"Shabby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see that he had pretty shabby clothes and a peaked cap and I guess he was startled to hear us coming. In just a few seconds he was gone in the woods and we all stood gaping there while the boat bobbed up and down, on account of him ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... ships did not come within range of the guns for many months. They contented themselves with lying at the Head of the Passes, and stopping all intercourse with the outer world, until New Orleans began to get shabby and ragged and hungry, and the pleasure-parties came less often to the forts, and the gay young soldiers saw their uniforms getting old and tattered, but knew not where to get ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... moment Ju's usually busy tongue was taking a well-earned rest, and his hawk-like visage was shrouded in a deep, contemplative repose. His always bloodshot eyes were speculative as he surveyed the smoke-laden scene from behind his shabby bar. The place was full of drinkers and gamblers. The hour was past midnight. And he was estimating silently the further spending possibilities of his customers, and consequently considering the ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... a sigh how shabby the old curtains looked since the dear new glasses which her darling Fitz had given her had been put up in the drawing-room. Muslin curtains cost nothing, and she must and ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... them has long since been out of them; yet these vague and shadowy fancies are all-powerful and govern our actions. So that morally we go about like maskers in the carnival, dressed in the old clothes of our ancestors. With this difference, that most of us do not see how shabby and threadbare they are, and how unsuited to our present wants. And the few who do see this have an inbred fondness for the old romantic rags, and wear some of them in spite of their better judgment. Our moneyed class cling in particular ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is religious,—that's the honest, livin' truth; South Pokus folks are pious,—man and woman, maid and youth; And they listen every Sunday, though it rains or snows or shines, In their seven shabby churches, ter their seven poor divines, Who dispense the balm and comfort that the thirstin' sperit needs, By a-fittin' of the gospel ter their seven different creeds, Each one sure his road ter Heaven is the only sartin ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... this first walk can never wholly fade from my mind. After traversing the few streets of tall, gloomy, convent-looking buildings near the port, inhabited chiefly by merchants and shopkeepers, along which idle soldiers, dressed in shabby uniforms carrying their muskets carelessly over their arms, priests, negresses with red water-jars on their heads, sad-looking Indian women carrying their naked children astride on their hips, and other samples of the motley life of the place, we passed down a long ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... these disgraceful attempts to injure a literary opponent and former friend assume severally the form of direct misstatement, suppression of the truth, prevarication, and cunning perversion; the manner and motive throughout being very shabby.[F] The purpose of all these attacks upon Mr. Dyce is not only to wound and disparage him, but to secure for the writer a reputation for superior sagacity and antiquarian learning; and we regret that we are obliged to close this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... alert and quick in every movement, with clear-cut and handsome features, was dressed with care and taste, evidently a man accustomed to metropolitan scenes and society; the other, a youth of probably his own age, though looking elder, was sallow, shabby, with a dejected down-at-the-heel expression to his entire personality that told infallibly of failure and humiliation. At a sign from their leader he dropped dumbly into a section, settled himself next the frosty window, with his head ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... he was in his own affairs, could not help a feeling of depression as with a single step he emerged from the throbbing life and light of Broadway into the shabby darkness of Seventh Avenue. For nowhere in the big city is the contrast of its extremes brought home so sharply as at this intersection of three ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... himself wounded, and being satisfied it had been done by one of his own people, Carvajal deemed it prudent to conceal the circumstance for the present; and retired along with Avendano, of whose fidelity he had no suspicion, on purpose to disguise himself in an old brown coat-and a shabby hat, that he might not be conspicuous, after which he returned to animate his men to defend the camp. Avendano again pointed him out to another conspirator, who fired a second time at Carvajal, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... lately, when that shabby fellow, Waverley, went over to the rebels? Lord, I wish our old cross Captain Crump would go over to the rebels, that Nosebag might get the troop! Lord, what can Bridoon be standing swinging on the bridge for? I'll be hanged if he ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... creature. He lives from day to day, from hand to mouth, downcast or sad, just as things may go. His first care in a morning, when he gets up, is to know where he will dine; and after dinner, he begins to think where he may pick up a supper. Night brings disquiets of its own. Either he climbs to a shabby garret that he has, unless the landlady, weary of waiting for her rent, has taken the key away from him; or else he slinks to some tavern on the outskirts of the town, where he waits for daybreak over a piece of bread and a mug of beer. When he has not threepence ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... "It was shabby to say I would not aid him, and God help me, it was not true. I won't leave him, though he marries a blackamoor," thought ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Heaven The wildest peal for years, If Parson lost his senses And people came to theirs, And he and they together Knelt down with angry prayers For tamed and shabby tigers And dancing dogs and bears, And wretched, blind pit ponies, And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... endeavour to convert it to Socialism, and to set it on against the wealthy. They argue: "The commercial clerk with his reading, his writing, his arithmetic, and his shorthand is a proletarian, and a very miserable proletarian, only needing to be awakened from his poor little superstition of shabby gentility to take his vote from the Tories and hand it over to us. The small tradesmen and ratepayers who are now allying themselves with the Duke of Westminster in a desperate and unavailing struggle—against the rising rates ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... and I've none. And you know that the only solution we could ever find was that I should marry money. And you know that I never found a woman with money whom I liked well enough.' He was not looking at Helen as he said this; his eyes were on the shabby old carpet that he was pacing. And in the pause that followed Helen did not speak. She knew—it was all that she had time to know—that her silence was expectant only, not ominous. Consciousness, now, as well as sub-consciousness, seemed rushing to the bolts ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the same collections of low grey huts, separated from each other by some muddy pool where the cattle were wont to drink and the women to draw water; long streets lined with high houses, irregularly shaped open spaces, bazaars, gardens, courtyards, and shabby-looking palaces which, while presenting a plain and unadorned exterior, contained within them the refinements of luxury and the comforts of wealth. The population did not exceed a hundred thousand souls,* reckoning a large proportion of foreigners ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of education," thought I as I passed beside them and came fairly among the tombs. Here, at least, there were no commonplace politics, no diluted this-morning's leader, to distract or offend me. The old shabby church showed, as usual, its quaint extent of roofage and the relievo skeleton on one gable, still blackened with the fire of thirty years ago. A chill dank mist lay over all. The Old Greyfriars' churchyard was in perfection that morning, and one could go round and reckon up ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grim mirth in his eyes, as Tiffany ushered into the circle a lean, shabby country-gentleman, whose habit would have shamed a scarecrow. Tiffany disappeared and the new-comer made Brilliana an awkward bow. "Sweet lady, you sent for me and I ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... deadly feud between the Indian and the outlaw brought them now, for the first time in months, face to face. In spite of his iron nerve Levake started. Scott, slightly stooped and wearing the familiar slouch hat and shabby coat in which he was always seen, regarded ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... him reading the paper in the Athenaeum. He was dressed in a complete suit of white - white trousers, a white linen coat, and a very shabby old white hat. People would have stared at ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... three weeks in a hay-stack, in an open field, to be near the men of an ammunition train taking supplies to the front under cover of darkness. The boys had watched their continued, devoted service for them—the many nights without sleep—and noticing the shabby uniform of the little officer in charge, collected among themselves 1600 francs, and offered it to her for a new one, and some other comforts, the spokesman saying: "This is just to show you how grateful we are to you." The officer was deeply touched, but told them ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... had finished reading these, a gentleman came up and introduced himself. He proved to be one John McLean, an old schoolmate of the colonel, and later a comrade-in-arms, though the colonel would never have recognised a rather natty major in his own regiment in this shabby middle-aged man, whose shoes were run down at the heel, whose linen was doubtful, and spotted with tobacco juice. The major talked about the weather, which was cool for the season; about the Civil War, ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... resident of Nijni, and the latter gentleman met us at the station. He could give but slight hope of quarters for the night, but generously offered his services. Droshkies were engaged to convey us to the old city, on the hill beyond the Oka; and, crowded two by two into the shabby little vehicles, we set forth. The sand was knee-deep, and the first thing that happened was the stoppage of our procession by the tumbling down of the several horses. They were righted with the help of some obliging spectators; and with infinite labor we worked through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... not coquettes, he noted as he kept pace with his companion. She uttered a word now and then for politeness' sake, but she never looked at him and seemed not in the least to care that he was a well-favoured and well-dressed young man. She cared for nothing but the young artist in the shabby coat and the slouched hat, and for discovering where he had set up ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... both peeped over the bank, and saw them seated beneath this kind of canopy. They were shabby, gipsy-looking men, who might be something else—sheep-stealers, or horse-stealers, in ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... learnt of late years to dress well, wealth makes no difference to the garb of mankind. All of the latter have the same dirty, unkempt appearance; all wear the same suit of shiny black, rusty high boots, and a shabby slouch-hat or peaked cap. Furs alone denote the difference of station, sable or blue fox denoting the mercantile Croesus, astrachan or sheep-skin his clerk. Otherwise all the men look (indoors) as though they had slept in their clothes, which, by the way, is not improbable, for on one occasion ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... it possible to adorn. An admirable example can be found in that splendid poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came." It is the hint of an entirely new and curious type of poetry, the poetry of the shabby and hungry aspect of the earth itself. Daring poets who wished to escape from conventional gardens and orchards had long been in the habit of celebrating the poetry of rugged and gloomy landscapes, but Browning is not content with this. ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... a small, shabby-looking box before him on the ground, with a box of blacking on one side of it, and several shoe-brushes upon the other. Holding another brush in his hand, he politely seconded his verbal invitation by gracefully flourishing the brush in ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... in painting at the rather shabby house of Rossetti in Portland Street, he was introduced to Rossetti's favorite model—a young woman of rare grace and beauty. Rossetti had painted her picture as "The Blessed Damozel," leaning over the bar of Heaven, while the stars in her hair were seven. Morris, the impressionable, fell in love ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... as I imagined, but ever so much nicer. Lorna looks sweet in grown-up things, and she thinks I look sweet in mine. She comes into my bed at nights, and we talk for hours. The house is right in the middle of the town, in a dingy old square, where the trees look more black than green. It is ugly and shabby, but there is plenty of room, which is a good thing, for I am sure it is needed. The doctor sits in his consulting-room all the morning seeing patients, who wait their turn in the dining-room, and if there are a great many you have to be late for lunch, but, as Lorna says, ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... invasions of private life and reputation. He was doubly detestable, in that he was the corruptor and worst specimen of the editorial calling in Europe and in America. I remember frequently seeing Williams, in the latter part of his life, in his shabby pepper-and-salt dress, in the obscure parts of the city. I believe he died during the first prevalence of the cholera in Brooklyn. Fancy may depict his expression as illustrating Otway's lines, "as if all ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... usually dark when the shabby little narrow-gauge train brings us home to Hillsboro from wanderings in the great world, and the big pond by the station is full of stars. Up on the hill the lights of the village twinkle against the blurred mass of Hemlock ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... her skirts, completing the picture of felicity and prosperity, and throwing into greater shadow the attic to which I shortly afterwards climbed my way up the steep, airless stairs. I was hardly prepared for the depressing spectacle that awaited me at their summit. It was not so much the shabby, fusty rooms, devoid of everything save a couple of mattresses, a rickety wooden table, a chair or two, and a heap of Passover cakes, as the unloveliness of the three women who stood there, awkward and flushing before their important ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... his valet used to do. The gas in the hall was not lighted, and so she stopped to light it, darkness having fallen. Then she opened the door, and saw, in the gloom, a short, thin woman standing on the step, a woman of advanced middle-age, dressed with a kind of shabby neatness. It seemed impossible that so frail and unimportant a creature could have made such a ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... out, planted, and adorned with all the beauty that taste, wealth, and skill could produce. Orchards and vineyards were set out. Conservatories and pineries were erected. The negroes' squalid log-huts were replaced with neat stone cottages, and the shabby wooden fences ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... but little bloodshed. To the uninitiated it appeared as if these young men had lost their wits; for no matter how warm it was, there they were, tearing about in the maddest manner, jackets off, sleeves rolled up, queer caps flung on anyway, all batting shabby leather balls and catching the same as if their lives depended on it. Every one talking in his gruffest tone, bawling at the top of his voice, squabbling over every point of the game, and seeming to enjoy himself immensely ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... grieving out the funeral march, they stepped with slow precision and with arms reversed. But now in abrupt contrast there appeared, moving as slowly and precisely after them, widely apart on either side of the stony way, two single attenuated files of but four bronzed and shabby gray-jackets each, with four others in one thin, open rank from file to file in their rear, and in the midst a hearse and its palled burden. Rise, Anna, Constance, Miranda—all. Ah, Albert Sidney Johnston! Weep, daughters of a lion-hearted cause. The eyes of its sons are wet. Yet in your ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... especially at night. The theatres that it contains are in themselves sufficient for the gathering of a considerable crowd. It is a grimy crowd for the most part. Round the doors of the hotels a number of ragged and shabby-looking individuals collect, waiting till some kind friend shall invite them to step inside. Further on a knot of horsey-looking men are to be seen standing under the Opera House verandah giving and taking odds about the Melbourne Cup, or some ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... seemed a little uninteresting, as if he did not feed his mind. The table had been spread for breakfast, and the meal was finished and partly cleared away. The room was ugly and the furniture was a little shabby; there was a glazed bookcase, full of dull-looking books, a sideboard, a table with writing materials in the window, and some engravings of royal ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... deal will have to stand. Yetmore believed we had a three-foot vein of galena, and it is perfectly evident that he meant to get my share out of me at a trifling price before I was aware of its value. It was a shabby trick. If he had dealt squarely with me, I would have offered to give him back his deed, but, as it is, I shan't. The deal ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... one upon the other, so as to make more space in the small room, and on the rather shabby rug by the fireplace a woman was kneeling with ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... rendezvous. These reunions were varied by glorious excursions to Sacramento, his friends in the legislature imploring him to keep away. After two years the pension was cut down to one hundred dollars per mouth and finally was discontinued in toto—a shabby and most undignified procedure. Opposite the saloon, at some little distance, is a conical hill. For many years Marshall, seated on the steps of the porch, had gazed dreamily at its summit. Shortly before ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... summer's day; and now, all at once, there was not the least particle of it left. In searching me they had found upon me fifteen guineas, how should a poor beggar lad, such as I appeared, come honestly by fifteen guineas? Besides, when they had stripped me naked, though my dress was so shabby my skin had all the sleekness of a gentleman. In fine, for what purpose could a poor beggar, who had never been in Ireland in his life, want to transport himself to that country? It was as clear as the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... grey beard and stern blue eye, haggard with illness and anxiety, tall but bent with age, leaning on his staff and wrapped in black velvet cloak—an imposing magisterial figure; the florid, plethoric Prince in brown doublet, big russet boots, narrow ruff, and shabby felt hat with its string of diamonds, with hand clutched on swordhilt, and eyes full of angry menace, the very type of the high-born, imperious soldier—thus they surveyed each other as men, once friends, between whom a gulf ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mother maintained her silence and passive attitude, only stirring when the light grew very dim; then she would turn half round, snuff the wick off with her fingers, and wipe them on her shabby dirty dress. ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... were a little more weather-beaten, with many of the boards in the porch floors and steps showing decay. The trees in the orchard were older and more gnarled with here and there gaps in their ranks. The fences showed many repairs. The little schoolhouse was almost shabby and, with the wood cleared away, looked naked and alone. The church, too, was in need of a fresh coat of white. And there were many new graves in the cemetery on the hill. As time had wrought changes in the man himself, even so had ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... home that night, leaving word to have any letters for L 22 forwarded, but without much hope. His last clutch of Dick's hand had a sort of desperate finality in it, and he carried with him most of the way home the tall, worn and rather shabby figure that saw him off with ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... spread before him in all their pathetic squalor. He saw, as though a living thing, the barren, inarticulate childhood. He heard, under compulsion, the tale of youth's indefinable longings, with the meagre story of a love which lacked not its own shabby tragedy. The delicacy of a gentleman, who had intruded where he had no right, had caused him to draw back with an apology; but the orderly had insisted on telling him. He could almost see the raw, ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... bedchamber, after the simple fashion of those days. He was a tall, lean, bony man, as was to be expected from his nickname, with a long hooked nose, a scanty brown beard, and a high conical head. His only garment was a shabby gray woollen tunic, which served him both as coat and kilt, and laced brogues of untanned hide. He might have been any age from twenty to forty; but his face was disfigured with deep scars and long exposure to the weather. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... arrived at the door of his lodgings, a mean house in a shabby neighbourhood, for my Lord was as poor as a church mouse despite his title. I left him here, and the last words I called over my shoulder ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... out from an inner room. On recognizing my companion, who had visited the house before, she led the way, without a word, to the same room she had herself just quitted. There was nothing remarkable in this. A shabby table, and two or three still more shabby chairs, occupied the room, and a dark wax-taper stood on the table, while at the side opposite the single window a curtain of some dark stuff shut in almost one entire side of the apartment. We ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... been brought to him that a ship from Macao was expected to load teas at Komchuk—a place inland not open to trade—he started off with a posse of tidewaiters on the revenue cruiser Cumfa, to seize her. She was a shabby little vessel; her paint was scratched, her name almost obliterated. Almost, but not quite; he was able to make out the word Shamrock at her bow, and on careful inquiry identified her as the very vessel on which he had travelled ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... them below zero. That would be too cold an anticipation to carry even to this latitude. Zero: a poor, shabby village these Christian Esquimaux will have built, even after nigh a century of Moravian tuition. Still it will be a real village, not a distracted jumble of huts, such as we had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... at his shabby clothes, and then reminding him that it was at his place, not mine, I was to have heard him read the play: and how he confessed that he had no chair for me there—that his room was, in fact, three parts dismantled—that he had sacrificed ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and physical agony. After she had eaten, all would be well with her. She could control Jude and her own fate. She would never let any one think—Gaston above all—that she was not mistress of her own shabby little life. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... of its five million inhabitants dared I speak heart to heart. Judith had gone out of my life. My aunts and cousins regarded me as beyond the moral pale. Mrs. McMurray was still unaware of my return to England. I confess to shabby treatment of my kind friend. I know she would have flown to aid Carlotta in her troubles; but would she have understood Carlotta? Reasoning now I am convinced that she would: in those days I did not reason. I shrank like ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... been built alike, hers is so superior to ours. To be sure the style of her furniture is perhaps better than ours, and the papering handsomer, and her carpet goes all over her room, and she has a very handsome hearth-rug. Altogether I could not help fancying our place looked quite mean and shabby after I came back. But then I said to myself, that William and I were after all only beginning the world, and who knows what we may not be able to do by-and-by. Nothing is more likely than that William should ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... is all," said the sailor, fumbling in his pockets. He produced a shabby little hussif, containing a thimble, scissors, needles and some skeins of unbleached thread. Case and contents were sodden or rusted with salt water, but the girl fastened upon this treasure with a sigh of ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... said she, "instead of eight hundred! Well, that is rather shabby. But still, Papa, you'll have the dear old ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... beings minister to your wants. You are clothed as if by magic in garments of marvelous beauty. The very rustle of your letter of credit is as an open sesame to treasure-chambers to which Ali Baba's cavern was but a shabby cellar. And if, on the contrary, your means are limited and your wants but few, the science of living has been so exactly conned and is so perfectly understood that your franc-piece will buy you as many necessaries as ever your fifty-cent greenback did home, and that, too, in face of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... profuse glossy hair, the long, slender, graceful limbs, and that pretty head leant against the knees of her own very counterpart; for these were Wilmet and Alda, the twin girls who had succeeded Felix, and whose beauty had been the marvel of Vale Leston, their shabby dress the scorn of the day school at Bexley. And forming the apex of the pyramid, perched astride on the very shoulders of much-enduring Wilmet, was three years old Angela—Baby Bernard being quiescent in a cradle near mamma. N.B.—Mrs. Underwood, though her girls had ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brick with white stone dressings, to lodge splendour-loving magistrates, had had their imposing roofs of slate removed to make way for two or three wretched storeys of lath and plaster or had even been demolished altogether and replaced by shabby whitewashed houses, and now displayed only a series of irregular, poverty-stricken, squalid fronts, pierced with countless narrow, unevenly spaced windows enlivened with flowers in pots, birdcages, and rags hanging out to dry. These were occupied by a swarm of artisans, jewellers, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... youth was crowding round De Marny; a few older men stood in a group at the farther end of the room: to these the Marquis turned, and addressing one of them, an elderly man with a military bearing and a shabby ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... at Stockholm is the redeeming grace of that city.—Stockholm "not being able to boast any considerable place or square, nor indeed any street wider than an English lane; the exterior of the houses is dirty, the architecture shabby, and all strikes as very low and confined. Yet the palace must be excepted; and that is commanding, and in a grand and simple taste." Such is the description of Stockholm by Sir Robert Ker Porter; but, as he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... and understand what we want, Mr. Rand," he said. Just behind Chester was a man of fifty, rather shabby and neglectful in his personal appearance. He might be described as an artist going to seed. Whatever talent he might have had originally had been dulled ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... of extremely shabby, frayed and dingy tapestry, that had the appearance of having once been even dingier and shabbier. It looked as if it had lain for years in a dusty corner of a dusty old shop, till someone had found it and ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... to the old man, and was stepping into the porch when I remembered Father Dan. He was standing in his shabby sack coat with a sorrowful face in a dark corner by the door, as if he had placed himself there to see the last of me. I wanted to put my arms around his neck, but I knew that would be wrong, so I dropped to my knees and kissed his hand and he gave ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... published immediately, as I find some paltry fellow is pirating an abridgment. Thus every line of life has its depredation. 'There be land rats and water rats, land pirates and water pirates,—I mean thieves,' as old Shylock says. I feel vexed at this shabby attempt to purloin this work from me, it having really cost me more toil and trouble than all my other productions, and being one that I trusted would keep me current with my countrymen; but we are making rapid advances in literature in America, and have ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... the whole working class joined the bread-lines. As a result, the provisions General Folsom had taken possession of diminished with perilous rapidity. How were the soldiers to distinguish between a shabby middle-class man, a member of the I.L.W., or a slum dweller? The first and the last had to be fed, but the soldiers did not know all the I.L.W. men in the city, much less the wives and sons and daughters of the I.L.W. men. The employers helping, ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... perform small and unassuming services for others, my own duties have appeared more sacred. I can't tell you how much I admire your unselfish devotion to these children. Don't think me rude because I say it. I often think we are shabby to one another because, in the strife, we do not frankly say when we are helped by seeing the brave fight that some ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... have had me fondle her there in the golden castle on the mammoth's shabby back, before the city streets packed with curious people. She had little enough appetite for privacy at any time. But for the life of me I could not do it. The Gods know I was earnest enough about my task, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... gratitude for what I had done for her. For some time it was reported that she was the daughter of Sir Rowland Hill, post-master general, but I wrote to that Knight, and found that she did not belong to his family. She made a fine appearance and was well dressed, but when I think of the shabby way in which she left the scene of her distress, I can't call her a lady. I am devoutly grateful that I was the means of saving her, but the case would not have been made thus prominent, had not several gentlemen of Hull, who were present on the occasion, ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... shabby they are thrown aside, and many of the village youths round about get hold of ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... knew most of the Lindsay folks by sight; but at the foot of the hill he met two people, a man and a boy, whom he did not know. They were sitting in a shabby, old-fashioned wagon, and were watering their horse at the brook, which gurgled limpidly under the little ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with branches laden with deep crimson rowan-berries, mixed with heather and silvery-leafed honesty; a basket of the same rowan-berries occupied the centre of the round table; an Oriental scarf draped the ugly horsehair sofa, and a comfortable-looking rug was thrown over the shabby easy-chair. The fishing-tackle, butterfly-nets, pipes, and all other heterogeneous matters, were consigned to a small bare apartment, known as 'Michael's den,' and which soon ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... attempting to disguise the fact that they were most unwelcome. Fate was, however, kind to us when it sent us these men. They turned out to be perfect gentlemen, and completely won us over by their unvarying good breeding under shabby treatment. Before long we were, and remained, the best of friends. As for their orderlies, they soon made love to our Indian maidens, and there is every reason to believe that the interlopers obtained all necessary ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... I heard a knot of gossips exclaim, as some widow of a gentleman in fallen circumstances glided by in her rusty weeds, "What shabby black that woman wears for her husband! I should be ashamed to appear in public ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... observed that the Indians were very fond of brass buttons, which they fastened to their garments as ornaments, and not for the useful purpose for which buttons are made, the men now proceeded to cut from their shabby United States uniforms those desired articles, and thus formed a new fund for trading purposes. To these they added some eye-water, some basilicon, and a few small tin boxes in which phosphorus had been kept. Basilicon, of which mention is frequently ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... a handsome young fellow, tall, slender, and dark, and looking very boyish, in spite of some deep lines on the white forehead and about the small, tightly-compressed lips. His clothes were shabby, almost threadbare; there was an air of carelessness, even recklessness, about him, and yet there was something that was far more easy to feel than to describe which proclaimed him to be a gentlemen. All this the Doctor noted as he took the soft slim hand, and answered ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... decorated the chimney. To harmonize with this strange collection of furniture, there was, between the chimney and the partition, a wretched sideboard of painted wood, pretending to be mahogany, of all woods the most impossible to imitate. But the slippery red quarries, the shabby little rugs in front of the chairs, and all the furniture, shone with the hard rubbing cleanliness which lends a treacherous lustre to old things by making their defects, their age, and their long service still more conspicuous. An indescribable odor pervaded the ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... strained itself to reach across his chest. So did the Professor. But his black had turned to green in spots, and he was so thin and the tails were so short and the coat so broad that it seemed as though its length and breadth had become transposed. It was a marvellously shabby coat, but even in its poverty there was no mistaking its blue blood. It was a decayed sartorial aristocrat, ill nourished and sad, but flaunting still the chiselled nose and high, white brow of noble lineage. Here it was all out of place. ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... been proud of the simplicity which had characterised the lives of her famous men. The new Republic felt ashamed of the shabby coats and the high principles which had been fashionable in the days of its grandfathers. It became a land of rich people ruled by rich people for the benefit of rich people. As such it was doomed to disastrous failure, as ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... secret intentions, Martha refrained from pledging herself, but she laughed and nodded significantly as she quitted the cold, dismal, and shabby room. ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... resemble a burglar, who surely ought to be big, muscular, and masterful. He resembled an undersized clerk who has been out of work for a long time, but who has nevertheless found the means to eat and drink rather plenteously. He was clothed in a very shabby navy-blue suit, frayed at the wrists and ankles, and greasy in front. His linen collar was brown with dirt, his fingers were dirty, his hair was unkempt and long, and a young and lusty black beard was sprouting on his chin. His boots were ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... of those fretful New-York heiresses to see how this woman lives. I wish, too, that half a dozen of ces messieurs of the clubs might take a peep at the present way of life of their humble servant. We breakfast at eight o'clock. Immediately afterwards, Miss Blunt, in a shabby old bonnet and shawl, starts off to school. If the weather is fine, the Captain goes out a-fishing, and I am left to my own devices. Twice I have accompanied the old man. The second time I was lucky enough to catch a big blue-fish, which we had for dinner. The Captain is an excellent specimen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... a lean brown man, having rather the look of a shabby tropical traveller, with a grey moustache and a lively and alert eye. But the most singular thing about him was that the front of his coat was covered with a multitude of shining metallic emblems made in the shape of stars and crescents. I was well accustomed by this time to Americans adorning the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... proposed performance that it might be advertised, for more people would come to see the singer jump than hear him sing. He was, in short, a most superb person, quite the grand seigneur. Think of Bach, the little shabby unimportant cantor, or of Beethoven, important enough but shabby, and with a great sorrow in his eyes, and an air of weariness, almost of defeat. Then look at the magnificent Mr. Handel in Hudson's portrait: fashionably dressed in a great periwig and gorgeous ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... to this. The solemn teaching of this word is not confined to that thought, but also opens out into this other, that all godlessness, all the low, sinful lives that so many of us live, miss the shabby aim which they set before themselves. I do not believe that any men or women ever got as much good, even of the lowest kind, out of a wrong thing as they expected to get when they ventured on it. If they did, they got something else along with it that took all the gilt off ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... as eccentric in his general mode of conduct. He "strutted proudly barefoot along the streets of Athens; he was careless and shabby in his dress; in his manner he was affected and haughty and was subject to ecstatic trances and visions. During these trances he would maintain a standing posture for hours, buried in his thoughts, and was quite ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... to balls, and to the play, will you not? Very well, I will accompany you. I will attend these fetes. I will have handsome toilets, I—poor Aunt Medea—who have never seen myself in anything but shabby black woollen dresses. Have you ever thought of giving me the pleasure of possessing a handsome dress? Yes, twice a year, perhaps, you have given me a black silk, recommending me to take good care of it. But it was not for my sake that you went to this expense. It was for your own sake; ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... stranger to the children, and from, his shabby, soiled clothing, unkempt locks, and unshaven face, it was evident he belonged ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... General Mettlich and the King talked together. The King had been lifted from his bed and sat propped in a great chair. Above his shabby dressing-gown his face showed gaunt and old. In a straight chair facing him sat his old ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... is a great deal of jolting, a great deal of noise, a great deal of wall, not much window, a locomotive engine, a shriek and a bell. The cars are like shabby omnibuses holding thirty, forty, fifty people. In the centre of the carriage there is usually a stove, fed with charcoal or anthracite coal, which is for the most part red hot. It is insufferably close, and you see the hot air fluttering between yourself and any other object ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... A shabby trick was perpetrated by the friends of John W. Angell, which was certainly anything but "angelic," and which ought to consign the parties who ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the atmosphere the moment she entered. There were carelessly gowned women and men smart and shabby, but none of them were thinking of clothes nor even of one another. They had great deeds in mind; they were scanning the earth; they were toiling for men. The same grim excitement that sends smaller souls hunting for birds and rabbits and lions, had sent them hunting ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... watering-place, I insisted that it seemed a shame not to be engaged, and how we fixed it to be engaged for a week, and it made him furious! But as good a fellow as I've been, the way you took our joke was shabby. You people may know some ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... continued her examination of the dirty yellow brick face of her new home. She could not yet acquiesce sufficiently in the fact to mount the long flight of steps that led from the walk to the front door. She looked on up the street, which ran straight as a bowling-alley between two rows of shabby brick houses,—all low, small, mean, unmistakably cheap,—thrown together for little people to live in. West Laurence Avenue was drab and commonplace,—the heart, the crown, the apex of the commonplace. And the girl knew it.... The April breeze, ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... I had that before the holidays. I never did like it. I shall not go with you girls and look shabby. You always look so well and I will not put ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... Mullen were the best dressed couple, the former as a tin of Ideal Milk, the latter as an extremely pretty girl dressed in much flowing white. But there were many other striking costumes, Girot, in shabby black tail coat and life-like nose made of bread, representing one of the race that hopes to return to Palestine. Sweet, a monkey (tail and all); J.W. Parr lived again one of his days as an A.B. at the Crystal Palace. Colonel Gibbons of the 7th ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... figure, stooped and so one-sided that the tail of the long and shabby coat he wore dragged on the ground. The face was black and shrewd, and little patches of snow-white ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Mr. Denyer seated himself and wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief. He was ominously grave. His eyes avoided the faces before him, as if in shame. He looked at his boots, which had just been blacked, but were shabby, and then glanced at the elegant skirts of his wife and daughters; he looked at his shirt-cuffs, which were clean but frayed, and then gathered courage to lift his eyes as far as the dainty hands folded upon laps in ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... and port wine. But the same books show that the planter was chronically in debt and that bankruptcy was common, while accounts left by travelers reveal the fact that many of the mansion houses were shabby and run down, with rotting roofs, ramshackle doors, broken windows into which old hats or other garments had been thrust to keep the wind away. In a word, a traveler could find to-day more elegance in a back county of Arkansas than ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... same shabby costume in which she had gone each day to the factory, and she had a queer sort of feeling that this was not a bit as she had always imagined a wedding to be. There was no satin frock, no coloured confetti, no ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... time, indeed—a month certainly—how much longer I can't precisely say. In the meantime, the lunatics had a jolly season of it—that you may swear. They doffed their own shabby clothes, and made free with the family wardrobe and jewels. The cellars of the chateau were well stocked with wine; and these madmen are just the devils that know how to drink it. They lived well, I can ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... he passed two or three men in threadbare suits and shabby hats, who were hovering about the Persepolitan, and who carefully exchanged glances of understanding with him. He went straight to the superintendent-inspector of police, and sat down in his cabinet to concert ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... had been converted into a bar, with counter and stillage, and after the girls had crushed through the crowds that stood there they came into a large and shabby chamber, which had the appearance of having been built over the space which had once been the backyard. This room had neither windows nor skylights; its walls were decorated with portraits of Garibaldi ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Hamilton, proprietor of the "Critical Review," the rival to that of Griffiths, readily made him a small advance on receiving three articles for his periodical. His purse thus slenderly replenished, Goldsmith paid for his warrant; wiped off the score of his milkmaid; abandoned his garret, and moved into a shabby first floor in a forlorn court near the Old Bailey; there to await the time for his migration to the magnificent coast ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... Street like a queen, for all her burst shoe,— a shabby street it was for such ladies,—and the two walked off to Fishmonger's Alley, and not a head but turned to look ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... placed before Congress in his first message: the improvement of the diplomatic and consular service; the reduction of the tariff; the repeal of the Bland-Allison silver-coinage act; the development of the navy, which he characterized as a "shabby ornament" and a naval reminder "of the days that are past"; better care of the Indians; and a means of preventing individuals from acquiring large areas of the public lands. The fact that Hayes and Arthur had urged similar reforms showed how little Cleveland differed from his Republican ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... reflect. "Now, I'm not right certain about that. Maybe you have and maybe you haven't; I don't remember. How did you teach Brother Bear to keep his hair roached and parted? Mostly when I used to know him, he went about looking mighty ragged and shabby." ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... and chuckled. She must drive in to see the picture of the fleet. She hadn't time to stop now, as lunch would be ready. Anyhow, night was the time for movies. She drove on, and the brick business buildings gave out into a dribble of small frame cottages, mostly shabby. Edith Webb was coming out of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... With an audience so disposed, each successive scene went off better and better. One deserves to be particularized. It was the second in the first act of the comedy; the stage directions for it are as follow:—"Scene—An ale-house room.—Several shabby fellows with punch and tobacco; Tony at the head of the table, &c., discovered." Never perhaps, in any previous representation, was the mise en scene so perfect. It drew three rounds of applause. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... day, late in the fall, a tall, mild-faced man on a spirited horse passed down the Bowery Road, followed by a long train of soldiers whose shabby clothes and worn faces told of days of trial and hardship. This was General George Washington with a portion of the Continental army. They were entering New York on this same day when the British ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... shabby case which whizzed and birred and struck five. The voice of its bell, measured and mellow and pure, ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams |
