a wedding-ring on her hand, and heard her say to her companion, ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... husband, he eventually obtained a divorce from her; she states, however, that she never at any time had physical relationships with Rosenthal, who was a man of fragile organization and health. Sacher-Masoch united himself to Hulda Meister, who is described by the first wife as a prim and faded but coquettish old maid, and by the biographer as a highly accomplished and gentle woman, who cared for him with almost maternal devotion. No doubt there is truth in both descriptions. It must be noted that, as Wanda clearly shows, apart from his abnormal ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to Germany. It was in these circumstances that an opportunity shewed itself of gaining another ally who would be more subservient than Russia. One of the many revolutions which had harassed Spain during this century had broken out. Queen Isabella had lost the throne, and General Prim found himself obliged to look about for a new sovereign. He applied in vain to all the Catholic Courts; nobody was anxious to accept an honour coupled with such danger as ruling over the Spanish people. Among others he applied to Leopold, hereditary Prince of ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... you your tea and put you tidily to bed. I shan't be home any other night this week. Kate has a convoy coming for her;—haven't you, Kate?—Le beau cousin will take the best possible care of us; and even prim Aunt Deborah won't object to our walking back with him. I believe he came up from Wales on purpose. What would somebody else give to take the charge off his hands?—You needn't blush, Kate; I can ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... and Lucy were standing at the white gates of Sunnyside, waiting for the arrival of the girls. Mrs. Merriman had soft brown hair, soft brown eyes to match, and a kindly, gentle face. Lucy was somewhat prim, very neat in her person, with thick fair hair which she wore in two long plaits far below her waist, a face full of intensity and determination, and a slightly set and ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... sonnets are full of poisonous fragrance—poetry embroidered and scented, not poetry felt. What a generous, royal prodigal nature he had, till he sank into his drugged and indulgent seclusion! Here then are three great souls. Ruskin, the pure lover of things noble and beautiful, but shadowed by a prim perversity, an old-maidish delicacy, a petulant despair. Carlyle, a great, rugged, and tumultuous heart, brutalised by ill-health, morbidity, selfishness. Rossetti, a sort of day-star in art, stepping ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that, even before this era, when "old maids" were open to all kinds of insult, there were women brave enough to refuse to barter their souls for the animal comforts of food and shelter. Speaking about "old maids," by which term we mean now a prim, fussy person, it is well to remember that there are male "old maids" as well as female who remain so all through life; also that many "old maids" marry, and are still ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... somebody did get the good of them after his death! he did not care to take his worldly treasure with him, but was quite willing to leave a goodly portion for the benefit of others; besides, many a worthy man owed his prim Sunday suit to those same heaped-up chests, and it would have done you good to see the broad ruffles bedecking the sons of Erin as they escorted their sweethearts to vespers. They would cross themselves, and murmur a prayer for the "masther," heretic though he ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... questions of accentuation. We say "prim-arily" and "tem-porarily;" most (or at any rate many) Americans say "primar-ily" and "temporar-ily." Here there is no question of right or wrong, refinement or vulgarity. The one accentuation is as good as the other. It may be argued, indeed, that our accentuation throws into relief the ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... thorough knowledge of housekeeping, but the rare habit of doing all things with regularity, neatness, decorum, and quietness. The writer of the above letter has also described one of these Pennsylvania schools with its prim teachers and commendable mingling of the practical and the artistic. "The first was merely a sewing school, little children and a pretty single spinster about 30, her white skirt, white short tight waistcoat, nice handkerchief pinned outside, a muslin apron and a close cap, of the most ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... personality and all that it involves in the full flowering of her whole nature. Up to then she had to all appearance had all the essential experiences of life. Yet she had remained spiritually virginal, with conventionally prim ideas of life, narrow in her sympathies, with the finest and noblest functions of her soul helpless and bound, at heart unhappy even if not clearly realising that she was unhappy. Now she has become another person. The new liberated forces from within have ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... we might get off from that train, and go by another in three or four hours' time, we availed ourselves of the opportunity of calling upon the Rev. Dr. Todd, the author of "Lectures to Children," "The Student's Guide," &c. Instead of the prim, neat, little man we had always imagined him to be, we found him tall, coarse, slovenly, and unshaven; a man of 46 years of age; hair of an iron-grey, rough and uncombed; features large; cheek-bones prominent; and the ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... mean and shabby. There was not a flower, not even a book or a paper, to relieve its prim ugliness. The only ornaments were a gilt clock on the mantelpiece, flanked with two sham Empire candelabra. The shutters were fastened closely, and the room was dreadfully ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... braying and laughing, until I began to grow a-weary of it, and, shouting a derisive farewell, turned to pursue my way. In so doing—it was like going suddenly into cold water—I found myself face to face with a prim little old maid. She was all in a flutter, the poor old dear! She had concluded beyond question that this must be a lunatic who stood laughing aloud at a white donkey in the placid beech-woods. I was sure, by her face, that she had already recommended her spirit most religiously to Heaven, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scene showed the same room in which the first act had been given. In a low rocker sat a spinster of uncertain age, very prim as to attitude and attire, her face partially concealed by a profusion of corkscrew curls that dangled from her temples. She appeared to be absorbed in reading, while there were piles of books on the table at her side, on ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... made him picture his Cousin Eleanor as a prim young person, with sharp elbows and a pinched nose and stringy hair. She would be lifeless and oppressively good-mannered, he felt certain. All the ill success of the last three days seemed to be behind his sudden determination to have none of her. But Cousin Jasper, having once ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... there we found her spruce and prim with her best black silk bonnet, something in shape like a coal-scuttle, her stick in her hand, and her shoes on her feet. We drove up the chair in fine style. There were several cottages close by, and the neighbors came out to see the old lady ride. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... ye wad thole to hear a friend, Tak tent, and nae wi' strunts offend, I've seen queans dink, and neatly prim'd Frae tap to middle, Looking just like the far-aff end O' an auld ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... Tredgold sat in the private office of Tredgold and Son, land and estate agents, gazing through the prim wire blinds at the peaceful High Street of Binchester. Tredgold senior, who believed in work for the young, had left early. Tredgold junior, glad at an opportunity of sharing his father's views, had passed most of the work on to a clerk who had arrived in the world exactly three weeks ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... this condemnation of James the Just, and its causes, as also that he did not die till long afterwards, see Prim. Christ. Revived, vol. III. ch. 43-46. The sanhedrim condemned our Savior, but could not put him to death without the approbation of the Roman procurator; nor could therefore Ananias and his sanhedrim do more here, since they never had Albinus's approbation for ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... know it would never do to keep that little fellow with us. How old did you say he was—about fifteen? Well, fifteen or sixteen—ya—you recollect how that old priest acted last July, at the village of Scurvy? A little girl I sent out to Brother Prim this priest smelt and hunted out; and actually broke in the room door where she was confined, and took her off by physical force to a Roman Catholic orphan house. These priests are terrible fellows; and your young fancy orphan, Paul, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... pleased to see his daughter, since it was out of rule; and he saw the programme of the concerted attack already peeping out. Nor was it long before the minor canon really made his appearance, as smart and prim and proper as a pet doll. Close at his heels followed Monsieur Pickard Leberfink, decorator and gilder, clad in all sorts of gay colours, so that he looked not unlike a spring-chafer. Wacht pretended to be highly delighted with the visit, the cause of ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... it was but the work of a moment after taps to tack a blanket over the window, light the gas, and bring out a dilapidated pack of cards for a game of California Jack or draw-poker; or to convert the prim pine table into a billiard-table, with marbles for balls, with which the ownership of many a collar, neckerchief, shirt, and other articles of none too plentiful wardrobes, were decided in a twinkling, while the air of the crowded room grew thick and stifling ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... It is this which makes Rome so admirable a residence for an artist. All things are easy and careless in the out-of-doors life of the common people,—all poses unsought, all groupings accidental, all action unaffected and unconscious. One meets Nature at every turn,—not braced up in prim forms, not conscious in manners, not made up into the fashionable or the proper, but impulsive, free, and simple. With the whole street looking on, they are as unconscious and natural as if they were where no eye could see them,—ay, and more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... tell you all this, however, for if you have an atom of observation, one glance at his sleek, knowing-looking head and face—his prim white neckerchief, with the wooden tie into which it has been regularly folded for twenty years past, merging by imperceptible degrees into a small-plaited shirt-frill—and his comfortable-looking form encased in ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... held up a dressing-gown and escorted him to an unexpectedly modern bathroom at the end of the corridor. When Quest returned, his toilet articles were all laid out for him with prim precision; the window was wide open, the blinds drawn, and a soft breeze was stealing through into the room. Below him, the park, looking more beautiful than ever in the morning sunshine, stretched away to a vista of distant meadowlands and cornfields, with here and there a little farm-house ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and Miriam's interest changed to excited thoughts of Fraulein—not hating her, and choosing Mademoiselle to sleep with the servant, a new servant—the things on the landing—Mademoiselle refusing to share a room with a married woman... she felt about round this idea as Millie's prim, clear voice went on... her eyes clutched at Mademoiselle, begging to understand... she gazed at the little down-flung head, fine little tendrils frilling along the edge of her hair, her little hard grey shape, all miserable and ashamed. ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... person; a man of brilliant talents, and, in every sense of the word, "a perfect gentleman!" Mr. Pinckney was one of the members of the first Congress, and during his sojourn in Philadelphia, boarded with an old lady by the name of Hall, I think—Mrs. Hall, a staid, prim and precise dame of the old regime. Mistress Hall was a widow; she kept but few boarders in her fine old mansion, on Chestnut street, and her few boarders were mostly members of Congress, or belonged to the Continental army. Never, since the days of that remarkable ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... asked the boy, uncomfortably. He was a very prim child, immaculately dressed, his smooth hair plastered neatly down over his forehead; and he sat bolt upright on the edge of his chair, for he knew well his ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... whereof the weekly progress had been for some time the delight of Elsmere's heart, they met old Meyrick in his pony-carriage. He stopped his shambling steed at sight of the pair. The bleared spectacled eyes lit up, the prim mouth broke into a smile which matched the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
