"Starched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and I ask her tek you in, Davy." He led the way through the empty Rue Chartres, turned to the right at the Rue Bienville, and stopped before an unpretentious house some three doors from the corner. Madame Gravois, elderly, wizened, primp in a starched cotton gown, opened the door herself, fell upon Monsieur Vigo in the Creole fashion; and within a quarter of an hour I was installed in her best room, which gave out on a little court behind. Monsieur Vigo promised to send his servant with my baggage, told me his address, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... winter or summer, whether it was raining or shining, whether the birds were singing, whether it was the season for dahlias or daisies, whether the Luxembourg was more charming than the Tuileries, whether the linen which the laundress brought home was starched too much or not enough, whether Toussaint had done "her marketing" well or ill; and she remained dejected, absorbed, attentive to but a single thought, her eyes vague and staring as when one gazes by night at a black and fathomless spot where ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... I said, quite confidentially, for somehow I seemed to get on with the brave hunter more easily than with the starched minions of society. "I'm bashful, and I'm tired of civilized life. I'm always putting my foot in it when I'm trying the hardest to keep it out. Besides, I'm in love, and the girl I want don't want me. It's either deliberate suicide or death ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... cantori side. So far as he could see, the boy, Stephen Bywater, who ought to have taken the anthem, was not in his place. There appeared to be only four of them; but the senior boy with his clean, starched surplice, partially hid those below him. Mr. Pye wondered where his eyes could have been, not to have noticed the boy's absence when they had all been gathered round the ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... feet were shod with substantial, well-kept laced shoes. Everything about her was immaculate. Jack knew that she had never laid aside the white petticoats and stockings it was her pride to keep spotless. She abominated the new fashions of black and silk. Jack could hear her starched skirts rustle as she came toward him. Her bonnet was black and in style of two or three years back, and its silk and ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... more he thought about it the more he wondered how Liddy could have been so nice to him. He vowed he would never be seen in public again with them on. He had seen boys in the village who wore neat and well-fitting garments, a starched shirt and collar that buttoned to it, instead of being pinned to the top of a roundabout, as his was, and thinking of them made him ashamed of himself. And then that awful gap between his pants and boots! Then he thought ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... grapes—a famous grape country this, by the way. In our room, opening from the gallery, is an antique high-post bedstead; everywhere about are similar relics of an early day. In keeping with the air of serene old age, which pervades the hostelry, is the white-haired landlady herself. In well-starched apron, white cap, and gold-rimmed glasses, she benignly sits rocking by the office stove, her feet on the fender, reading Wallace's Prince of India; and looking, for all the world, as if she had just stepped out of some old portrait of—well, of ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... clump of trees a woman had come upon the broad walk bordered with flowers. We could hear the rustle of her starched petticoats and observed the ample spread of her old-fashioned black silk skirt. She looked up, and seeing all these eyes staring at her stopped, frowned, smiled, shook her finger at the General, who was laughing boisterously, and drawing the black lace on her head so as to partly conceal her ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... men and women with the powdered hair of the Georgian period, and the flowing full-bottomed wigs familiar to St. James's and Tunbridge-wells in the days of inoffensive Anne. There were in all seven miniatures, six of which specimens of antique portraiture were prim and starched and artificial of aspect. But the seventh was different in form and style: it was the picture of a girlish face looking out of a frame of loose unpowdered locks; a bright innocent face, with gray eyes and marked black eyebrows, pouting lips a little parted, and white ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... a measure which, it may be, was chiefly hindered by the consideration that, in that case, the cost of supporting them would probably be transferred from the grim Doctor's shoulders to those of the community. Nevertheless, they did what they could. Maidenly ladies, prim and starched, in one or two instances called upon the Doctor—the two children meanwhile being in the graveyard at play—to give him Christian advice as to the management of his charge. But, to confess the truth, the Doctor's reception of these fair missionaries was not extremely courteous. They were, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... delicate women, often rendered so by their unhealthful mode of dress, and was strongly recommended in the "water cure" journals. When women began to go into public work, they could not fail to recognize the disadvantages of the unyielding corsets, heavy, quilted and stiffly-starched petticoats, five or six worn at one time to hold out the long, voluminous dress skirts; and to feel that to be consistent they must give freedom to the body. The proprietors of the "water cures" were, for the most part, in touch with all reform movements and their ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... now ever permitted to see her in disarray, but always, as it seemed to me, fresh from my sister's clever hands, her hair laid smooth and shining, her simple gown starched crisp and sweetly smelling of the ironing board; and when I asked her why she was never but thus lovely, she answered, with a smile, that surely it pleased her son to find her always so: which, indeed, it did. I felt, hence, in some puzzled way, that this display was a design upon me, but to what ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... the poet's merits; while de Marsay, with his flow of spirits, his confidence in his power to please, and appropriate style of dress, eclipsed every rival by his presence. Judge, therefore, the kind of figure that Lucien, stiff, starched, unbending in clothes as new and unfamiliar as his surroundings, was likely to cut in de Marsay's vicinity. De Marsay with his wit and charm of manner was privileged to be insolent. From Mme. d'Espard's reception of this ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... others. As for the muslins and laces, being of a frailer fabric, they gave way beneath the vigorous treatment to which they were subjected, and exhibited mere wrecks of their former selves. Not a single article was wearable which had passed through the severe ordeal of being starched and ironed by Deborah, and what was still more lamentable, many of them could not even, like an antique painting ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... little, delighted cry of surprise; a rather uncertain, "Oh, Mr. Tom!" and in another instant he was enveloped in a tiny cloud of lace and ribbons and primly starched linen while two bare, brown little legs waved wildly about his breast, a pair of very sticky lips were set against his own, and his neck found itself in the clasp of tiny fingers that had known orange-juice and oat-meal and sugar—and ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... of this importing and jobbing house, was a keen, little, slick-as-a-whistle, heavy-bearded, shaved and starched genus, of six-and-thirty, more or less; and received Jeremiah with a rather patronizing survey personelle, and opened the engagement with a ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... pursued Gideon. "You wears buckskins an' flannels an' a frontier hat; you goes about with your shirt-sleeves rolled up an' a scarf 'stead of a stiff starched collar; but you takes care that thar's allus elegant underclothin' nex' yer skin. You've gotten surprisin' clean habits, too: washes yourself three or four times a day, allus shaves yerself mornin's an' oils an' brushes yer hair. You don't go ter bed ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... move 'long out o' dat." They were about equally divided on the island for and against me. The man who had made so much fuss over the matter gave it up when he found that I wished to be quarantined, and sent for an all-important half-white, who soon came alongside, starched from clue to earing. He stood in the boat as straight up and down as a fathom of pump-water—a marvel of importance. "Charts!" cried I, as soon as his shirt-collar appeared over the sloop's rail; "have you any charts?" "No, sah," he replied with much-stiffened dignity; "no, sah; cha'ts do'sn't ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... of the clown both in method and makeup. His stiffly starched bulging trousers disappeared under the stiff ruffles of a three-quarter waist. A broad turnover collar of the nurse style was set off with a large bow of bright red ribbon, and a baker's cap, perched jauntily on one side ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... hands, or the way her shining hair sprang from her forehead. Also the smooth creaminess of her clear skin may have had something to do with it. But privately, I think it was due to the way she wore her shirtwaists. Miss Gussie Fink could wear a starched white shirtwaist under a close-fitting winter coat, remove the coat, run her right forefinger along her collar's edge and her left thumb along the back of her belt and disclose to the admiring world a blouse as unwrinkled and unsullied as though it had just come from her own skilful hands at ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... Pale blue tissue paper, stuffed into the sleeves and front of lace and embroidery blouses cunningly enhanced their immaculate virginity. White piqu skirts, destined to be grimed by the sands of beach and tee, dangled like innocent lambs before the slaughter. Just behind this starched and glistening ambush one glimpsed the bent head and the nimble fingers of Martha Eggers, first ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... and red beets, apple butter and preserved peaches, pumpkin and apple pie, sponge cake and coffee. After dinner came our next neighbours, 'the maids,' Susy and Katy Groff, who live in single blessedness and great neatness. They wore pretty, clear-starched Mennonist caps, very plain. Katy is a sweet-looking woman and, although she is more than sixty years old, her forehead is almost unwrinkled, and her fine hair is still brown. It was late when the farmer's wife came—three o'clock; for she had ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... superbly washed young man was accustomed to obey his superior and to command his inferior, and that behind the counter of his shop he must infallibly inspire respect even in his customers! Of his supernatural honesty there could never be a particle of doubt: one had but to look at his stiffly starched collars! And his voice, it appeared, was just what one would expect; deep, and of a self-confident richness, but not too loud, with positively a certain caressing note in its timbre. Such a voice was ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... ever. White-collared as ever, starched and brushed to the sheen of a new penny and ugly of face as a gargoyle—ugly as his goddess was beautiful. Not merely negroidal, in lips, nose, ears, and tight black wool divided on the absolute equator; not racially but uniquely ugly—till he smiled—and spoke. He smiled ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... wipe the iron after using the beeswax. A newspaper should be spread on the floor, to protect any pieces that may hang down while being ironed. The coarser towels should be ironed first, as the longer the irons are used, the smoother they become. Starched pieces should not be ironed until the irons are very hot. If the article is first laid smooth, it will be easier to iron it and keep it in shape, and every piece should be ironed until it is perfectly dry. As soon as the ironing is completed, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... many, ranged on both sides down the hospital walls. Large windows, set very high up, opened on to grey skies and a flood of rather cold sunshine. At the foot of her bed, watching her with impartial eyes, stood a man, and beside him two nurses, their neat pink dresses and starched aprons rustling a little ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... another room, and I heard some one bring him his blue frockcoat and under-linen. Then at the door leading downstairs I heard a maid-servant's voice, and went to see what she wanted. In her hand she held a well-starched shirt which she said she had been sitting up all night to get ready. I took it, and asked if ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... The herb tea did not cure him, nor did the stuff the doctor gave him. Nor did the starched crackling nurse, who turned Joanna out of the room and exasperatingly spoke of Martin ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... dining parlor, the tea-table was neatly spread for two, while old Judith, in starched gingham dress, white muslin apron, bustled in and out, occasionally changing the position of a curtain or chair, and then stepping backward to witness the effect. The stuffed rocking chair, with two extra cushions, and ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... their model, and the cravat adopted by the dandies soon became excessively starched; the test being that of raising three parts of their length by one corner without bending. Yet Brummell, though he adhered to the happy medium, and was moderate in his starch, was rigorous in his tie. If his cravat did not correspond to his wishes in its first arrangement, it was instantly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... singer, Heine, visited England, and, as he handed a fee to the verger who had shown him around Westminster Abbey, said: "I would willingly give you twice as much if the collection were complete!" To him Napoleon defeated was a greater man than the "starched, stiff" Wellington; and the "potatoes boiled in water and put on the table as God made them" and the "country with three hundred religions and only one sauce were a constant source of amused annoyance. The German professors and students, who in the early part of ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... naves. The congregation of the faithful was greater than on other days, but even so the Cathedral seemed deserted. In the crossways, kneeling between the choir and the high altar, were several nuns in starched linen bibs and pointed hoods, in charge of sundry groups of children dressed in black, with red or blue stripes according to the colleges to which they belonged; a few officials from the academy, fat and bald, listened to the mass standing, bending ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... their brows, while it falls thickly behind upon their necks in a multitude of little curls, which must have taken them no small trouble to get into order. Most wear nothing but a kilt of white linen; but the chief officer has a fine white cloak thrown over his shoulders; his linen kilt is stiffly starched, so that it stands out almost like a board where it folds over in front, and he wears a gilded girdle with fringed ends which hang down nearly to his knees. In his right hand he carries a long stick, which he is not slow to lay over the shoulders ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... without the impulse of which, thou wouldst doubtless have me believe thou wouldst not budge an inch! But have I not seen Gravity out of his bed at midnight? and must I, in plain terms, remind thee of certain mad pranks? Thou hadst ever, with the gravest sentiments in thy mouth and the most starched reserve in thy manner, a kind of lumbering proclivity towards mischief, although with more inclination to set it a-going than address to carry it through; and I cannot but chuckle internally, when I think of having seen my most venerable monitor, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... veranda listening to the reminiscent stories of Consuello's father, the first of the fine old Spanish aristocrats of Southern California John had ever met. Don Ygnacio Carrillo wore a dark blue broadcloth suit with black velvet lapels and cuffs, a spotless, stiffly starched, pleated linen shirt and a loose black silk bow tie. His fluffy white hair contrasted beautifully, John thought, with his skin, ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... copecks yes! And maybe she needs them now, eh? What do you think, my dear sir? For now she's got to keep up her appearance. It costs money, that smartness, that special smartness, you know? Do you understand? And there's pomatum, too, you see, she must have things; petticoats, starched ones, shoes, too, real jaunty ones to show off her foot when she has to step over a puddle. Do you understand, sir, do you understand what all that smartness means? And here I, her own father, here I took thirty copecks of that money for a drink! And I am drinking it! And I have already drunk ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... too immersed in the wretched folly of agitation to understand," she says; "I came to show you the better way." She is followed by the clothes enthusiast. He wears sandals and has discarded the abomination of starched linen. "We are forming a Society for the Revival of Greek Clothing," he announces. "From the aesthetic and the hygienic points of view, nothing is more important than the clothes we wear." I venture on a feeble Teufelsdroeckh joke. He does not condescend to listen. "We must ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... who appreciates what he can do, and how well he does it; who can value absolute faithfulness and honesty; who confesses a sneaking fondness for the picturesque as nobly exemplified in a clean and starched or brocaded heathen; who understands how to balance the difficult poise, supervision, and interference, the Chinese servant is the best on the continent. But to one who enjoys supervising every step or who likes well-trained ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... of soldiers. Among them were the Greek mountaineers in their picturesque costume of white linen, consisting of tunics with long, flowing sleeves, and kilted skirts so full and so starched that they stood out like the skirts of a ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 18, March 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Plague to burial within the city walls. In 1522 there were 50,000 of such burials in Rouen alone in six months. Every gallant who goes by with his feathered cap and velvet cloak, his tightly-fitting hose and slashed shoes, every lady in her purple hat and stiff-starched ruff, her gold-brocaded stomacher, and her sweeping skirt, every soldier swaggering his rapier, every sailor rolling home from sea, every monk mumbling his prayers over a rosary—all alike are breathing an infected poisonous air. The young ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... his child, that these people—the mere dust of the earth, as he thought them—should be necessary to him; and it was natural that in proportion as he felt disturbed by it, he should deplore the occurrence which had made them so. For all his starched, impenetrable dignity and composure, he wiped blinding tears from his eyes as he paced up and down his room; and often said, with an emotion of which he would not, for the world, have had a ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... to compose themselves before Paulett came in, looking, as they all thought, grimmer and more starched than ever, and not well pleased to find Humfrey there, but the Queen ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at the gate, splendidly starched in her afternoon calico, regarded him without personal interest. He was merely an old resident likely to clear up a matter that had been blurred during her years of absence in the West. Jim's eyes traveled past her to the garden in the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... "It has been starched and ironed out of it, apparently. Saratoga is still trying to do the good old American act, with its big hotels and its heterogeneous hops, and I don't suppose there's ever such a thing as a society person at any of them. That wouldn't be ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... one quite refuse to excuse myself from further exercise of it on coming back to Europe. The General feels with me; and we have laid ourselves out to be civil to our compatriots here at St. Augustin this winter. A few people were vexatiously stiff and starched at first; but each one of them has given in, in turn. They really do, I believe, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... nothing less than the great virtuoso's perfections, was a maternal great-uncle of mine, and the pathetic little story of the manner in which the life-long severance between himself and his sweetheart was brought about is literally true. "Aunt Rachel" herself in her extremely starched and dignified old age was a constant visitor at my mother's house. She had, for a space of something like forty years, had charge of successive generations of children in a stately country house in Worcestershire, and when she was honourably pensioned and retired, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... that the impress has become a Swedenboorjan. I will r-read it standin' on me head whin I get home where I can pin down me overskirt; thin I'll r-read it in a lookin' glass; thin I'll saw it into sthrips an' r-run it through a wringer an' lave it stand in a tub iv bluein', an' whin its properly starched I'll find out what it says. Fin'lly I'll cut it into small pieces an' cook with rice an' lave it to rest in a cool place, an' thin 'twill r-read even betther. I hope ye're satisfied,' he says. 'I am,' says Jawn Hay. 'I'll tillygraft to Mark that ivrything is ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... Winfield was one of the real old school. He was not a high or broad so much as a good, thick, consistent churchman of the Evangelical school. He "wore his beaver stiffly up," his neck-tie was a starched white cravat, his clothes were black broadcloth, with the dress coat worn by gentlemen in the early and middle years of last century. All the same, he had some modern ideas, especially, as I have said, in the matter of education. If it came to be totalled up how much he ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... school-children had all new clothes for Easter. We worked diligently for three hours every morning. The jackets were made of the Irish gingham I brought from home. This week is holiday, and Julia and I have had a fine wash, and have clear-starched the Bishop's sleeves and ruffles—such a business! My hand aches to-day with lifting the heavy smoothing-iron, which is not iron, but a large brass box, hollow and filled with hot charcoal. We shall get more used to it in time. Mrs. Stahl used to do it. Now she is gone it is quite impossible to ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... in her high bed, her Bible and spectacles on the stand beside her, her starched pillows, her soft and highbred voice? Or another Miss Emily, panting and terror-stricken, carrying down her armfuls of forbidden books, her slight figure bent under their weight, her ears open for sounds from the silent ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the merry eyes under the broad brim of her best hat—saw the flushed, softly rounded, cheek with the dimple, the curve of the red lips, and the dainty chin—saw her dress so clean and white and starched—saw and wondered if the angels in heaven could be more ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... and dark blue; either the coat, the waistcoat, or the trousers would be black, the rest blue; the trousers had the old-fashioned flap-pockets, like a sailor's, with a complex apparatus of buttons. He wore loose white cuffs that were continually slipping down the wrist, a starched dickey, a collar of too lenient flexure, and a black necktie with a 'made' bow that was fastened by means of a button and button-hole under the chin to the right; twenty times a day Meshach had to secure this precarious cravat. Lastly, the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... happy, in an earnest, unplayful fashion, being blessed besides by three healthy, active, self- reliant children, all girls. They were all pedestrians too. Even the youngest would wander away for miles if not restrained. Mrs. Fyne had a ruddy out-of-doors complexion and wore blouses with a starched front like a man's shirt, a stand-up collar and a long necktie. Marlow had made their acquaintance one summer in the country, where they were accustomed to take a cottage for the holidays ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... unbendingness which a profound moralist calls the worship rendered to pride by a feelingless soul, because she could not understand the possibility of tastes and habits different to those of ordinary routine, or of her own starched life. Not to be hungry when she was; not to sleep at night, but to write while she was sleeping, and to sleep when she was up; in short, to gratify the requirements of material and intellectual life at hours different to hers,—all that was not merely annoying for her, but it must be madness; ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... majority of the men, who wore the hair moderately long, his was cut short to his pate, not a straggling hair protruding itself beyond the others. In deference to the seventh day, he exchanged his shirt of blue cotton for a white, well-starched linen one, and donned a high black lasting neck-stock and dark vest, and shaved his face so clean that it reflected his own sunshine if not the solar ray. In person he was of medium height, with a head of ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Jehan, on the Place de Greve, where, as everyone knows, the fashionable world was accustomed to meet; and while saying her paternosters to God she feasted her eyes upon all these gallants, curled, adorned, and starched, young, comely, and flitting about like true butterflies, and finished by picking out from among the lot a good gentleman, lover of the queen-mother, and a handsome Italian, with whom she was smitten because he was in the May of his age, nobly dressed, a graceful ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... of different shades of black and brown Malays, with pointed hats on the men's heads: the women encircle their dusky, smiling faces with a gay cotton handkerchief and throw another of a still brighter hue over their shoulders. When you add to this that they wear a full, flowing, stiffly-starched cotton gown of a third bright color, you can perhaps form some idea of how they enliven the streets. Swarms of children everywhere, romping and laughing and showing their white teeth in broadest of grins. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... who earned his livelihood by playing for the dances the young people of Olney sometimes got up. He was anticipating quite a windfall from the infair it was confidently expected would be given by Mrs. Markham in honor of her son's marriage; and Eunice herself had washed and starched and ironed the white waist she intended to wear on the same occasion. Of course she knew she would have to wait and tend and do the running, she said to Melinda, to whom she confided her thoughts, but after the supper was over she surely might have one little ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... columns simply wreathed in black and snowy white, that sparkled a little here and there in the fitful, cold, spring sunlight. Of course, when you drew near to it, it resolved itself into a bewildering and somewhat indecent confusion of black petticoats, and starched shirts, and drawers, and skirts, and baby-clothes, and chemises, and dickies, and neck-cloths, and handkerchiefs, all twisted up into the most fantastic trappings of woe that ever decked a genuine and patriotic grief. But I am glad, for ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... not reasonably have been expected to withstand. The temptation to lodge herself in this charming little flat; furnish it after her own liking; and install that delightful little old poverty-stricken English woman as keeper of Proprieties, with her irresistible white starched caps and her altogether delightful way of inquiring daily after that "poor, dear, kind Mr. Hosmer." It had all cost a little more than she had foreseen. But the worst of it, the very worst of it was, that she had ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... only marry Thomas Hardy to Victoria Cross he might have gained some inkling of real passion with which to animate his little keepsake pictures of starched ladies. A great many writers, I think, might be saved in this way, but there would still be left the Corellis and Hall Caines that one could do nothing with except bind them back to back, which would not even tantalise them, and ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the guests, and created in the Sabbath school a sensation that was so inimical to the orthodox dullness and placidity of that institution that, with a decent regard for the starched frocks and unblemished morals of the two pink-and-white-faced children of the first families, the reverend gentleman had her ignominiously expelled. Such were the antecedents, and such the character of Mliss as she stood before the master. It was shown in the ragged dress, the unkempt hair, and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... what I felt when the valet opened the door to me and told me that Mr. Colmacher was in the country and wouldn't be back for a month. Not a word had been said about this, mind you—not a hint at it; and yet the stiff and starched gentleman could tell me the news just as coolly as though he had said, "My master has gone across the street to see a friend." When I asked him if there was no message for me, ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... miniature, stopped in front of him and stared at him in shy wonder. He had always been fond of children, and often rejoiced in their affectionate ways and confidential prattle, and now it suddenly touched him with a warm sense of human fellowship to have this little daintily befrilled and crisply starched beauty single him out for notice among the hundreds who reclined in the arbors, or sauntered to and fro under ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... robes. They were the most self-sacrificing women in Asia, the most devout, the most useful. Government gave hospitals and doctors into their hands; they took the whole charge of certain schools. They differed in complexion, some of the newly arrived being delightfully fresh and pink under their starched bandeaux. But they were all official, they all walked discreetly and directly about their business, with a jangle of keys in the folds of their robes, immensely organised, immensely under orders. Hilda, when she had ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... should return thanks for this wedding, seeing how it will purge of coarseness the picture-sheets of that artistic nation, which will hardly be able to caricature the new wife as it did poor plebeian Josephine. Such starched and ironed monarchists cannot sneer at a woman of such a divinely dry and crusted line like ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... compactly, as it were; seemed more the master of all his physical expressions. He was dressed like a magnate who was also a person of taste. There was a flower in the lapel of his well-shaped frock-coat, and the rustle of his starched and spotless white waistcoat murmured pleasantly ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... The calico made another frock and two nice pinafores, the black alpaca some small aprons. Mary trimmed the two worst hats with the ribbon. Last of all, she cut and stitched five narrow bands of the linen, which mother washed and starched, and behold, the class had collars! I don't know which was most pleased at this last decoration, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... a severe manner and a freshly starched purple calico, was sitting straight and stiff on the edge of the cretonne-covered lounge, and as he entered she rose to receive him with a visible unbending of her person. She was a lank woman, with a long, scrawny figure which appeared to have run ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... They were seated in the shade and the coolness of a long open colonnade at Isola Nobile, while, all round them, the August morning, like a thing alive, pulsated with warmth and light, and the dancing waves of the bay lapped musically against the walls below. The Commendatore was clad in stiffly-starched white duck, and held a white yachting-cap in his hand. Susanna wore a costume of some cool gauzy tissue, pearl-grey, with white ruffles that looked ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Pee-wee Harris. It was necessary to shorten it by a series of pokes and pushes by which it was tucked up under its own strings and lifted clear of the adventurous feet of the scout. Nor was that all, for somewhere out of the mysterious depths of the house, Minerva had brought a starched and snowy chef's cap with which she crowned ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Margarine is recommended instead of butter. Home baking is strenuously suggested. It is shown how reduction in personal and household expenditure can be effected, for example, in the laundry by using curtains and linen that can be washed in the house. A special appeal to dispense with starched and ornamental lingerie is made. In these and many other ways the style of living is simplified so that the amount of domestic service in every home is greatly cut down and much labour set free for war work and ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... with bright faces under all, went streaming by, and then a solemn priest or two headed a rambling host of lads with well-scrubbed cheeks and clean collars, and decent raiment of church-going Sunday black. Then came a flock of young women in white muslin, very starched and stiff, with blue bows and blue sashes. In front of these two stalwart wenches bore a flapping banner, inscribed 'La Jeunesse de Janenne'; and closing up the rank of Janenne's youth and rustic beauty came half a dozen chosen damsels, big limbed and strong, bearing on ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... dyspepsia and love, Mrs. Brewster took her chair at the table. Immediately after giving thanks, the host stood up to carve the roast. Then, to the surprise of all present, it was seen that the rancher had donned his second-best black coat and had taken the trouble to wear cuffs and a starched collar. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... same person, each member of the family has a given number, and the napkins are numbered to correspond, or else are slipped into ivory rings, which are numbered. A stranger has a clean one, at each meal. Tablecloths should be well starched, and ironed on the right side, and always, when taken off, folded in the ironed creases. Doilies are colored napkins, which, when fruit is offered, should always be furnished, to prevent a person from staining a nice ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... seldom you see portraits of children, that are really child-like," observed Elinor. "And then what a trial, to paint a pretty, innocent little creature, in full dress, starched and trim!" ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... thy father. King Powhatan," the Englishwoman said as she showed Pocahontas how to adjust a starched ruff that scratched her neck so that she made a grimace. "They will tell him that thou art here, and then surely in his anxiety to see thee again, he will grant what Sir Thomas desires: that he deliver up our men and the arms he hath taken and give us three hundred quarters ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... strange sanitary laws that forbade a man even to be uncleanly in his habits, after the good old sacred right of his ancestors to remotest ages. Then, too, there was a Zone policeman in dressy, new-starched khaki treading with dangling club and the icy-eye of public appearance, waiting all too eagerly for some one to "start something." But the great percentage of the maltreated multitude were "Old Timers," men of four or five years of digging who had learned to know this strange creature, the ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... this intellectual power and becoming simplicity of attire, how stupid and tawdry were the bevies of soulless women and the dumb groups of half-tamed soldiers! How vapid also the rules of etiquette and precedence which starched the men and agitated the minds of their consorts! Yet, while soaring above these rules with easy grace, the First Consul imposed them rigidly on the crowd of eager courtiers. On these burning questions he generally took ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the cause I spoke of, why wouldst thou assault gentlemen of birth rather than any other class of people? Why dost thou compel them to cobble their shoes, and wear upon their coats one button of silk, another of hair, and a third of glass? Why must their ruffs be generally yellow and ill-starched? (By the by, from this circumstance we learn the antiquity of ruffs and starch. But thus he proceeds:) O wretched man of noble pedigree! who is obliged to administer cordials to his honor, in the midst of hunger and solitude, by playing the hypocrite with a toothpick, which he affects ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the iron wouldn't stick to the starched dress," explained Janet. "I should think anybody would know that! Wouldn't you, Lola?" she asked in a rather "snippy" manner and with an upward turn of ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... characters. It is as if they had been veritable living men and women, and he had seen and comprehended and delivered the whole and pure truth respecting them. Of course, therefore, they are as far as possible from being mere names set before pieces of starched and painted rhetoric, or mere got-up figures of modes and manners: they are no shadows or images of fancy, no heroes of romance, no theatrical personages at all; they have nothing surreptitious or make-believe or ungenuine about them: they do not in any sort belong ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... "How bitterly," thought he, "the wise Saville would smile at my folly! I have renounced the bliss of possessing this singular and beautiful being; for what?—a scruple which she cannot even comprehend, and at which, in her friendless and forlorn state, the most starched of her dissolute countrywomen would smile as a ridiculous punctilio. And, in truth, had I fled hence with her, should I not have made her through out life happier—far happier, than she will be now? Nor would ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rationalism ordains, I rejoice and gloat over the slavery of those who have failed to catch even glimpses of the loveliness of liberty, who are yet afeared of opinion—"that sour-breathed hag." How can a man with hoop-like collar, starched to board-like texture, cutting his jowl and sawing each side of his neck, be free? He may rejoice because he is a very lord among creation, and has trousers shortened by turning up the ninth part of a hair after London vogue, and may be proud of his laws and legislature, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... insignia, for he stood head and shoulders above his companions and bore himself with an air of authority. He was unusually tall, at least six feet three, and very slim, very lithe; he was alert, keen; he was like the blade of a rapier. The leanness of his legs was accentuated by his stiff, starched riding-breeches and close-fitting pigskin puttees, while his face, apart from all else, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... disaster. First, her aunt was more genial on Sunday, because the family was on its best behavior that day, and came a little nearer to being genteel. Then Elizabeth was clothed in a long, spotlessly clean, dun-colored pinafore, starched to the extremity of discomfort, and her spirits, always colored by her surroundings, were ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... could in some miraculous way slow down the hours, dull the incidents, lengthen the meals, and make even the servants and page-boys wear a look of boredom and propriety. The best clothes which every one put on helped the general effect; it seemed that no lady could sit down without bending a clean starched petticoat, and no gentleman could breathe without a sudden crackle from a stiff shirt-front. As the hands of the clock neared eleven, on this particular Sunday, various people tended to draw together in the hall, clasping little red-leaved books in their ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... rhythm of her words as she unfolds her tales to us. She is a picture to remember as she stands under the mango trees on our terrace. Her spotless white "camiza" is decorated with beautiful pillow lace, her own handiwork. Her skirt of stiffly starched cotton is red and purple in colour. A crimson flowered folded shawl hangs over her right shoulder and great strings of beads ornament the ebony of her neck and arms. To sit at the feet of Theresa, the ama, is to enter ...
— Fairy Tales from Brazil - How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folk-Lore • Elsie Spicer Eells
... Madrid a wealthy goldsmith by the name of Antonio Perez, whose family—having lost his wife—consisted of a lovely daughter, named Magdalena, and a less beautiful but still charming niece, Juanita. The housekeeping and the care of the girls were committed to a starched old duenna, Donna Margarita, whose vinegar aspect and sharp tongue might well keep at a distance the boldest gallants of the court and camp. For the rest, some half dozen workmen and servitors, and a couple of stout ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... dazzling qualities, she was not what is called a lovable person. A certain hardness in her disposition, even as a child, had prevented her winding into the hearts of those around her. Deprived of her mother's care—having little or no intercourse with children of her own age—brought up with a starched governess, or female relations, poor and proud—she never had contracted the softness of manner which the reciprocation of household affections usually produces. With a haughty consciousness of her powers, her birth, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the book was called 'Lucile.' And he looked her over some more—between mouthfuls, of course—the neat-fitting black dress revealing every line of her lithe young figure, like these magazine stories say, the starched white apron and the look of sad dignity that had probably come of fresh drummers trying to teach her how to take a joke, and the smooth brown hair—he'd probably got wise to the other kind back in the social centres of Ohio—and all at once he saw ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... eyes there rolled, steadily, the biggest, roundest tears I ever saw. They ran down her cheeks, formed a stream in the first groove of her double chin, overflowed it, and dripped drop, drop, a drop at a time, on the breast of her stiffly starched calico dress, and from ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... rays and gave none back. The round pool of light which spread out beneath the lamp was behind Ballantyne when he turned to the doorway, so Thresk for a moment was only aware of him as a big heavily-built man in a smoking-jacket and a starched white shirt; and it was to that starched white shirt that he spoke, making his apologies. He was glad too to delay for a second or two the moment when he must speak to Stella. In her presence this eight long years of effort and work had become a ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... o' lace at your throat, ain't fluffy ruffles. An' stiff, starched things don't kinder become you, Miss Claire. They ain't your style. You don't wanter look like you been dressed by your worst enemy, do you? You're so little an' dainty, you got to have delicate things to go with you. Say, just try that butterfly on you now. I want to see if it'll ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... street—in fact, the house being a corner one, the noises of two streets. Roxdal continued to exhibit the same finicking temperament in the petty details of the menage. His shirt fronts were never sufficiently starched, nor his boots sufficiently polished. Tom Peters, having no regard for rigid linen, was always good-tempered and satisfied, and never acquired the respect of his landlady. He wore blue check shirts and loose ties even on Sundays. It is true he did net go to church, ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... in her white-starched, rose-sprigged muslin, her pink parasol, beribboned gypsy hat, and the long mane-like curls that swung over her shoulders, Cissy entered the house and was shown to the large low drawing-room on the ground-floor. She once more inhaled its hot potpourri ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... than she knew that he had come braced to try the conclusion with her. He sat himself before her in silence. His waistcoat was white, his neck-cloth white, his collar starched and high; his thick light hair was carefully oiled according to the fashion of the day, and brushed with curling locks upon the sides of the brow. At this critical hour Susannah observed him more narrowly than ever before. His smooth-shaven face, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... warm, for Norah had been ironing. She was a thrifty soul, and when she had a big fire to heat her irons she liked to bake good things to eat in the oven at the same time. A basket full of beautifully ironed and starched clothes sat on the table, ready to be carried upstairs, and a bowl of crisp sugar cookies sat ...
— Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun • Mabel C. Hawley
... blood, though just beginning to coagulate; it was dabbled over his brown serge suit, splotching the neatly starched white cuffs of his shirt. His wife always did them up so nicely with the peasant's love for ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... flung forth her child from the warmth of her own bosom to the cold, hireling kindness of the stranger. I think I hear some puritanical, world-observing, starched piece of female rigidity exclaim, "And therein she did a great wickedness." The fact I admit, but ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... consciousness that the place was flooded with indubitable and undoubted sunshine. To be sure, it was not the sharp, hard sunshine we have in America, which scours and bleaches all it touches, until the whole world has the look of having just been clear-starched and hot-ironed. It was a softened, smoke-edged, pastel-shaded sunshine; nevertheless it was plainly recognizable ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... first speaker. She was a vast woman, with a broad, kindly face, lit by shrewd and twinkling blue eyes, dressed, as was her custom, in a starched blue print, with a snowy apron. "Mejum only. But I don't feel comferable at that there bank of ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... religious integrity. So that he refused in his own mind to believe in the venality of a man who lived in such surroundings. Ushered into the advocate's waiting-room, a large parlor with curtains of starched muslin as fine as that of which surplices are made, its only ornament a large and beautiful copy of Tintoret's Dead Christ over the door, his uncertainty and anxiety changed to indignant conviction. It was not possible. He had been misled touching ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... chips of wood, inner bark of trees, calico and other tissues, lead plates, and slaty stone. I knew an eminent engineer who habitually jotted his pencil memoranda on the well-starched wristband of his left shirt-sleeve, pushing back the cuff of his coat in order to expose it. The natives in some parts of Bengal, when in the jungle, write on any large smooth leaf with the broken-off moist end of a leaf-stalk or twig of any milky sap-producing tree. They then throw dust upon it, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... medicine for the soul—a number of pretty little books in middle-age bindings, in antique type many of theist, adorned with pictures of the German school, representing demure ecclesiastics, with their heads on one side, children in long starched nightgowns, virgins bearing lilies, and so forth, from which it was to be concluded that the owner of the volumes was not so hostile to Rome as she had been at an earlier period of her religious life; and that she had migrated (in spirit) from Clapham to Knightsbridge—so ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... clean, her furniture of the golden oak type was polished, and the table cover and sideboard scarfs were beautifully laundered. Margaret is a small, trim little figure dressed in a grey print dress with a full gathered skirt and a clean, starched apron with strings tied in a big bow. She has twinkling eyes, a kindly smile and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the diminutive rouelle, a little wheel or rowel, like that of an ancient spur,—which the verticillate leaves of this herb closely resemble. They serve to remind us also of good Queen Bess, and of the high, starched, old-fashioned ruff which she is shown to wear [609] in her portraits. Therefore, the plant ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... softest tone, "do you know you have never called to take away the shirts you left for me to make more than two years ago? I have often thought I would take them to you; but sister Stanhope said I had better wait, as you would call when you wanted them. I starched and ironed them all up nice for you; but I am sure the stiffening is all out, and they are as yellow as saffron ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... to be starched" are washed, dried, and taken off the lines, they should be dipped into the hot starch made as directed, squeezed out of it, and then just dipped into cold water, and immediately squeezed dry. If fine things be wrung, or roughly used, they are very liable to tear; so too much care ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... sympathetically, determining to sympathise a pound-note. Starched shirts did not count to him personally but he understood that the town and the bush ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... only a short while. There was a glass bowl of pink hyacinths on her desk this morning, and she sat down to make a list of several things which she wanted to suggest for the coming event. Presently there was a rustle of stiffly starched skirts in the hall, and she looked up to see Mom Beck in the doorway. The old black face was beaming as she called: "How's my honey chile this mawnin'?" Then without waiting for an answer, she added, "Miss Betty said ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... handsomer, and saw themselves infinitely better clad, and wondered how people could be so vulgar. A shuddering came over Emilius; he looked round for Roderick, but the latter had already run away from him again. An impertinent coxcomb, with a head pilloried in his high starched neck-cloth, a servant to one of the visitors, eager to show his wit, pressed up to Emilius, giggling, and cried: 'Now, your honour, what says your honour to this grand couple? They can neither of them guess where ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... corslet spanned the girlish figure, and made it look all the more slender as it seemed to rise out of the outstanding billows of numberless starched petticoats. Necklace and earrings made of beads of solid gold—a present from Bela to his fiancee—gave a touch of barbaric splendour to this dainty apparition, whilst her bare shoulders and breast, her sturdy young ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and strong, and finely made, with a clear white skin, and brown hair waving in heavy masses under her white starched caps. She had beautiful eyes, heavy-lidded and dark-lashed, and a firm, sweet mouth—such a woman as you see sometimes amongst the desolate mountains, as if God had given to them a grander soul, to compensate for ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... about the dress, except a row of gold buttons down the jerkin. Attached to his girdle he wore a large pouch, with the mouth drawn together by silken cords, and a small silver bugle was suspended from his neck by a baldric of green silk. Stiffly-starched bands, edged with lace, and slightly turned down on either side of the face, completed his attire. There was nothing majestic, but the very reverse, in the King's deportment, and he seemed only kept upright by the exceeding stiffness of his cumbersome ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... have visitors sliding down through the opening with a small avalanche of snow in their train. Further, to increase their own discomfort, they arrived covered in snow, and what they were unable to shake off thawed and wet them, subsequently freezing again to the consistency of a starched collar. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the throat, and with a pocket full of cookies to munch ad lib throughout the services, I am sure that the spiritual uplift would have been greater. The soul of a boy doesn't expand violently when encased in a starched shirt and a paper collar, and these surmounted by a thick coat, with the mercury at ninety-seven in the shade. I think I can trace my religious retardation back to those hungry Sundays, those tight ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... a sturdy boy. But he was six feet two now and I had wasted to a shadow. Perry Thomas had a speech prepared. He is our orator, our prize debater, our township statesman, and his frock-coat tightly buttoned across his chest, his unusually high and stiffly starched collar, his repeated coughing as he hovered on the outskirts of the crowd, told me plainly that he had an address to make. Henry Holmes, indeed, asked me to stand still just one minute, and I divined instantly ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... producing depraved stomachs, whimsical nerves, peevish tempers, indolent minds, and depraved morals. They become but wrecks of what they were when they first entered the school. This has been called "the stiff and starched system of muslin education," and is the nursery of pale, sickly, listless, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... mediaeval poetry by the Italian peasantry of the Renaissance can be compared more significantly than at first seemed with the adoption of a once fashionable garb by country folk. The peasant pulled about this Courtly lyrism, oppressively tight in its conventional fit and starched with elaborate rhetorical embroideries; turned it inside out, twisted a bit here, a bit there, ripped open seam after seam, patched and repatched with stuffs and stitches of its own; and then wore the whole thing as it had never been intended to be worn; until this cast-off poetic apparel, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... Emma's spring hat flaunt flowers, the elevators, at closing time, looked like gardens abloom. If she appeared on Monday morning in severely tailored white-linen blouse, the shop on Tuesday was a Boston seminary in its starched primness. ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... your daughters' daughters yet you thrive, [v] Burst from your lead, and be yourselves alive! Back to the Ball-room speed your spectred host, Fool's Paradise is dull to that you lost. [vi] No treacherous powder bids Conjecture quake; No stiff-starched stays make meddling fingers ache; [vii] 140 (Transferred to those ambiguous things that ape Goats in their visage, [15] women in their shape;) No damsel faints when rather closely pressed, But more caressing seems when most caressed; Superfluous Hartshorn, and reviving Salts, Both banished ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... foot, and though conscious of appearing rather plain and quaker-like, we can assure our friends that in this, we conform to the newest fashion, and have no doubt of being treated civilly by as large a portion of the public, as if we had appeared with more gay feathers in our cap, with starched ruffles and gilt buttons and trimmings. In this, however, we would not be understood to boast, of any peculiar evidence of taste of our own, as we have been induced in this instance, to submit wholly ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... Mr. Rusper; it was as if the High Street had a plague of worms, and beyond again the more timid and less active crowded in front of an accumulation of arrested traffic. Most of the men were in Sabbatical black, and this and the white and starched quality of the women and children in their best clothes gave a note of ceremony to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... stuffed the cucumbers. No, it was an indulgence of laziness such as Europeans, Englishmen, at least, don't know how to enjoy. Here he lives like a languid Lotus-eater—a dreamy, hazy, lazy, tobaccofied life. He was away from evening parties, he said: he needn't wear white kid gloves, or starched neckcloths, or read a newspaper. And even this life at Cairo was too civilised for him: Englishmen passed through; old acquaintances would call: the great pleasure of pleasures was life in the desert,—under the tents, with still more nothing ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Pembertons' green gate she sees the tidy parlor maid come, in her smart shawl and new, bright ribbons; holding up her pretty printed mousseline dress with one hand, as she steps down upon the street, and so revealing the white hem of a clean starched skirt; while the other hand is occupied with the little Catholic prayer book and a folded handkerchief. Actually, gloves on her hands, too. The gate closes with a cord and pulley after her, and somehow the hem of the fresh, outspreading crinoline gets caught in ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... tail wagging ingratiatingly, came first, carrying Totty-Fay in his mouth. Back of him marched the twins, Twaddles' face shining with soap and water he had evidently applied himself, for it had dried in streaks, and Dot in a frock so stiffly starched that each separate ruffle stood out around her ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley
... her heart, of whose existence she had never in her life been reminded, was beating audibly. Although she said to herself that it was bad manners, she shook out her handkerchief, which she had herself starched and ironed with much care; and gathering her skirts aside, first to the right and then to the left, dusted her shoes, lifting each a little into the air, and she pulled some grass from around the buttons. With the other half of her handkerchief she wiped her brow; but a fresh bead of perspiration ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... heard a commotion in the court outside. Dennet had been standing on the steps cleaning her tame starling's cage, when Mistress Headley had suddenly come out on the gallery behind her, hotly scolding her laundress, and waving her cap to show how ill- starched it was. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the more northern countries, where, fortunately for the natives of it, they never bear at all. The queens of Eyeo are, to all intents and purposes, slaves, and so are also other queens; but then they are slaves to foolish and ridiculous customs, to stiff starched etiquette, and to ceremonies degrading to ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... a new dress to me; no more jewels to be seen, no more pearls; the finery of which so dazzled me in Tuscany: these wenches are prohibited such ornaments it seems. A muslin handkerchief, folded in a most becoming manner, and starched exactly enough to make it wear clean four days, is the head-dress of Lucchese lasses; it is put on turban-wise, and they button their gowns close, with long sleeves a la Savoyarde; but it is made often of a stiff brocaded silk, and green lapels, with cuffs ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the ministers had almost entire control. A church reproof was the heaviest punishment, and knotty points in theology caused the bitterest discussion. A pillion was the grandest equipage, and a plain blue and white gown, with primly starched apron, was the common attire of the New ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... sweating; schooling is made free and compulsory; sanitary by-laws are multiplied; public steps are taken to house the masses decently; the bare-footed get boots; rags become rare; and bathrooms and pianos, smart tweeds and starched collars, reach numbers of people who once, as "the unsoaped," played the Jew's harp or the accordion in moleskins and belchers. Some of these changes are gains: some of them are losses. Some of them are not changes at all: all of them are merely the changes that money makes. Still, they produce ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... A low laugh startled Debby, though it was smothered like the babes in the Tower; and, turning, she beheld the trespasser scarlet with confusion, and sobered with a tardy sense of his transgression. Debby was not a starched young lady of the "prune and prism" school, but a frank, free-hearted little body, quick to read the sincerity of others, and to take looks and words at their real value. Dickens was her idol; and for his sake ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... dining-room. A table, which looked very imposing with its four legs carved in the shape of lions' paws, and a huge side-board to match, stood in the oblong room, the floor of which had been polished by three men the day before. On the table, which was covered with a fine, starched cloth, stood a silver coffeepot full of aromatic coffee, a sugar basin, a jug of fresh cream, and a bread basket filled with fresh rolls, rusks, and biscuits; and beside the plate lay the last number of the Revue des Deux Mondes, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... breathe; but surely, it is a much greater and nobler Applause, that they appear to think." [Footnote: Fielding occasionally refers to Hogarth for the pictorial types of his characters. Bridget Allworthy, he tells us, resembled the starched prude in Morning; and Mrs. Partridge and Parson Thwackum have their originals in the Harlot's Progress. It was Fielding, too, who said that the Enraged Musician was "enough to make a man deaf to look at" (Voyage to Lisbon, 1755, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... a starched and immaculate nurse met her with a significant nod of understanding. And so, between Clive and the trained nurse she mounted the stairs to ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... fresh as paint, however, on Saturday, when she met Dr. McKenzie in Paris. "I have had two hot baths, and all my clothes are starched and ironed and fluted by an adorable Frenchwoman who opened her house for me," she announced as she sat down with him at a corner table. "I never wore fluted things before, but you can't imagine how civilizing it is after you've been ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... Miss Colton!" exclaimed Sim. "You're just in time, ain't ye! Let me get you a chair. Alvin," to Mr. Baker, who, perspiring beneath the unaccustomed dignity of a starched shirt front, occupied a front seat, "get up and let ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... square northwest room was warm, but the frost had not yet melted from the window-panes. The room looked full of hard white lines of frost, and starched curtains, and high wainscoting; but the hardest white lines of all were in Lot Gordon's face, sunken sharply in his pillows, showing between the stiff dimity slants of his bed-hangings as in a ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... melted; the streets ran with water and then froze. Old Chris no longer came into the parlor in the evening to sit, his hands clasped over his thin stomach, his bald head bent until his chin rested upon the starched neckband of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... bewilderingly inexpensive. But cotton stuffs are from America, and are extravagances. They make them up into "costumes," and trim them with velvet ribbon. Never by any chance could you be supposed to send cotton frocks to be washed every week. The luxury of fresh, starched muslin dresses and plenty of ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell |
