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More "Decent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lived with a niece in a couple of rooms quite close to Henrietta. Mrs. Marston was dead, and Miss Arundel had retired from the school with just enough to live in decent comfort. ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... talked over his nebulous relation with her to Nan; but he was suddenly alive with curiosity to know. He couldn't coax Nan into betraying that confidence, but he was nevertheless set on getting at it somehow. He wondered if it might be decent to do it by ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... lowlands adjoining the coast. The impression was confirmed by the miserable aspect of the place, one long wide vacant street, in which, as we drove down it, the effects of the intemperie were stamped on the sickly faces of the few stragglers we met. We found, however, a roomy and decent hotel, and, after rambling about the neighbourhood, sat down to our usual evening tasks of writing and drawing. We were in light costume, and had thrown open the casements, for though the apartment was both lofty and spacious, the air felt insufferably close and stifling. Shortly afterwards, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... he had neither the consideration nor the silly sense of a fool's solicitude for a hard-worked mother. She appealed to the sleeping Lumai, who awoke heavily and fatly, who muttered and mumbled easy terms of Somo dialect to the effect that it was a most decent world, that all puppy dogs and eldest-born sons were right delightful things to possess, that he had never yet starved to death, and that peace and sleep were the finest things that ever befell the lot of mortal man—and, in token thereof, back into the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... old fellow, and we will be good friends!—only, tell your people to keep decent tongues in their heads, ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... luck, anyway," said I. "Here is decent shelter, and the hills keep off the worst of the storm. We ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... change which took place may be mentioned the instance of the Earl of March. "As Duke of Queensberry, at nearer ninety than eighty years of age, he was still rolling in wealth, still wallowing in sin, and regarded by his countrymen as one whom it was hardly decent to name, because he did not choose, out of respect for the public opinion of 1808, to discontinue a mode of existence which in 1768 was almost a thing of course" ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... newspapers have all been pleased to remark that President Cleveland has done a very decent thing by refusing to appoint as post-master at Mr. Blaine's home, in Augusta, the Democratic editor, who "was virulently active in publishing particularly unclean falsehoods concerning the Republican candidate last fall." Mr. Blaine had a perfect right to object, and he exercised ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... form to raise it. The committee, however, only wanted to scare her, and had of course worked out a third course of action, which was reasonable and combined the advantages of both, that is, a very decent fete in every respect only without champagne, and so yielding a very respectable sum, much more than ninety roubles. But Yulia Mihailovna would not agree to it: her proud spirit revolted from paltry compromise. She decided at once that if ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the travellers moved had just been vacated by a Spanish family of political refugees departing for France. These lodgings were at least provided with doors, window-panes, and decent furniture; but the luxury of chimneys was unknown, and a stove, which had to be manufactured at an enormous price on purpose for the party, is described as "a sort of iron cauldron, that made our heads ache and dried up our throats." Continuous stormy weather having suspended steam traffic ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... the Irish their heads and they'll run straight enough. Look at the Boers, don't you know. Not half such a decent sort as the Irish. Look at ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... variety; they saw in this an opportunity of spending halcyon days in the game preserves, glorious opportunities for making collections of big game heads, all sandwiched in with pleasant and successful enterprises against an enemy that was waiting only a decent excuse to surrender. ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... corps to the American army. On reliable authority I am told that American women, because they have dared demand their political freedom, are held in vile conditions in the Government workhouse in Washington; are compelled to paint the negro toilets for eight hours a day; are denied decent food and denied communication with counsel. Why should I work for democracy in Europe when our American women are denied democracy at home? If I am to fight for social hygiene in France, why not begin ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... am concerned most, however, about somebody I value more than the Archbishop of Canterbury; Frances, to whom I owe much of my own faith, and to whom therefore (as far as I can see my way) I also owe every decent chance for the controversial defence of her faith. If her side can convince me, they have a right to do so; if not, I shall go hot and strong to convince her. I put it clumsily, but there is a point in my mind. Logically, therefore, I must ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... some pity Upon my wretched women, that so long Have follow'd both my fortunes faithfully; Of which there is not one, I dare avow, And now I should not lie, but will deserve, For virtue and true beauty of the soul, For honesty and decent carriage, A right good husband; let him be a noble; And, sure, those men are happy that shall have 'em. The last is, for my men,—they are the poorest, But poverty could never draw 'em from me— That they may have ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... I experienced in finding that a war was inevitable betwixt the King my husband and his Majesty, and that I must continue in a state of separation from my husband; that, as long as the war lasted, it was neither decent nor honourable for me to stay at Court, where I must be in one or other, or both, of these cruel situations: either that the King my husband should believe that I continued in it out of inclination, and think ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... understand it I know, for to you the world is black and white, and each incident stands by itself. But as a man lives these incidents are interwoven like the links of a chain, each one depending on the others, so that sometimes what appears to be a bad thing is really the only decent thing ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... fashion with all those fine garments of enlightened self-government, but underneath those garments are, or were, the same vermin that infested the garments of so many communities less clean—parasites that suck existence from God's gifts to decent people. Indeed, that human vermin at one time infested East Haven even more than the other and neighboring towns; perhaps just because its clothing of civilization was more soft and warm than theirs; perhaps (and upon the face this latter is the more ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... form a kind of scarf; and to prevent it trailing on the ground, throw it in a graceful way over the shoulder, so that part of it falls on the bosom, while the end hangs down the back. It is often ornamented with cotton tassels, and is the most decent and serviceable, as well as the most picturesque, covering worn by any of the native tribes. Sometimes a coronal of flowers surrounds the head, which is usually adorned by a large daub of arnatto on the hair above the brow; while the forehead and cheeks are painted in various patterns with the same ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... visiting the works in the day and spending hours in the evening over the plans. He was waiting. He believed that Corona cared for him, and he knew that he loved her, but for the present he must wait patiently, both for the sake of his promise and for the sake of a decent respect of her widowhood. In order to wait he felt the necessity of constant occupation, and to that end he had set himself resolutely to work with his father, whose ideal dream was to make Saracinesea the most complete and prosperous community in ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... the result of educated intelligence. The largest number earn from two to two hundred and fifty dollars, and, as has been said, lose an average of thirty days in the year. The highest average wage, $6.91, is little more than subsistence, and the lowest, $4.05, is far less than decent subsistence requires. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... given by Colonel Logan, to have the bodies collected, and interred in a manner as decent as circumstances would permit. This being accomplished, he returned with his men to Bryan's Station, and there dismissed them—it not being thought advisable to pursue the enemy further. In this ever memorable battle of Blue ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... though every effort was made to revive him and save his life. Grenfell and his crew gave the man and woman as decent a Christian burial as the wilderness and conditions would permit, and when all was over the Doctor found five ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... epoch, people still imagined that a wedding was a private and social festival, that a patriarchal banquet does not spoil a domestic solemnity, that gayety, even in excess, provided it be honest, and decent, does happiness no harm, and that, in short, it is a good and a venerable thing that the fusion of these two destinies whence a family is destined to spring, should begin at home, and that the household should thenceforth have its nuptial ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... bloater!" said Herbert. "It isn't fair. If she'd said some salmon, or a lobster, or even a pound of sausages; or if she'd allowed me to 'phone for it. It's not as if I'd ever had any practice. It's not decent to start a beginner on ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... he was friendly without being companionable; and as they were of a decent sort, they let ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... that the decadence obvious in the sartorial modes for society women reached its limit last year and that a saner and more decent sense of propriety would evince itself in the revulsion of public taste. But the tendency to bizarre indecency has increased so that now we are offered in our public ballrooms the spectacle of criminal impropriety—of women's bare legs with painted knees, of naked backs and lewdly veiled ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... the first edition in the Bodleian Library, which had belonged to Gough the antiquary, there is written in his hand, as a foot-note to 'neighbours': 'There is now, as I have heard, a body of men not less decent or virtuous than the Scottish Council, longing to melt the lead of an English Cathedral. What they shall melt, it were just that they should swallow.' It can scarcely be doubted that this is the suppressed ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... the convict population, and as it would be unjust to allow the exceptions which may yet exist to affect the reputation of the colony at large, the government will still more firmly pursue the course of withdrawing assigned servants from all masters who neglect to regard cleanly, decent, and sober habits in and out of their huts, and a seasonable attention to moral and religious duties, as part of the compact under which the labor ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... it's evened up my circulation and I can be decent again. I'm not going to tell you what made me rage like the bull of Bashan, for it wouldn't be safe yet to let loose on that. It's enough that I can treat a good comrade like you as I did and ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... of such a society was usually a privileged slave who had the confidence of his or her master and could go and come at will. Thus a form of communication could be kept up between all members. In event of death of a member, provision was made for decent burial, and all the members as far as possible obtained permits to attend the funeral. Here and again their plan of getting together was brought into play. In Richmond they would go to the church ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... Old Faith and the New," a publication which certainly has to be ranked here, for the reason that in it he founds on Darwinism his whole knowledge of the world, on the ground of which he wishes to arrange life, appears to be much more decent, and in the practical consequences much more conservative, than Buechner; but essentially stands upon quite the same ground. Haeckel, Oskar Schmidt, and (as to his linguistic Darwinism) W. Bleek, group themselves around Strauss, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... sell so profitably as their originals; and her theory was, that this agent hoped to make our friend buy the place, and so allured him there under pretence of sketching. Moreover, she surmised, he was studying some effect of shadow, because, unlike most men, he appeared in decent spirits only on cloudy days. It is always so easy to fit a man out with a set of ready-made motives! But I drew my own conclusions, and was not surprised to hear, soon after, that Severance ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... plates occasionally at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the guests, and created in the Sabbath school a sensation that was so inimical to the orthodox dulness 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 M'liss, as ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... of Captain Brand's being commissioned against the South Sea pirates, he had always been esteemed as honest, reputable a sea-captain as could be. When he started out upon that adventure it was with a ship, the Royal Sovereign, fitted out by some of the most decent merchants of New York. Governor Van Dam himself had subscribed to the adventure, and himself had signed Captain Brand's commission. So, if the unfortunate man went astray, he must have had great temptation to do so; many others behaving no better ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... with such actions!" grumbled Mrs. Popham. "Young folks are so full of notions nowadays that they look for change and excitement everywheres. I s'pose James Todd thinks it's a decent, respectable way of actin', to turn his back on the girls he's been brought up an' gone to school with, and court somebody he never laid eyes on till a year ago. It's a free country, but I must say I don't think ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... beast swarmed with bugs and mosquitoes; and, though the five letters I had were to the wealthiest persons in Volo, amongst them being the mayor, not one offered me hospitality when I told them the next day that I must return by the steamer that brought me, in default of a decent bed and eatable food; and, though they expressed polite regrets, they saw no alternative, and I took a return passage. Hospitality in continental Greece has no traditions; and even in Athens, except from Greeks who had lived in England, I have never been ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... three-fourths of his time in a dream and the rest in open self-deception, and we expect him to be as nice upon a matter of fact as a scientific expert bearing evidence. Upon my heart, I think it less than decent: you do not consider how little the child sees, or how swift he is to weave what he has seen into bewildering fiction; and that he cares no more for what you call truth, than you for a gingerbread dragoon. It would be easy to leave them in their native cloudland, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nation rose and demanded honesty, and honesty was there. The enormous majority of decent people woke from a discontented apathy and took charge. Men sprang into place naturally and served the nation. The old log-rolling, brainless, greedy public officials were thrown into the junk-heap. As if by magic the stress of the war wrung ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... glory—so much so that even now a positive satisfaction would have been his could he have pictured himself outstretched and lifeless, with lookers-on moved to compassion by the dead grace of his winsome face and slender limbs. Joan, too, was caught by the same infection. Not to lie whole and decent in one's coffin! Oh, it was an indignity too terrible for contemplation; and every time they were away from Jerrem she would beset Reuben with entreaties and questions as to what could be done ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... expenses for rent, insurance, and car fare. From the remainder the per capita income is found which must provide for all other expenses, that is, for each person's share of food, clothing, light, fuel, medicine, and all incidentals. It was estimated that a family could not maintain a decent standard of living on a per capita income of less than $1.50 a week. Although each case is considered on its merits, aid is almost always given when the per capita income is less than $1.50; in some special cases it is granted when the income exceeds this ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... St Paul, he was fortunate enough to find a decent furnished lodging, and for the next twenty-four hours he lived, comparatively speaking, in peace. His last notes were written on this day. They are too disjointed and ejaculatory to be given here in full, but the ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... profiting by the liberty of his arms, and loosening his own neck from the halter, notwithstanding a movement made by some of the people to prevent it, which was, however, staid by a look from their leader's eyes. "I will first cast loose this here rope; seeing that it is neither decent, nor safe, for an ignorant man, like me, to enter into such unknown navigation, a-head of his officer. The collar was just the necklace of the dog, which is here to be seen on the arm of poor Guinea, who was, in most respects, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... exams, I'm not in a position to say. He will be near thirty, and ought to have a couple of thousand a year—more or less. His father, at any rate, was a great man at the bar, and must have left something decent. And the only other thing in the world I know about him is that he's a great friend of that clever gossip Margaret Winchfield—which goes to show that however obscure he may be as a scribbler of fiction, he must possess some redeeming virtues as a social being—for Mrs. Winchfield is by ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... her country education blame. One thing he only wonder'd at,—what she So very comic in his nose could see. Hers, it must be confest, was somewhat short, And time and shrinking age accounted for't; But for his own, thank heaven, he could not tell That it was ever thought remarkable; A decent nose, of reasonable size, And handsome thought, rather than otherwise. But that which most of all his wonder paid, Was to observe the Fairy's waiting Maid; How at each word the aged Dame let fall She courtsied low, and smil'd assent to all; But chiefly when the ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the sacred edifice, all divested themselves of their sandals, except the Inca and his family, who did the same on passing through the portals of the temple, where none but these august personages were admitted. *28 After a decent time spent in devotion, the sovereign, attended by his courtly train, again appeared, and preparations were made to commence the sacrifice. This, with the Peruvians, consisted of animals, grain, flowers, and sweet-scented gums; sometimes of human beings, on which occasions a child or beautiful ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... roads; improved both in dimensions and also in the art of construction. For it is observable, that, so early as Queen Elizabeth's days, England, the most equestrian of nations, already presented to its inhabitants a general system of decent bridle roads. Even at this day, it is doubtful whether any man, taking all hinderances into account, and having laid no previous relays of horses, could much exceed the exploit of Carey, (afterwards Lord Monmouth,) a younger ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... "what is this about? You're really cutting with the Groves—two excessively nice people who were decent to me." ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to go with me to pick out the apron, and he fretted like sixty because I would buy one made of decent cloth! I was all in ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... the florid Schomberg with the military bearing, benefactor of white men ('decent food to eat in decent company')—mature victim of belated passion. The girl shuddered. The characteristic harmoniousness of her face became, as it were, decomposed for an ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... he said, "all this guardian angel business. You let me alone and I'll let you alone. We're both decent chaps, but when you begin with your psychotherapy and that other word I don't know how ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... In yesterday's issue you took occasion to speak of the organ-grinding nuisance, about which I hope you will let me ask you the following questions: Why must decent people all over town suffer these pestilential beggars to go about torturing our senses, and practically blackmailing the listeners into paying them to go away? Is it not a most ridiculous excuse on the part of the police, when ordered to arrest these vagrants, to ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... hard-working, does her best, but has chronic bronchitis; does not keep house over tidy. The two elder boys are very idle, tiresome fellows, and worry the father a great deal. They improved and found work during the year following the visit, in which time the father got into decent work in the City. The S. P. C. C. branch had to interfere on behalf of small children. Three dead since marriage, when parents were at ages 23 and 20. Food good when there is any. School gave free dinners and clothes to two. Evidence from Police, S. P. C. C. branch, School Charity, Parish ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... and violence could not be suppressed. We have all heard of the way in which the decent element finally got together, formed special laws and executed offenders in short order. No one of course approves lynch law in the abstract, but when the circumstances of the case are taken into consideration, it is difficult to condemn very severely the men who made ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... degrading and savage names. Billingsgate might have gone to school to Drayton House. Inter alia, they seemed in love with a term that Othello hit upon; only they used it not once, but fifty times a day, and struck decent women with it on the face, like a scorpion whip; and then the scalding tears were sure to run in torrents down their silly, honest, burning cheeks. But this was not all; they had got a large tank in a flagged room, nominally ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... had now wandered back to his post. Tom held his breath. But the policeman, although he undoubtedly followed the youth with his gaze for a moment, failed to act, and Tom was not a little relieved. Even if the fellow was a crook he seemed an awfully decent sort and Tom was glad he ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... enough, you can steal and lie and marry people like Kenneth Saunders; there's no law that you can't break—pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth! That IS society! And yet, if you want to be decent, you can slave away a thousand years, mending and patching and teaching and keeping books, and nothing beautiful or easy ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... post-office or a shop, Pym is the most perfectly isolated village within a reasonable distance of London. As I sauntered up the mile-long lane that climbs the steep hill, and is the only connection between Pym and anything approaching a decent road, I thought that this was the place to which I should like to retire for a year, in order to write the book I had so often contemplated, and never found time to begin. This, I reflected, was a ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... bigoted prelates and ministers who would have sent to the flames an unoffending woman if she denied the authority of the Pope, were not the men to suffer him to escape who had not only overturned the papal power in England, but had deprived them of their sees and sent them to the Tower. No matter how decent the forms of law or respectful the agents of the crown, Cranmer had not the shadow of a hope; and hence he was certainly weak, to say the least, to trust to any deceitful promises made to him. What ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... Cap'n Bill, "I'd like a decent square meal, once more, just by way of variety. In the last place there was nothing but fruit to eat, and here it's worse, for there's ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... him, and only coldly spoke to him when speech was necessary. Chester treated him with marked aversion; the colonel would not look at him; only Armitage—his captain—had a decent word for him at any time, and even he was stern and cold. The most envied and careless of the entire command, the Adonis, the beau, the crack shot, the graceful leader in all garrison gayeties, the beautiful dancer, rider, tennis-player, the adored of so many sentimental ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... answer. "He's a queer old gink—old chap, I mean—whose work is quite the go about here recently. Some very decent people have taken him up, I believe. He's worth meeting, so I'm told, as a curiosity. I've seen only two or three of his paintings, but they're really not bad. Some of the fellows at the club were talking about him the other night. I think you'd ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... are simply exterminating the bourgeoisie, and their arguments are machine guns and the gallows. My talk to-day with Joffe has shown me that these people are not honest, and in falsity surpass all that cunning diplomacy has been accused of, for to oppress decent citizens in this fashion and then talk at the same time of the universal blessing of freedom—it is ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... have been three times before the court of session and won each time. I knew your father, who was a decent shoemaker in Cupar, and when he sent you to learn to be a lawyer he little thought he was making a tool for those he despised. Pick a man from the plow, clap on his back a black coat, send him to college, and in five years ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... He left behind him no friend to speak for him, and we have heard of him certainly from one enemy; but the tidings are of a nature to force upon us belief in the evil which Cicero spoke of him. Had he been a man of decent habits of life, and of an honest purpose, would Cicero have dared to say to the Romans respecting him the words which he produced, not only in the second Philippic, which was unspoken, but also in the twelve which followed? The ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... exalt—the source and marrow of vanity. We see her as a wife partaking of the cares and guiding the labors of her husband and by domestic diligence spreading cheerfulness all around for his sake; sharing the decent refinements of civilization without being injured by them; placing all her joy, all her happiness in the merited approbation of the man she loves; as a mother, we find her affectionate, the ardent instructress of the children she has reared ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... a guide," began Shelby, as soon as decent greetings had been made. "He's just been let loose by Sir Somebody of Somewhere, and I nailed him. Name o' Joshua,—but we can stand that. He really knows it all,—without continually proclaiming ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... the one that he tried to give me. I probably was the first decent man who ever had treated him civilly, and to impress me with his knowledge he spread that knowledge before me. It was ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... was an actor, short in stature, defective in speech and accent, but earnest in temperament, whom he cast for this eminent role. The other parts were filled as best he could, and the principals with him enabled Mr. Booth to give some semblance of a decent performance. In order to properly advertise the event, he secured the assistance of several Hawaiians, and furnished them with a paste made out of their native product called "poi." He discovered later, to his amazement, that not a bill had been posted, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... my store. It is not in my power to supply this unfortunate girl with decent raiment and honest bread. I have no house to which to conduct her. I have no means of securing her from ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... for her death as long as was decent, I took possession of all her property, a particular account of which she gave me before she died; and the corn you sold for me was ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... survive Mr. Combe long, for he dy'd in the Year 1616, the 53d of his Age. He lies buried on the North Side of the Chancel in the great Church at Stratford; where a Monument, decent enough for the Time, is erected to him, and plac'd against the Wall. He is represented under an Arch in a sitting Posture, a Cushion spread before him, with a Pen in his Right Hand, and his Left rested on a Scrowl of Paper. The Latin Distich, which is placed under ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... with a pretty blush. "But then, you know, he could hardly say less after such a frank confession on my part. It is no more than decent of him to make believe, even if it is not true. Now, Katy, look at Boston, and see if you ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... the custom, sir, in decent society," said Mr. Crawley, haughtily, "to call the dish as I have called it"; and it was served to us on silver soup plates by the footmen in the canary coats, with the mouton aux navets. Then "ale and water" ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Smith. "Look at this. Here's my aeroplane, fixed up here. You don't suppose I came down here on purpose? I lost my way in this confounded mist, and don't know where I am. Just be sensible, there's a decent chap, and get some of your men to help us out. I'll ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... my rooms during this part of the day, I could form some opinion as to the briskness of the plague. I don’t mean this for a sly insinuation that I got up every morning with the sun. It was not so; but the funerals of most people in decent circumstances at Cairo are attended by singers and howlers, and the performances of these people woke me in the early morning, and prevented me from remaining in ignorance of what was going ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... told him that I worked a little in the same trade as his own. This worthy man bade me come into his shop, and at once gave me work to do, and spoke as follows: "Your good appearance makes me believe you are a decent honest youth." Then he told me out gold, silver, and gems; and when the first day's work was finished, he took me in the evening to his house, where he dwelt respectably with his handsome wife and children. Thinking of the grief which my good father might be feeling ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... that the use of beer and ale had produced none of those dreadful effects which were the consequences of drinking geneva; and since the prohibition of the distilling of malt-spirits had taken place, the common people were become apparently more sober, decent, healthy, and industrious: a circumstance sufficient to induce the legislature not only to intermit, but even totally to abolish the practice of distillation, which has ever been productive of such intoxication, riot, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... addressing a single sermon, on the Lord's day, to many who are under his episcopal supervision. The early bishop had the care of a parish: the modern bishop superintends a diocese. The elders of the primitive bishop were not unfrequently decent tradesmen who earned their bread by the sweat of their brow: [587:3] the presbyters of a modern prelate have generally each the charge of a congregation, and are supposed to be entirely devoted to sacred duties. Even the ancient city bishop ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... cat's sake let's get to a regular town where we got a chance to make real money! Why—think of it! We can start now, and with luck we can sleep in Los Angeles to-night. And it won't be hot like it is here, and you can git a decent meal and see a decent show while you put yourself outside it. And," he added artfully, giving the propeller a pull, "the Thunder Bird is achin' to fly. Look underneath, bo. I've got her name painted on the under side, too, so she'll holler her name like a honkin' goose as she flies. And you ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... feet, lady of the house, and when I saw the light below I thought maybe if you'd a sup of new milk and a quiet decent corner where a man could sleep {he looks in past her and sees the dead man.} The Lord have mercy ...
— In the Shadow of the Glen • J. M. Synge
... I praise Young "Peter" sleek before the fire, A proper dog, whose decent ways Renew the virtues of his sire; "Patroclus" rests in grassy tomb, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... He did not wander about the countryside, but lived at the little village of Elstow, about a mile from the town of Bedford, as his father had before him. He was a poor and honest workman who mended his neighbors' kettles and pans, and did his best to keep his family in decent comfort. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... fire was at its height. The waves of air followed one another with great violence, and the fumes of picric acid and of other acids that he did not know became very strong. But he scarcely noticed it. The bombardment was all in the day's work, and when the Germans ceased, the French, after a decent interval, would begin their own cannonade, carried on at ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in Konnaia Square had been founded in the year 1679, by the third of the line, Alexis Gregorievitch, who had purposely placed the dwelling of his race in this far corner of the city, out of the possible range of decent dwellings. And none of the succession of Peters and Mikhails that followed, ever thought to reproach this act of their ancestor. The details of the life of one of these men would have sufficed for ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... might all have saved their lives, if they would have renounced the Covenant: So they were really a sort of martyrs for it.—Swift. Decent term. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... ignorance, and red-headed lewdness. If she were even a type, she might be worth considering; but she is simply an abnormal sport, with a little brain addled by notions that she is like Hypatia, and a large impudence rendered intolerable by the fact that she has money. Her father is a decent man. He ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... politics; and a man who mingles in political development with no intention of taking on responsible tasks unless he gets all his particular formulae accepted is a pervert, a victim of Irish bad example, and unfit far decent democratic institutions ... ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... sugar and sherbet with it, and then hands it to his customer who swallows the mixture with every sign of deep satisfaction. If possessed of a conveyance the middle-class Memon will drive about sunset to the Apollo Bunder, Breach Candy or the Bandstand. Happy possessor of a tolerably decent horse and victoria, he considers himself above the conventionalities of dress, and thus may be seen in the skull-cap, waist-coat, long white shirt and trousers which constitute his shop or business-attire, attended not infrequently by little miniatures ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... their situation, not being able to get many students, endeavoured to turn a penny in the only way in which they could turn it, and sold their degrees to whoever would buy them, generally without requiring any residence or standing, and frequently without subjecting the candidate even to a decent examination. The less trouble they gave, the more money they got, and I certainly do not pretend to vindicate so dirty a practice. All universities being ecclesiastical establishments under the ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... and health and good looks. The second Sunday the minister's wife, prompted by her husband, spoke to Mrs. Ridge and called soon after. She liked Milly—minister's wives usually did—and she approved of the grandmother, who had an aristocratic air, in her decent black, her thin, gray face. "They seem really nice people," Mrs. Borland reported to her husband, "but a very ordinary home. He travels for the Hoppers'. Her mother was a southerner." (Milly had got that in somehow,—"My mother's home was Kentucky, ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... Cottage. You see we have no lessons then, 'cause Miss Marston goes away for her holidays, and we can be out of doors all day long if we choose; papa doesn't mind as long as we're in time for meals and looking clean and decent. There's a lovely cove near our house,—it isn't deep or dangerous,—and there we go boating and swimming; then there's fishing and crabbing, and drives about the country in the big, rattly depot-wagon behind Pegasus,—that's our horse, but he's an ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... he found his company amusing, which he did until their arrival at Tjilatjap. Here his opinion was somewhat modified, when his voluble companion, profiting by superior experience, annexed the only decent room in the hotel and exulted over the ruse which ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... I have been able to learn," he said, evenly, "we should reach Saul, with decent luck, just ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... good cheerful noise, scuffling with their feet as they marched into church and up the organ-loft stair, and blowing their noses a good deal during the service. To be brief, the congregation looked as decent as might be in these bad times. The Abbey Church was furnished with a magnificent screen, and many hatchments and heraldic tombstones. The Doctor spent a great part of his income in beautifying his darling place; he had endowed it with a superb painted window, bought in the Netherlands, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... undertaking that had been begun, promising them a happy result. He yielded up his spirit to God amid tender colloquies. Those of the ship wished to keep his body in a well-sealed wooden casket, in order to give it decent burial on shore; but in order to avoid innovations, the venerable superior, Fray Juan, did not consent to this. Accordingly, having been placed in a casket, he was cast into the sea, accompanied ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... instantly transforms the heart into a second brain. But why worry, when nothing is final? Haven't you and I, for instance, lamented the present rottenness of smart society? Why, when kings by the name of George sat on the throne of England, society was just as drunken, just as dissolute! Then a decent queen came, and society behaved itself; and now, here we come round again to the Georges, only with the name changed! There's nothing final. So, when things are as you don't like them, remember that and bear them; and when they're as you do like them, ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... safety, and of wealth, united in a single spot, was sufficient to justify the choice of Constantine. But as some decent mixture of prodigy and fable has, in every age, been supposed to reflect a becoming majesty on the origin of great cities, the Emperor was desirous of ascribing his resolution, not so much to the uncertain ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... custom when death takes place. The two great toes are tied together, to make the body look decent; and formerly the hands were placed with the palms together, as if in the attitude of prayer, and were kept in that posture by ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... have nothing to do with any of them. Mr. Phillips gave more credit than any of the folk I had ever seen to my yearnings after Bessie's orphans, and my resolutions to live single for their sake; but he never could see that they would be such a drawback to any decent man that liked me; but I knew there were few men so taken up with bairns as ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... everybody was talking about the "lovely" new waiter, and to hear the girls go on you'd think the Prince of Wales had landed. Jonadab was the only kicker, and he said 'twas bad enough afore, but now that new dude had shipped, 'twa'n't the place for a decent, ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... hope fade. He hadn't a chance—even to go to a decent jail! He had heard all about the horrors of the reformatory. They wouldn't even let your people visit you on Sundays! And his mother would think he was run over or murdered. She would go crazy with worry. He didn't mind on his own account, but his mother— He loved the old widowed mother ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... Exchange in all directions out of the city are lined, on both sides, with an almost unbroken series of shops, and are so kept in the hands of the middle and lower bourgeoisie, which, out of self-interest, cares for a decent and cleanly external appearance and can care for it. True, these shops bear some relation to the districts which lie behind them, and are more elegant in the commercial and residential quarters than ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... kitchen to the Fellows' table, waiting for dinner until all the rest had finished, and wearing a garb to signalise inferiority and degradation. Common manliness cannot suffer indignities of this sort. Johnson at Oxford and Goldsmith in Dublin rebelled. The agonised sense of decent justice could not be stifled. In such contexts, only cowards can wish dishonour borne and indignation unrevealed. Oliver himself had none of those conventional prejudices that raise Universities to fetishes. Like the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... means of living, but perhaps her morals may be irremediably corrupted. She is now lodged in a room with ten or dozen men, and the house is so crouded that I doubt whether I have interest enough to procure her a more decent apartment. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... close on two hundred miles astern. But as I told you a moment since, you need not worry about your future. Why, you have already been adopted into the happy family—you are already one of the jolly company of the brig Cohasset, with equal rights, and an equal share. And if we have decent luck with this job ahead of us, you will have no cause to grieve at being yanked out of your berth ashore. It isn't so bad, is it? We know you leave no family behind—oh, yes, we know quite a lot about ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... who, with hermit heart, Disdain'st the wealth of art, And gauds, and pageant weeds, and trailing pall; But com'st a decent maid, 10 In attic robe array'd, O chaste, unboastful Nymph, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... life; his interest was engrossed by a human figure, seated on a campstool near the back wall of the house, and holding a concertina, whence, at this moment, in slow, melancholy strain, 'Home, Sweet Home' began to wheeze forth. The player was a middle-aged man, dressed like a decent clerk or shopkeeper, his head shaded with an old straw hat rather too large for him, and on his feet—one of which swung as he sat with legs crossed—a pair of still more ancient slippers, also too large. With head aside, and eyes looking upward, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... courage to say a decent word in favor of the I. W. W. I have. (Here several in the ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... firmly, "all I've got to say is that it ain't decent. Think of people sleepin' just off kitchens and washin' their faces and ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... no reproof for him when, clean and decent once more, he sought the dining-room. Aunt Hannah shook her head, but smiled as she made the tea, and kissed him as ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... espied, at the upper end of the street, a negro-slave standing at his door; so I went up to him and said to him, 'Hast thou a place where I may abide for an hour of the day?' 'Yes,' answered he, and opening the door admitted me into a decent house, furnished with carpets and mats and cushions of leather. Then he shut the door on me and went away; and I misdoubted me he had heard of the reward offered for me, and said to myself, 'He hath gone to inform against me.' But, as I sat pondering my case and boiling like cauldron over fire, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... singular regularity for the last three weeks. The two spectators of this gentle comedy received it as they had often received it before, with a mixture of apparent astonishment and patronizing unconsciousness, and, after a decent interval, moved away together, leaving the ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... lessons and instructions, and Urad, with a decent solemnity, attended both her labours and her teacher, who was so pleased with the fruits which she saw spring forth from the seeds of virtue that she had sown in the breast of her pupil, that she now began to leave her more to herself, and exhorted her to set apart some portion ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... were going out to a savage country, where you've got to do everything yourself before you can have it, and as there'd be no parsons and churches, we thought we'd get it done decent and 'spectable ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... collection of three stores under one roof: two of them were shut up and evidently unoccupied, the third showed a lighted window. This was the manufactory. It occupied the middle place and presented a tolerably decent appearance. It showed, besides the lighted lamp I have mentioned, such signs of life as a few packing-boxes tumbled out on the small platform in front, and a whinnying horse attached to an empty buggy, tied to a post on the opposite ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... BLAKE'S dissipated friends called his attention to the frown or the pout of her, Whenever he did anything which appeared to her to savour of an unmentionable place, He would say that "she would be a very decent old girl when all that nonsense was knocked out of her," And his method of knocking it out of her is one that ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... knows how to keep his word, even when it has been passed to a Norman. But let me see thee use the dress and costume of thy English ancestry—no short cloaks, no gay bonnets, no fantastic plumage in my decent household. He that would be the son of Cedric, must show himself of English ancestry.—Thou art about to speak," he added, sternly, "and I guess the topic. The Lady Rowena must complete two years' mourning, as for a betrothed husband—all our Saxon ancestors would ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... "Since the Consul went away on leave things seem to have been humming—two stabbing affrays, eight drunken seamen locked up, a mutiny on a tramp steamer, and now a yacht being cast away—a fairly decent list! And yet some stay-at-home people complain that British consuls are only paid to be ornamental! They should spend a week here, at Leghorn, and ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... say—why, I know the fellow well. He ought to be able to make a decent map of this country, for he's spent many years roaming over it, though I think he was more concerned about stealing some honest trapper's pelts than anything else. Why, see here, he's made an awful botch of this thing right around this quarter, where he certainly knows every foot of ground. ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... brought three young Irishmen to her house, who pretended to be in daily expectation of remittances from their country, and of a pension from Bonaparte. During six months she not only lodged and supported them, but embarrassed herself to procure them linen and a decent apparel. At last she was informed that each of, them had been allowed sixty livres—in the month, and that arrears had been paid them for nine months. Their debt to her was above three thousand livres—but the day after she asked for payment they decamped, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... arranged for our passage, Patsey. She is a fast-looking little craft, with very decent accommodation. She is in the wine trade, and brought a cargo safely up last week, and will start again the day after tomorrow. She carries a crew of eight hands; and I have made inquiries about the captain, and hear ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... and believe, is a decent man—that is to say, upon any ground not connected with politics; equal to six out of any ten manufacturers you will meet in the Queen's high road—whilst of the other four not more than three will be found conspicuously his superiors. He is certainly, in the senate, not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... their pay was in arrear, and that of the officers, owing to the great depreciation of the paper currency, was wholly unequal to their decent maintenance. These multiplied privations and sufferings soured the temper of the men, and it required all the influence of Washington to prevent many of the officers from resigning their commissions. The long continuance of want and ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... are all in love with you!" he exclaimed in low, vehement tones; adding quickly, as he detected a flicker of apprehension in Magda's eyes: "But you need not fear to dance with me. I will be as your brother—I will go on being 'decent.'" ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... place the Bunyard letter in my money-belt; the others, being of minor importance, I put in my valise again. I looked at the miserable being who lay groaning and uneasy in the stupor of intoxication. The state-room was not fit for the occupancy of a decent person. The fumes of the whiskey were sickening to me, and I could no longer stay there. Taking my valise in my hand, I left it, resolved not to be the room-mate of such a ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... ethical position. It's the sort of way a woman always does gloss over her ethical positions. You're all dependents—all of you. By instinct. Only you good ones—shirk. You shirk a straightforward and decent return for what you get from us—taking refuge in purity and delicacy and such-like when it ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... that all useful information may be obtained; but when it has passed through the examination of the committees, has been approved by the collective wisdom of the senate, and requires only a formal ratification to give it the force of a law, it is neither usual nor decent to offer petitions, or declare any dislike of what the senate ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... bad lot. I knew it from the first. Of course we shall have trouble." Then Mr. Eustace explained to the lawyer that their best way out of it all would be to get the widow married to some respectable husband. She was sure to marry sooner or later,—so John Eustace said,—and any "decently decent" fellow would be easier to deal with than she herself. "He must be very indecently indecent if he is not," said Mr. Camperdown. But Mr. Eustace did not name Frank Greystock the barrister as ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... at each other in astonishment, as it seemed odd and not altogether decent to be unable to ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... doctrine that her existence was imperilled if Great Britain should extend by so much as a mile a vague frontier running through a South American swamp thousands of miles away. And for that cause these decent and honourable people were prepared to take all the risks that would be involved to Anglo-Saxon civilisation by a war between England and America. The present writer happened at that time to be living in America, and concerned with certain political work. Night after night he heard these ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... won't find us together," announced Bradley decisively. "You stay right here—you won't be any worse off than before I came—and I'll get as far as I can and account for as many of the beggars as possible before they get me. Good-bye! You're a mighty decent little girl. I wish that I ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... upon letter, to prevent the green and blue factions cutting each other's throats at the public spectacles; letters to the tribunus voluptatum, who had to look after the pantomimes and loose women, telling him to keep the poor wretches in some decent order, and to set them and the city an example of a better life, by being a chaste and respectable man himself. Letter upon letter of Cassiodorus', written in Dietrich's name, disclose a state of things in Rome on which a Goth could look only with ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... taverns! There is just one genuine, clean, decent, palatable thing occasionally to be had in them,—namely, a boiled egg. The soups taste pretty good sometimes, but their sources are involved in a darker mystery than that of the Nile. Omelettes taste as if they had been carried in the waiter's hat, or fried in an old boot. I ordered scrambled ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... will keep his planes at home. But as you won't listen to me, you've got to have your way, I suppose. Well, I've got you rooms of a sort. They'll have to do. I haven't got money enough for anything decent." ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Better tell me what sort of lodgings you have got. Is it a decent room? Plenty of air and sunshine? But, no. Don't tell me anything. I mustn't know." ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... had, as yet, served no other purpose than that of feeding my vanity and making me believe I was a very superior animal; and you may learn from this incident, that those who wish to make a proper figure in the world, and play the part they are called on to perform in a decent manner, must study their lesson in the world itself, by mingling with their fellows, for books alone can no more teach such knowledge than it can teach a dog to swim without his ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... whole movement of women's rights was to be established in America. He had seen the effects of woman's presence in associations upon men, and he was sure that this same agency would have the effect of bringing politics to such a condition as that decent people of either sex might take part in it. As to the Bible declaring that man shall rule over woman, he found a similar case where it used to be quoted in support of the institution of slavery, but when ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the door. Rogers opened it and admitted Papadopoulos, who forthwith began to execute his usual manoeuvres of salutation. Rogers stood staring and open-mouthed at the apparition. It took all his professional training in imperturbability to enable him to make a decent exit. This increased my good humour. I grasped the ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... blister your fingers, I dare say," he admitted. "I'm afraid you are too good for this rude country, and I have no use for you. I could afford to be decent? Perhaps so, but I earn my money with considerably more effort than you seem willing to make. The cook will give you dinner with the other men to-day; then you can resume your search for an easy billet. We have no room ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... a bare room adorned by a single Chinese bronze of flawless shape, or by some precious fragment of Asiatic pottery. But such redeeming features were conspicuously absent, and no attempt had been made to disguise the decent ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... grandson of his grandfather. A perpetual breeder of trouble; never did a decent day's work the whole trip. Insolent, mutinous, and overbearing, till I went for him with intent to do bodily mischief; then he became extremely obsequious. Like the rest of the foregoing, he resigned and ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... in a farm again. The people are very decent indeed. The woman gave me three drinks as soon as I arrived, offering them herself and refusing to take any payment for them; she also offered to boil me a couple of eggs, but I did not wish to put on good ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... eyes, wandering from one face to the other, there lurked the question as to whether they had seen Roden and Von Holzen quit his door a minute earlier. But no reference was made to those two gentlemen, and Lord Ferriby, who, as a chairman of many boards, was a master of the art of conciliation and the decent closing of both eyes to unsightly facts, received Cornish's suggestion with a ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... know how, under such a home government, I ever became a decent fellow. I do not know why I am not now a pirate, a freebooter, a pickpocket, or a nuisance to myself and the world in some other capacity. I have come to believe since that my inherited good qualities saved me under such an utter neglect of all home ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... torment from the present; and one of the things which made the present a source of misery to him was the fact that he was expected to behave more like a mad millionaire than a sober young man with a knowledge of the value of money. His mind, trained from infancy to a decent respect for the pence, had not yet adjusted itself to the possession of large means; and the open-handed role forced upon him by ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... way he draws on his courage. The history of the two years that passed before he came to Mr. Sloane is really absolutely edifying. He rescued his sisters and nieces from the deep waters, placed them high and dry, established them somewhere in decent gentility—and then found at last that his strength had left him—had dropped dead like an over-ridden horse. In short, he had worked himself to the bone. It was now his sisters' turn. They nursed him with all the added tenderness of gratitude for the past and terror of the future, and brought ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... conjectured there was none; but there might be just cause, if the memorial was not taken into consideration. He placed himself in the case of a slave, and said, that on hearing that Congress had refused to listen to the decent suggestions of a respectable part of the community, he should infer, that the general government, from which was expected great good would result to EVERY CLASS of citizens, had shut their ears ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... country, to that persecution, as so many judgments of God to punish so heinous an offense, and exhorting a repeal of those uncharitable laws. The whole appeared to me as written with a good deal of decent plainness and manly freedom. The six concluding lines I remember, though I have forgotten the two first of the stanza; but the purport of them was, that his censures proceeded from good-will, and, therefore, he would be ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... this. Boone and Calloway were to be killed, but they were too brave to be killed in this way. Some proposed making them run the gauntlet. At last it was decided (in pity for the girls, it is said) that the parents should be killed in a more decent and quiet way. They were to be tomahawked and scalped, and the girls were still to be kept prisoners. With the morning's light they started out to execute the sentence. That the poor girls might not see their parents murdered the men were led off to the woods, ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... Doll, who always thought it necessary to explain that he was not what no one thought he was. "I hate all that sort of thing. Utter rot, I call it. For goodness' sake, Scarlett, sit tight. I must be decent to the beast in my own house, and if you go I shall have to have him alone jawing at me till all hours of the ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... and great lords came into our city, they were ever ready to find lodging in the great and wealthy house of the Im Hoffs; but then she would suffer them to pay court to her, and grant them greater freedom than becomes the decent honor of a Nuremberg citizen's hearth. Once, then, when my lord the duke of Bavaria lay at their house with a numerous fellowship, a fine young count, who had courted my grand uncle's wife while she was yet a maid, fanned his jealousy to a flame; and, one evening, at a late hour, while ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the same decision to make again as when she knew nothing, she would have taken wing, just as she had. She had made failures, she had hurt herself, mind and body, but her honour, her self-respect were intact. Suddenly she sat straight. She was glad that she had taken a bath, worn a reasonably decent dress, and had a better one in the back of the buggy. She would cut the Gordian knot with a vengeance. She would not wait to see how they treated her, she would treat them! As for Adam's state, there was ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... "Happiness for instance only comes when we forget our eternal search for it, and try to make others happy. Even religion is changing. The old selfish idea of saving our own souls has given way largely to the saving of others, by giving them a chance to redeem themselves. Decent living conditions—" ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "Well, that's one decent thing he did," said Rob Lindsey, "and I s'pose there's just a chance that he didn't take my ball, or your kite, but who ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... unkind; they offered food and fire—as soldiers do, Loskiel," he added, with a flash of Contempt for men who sought what no Siwanois, no Iroquois, ever did seek of any maiden or any chaste and decent ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... I saw at the Ragged School. They could not be trusted with books; they could only be instructed orally; they were difficult of reduction to anything like attention, obedience, or decent behaviour; their benighted ignorance in reference to the Deity, or to any social duty (how could they guess at any social duty, being so discarded by all social teachers but the gaoler and the hangman!) was terrible to see. Yet, even ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... kinds of friendships," he said, "physical and mental. The physical is a thing of the moment. Of cauce you quite like the individual, you remain quite nice with them, and so on,—to keep the thing as decent as possible. It is quite decent, so long as you keep it so. But it is a thing of the moment. Which you know. It may last a week or two, or a month or two. But you know from the beginning it is going to end—quite finally—quite soon. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... water to be moist inside—then put it in a bake pan, without any cover, and heat it very hot. If broken pieces of bread are put in the oven, five or six hours after baking, and rusked, they will keep good a long time. Sour heavy bread, treated in this manner, will make very decent cakes and puddings, provided there is enough saleratus used in making them to correct the acidity of the bread. Rich cake, that has wine or brandy in it, will remain good in cold weather several months, if it is kept in a cool, dry place. The day in which it is to be eaten, ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... about it," said Tanno. "Horse-training is, at least, and always, an activity fit for a gentleman and wholly decent and respectable." ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... for breath. Then she drew a long sigh. "Oh dear," she lamented, "I'd give anything if I had a decent shape! I'd like to wear those shimmering, flowing, transparent summer things over silk tights. But, mercy me! I'd look like a potato busted wide open. Now you can wear ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of horrors, the electors of the department had been in session. As the news reached them of what was going on in the streets, one thought came into the minds of all the decent men among them, to get through as fast as possible and quit the city. At the first ballot 442 electors were present. At the seventh only 203 remained. Of these 135, being the compact 'Republican' minority, gave their votes on that ballot to Drouet, the postmaster's son of Ste-Menehould, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... ancient usages, Salina Bowles set herself resolutely against all cooking-stoves, modern ranges and inventions of that class. That exemplary female was often heard to declare that no decent meal could ever be cooked by any of these new-fangled contrivances. A hickory back log, and good oak-wood answered her purpose quite well enough. Only give her plenty of them and she'd cook a dinner with any woman on this side of sundown. From these prejudices it happened that Salina, ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... two-thirds of our entire wealth. Seventy-five per cent of the workers in the basic industry are unable to send their children to school. Seventy-one per cent of the heads of the families in our basic industries are unable to provide a decent living for their families without the assistance of the other members. Twenty-nine per cent of our laborers are able to live up to the myth that he is the head of the family. The results of these evils ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... painted in soft and cheerful tints. I would have the walls pleasantly colored, or covered with delicate, or bright, or warm-hued paper. The floor should be either tiled, or hidden under carpets, durable, if possible, at any rate, decent. Straw or rope matting is better than brown, yawning boards. There you have things put upon an entirely new basis. At no immoderate expense there is a new sky, a new earth, a new horizon. If a boy is rich and can furnish his room handsomely, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the morning when we reached Jalapa, tired to death, and shivering with cold. Greatly we rejoiced as we rattled through its mountainous streets, and still more when we found ourselves in a nice clean inn, with brick floors and decent small beds, and everything prepared for us. The sight of a fire would have been too much luxury; however, they gave us some hot tea, and very shortly after, I at least can answer for myself, that I was in bed, and enjoying the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Hicacal Cay, who will be sure to notice us as we go in. By the way, I picked up a rather useful little item of information while I was ashore this afternoon. I fell in with the harbour-master, who seems quite a decent sort of chap, as Spaniards go; he and I have gradually grown to be rather chummy since we have been in harbour here, and upon the strength of the fact that I was clearing for sea I took him into that place on the quay yonder and cracked a farewell bottle of wine with him. As we ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... bead industry of Venice is but a poorly-paid one; only the most skilful among the hands can manage to make a decent livelihood. Not very many of the women can earn more than about 4-1/2d. a day, so that for them all the fast-days decreed by their Church are quite superfluous; their fasts last from Ash Wednesday to Ash Wednesday. Even polenta, that very frugal Italian national dish, is ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... city. But the need thus pathetically shown in the children of many social strata in the United States indicates that not only should there be own mothers or substitute-mothers for every little child to start each aright along the way of life but every own mother or substitute-mother should have a decent place to live in so that all needed drill may be conducted in dignified privacy and in an atmosphere required for right results. The housing problem reaches back to the primal need to have a suitable living-place into which to put ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... Wild' has its closest English parallel in 'Barry Lyndon.' The burlesque in 'Tom Thumb' of the Lee and Dryden school of tragedy may remind us of Thackeray's burlesques of Scott and Dumas. The characters of the two authors belong to the same family. 'Vanity Fair' has grown more decent since the days of Lady Bellaston, but the costume of the actors has changed more than their nature. Rawdon Crawley would not have been surprised to meet Captain Booth in a spunging-house; Shandon and his friends preserved the old traditions of Fielding's Grub Street; Lord Steyne and ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... a plausible talker," explained Will, "and he persuaded me he had a great scheme for making money. Well, before I knew it I had signed some papers—foolishly. At first I was given decent clerical work to do, and then the scheme failed, I was transferred to another part of the State, and to another company, and in some way, by a juggling of contracts, not knowing what I was doing, it seems that I signed an agreement to work in a ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... while she lived, to take an interest in Rachel Frost; it is very probable that their own child's death only made this interest greater. They were sufficiently wise not to lift the girl palpably out of her proper sphere; but they paid for a decent education for her at a day-school, and were personally kind to her. Rachel—I was going to say fortunately, but it may be as just to say unfortunately—was one of those who seem to make the best of every trifling advantage: she had grown, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... decent household,' she said; 'no mistress who respected herself would keep me a moment. I ought to be put out on the doorstep with my box and a ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... here for three days. Last night we were visited by some singers. We were very far from the music that I love, but the popular and sentimental tunes were quite able to replace a finer art, because of the ardent conviction of the singer. The workman who sang these songs, which were decent, in fact moral (a rather questionable moral, perhaps, but still a moral), so put his soul into it that the timbre of his voice was altogether too moving for our hostesses. Here are the ideal people: perhaps ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... who fed at his cost. But it was plain my presence or absence would be of as little importance in his eyes as that of one of his blue-coated serving-men. My cousins were mere cubs, in whose company I might, if I liked it, unlearn whatever decent manners, or elegant accomplishments, I had acquired, but where I could attain no information beyond what regarded worming dogs, rowelling horses, and following foxes. I could only imagine one reason, which was probably the true one. My father considered the life which was led at Osbaldistone ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... I've notified Mr. Cluff. You won't mind his being there? He's a rough diamond, but a thoroughly decent fellow." ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... essay on some subject, of their own composition, and in their own handwriting. I sent in two long poems on the Covenanters, which must have exceedingly amused them, as I had not learned to write even decent prose. But, much to my surprise, immediately on the close of the harvesting experience, a letter arrived, intimating that I, along with another young man, had been put upon the short leet, and that both were requested to appear in ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... hastily land again from their canoes, in which they had been carried beyond the Cichican* valley, differing one from another in manners, but inspired with the same avidity for blood, and all more eager to shroud their villainous faces in bushy hair than to cover with decent clothing those parts of their body which required it. Moreover, having heard of the departure of our friends, and their resolution never to return, they seized with greater boldness than before on all the country towards the extreme ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... question, how a man might become a god, was, "By doing that which was impossible for men to do." The eighth told him, "Life is stronger than death, because it supports so many miseries." And the last being asked, how long he thought it decent for a man to live, said, "Till death appeared more desirable than life." Then Alexander turned to him whom he had made judge, and commanded him to give sentence. "All that I can determine," said he, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... a bit worse off than Tom Green, Nicholas, and he has not got your money, and Tom is as jolly as anything, and everybody loves him, though he is a hopeless cripple, and can't even look decent, as you will be able to in a year or two. There is no use in having this sentiment about war heroes that would make one put up with their tempers, and their cynicism! Everybody is in the same boat, women and men, we chance being maimed by bombs, and ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... which Dr Johnson delivered those excellent arguments for a form of prayer which he has introduced into his Journey. I am myself fully convinced that a form of prayer for publick worship is in general most decent and edifying. Solennia verba have a kind of prescriptive sanctity, and make a deeper impression on the mind than extemporaneous effusions, in which, as we know not what they are to be, we cannot readily acquiesce. Yet I would allow also of a certain portion of extempore address, as occasion may ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... thing as cold or heat or pain, and therefore you could not feel cold. But now, since, according to the new creed, such things as uric acid, chromogens and purins had no existence, she could safely indulge in decent viands again. But her unhappy husband was not a real gainer in this respect, for while he ate, she tirelessly discoursed to him on the new creed, and asked him to recite with her the True Statement of Being. And on the top of that she dismissed the admirable ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... philosophical tinctures of any kind; he was quite content to be inconsistent—to be a Conservative at home and a Liberal abroad. There were very good reasons for keeping the Irish in their places; but what had that to do with it? The point was this—when any decent man read an account of the political prisons in Naples his gorge rose. He did not want war; but he saw that without war a skilful and determined use of England's power might do much to further the cause of the Liberals ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... underprivileged. Both of these manifestations of injustice have retarded happiness. No wise man has any intention of destroying what is known as the profit motive; because by the profit motive we mean the right by work to earn a decent livelihood for ourselves and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "Defection," said I, "is inevitable. The soldiers are drinking in their barracks the money which you have been giving them for some days past to purchase their fidelity. They say Louis XVIII., is a very decent sort of man, but 'Vive le ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... coaches, the abominable roads, the irresponsible drivers, the wretched delay, misery, and uncertainty rapidly gave place to lighter, stronger, and more commodious vehicles, better horses, more experienced drivers, careful guards, regular stages, marked by decent inns and comfortable hostelries, and improved roads. The post-office made a contract with the coaching speculator—a very safe contract indeed—by which he was to have two and one-half per cent of the money saved in the conveyance of letters. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... hardly be honest to take the "loafers" of Washington as fair representatives of their order: there are, no doubt, better—if not braver—soldiers in the front; and perhaps even the queer specimens then before me might look decent, if not dignified, under the earnest ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... "It's what most of the decent people in this country are thinking, I guess, even if they haven't begun saying it out loud yet. It strikes me the American people are a mighty patient lot—putting up with that demagogue. That was a rotten thing that happened up on the hill to-day, Quinlan—a damnable thing. ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... justified himself by alleging that, inasmuch as the queen was married first, although her sister was married immediately after, the ceremonial was not celebrated at the same time! This audacious departure from every decent observance of truth and honesty was perpetrated by a man who is lauded by the savons of France to this day as one of their illustrious number. His Memoir of Sir Robert Peel is popular in England, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... it was capital fun; but I think I was rather bewildered by it, though "Roderick Random" was and remains delightful. I don't remember having Sterne in the school library, no doubt because the works of that divine were not considered decent for young people. Ah! not against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby and Trim, would I say a word in disrespect. But I am thankful to live in times when men no longer have the temptation to write so as to call blushes on women's cheeks, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... very busy, full of almost American activity. He thought a greater calm would have been more decent, and waited in the hope that the floor would presently cease to forget itself. As it showed no symptoms of complying with his desire he endeavoured to spurn it, and, in the fulness of time, gained ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... cheek unwet was seen. And ev'n the priest reluctant, and in tears, Op'd by a sudden plunge the offer'd breast. She, to earth sinking, 'neath her tottering limbs, Wore to the last a face unmov'd; ev'n then Her final care was in her fall to veil Limbs that a veil demanded, as she sank; And decent pride of modesty preserve. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... mean act; but do not always condemn the actor. They were to seize the fort, and cease firing. They affect great grief; but do not effect their purpose. Do you dissent from my opinion? The hill was difficult of descent. A decent regard for others' ills is human. They advise the young to take the advice of the old. The enemy will invade the rich province. They ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... well-recommended leg of mutton she had that day for sale as well. Priscilla shuddered at the sight of it and determined never to eat legs of mutton again. The bacon, too, piled up on the counter, revolted her. The only things that looked as decent raw as when they were cooked were eggs; and on eggs she decided she and Fritzing would in future live. She broke off a piece of the crust of the bread Mrs. Vickerton was wrapping up and ate it, putting great pressure on herself to do it carelessly, with ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... a really good fellow, decent, rich, "born of pious parents," and determined to have all the ready-made refinements and tastes that pure money could buy, came and sat with me at my ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... after Smart's release, that the now famous Song to David was published. A long and interesting letter in the correspondence of Hawkesworth, dated October 1764, gives a pleasant idea of Smart restored to cheerfulness and placed "with very decent people in a house, most delightfully situated, with a terrace that overlooks St. James's Park." But this relief was only temporary; Smart fell back presently into drunkenness and debt, and was happily relieved by death in 1770, in his forty-eighth year, at the close of a career ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... just sittin' there, in all the dust and cobwebs. When I get time, I aim to go over there and clean up the house for her—'t ain't decent for a body to live like that. I'll take you with me, to help scrub, and what I'm telling you all this for is so 's you won't ask any questions, nor act as if you thought it was queer for a woman to wear a white veil all the time. You'll ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... the English barrows, of the Danish kitchen middens, of the Swiss lake dwellings. The men who lived in it had domesticated the dog, the cow, the sheep, the goat, and the invaluable pig; they had begun to sow small ancestral wheat and undeveloped barley; they had learnt to weave flax and wear decent clothing: in a word, they had passed from the savage hunting condition to the stage of barbaric herdsmen and agriculturists. That is a comparatively modern period, and yet I suppose we must conclude with Dr. James Geikie that ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... of houses without anything in them deserving the name of furniture; hundreds of beds without clothing, and hundreds of children whose excuses for clothes are barely sufficient, with every contrivance decent poverty can suggest, to cover the body as civilized society demands. In the towns I have enumerated, in fact, if the least reliance may be placed in newspaper reports, in every town and village in the country the same want prevails to a much greater extent than can be conceived by such as Sir ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... partridges which needed "keeping down." He himself was "laid by" with a bad leg, but he would be very glad if Mr. Leith would "take his chance among the birds" any day, or days, he liked while at Welsley. The gentleman farmer could not offer much, just the ground, most of it stubble, and a decent lot of birds. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... living-room, which was behind the store, the chambers being overhead. She was gone home long before he put out the store lights and turned out the last lingering idler, for Cap'n Abe preferred to cook for himself. He declared the Widow Gallup did not know how to make a decent chowder, anyway; and as for lobscouse, or the proper frying of a mess of "blood-ends," she was all at sea. He intimated that there were digestive reasons for her husband's death at the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... infinite sadness, and he sighed even while the smile came back on the face he turned to us from the door as he said: "Sometimes I think he is studying law with old Charley Hedrick and sometimes I think he is in the bank with John Markley; but he is always with me, and was such a decent boy when I had him out to the College. But I saw him with Joe Nevison last night, and I ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... either, not one of us. We'd like nothin' better'n to be neighborly an' run in. It's the only decent way of doin' when folks live side by side. But Martin wouldn't listen to our doin' it, even if your aunt would—which I know she wouldn't. He's ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... cat's-meat, and burly-looking prize-fighters. They have the fortiter in re for kicking, but not the suaviter in modo for corns. Look at them villanously treed out at the "Noah's Ark" and elsewhere; what are they but eight-and-six-penny worth of discomfort! They will no more accommodate a decent foot than the old general would have turned his back in a charge, or cut off his grizzled mustachios. If it wasn't for the look of the thing, one might as well shove one's foot into a box-iron. We wouldn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... curious combination of stiffness and dandyism,—may be met every where; but till that time arrives, the offices of religion appear to engross all thoughts, for the shops are closed, and the streets deserted, except by persons passing to and from their several places of worship. How much more decent, to use no stronger expression, is this, than the sort of scenes which I had occasion to describe in a previous chapter,—how much better calculated to keep alive among the people some sense of religion, some ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... bride and her friends were distinguished by having a sort of brass nail-head driven through the right nostril of their noses. Good big boys were running about quite naked. But the conduct of the people, old and young, was quite decent. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... always be a bit too strict in his views of life, a bit narrow in many things. Nevertheless, he was changed. He was less harsh in his opinions of others since he had seen and heard how thousands who were not of his religious faith had gone forth to lay down their lives that the world might be made a decent place in which to live. He, Phares Eby, preacher, had formerly denounced all that pertained to actors and the theatre, yet tears had coursed down his cheeks as he had read the account of a famous comedian who ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... balls out and healing up the sores, so the bandits thought Pa was great. When he insisted that the leader let him know how much it would be to ransom us, so we could send to the circus for money, the leader told Pa he had been such a decent prisoner, and had been such good company, and had been such a help in digging the bullets out of the wounded, that the gang was going to let us go free, without taking a cent from us, but was going to consider us honorary members of the gang and ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... House, and laid before the marquis the whole matter from his point of view—that the tabernacles of the Lord were deserted for dens and caves of the earth; that fellows so void of learning as not to be able to put a sentence together, or talk decent English, (a censure at which Lord Lossie smiled, for his ears were accustomed to a different quality of English from that which now invaded them) took upon themselves to expound the Scriptures; that they taught antinomianism, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... rich states the money is too scattered, and clings too close to the hands of the owners, to be often obtainable in large quantities for new purposes. A place like Lombard Street, where in all but the rarest times money can be always obtained upon good security or upon decent prospects of probable gain, is a luxury which no country has ever enjoyed with even comparable ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... flesh, and to a few ardent souls these sensuous delights were an open highway to death eternal. Eulogius became the leader of this band of zealots. In lamenting the decadence of his people, he wrote, "hardly one in a thousand can write a decent Latin letter, and yet they indite excellent Arabic verse!" Filled with despairing ardor this man aroused a few kindred spirits to join him in a desperate attempt to awaken the benumbed conscience of ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... be had out of a good saddle horse!'" he quoted me. "'More excitement out of a polo pony, and as for the eternal matrimonial chase, give me instead a good stubble, a fox, some decent hounds and a hunter, and I'll show you the ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... end of the first week in August, when the messenger arrived with the long-hoped-for report of the ratification of the treaty of peace, and General Mason's proclamation officially announcing it, there were not enough men left in the valley, outside of the barracks, to give a decent round of cheers for ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... said to him one evening when he came a-courtin', 'Jim,' says he, 'you'll never come to no good, if you act like Old Scratch as you do; you ain't fit to come into no decent man's house at all, and your absence would be ten times more agreeable than your company, I tell you. I won't consent to Sall's goin' to them 'ere huskin' parties and quiltin' frolics along with you no more, on no account, for you know ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... garments of enlightened self-government, but underneath those garments are, or were, the same vermin that infested the garments of so many communities less clean—parasites that suck existence from God's gifts to decent people. Indeed, that human vermin at one time infested East Haven even more than the other and neighboring towns; perhaps just because its clothing of civilization was more soft and warm than theirs; perhaps ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... France that, though he had never seen the lady, he fell ardently in love with her, and, being to join the armada, resolved that his port of embarcation should be no other than Genoa, in order that, travelling thither by land, he might find a decent pretext for visiting the Marchioness, with whom in the absence of the Marquis he trusted to have the success which he desired; nor did he fail to put his design in execution. Having sent his main army on before, he took the road himself with a small company of gentlemen, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... She has come to her senses again now, and pours out water in a basin for Oline to wash. "There—if you want to tidy yourself," she says. Oline too thinks it as well to make herself as decent as may be, but cannot see where the blood is, and washes the wrong places. Inger looks on for a while, and then points ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... member during the year, would send an advertisement of his own, or some other person's, business for the annual report, and would pay his own dues promptly on the first intimation from the secretary. Members whose dues for the year are not paid will not receive the annual report and, after a decent interval, their names will automatically drop from the roll of membership and not appear ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... difficulty in selecting guests, for the ears of many people would have been much confused at his loose talk, and their eyes much astonished to see him get drunk at the very commencement of the repast, in the midst of those who thought only of amusing and recreating themselves in a decent manner, and who never ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... It's up to you. Stand aside now, and I'll get across those mountains and become a decent man. Keep me here, and I'll be a killer. I know it; you know it. Why are you after me? Because your brother was killed by me. Dozier, think of your brother and then look at me. Was his life worth my life? You're ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... thankin' me," she muttered—"me that 'u'd die an' stay in hell forever for him? Now I must go mend up the fish-bag your Honor's brother's wife was for sendin' him an' which no decent fish would ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... reader. But when the poet or the story-teller invades the province of the man of science, he is on dangerous ground. I need say nothing of the blunders he is pretty sure to make. The imaginative writer is after effects. The scientific man is after truth. Science is decent, modest; does not try to startle, but to instruct. The same scenes and objects which outrage every sense of delicacy in the story teller's highly colored paragraphs can be read without giving offence in the chaste language of the ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tomorrow, I'll ruin John Ellery as sure as I'm a living man. He'll be ruined in Trumet, anyhow. He'll be thrown out by the parish committee. I'm not sure that his church people won't tar and feather him. Marrying a low-down Come-Outer hussy! As if there wa'n't decent girls of good families he might have had! But losing this church won't be the only thing that'll happen to him. The committee'll see that he doesn't get another one. I'll use my influence and have him thrown out ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... pleasant journey without any incident of note. We left the university town about nine, reckoning upon getting home comfortably before midnight. There was a bright slice of moon shining, and we did the dozen miles before reaching Royston at a decent pace. We went slowly over the hilly road out of Royston and had passed over the worst of it, and I had just put on a higher speed, when I fancied I heard the distant hum which once heard could never be ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as he stood at the pony's head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at us ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... aye sae clean and neat, Baith decent and genteel, And then there's something in her gait Gars ony dress ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... sacrifice is required, for if the Treaty should be defeated, God only knows what would happen to the world as a result of it. In the presence of the great tragedy which now faces the world, no decent man can count his own personal fortunes in the reckoning. Even though, in my condition, it might mean the giving up of my life, I will gladly make the sacrifice ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... for early and second early; Boston Unrivaled (an improved form of Telephone) for main crop, and Gradus for autumn. These two peas are good yielders, free growers and of really wonderfully fine quality. They need bushing, but I have never found a variety of decent quality that does not. ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... as any decent woman would be to whom such a thing happened. She certainly didn't encourage Maxwell; but she found an appointment already made for her to go on the river with him. No doubt she took an exaggerated view of her—of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... After that I went on to the stable yard, and if you'll believe me, the two chaps there had never turned up at all—at half-past eight, mind you!—and there was Fennessy doing up the horses. He said he believed that there'd been a wake down at Enniscar last night. I thought it was rather decent of him doing ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Gouverneur walked together up Second Avenue, past the closed gateways of Stuyvesant Park. Millard was doing the talking, at a great rate. Philip was silent in regard to everything, or if he spoke he said only so much as a decent courtesy demanded. This soon became tiresome to Millard, who was relieving the internal pressure of his thoughts by mere bubble talk about things of no interest to himself, while it seemed impossible to excite ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... murmur about, while their only great nuisances pass unnoticed, the heaps of dirt, and crowds of beggars, who infest the streets, and poison the pleasures of society. While ladies are eating ice at a coffee-house door, while decent people are hearing mass at the altar, while strangers are surveying the beauties of the place—no peace, no enjoyment can one obtain for the beggars; numerous beyond credibility, fancy and airy, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... excellent objects are coveted exclusively for lower purposes. True, no one can find fault with a physician for making his profession, no matter how exalted, a means of earning an honest livelihood and a decent competency; but to ambition this career solely for its pecuniary remuneration would be to degrade one of the most sublime vocations to which man may aspire. There is unfortunately too much of this ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... as the misery of the people, and, except those employed under Bonaparte, and some few upstart contractors or army commissaries, the greatest privations must be submitted to in order to pay the enormous taxes and make a decent appearance. I know families of five, six, and seven persons, who formerly were wealthy, and now have for a scanty subsistence an income of twelve or eighteen hundred livres—per year, with which they are obliged to live as they can, being deprived of all the resource ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... she said, wiping the tear-drop from the end of her nose, "I do think as we ought not to leave it a-lying here, cramped up onto this sofy, where we can't stretch it straight. We ought to have it taken to her room and laid out on her bed, decent and in order." ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... hard to be always saying 'no'; and there ain't much to do in these places but to drink or to gamble. A man here ain't so much to be blamed as folks who live in comfortable houses, and have got wives and families and decent places of amusement, and books and all that sort of thing, if they take to drink or gambling. I have not any right to preach, for if I don't drink I do gamble; that is, I have done; though I swore off that when I got the letter telling ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... and to the Abbey: the Charity School and their families of course came; Wapshot's boys made a good cheerful noise, scuffling with their feet as they marched into church and up the organ-loft stair, and blowing their noses a good deal during the service. To be brief, the congregation looked as decent as might be in these bad times. The Abbey Church was furnished with a magnificent screen, and many hatchments and heraldic tombstones. The Doctor spent a great part of his income in beautifying his darling place; he ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... attraction, for we have so much to do on the farm. The men work us pretty hard, I can tell you; as, besides all our indoor work, we have had three afternoons cutting potatoes for seed, until our hands are too awful to look at, and the water is so hard that we never shall get them a decent colour again. Some "white elephants" potatoes, planted three weeks ago (thirty in number we cut into 420 pieces) already make a great show, and will want banking up next week. About ten acres of ground close to the house have been reserved and are called "the ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... luck," he cried. "The landlord had a couple of new packs, for he was expecting to give a little party to-night. But a relation of his wife died rather suddenly yesterday, and he put his guests off. A decent-minded fellow, I ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... "Decent or not," said Captain Glenn, "a pirate's a pirate, and if we can manage to get out of his clutches it's up to ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... poverty by the confiscation of their fortunes. But if the victims of Tiberius and Nero anticipated the decree of the prince or senate, their courage and despatch were recompensed by the applause of the public, the decent honors of burial, and the validity of their testaments. The exquisite avarice and cruelty of Domitian appear to have deprived the unfortunate of this last consolation, and it was still denied even by the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... a chance to thank him for that address!" I said, half regretfully. Little did we think that the only decent thing fate did for us on that trip ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... said Bob. "We're all sleeping in the same room and I have a call in for five-thirty. That will give us time to get up and have a decent ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... indicated in the last chapter as performed by me for the purpose of disgusting Colonel Snobley; viz, the using the fork in the guise of a toothpick. I once, I say, knew a man who, dining in my company at the 'Europa Coffee-house,' (opposite the Grand Opera, and, as everybody knows, the only decent place for dining at Naples,) ate peas with the assistance of his knife. He was a person with whose society I was greatly pleased at first—indeed, we had met in the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and were subsequently robbed and held ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... England we have an incalculable power of steam, of machinery, of modes of transit, roads, canals, railways, and everything which capital and human invention can bring to help the industry of the people; while in India there is nothing of the kind. In India there is scarcely a decent road, the rivers are not bridged, there are comparatively no steam engines, and none of those aids to industry that meet us at every step in Great Britain and Ireland. Suppose steam- engines, machinery, and modes of transit abolished in England, how much revenue would ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... why it isn't the decent and reasonable thing," concluded my husband, without stooping to acknowledge the interruption, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... marries, there are necessary consequences, I mean of expenses, which the wife ought not be charged with, and cannot be made accountable for—such as, first, furnishing the house; and let this be done with the utmost plainness, so as to be decent; yet it must be done, and this calls for ready money, and that ready money by so much diminishes his stock in trade; nor is the wife at all to be charged in this case, unless she either put him to more charge ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... my wish. I think that is sufficient for everybody concerned." Then, averting her face, which had suddenly lost a little of its colour: "A year is little enough," she said impatiently. "I—what has happened to us requires an interval—a decent interval for its burial. ... Death is respectable in any form. What dies between you and me can have no resurrection under the snow. ... So I bring to the burial my tribute—a year of life, a year of constancy, my friend; symbol of an eternity I could have given ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... twenty-five dollars. Bargaining with him stood the negro-driver, a tattooed African, armed with a whip. All within the court swarmed the black bees of the hive,—the men with little clothing, the small children naked, the women decent. All had their little charcoal fires, with pots boiling over them; the rooms within looked dismally dark, close, and dirty; there are no windows, no air and light save through the ever-open door. The beds are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... my two feet, lady of the house, and when I saw the light below I thought maybe if you'd a sup of new milk and a quiet decent corner where a man could sleep {he looks in past her and sees the dead man.} The Lord have mercy on ...
— In the Shadow of the Glen • J. M. Synge
... pitched to a sudden slant and Saltash braced himself, protecting the fair head from a blow against the woodwork behind him. "I'm going to put you to bed in my bunk here," he said. "You've got to have a decent night's rest. Did Murray look you out any spare slops? I ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... not of such a kind as to either gratify or encourage him. At first he read prayers to the soldiers at the barracks from the drumhead, and as there were no seats provided, was desired to omit the sermon. Afterwards more decent arrangements being made, the families came in; but taking offense at his evangelical plainness, they asked that he should desist from extempore preaching. These European members of his flock were jealous and angry at his constant efforts for the salvation ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... had taken him for a decent, modest sort of fellow. But any one who will get into a ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... into topicks of this nature with barbers." One would not willingly, even now, discuss the foreign policy of her Majesty's Ministers with the person who shaves one. There are opportunities and temptations to which no decent person should be wantonly exposed. The bad effect of Whiggery on the temper was evident in this, that "the Mohocks are all of the Whiggish gang, and indeed all Whigs are looked upon as such Mohocks, their principles and doctrines leading thus to all ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... fortunate women as truly as her employer with other firms; she drank her tea at the expense of her less lucky sister, who had no work and no tea. What chance does this system afford for perfect fraternalism, or even for decent fraternalism, among ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... might be again sent to her. Bethinking herself of his poverty and his humble plight, she ordered that money should be forwarded to him, sufficient to bear his traveling expenses, and to furnish him with decent raiment. ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... and alarm lest there should be no election, and anarchy ensue, a wonderful effect was produced on the mass of federalists who had not before come over. Those who had before become sensible of their error in the former change, and only wanted a decent excuse for coming back, seized that occasion for doing so. Another body, and a large one it is, who from timidity of constitution had gone with those who wished for a strong executive, were induced by the same timidity ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... few women who do not at times have occasion to use face powder. A woman once remarked: "It isn't decent not to in summer—one looks so greasy without." There are many face powders on the market, some of which are comparatively harmless, while others are deleterious. The injury done by powder is that it fills the pores, stopping them up ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... and the imperial idea was a dominant note in Henry's mind. No king was more fond of protesting that he wore an imperial crown and ruled an imperial realm. When, in 1536, Convocation declared England to be "an imperial See of itself," it only clothed in decent and formal language Henry's own boast that he was not merely King, but Pope and Emperor, in his own domains. The rest of Western Europe was under the temporal sway of Caesar, as it was under the spiritual sway of the Pope; but neither to one ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... there in terror at the idea that Peer was to be taken away. And then, as the doctor was going, he looked at her more closely, and said: "You'd do well to be a bit careful yourself, my good girl. You look as if you wanted a change to a decent room, with a little more light and ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... are you? You seem decent enough. I've got a brother in the States. He used to own this stable with me. In St. Cloud, Minnesota, he is, you know. Minnesota's some kind of a shire. Either of you chaps been ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... was convulsed with passion, and when he was in a rage he lost all control to his tongue, using language that was simply frightful from a boy brought up in a decent home. And at this particular time he was so enraged that he forgot to be afraid! He rushed at me the instant he regained his feet, his arms beating the air like those of a windmill. He was a lubberly fellow ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... that purpose. The whole doggrel is only calculated to bring ridicule and contempt upon the Scriptures; but there are, besides, passages such as refer to Job's "Curse God, and die;" to Jeshuram waxing fat; to Jonah in the whale's belly; and other parts, which utterly unfit the MS. for decent perusal. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... thing Henry Lavine can do for me," cried Polly, turning an angry face now toward the shore. "He can stop telling stories about my father. He can be kind to him—be decent to him. I don't want anything else—and I don't want that as pay for fishing ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Telemachus, [4] To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd and wrought, and thought with me— That ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... never could bear to go half-dressed to the toilet-room as most men do, and stepped out of his berth fully appareled—in a natty business sack-suit of Scots-gray, a high turn-down collar, fine enamel shoes and a rather noticeable tie. Florian Amidon had always worn a decent buttoned-up frock and a polka-dot cravat of modest blue, which his haberdasher kept in stock especially for him. He felt as if, in getting lost, he had got into the clothes of some other man—and that other one of much less quiet and old-fashioned tastes ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... continually making terrific indictments of the German Government, yet he hated England to such a degree that he would splutter and get purple in the face whenever he mentioned the word. However, he could find it in his heart to be decent ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... you get all this? I sometimes think I'm not square with you at all. Why, I've been in all those places before! I saw the Bay of Naples long before I ever saw you—and yet I didn't really see it before at all. Don't you see? Eyes and appreciation and every decent thing I take from you. Where did you get it ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... reason to believe that the book is disapproved of by the decent portion even of the free colored population in this place, and it would be a cause of deep regret to me, and I believe to all my well-disposed fellow-citizens, if a publication of this character, and emanating from such a source, should be thought to be countenanced by any ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... them, soon enough," one of the others laughed. "As long as this war has been going on, one could put up with the heat, and the dust, and the horrible thirst one gets, and the absence of anything decent to drink; but now that it is all over, the idea of settling down here, permanently, would be horrible; except to men—and there are such fellows—who are never happy, unless they are at work; to whom work is everything—meat, and drink, and pleasure. It would have to be everything, out here; for ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... from the close precincts of a mangrove creek. Shock-headed it rolls and squirms. Soft-headed, too, for the weakest airs knead and mould it into ever-varying shapes. Now it has a lolling, impudent tongue—a truly unruly member, wagging disrespectfully at the decent night. Now a perky top-knot, and presently no head at all. Lumbering, low-lying, cowardly—a plaything, a toy, a mockery, a sport for the wilful zephyrs. Now it lifts a bully head as it creeps unimpeded across the sea and spreads, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... perpetually in the field, the education of their children at home must have been much neglected, and that young men of my friend's age know better how to use a broadsword, or to toss a pike, than the decent ceremonials of society." ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... of the children in "Our School Room" in America, as I went on to say, that they would not be willing to have Josiah go to school in his old worn out clothes, to be laughed at or shunned by well-dressed school-mates; nor that he should stay at home for want of decent and comfortable clothes. I knew what they would say, if they were with me; and so I offered to fit him out at the tailor's shop with a good comfortable suit, as a part of the Christmas present from his young friends on the other side of the ocean. The little ones ...
— Jemmy Stubbins, or The Nailer Boy - Illustrations Of The Law Of Kindness • Unknown Author
... saying any thing that is really foolish, absurd, or ridiculous. The discipline of the college, at the same time, may enable him to force all his pupils to the most regular attendance upon his sham lecture, and to maintain the most decent and respectful behaviour during the whole time of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... of opening my eyes to my own foolish and sinful course. You seem to thrive—so do we. My wife and children were half-naked and half-starved only this time last year. Look at them, if you please, now; for, so far as sweet, contented looks go, and decent raiment befitting their station, I'll match them with any man's wife and children. And now, madam, I tell you, as you told a friend of yours one day last year, that ''tis the FOOLS' PENCE which have done all this for us.' The fools' pence! I ought ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... mile behind Ted and his crowd!" jeered one fellow who must have had leanings toward the Slavin party; he had been detected in cheating so often in every game boys played that for months now he found himself left severely alone by decent fellows, and it was reported had applied for admission to the patrol Ward and Ted ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... estate into the hands of the Lord Fitz-Owen, in trust for his sons, who are his heirs of blood. Thirdly, that he shall retire into a religious house, or else quit the kingdom in three months time; and, in either case, those who enjoy his fortune shall allow him a decent annuity, that he may not want the comforts of life. By the last, I disable him from the means of doing further mischief, and enable him to devote the remainder of his days to penitence. These are my proposals, and I give him four-and-twenty ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... fields the hay-cocks and corn-ricks were just showing themselves above the water. It made one's heart ache for the farmers. Well, I turned back, of course, and took the London road to Huntingdon, which runs high all the way to Alconbury. I was getting jolly tired and wondering if I should find a decent bed before I reached Huntingdon, when I came to Saxon Cross. At the cross-roads stands a fine inn all by itself, and to judge by the names and addresses in the visitors' book, it is nearly as well known in America as in England. The Saxon Cross Hotel is not really a hotel at all, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... which this time might have been applied, the expenses of tobacco, pipes, snuff, and spitting boxes—and of the injuries which are done to the clothing, during a whole life, the aggregate sum would probably amount to several hundred dollars. To a labouring man this would be a decent portion for a son or daughter, while the same sum saved by a man in affluent circumstances, would have enabled him, by a contribution to a public charity, to have lessened a large portion of the ignorance or misery of mankind." But Lord Stanhope makes a far more liberal estimate ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... was connected with Deistical or with Socinian or Arian views, sometimes with a visionary enthusiasm, sometimes with a weak and nerveless religion of sentiment. They could point also to the obvious fact that thorough scepticism, or even mere irreligion, often found a decent veil under plausible professions of a liberal Christianity. There were some, indeed, who, in the excitement of hostility or alarm, seemed to lose all power of ordinary discrimination. Much in the same way as every 'freethinker' was set down as a libertine ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... down, Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort Or Gottingen, I have to thank for't? It may be Gottingen,—most likely. Through the open door I catch obliquely Glimpses of a lecture-hall; And not a bad assembly neither, Ranged decent and symmetrical On benches, waiting what's to see there: Which, holding still by the vesture's hem, I also resolve to see with them, Cautious this time how I suffer to slip The chance of joining in fellowship ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... wise, "I have brought you some help. These good women here seek lodging for the night—any decent kind will serve them—and they offer to pay for it in work. It will be such a rest for you, Mother, if you will take in one or two; and don't you think Franna would do the same, and old Turguia ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... "make two boxes in the lowermost story, fit and decent for gentlemen to sit in," and in the rest of the galleries "partitions between the rooms as they are in the ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... had the industrial education now given in some schools they might support themselves in the same communities where they teach, acquiring decent homes of their own, which would be a much-needed example and incentive to all about them. The lack of anything worthy to be called home is the most appalling obstacle to the elevation of the negro. If these ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... somewhere at some time or other, on condition that no one shall know it till he is ready? Mark it well, the man who so insults a lady and all her family never means to marry her, or else he is so coarse and brutal in all his instincts that no decent woman ought ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... photographs and anecdotes), we may take them as his ideal. He dislikes humbug: he tries to be polite. Could one sketch a sounder scaffolding on which to build all the odd divergencies—crankinesses and heroisms, stupidities and engagingnesses—which may go to make the edifice of an average decent soul's ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... her: what decorous calm! She, with her week-day worldliness sufficed, Stands in her pew and hums her decent psalm With decent dippings at the name of Christ! And she has mov'd in that smooth way so long, She hardly can believe that she shall ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... a great deal—sometimes; but I have learned to conceal my feelings. You may not perhaps be aware that English boys are educated in this fashion, nowadays. At a public school it is considered 'bad form' to be enthusiastic on any subject. 'Not bad' or 'pretty decent' are the superlatives of praise, and anything more emphatic is sure to be snubbed. Perhaps I have been too apt a disciple ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... remarkable man, not only immensely popular for his great professional merit, but so much respected for an order of merit not apt to be enthusiastically admired by Parisians—that of a moral character and decent life—that at his funeral a very serious riot occurred, in consequence of the Archbishop of Paris, according to the received opinion and custom of the day, refusing to allow him to be buried in consecrated ground; the profane player's calling, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... steamers. Even the charities of a decently managed company are large. Firemen and engineers become disabled and must be supported; or they are killed in the service of the ship, leaving families which no decent company can disregard. The amount which the West-India Royal Mail Company pays in this way, and which our noble American lines advance to the deserving, are beyond all ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... governor large advances, both of provisions and money, which amounted to 50,000 francs; he had continually, at his house, Mr. Schmalz, his family and a numerous suite. The general opinion was that, Mr. Durecur had got by his acts of generosity, a decent profit of a hundred per cent; he was, besides, recompenced, on the application of the governor, by that decoration, which it seems, ought to be conferred for some brilliant action,[40] and not for a very profitable commercial ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... took in a cup of broth, but she was soundly asleep. Have some steak while it is hot. The saints be praised for a mouthful of decent food." ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... "A decent-lookin' workin'-like body," she answered. "I couldna see her verra weel, it's sae foggy the nicht aboot ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... said Moore, changing the subject. "Decent old Johnny, wasn't he? Jolly nice of him to bring all those papers in case he came across ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... wine, for the waiting—nothing was right. It was great fun. He kept it up all the evening. When saying good-bye to Their Excellencies, he said: "I can't tell you how sorry I am about everything being so bad to-night, but I'll ask you out to a restaurant another night and give you some decent ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... together, and they had been cronies from their earliest school-days. Two of them were usually well dressed; and the others were somewhat ragged, and considerably patched, showing the efforts of their protectors to keep them decent. They had all been to school up to the present time, and now it was vacation; and the next thing to be decided by their friends was what should be done with them. Dick and Corny were to go to the high school; but the others must go to work, and earn ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... having trees on each side. On particularly dark nights a dozen oil-lamps standing at long intervals apart are lighted, but when it is even moderately starlight these aids to finding one's way about are prudently dispensed with. There is not a single handsome and hardly a decent building in the whole place. The streets, as I saw them after rain, are veritable sloughs of despond, but they are capable of being changed by dry weather into deserts of dust. It is true, I have only been as yet twice down to the town, but on both visits it reminded ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Japanese people know practically none of the diversions which give joy and color to American and English country life, it is no wonder that thousands of farmers are leaving their two and three acre plots, too small to produce a decent living for a family, to try their fortunes in the factories and the towns. Specifically, it may be mentioned that the boys from the farms who go into the army for the compulsory two years' service are reported as seldom returning ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... survive her just punishment, we command you to make sufficient provision for her daily wants, but no more, and to charge the same against the sum due Us from the revenues of Lesbos. Should she die at once, or at any future time, give to her decent private burial, and report to Us the circumstances of her death ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... distinct little faces characteristic of these artists stare at you with a solemn formalism. Some are faded and injured, and many so ill-lighted and ill-placed that you can only glance at them with decent conjecture; the great group, however— four paintings by Giotto on the ceiling above the altar—may be examined with some success. Like everything of that grim and beautiful master they deserve examination; but with the effect ever of carrying one's appreciation ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... bitterly this false Charity often comes out in individual cases. We will just take an illustration. We will suppose here is a family of decent, respectable, professedly Christian people, who have been to church or chapel most of their lives. Or here is a Church, we will suppose, of the same character—nothing particular has happened; they fear the Lord, and ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... no occult "bearing down" that led him to order her admitted the instant her card came. He liked her; he wished to see her again; he felt that it was the decent thing, and somehow not difficult gently but clearly to convey to her the truth. On her side she, who had looked forward to the interview with some nervousness, was at her ease the moment she faced ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... ordinem pertinent, non habenda esse pro humanis placitas, quia divinitus approbantur. Therefore we think concerning such canons, "that they are necessary to be observed so far forth only, as the keeping of them maintaineth decent ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... whilst I praise Young "Peter" sleek before the fire, A proper dog, whose decent ways Renew the virtues of his sire; "Patroclus" rests in grassy tomb, And "Peter" ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... hint, and watch the somersaulting pair. What an editor the elder brother would make! He could turn as sudden and perfect a somersault as did Mr. DANA, when he transformed the Sun in a single night from a decent daily to what it now is. Or what a politician the younger brother might become, were he to exhibit in the arena of public life the agility in turning flip-flaps, and reversing himself by unexpectedly standing on his ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... at his front door. The fact that he is there is an obstacle to your peace of mind. If you did not see him so often, you would more readily come to believe that he possessed a conscience and some shred of principle and decent doctrine. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... with reverence in its proper place. The fulsome clench that nauseates the town, Would from a judge or alderman go down— Such virtue is there in a robe and gown! And that insipid stuff which here you hate, Might somewhere else be call'd a grave debate: Dulness is decent in the church and state. But I forget that still 'tis understood Bad plays are best decried by showing good. Sit silent, then, that my pleased soul may see A judging audience once, and worthy me. My faithful scene from true records shall tell, How Trojan valour did the Greek excel; Your great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... sell me faded goods that never were anything else but faded, at twice the price they ever were, when they couldn't have been worth half of it if the color hadn't faded that never did, because there wasn't no decent color to fade. I'll——" ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... beaver hat was a valuable asset which might be handed down to the second or even the third generation. A decent broadcloth suit would cost a man as much as he could earn in three months at the current rate of wages, after paying his board; consequently the early settler did not often indulge in the luxury of a new suit. Leather breeches were commonly worn, and from ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... him in rags, and he was glad. He felt he hated his philosophy only less than he hated life—hated, yet desired as the man hates a mistress he covets, and has never yet possessed. "Never had anything, never done anything, never felt anything decent yet," ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... second visit to Cherry Orchard haunted Anstice for days. There was something so incongruous in the notion of this woman having served a sentence of imprisonment for an offence which, of all others, might well be supposed the most impossible for any decent person to commit; yet Anstice knew instinctively that Mrs. Carstairs had spoken the truth; and although for the last few years he had been far too much occupied with his own private grudge against Fate to spare any pity for the woes of others, ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... his lordship was the next day sworn of the privy-council, and declared lord chamberlain of the household, 'A place, says Prior, which he eminently adorned by the grace of his person, the fineness of his breeding, and the knowledge and practice of what was decent and magnificent.' It appears by the history of England, that he had the honour to stand godfather, with King William to a son of the prince and princess of Denmark, born at Hampton-court, the 24th of July 1689, and christened the 27th by the name of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... him; "but I don't want you to think it's because I don't care any more. It was mostly because I was trying to help Skinny. Anyway, it's all over now. How did the fellows treat him to-day? If they'd known it was his last day, they'd have treated him decent, I bet." ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... in the lumpy bed which she and her daughter shared and said, with a querulousness undiminished by her sleepiness, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Lena Quincy, gallivanting around at this hour of night. It ain't decent. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... of Lancashire and Yorkshire, on which the country hand-loom weavers eke out a miserable livelihood by cultivating patches of grass land, there is distress more acute than ever was known in a Dorset village. But in Northumberland, by exception, there is a decent country life. 'What I saw of the northern peasantry impressed me very strongly in their favour; they are very intelligent, sober, and courteous in their manners.... The education in Northumberland is very good; the people are intelligent and cute, alive to the advantages of knowledge, and ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... ignorance of it, unknown multitudes of boys have suffered anxiety sometimes amounting to terror, have become moody and dejected, lost interest in work and studies; and finally thousands of them, ashamed to ask counsel or enlightenment from any decent source, have had recourse to the venereal quack, who so artfully spreads his snares for them in daily paper and widely circulated pamphlet. Once the victim is in his hands there is almost no limit to the evil that may result.[38] High-school principals tell of watching the faces of their ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... payment of the honorarium. As my letter about the withdrawal of "Rienzi" was written with a view to being shown, it may very likely have puzzled you; but I know that it was intended only to frighten D., and to supply you with a weapon for forcing him into a decent and business-like attitude. In consequence, I hoped that the success of this little manoeuvre would secure me the receipt of the wretched twenty-five louis d'or before the new year. Upon this sum I looked ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... all, at such a crisis in your married life, you get into a window corner with that ogling dame von Rosen. I do not dream that there was any harm; but I do say it was an idle disrespect to your wife. Why, man, the woman is not decent.' ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that he might go and give himself up. Now he could see the girl; the danger from that was as nothing compared with the danger from his own conscience. He had promised Keith not to see her. Keith had been decent and loyal to him—good old Keith! But he would never understand that this girl was now all he cared about in life; that he would rather be cut off from life itself than be cut off from her. Instead of becoming less and less, she was becoming ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... pride, luxury, and avarice in one class gave motive and temptation to the grosser forms of evil in another. How gentle, and yet how searching, are his rebukes of self-complacent respectability, holding it responsible, in spite of all its decent seemings, for much of the depravity which it condemned with Pharisaical harshness! In his Considerations on the True Harmony of Mankind be dwells with great earnestness upon the importance of possessing "the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... we do with such a fool as you?" cried M. Lecoq angrily. "I begin to think you are a rascal too. A decent fellow would see that we wanted to get him out of a scrape, and he'd tell us the truth. You are prolonging your imprisonment by your own will. You'd better learn that the greatest shrewdness consists in telling the truth. A last time, will ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... savings bank. Dickie bought carving tools and went to the Goldsmiths' Institute to learn to use them. The front bedroom was fitted with a bench for Dickie. The back sitting-room was a kennel for the dogs which Mr. Beale instantly began to collect. The front room was a parlor—a real parlor. A decent young woman—Amelia by name—was engaged to come in every day and "do for" them. The clothes they wore were clean; the food they ate was good. Dickie's knowledge of an ordered life in a great house helped ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... to horse-buying; the place was like a fair; everyone who owned even the framework of a horse brought it out and offered it for sale; and officers were competing busily for the purchase of any decent animal. I found time to go down and listen to the river—strange sights the water that is flowing so quietly must have passed this morning! For one of our 6-inch siege guns was sent up to Warrenton last night, and opened at ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... appreciation of the English public, has undergone, within the last few years, a notable change. We need revert to no distant period to recall the day when the word "Paris" on the title-page of a book of fiction, was, to the work so inscribed, virtual sentence of exclusion from respectable library and decent drawing-room this side the Channel. It was the foul-bill of health, the signal of a moral quarantine, interminable and hopeless of pratique. French novels came to England and were read; but the arrivals were comparatively rare, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... of Gaudisso would have been cast out a prey to dogs and vultures, had not Sherasmin, under the character of nephew of the deceased, been permitted to receive it, and give it decent burial, which he did, but not till he had taken possession of the beard and grinders, agreeably to the orders ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... he received a remittance of five pounds from London, with which he provided himself a decent coat, and determined to go to London, but unhappily spent his money at a favourite tavern. Thus was he again confined to Bristol, where he was every day hunted by bailiffs. In this exigence he once more ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... conditions. The aid of several mothers' clubs among the colored women was enlisted to instruct immigrant mothers in the proper diet and clothing for children in a northern climate. From the outset, the aim was not only to put each migrant in a decent home but also to connect him with some church. Many times the churches reciprocated with considerable material ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... ices and looking the worse for wear in his clothes of the night before. As this meant delay in the execution of her wishes, Zora prescribed habits less irregular. By means of bribery of chambermaids and porters, and the sacrifice of food and sleep, he contrived to find himself dressed in decent time in the mornings. He would then patiently await her orders or call modestly for them at her residence, like the butcher or ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... large cavalcade, which included Mr. Keeley, a prisoner. He went on with his escort at daybreak, leaving us full of sympathy for his poor wife. I sent by his bodyguard, under the command of another Dietrich, brother to the drunkard, who seemed a decent sort of man, a letter to General Snyman, begging for a pass into Mafeking to rejoin my husband. Mr. Keeley told me their Intelligence Department was very perfect, as they had been aware of every one of my movements since ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... were mathematically safe—if they depended on the laws of chance. No ship moving through the Asteroid Belt would dare to move at any decent velocity without using radar, so the people on this particular lump of planetary flotsam would be able to spot a ship's approach easily, long before their own weak detection system would register on the ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... from the gallantry of preceptors is broken down, and your families are no longer protected by decent pride and salutary domestic prejudice, there is but one step to a frightful corruption. The rulers in the National Assembly are in good hopes that the females of the first families in France may become an easy prey to dancing-masters, fiddlers, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... say, 'before you could look round you,' the man at the helm replaced by one of my men, the crew bundled down into the slave-hold to give them a taste of its horrors, and the sails trimmed for seaward instead of towards the land. The captain, who seemed a decent fellow, cried like a child. He said: 'If I had seen you five minutes before you would never have taken me. Now I am ruined.' I consoled him as well as I could and treated him well, as he really seemed half ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... Gib was a decent man if he would resist the devil of pride. She charged me to tell you that you would never be out of her prayers, and that she would live to be proud of you. 'John will never shame ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... know there are nights when a king like Conchubor will spit upon his arm ring, and queens will stick their tongues out at the rising moon. We're that way this night, and it's not wine we're asking only. Where is the young girl told us we might shelter here? LAVARCHAM. Asking me you'd be? We're decent people, and I wouldn't put you tracking a young girl, not if you gave me the gold clasp you have hanging on your coat. NAISI — giving it to her. — Where is she? LAVARCHAM — in confidential whisper, putting her hand on his arm. — Let you walk back into the hills and ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... why hasn't someone tried?" Bridget waited for him to answer a decent two seconds and then ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... of strange and beautiful things. Among them, I knew, by pictures I had seen, the armor of knights, when they fought on their horses' backs. Before people had money they must have misered other things. Some girls miser their clothes, and never go decent!" ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... structure of our modern society, like an old Mexican temple, must be built upon a layer of living men, flung in for a foundation? Can it not be helped that there should be streets in our cities into which it is unfit for a decent woman to go by day alone, and unsafe for a brave man to venture after nightfall? Must men and women huddle together in dens where decency is as impossible as it is for swine in a sty? Is it an indispensable part of our material progress and wonderful civilisation that vice ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Hutchins, the driver, hears that he may probably be given charge of a lavatory at one of the stations. He is a decent, bluff, short-spoken old chap, with his heart in his work. Just now you'll find him at his worst—bitter and suspicious. The thought of swabbing down a lavatory and taking pennies all day is ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... a single soul within it, we made within a few minutes an agreeable acquaintance. After we passed the Isar Gate, we began looking for a decent inn, for the day's walk was very fatiguing. Presently a young man, who had been watching us for some time, came up and said, if we would allow him, he would conduct us to a good lodging-place. Finding we were strangers, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... chance, started from the opposite ends of Paris to meet in the office of the lawyer who was engaged by both. The supplies liberally advanced by Derville to Colonel Chabert had enabled him to dress as suited his position in life, and the dead man arrived in a very decent cab. He wore a wig suited to his face, was dressed in blue cloth with white linen, and wore under his waistcoat the broad red ribbon of the higher grade of the Legion of Honor. In resuming the habits of wealth he had recovered his soldierly style. ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... Whitefolks mighty decent to me now, and I always tried to teach my children to be respectful and act like they think the whitefolks they dealing with expects them to act. That the way to git along, because some folks been taught one way and some been taught ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... a lesson to you. You ought not to indulge habits that are liable any moment to involve you in such distress. Now look at you, a big, healthy, able-bodied man, on a night like this too, with all the splendour and glory of sky and woods and river about you, with decent company too, and a good fire, and yet you are incapable of enjoyment. You are an abnormality, and you have made yourself so. You need treatment; I am going to administer ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... The King was walkin' one mornin' by the edge of the lake, lamentin' his cruel fate, and thinking of drowning himself, that could get no diversion in life, when all of a sudden, turning round the corner, whom should he meet but a mighty decent young man coming up ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... thought Henry would take it that way, I'd rather had the wall bare, Mr. Gubb. I've cried and cried, and last night I made up my mind it was all my fault and that when Henry came home he'd find a decent paper on the wall. I don't mind telling you, Mr. Gubb, that when the paper was on the wall it looked worse than it looked in the roll. It ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... house of Esau. He knew his wives far too well to entrust so precious a treasure to them; they were in the safe-keeping of his mother. Besides, he used them most frequently in the house of his parents. As a rule, he did not lay much stress upon decent apparel. He was willing to appear on the street clad in rags, but he considered it his duty to wait upon his father arrayed in his best. "My father," Esau was in the habit of saying, "is a king in my sight, and it would ill become me ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... out the approximate force required to drive back a moving body of that weight while traveling forward, say, fifteen miles an hour. There are angles of resistance to be calculated, too, so it offers a decent problem. Meanwhile, the vital question ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... (eleventh and twelfth centuries extra) 21 0 0 For bombs warranted to destroy an ordinary church. 30 0 0 For bombs suited to wreck really superior Buildings, such as Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's 50 0 0 For disturbing public meetings and the general harassing and annoyance of all peaceable and decent people ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... Calixtus 2nd, in the reign of Henry 1st, who declared at a London Synod, it was an intolerable enormity, that a priest should dare to consecrate, and touch the body of Christ immediately after he had risen from the side of a strumpet, (for that was the decent appellation he gave to the wives of the clergy), but it happened, that the very next night, the officers of justice, breaking into a disorderly house, found the Cardinal in bed with a courtezan; an incident, says Hume, [72:1] ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... Dancing. The Musick consisted of 3 Drums, and the Dancing was mostly perform'd by 2 Young Women and one Man, and this seem'd to be their profession. The dress of the women was such as we had not seen before; it was neat, decent, and well chose, and in many respects not much unlike a European dress; only their Arms, Necks, and Shoulders were bare, and their headdress was the Tomow stuck with Flowers. They made very little use of ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... (see chapter xxx), steps must of course be taken to prevent the marrying of the unfit-or, at least, their breeding. With our rapidly decreasing birth rate, and the spread of education, which will do away with "lower" classes and fit every one in some decent degree to be a parent, this will probably be the ultimate solution. With the disappearance of poverty, the miserable living conditions of so large a proportion of our population will automatically ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... at once he saw that it was not sand but fine shingle, and the discovery of this mistake surprised him so much that he kept on looking at the shingle through the little telescope, which showed it quite plainly. And as he looked the shingle grew coarser; it was stones now—quite decent-sized ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... to bathe my temples. As soon as I began to recover, I caressed the soft hand of the dear pagan lady, and implored her, partly in Siamese, partly in English, to intercede for me with her husband, that a decent home might be provided for us. She assured me, while she smoothed my hair and patted my cheek as though I were a helpless child, that she would do her best with him, begging me meanwhile to be patient. But that ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... young men," said I, "that are going down to ruin there. They have no home, no decent shelter even for a ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... with a generosity free from ostentation. He went himself to meet the two travelers, whom he led into a commodious apartment, where he desired them to repose themselves a little. Soon after he came and invited them to a decent and well-ordered repast during which he spoke with great judgment of the last revolutions in Babylon. He seemed to be strongly attached to the queen, and wished that Zadig had appeared in the lists to dispute the crown. "But the people," ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... to be worn that night; but it was true enough that Mary did not mind what she was about; she was too busy planning how her old black gown (her best when her mother died) might be sponged, and turned, and lengthened into something like decent mourning for the widow. And when she went home at night (though it was very late, as a sort of retribution for her morning's negligence), she set to work at once, and was so busy and so glad over her task, that she had, every now and then, to check herself in singing merry ditties, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and goin' to work on the farm, and that's where I'm goin' to stay. I was a fool ever to leave it for this confounded place. I could live decent put there, and that's more than I can do ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... You should see me when I say to myself, 'It ought to go now,' and sit down to the piano and put together some miserable rubbish, which I fling away again like an idiot. I know quite well the kind of musical trash I produce.... Believe me, it is no good expecting me to do anything decent. Sometimes I really think it was Reissiger who inspired me to ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... who now came into the room was a very different looking person from the wild, unkempt creature who had confronted Natalie Lind in Curzon Street. The voluminous red beard and mustache had been cropped; he wore the clothes of a decent workman, with a foreign touch here and there; he was submissive and docile ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... form; for his parliamentary and official talents made all his faults conspicuous. His courage, his vehement temper, his contempt for appearances, led him to display much that others, quite as unscrupulous as himself, covered with a decent veil. He was the most unpopular of the statesmen of his time, not because he sinned more than many of them, but because he ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... believe me, the two chaps there had never turned up at all—at half-past eight, mind you!—and there was Fennessy doing up the horses. He said he believed that there'd been a wake down at Enniscar last night. I thought it was rather decent of him doing their work ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... that will henceforth be in your service," replied Fink, jumping down. "They seem decent folk," said he, turning to Anton; "but I had some trouble to collect them. Hands are scarce just now, and yet nothing gets done. We have been drumming and bribing in your country like recruiting sergeants. These fellows would hardly have been got here merely to work; the gray jackets and the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... banner of truth, should back this assertion of his wife's, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, really required resignation to put up with; argued a blindness, an infatuation, which seemed to his sister hardly decent. Because after all, facts were facts, and you didn't alter them by pretending that they ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... offered to ghosts are very economical; for if the offering is of food, the living eat it up after a decent interval; if it is a valuable, they remove it and resume the use of it themselves. The principle of this spiritual economy probably lies in the common belief that ghosts, being immaterial, absorb the immaterial essence of the objects, leaving the material ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... discover ourselves smiling over puns and remarks which, on casual perusal, we might pronounce flavourless imbecilities. Indeed, for sheer laughable absurdity on the stage, Sir Tophas would be hard to beat. The following scene will also show the decent quality of wit which Lyly bestowed upon his Pages—lineal descendants of the old Vice through those younger sons, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... first irresistible impulse to dip his fingers in the till and get away with what he thought would be unnoticed petty cash. It had been her fault that the thing had happened, of course. She could have given him a decent amount of spending money, instead of doling it out to him from his own wages as if she were giving money for candy to a schoolboy. She could have treated him more like the man ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... to my lord's design, we were all met. The Master had by that time plucked off his patched boots and made a toilet suitable to the hour; Secundra Dass was no longer bundled up in wrappers, but wore a decent plain black suit, which misbecame him strangely; and the pair were at the great window, looking forth, when the family entered. They turned; and the black man (as they had already named him in the house) bowed almost to his knees, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as fearlessly in his presence as if he were a grown-up nephew. They prized him as a discovery of their own, for they had stumbled on him one day before any one else had found him out, when he was sketching at Fontainebleau. They liked the look of his picture, as they viewed it at a decent remove over his shoulder, and after they got by Burton proposed to go back and kill the fellow on account of the solemn coxcombery of his personal appearance. His wife said: "Well, ask him what he'll take for his picture, first," and Burton returned and said with brutal directness, ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... meal was finished, I don't know why, but instead of sleeping a decent siesta of two hours, the Spanish tonic to digest a dinner, I never awoke before sunset; and only then, because I began to feel a motion that was far from being pleasant. In fact, the waves were beginning to rise in sharp ridges, covered with foam; the mild ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... women, though of irregular and slovenly habits, may exist among this odd fragment of our motley population. It is for the sake of their children, who ought to be, at least equally with those of the English labouring classes, since they cannot get it from their parents, provided with means of decent Christian education, that Mr. George Smith has brought this subject under public notice. The Gipsies, so long as they refrain from picking and stealing, and do not obstruct the highways, should not be persecuted; for they are a less active nuisance ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... maids were reduced to tears, and each policeman cleverly insulted as such. But the testimony of all four remained unshaken; and the judge himself soothed the young women's feelings with a fatherly word, while wigs were shaken in the well of the court. That was no road to the soft side of a decent, conscientious, hard-headed jury, of much the same class as these witnesses themselves; even the actors and authors had a sound opinion on the point, without waiting to hear one from the professional gentlemen in the well. But the man in front with the very white hair—the ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... were well armed with muskets and bayonets, and provided with the usual implements of foot soldiers. Harvey knew resistance to be vain, and quietly submitted to their directions. In the twinkling of an eye both he and Caesar were stripped of their decent garments, and made to exchange clothes with two of the filthiest of the band. They were then placed in separate corners of the room, and, under the muzzles of the muskets, required faithfully to answer such interrogatories ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the man is kissed and deserted. If Mr. Jones of the nineties bragged he'd kissed a girl, every one knew he was through with her. If Mr. Jones of 1919 brags the same every one knows it's because he can't kiss her any more. Given a decent start any girl can beat a ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... night, but with great reluctance we were now obliged to give up this round. From Morteau to St. Hippolyte is a day's journey, only to be made by starting at eight in the morning, and there are not even decent wayside inns. So we patiently waited till the storm was over, and as by that time it was past midday, there was nothing to do but drive leisurely back to Maiche. More fortunate travellers than ourselves, in the matter of weather, however, are particularly ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the little children being stunted mentally and physically in our mills and factories, if these thousands of young women, many of them enjoying the wealth made out of these little human souls, refused to wear or buy anything made under any but decent living conditions! Think what it would mean if they decided that every child should have a seat in school, that every neighborhood should have a play-ground and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... before the kurios. "Behold all that is left of the father of Jael, the fisherman who followed the call of the Gaulonite to liberty from oppression, nor was the head that once this covering clung to, allowed its right to rot in a decent tomb. What hast thou of help to offer the oppressed?" and with a sudden twist he wrapped the cloth about his outstretched hand and held it toward ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... customary in Scotland, gave thanks and asked a blessing before meals, not merely as a matter of form and decent Christian manners, for he regarded food as a gift derived directly from the hands of the Father in heaven. Therefore every meal to him was a sacrament requiring conduct and attitude of mind not unlike that befitting ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... everything in sight today," laughed Henry teasingly. "The trouble is, they don't bear any decent fruit. I'd give five dollars if anyone would show ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... world and talked his own tongue. The prospect of genuine intercourse disclosed itself. None but those who have felt it can imagine the relief, the joyous expansion, which follow the discovery after long years of imprisonment with decent people of a person before whom it is unnecessary to stifle what we most care to express. No wonder he ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... person, in such a case, and she gladly promised to be a better woman, but she had been more than once to the thorn for grapes, and we fear will go again. There was a young fellow brought up for drunkenness and obscenity, whose fine was paid by his mother. She looked a decent but poor woman, and one could not but wonder what she had parted with to raise the money, to keep what one of the Magistrates called a blackguard, out of prison. But what will not a mother's love do! These are a few of the ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... there is no feud, and it doesn't seem so romantic when you're in it. The man my sister married I thought was frightfully boring except for his family place, and being in the army, which is rather decent. He talks," she smiled, "like a phonograph with ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... pretty decent sort of a man-driver, isn't he?" said Lidgerwood, doing premeditated and intentional violence to what he had come to call his unjust prejudice against ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... which Cato always highly cried up, Aristides preserved truly pure and untainted. But Cato's marriage, unbecoming his dignity and age, is a considerable disparagement, in this respect, to his character. For it was not decent for him at that age to bring home to his son and his wife a young woman, the daughter of a common paid clerk in the public service: but whether it were for his own gratification or out of anger at his son, both the fact and the presence were unworthy. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... pity of it is that the Austrian is quite a good fellow, the Saxon is a decent sort of man, the Bavarian is chiefly a brute in drink, whilst the Prussian—we all know what the Prussian is, the black centre of hardness, the incarnation of the shady trick, and the very complex ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... lady of great beauty, of decent stature, and of an excellent shape. In her youth she was adorned with a more than usual maiden modesty; her skin was of pure white, and her hair of a yellow colour; her eyes were beautiful and lively. In short, her whole body was well made, and her face was adorned with a wonderful and sweet beauty ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... bachelor apartment, as he loved to call his three rooms at the top of a lodging house which had once been a fashionable private home, faced south and west, rather than east. At the Rhodes House, whose boarding-house clamor and lack of privacy he had abandoned upon taking the flattering job and decent salary of "Special Investigator attached to the District Attorney's office," he had grown accustomed to using the hot morning sun upon his reluctant eyelids as ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... nor any other absurdity? And does it not appear to you that neither by this nor any other example you have done right in painting the picture in this manner, and that it can be proved right and decent? ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed when you and I were young. They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed. Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus; When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... apricot-colored cassimere, were so old that the color had disappeared in spots; and the buckles, instead of being of steel, seemed to me to be made of common iron. His white, flowered waistcoat, now yellow from long wearing, also his shirt, the frill of which was frayed, betrayed a horrible yet decent poverty. A mere glance at his coat was enough to convince me that my friend had fallen into dire distress. That coat was nut-brown in color, threadbare at the seams, carefully brushed, though the collar ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... see that," he said. "I seem to have exhausted my credit all round. It's decent of you, Tommy, to have been as forbearing as you have. Now what is ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... him had just declared her love, and that he had so clumsily and bluntly "refused" her. For the first time in his life it was his lot to learn by experience how little that a man does depends on his own will, and to suffer in his own person the feelings of a decent kindly man who has against his will caused his ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... got to do everything we can to get out of this jam! Let's signal them! Damnation! Maybe they'll realize we're decent people!" ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... gentle to ring quite true. Vernon was a type with which in a more crude stratum of humanity she had become familiar in the gaming-rooms of the Blue Chip. Weak without being absolutely vicious, crafty without initiative, he would be a mere tool in dominant unscrupulous hands or an average, decent fellow if his better ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... dispatched to a secret address, is a very ordinary complaisance on the part of small London stationers; hundreds of such letters are sent and called for every week within the metropolitan postal area. It did not take Monica long to find an obliging shopkeeper; the first to whom she applied—a decent woman behind a counter which displayed newspapers, tobacco, and ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... made, the names of the most deserving applicants are to numbers of people perfectly well known. The members have now got before them a plain statement of fact as to these charges; and it is for them to say whether they are justifiable, becoming, or decent. I beg most earnestly and respectfully to put it to those gentlemen who belong to this institution, that must now decide, and cannot help deciding, what the Literary Fund is for, and what it is not for. The question raised by the resolution is whether this is ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... snares to inveigle more of them. However, Sir, excuse me this once, and I will be more modest for the future in trespassing on your kindness. Yet, before I break out on my new wants, it will be but decent, Sir, to answer some ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "a decent man does not marry under such circumstances. If he does, he commits a crime, consciously or unconsciously, not only upon a woman, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the King, tranquilly, secluded in his golden box, could see and examine the lady at his leisure, without compromising himself or embarrassing her by his gaze. As for her, her decent and quite appropriate attitude merited for her the approval of her old friend, of the King, and of ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Montenegrin border, which was quite close to his garrison, and has been in Montenegro ever since, wearing the national costume and married to a girl of the country. Stephan was certainly a most violent-tempered man, but he was often entertaining, full of fun, a decent cook, and could sing a host of odd songs and snatches picked up in Austrian garrison towns. Otherwise he was a thorough Montenegrin, though he considered himself vastly their superior. His temper at other times ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... said the detective instantly. "Never mind. It's a fairly decent world, taken en bloc. I ought to speak with authority. I see enough of the seamy side of it, goodness knows. Now, forewarned is forearmed. Don't be nervous. Don't take risks. Everything will come right in time. Remember, I'm not far away in an emergency. Should I chance ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... advances, the meaning of bread changes. The university professor, no less than the day-laborer, finds his income too small for him, and says, "I, too, do income-work which does not bring me bread, books, travel, society, a summer home, and surroundings which are not only decent and sanitary, but refined ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... Witch's Magic Glue, which worked perfectly. That was the hardest part of my job, however, because the bodies didn't match up well and some parts were missing. But by using a piece of Captain Fyter here and a piece of Nick Chopper there, I finally got together a very decent body, with heart ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... had built for them. I have a man and his wife to look after them, and I try to make it as nearly like a happy family as I can. But Miss Brown says she can't stay there any longer. This young man—a decent enough chap he had seemed to me—is pestering her with his attentions. He is quite in love ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... in the meantime his wife died from actual starvation. Being unable to purchase the timber for a coffin in which to bury her, poor M'Loughlin held over the remains for upwards of forty-eight hours; but yet anxious to earn what would give her decent sepulture, and at the same time procure food for his children, he went each of the two days her remains were in his cabin to labour, and spent the night in sorrowing over his departed wife. At length the story came to the ears of the parochial clergy, one ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... exists, no feeling of kinship is awakened by their peril; they will assist at a shipwreck, like the fisher-folk of Lunga, as spectators, and when the fatal scene is over, and the beach strewn with dead bodies, they will fence their fields with mahogany, and, after a decent grace, sup claret to their porridge. It is not wickedness: it is scarce evil; it is only, in its highest power, the sense of isolation and the wise disinterestedness of feeble and poor races. Think how many viking ships had sailed by these islands in the past, how many vikings had landed, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his hands and taking long strides, "this begins well. Provided I can appear to advantage, provided that the deceased husbands of the widow had decent figures and that their clothes will not disfigure me too much, I shall please—I shall captivate the widow; and this animal of a buccaneer, ousted by me from the heart of Blue Beard, will return to-morrow—perhaps even to-night, ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... diamond in the rough, Mary," he assured her gravely, but with a twinkle in his eyes. "He may be one of the leading citizens of the state twenty years from now, and even if he isn't, he's one of the few young fellows of the settlement, and a decent one at that, and you can't afford to snub him ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... ancient world. Periander,[80] the tyrant of Corinth, on one occasion wished to consult his wife's spirit upon a very important matter; but she replied, as she had doubtless often done when alive, that she would not answer his questions till she had some decent clothes to wear. Periander waited for a great festival, when he knew that all the women of Corinth would be assembled in their best, and then gave orders that they should one and all strip themselves. He burnt the clothes ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... needn't be lonely any more; I've talked to some of the guests, and they want to make friends with her. She'll find them nice people, and you must make her meet them halfway. Perhaps she'll become interested in some decent young fellow. I'd like ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... taste, but these internal powers Active, and strong, and feelingly alive To each fine impulse,—a discerning sense Of decent and sublime, with quick disgust From things deform'd, or disarranged, or gross In species? This, nor gems, nor stores of gold, 520 Nor purple state, nor culture can bestow; But God alone, when first His active hand Imprints ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... he prayed pardon if we asked him to believe in us. "Conduct," he said once, "is the outcome of selfishness limited by self-conceit." It was his way so to put things as to strip them of friendly, decent covering; had he said self-interest limited by self-respect, the axiom would have been more accepted and less quoted. A superficial person used to exclaim to me, "And yet he is so kind!" A man without ideals finds kindness the easiest thing in the world. In truth he was kind, and in ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... not to, do not allow yourselves to be in situations which make it unduly difficult to carry out your decision. Drink stimulates the sex urge; few decent people would enjoy remembering that their first sex experience came when they were stimulated by liquor. If you drink, avoid emotional situations in secret thereafter, until this stimulus has worn off. If you harass your serenity and loving contacts by reopening the ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... reading of the warrant that morning, Charley Balaam had shown Carrington the road to the Forks, assuring him when they separated that with a little care and decent use of his eyes it would be possible to fetch up there and not pass plumb through the settlement without knowing where he was. But Carrington had found the Forks without difficulty. He had seen the old mill his grandfather had built almost a hundred years before, and in the churchyard ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... effectiveness. But her methods are coarser and more commonplace than Becky's; she never could have long sustained such an ordeal as the tenure of the house in Curzon Street without losing even an equivocal position in decent English society; and it must always be remembered that she was under the orders, so to speak, of Lisbeth, and inspired ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... uniformly kind and compassionate; and I can truly say, as Mr. Ledyard has eloquently said before me—'To a woman, I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. If I was hungry, or thirsty, wet, or ill, they did not hesitate, like the men, to perform a generous action. In so free and so kind a manner, did they contribute to my relief, that if I were thirsty, I ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... that is a new business for you, I think. Well, run up to Aunt Chloe, and tell her I want you made decent with all possible haste or you will be too late for tea. But stay," he added as she was turning to go, "you have been crying; what ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... himself in the main thoroughfare of last night, which he now knew to be Montgomery Street. It was more thronged than then, but he failed to be impressed, as then, with the selfish activity of the crowd. Yet he was half conscious that his own brighter fortune, more decent attire, and satisfied hunger had something to do with this change, and he glanced hurriedly at the druggist's broad plate-glass windows, with a faint hope that the young girl whose amused pity he had awakened might be there again. He found California Street quickly, and in a few moments ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... unusual brilliancy. She was going out with John Jr., who, just as she finished speaking, appeared in the doorway, and catching a glimpse of her face, exclaimed in his blunt, jocose way, "Upon my word, Meb, if you keep on, you'll get to be quite decent ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... not at liberty to violate the sanctity of private life, by mentioning the names of the parties concerned in this little anecdote. I only wish to have it understood that I am a gentleman, and live at least in DECENT society. Verbum sat. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... some months, and relate a remarkable incident that befell her in the said character. On the first of August in this year, a good Christian woman, one of her patients, asked her to call on Mr. Barkington, that lodged above. "He is a decent body, miss, and between you and me, I think his complaint is, he don't ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... me say that. I don't really want to snub her. I don't want to hurt her feelings. But, of course, I can't have those pauper children at my party—Amy and Gummy. 'Gummy!' What a frightful name! And his pants are patched at the knees. They wouldn't—either of them—have a decent thing to wear, ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... solace she could in solitude. Norma was not wantonly cruel; she could impale a foe, but she had no desire to witness his contortions. After a death-scene she shrank from the grewsomeness of burial; she preferred a decent drop-curtain and ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... the city, and I found no difficulty in discovering where he lived. I abstained from entering his house, and making any direct inquiries concerning the fate of my friend; but I stopped at the shop of a barber in the neighbourhood, both because I wanted his assistance in giving a decent appearance to my head and face, and because I knew that he would be the most likely person to inform me of the real state of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... wonder if we are? I wonder if that poor, little, brown-skinned fool isn't after all as much a victim as I am. She doesn't know better, maybe; but Charlie does, and he doesn't seem to care. It merely embarrasses him to be found out, that's all. It isn't right. It isn't fair, or decent, or anything. We're just for him ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... devil out of him so that he'll be all quiet for the afternoon," cried Torode, as he sped past us one time. And Gray Robin tried to look after his mate, and jogged comfortably along thanking his stars that if he did feel somewhat of a fool, he had decent quiet folk on his back, and was not as badly off as some he ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... suffer from brain-fag on occasion, but alcohol never suggested itself as an ameliorative. Heavens! Editorial acceptances and cheques were all the amelioratives I needed. A thin envelope from an editor in the morning's mail was more stimulating than half a dozen cocktails. And if a cheque of decent amount came out of the envelope, such incident in itself was a ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... thing that we're lovin' more than money, grub, or booze, Or even decent folks that speaks us fair; And that's the Grand Old Privilege to chuck our luck and choose, Any road at any time for ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... he made, with his decent portliness, his whiskers, the money in his purse, the excellent cigar that he now lighted, recurred to his mind in consolatory comparison with that of a certain maddened lad who, on a certain spring ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a somewhat nervous fashion: "Him? Look here, Jue: leave me out of it—I haven't the cheek to talk of myself in that connection—but if there was a decent sort of fellow whom that girl really took a liking to, do you think he would let that elderly and elegant swell out in Jamaica stand in his way? He would be no such fool, I can tell you. He would consider ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... indecent to show themselves decolletees. They sit, however, in postures which leave their legs uncovered.[1406] A peasant woman could not wear the dress of a lady of fashion. Where men or women wear only a string around the waist, their dress is decent, but it is indecent to leave off the string. The suggestive effect of putting on ornaments and dress at one stage is the same as that of leaving them off at another stage. Barbarians put on dress for festivals, dances, and solemn occasions. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the reason, in Heaven's name," answered the matron, keeping her eyes firmly shut, and still shrewish in her expostulation, though in the very extremity of terror, "what is the reason that you should come and frighten a decent house, where you met naething, when ye was in the body, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... course, they will be beaten." The statement is almost a query, and they continue, "but they are putting up a decent fight." For being beaten does not greatly matter in Ireland, but not fighting does matter. "They went forth always to the battle; and they always fell," Indeed, the history of the Irish race ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... being a wonderful person, to be desired beyond all others. Often the critical faculty in us is entirely suspended by this attraction; and "her" words seem wise, though in fact they are silly, and "he" seems noble, though in fact he is only an averagely decent man. Two such persons long ardently to be together, though they do not nearly always want to talk to each other. They are held by something they do not understand, ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... only improvements, outside of vine and tree growth, that can be made; the wear of time even cannot be repaired, for the occupant has nothing to spare for repairs or improvements, and even the necessaries of life are a tug, and as to decent clothing for himself and wife and other dependants that is not to be thought of while he is loaded down with that bane of ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... dirtiness of the suite we had passed through. This total want of keeping, it may be mentioned, is quite in Oriental taste. They know tolerably well how to be magnificent on occasions; but they never learn how to be uniformly decent. The Asiatics, and even some other nations which might be named nearer home, can seldom afford to be taken by surprise. Indeed, I am not sure if more than one country can be alluded to, in which the people are at all hours ready to receive strangers, and have no occasion to make ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... is the father, we are the youngsters. Those of us who can do a decent thing learned how from him; and whoever will not ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... public government; for here a man shall be valued purely for his merit, and rise by it too, though it be but to a halter, in which there is a great deal of glory in dying like a hero, and making a decent figure in the cart to the last two staves of the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... I guilty—I speak not of acts, but of so much as a single thought of crossing his will or tarnishing his honour. Now a man there is—his name, indeed, I know not, but he seems to me to be a gentleman, and, if I mistake not, he is much with you—a fine man and tall, his garb dun and very decent, who, the bent of my mind being, belike, quite unknown to him, would seem to have laid siege to me, insomuch that I cannot shew myself at door or casement, or quit the house, but forthwith he presents himself before ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... "It's a very decent letter," said Yaspard, "and everybody who knows the young Laird says he is a brick; but I know how Uncle Brues would flare up over this. One has only to utter 'holme' or 'Lunda' in uncle's hearing if one wants to bring the ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... prevent any destruction of human life and property which might take place at the instigation of irresponsible extremists. In this difficult and ofttimes dangerous duty the men who stand for constitutional order in society will always have the support of decent intelligent citizens. ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... Pannell, he either found or made his parishioners peaceable, and complying with him in the decent and regular service of God. And thus his Parish, his patron, and he lived together in a religious love and a contented quietness; he not troubling their thoughts by preaching high and useless notions, but such plain truths ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... ridiculous old men forcing her on people this way. If we had known the party was given to her, we never should have come, but now that we are here we naturally must behave as gentle folk and be decent." ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... are only four. The Ladle; which is introduced by a preface, neither necessary nor pleasing, neither grave nor merry. Paulo Purganti; which has likewise a preface, but of more value than the tale. Hans Carvel, not over-decent; and Protogenes and Apelles, an old story, mingled, by an affectation not disagreeable, with modern images. The Young Gentleman in Love has hardly a just claim to the title of a tale. I know not whether he be the original author of any tale which he has given us. The adventure ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... were sold for fourscore pounds upon his death, which happened in September 1714, being upwards of threescore years of age; and (he) lyes buried in the church-yard of Clerkenwell, without monument or inscription: being attended to his grave, in a very solemn and decent manner, by a great concourse of people, especially of such as frequented the Musical club, that was kept up for many years at his own charges (he being a man of a very generous and liberal spirit) at his ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Dolphin House, Troy, a Mr Samuel Pinsent, ship-chandler, who by general consent was the funniest fellow that ever took up his abode in the town. He came originally from somewhere in the South Hams, but this tells us nothing, for the folk of the South Hams are a decent, quiet lot, and you might travel the district to-day from end to end without coming across the like ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... my head was bandaged up, and I was in quite a decent little room, lying on a couch, with Mr. Ivan Abramovitch sitting opposite to me. I couldn't give a guess where it was, for the window only looked out on a blank wall. I sat up, and ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... he knew that it would disappoint and mortify Lady Glistonbury. The interests of his hatred seemed, indeed, to occupy his lordship more than the interests of Vivian's love; but politeness threw a decent veil over these feelings; and, after saying all that could be expected of the satisfaction it must be to a father to see his daughter united to a man of Mr. Vivian's family, fortune, talents, and great respectability; and after having given, incidentally and parenthetically, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... these were decent girls at the start, at the beginning of the war. But you know women, how they run after men, especially when the men wear uniforms, all gilt buttons and braid. It's not the men's fault that most of the women in the War Zone are ruined. Have you ever watched the village ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... to fail were stripped of the earnings of years, and besides, are compelled to bear the name of dishonorable debtors, are the most worthy of sympathy of any the world knows. The decrepit old chattel slave had hope of a home until the end, and a decent burial, but the debtor has nothing, not even ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... don't keep them home where they belong. Some librarians may choose to be so wishy-washy and turn their libraries into nursing-homes and kindergartens, but as long as I'm in charge, the Gopher Prairie library is going to be quiet and decent, and the books ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... courage to say how life should run after they were gone. And then because constitutions are difficult to amend, zealous people with a taste for mortmain have loved to write on this imperishable brass all kinds of rules and restrictions that, given any decent humility about the future, ought to be no more permanent ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... this: fine family, good blood, decent habits, handsome, healthy, poetic. He might even be affectionate. His one fault is that he is not adjusted to modern commercial standards. He cannot make money, or he will not—it ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
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