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More "Flimsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... piano, had a transitory look; two light wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the recess—all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white rim of ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... as compared with our Confession. Our people, however, and many other pious hearts were greatly delighted and mightily strengthened when they heard that with all the strength and art which our opponents were then called upon to display, they were capable of producing nothing but this flimsy rebuttal, which now, praise God! a woman, a child, a layman, a peasant are fully able to refute with good arguments taken from the Scriptures, the Word of Truth. And that is also the true and ultimate reason ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... ne'er adorn The flimsy robe by pleasure worn; Its feeble texture soon would tear, And give ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... occasioned by Solange's dramatic entrance, noises of the camp could be heard through the flimsy walls. Far down the canyon faint shouts could be heard. Some one was calling to animals of some sort, apparently. A faint voice, muffled ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... meet the family. A small, light wagon, easily dragged through sloughs and heavy roads, is covered with a white cotton cloth, and drawn, by either two yokes of oxen, or a pair of lean horses. A "patch-work" quilt is sometimes stretched across the flimsy covering, as a guard against the sun and rain. Within this vehicle are stowed all the emigrant's household goods, and still, it is ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Tasso. The English critics of the Restoration—Davenant, Hobbes, Shaftesbury—took their cue from the French, till these pseudo-classical principles "grew into a sort of a cant, with which Rymer and the rest of that school filled their flimsy essays and rumbling prefaces. . . The exact but cold Boileau happened to say something about the clinquant of Tasso," and "Mr. Addison,[2] who gave the law in taste here, took it up and sent it about," so that "it became a sort of watchword among the critics." "What we have gotten," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... necessary. The most I would acknowledge, even privately, was that, like the majority of men, I hated work. Like so many men I was certain that my home, my wife, were absorbing as possible. Wherever I looked, other lives were built of the same labored and flimsy materials. Mine was no worse; it was, actually, far better than most. But only better in degree, not in kind. It occupied about a fifth of my existence, and the rest was made up of hours, engagements, that ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... under Doctor Buddle's porch, and made a flimsy rattle with his thin brass knocker. 'Maybe he has returned?' He did not believe ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... liberty and independence; and if varieties may be found in their structure and color, these are only to be attributed to the nature of their diet and habits, as also to the soil and the climate they may inhabit, and serve as flimsy pretexts for enslaving them. ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... the world he was going to deliver Stella Croyle's message—a flimsy thing of delicate sentimentality—to this man concerned with life and death, and discharging his responsibilities according to the just rules of his race, without fear and without too much self-questioning. Indeed, the Luttrell, Acting-Governor of Senga, was a more ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... poisoned, and he is kept in a weak and helpless condition, all out of fear of him. It is impossible to argue the patient out of his delusions by pointing out to him how clearly they conflict with reality; he evades any such test by some counter-argument, no matter how flimsy, and sticks ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... just as it is," commanded the managing editor. "Use it for your introduction and get your story from the flimsy. And, in your head, cut out Flagg entirely. Call it 'The Red Cross Girl.' And play it up strong with pictures." He turned on Sam and eyed ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... sun, with little clothing on, and plenty of flies about. Then we would see if he wouldn't sympathize with the poor, dumb beast. It's the most senseless thing in the world, this docking fashion. They've a few flimsy arguments about a horse with a docked tail being stronger-backed, like a short-tailed sheep, but I don't believe a word of it. The horse was made strong enough to do the work he's got to do, and man can't improve on him. Docking is ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... perhaps the only real enemy he has to fear. How his heart and his flimsy paper must flutter in the unruly gusts of a March wind! We only imagine him pasting up a "Sale of Horses," in a retired nook, and seeing his bill ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... your eyes that day in the forest? Could you forget what you wrote there? Only your lips refused me. Even when they refused me, they were warm with my kisses. They were mine, as you were, body and soul. You loved me, Hermia—from the first. These flimsy barriers you're raising, I'll break ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... bed with a mind suddenly swept into a new atmosphere, and opened the flimsy cover. Shutting her eyes, she lay still for a moment —still and vague; she was only conscious of one thing, that a curtain had dropped on the terrible pictures she had seen, and that her mind was in a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it, hooting from beneath the house roof; the bats rustled with flimsy wings, and flew towards the house, where shone the panes of the windows and human faces; but nearer, the little sisters of the bats, the moths, hovered in a swarm, attracted by the white garments of ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... bumble-bee, Your gauzy wings, It seems to me, Are flimsy things; Should they get drenched, 'twould spoil them quite, And you'd be in ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... nothing that pleased him better than to have London to himself—that is to say, to himself and five millions of perfect strangers. He had it now, and could wallow unmolested in Sabellian researches, and tear the flimsy theories of Bopsius—whose name we haven't got quite right—to tatters. Indeed, we are not really sure the researches were Sabellian. But ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... aching breast a wailing sigh, Sad as the gust that sweeps the clouded sky. Ask him his griefs; what midnight demons plough The lines of torture on his lofty brow; Unlock those marble lips, and bid them speak The mystery freezing in his bloodless cheek. His secret? Hid beneath a flimsy word; One foolish whisper that ambition heard; And thus it spake: "Behold yon gilded chair, The world's one vacant throne,—thy plate ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Jane said her mind ran on it, and it was 'anything to take off her thoughts from that man.' So I went into her room, and oh! if you could have seen the poor thing, with her short breath and racking cough, her cheeks burning and her eyes glistening at that flimsy trumpery. One bunch of the silver flowers on my skirt was wrong; she spied it, and they would not thwart her, so she would have the needle, and the skeleton trembling fingers set them right. They said she would sleep the ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Away with the flimsy idea that life with a past is attended. There's now—only now—and no past. There's never a past; it has ended. Away with the obsolete story and all of its yesterday sorrow! There's only Today, almost gone, and in front of Today stands Tomorrow. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... man who was with her the night Mr. Lambert said they met them in front of Mrs. Burton's, a dreadful man who said that he believed that she loved Lieutenant Loring and made threats against him. She implored Loring's protection, and Loring saw through the flimsy device and returned the letter unanswered, and later letters unopened, and then the woman seemed to take fire, and ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... They declared their gun hadn't had half a chance, and were burning to show what it could do. Directed by the newcomers, they made a trench and bank about the mounting of the piece, and constructed flimsy shelter-pits ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... the illiterate vulgar"; and indeed to so good purpose, that I would by all means recommend the performer to the army of the braying Faction, recorded by Cervantes. The testimony of his contemporaries is again disputed; constant tradition is opposed by flimsy arguments; and nothing is heard but confusion and nonsense. One could scarcely imagine this a topick very likely to inflame the passions: it is asserted by Dryden, that "those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greatest ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... were so many cobwebs hanging about, that it puzzled her to think where all the spiders were who had spun them. There were no spiders now, but there were masses of cobwebs in every nook and corner, some of them waving in the dimness like flimsy grey veils, others spread about in such strange shapes that they almost seemed alive. No doubt bats lived up there, Maisie thought, and she even fancied she could see them clinging to the wall, dusky and shadowy as the cobwebs themselves. She turned her eyes with a little shudder, for ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... not grow corn—if they prefer trusting to the potato, and the potato happens to fail—are we to be punished for that defect, be it one of carelessness, of improvidence, or of misgovernment? Better that we had no reason at all than one so obviously flimsy. If we turn to the petitions which, about the end of autumn, were forwarded from different towns, praying for that favourite measure of the League, the opening of the ports, it will be seen that one and all of them were founded on the assumed fact, that the grain crop was a ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Turks and the schismatics had already disturbed the peace of his country. The funeral of the late emperor was accelerated with singular and even suspicious haste: the claim of Demetrius to the vacant throne was justified by a trite and flimsy sophism, that he was born in the purple, the eldest son of his father's reign. But the empress-mother, the senate and soldiers, the clergy and people, were unanimous in the cause of the lawful successor: and the despot Thomas, who, ignorant of the change, accidentally returned ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... agony. The son read, shrinking into himself, composing his face as if under the author's eye, with a vivid consciousness of the portrait on his right hand, a little above his head; a wonderful presence in its heavy frame on the flimsy wall of mats, looking exiled and at home, out of place and masterful, in the painted immobility ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... sceptics, let us all be vicious; but until their admirable efficacy is proved, let us jog on the beaten course of life, neither influenced by the scoff of infidelity, nor fascinated by the dazzling but flimsy garb of licentiousness ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... of my mind, as you seem to be of yours; I am only somewhat tired of the little cage in which, since it has been alone, it ruffles its plumes against the flimsy wires that confine it from wider space. I shall take up my home for a time with the new-married couple: they want me. Ashleigh Sumner has come into parliament. He means to attend regularly and work hard, but he does not like Jane to go into ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... against the opposite wall. She saw the Pug fling himself against the door. It was a flimsy affair. It crashed inward. She ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... development passages, etc.—of these there were none. Some composers were groping blindly after a something they wanted, but they did not hit on it. Self-sustaining musical structures, independent of words, were poor and flimsy. The form of the music that matters was determined by the words. From beginning to end of each composition voice followed voice, one singing, higher or lower, what had been sung by the others, while those others ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... too sure of your prey," I said, mentally. "If she's not yours at heart—which I doubt more than ever—you shall never have her." But she puzzled me for a day or two. If she were not happy she simulated happiness, and made my poor acting a flimsy pretence in contrast. She and the banker took long rides together, and she was always exceedingly cheerful on her return—a little too much so, I tried to think. She ignored the past as completely as possible, and while ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... flimsy, somewhat resembling a vast greenhouse with its multitudinous windows, and bore the name of a firm whose offices were in the city to which ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sea from the Athenians, demanded Lysander, who had before served with success in that capacity, to command the combined fleets. The Lacedaemonians, to gratify their allies, and yet preserve the semblance of an adherence to their ancient institutions, had recourse to the flimsy subterfuge of investing Lysander with the real power of admiral, under the nominal title of vice-admiral. This instance is selected from among a multitude that might be cited to confirm the truth already advanced and illustrated ...
— The Federalist Papers
... of olden tales and legends, and in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy, whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I have chid him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in his ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... sunlight, without, beating upon it, made it glow a light yellow shade. A small window shot an oblique square of whiter light upon the cluttered floor. The smoke from the fire at times neglected the clay chimney and wreathed into the room, and this flimsy chimney of clay and sticks made endless threats to ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... began. There are copy-books extant containing tales, some of which must have been composed while she was a young girl, as they had amounted to a considerable number by the time she was sixteen. Her earliest stories are of a slight and flimsy texture, and are generally intended to be nonsensical, but the nonsense has much spirit in it. They are usually preceded by a dedication of mock solemnity to some one of her family. It would seem that the grandiloquent dedications prevalent in those days had not escaped her youthful penetration. ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... you have reference is celebrated, both for its antiquity, and the pleasing harmonies that must ever commend it to the taste of the true lover of music; although I allow that to a disciple of the modern and more flimsy school of this glorious art, it may seem puerile and ridiculous," he remarked, in grandiose patronage. Then, again to Mabel, "There were four of us—as I said—all students. What is ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... first attempt, his face blank of expression, a sign Drew had come to recognize as the Texan's withdrawal from a situation or action of which he did not approve. There were five men squeezed together on the flimsy-looking raft and they had strung out their mounts in a line, the head of one horse linked by leading rope to the tail of the one ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... urged the necessity of interference upon the representatives of a people unanimous in demanding it; and he repeatedly urged it in vain. The Government always leaned towards the planter, and the most flimsy excuses were constantly given for preferring to the effectual measures propounded by the Abolitionists, the most flimsy of expedients, useless for any one purpose, save that of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... drastic and dictatorial measure was to suppress disorder, maintain the public peace, and protect persons and property of loyal citizens—all simple police duties. For issuing his proclamation without consultation with the President, he could offer only the flimsy excuse that it involved two days of time to communicate with Washington, while he well knew that no battle was pending and no invasion in progress. This reckless misuse of power President Lincoln also corrected with his dispassionate prudence and habitual courtesy. ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... twenty questions which might be asked, but staring at the flimsy bit of paper, with its jerky lettering, would not answer any of them. And the issue called for instant decision. Already, in obedience to a signal from Stump, men were standing by the fixed capstans on the mole ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... was to be expected, rejected the American proposal on somewhat flimsy pretexts, for England's sea supremacy was at stake in this as in her previous wars. "Britannia rules the waves" was, and ever must be, the guiding principle of all her policy, while her world-Empire endures. On this vitally important question England ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... that the Americans need not make so much fuss about being taxed without being represented, for in that respect they were no worse off than the people of Sheffield or Birmingham. To this James Otis replied, "Don't talk to us any more about those towns, for we are tired of such a flimsy argument. If they are not represented, they ought to be;" and by the New Whigs this retort ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... and his officers were sentenced to imprisonment in Holloway jail, the rumors died out. They revived again as one man after another was released from jail before his time was up. The various excuses offered were so flimsy that the public began to think that it was true that they had powerful friends ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 34, July 1, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the traditional principle that death is preferable to dishonour, that a lie is essentially dishonourable, will be far more likely to die for the truth, than one who has philosophized much about honour and veracity, and whose resolution is enfeebled by the consciousness of the weak and flimsy support which theory lends to these healthy and universally received maxims. And similarly those who have received the faith by tradition, who for years have assumed it in their daily conduct as a matter of course, in whom therefore ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... and massive, seemed awkwardly constricted in ill-fitting, blue cotton overalls such as American laborers wear over street-clothes. Their huge bodies seemed about to break through the flimsy bindings, and the carriage of their striking heads made the garments ridiculous. Most of them had fairly regular features on a large scale, their mouths wide, and their lips full and sensual. They wore no hats or ornaments, though it has ever ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... and not very recondite ideas, of ethical or moral import, were discussed freely and amiably, without affectation, and occasionally with a certain amount of animation. But the arguments engendered were flimsy, inconsequent, and fantastic enough; the dialectic flashed to and fro, never very convincing, and mostly intended to aggravate rather than to persuade. Even at the time it had often appeared to Hugh to be shallow and flimsy. He had ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... truth in it, none the less. The life one led out here was not calculated to tone down any innate restlessness of temperament: on the contrary, it directly hindered one from becoming fixed and settled. It was on a par with the houses you lived in—these flimsy tents and draught-riddled cabins you put up with, "for the time being"—was just as much of a makeshift affair as they. Its keynote was change. Fortunes were made, and lost, and made again, before you could say Jack Robinson; whole townships shot up over-night, to be deserted ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... plunged into her natural element at once; Mr. Rhodes was a rich widower, vulgar and pompous as could well be imagined; but that made no difference, the lady spread her flimsy net in that direction and put on all her fascinations at once, leaving the younger men to their fate. This was splendid sport to Elsie, for Miss Jemima, the daughter, a gaunt, peaked-nosed female, had been Miss Jemima a good many more years than she found agreeable, and ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... "P.," for Plague. The present church, built in 1830-3, was designed by John Shaw, who died on the twelfth day after the completion of the outer shell, leaving his son to finish his work. The church is of a flimsy Gothic, the true revival having hardly then commenced. The eight bells are from the old church. The two heads over the chief entrance are portraits of Tyndale and Dr. Donne; and the painted window is the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... we say, no science of sociology—merely a heap of vague, empirical observations, too flimsy to be useful in strict logical inference? I should, I confess, be apt to say so myself. Then, you may proceed, is it not idle to attempt to introduce a scientific method? And to that I should emphatically ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... booty!" repeated the Proveditore scornfully. "Whence comes, then, your manifest misery and poverty? Whence comes it that you turn robbers, if in the pay of Austria? No, Dansowich, you will not deceive us by such flimsy pretexts! Your gains, lawful and unlawful, are wrested from you by the archducal counsellors, in whose hands you are mere puppets. 'Twas they who prompted you to tell the Turks that you were in league with Venice; that the republic encouraged your misdeeds, and shared the profits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... With difficulty Ranald restrained his indignation. He let him talk for some time and then opened out upon him. He read him no long lecture, but his words came forth with such fiery heat that they burned their way clear through all the faults and flimsy selfishness of the younger man till they reached the true heart of him. His last words ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... not because he had approached a woman, but, apparently, in order to make good his claim that there were charges which might lead to the death of an ambassador. But the envoys replied as follows: "The facts are not, O Ruler of the Goths, as thou hast stated them, nor canst thou, under cover of flimsy pretexts, wantonly perpetrate unholy deeds upon men who are envoys. For it is not possible for an ambassador, even if he wishes it, to become an adulterer, since it is not easy for him even to partake of water except by the will of those who guard him. And as for the proposals which ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... born and reared in the very hotbed of temptation, struggling to break the chain that he had but recently discovered was bound around him, making resolutions many and strong, and gradually awakening to the knowledge that resolutions were flimsy as paper threads compared with the iron bands with which his tyrant held him. After the groan, he opened his eyes, and staring about him in a bewildered way, tried to ...
— Three People • Pansy
... city. My general impressions are of crooked, narrow lanes, white-washed houses, mortar-plastered streets, in the clean quarter;—of seeing alcoves on each side, with deep recesses, with a fore-ground of red-turbaned Banyans, and a back-ground of flimsy cottons, prints, calicoes, domestics and what not; or of floors crowded with ivory tusks; or of dark corners with a pile of unginned and loose cotton; or of stores of crockery, nails, cheap Brummagem ware, tools, &c., in what ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... do!" Norma said. But she glanced about deserted Eighth Avenue uneasily none the less, and furtively dried her eyes upon a flimsy little transparent handkerchief that somehow tore at her husband's heart. "If you had been a little patient, Wolf——" she ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... only the most effective, but essentially the most lenient, and when duly reported and checked, far more likely to contribute to the peace and comfort of the men themselves, than any of the specious but flimsy substitutes alluded to. Solitary confinement, for example, I take to be one of the most cruel, and, generally speaking, one of the most unjust of all punishments; for it is incapable of being correctly measured, and ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... would not, adopt as a standard the two short hours' march between the Port and the inland Fort of El-Wijh. When, however, the trick was pointed out to them, they at once threw it aside as useless. No pretext was too flimsy to shorten a march or to cause a halt—the northerners did the same, but with them we had a controlling power in the shape of Shaykh Furayj. And like the citizens, they hate our manner of travelling: they love to sit up and chat through half the night; and to ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... work, both by French and English firms. The drawing-room of 1850 to 1860 was apparently incomplete without occasional chairs, a screen with painted panel, a work table, or some small cabinet or casket of this decorative but somewhat flimsy material. ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... thirds of her wages and the product of many silk dresses ("scarcely soiled") in furnishing that objectionable and disreputable suitor of hers with funds for his extravagance. He has beggared two or three of her acquaintance already, under the same flimsy pretense of intended marriage, that scarcely deludes poor Abigail; she has sore misgivings as to her own fate. Alternately he bullies and cajoles, but all the while she knows that he is lying, deliberately and incessantly, yet she never remonstrates or complains. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... strong and vigorous, and there were plenty of children. The colonel was received as a valued friend and as a leader who was to be followed and obeyed. He is raising them by degrees—the only way by which to make the rise permanent. In this village he has got them to substitute for the flimsy Indian cabins houses of the type usual among the poorer field laborers and back-country dwellers in Brazil. These houses have roofs of palm thatch, steeply pitched. They are usually open at the sides, consisting ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... jersey and shirt. Liosha joined me and we worked together without speaking. Her long thick hair had come down and she had hastily tied it in a knot, just as you might tie a knot in a towel, and she had thrown off things like everybody else and only a flimsy cotton, sleeveless bodice, or whatever it's called, drenched through and sticking to her, made a pretence of covering ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... kid-like, insisted upon going over a very flimsy-looking snow bridge, simply because the old guide told us that he had never seen that crevasse bridged before, and that the tradition down in Chamonix was that it had only been bridged once or twice in the ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... Elizabeth!" she cried. "I have told you to wear those stockings, and you are to wear them. Remember, I mean what I say. I wonder your father has not insisted long before this on your wearing flannel next your skin. Don't you know that by going about in flimsy cotton things in all weathers you are laying up for yourself a rheumatic old age, and all kinds of ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... had no pressing invitation to come back and has not been away long; after all, she and Lucy Foster are not great friends. Now she has only a flimsy excuse for the visit—I've seen her letter. Why should the woman force herself into Hazlehurst, unless it's to be within striking distance ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... well defended by palisades. The inhabitants, as usual, had fled; but left in their dwellings a good supply of provisions and some gold trinkets, which the Spaniards made no difficulty of appropriating to themselves. Pizarro's flimsy bark had been strained by the heavy gales it had of late encountered, so that it was unsafe to prosecute the voyage further without more thorough repairs than could be given to her on this desolate coast. ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... all gazed at Rabourdin with curiosity. The poor man had come there expecting some serious, even solemn, result, and he was like a great fish caught in the threads of a flimsy net; he ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... tables, and quiet recesses, richly curtained, invite to self-surrender and seclusion. The softest music breathes from a full orchestra. Gold is everywhere, in slugs, doubloons, and heaps of nuggets. Gold reigns here. Silver is a meaner metal hardly attainable. Bank notes are a flimsy possibility of the future. Piles of yellow sovereigns and the coinage of every land load the tables. Sallow, glittering-eyed croupiers sweep in, with affected nonchalance, this easy-gained harvest of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... rural districts. In the city policeman, then, we have an opportunity to study the output of the system of repression at its highest level. Policemen are often the most unbearable of tyrants, arresting Negroes upon the most flimsy charges, and refusing to tolerate a word of explanation. It is actually a capital offense for a Negro to run from a policeman, however trivial the charge upon which ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... Madhouse. Dressgoods was being looted by a howling mob of women, who were pulling bolts of material from shelves and fighting among themselves over them. Somebody had turned on the electric fans, and long streams of flimsy fabric were blowing about like a surrealist maypole dance. Somebody in Household Furnishings had turned on a couple of fans, too, and a mob of hoodlums were opening cans of paint and throwing them into the ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... stacked their guns and sallied out after railroad ties with which to build defenses. Anderson, the scout, rode up the slope to a secluded point from which he was to keep watch. The women were instructed to stay inside the log cabin that adjoined the flimsy quarters of the engineers. Baxter, with his assistants, overhauled the guns and ammunition left; and Neale gathered up all the maps and plans and drawings and put them in ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... difficulty and much exertion over the sticky, new sea-ice. As a substitute a portable, steel handcart was advantageously employed, although, owing to its weight, tide-cracks and rotten areas had to be crossed at a run. On one occasion a flimsy surface collapsed under it, and Hunter had a wetting before it was ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... an effeminate and flimsy opinion, nor more so in pain than in pleasure, in which, while we are at our ease, we cannot bear without a cry the sting of a bee. The whole business is to commend thyself."—Cicero, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... themselves home, slipped into the house, and built up a fine, cheerful fire on the hearth. They proposed to practise a deception on Mrs. Howells by pretending they had been to Concord and returned. But it was no use. Their statements were flimsy, and guilt was plainly written on their faces. Howells recalls this incident delightfully, and expresses the belief that the humor of the situation was finally a greater pleasure to Clemens than the actual visit ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... scarcely unjust. The light-coloured flimsy gown, shorter than even Coltham fashionables would have esteemed decent, the fluttering bonnet, the abundance of flaunting curls—no wonder that the stranger attracted considerable notice in quiet Norton Bury. ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Philippines are dressed as in the ancient cities of their own renowned peninsula. The Filipinos are of the varied styles that adorn Africans and the Asiatics. They are gay in colors and curious in the adjustment of stuffs, from the flimsy jackets to the fantastic skirts. The first essential in the dress of a Filipino is a jacket cut low, the decolette feature being obscured to some extent by pulling out one shoulder and covering the other, taking the ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... precious relic such as the Manesse MS., presented by the German Emperor Frederic to the library at Heidelberg, from which it had been taken by the French during the wars of the Revolution. But the Parisian gout is less intent on such matters than on flimsy and effeminate specialities. A copy of a book, it does not signify how valuable intrinsically it may be, is worth nothing in the eyes of Monsieur and Monsieur d'Angleterre son ami, unless it is in a particular vesture, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... Champ de Mars, the demand at once arose for an ascension by a human being. It was a case of calling for volunteers. The experiments already made showed clearly enough that the balloon would rise high in air. Who would risk his life soaring one thousand feet or more above the earth, in a flimsy bag, filled with hot air, or inflammable gas, without means of directing its course or bringing it with certainty and safety back to a landing place? It was a hard question, and it is interesting to note that it was answered not by a soldier or ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... awake, hearing through the flimsy walls their passionate tones, now rising high, now fiercely forced into cold whispers; and then their words to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... so odd a name, Madame, that everyone remembers, because it means nightingale," said Leontine, gingerly tearing off an end of the flimsy yellow envelope. ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... on your red wig, and you!—It is certain La Beaumelle, soon after this, left Berlin: not in love with Voltaire. And there soon appeared, at Franfurt-on-Mayn, a Pirate Edition of our brand-new SIECLE DE LOUIS QUATORZE (with Annotations scurrilous and flimsy);—La Beaumelle the professed Perpetrator; 'who received for the job 7 pounds 10s. net!' [Ib. xx.] asseverates the well-informed Voltaire. Oh, M. de Voltaire, and why not leave it to him, then? Poor devil, he got put into ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... when Charles Martel and the Franks checked the advance of the Saracens at Tours. Offensive wars, even, may have been necessary to wipe out evils, such as slavery or the oppression of neighboring peoples. But in modern times the moral justification of war on such grounds has usually been a flimsy pretext; and certainly the occasion for legitimate warfare is becoming steadily rarer. Nearly always the good aimed at could have been attained without the evils of war. If the American colonies had had a little more patience, they could have won the liberty they craved ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... his daughter, lifting out the top garment and holding it up before them both. "Oh, what a dress to send a poor country cousin! Fluff and flimsy, trimmed with sparklers; cut frightfully low, no sleeves, and a draggly train. Doesn't it look suitable for me?" She flung it aside with a gesture of scorn. "Ah, here's something a shade better! A little dancing frock of rose-coloured chiffon—and ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... This came to me secondhand. The lone witness was said to have rushed over to his car to get his camera as the disk approached. When it plunged toward the lake, he was so startled that he failed to snap the picture until the moment it struck. This story sounded so flimsy that I didn't ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... contempt at the stiff, ornamental, and childishly antithetical style of his day and nation, he welded the flimsy elements of the French language into instruments of strength akin to his own conceptions, and wrought out of them a style for himself in which a Demosthenic simplicity and severity of language is sustained by an earnest and straightforward power which vivifies and amplifies ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... course locked, the other room being occupied by an Italian. We had to make a flying start for Naples at 5 A.M., and I got up at 4, in order to shave, dress and breakfast in time to catch the train. I opened the proceedings by starting to strop my razor on a big leather strop; the door being quite flimsy, my Italian neighbor heard me distinctly, and as he was trying to fall asleep he became very angry, jumped out of bed and protested in loud and profane language. I paid no attention to his protest and ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... Now, if he had bought that house, the sort of life we were then leading might have become habitual, and he might possibly have been saved from the sad fate that awaited him. However, though tempted for a moment, he refused because it did not seem a good investment, being a flimsy little ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... news' offices, independent of the newspapers. It is there that all the provincial journals are received, the news of the day gathered up, digested, and multiplied by means of lithography; which is found more efficacious than the stylet and oiled "flimsy" paper of our Penny-a-liners. It is from these latter places too, that the country journals, as well as many of the foreign press, the German, the Belgium, and the Spanish, are supplied with Paris news. England is a good market, as most of our newspapers are wealthy ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... they may take into their hearts this weight and extent of the reasons that call that they should join in united effort for the salvation of the nation and the conversion of the world; and that this does not allow that there shall be anything of flimsy, shallow, or hypocritical concealment of the facts of ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... requested of his sovereign the kiss of peace. It was the usual termination of such discussions, the bond by which the contending parties sealed their reconciliation. But Henry coldly replied that he had formerly sworn never to give it him; and that he was unwilling to incur the guilt of perjury. So flimsy an evasion could deceive no one; and the Primate departed in the full conviction that no reliance could be placed on the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... a short time, and of such flimsy material, this expensive Banqueting House seems to have been allowed to stand, and to have been used thereafter for masques and plays. Thus, when King James came to the throne, he ordered plays to be given there in November, ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... black and white wings and tail. The habits of this bird are the same as those of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak and its song is very similar but more lengthy. Their nests, like those of the last, are very flimsy structures placed in bushes or trees, usually below twenty feet from the ground; they are open frameworks of twigs, rootlets and weed stalks, through which the eggs can be plainly seen. The eggs are similar to those of the ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... her feet—very slowly—and walked very slowly—across the room. She seated herself on the sofa where Ella had sat, and she remained motionless for some minutes. Then she made a motion with one of her hands as if sweeping from before her eyes some flimsy repulsiveness—the web of an unclean thing flashing in the air. In another instant she had buried her face in the pillow that still bore ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... and the former lighted a cigarette, while he tapped the mummy case, and examined it as closely as the pale gleam of the moonlight permitted. Mrs. Jasher made no move to enter the house, much as she had complained of the cold. But perhaps she found the flimsy skirt of the ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... before her mother's return, when in his drunken helplessness he fell against the table, overturning the kerosene lamp, and the curtains were all aflame in an instant. It was just after taps—or ten o'clock—when Kate's shrieks aroused the inmates of Sudsville and started the cry of "Fire." The flimsy structure of pine boards burned like so much tinder, and the child and her stupefied father had been dragged forth only in time to save their lives. The little one, after giving the alarm, had rushed again into the house and was tugging at his senseless form when ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... and one that I shall never forget—the white-faced, distracted woman, tramping in her flimsy house-shoes over the rough ground, bursting through the bushes, regardless of the thorny branches that dragged at skin and hair and dainty clothing, and sending forth from time to time a tremulous cry, so dreadfully pathetic in its mingling of terror and coaxing softness, ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... impart a slight rocking movement to the car. And again the big motor roared and churned up the mud and again Paddy took to prancing and pirouetting like a two-year-old. But this time the spinning rear wheels appeared to get a trace of traction, flimsy as it was, for the throbbing gray mass moved forward a little, subsided again, and once more nosed a few inches ahead. Then the engine whined in a still higher key, and slowly but surely that mud-covered mass emerged from the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... republican principles in England were still very numerous, and had become bolder in their advocacy of such principles. A fierce war was carried on by the newspapers of the day against Burke's "Reflections," and pamphlets and volumes of all sizes were published, in order to show that it was a mere flimsy piece of rhetoric and fine writing. The most conspicuous of these volumes were the "Vindictae Gallicae;" or "Defence of the French Revolution," written by Sir James Mackintosh; the "Rights of Man," written by that fierce democrat, Tom Paine; and "Letters to the Right Honourable ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... them with the flowers of poesy, whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I have chid him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in his Vaticination on the Death of ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... and faced the little doorway. She stood there, smiling, scornful, her hands full of some delicate flimsy stuff, a gold thimble-cap on her finger. "It would not make a bad picture," she said ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... her Ladyship's a'ground, your Face may put both Sexes out o'Countenance. [Exeunt Lady Toss-up, and Mrs. Flimsy. ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... that was lying on his desk and opened it. His face became a livid yellow. He put the flimsy paper down with a slow, reluctant movement and ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... might do more damage to the flimsy paper people, they decided to go away. But first they thanked Miss Cuttenclip very warmly for her ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... because he had approached a woman, but, apparently, in order to make good his claim that there were charges which might lead to the death of an ambassador. But the envoys replied as follows: "The facts are not, O Ruler of the Goths, as thou hast stated them, nor canst thou, under cover of flimsy pretexts, wantonly perpetrate unholy deeds upon men who are envoys. For it is not possible for an ambassador, even if he wishes it, to become an adulterer, since it is not easy for him even to partake of water except by the will of ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... three exact replicas of his face, of his clothes, of his dull severity, of his solemn grief, repeated the wide gesture that in its comprehensive sweep indicated an infinity of moral sweetness, embraced the walls, the hangings, the whole house, all the crowd of houses outside, all the flimsy and inscrutable graves of the living, with their doors numbered like the doors of prison-cells, and as impenetrable ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... party, and if I am ever warm, it is by contagion; and where violence passes for parts, what will indifference be called? But how could you think of such a question '! I don't want money, consequently Do old women pay me for my wit; I have a very flimsy constitution, consequently the young women won't taste my wit, and it is a long while before wit makes its own way in the world; especially, as I never prove it, by assuring people that I have it by me. Indeed, if I were disposed to brag, I could quote two or three half-pay ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Solomon Don Dunce, "Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. Through all the flimsy things we see at once As easily as through a Naples bonnet— Trash of all trash!—how can a lady don it? Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff— Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it." ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... accentuated the elegant slimness of her figure. She affected out-of-the-way colours, and quaint combinations—pale pinks and olive greens, tawny yellow and faded russet—and bought her gowns at a Japanese warehouse, where limp lengths of flimsy cashmere were mixed in artistic confusion with sixpenny teapots and paper umbrellas. In a word, Miss Rylance had become a disciple of the peacock-feather school of art, and affected to despise every other ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... one end of the trunk, his father the other, and piloted by the hotel man, with Mr. Grigsby, lugging the hand baggage, in their wake, they climbed two flimsy flights of stairs to the third floor! The hotel man led the way down a narrow hall of rough boards, and ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... very flimsy kind but "bolstered-up" and carried through by the bluster of the serjeant and the smartness of his junior. It rested first on a dialogue between Mr. Pickwick and his landlady which was overheard, in fact by several persons; second, on a striking situation witnessed ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... nothings under divine masterpieces. The utilitarian M.P. must find some justification for art; he is not sensible enough to understand that art justifies its own existence, that it is its own honour and glory; and he nourishes a flimsy lie, and votes that large sums of money shall be spent in endowing schools of art and founding picture galleries. Then there is another class—those who have fish to fry, and to whom art seems a convenient frying-pan. Mr. Tate craves for a museum to be called Tate's; ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... that this was only a flimsy pretense, and deeply hurt by his friend's behaviour, the mystified man arose at once and left without another word. He was now determined to solve this mystery at any cost. What could be the meaning of the words on that infernal piece ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... On such flimsy pretexts do men and nations wage war. Why then wonder if historians differ also? In the "Wilderness," each man's view was bounded by a very narrow horizon and few knew what was going on outside their range of vision. What was true of the "Wilderness" was true of nearly every ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... with her flimsy green satin and point-lace, was one of the first victims, and fell from the bough in company with a sad shower of last year's leaves. The worthy Cricket family, however, avoided Jack Frost by emigrating in time to the chimney-corner of a nice little cottage ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... for almost the first time in her life a little selfish feeling that she did not wish to jar a perfect moment even with the contemplation of a friend's troubles. She was very happy walking beside Von Rosen, holding up her flimsy embroidered skirts carefully lest they come in contact with dewy grass. She had been admonished by her grandmother and her aunts so to do and reminded that the frail fabric would not endure much washing however skilful. Between the shadows, her lovely face showed like a white flower ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... up all description of political badges—badges for the court, for processions, school badges, military badges, flimsy bits of coloured ribbon and gold fringe which go the tour of the world, rallying men to glory. In the dismal twilight our fingers were now busied with black-and-silver "in memoriam" badges, to be worn as a last tribute to some dead member of a coterie who would follow him to ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... of jostling women was especially thick and eager before a vast and vulgar front whose base was heaped with cheap truck cheaply ticketed, and whose long row of third-story windows was obscured by a great reach of cotton cloth tacked to a flimsy wooden frame. Unprecedented bargains were offered in gigantic letters by the new proprietors, "Eisendrath & Heide..."—the rest of the name flapped loosely in ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... little Earthers were staring up at him as if he were some sort of beast. He probably weighed as much as both of them, he knew, and at six-four he was better than a foot taller. They looked like children next to him, like toys. The savage blast of acceleration would snap their flimsy bodies like toothpicks. ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg
... cured me of my vanity] as to attribute their disappointment so much to particular liking of me, as to their own self-admiration. They looked upon me as a connoisseur in beauty. They would have been proud of engaging my attention, as such: but so affected, so flimsy-witted, mere skin-deep beauties!—They had looked no farther into themselves than what their glasses were flattering-glasses too; for I thought them passive-faced, and spiritless; with eyes, however, upon the hunt for conquests, and bespeaking ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... Times[18], "was returning officer, and was assisted in the count by thirty miners—a body of utterly untrained men whose hands, accustomed by daily usage to the contact of pickaxe and shovel, were new and strange to the somewhat delicate task of fingering and separating flimsy ballot papers. They had received no instructions before they were assembled in the room as to the duties they would be required to transact, and the expedition, good-humour, and correctness with ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... occasion; and the poor woman, toward whom Adele's charities have flowed with a profusion that has astounded the Doctor, repays some new gift by placing in her hands a little embroidered kerchief, "too fine for such as she," which had belonged to Madame Arles. A flimsy bit of muslin daintily embroidered; but there is a name stitched upon its corner, for which Adele treasures it past all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... The flimsy little shelter rocked under the gusts of the gale, now at its height. The shepherd was too busy counting to notice. Suddenly he jerked up straight. "There is one missing!" Before the disciples could stop him, he plunged into ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... the loose sidewalks, floundering knee-deep in the mire of the streets, struggling and squabbling and cursing over their outfits—that is all I remember of Skagway. The mountains, stark and bare to the bluff, seemed to overwhelm the flimsy town, and between them, like a giant funnel, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... could settle into the sacklike hammock, the Navaho began to shake faintly, and weight piled up. It was mild compared to that on the shuttle, since the big ships couldn't take high acceleration. Space had been conquered for more than a century, but the ships were still flimsy tubs that took months to reach Mars, using immense amounts of fuel. Only the valuable plant hormones from Mars made commerce possible at the ridiculously high ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... the full force of objective observation. And is it any wonder, with the process of exploitation thus naked always before his eyes, that he should have been among the very first workers to challenge the flimsy title of the lumber barons to the private ownership of ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... the meadow and tears the surface smoothness, it exposes the unmoved rock foundation; when the fire burns down the flimsy woodwork, it shows in double force the unchanged girders of steel. Storm and fire in double power and heat had been Jim's lot for weeks and, in less degree, for months. Now there was a breathing spell, a time to stop and look at the ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... I sombrely, and began to search my luggage thoroughly for my missing inheritance. But it was all to no purpose. The papers were not there. I could not have lost them. They had been stolen. I saw my always-flimsy inheritance melt away. I had been, I thought, on the edge of success, but I now had nothing but my name, a successful duel, and a few pieces of gold. I ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... and tie his hands, and turn him out in a field in the hot sun, with little clothing on, and plenty of flies about. Then we would see if he wouldn't sympathize with the poor, dumb beast. It's the most senseless thing in the world, this docking fashion. They've a few flimsy arguments about a horse with a docked tail being stronger-backed, like a short-tailed sheep, but I don't believe a word of it. The horse was made strong enough to do the work he's got to do, and man can't improve on him. Docking is a cruel, wicked ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... Republican; and excellent papers they are. Both in appearance and in matter, O Mundo and A Lucta ("The Struggle") would do credit to the journalism of any country. In size, in excellence of production, and in the well-considered weight of their articles, they contrast strangely with the flimsy, ill-printed sheets that content the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... prove that immorality is not characteristic of uncivilized races in general. He leads off with that preposterous statement of Barrow that "a Kaffir woman is chaste and extremely modest;" and most of his other instances are based on equally flimsy evidence. I shall recur to the subject repeatedly. It is hardly necessary to call the reader's attention to the unconscious humor of the assertion of Westermarck's friend Cousins that "between their various feasts the Kaffirs have to live in strict continence"—which ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... to the factory. I felt as much lost as if I had found myself translated there after a sleep of legendary length. There are many new faces. The factory has tripled—quadrupled in importance; quite a town of flimsy buildings ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... lock. Kronberg, huddled in a corner, stirred and cunningly hid the flimsy coverings of chintz he had unearthed from an ancient trunk. For three days he had not spoken, three days of bitter, biting cold, three days of creaking, lonely quiet, of mournful wind and shifting lights above the glass overhead, of infernal visitations from ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... country is going to pot because of it. People hold high office or places of responsibility not because of superior intelligence, or even acquired skill, but because of the social-labels they've accumulated, and these can be based on something as flimsy—from the Movement's viewpoint—as who your grandparents were, what school you attended, how much seniority you have on the job, what part of town you live in, or what tailor ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... can buy those flimsy French things that do not give you any wear. And presently we may not be able to buy either French or English. She is not going to be so rich either. It's nonsense to think of that marshy land ever being valuable. Whatever possessed anyone to buy it, I can't see! And if Doris ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... excuses to make for him," fired Miss Corny. "You are as bad as Archibald! Notice Afy Hallijohn, when she dresses and flirts and minces as you saw her but now! What creditable servant would flaunt abroad in such a dress and bonnet as that, with that flimsy gauze thing over her face. It's ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... indeed, deserves to last a month: some are odious distortions and caricatures, which never should have been allowed to stand for a moment. On the very day of the fete, the wind was shaking the canvas pedestals, and the flimsy wood-work had begun to gape and give way. At a little distance, to be sure, you could not see the cracks; and pedestals and statues LOOKED like marble. At some distance, you could not tell but that the wreaths and eagles were gold embroidery, and not gilt paper—the great tricolor ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... Congress, commencing with a contest which threatened violence on the floor of the House of Representatives, was held unorganized for sixty days by a defeated party upon a flimsy pretext, and during all that time we had to listen to open threats of secession and disunion made by its members. No previous Congress had exhibited such violence of speech and action. When fully organized it quieted down, and, with occasional exceptions, proceeded rapidly ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... impatiently on his heel. But Ada was not to be torn away. She ran her eye over the stock, marvelling at the cheapness of everything. Jonah, finding nothing better to do, lit a cigarette, and turned a contemptuous eye on the bales of calico, cheap prints, and flimsy lace displayed. Presently he began to study the tickets with extraordinary interest. They were all alike. The shillings in gigantic figures of red or black, and across the dividing line elevenpence three-farthings pencilled in strokes as modest as the shy violet. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... to lie at home and she did it. Some fabrication about the girls at the watchworks did the trick. Fried chicken, chocolate cake. She packed them deftly and daintily. High-heeled shoes, flimsy blouse, rustling skirt. Nap Ballou was waiting for her over in the city park. She saw him before he espied her. He was leaning against a tree, idly, staring straight ahead with queer, lackluster eyes. Silhouetted there against ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... and the fire kindled by your accusations has burned itself away. I ask you, Maximus, have you ever seen fire spring up among the stubble, crackling sharply, blazing wide and spreading fast, but soon exhausting its flimsy fuel, dying fast away, leaving not a wrack behind? So they have kindled their accusation with abuse and fanned it with words, but it lacks the fuel of facts and, your verdict once given, is destined to leave not a wrack of calumny behind. The whole ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... have the gun, and welcome, Nick; only be careful how you shoot. One of those charges at close range would go through the flimsy planking of my boat like a bullet. Here, take the gun. And if there's anything else I can do to make you comfortable, let me know. I'm the most obliging ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... thumps and bangs as grapplers clanged on the surface of the craft. Mud gurgled around them as they were hauled up and out with the sound of a giant sipping soup. A mud-encrusted hatchway flew open, and Kielland stepped down on a flimsy-looking platform below. Four small rodent-like creatures were attached to it by ropes; they heaved with a will and began paddling through the soupy mud dragging the platform and Kielland toward a row of low wooden buildings near some ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... world of good, there is no doubt of that, especially when one's grandfather was a Revolutionary notability, and other antecedents of a piece—but men are all alike at heart, only the worldly ones wear flimsy masks, you know, and pretend to adore intellect and ugliness, when beauty is the only thing they care for—all a sham, my ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... and flimsy opinion, nor more so in pain than in pleasure, in which, while we are at our ease, we cannot bear without a cry the sting of a bee. The whole business is to commend ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... "special" and "local;" reviewers; reporters; stenographers, or "gallery" men; dramatic and musical critics; "paragraphists"—the new name for fire and murder manifolders, and other "flimsy" compilers; and, penny-a-liners:—each and all, are, severally and collectively, "editors," beneath the star-spangled banner ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... minutes after myself. He had the air and look of an honest man, but perhaps no species of deceit is more easily detected than that quiet, subdued manner, compressed lips, and uplifted eye. Now-a-days such a mode of dissembling would be too flimsy to impose even on children; and hypocrites are ever greater proficients in their art than was even M. de Rumas. Madame de Mirepoix left us alone together, in order that I might converse more freely with him. I knew not how ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... kitchen lounge. Also, that after her husband left for the day I should go around half-naked, washing and dressing myself, in the same crowded little room in which she was then doing her work, as scantily clad as I was and with the sleeves of her flimsy blouse rolled up ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... his flimsy cassock, Pierre was looking on when Abbe Rose, who seemed to have sheltered himself behind a pillar of the porch on purpose to watch for him, came forward: "Ah! it's you at last, my dear child," said he, "I have ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... it is true, not overmuch valued by its recipients, for Mrs. Gurley's bedroom lay just above, and that lady could swoop down on whoever was weak enough to take a little rest. But Laura snapped her fingers at such a flimsy objection; for this was the wonderful room round the walls of which low, open bookshelves ran; and she was soon bold enough, on entering, hastily to select a book to read while she played, always on the ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... lately the uppermost. It is true, Doctor Dummerar framed (honest worthy man) no extravagant views of elevation or preferment; but the probability of his being replaced in the living, from which he had been expelled under very flimsy pretences, inferred a severe blow to the Presbyterian divine, who could not be considered otherwise than as an intruder. The interest of the two preachers, therefore, as well as the sentiments of their flocks, were at direct variance; and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... shallow crater in the roadway. A big cart horse, hit in the neck and forelegs by fragments of the shell, screamed hideously. Right at the bridge, the sentry, an old territorial, was watching the whole scene from his flimsy box ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... a vision of the lady at Folkestone and conscientiously replied: "Even with those things of Mrs. Meldrum's." I begged him not to think my laughter in bad taste: it was only a practical recognition of the fact that we had built a monstrous castle in the air. Didn't he see on what flimsy ground the structure rested? The evidence was preposterously small. He believed the worst, but we ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... evidently entered the house from above, though all the shutters were still barred and the door from the cupola had later been locked. Remembering the flimsy lock on that door, Gavin realized how Hade could ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... extravagances, whether in lavish presents or in personal expenditure, soon rendered him bankrupt. He had no means of paying the soldiers or meeting his own appetites. Then began, or increased, his attacks on wealthy persons, his executions and banishments of senators and other wealthy men, and his flimsy pretexts for all manner of confiscation. The Senate he hated and the Senate hated him. Nevertheless, so far as the empire itself was concerned, no systematic or widespread oppression can have been perceptible. His officers and the officers ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Where an arm or leg showed to their hawk-like eyes, their rifles cracked sharply, to be generally rewarded with a howl of pain from some cutthroat who had been winged. But there could be but one end to such a battle. The convicts were well protected behind big trees, while the flimsy sides of their canoes afforded the brave little band of Seminoles almost no protection. Still they fought stubbornly on, answering shot with shot until the point and canoes were shrouded in a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... events, the evidence against Lucinda and Hannah, when sifted, was so exceedingly flimsy, and the lack of motive grew so evident, that there was no further question of bringing them to trial. Still the suspicion, once raised, grew like a weed, as suspicion does grow in the ready soil of the human heart. For a month after the tragedy it seemed as if Sylvia Whitman's prophecy concerning ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... my telegram now,' said Dunbar, starting to his feet as a horse's hoofs were plainly heard in the stillness of the solitary camp. 'Well, I 'm damned,' he said. He held the flimsy paper close to his near-sighted eyes, and read the message to the other men ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... She was looking across the tree-tops towards an angry bank of clouds—long, pencil-like streaks of black on a purple background. Below, in the street, a taxi passed with grinding of brakes and noisy horn. The rail against which she leaned looked very flimsy. Sir Timothy stretched out his hand and held ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... we had studied, I had the audacity to produce a composition in which I weighed Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced him wanting in the balance. I supported this heresy by a profusion of bad reading and flimsy argument. The wrath of the Professor was extreme, while at the same time he could not suppress his surprise at the quantity of out-of-the-way knowledge which I displayed. He pronounced upon me the severe sentence—that dunce I was, and dunce was to remain—which, however, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Tordenskjold was roused from sleep at five, and, after saying his prayers, a duty he never on any account omitted, he started for the place appointed. His old body-servant vainly pleaded with his master to take his stout blade instead of the flimsy parade sword the Admiral carried. Muennichhausen advised against it; it would be too heavy, he said. Stahl's weapon was a long fighting rapier, and to this the treacherous second made no objection. Almost at the first thrust he ran the Admiral through. The seconds held his servant while ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... me was the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed by persons expecting to be complimented upon their sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed thoroughly to despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. 'God only made four Frenchmen poets,' he burst out with, 'and their names are, Corneille, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... money for nothing," he said, again assuming a pleasant expression. "I succeeded in obtaining the discharge of an insolent debtor who was incarcerated on flimsy accusations of fraud, and now they all run after me. And every such case requires great labor. We, too, you know, leave some of our flesh in the ink-pot, as ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... Turold how near he stood to the edge of the precipice. The strain of the interview had told on him. This was the first actual buffet of the beast's paw. He led the way to his son's room and watched Barrant go through his intimate belongings with the feeling that intelligence was a flimsy shield against the brutal force of authority. The law in search of prey cared nothing for such civilized refinements as intellect or self-respect. As well try to stop ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... phrase, upon egg-shells! And this grand creature—I drink her health in my sugar-and-water—this grand creature, who stands in the strength of her love and her courage, firm as a rock, between us two and that poor, flimsy, pretty blonde wife of yours—this magnificent woman, whom I admire with all my soul, though I oppose her in your interests and in mine, you drive to extremities as if she was no sharper and no bolder than the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... but in his heart knew that Lanyard didn't exaggerate. The murder of the inventor had exasperated all France; and though tonight's weather kept a third of Paris within doors, there was still a tide of pedestrians fluent on the sidewalk, beyond the flimsy barrier of firs, that would thicken to a ravening mob upon ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... was scarcely unjust. The light-coloured flimsy gown, shorter than even Coltham fashionables would have esteemed decent, the fluttering bonnet, the abundance of flaunting curls—no wonder that the stranger attracted considerable notice in quiet Norton ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... disappeared. Pete heard a faint shuffling sound in the hall outside. Before he could turn the door crashed inward. He leapt to his feet. With the leap his hand flashed to his side. Unaccustomed to a coat, his thumb caught in the pocket just as the man who had shouldered the flimsy door down, reeled and sprawled on the floor. Pete jerked his hand free, but in that lost instant a gun roared in the doorway. He crumpled to the floor. The heavy-shouldered man, followed by two officers, stepped into ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Cossack camp there were three soldiers whom the quondam Ottoman general had released from captivity, and they, at once penetrating the flimsy disguise of the stranger, revealed him to their own commander in his true character. At first he was well treated by the Cossack chief, who was anxious that the honour of his baptism should appertain to the Eastern Greek Church; but our prince, designing ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... place for a relative of any domestic of mine; so Miss Yeo answered that she thought her sister—I mean Jane—having been with me five years was a circumstance not in her favour at all, quite the contrary, and she would strongly advise Hyacinth not to take Jane's sister on so flimsy recommendation. I was thunderstruck. But this is not all. Before I left Miss Yeo dared to invite me to go to see her and her friends, and even went so far as to say she could get me an invitation to a ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... of our readers as take interest in genuine records of glowing patriotism, to turn to general Miller's "Memoirs"—for such volumes of exhaustless variety and importance are seldom met with in these days of flimsy literature. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... astonishing!) nothing happened. The net outcome of all this fuss and fluster was precisely nil. With the collapse of the flimsy structure of prejudice and suspicion in which Manvers had sought to trap Iff, the interest of all concerned seemed to simmer off into apathy. Nobody did anything helpful, offered any useful suggestion or brought to light anything illuminating. Staff couldn't understand ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... grateful to complain)—or whether it's in the air, which reminds me, I do assure you, of our native atmosphere at Coolspring, Mass., is more than I can tell, with a hard steel pen on a leaf of flimsy paper. You have heard the saying, 'When a good American dies, he goes to Paris'. Maybe, sometimes, he's smart enough to discount his own death, and rationally enjoy the future time in the present. This you see is a poetic ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... but game to the last, made an ineffectual attempt to hold one of his tormentors, catching the flying end of his jacket; but such was the moment of Sim's upward movement, and the flimsy character of his wearing apparel, that the entire section came away, remaining in the grip of the enemy as he went ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... and went into the bedroom. With a sick feeling in her heart, and as near the fire as she could get, she undressed with desperate haste, and got to bed. An age—it seemed—she lay there shivering in her flimsy lawn against the cold sheets, her eyes not quite closed, watching the flicker of the firelight. She did not think—could not—just lay stiller than the dead. The door creaked. She shut her eyes. Had she a heart at all? It did not seem to beat. She lay thus, with eyes shut, till she could ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... next example is less simple, but is quite as flimsy as a weapon of attack. Empiricists think that truth in general is distilled from single men's beliefs; and the so-called pragmatists 'go them one better' by trying to define what it consists in when it comes. It consists, ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... to the Delphic oracle for some means of cure. The god prescribed a peculiar form of sacrifice, which would be effective if they could carry it through without laughing. They did their best; but the flimsy joke of a boy upset their unaccustomed gravity, and in this way the oracle taught them that even the gods could not prescribe a quick cure for a long vitiation, or give power and dignity to a people who in a crisis of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... speech Mrs. Johns writes: "It was one of the most masterly arguments I ever heard. At one point she said: 'The great majority of you declare that woman suffrage is right, (a roar of 'yes,' 'yes,' went up), and yet you oppose this plank. Are you afraid to do right?' Her reply to the flimsy objections of the chairman, P. P. Elder, was simply unanswerable. She cut the ground from under his feet, and his confusion and rout were so complete that he stood utterly confounded. That small woman with her truth and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... am I to think? What will the police think? What will the jury think when they hear your flimsy yarn—an' the straightforward evidence of my daughter? They'll think that the coat she wore to the show, an' that she still has, is the coat she wore from the store, an' that you've got the other. An' when Kranz tells of your midnight ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... eye glued to a crack is not a comfortable position, and the watcher thought the hours of the next day would never end. As they dragged wearily past, his bones began to ache beyond endurance, yet owing to the flimsy structure of the building he dared not move while the room below was tenanted. In fact, he would not have stirred had he dared, so intense was his interest in the scenes being ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... pitiful straits to which Chips had latterly been reduced; for worked into it there were scraps of wood less than a foot in length, fastened to other pieces of similar size with nails or plugs, and presenting a most flimsy and unsatisfactory appearance. But when I came to look more closely I saw that the only unsatisfactory part of the work was its appearance; it was not nearly so flimsy as at first sight it had appeared to be. ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... of furniture," said Porthos, while the comte was looking about, "are constructed in a ridiculously flimsy manner. In my early days, when I used to sit down with far more energy than is now the case, I do not remember ever to have broken a chair, except in ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... some very pretty faces; oval faces with large dreamy black eyes, and a flush of warm sunset on brownish cheeks. The indoor costume of Persian women is but an inconsiderable improvement upon the costume of our ancestress in the garden of Eden, and over this they hastily don a flimsy shawl-like garment to come out and see me ride. They are always much less concerned about concealing their nether extremities than about their faces, and as they seem but little concerned about anything on this occasion ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... produce long works volume by volume, so that Dr. Lardner's plan is by no means novel; but we should also bear in mind that, compared with our family and cabinet libraries, the majority of similar foreign works are mere flimsy productions; and the Encyclopedie Methodique, published in monthly volumes, in Paris, both in quantity and execution, will not reach our literary standards of 1829. As Dr. Lardner's plan is well known, it need not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... afterward, you meet the family. A small, light wagon, easily dragged through sloughs and heavy roads, is covered with a white cotton cloth, and drawn, by either two yokes of oxen, or a pair of lean horses. A "patch-work" quilt is sometimes stretched across the flimsy covering, as a guard against the sun and rain. Within this vehicle are stowed all the emigrant's household goods, and still, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... be said that he has left as memories behind him only three things that will be remembered. The first is the Pavilion at Brighton, with its absurdly oriental decorations, its minarets and flimsy towers. The second is the buckle which he invented and which Thackeray has immortalized with his biting satire. The last is the story of his marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, and of the influence exercised upon him by the affection ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... the flimsy stuff, our teachers of what nobody knows, would palm upon us as demonstration of the Being and ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... she slept fitfully, but was awakened by the sound of voices on the sands outside the hut. Its flimsy structure, already warped by the fierce day-long sun, allowed her through chinks and crevices not only to recognize the voices of the detectives, but to hear distinctly what they said. Suddenly the name of Jarman struck upon her ear. She sat ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... succeeded by General Pelissier. Pelissier, a resolute, energetic soldier, one moreover who did not owe his promotion to complicity in the coup d'etat, flatly refused to obey the Emperor's orders. Sweeping aside the flimsy schemes evolved at the Tuileries, he returned with all his heart to the plan agreed upon by the Allied commanders at the beginning of the year; and from this time, though disasters were still in store, they were ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Why don't you pluck up the nerve to shoot, and be done with it? I'll make it still more binding upon you: if you don't kill me now, while you have the chance, as God is my witness I'll hang you both for those murders last night at Silver Switch. I know you, in spite of your flimsy disguise: I can ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... came to keep it company. The men from the next room came home—students, I suppose. They talked gaily enough, their remarks interspersed by the thuds of falling boots and the other incomprehensible noises of the night. Through the flimsy partition I caught half sentences in that sort of French intonation that is so impossible to attain. It reminded me of the voices of the two men at the Opera. I began to wonder what they had been saying—what they could have been saying that concerned me and affected ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... Bat, vicious-faced, unkempt, disreputable, lay sprawled out on one of the dive's bunks, an opium pipe beside him. But Larry the Bat was not smoking; instead, his ear was pressed closely against the boarding that formed the rather flimsy partition at the side of the bunk. One heard many things in Chang Foo's if one cared to listen—if one could first win one's way through the carefully guarded gateway, that to the uninitiated offered nothing more interesting than the entrance ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... tenderly for her: he would be her protector. But she was not always timid. He had discovered courage in her and something uncommonly like obstinacy of mind. She uttered opinions which startled him, less because of the flimsy grounds on which they were built, than because of the queer chivalry that made her utter them. She defended the weak because they were weak, whereas he would have had her defend the truth because it was the truth. The attacked had her sympathy, whether they were in the right or in the wrong, ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... undone. The wise woman simplifies to the last degree compatible with comfort. Useless bric-a-brac is dispensed with. "Not how much but how good," is her rule when buying. A few good things kept in place, are better than a clutter of flimsy things which pander only to an uncultured esthetic taste—and make work. Order is the wise woman's first law in housekeeping; cleanliness her second, which is like unto the first in importance. She lets extra rooms, furniture and fallals go until she can pay well to have them cared ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... said Beaumanoir. "This is indeed," he continued, as he looked at the flimsy texture and slender fingers, "a slight and frail gage for a purpose so deadly!—Seest thou, Rebecca, as this thin and light glove of thine is to one of our heavy steel gauntlets, so is thy cause to that of the Temple, for it is our Order ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... to-day from the life of the gatherer of wild rubber in the jungle. In Brazil, the solitary workers have to plunge at dawn into the perilous forest, with its lurking wildcats and jaguars, its coiled and creeping serpents. The dwellings are flimsy huts, food is scarce and expensive, and disease and fever ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... a bit of grass and a few trees, and the rooms are cheaper in their long continuance than any flimsy new rubbish that ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... then in her glory, consisted of two stores, five saloons, a half-dozen less reputable places of entertainment, a steepleless board church, a schoolhouse, also of boards, a hotel, a post office, a feed stable, fifty or more board shacks of miners, and a few flimsy buildings at the mouths of shafts. It was nearly noon when the three drew up ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... ever chose this place from which to start his long journey to Tarshish passes my comprehension unless, indeed, it was Hobson's choice. He must certainly have been violently ill ere ever his flimsy boat had crossed the bar—a feat his whale could never have accomplished at all—and for a man of his temperament, soured by many trials, this must have been ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... of flimsy, working always gaily, or with at least the air of gaiety; and even as she rattled on, there was somewhere in her mind a constant little wonder. Everything she said seemed to be necessary to support something else she had said. How had it happened? ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... be discourteous," he said, "I must say that I think the arguments just set forth are exceedingly flimsy. There can be no question but that Vernondale would be a far better and more appropriate home for the young lady in question than any other spot on the globe. Here we have wide streets, green lawns, fresh air, and bright sunshine; all conducive ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... careening around the great curved outer surface of the Shed. It landed and taxied up to the door. It swung smartly around and its side door opened. A bandaged hand waved at Joe. He climbed in. The pilot of this light, flimsy plane was the co-pilot of the transport of yesterday. He was the man Joe had helped ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... the telephone business have grown up together, he always a little distance in advance. No other man has touched the apparatus of telephony at so many points. He fought down the flimsy, clumsy methods, which led from one snarl to another. He found out how to do with wires what Dickens did with words. "Let us do it right, boys, and then we won't have any bad dreams"—this has been his motif. And, as the ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... intrude uninvited into their premises and paint out the signs they have permitted to occupy their fences and barns and sheds? Who would do these things but an impertinent meddler who is so inexperienced in life that he sets his own flimsy judgment ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... buttoned her flimsy blouse with three pearl beads down its front, wiping constantly ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... If it is, I call that very flimsy evidence; and I again warn you to be careful how you ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... Klemantans also build houses little if at all inferior to those of the Kayans, and very similar to them in general plan. But in this as in all other respects the Klemantans exhibit great diversities, some of their houses being built in a comparatively flimsy manner, light timber and even bamboos being used, and the roof being made of leaves. The houses of the Muruts are small and low, and of ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... not such a fool as to believe that this war is on account of the Servian assassination? That is a mere flimsy pretext—one of the flimsiest ever known. I have read all about it to-day. Austria had practically agreed to live at peace with Servia, to allow Servia to retain her independence. The trouble was, to all intents and purposes, patched up, and then ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... the sort of girl I request the ten lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast what you admire. The lines may come before the Law question, as that cannot be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not burnt your returned letter pray re-send it me as a monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling in those accursed Annuals I have become a by-word of infamy all over the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... means of expression for their most precious message: One day a serious young man came to Hull-House with his pretty young sister who, he explained, wanted to go somewhere every single evening, "although she could only give the flimsy excuse that the flat was too little and too stuffy to stay in." In the difficult role of elder brother, he had done his best, stating that he had taken her "to all the missions in the neighborhood, that she had had a ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... conscience; What served him pleased him, and without a murmur He stamped his broad seal on these lawless deeds. What at that time was right, because thou didst it For him, to-day is all at once become Opprobrious, foul, because it is directed Against him. O most flimsy superstition! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "MIMSY" is "flimsy and miserable" (there's another portmanteau for you). And a "BOROGOVE" is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round—something like ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... of oaks in regard to size and toughness. His spirits were far above "proof." His organs were cathedral organs compared with the mere barrel-organs of ordinary men. On the other hand, the "cabin" in Grubb's Court was but a flimsy tenement; its plank floorings were thin, and its beams and rafters slim and somewhat loose owing to age, so that when the captain snored, which he did regularly and continuously, it was as if a mastiff had got inside a ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... truth and Dan Hicks knew it, but he was not to be beaten out of his share of the salvage by such flimsy argument. "Jack," he pleaded, "don't be a hog all the time. The Yankee Prince is an eight thousand ton vessel and it's a two-tug job. Better send us both, Tiernan, and play safe. Chances are our competitors have three tugs on ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... uninteresting. The sonata, in the key of F major, commences with a brief introductory Adagio, followed by a long, tedious Allegro abounding in passages of thirds. A brief Andante comes between this Allegro and the Finale, consisting of flimsy variations on the popular melody "Life let us Cherish." In a book of small compass such as the present one, we only wish to dwell upon matters of interest. For some particular purpose Woelfl's sonatas might possibly prove of importance and even interest; ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... only immortal soul in Katharine's hands just now was the one inside her baby boy, a flimsy, fragile little chip upon the tides of time. However, it would not be Katharine's fault, if time were not ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... it is that the Great man abides by what is solid, and eschews what is flimsy; dwells with the fruit and not with the flower. It is thus that he puts away the one and makes ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... not sick of my mind, as you seem to be of yours; I am only somewhat tired of the little cage in which, since it has been alone, it ruffles its plumes against the flimsy wires that confine it from wider space. I shall take up my home for a time with the new-married couple: they want me. Ashleigh Sumner has come into parliament. He means to attend regularly and work hard, but he does not like Jane to go into the world by herself, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... motive, an ingenious evasion of the issue, a witty instead of a passionate turn, offend us like an insincerity. All should be plain, all straightforward to the end. Hence it is that, in "Rhoda Fleming," Mrs. Lovel raises such resentment in the reader; her motives are too flimsy, her ways are too equivocal, for the weight and strength of her surroundings. Hence the hot indignation of the reader when Balzac, after having begun the "Duchesse de Langeais" in terms of strong if somewhat swollen passion, cuts the knot by the derangement of the hero's clock. Such personages ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... acquaintance soon ripened into friendship, leading to much personal intercourse and a variety of literary schemes. Mr. Gilchrist first started a proposal to publish a 'Select collection of Old Plays,' in fifteen volumes, and on the failure of this scheme, owing to the sudden appearance of a flimsy kind of work called 'Old Plays,' Mr. Taylor and he agreed to launch a new monthly publication, under the revived title of 'The London Magazine.' The negotiations for carrying out this work were pending between writer and publisher, when ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... those pieces of paper are spoilt—not that they are so very flimsy neither—the owner carries them to the Mint, and by paying three per cent, on the value he gets new pieces in exchange. And if any Baron, or any one else soever, hath need of gold or silver or gems or pearls, in order to make plate, or girdles, or the like, he goes to the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... reciprocity system adopted so generally in 1824. Notwithstanding which, here have we a government insisting upon extending, without a moment's hesitation, this system which has already so deeply injured us, to three-fourths of the commercial marine of this country. And what are the flimsy pretences in addition? Why, that Prussia has threatened on one hand, and the United States coaxed on the other, and that British masters and mates are intemperate, and British seamen insubordinate. I will take the libel first, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... "These flimsy rags, that scarcely hide Our forms, can naught discourage us; But Hunger—ah! it may be thus That Fortune shall ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... be opaque, because no editor wants to be annoyed by having the writing on the second sheet show through between the lines of the first, when he is reading that. That is the chief, and a sufficient, reason. A second, is that thin paper is flimsy and hard ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... for ingenious schemes. There she was, in the beautiful room, with the only exit to the house, the hall door, securely locked. The door was of solid mahogany, the knob and lock of a most secure firmness. Had it been a light or flimsy door, Patty would have rattled and shaken it, but this door was solid as a rock. Either, she would have to think up some clever plan, and that quickly, or spend the entire evening there in solitude. Her quick mind took ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... on them mighty everlastin' waves, forever flowin' back and forth, forth and back, the world of the flimsy and the false seemed to pass away and the Real more nigh to me than it did in the painted land of shams and onreality I had been passin' through. And as I meditated on the disgraceful sight I had seen—that gaudy, guilty creeter with a man concealed in her breast. For if it wuzn't a guilty ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... pulsing, in the dark and narrow hall beside the flimsy rack where several coats and hats were hung. Once before I had visited Krebs in that lodging-house in Cambridge long ago with something of the same feelings. But now they were greatly ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... communication with the coast, and no expectation of a reinforcement; and, had the enemy made an appearance, the troops were hardly in a fit state to defend themselves. Day after day torrents of rain fell; it was impossible to light fires for cooking purposes except under flimsy sheds of palm branches; and night after night officers and men turned into their wretched and dripping tents hungry and drenched to the skin. Neither was there any occupation for the mind or body, and universal gloom and despondency set in. It was no unusual ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... boarder, was in every respect a contrast to me, being small, young, and dressed with elaboration in a flimsy style which, off the stage, I have always scorned. Her wrists were laden with bangles, her fingers with rings, and her golden hair piled high in the most exaggerated of the exaggerated pompadour styles in vogue. Her appetite ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... reached me on Sunday, and the note which you were so kind as to send with it, I can only repay you in this the old paper of unproductive thanks, but the sincerity of them will be held in some estimation by the mind actuated by the kindness that has excited them, and, therefore, flimsy as they are, I venture to beg your acceptance of them. I have nothing new, Madam, to send you for your entertainment from this great city. That the Regent is going to divorce the Princess of Wales, and excite the hope of the ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... Wabbly had spewed out deadly gases. Also it had simply forged ahead. And the two living men in their gas-masks paid as little attention as possible to the bodies in the streets, most of them in flimsy night-clothing, struck down in frenzied flight, but they could ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... subject, I will take occasion to lament the very great inferiority of the paper generally which is employed in printing books. It may have a fine, glossy, smooth appearance, but its texture is so poor and flimsy, that it soon frays or breaks, without the greatest care; and many an immortal work is committed to a miserably frail ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... we ought to take all these light waists?" she asked a little later, holding up a beautiful flimsy one. "It's sure to be hot ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... perfectly correct, and she is evidently a prize to the brigantine. The rascals on board her profess to be her regular crew, and disown all acquaintance with the crew of the 'Juanita,' but there are twice as many men on board as are entered in the ship's books, and altogether their tale is far too flimsy to hold water. I have no doubt they are a prize crew from the 'Juanita,' and that the ship's crew have all been murdered. So that we have done a ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... his lands, the next care is to provide a mansion worthy the residence of a landholder. A huge palace of pine boards immediately springs up in the midst of the wilderness, large enough for a parish church, and furnished with windows of all dimensions, but so rickety and flimsy withal, that every blast gives it a ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the end came about December, 1910. The various inconsistencies in the reports from Libagnon, the continual postponement by Mesknan of the end for one flimsy reason or another, the discovery by individuals of lies and fraudulent conduct on the part of the priests, the hunger and misery consequent upon the abandonment of the crops, the constant advice on the part of Bisyas and others, and the ever-increasing scarcity of valuables that might be ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... you let me hear from you?" asked Warburton. "I got nothing but that flimsy postcard ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... and Spiridion thought exactly like him. As for the innocent Pascalon, he was horribly afraid of women, and reddened to the ears when the name of the Little Scheideck was uttered before him, thinking some lady of flimsy morals was referred to. The poor lover was therefore reduced to keep his confidences to himself, and console himself alone—which, after all, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... lust and rapine, ever practiced under the barbarism of the ages of antiquity? Do not the women of this age go lower in shamelessness than the women of ancient times? Here we see them veiling their faces with the flimsy gauze of artifice, and befouling the pure waters of life with the turbulent stream of their own vanity. They pollute the purity of real beauty by the foul arts of beautifying, and cry out in loud rude voices in every assembly and gathering. They strut about in vain-glorious conceit, ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... representative to ascertain whether I had, or had not, been acquitted of the espionage charge. I particularly desired the official acquittal in writing from Wesel, because it would be of far-reaching value in the event of my being haled before the authorities upon some other flimsy offence. He listened attentively and sympathetically, appreciated the situation as it affected me personally and promised to do everything he could on my behalf. But evidently, subsequent conversation with the Teuton authorities exercised the desired German ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... long dead; and again we can say at once, by no one man, but by many, a cohort, an army of men; and again, by no common men, but by men hellish (or heavenly) in cunning, in resource, in strength and unity of purpose; men laughing to scorn the flimsy prophylactics of society, separated by an infinity of self-confidence and spiritual integrity from the ordinary easily-crushed criminal of ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... intention that they should be published. It is humiliating to record this act. No justification for it is possible. It is idle to say that these revelations were made to warn the country of its danger. As evidence they are not entitled to a thought. More flimsy gossip never floated over a tea-table. Besides, for such a purpose they should have been published when the contest was in progress, when the danger was imminent, not after the men whom he arraigned were defeated and most of them in their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... the man who was with her the night Mr. Lambert said they met them in front of Mrs. Burton's, a dreadful man who said that he believed that she loved Lieutenant Loring and made threats against him. She implored Loring's protection, and Loring saw through the flimsy device and returned the letter unanswered, and later letters unopened, and then the woman seemed to take fire, and ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... followed her. Here was my opportunity. The topography of the place was so perfectly suited to the simplest plan of campaign that it may suggest to the suspicious reader a romancist's shift, diaphanous as the "woven wind" of Dacca. Let me repeat, then, that such a flimsy thing is entirely out of my line, and would have been so even at ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... others shut the gate behind it. Commodus admired the team a minute, then examined the new high wheels of the gilded chariot, that was hardly wider than a coffin—a thing that a man could upset with a shove and built to look as flimsy as an egg shell. Suddenly he seized the reins and leaped in, ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... writings which came from the hands of the apostles and their amanuenses we do not possess. These were probably written, not on skins, but upon the papyrus paper commonly used at that day, which was a frail and flimsy fabric, and under ordinary circumstances would soon perish. Fragments of this papyrus have come down to us, but only those which were preserved with exceptional care. Jerome tells us of a library in Cassarea that was partly destroyed, owing to the crumbling of ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... of the Birds is "the everlasting allegory of foolish sham and flimsy ambition." It was aimed particularly at the ambitious Sicilian schemes of Alcibiades; for at the time the play appeared, the Athenian army was before Syracuse, and elated by good news daily arriving, the Athenians were building the most gorgeous air-castles, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... this Mosaic fence, as erected by dogmatic theologians and scholasticists, was but a flimsy structure at best, and one that was ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... speech brought a radiant smile of relief to Sewell's face. "Ah, well, then! That settles it! I feel perfectly sure that 'Manda Grier will win the day. That poor, sick, flimsy little Statira is completely under 'Manda Grier's thumb, and will do just what she says, now that there's no direct appeal from her will to Barker's; they will never be married. Don't you see that it was 'Manda Grier's romance in the beginning, and that when she ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... a flimsy, whimsey tale, Put out to catch a whimsey, flimsy sale. I'd choose my Omar print on grocer's wraps Before the vellum ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... bamboos, was a grating, on which the crew sat or stood to work the vessel. A long bamboo, with a circular board at the end fixed astern, served as a rudder; the oars also being long bamboos of the same description. The mast was a stout bamboo, carrying a squaresail and topsail of a coarse and flimsy canvas. ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... left, so that the driver cannot favor them at all, but has to crowd between them, and drive both into the mud. That is palpably interested false witness. He thinks it is fine fun to push women into the mud, and frames such flimsy excuses. But as a woman's thoughts about women, this woman's utterances are deserving of attention; and she says that women are not to be depended upon. She is never sure that they will not turn out on the wrong side. They are nervous; they are timid; they are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... behalf. When therefore he heard the charge against him, and realised the fact that he was wholly in their power, and utterly at their mercy, his courage—which at the best of times was only of a very flimsy and unreliable character— utterly gave way; he involuntarily turned his eyes for a moment upon the miserable second mate; recalled the fact that the wretched man had been doomed to a speedy and degrading death by the same individuals who were now sitting ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... threat?" inquired Quarrier, showing the edges of his well-kept teeth. "Is this intimidation, Mr. Siward? Do I understand that you are proposing to bespatter others with scandal unless I am frightened into going to the governors with the flimsy excuse you attempt to offer me? In other words, Mr. Siward, are you bent on making me pay for what you believe you know of my private ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... sergeant was ordered to be taken to the village square, where a dozen old men of the village were being held by the Germans under sentence of death on the flimsy charge of having resisted the Prussians. One by one these unhappy Frenchmen were being lined up before a firing squad and shot down. The sergeant, who, of course, was to share a like fate, was reserved for the last that he might have more ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... out of vague traditions with fragments and snatches of old ballads, so that the result resembles a gaudy, staring transparency, in which you cannot distinguish the daubing of the painter from the light that shines through the flimsy colours and gives them brilliancy. Here all is clearly made out with strokes of the pencil, by fair, not by factitious means. Our author takes a given subject from nature or from books, and then fills it up with the ardent ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... of Scotland Yard, waited with the receiver held to his ear. While he waited he scrutinised keenly a sheet of paper which lay on the desk in front of him. It was a flimsy, faintly-ruled sheet from a cheap writing-pad, blotted and soiled, and covered with sprawling letters which had been roughly printed at irregular intervals as though to hide the identity of the writer. But the letters formed words, and ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... nonessential; indifferent. subordinate &c. (inferior) 34; mediocre &c. (average) 29; passable, fair, respectable, tolerable, commonplace; uneventful, mere, common; ordinary &c. (habitual) 613; inconsiderable, so-so, insignificant, inappreciable. trifling, trivial; slight, slender, light, flimsy, frothy, idle; puerile &c. (foolish) 499; airy, shallow; weak &c. 160; powerless &c. 158; frivolous, petty, niggling; piddling, peddling; fribble[obs3], inane, ridiculous, farcical; finical, finikin[obs3]; fiddle-faddle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... was not very large, and it seemed very ordinary. There were some flimsy, uncomfortable chairs in gilt and red. Two large palms were in corners. Under a glass cover on the table was a view of Rome. The room had not a business-like look, thought Mrs. Wilton; there was no suggestion of the office or waiting-room where people came and went all ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... sort of life we were then leading might have become habitual, and he might possibly have been saved from the sad fate that awaited him. However, though tempted for a moment, he refused because it did not seem a good investment, being a flimsy little building, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... rapture of their dominance; and I am not lightly to be stripped of recollection of them, nor of the attendant thrill either, by any cheerless hour wherein, as sometimes happens, my personal achievements confront me like a pile of flimsy jack-straws. ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... excepting the piano, had a transitory look; two light wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the recess—all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... may hope, a substitution of knowledge for the former reciprocity of ignorance. All this makes for better social and intellectual relations, good understanding and friendship, and so for political relations much more substantial in the case of many of the republics than the rather flimsy Pan-Americanism celebrated in eloquent speeches ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the first stanza is quite too much in the flimsy strain of our ordinary street ballads; and on the other hand, the second distich is too much in the other extreme. The expression is a little awkward, and the sentiment too serious. Stanza the second I am well ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... good time, Sire," said Howard. "But not crudely, not crudely. This is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled mind. Your awakening. No one expected your awakening. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the stiff, ornamental, and childishly antithetical style of his day and nation, he welded the flimsy elements of the French language into instruments of strength akin to his own conceptions, and wrought out of them a style for himself in which a Demosthenic simplicity and severity of language is sustained by an earnest ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... supporting it, assuring myself that it was necessary. The most I would acknowledge, even privately, was that, like the majority of men, I hated work. Like so many men I was certain that my home, my wife, were absorbing as possible. Wherever I looked, other lives were built of the same labored and flimsy materials. Mine was no worse; it was, actually, far better than most. But only better in degree, not in kind. It occupied about a fifth of my existence, and the rest was made up of hours, engagements, that were ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of the tobacco smoke the windows were pulled down partly from the top. The bottom sashes were covered with half-curtains of imitation lace, but so flimsy that the boys saw through ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... $50,000. These were likewise set aside by the higher Court. We thus see that as far back as 1874 this king of litigants had already had set aside by the higher Courts as many as some 1,900 distinct and separate judgments. How many more of those based on the same flimsy tissue of his distorted imagination he actually realized on is not known. As far as can be ascertained, the issue of insanity was never raised, at any rate by the Court, prior to the perjury trial, and it was only when this master litigant, ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... Butterfly in the Talmud, who (to impress Mrs. Butterfly) stamped his tiny foot upon the dome of King Solomon's Temple, our Critic might have declared the World "Too flimsy in construction." He would certainly have found fault with the Solar System and the Plumbing—the absence of heat in Winter when there is the greater need of it and the paucity of moisture in the desert ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... superlatives or frames elaborately poised, Johnsonian periods; the heroine excels in cheap but glittering repartee, wears "spangled muslin," and has "practised tripping, gliding, flitting, and tottering, with great success." Shreds and patches torn with a ruthless, masculine hand from the flimsy tapestry of romance, fitted together in a new and amusing pattern, are exhibited for our derision. The caricature is entertaining in itself, and would probably be enjoyed by those who are unfamiliar with the romances ridiculed; ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... feeling the furs, examining and weighing the pelts. Then going to the pack horse he returned and spread out upon the rock beside the furs the goods which he proposed to offer in exchange. And a pitiful display it was, gaudy calicoes and flimsy flannels, the brilliance of whose colour was only equalled by the shoddiness of the material, cheap domestic blankets, half wool half cotton, prepared especially for the Indian trade. These, with beads and buttons, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... hat-rack," said Scott, slinging his revolver and his water-bottle over the little upward-pointing pegs which bristle from the trunk. "As a shade tree, however, it isn't an unqualified success. Curious that in the universal adaptation of means to ends something a little less flimsy could not have been devised ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... would have passed without remark in summer; but it was bitter cold for the South Seas. Inanimate nature knew it, and the bottle of cocoa-nut oil stood frozen in every bird-cage house about the island; and the men knew it, and shivered. They wore flimsy cotton clothes, the same they had sweated in by day and run the gauntlet of the tropic showers; and to complete their evil case, they had no breakfast to mention, less dinner, and no ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... long ages, fragments of only four skeletons of very doubtful character have been found, and upon this flimsy proof, the youth of our land are expected by self-styled "scientists" to believe it, even though it leads them into infidelity and atheism, and causes ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... baron will not cry abroad the cause of the meeting," said the soldier, gravely. "These fashionable affairs need but flimsy pretexts." ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Christiansborg Castle on the right, both almost on shore level, give, with an outcrop of sandy dwarf cliffs, a certain air of balance and strength to the town, though but for these and the two old castles, Accra would be but a poor place and a flimsy, for the rest of it is a mass of rubbishy mud and palm-leaf huts, and corrugated ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... with the Turks and the schismatics had already disturbed the peace of his country. The funeral of the late emperor was accelerated with singular and even suspicious haste: the claim of Demetrius to the vacant throne was justified by a trite and flimsy sophism, that he was born in the purple, the eldest son of his father's reign. But the empress-mother, the senate and soldiers, the clergy and people, were unanimous in the cause of the lawful successor: and the despot Thomas, who, ignorant of the change, accidentally returned ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... of this class of work, both by French and English firms. The drawing-room of 1850 to 1860 was apparently incomplete without occasional chairs, a screen with painted panel, a work table, or some small cabinet or casket of this decorative but somewhat flimsy material. ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... up, the valley widened somewhat; and finding here some grass for her pony to forage on, she stopped for the night. The flimsy saddle was removed from her horse and converted into a crude pillow, in true cowboy style. Marie was uneasy. This was the first night in all her adventures that she had been absolutely alone, separated from both friends and foes, with no ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... killed his "Silver-brown," and would have followed, but it ceased at a place where a horse-track joined. Yet he found it again that night, mixed with the sheep smell so familiar once. He followed this, sore and savage. It led him to a settler's flimsy shack, the house of Tampico's parents, and as the big Bear reached it two human beings scrambled ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... in Egypt, in the rose-coloured lands of Karnak and Luxor, is the light more pure and admirable than in these great bare plains of Numidia and the region of the Sahara. Is there not enchantment for the eyes of the metaphysician in this play of light, these nameless interfulgent colours which appear flimsy as the play of thought? For the glowing floating haze is made of nothing—of lines, of gleam, of unregulated splendour. And all this triumph of fluctuating light and elusive colour is quenched with the sun, smoulders into darkness, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... thirty years the Traveling Salesman's hand shook slightly with the memory, and his joggled mind drove him with unwonted carelessness to pin price mark after price mark in the same soft, flimsy mesh of pink lisle. But the grin on his lips did not ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... best." Mrs. Ericson had dropped into a blandly agreeable tone which Nils well remembered. It seemed to amuse him a good deal and his white teeth flashed behind his pipe. His mother's strategies had always diverted him, even when he was a boy—they were so flimsy and patent, so illy proportioned to her vigor and force. "They've been waiting to see which way I'd jump," he reflected. He felt that Mrs. Ericson was pondering his case deeply as she ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... and turn him out in a field in the hot sun, with little clothing on, and plenty of flies about. Then we would see if he wouldn't sympathize with the poor, dumb beast. It's the most senseless thing in the world, this docking fashion. They've a few flimsy arguments about a horse with a docked tail being stronger-backed, like a short-tailed sheep, but I don't believe a word of it. The horse was made strong enough to do the work he's got to do, and man can't improve on him. Docking is a cruel, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... powerful. This belief has not one qual- ity of Truth. It is either ignorant or malicious. The 103:24 malicious form of hypnotism ultimates in moral idiocy. The truths of immortal Mind sustain man, and they anni- hilate the fables of mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy 103:27 pretensions, like silly moths, singe their own wings ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... humour I fell into was one (I had near said) of gratitude to Prestongrange, who had saved me, in this violent, illegal manner, out of the midst of my dangers, temptations, and perplexities. But this was both too flimsy and too cowardly to last me long, and the remembrance of James began to succeed to the possession of my spirits. The 21st, the day set for the trial, I passed in such misery of mind as I can scarce recall to have endured, save perhaps upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a fresh proof that they were the peculiar care of an approving Providence. While they were in camp the weather had been favorable; but they were scarcely housed when a cold, persistent rain poured down in floods that would have drenched their flimsy tents and turned their huts of turf into mud-heaps, robbing the sick of every hope of recovery. Even now they got little comfort from the shattered tenements of Louisbourg. The siege had left the town in so filthy a condition ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... joined me and we worked together without speaking. Her long thick hair had come down and she had hastily tied it in a knot, just as you might tie a knot in a towel, and she had thrown off things like everybody else and only a flimsy cotton, sleeveless bodice, or whatever it's called, drenched through and sticking to her, made a pretence of ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... disagreement, the second in a conviction. His sentence was a fine of $12,000 and twelve years' imprisonment. When he arrived at the penitentiary, he answered the customary questions. "What occupation?" "Statesman." "What religion?" "None." He served one year and was then released on a flimsy technicality by the Court of Appeals. Civil suits were now brought, and, unable to obtain the $3,000,000 bail demanded, the fallen boss was sent to jail. He escaped to Cuba, and finally to Spain, but he was again arrested, returned to New York on a man-of-war, ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... also her skill and taste and labor. She had cut the pattern out of an illustrated newspaper, had fashioned and sewed it with her own hands; she knew that it fitted her almost as well as her own skin; and although the material was cheap and rather flimsy, the style was very nearly the same as that worn the same day on the Boulevard of the Italians. Her costume was completed by a pair of eyeglasses with steel rims, which looked odd on ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... his food is poisoned, and he is kept in a weak and helpless condition, all out of fear of him. It is impossible to argue the patient out of his delusions by pointing out to him how clearly they conflict with reality; he evades any such test by some counter-argument, no matter how flimsy, and sticks to his ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... sort of girl I request the ten lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast what you admire. The lines may come before the Law question, as that cannot be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not burnt your returned letter pray re-send it me as a monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling in those accursed Annuals I have become a by-word of infamy all over the kingdom. I have ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... p. 91) places the scene of such a conversation in the house of the Bishop of Salisbury. 'Boscovitch,' he writes, 'had a ready current flow of that flimsy phraseology with which a priest may travel through Italy, Spain, and Germany. Johnson scorned what he called colloquial barbarisms. It was his pride to speak his best. He went on, after a little practice, with as much facility as if it was his native tongue. One sentence this writer well remembers. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... this—one only amongst many—soon disillusioned Hyde. The great hopes which he had formed from estimating the splendid chances opened by the Restoration, were grievously dispelled. He learned how selfish and how flimsy was much of the noisy loyalty. He soon learned, also, to take a just estimate of the character of the King. During the time of exile he had formed a high opinion of Charles's abilities, and had frequent cause to appreciate ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... so much, without her attendant Graces, as they will without her. Among men, how often have I seen the most solid merit and knowledge neglected, unwelcome, or even rejected, for want of them! While flimsy parts, little knowledge, and less merit, introduced by the Graces, have been received, cherished, and admired. Even virtue, which is moral beauty, wants some of its ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... schism, Nurtured by foppery and barbarism, ... who went about Holding a poor decrepit standard out, Marked with most flimsy mottoes, and in large ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... to many modern aspects of Nagasaki, the residences almost without exception were of flimsy, typical Japanese construction, consisting of wood or wood-frame buildings, with wood walls with or without plaster, and tile roofs. Many of the smaller industries and business establishments were also housed in wooden buildings ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... Gorby, thoughtfully, taking down a flimsy yellow book rather tattered. "I've heard of him; if his novels are as bad as his reputation I shouldn't care to ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... am surprised you should do these honest men the injustice to suppose that such an impudent, flimsy, bombastic tirade as that same proclamation of Burgoyne's, should have a feather's weight with any ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... from the horrors of civil war. A year ago the Pope was supported by French bayonets, but his light coinage would not pass in Paris. Now Papal zouaves are killing the citizens of Paris, and we take light silver and lighter paper. The piece is flimsy enough. It is not its political significance that makes it diverting, but the double-entendre therein. One must laugh a little, you understand. Men are dying out yonder, we might as well laugh a little here. Low whispers in the baignoires, munching of sugared violets in the stage boxes—everything's ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... constructed: the last page ends the tale, and the tale is told with a light grace, sportive within restraint, that takes nothing from the seriousness of the subject. Some may think this extravagant praise for a little story which, after all (they will say), is flimsy as a soap bubble. But let them sit down and tick off on their fingers the names of living authors who could have written it, and it may begin to dawn on them that a story has other dimensions ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the young man's elbow holding a salver on which lay a missive of some sort, a telegraphic message, to judge by the flimsy, buff envelope. ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... yourself. Just cool off and then you'll feel better after such a long ride. Shall I send Polly to the spring-house for some cold milk?" asked the lady of the house, folding the flimsy crepe token of Sary's ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... never acquitted himself so well; he cut, capered, and set to his partner with unusual agility; we naturally participated in the admiration he excited, and in the fullness of our triumph, while brushing past the flimsy nankeens worn by Tibbins, I could not refrain from bestowing a smart kick upon his shins, that brought the tears to his eyes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the position in society," replied Mrs. Wardour, enveloping her nothing in flimsy reiteration ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... The life one led out here was not calculated to tone down any innate restlessness of temperament: on the contrary, it directly hindered one from becoming fixed and settled. It was on a par with the houses you lived in—these flimsy tents and draught-riddled cabins you put up with, "for the time being"—was just as much of a makeshift affair as they. Its keynote was change. Fortunes were made, and lost, and made again, before you could say Jack ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... period, there ought to be small difference of opinion in a free and educated country as to where the right lay in the subsequent Roman struggle. What sensible or honest Protestant would not sympathize with the indignant eloquence of this earnest Italian protesting against the flimsy oratory of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the girl laid the table-cloth, it occurred to him how flimsy, after all, was the evidence that she loved him. Suppose she did nothing of the kind! At the Junta, he had foreseen no difficulty in asking her. Now he found himself a prey to embarrassment. He wondered why. He had not ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... these chances by constructing another craft which would tempt us out upon the perfidious element. My wife's fears were, however, speedily allayed, for I assured her that the boat I intended to construct should be no flimsy cockleshell, but as safe and stout a craft as ever floated upon the sea. The Greenlander's cajack I intended to be my model, and I resolved not only to occupy the children, but also to produce a strong and serviceable canoe—a masterpiece ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... principles in England were still very numerous, and had become bolder in their advocacy of such principles. A fierce war was carried on by the newspapers of the day against Burke's "Reflections," and pamphlets and volumes of all sizes were published, in order to show that it was a mere flimsy piece of rhetoric and fine writing. The most conspicuous of these volumes were the "Vindictae Gallicae;" or "Defence of the French Revolution," written by Sir James Mackintosh; the "Rights of Man," written by that fierce democrat, Tom Paine; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... did you introduce any real proof that he is the scoundrel you say he is? Seems to me the poor girl is right in the stand she takes. She wants proof, and positive proof, you know. I don't blame her. How the deuce can she break it off with the fellow on the flimsy excuse that Phil Quentin and Lady Saxondale say he is a rascal? You've all been acting like a tribe of ninnies, if ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... storm-tossed team before it finally escaped the clutches of the students. Every player had a ringing in his ears and a swelling in his heart. When the baseball uniforms came off they were carefully packed in the bottoms of trunks, and twelve varsity sweaters received as tender care as if they were the flimsy finery dear ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... prospective bribe to the student, a promise of an ulterior reward which is more important than knowledge itself. Temptations, held before us as inducements to be good or to pursue uncongenial paths, are most often flimsy lies or half-truths, such as the oft-quoted maxim of respectable piety, "Honesty is the best policy," at which politicians all over the world seem to laugh in their sleeves. But unfortunately, education conducted under a special providence ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... whispering to the mischievous wild beast which lurks in the bottom of all our hearts, now, "Rouse up! art thou a man and darest not do this thing?" now, "Rise, kill and eat—it is thine, wilt thou not take it? Shall the flimsy scruples of this teacher, or the sanctified cant of that, bar thy way, and balk thee of thine own? Thou hast strength to brave them—to brave all things in earth, or heaven, or hell; put out thy strength ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... ship, far below the water line. An electrically driven horizontal fan, with its motor, can be got into the thickness of a deck with its beams, if needs be. This would clearly be better than depending on a flimsy construction, which would certainly be greatly damaged, if not entirely shot away, in action. If clear decks are wanted, the windsail is about as inconvenient as it is ugly, and that is saying a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... the forenoon—the first pawning of the silver spoons—or any other terrible first step downwards you may please to liken it to. There is no hope for the patient after this. It rends at once the veil of decorum spun out of the flimsy sophisms by which he has been deceiving his friends, and partially deceiving himself, into the belief that his previous purchases were necessary, or, at all events, serviceable for professional and literary purposes. He now becomes shameless and hardened; ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... held Michilimackinac, Detroit, Niagara, Oswego, and other posts. The policy of Great Britain was dictated by much the same considerations as was that of Spain. Lord Dorchester, Governor of Canada, assured the home Government that "the flimsy texture of republican government" could not long hold the Western settlements in the Union. In 1789, the Lords of Trade reported that it was a matter of interest for Great Britain "to prevent Vermont and Kentucke, and all other settlements now forming in the ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... chief characteristic and it had caused him to feel tenderly for her: he would be her protector. But she was not always timid. He had discovered courage in her and something uncommonly like obstinacy of mind. She uttered opinions which startled him, less because of the flimsy grounds on which they were built, than because of the queer chivalry that made her utter them. She defended the weak because they were weak, whereas he would have had her defend the truth because it was the truth. The attacked had her sympathy, whether they were in the right or in the wrong, ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... up the flimsy sheet again and re-read the pitiful words. The letter could be answered easily enough. If she replied truthfully, she would relate a tragic history of a winter of lonely despair lived out in the beautiful ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... question of being overlooked from passing trains, observe the open four-foot fences which separate one garden or yard from the other. There is no privacy at all! To me the manner in which your poorer classes are housed in the suburbs, packed closely together in flimsy buildings, where every sound can be heard, suggests a form of socialism—communism, or ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... burials, 568 in only three months are marked "P.," for Plague. The present church, built in 1830-3, was designed by John Shaw, who died on the twelfth day after the completion of the outer shell, leaving his son to finish his work. The church is of a flimsy Gothic, the true revival having hardly then commenced. The eight bells are from the old church. The two heads over the chief entrance are portraits of Tyndale and Dr. Donne; and the painted window is the gift ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Through the flimsy partitions they heard her mounting the uncarpeted stairs, hustling about upon an uncarpeted floor above, and presently descending. "I'll hoof it," she said, reappearing in the doorway. "I'll send ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... their hawk-like eyes, their rifles cracked sharply, to be generally rewarded with a howl of pain from some cutthroat who had been winged. But there could be but one end to such a battle. The convicts were well protected behind big trees, while the flimsy sides of their canoes afforded the brave little band of Seminoles almost no protection. Still they fought stubbornly on, answering shot with shot until the point and canoes were shrouded in a fog ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... room that was oh, so very, very different from the high, warm, richly colored library of Sir Walter! This garret closet in the slums of Edinburgh was all of cut stone, except for the worn, oaken floor, a flimsy, modern door, and a thin, board partition on one side through which a "neebor" could be heard snoring. Filling all of the outer wall between the peephole, leaded windows and running-up to the slope of the ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... put his hand on the cloth, and drew forth a flimsy pair of tights of carmine hue—part of the Mephistophelian costume that Theodore had worn on the night of the party next door. With this in his hand, and a clearer understanding of the house, with its ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... was said on the farm of these matters, except in private discussions; all were too busy with the active work. We felt that we had put our ears down to the earth and heard nature's whisperings of harmony; that we had gone back from the uncertain and flimsy foundations of present society, and placed our corner stone on the eternal rock of science and justice; that the social laws God ordained from the beginning had been discovered; there could be no possibility of a mistake, ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... out, it will in the beginning at all events, witness a great and passionate uprising of imperialistic and capitalistic tendencies. If there is any one who did not understand that a policy based on hopes of other peoples' bankruptcy is the most flimsy and frivolous of all policies, he might well have learned it from ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... Strobo and Rosario, that seemed to declare him more than indifferent to circles in which he would not meet them. In the end our argument left me ridiculously irritated—it was simply distressing to see the platform from which he obtained so wide and exquisite a view of the world upheld by such flimsy pillars—and my nerves were not soothed by his proposal to walk with me to the Club. I could hardly refuse it, however, and he came along in excellent spirits, having effected the demolition of British social ideals, root and branch. His mongrel dog accompanied, keeping offensively near our heels. ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Douglass, if you can help it. I don't feel innocent at all, just now at least, and I have no particular faith to shake; if I had I hope you would not consider it such a flimsy material as to be shaken by any thing which you have said as yet. I certainly have heard no arguments. Occasionally I think of these matters, and I have been surprised, and not a little puzzled, to note the strange inconsistency existing between the profession and practice ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... Mr. Hopkins was in a state of amazement; and Millicent, if she did not swoon, seemed to herself in a trance. Neither of them could see in the cause anything to account for the effect. How could a merchant prince quail before so flimsy a piece of paper? Mr. Sterling explained. Mr. Hopkins begged the matter might not be made public,—above all things, that legal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... doesn't matter,' cried Kenyon. 'It was a flimsy structure at best. I am not hurt, if that is what you ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... secrecy, mystery, and ignorance? And how can men and women who are to all appearances rational and high-minded bring themselves to indict and condemn a whole race, invoking thereby the perils of world-wide racial conflict, upon the basis of such flimsy, clouded, and tainted testimony? No decent and self-respecting judge or jury anywhere in the United States would, I dare believe, convict the humblest individual of even petty crime upon the basis of such testimony. Serious ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... were greatly delighted and mightily strengthened when they heard that with all the strength and art which our opponents were then called upon to display, they were capable of producing nothing but this flimsy rebuttal, which now, praise God! a woman, a child, a layman, a peasant are fully able to refute with good arguments taken from the Scriptures, the Word of Truth. And that is also the true and ultimate reason ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... which dead Caesar my saucy Burt boot No. 2 is walking over. I shouldn't mind trampling old Caligula, but I don't like the thought on general principles. I feel all out of place, so modern and fixed up and flimsy. If I could get into old picturesque clothes and out of the English-speaking quarter, I should not be so oppressed and might worship Rome. But I seriously think I shall die if I stay here much longer. There's a spirit-malaria that eats into my life. I feel as if all the ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... on the morning of November 12, 1720. Tordenskjold was roused from sleep at five, and, after saying his prayers, a duty he never on any account omitted, he started for the place appointed. His old body-servant vainly pleaded with his master to take his stout blade instead of the flimsy parade sword the Admiral carried. Muennichhausen advised against it; it would be too heavy, he said. Stahl's weapon was a long fighting rapier, and to this the treacherous second made no objection. Almost at the first thrust ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... won't. I remember when the Jocelyn house burned down, and nothing was saved but a piano (at which Peter Reddy seated himself and played the "Fire Music") and a scuttle of coal, how Mrs. Jocelyn, usually the shyest and most easily shocked person in the world, came down a ladder in nothing but a flimsy nightgown, and stood among us utterly unselfconscious and calmly making the best of things, until someone (it was a warm night and there were no overcoats in the crowd) tore down a veranda awning and wrapped her in it. And I remember a certain very rich and pushing Mrs. Edison from ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... a terrible experience, and one that I shall never forget—the white-faced, distracted woman, tramping in her flimsy house-shoes over the rough ground, bursting through the bushes, regardless of the thorny branches that dragged at skin and hair and dainty clothing, and sending forth from time to time a tremulous cry, so dreadfully pathetic ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... Yellowhammer had been truly described. The voice of childhood had never gladdened its flimsy structures; the patter of restless little feet had never consecrated the one rugged highway between the two rows of tents and rough buildings. Later they would come. But now Yellowhammer was but a mountain camp, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... a quiver of the flimsy railing, a slender body cut through the moonlight, parted the water with a clean sush! and bobbed up almost immediately, within three feet of the boat. Jerry Ring did not have the reputation of being the best ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... act as an equalizer in bringing the very best out of both light and dark rooms, serving at the same time as a partial background for their contents; while portieres are not only aesthetic but useful in deadening sounds, cutting off draughts, and screening one room from another. "Drapes," those flimsy, go-as-you-please looking bunches of poor taste knotted, cascaded, and festooned over mantels, pictures, and chair backs, we have outgrown, confining our efforts in this line to the silk draught curtain to conceal the inelegant yawn of an open grate; and even ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... house party had returned from Connachan and had ascended to their rooms, weary with the night's revelry, the men with shirt-fronts crumpled and ties awry, the women with hair disordered, and in some cases with flimsy skirts torn in the mazes of the dance. Yet all were merry and full of satisfaction at what one young man from town had declared to be "an awfully ripping evening." All retired at once—all save the hostess and one of her male guests, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... and he made for a door, outside which lanterns were swinging in the wind. Margaret caught up some flimsy garment and wound it about her pretty round throat—they call it ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... a letter," said Emerson; "it has intent, personality, secrecy." Flimsy and frail as it is, so easily torn or destroyed, the love-letter many times outlasts the love. Even the Father of his Country, though he has been dead this hundred years or more, has left behind him a love-letter, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... even to this flimsy conclusion might be given if nature could be said to be working towards a given end. But we do not find this. What we see is a multitude of forces at work, the action of each of which often results in the negation of the other. ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... moment of disillusion came on the day that his aunt informed him, with considerable asperity, that his pretty cousin was not a person to be mentioned in their circle—the reason given—that "she was not yet out,"—sounding rather flimsy even to his trusting ears. Still, he was given to understand that, in all probability, Nathalie would be presented next winter, at one of the court balls; on which day, Caroline admitted, wearily, to herself, her special reign ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... tedious to both the reader and author, here to repeat what has been before written of Sir Thomas More—whose memory lives in every cultivated bosom. Of this edition of the Utopia there appeared a flimsy and tart censure in the Edinburgh Review, by a critic, who, it was manifest, had never examined the volumes, and who, when he observes upon the fidelity of Bishop Burnet's translation of the original Latin of More, was resolved, from pure love of ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... your Sunday's quavering, Sir Clerk," said Lambourne fiercely; "cudgel you, my worshipful dealer in flimsy sarsenets, into one ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... bomb there to prevent anyone going in at the first alarm and saving anything," Tom said. "They didn't count on the roof burning through first, giving me a chance to use the sand. I made the roof of the red shed flimsy just on that account, so the force of the explosion if one ever came, would be mostly upward. You know the expanding gases, caused by an explosion or by rapid combustion, always do just as electricity ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... and the people in their wild terror resorted to the bal-shem for amulets and talismans. On every door could be read the inscription, "Not at home." But the cholera would not be put off by so flimsy a device and entered unbidden. Even the death of a grave-digger did not stay the dread disease, although it had been prophesied that such an event would end the trouble. The cabalistic books were ransacked for charms and mystic signs with which to resist the power of the conqueror, ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... war were in hot chase after the enemy, who were scampering away over the hills as fast as their legs could carry them, leaving their baggage ingloriously scattered over the road, as many a cheap lacquered hat and flimsy paper cartridge-box, preserved by our Blue Jackets as trophies, will testify. So good was the stampede, that the enemy's loss amounted only to one aged coolie, who, being too decrepit to run, was taken ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... roomy and comfortable, as I have said, it was not, by any means, a handsome one. It was composed of dark red brick, with small windows, and thick white sashes; a porch, too—none of your flimsy trellis-work, but a solid projection of the same vermillion masonry—surmounted by a leaded balcony, with heavy, half-rotten balustrades, darkened the hall-door with a perennial gloom. The mansion itself stood in a walled enclosure, which had, perhaps, from ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... 1793, under the title of The Upper Canada Gazette, or the American Oracle. The sheet was in folio, 15 by 9-1/2 inches, of coarse, but durable paper—not a characteristic, certainly, of our great newspapers now-a-days, of which the material is very flimsy; the impression was fairly executed; the price was three dollars a year. In 1794, the form was changed to a quarto, and one Tiffany had become the proprietor. When the Gazette was removed to ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... the night Mr. Lambert said they met them in front of Mrs. Burton's, a dreadful man who said that he believed that she loved Lieutenant Loring and made threats against him. She implored Loring's protection, and Loring saw through the flimsy device and returned the letter unanswered, and later letters unopened, and then the woman seemed to take fire, and ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... growled the old gentleman. "I hope you value his friendship sufficiently not to marry him. The man's a fraud—a flimsy, sickening fraud, like his poetry, begad, and that's made up of botany and wide margins and indecency in about equal proportions. It ain't fit for a woman to read—in fact, a woman ought not to read anything; a comprehension of the Decalogue and ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... off that roof and take your medicine," said Bob, ignoring this flimsy excuse. "You've had a licking coming to you for a long time, and now you're ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... silently thinking a moment before deciding to send a second word; but can you imagine his astonishment a little later, when two of that second squad came running in, all breathless, and told him that though they fully explained the magnificence of the wedding supper, some turned upon their heels with a flimsy excuse, others rudely laughed outright in the messengers' faces, and—oh, the horror of it!—still others actually stoned and beat some of the messengers to death!—and their bodies were even at that moment lying in the street, being ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... which came from the hands of the apostles and their amanuenses we do not possess. These were probably written, not on skins, but upon the papyrus paper commonly used at that day, which was a frail and flimsy fabric, and under ordinary circumstances would soon perish. Fragments of this papyrus have come down to us, but only those which were preserved with exceptional care. Jerome tells us of a library in Cassarea that was partly destroyed, owing to the crumbling of its ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... act was over and I was locked in for the night and felt myself able to kick my way through the flimsy walls, yet as completely a prisoner as if they had been of stone, I will confess that I fell into a most undiplomatical rage; and when I found myself played with from month to month by a people I scorned as a grotesque mixture of barbarian and mannikin, I was alternately infuriated, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... said, and then, with a little stab of extra pleasure, she wondered if he would be shocked by her flimsy pink dressing gown ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... were dressed as shrouded skeletons, and the women as worms. The men wore a light flimsy gray robe on which skilful artists had painted on four sides in deep colours the picture of ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... daughters' feet bound and make them sleep away from the house so their moans will not disturb the family. In America fathers often repress their daughters' self-sufficiency and intellect by bonds of self-indulgence, and when the daughters realize that a stockade of dollars is a most flimsy fortress in the world against the experiences which come to every man and woman the American girls are the mental complement of their physically tortured Chinese cousins—hopeless and ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy, whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I have chid him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in his Vaticination on the Death of the ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... first unprotected place that could be found. There was a strong smell throughout the house, but whether it was bugs, or rats, or cats, or drains, or a compound of all four, I could not determine. The sashes did not fit, the flimsy doors hung badly; the skirting was gone in several places, and there were not a few holes in the floor; the locks were loose, and paper was torn and dirty; the stairs were weak and one felt the treads give as one ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... his warehouse, which was empty now and silent, the mere ghost of what it had been, he seemed in no hurry to show me. On the contrary, he went back to the ledgers of his earliest years in business, on the flimsy pretext of looking up certain figures and dates. He did not need me here, the work he gave me was absurd, I was simply taking the musty books from their piles in the closet and arranging them by years on the floor. "To save time," he said. But he himself was still on that first ledger, stopping ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... repairs, to start once more on its erring course, or, perhaps, to go forth unfinished, remanded just there to death. The ten-thirty express was now pulling out through the yards in a powerful clamor of clattering switches and hearty pulsations that shook the flimsy walls of St. Isidore's, and drew new groans from the man on the chair. The young nurse's eyes travelled from him to a woman who stood behind the ward tenders, shielded by them and the young interne from the group about the hospital chair. This woman, having no uniform of any sort, must be ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... body-linen was also added, made of striped muslin. Since our fair ancestresses made their night-dresses of "muslin," it would appear that they extended the term to some stouter material than the thin and flimsy manufacture to which we restrict it. Rhoda's boots were of white kid, goloshed with black velvet. There were also "jessamy" gloves—namely, kid gloves perfumed with jessamine; a black velvet mask; a superb painted fan; a box of patches, ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... she would go into Parliament. It would be bound to come soon, the woman's vote. And after that the opening of all doors would follow. She would wear her college robes. It would be far more fitting than a succession of flimsy frocks that would have no meaning in them. What pity it was that the art of dressing—its relation to life—was not better understood. What beauty-hating devil had prompted the workers to discard their characteristic costumes that had been both beautiful and serviceable ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... putting final touches to their toilet in the broad light of day. The native officers alone aspired to a certain degree of privacy. Their huts were detached a little space from those that guarded the horses; and flimsy walls of grass matting, set around them, imparted a suggestion of dignity and aloofness from ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... actors, as with matchless skill they gave rein to their genius in tragic situations; but how inconceivably tawdry and cheap such pictures seemed in comparison with this! The claptrap of the music, the lights, the posing, the wry faces, the gasps, lunges, staggerings, rolling eyes,—how flimsy and colorless, how mocking and grotesque, they all appeared beside this simple, uncouth, but genuine expression ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... certain bad issue. The moral of the Jesuit's story I think as wholesome a one as ever was writ: the artfullest, the wisest, the most toilsome, and dexterous plot-builders in the world—there always comes a day when the roused public indignation kicks their flimsy edifice down, and sends its cowardly enemies a-flying. Mr. Swift hath finely described that passion for intrigue, that love of secrecy, slander, and lying, which belongs to weak people, hangers-on of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... without reserve to either. Their organization and their history evince their intrinsic superiority. Even their traditionary lore, amid its wild puerilities, shows at times the stamp of an energy and force in striking contrast with the flimsy creations of Algonquin fancy. That the Iroquois, left under their institutions to work out their destiny undisturbed, would ever have developed a civilization of their own, I do not believe. These institutions, however, are sufficiently characteristic and curious, and we shall soon have occasion ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... through an aperture, and saw the whole dramatis personae, tragedy, comedy, pantomime, all refreshing themselves after the final dismissal of their auditors. They were merry and gamesome, and made their flimsy theatre ring with laughter. I was astonished to see the tragedy tyrant in red baize and fierce whiskers, who had made my heart quake as he strutted about the boards, now transformed into a fat, good humored fellow; the beaming porringer laid ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the offices of these petty newspapers: the passage divided into two equal portions, one of which leads to the editor's room, and the other to the grated counter where the clerk sits to receive subscribers. Everybody knows the appearance of these old houses, these staircases, these flimsy partitions, with their bad light coming through a window whose panes are veiled with a triple coating of dust, smoke, and soot,—the whitewashed walls bearing innumerable traces of fingers covered with ink, mingled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... do so with a contemptuous smile. Had I wanted to follow him, my weight flung against the flimsy door would have crushed it in. And I was left standing there alone in the smoke-filled room with nothing but the thunderings of my own pulses to ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... is ridiculous, because it rests on no experimental basis. It is a flimsy theory, entirely unsupported by any facts. Never has it been proved that hot iron, at any temperature likely to be obtained in steam boiler tubes, decomposes steam except by itself appropriating the oxygen of the steam, and leaving the hydrogen, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... iii., p. 181.).—Cordially do I agree with every word of your correspondent LAUDATOR TEMPORIS ACTI, and especially as to the prayer-books for churches and chapels, printed by the Universities. Experto crede, no solicitude can preserve their "flimsy, brittle, and cottony" leaves, as he justly entitles them, from rapid destruction. Might not the delegates of the University presses be persuaded to give us an edition with the morning and evening services printed on vellum, instead of the miserable fabric ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... He kept them at bay for a minute by the quickness of his defence, but being compelled to give back he was parrying a couple of their blades in front, when the third got in a thrust beneath his arm. It was as if the hostile sword had stricken a stone wall. The flimsy and treacherous blade went to flinders, and the would-be robber was left staring at the guard suddenly grown light in ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... left and Christiansborg Castle on the right, both almost on shore level, give, with an outcrop of sandy dwarf cliffs, a certain air of balance and strength to the town, though but for these and the two old castles, Accra would be but a poor place and a flimsy, for the rest of it is a mass of rubbishy mud and palm-leaf huts, and corrugated iron ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... be seen here and there among the trees. But during the long summer days, and indeed until driven from the open by the blizzards of winter, not one of these children of the free air and open sky could be persuaded to enter the dismal shelter afforded by the log houses. They much preferred the flimsy teepee or tent. And small wonder. Their methods of sanitation did not comport with a permanent dwelling. When the teepee grew foul, which their habits made inevitable, a simple and satisfactory remedy was discovered in a shift to another camp-ground. Not so with the ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... Shelley had sat at the feet of Godwin, and represented that vague metaphysical dreaming to which the Utilitarians were radically hostile. To the literary critic, Shelley's power is the more remarkable because from a flimsy philosophy he span an imaginative tissue of such magical and marvellous beauty. But Shelley dwelt in an ethereal region, where ordinary beings found breathing difficult. There facts seemed to dissolve into thin air instead of supplying a solid and substantial base. His idealism ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... promoted from courier to equerry, and in this more exalted and privileged role was always at her side. So marked, in fact, was the intimacy even at this early stage, that the Princess's retinue, one after another, and on one flimsy pretext or another, deserted her in disgust, each vacancy, as it occurred, being filled by one of Pergami's relatives—his brother, his daughter, his sister-in-law (the Countess Oidi), and others, until Caroline was soon surrounded by members of ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... pursued her too. She could see them from her bedroom between the red trunks of the bird-haunted Scotch firs in the Wilderness. First thing, on clear mornings, the sunlight glittered on the glass of their small windows. Last thing, at night, the dim glow of lamp-light showed through open doorway, or flimsy curtain from within. They stood alone, but curiously united and self-sufficing, upon the treeless inhospitable piece of land, ringed by the rivers, the great whispering reed-beds and the tide. Their life was strangely apart from, defiant of, that of the mainland and the village. It yielded ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... stayed to dinner, and though, observing the flimsy compact, they dismissed the questions of Ionian islands and marriage, they talked till midnight of ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... minx, called me back on some flimsy pretext," he said, relighting his cigar; "I forgot that time was going—and she was wily enough to keep me talking until Miss Paisely caught me at it and showed me out. I tell you," turning on Selwyn—"children are what ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... however, that in justice to other people I must put one of Dr. Greenwood's paragraphs in the pillory. He says that I have "built up, on the flimsy foundation of stories told by three or four deserters from the Army" (p. 114), a sweeping indictment against General Booth. This is the sort of thing to which I am well accustomed at the hands of anonymous newspaper ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... difficult to imagine a better training for the naturalist than to spend years, as Huxley did, working at this varied assortment of living creatures. Huxley declared that the difficulties of examining such flimsy creatures had been exaggerated. ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... queer things around him,—like himself bobbing about upon the tiny waves. One, however, soon monopolised his attention; and that was a barrel of somewhat flimsy structure, and about the size of those usually employed for carrying flour. Snowball recognised it also as an old acquaintance in the store-room, and knew that it was filled with the best kind of biscuit,—a private stock belonging ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... notice, and they take various forms of opposition, but are all unanimous against the Department of Agriculture offering to the prospective purchaser any information. Various reasons for their stand were given by the protestants, but how flimsy and ridiculous they are when analyzed. Congress for a number of years has been appropriating money and authorizing certain work by the Department of Agriculture. It is the people's money, and the people's Department, and the information gathered by the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... tied with long flowing ribbons. Over his pelisse he wore occasionally a long cape or short cloak, which was fastened with a brooch or strings across the breast and flowed over the back and shoulders. The material composing the cloak was in general exceedingly light and flimsy. The head-dress commonly worn seems to have been a round cap, which was perhaps ornamented with jewels. The vest and trousers were also in some cases richly jewelled. Every king wore ear-rings, with one, two, or three pendants. A collar ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... be hoisted upon the City Hall. His secretary, who was charged with this office, waited to fulfill it until the cannonade at English Turn had ceased, and it was evident the fleet had passed the last flimsy barrier and would within an hour appear before the city. The flag was then run up; and the Mayor had the satisfaction of creating a position of very unnecessary embarrassment for all parties by his ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... two. It is broadly affirmed that half the people on the island do not speak to the other half. And, worse than all, religious differences have been brought up as engines wherewith to wreak political animosities. I never saw a community in which people appeared to hate each other so cordially. The flimsy veil of etiquette does not conceal the pointed sneer, the malicious innuendo, the malignant backbiting, and the unfounded slander. Some of the forms of society are observed in the island—that extreme of civilisation vulgarly called "cutting" is common; morning calls are punctiliously ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... her had not been a mistaken one. Sydney had always been susceptible to the charms of a pretty face; and Nature had preordained a certain measure of excuse for any man who felt impelled to look twice at Milly, or even to speak to her on a flimsy pretext. And Milly was on Nature's side, for she did not resent being looked at or spoken to, although there was more innocence and ignorance of evil on her side than men were likely to give her credit for. Therefore Sydney had for some time been on speaking terms with her, over and above ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... his own adolescence. To be able to face people and to endure the constant reminder of Gloria that all existence had become, it was necessary for him to have hope. So he built hope desperately and tenaciously out of the stuff of his dream, a hope flimsy enough, to be sure, a hope that was cracked and dissipated a dozen times a day, a hope mothered by mockery, but, nevertheless, a hope that would be brawn and sinew ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... everybody. Why? because Venus will not charm so much, without her attendant Graces, as they will without her. Among men, how often have I seen the most solid merit and knowledge neglected, unwelcome, or even rejected, for want of them! While flimsy parts, little knowledge, and less merit, introduced by the Graces, have been received, cherished, and admired. Even virtue, which is moral beauty, wants some of its charms ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... appeared about a mile long, spread out on two sides of the main street, graduating from the big buildings of stone and wood in the center to flimsy frame structures and tents along the outskirts. Pan estimated that he must have passed three thousand people during his stroll, up one side of the street and down the other. Even if these made up the whole population it was enough ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... of her own flimsy self-justification. She snatched away her hand, as she said it, with an angry frown. The blood rushed back ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... fictions of flimsy romance! Those tissues of falsehood which folly has wove! Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance, Or the rapture which dwells on the first ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Well, then, "MIMSY" is "flimsy and miserable" (there's another portmanteau for you). And a "BOROGOVE" is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round—something like ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... the roar of the fire. It even drowned all the noises of the street. But not for a moment did he think of turning back, though he knew how awful the danger would be if he tried to go up that burning stairway. He cast about for some sort of protection. A flimsy curtain of cotton material was stretched across a doorway. This Hodge pulled down and wrapped round his head, protecting his hands with it also as well as he could. Then he measured the stairway and its direction with a quick glance, and made a ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... work the electric rifle, as all Tom's attention would be needed at the machinery. As soon as the craft had made a landing he was to leap out, carrying a revolver in either hand, and, followed by Tomba, would endeavor to gain entrance to the hut, break through the flimsy grass-woven curtain over the doorway, and get Mr. and Mrs. Illingway out. Ned, Mr. Damon and the other two men would stand by to fire on the red pygmies as soon as they commenced the attack, which they would undoubtedly do as soon as the ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... doing my hair this morning, informed me of this fact. We conferred about my toilet for the afternoon fete in the Elysees Gardens. We heard that twelve thousand people were invited. Certainly I should be lost in a crowd like that and need not be dressed in my best. My maid thought a rather flimsy gown of about year before last would be good enough. Johan thought that he would be so entirely out of sight that he was on the point of not going at all. Well, we had a queer awakening. I was very much astonished when the master of ceremonies met me at the entrance ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... like figures of myth. He was too little of the timber out of which journalists, romancers, or diplomats are made to take them very seriously. The world he lived in, moreover, was too solid to be shaken by any such flimsy device as the one of which he had happened to catch a glimpse. What had been real to him was that he, Guy Matthews, had been suspected of playing a part in story-book intrigues, and had been treated rudely by an old barbarian of whom he expected ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... graphic and entertaining of modern writings. If we were, through any misadventure, sent to jail, we would stipulate for permission to carry into our cell Hakluyt's Voyages. The narratives of modern travellers are often learned, more often flimsy, and from the universality of locomotion, much given, like the prayers of the old Pharisees, to tedious repetitions. A tour in Greece or Italy now affects us with unutterable weariness. A journey from London to York ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... not belong to a false man: the false man sees false shows, plausibilities, expediences: the true man is needed to discern even practical truth. Cromwell's advice about the Parliament's Army, early in the contest, How they were to dismiss their city-tapsters, flimsy riotous persons, and choose substantial yeomen, whose heart was in the work, to be soldiers for them: this is advice by a man who saw. Fact answers, if you see into Fact. Cromwell's Ironsides were the embodiment of this insight of his; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... of plant, itself of doubtful origin (variety or hybrid), and offering phenomena in no way different from scores of other cultivated plants. Never, I should think, has such a vast hypothetical structure been erected on so flimsy ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... said Ina. "It is my destiny. And yet," said she, after a pause, "I would not have you remember me by that flimsy thing. Let me sing you a song your mother loved; let me be remembered in this house, as ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... be any whippin', ur tarrin' an' featherin' in this case, I'm agin it tooth an' toe-nail. Cap Westerfelt's boy sha'n't have a hair o' his head fetched on sech flimsy evidence as we've had while I'm alive. You kin think what you please o' me. I've got too much faith in the Westerfelt stock to believe that a branch of it 'u'd spy ur sneak. This is Jim ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... changed; new and larger locomotives were made, the freight cars, which during the period of the Civil War had a capacity of about eight tons, were now built to carry fifteen or twenty. The former little flimsy iron rails were taken up and were relaid with steel. In the early seventies when Cornelius Vanderbilt substituted steel for iron on the New York Central, he had to import the new material from England. In the Civil War period, practically all American ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... on a single plank with eye glued to a crack is not a comfortable position, and the watcher thought the hours of the next day would never end. As they dragged wearily past, his bones began to ache beyond endurance, yet owing to the flimsy structure of the building he dared not move while the room below was tenanted. In fact, he would not have stirred had he dared, so intense was his interest in the scenes being ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... moment. The tuning of instruments outside broke off, and the first bars of a waltz droned invitingly out: "If you really love me," the song that had been in her ears all the evening, a flimsy ballad of the year, hauntingly sweet, as only such short-lived songs can be. Moving to the tune of it, Judith crowded with the other girls out of ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... temptingly, whispering to the mischievous wild beast which lurks in the bottom of all our hearts, now, "Rouse up! art thou a man and darest not do this thing?" now, "Rise, kill and eat—it is thine, wilt thou not take it? Shall the flimsy scruples of this teacher, or the sanctified cant of that, bar thy way, and balk thee of thine own? Thou hast strength to brave them—to brave all things in earth, or heaven, or hell; put out thy ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... were about to do, the unearthliness of it, overwhelmed me. I was like a man awakened out of pleasant dreams to the most horrible surroundings. I lay, eyes wide open, and the sphere seemed to get more flimsy and feeble, and Cavor more unreal and fantastic, and the whole enterprise madder and madder ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... ancient cities of their own renowned peninsula. The Filipinos are of the varied styles that adorn Africans and the Asiatics. They are gay in colors and curious in the adjustment of stuffs, from the flimsy jackets to the fantastic skirts. The first essential in the dress of a Filipino is a jacket cut low, the decolette feature being obscured to some extent by pulling out one shoulder and covering the other, taking the chances of ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... misunderstanding. It is generally, though mistakenly, held that the Boers ill-treated the natives, and that in the most brutal and tyrannical manner. Such unwarranted assertions had furnished one of the various flimsy excuses for war in South Africa. The natives had to be protected! They were slaves, and must be liberated. Therefore—war! That natives have sometimes received bad treatment at the hands of their masters we shall candidly admit. In such instances the law-courts of the country stood ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... the dearest of little girls who once made me a Christmas present of a purse of her own embroidering. The colors she chose were brilliant, but hardly beautiful; the material rather flimsy, the sewing was far beyond criticism, and if I had ever been rash enough to intrust any money to such a purse, I should have returned home penniless. But I was enchanted with the gift. I shall keep it as long as I live wrapped in the ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... squalor. All are built on the same plan. There is one guest-room, a bare carpetless apartment, with a rough wooden bench, a table, and two straight-backed wooden chairs, and the room is heated to suffocation by a huge stove, which occupies a corner of the room. The flimsy plank partition is unpapered, but generally plastered with the cheap, crudely coloured prints sold by pedlars. Some of these depicted events connected with our recent war in South Africa, and it is needless to add that the English troops were invariably depicted in the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... so long as his goddess smiled, even though it were as a goddess indeed,—as a creature unattainable. But when she frowned, and the heavens grew dark, Richard's sole dependence was in his own will,—as flimsy a trust for an upward scramble, one would have premised, as a tuft of grass on the face of a perpendicular cliff. Flimsy as it looked, however, it served him. It started and crumbled, but it held, if only by a single fibre. When Richard had cantered fifty yards away from Gertrude's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... only amongst many—soon disillusioned Hyde. The great hopes which he had formed from estimating the splendid chances opened by the Restoration, were grievously dispelled. He learned how selfish and how flimsy was much of the noisy loyalty. He soon learned, also, to take a just estimate of the character of the King. During the time of exile he had formed a high opinion of Charles's abilities, and had frequent cause to appreciate his tact and abundant fund of humour and of common-sense. ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... and are striving to play his music, this book will be invaluable, as giving a deep insight into the meaning and proper mode of rendering his compositions. To those who know nothing of him, and who are still floundering amid the fade and flimsy productions that would fain hide their emptiness and vulgarity under the noble name of music, this life of a true musician will reveal a new world, a new purpose for the drudgery of daily practice, and the expenditure of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... made a needle of bone and taking an empty flour sack proceeded to manufacture a pair of legs which, with infinite pains, I stitched to the waistband of my long lost trousers and added wooden pegs to insure stability and strength to the flimsy ravelings. In order to form a fair idea of my appearance, one must imagine a youth with a six weeks' growth of hair and beard, a shirt that had to be taken off once a week to wash, a black band around ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... pleased him, and without a murmur He stamped his broad seal on these lawless deeds. What at that time was right, because thou didst it For him, to-day is all at once become Opprobrious, foul, because it is directed 210 Against him.—O most flimsy superstition! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... clear than all one note, One sudden hail I still remember best, That came on sunny days from one afloat And drew me to the pane in certain quest Of a long brown face, bare arms and flimsy vest, In fragments through the branches, Above the green reflections: Paused by the willows in your varnished boat You, with your ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... rough-rider, she noticed. The ladies applauded daintily, and once the stouter of the two gentlemen called out: "Good work!" as the rider executed a seemingly daring feat, and the other gentleman consulted his flimsy play bill. ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... kind of flimsy mental process results in ignoring the question. Instead of sticking closely to the proposition to be proved the speaker argues beside the point, proving not the entire proposition but merely a portion of it. Or in some manner he may shift ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... in a flimsy dressing gown of yellow, with blue ribbons in it, her hair wet and still done up in a towel. Superbly she trusted to her big eyes of limpid brown, and to the marble-like pallour of her complexion, the twin laughing ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... suffer their names to be coupled with it wherever it may gain a credulous patient; and deny all responsibility for its character, refuse all argument for its doctrines, allege no palliation for the ignorance and deception interwoven with every thread of its flimsy tissue, when they are questioned by those competent to judge and entitled to ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... began to shake faintly, and weight piled up. It was mild compared to that on the shuttle, since the big ships couldn't take high acceleration. Space had been conquered for more than a century, but the ships were still flimsy tubs that took months to reach Mars, using immense amounts of fuel. Only the valuable plant hormones from Mars made commerce possible at the ridiculously ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... changes to quite a disagreeable degree of cold by the time I reach the end of to-day's ride. This introduces me promptly into the mysteries of how the Japanese manage to keep themselves warm in their flimsy houses of wooden ribs and semi-transparent paper in cold weather. An opening in the floor accommodates a brazier of coals; over this stands an open wood-work frame; quilts covered over the frame retain the heat. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... forth bearing a dead tree-trunk between them, he got two more of them. And then the timber crashed against the flimsy door; the rended boards flew across the room; the sod walls trembled to the shock. He dropped his rifle and drew his revolver as he leaped to ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... large proportion of what meets the eye above the water-line of this ironclad, and looks solid enough, is of this comparatively flimsy build; not meant to resist shot or shell; willing, as it were, to be blown away, if the enemy can manage it, though proof against rifle-bullets. There is a huge central erection, styled the 'flying' or 'hurricane' ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... which was from the author's manuscript, has been altered to 'paper-windows.' Bunyan's allusion is to the winkers, called by many 'blinkers,' put by the side of a horse's eyes, to keep him under the complete control of his driver—and by 'paper-winkers' the flimsy attempt of Antichrist to hoodwink mankind by printed legends, miracles, and absurd assumptions—it is one of the almost innumerable sparks of wit, which render all the writings of Bunyan so entertaining ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... It was no flimsy, two-fingered ceremony, but a whole-hearted, whole- handed grip that made the man's blood move more quickly. Unconsciously, as he felt the warm strength in the touch of the girl's hand, he leaned toward her with quick eagerness. And Barbara, who was looking straight into his ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... your prey," I said, mentally. "If she's not yours at heart—which I doubt more than ever—you shall never have her." But she puzzled me for a day or two. If she were not happy she simulated happiness, and made my poor acting a flimsy pretence in contrast. She and the banker took long rides together, and she was always exceedingly cheerful on her return—a little too much so, I tried to think. She ignored the past as completely as possible, and while her manner was kind to me she had regained her old-time delicate ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... there is erected the most laughable superstructure of fantastic farce. I remember hearing one of the two great comedians of the Theatre Francais, M. Coquelin, praise a comic actor of the Varietes whom we had lately seen in a rather cheap and flimsy farce, because he combined "la verite la plus absolue avec la fantasie la plus pure." And this is the merit of La Boule: its most humorous inventions have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... being overlooked from passing trains, observe the open four-foot fences which separate one garden or yard from the other. There is no privacy at all! To me the manner in which your poorer classes are housed in the suburbs, packed closely together in flimsy buildings, where every sound can be heard, suggests a form of socialism—communism, or perhaps ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... them mighty everlastin' waves, forever flowin' back and forth, forth and back, the world of the flimsy and the false seemed to pass away and the Real more nigh to me than it did in the painted land of shams and onreality I had been passin' through. And as I meditated on the disgraceful sight I had seen—that ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... underside of the deck above close to the ship's side, so that they sloped over the bunk tent-fashion, an ingenious arrangement of frilling along the upper edge imparting a sufficient stiffness to the flimsy material to cause it to stand up close to the planking, thus leaving no opening by which the persevering little insects could obtain access to the interior. The bulkhead was panelled with pilasters of satin-wood supporting ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... looked like any other flimsy construction under the dome. We had just passed a row of small warehouses, and the only difference seemed to be the lighted sign ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... two thirds of her wages and the product of many silk dresses ("scarcely soiled") in furnishing that objectionable and disreputable suitor of hers with funds for his extravagance. He has beggared two or three of her acquaintance already, under the same flimsy pretense of intended marriage, that scarcely deludes poor Abigail; she has sore misgivings as to her own fate. Alternately he bullies and cajoles, but all the while she knows that he is lying, deliberately and incessantly, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... it absurd that I should array myself in these gorgeous gowns to compete with that Indian in her few flimsy calicoes and silks? The contrast is out of all proportion. It's the sublime and the ridiculous. And yet she looks well in anything! Dress her in rags and she is picturesque; robe her in silks and ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race! That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face, And did not know it,—no, they went about, Holding a poor, decrepid standard out Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large The name of ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... game to the last, made an ineffectual attempt to hold one of his tormentors, catching the flying end of his jacket; but such was the moment of Sim's upward movement, and the flimsy character of his wearing apparel, that the entire section came away, remaining in the grip of the enemy as he ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... gods, and invested with many of their attributes, we may next ask the question, why this artificial cult, due in the first place to imperial passion and caprice, and nourished by the adulation of fawning provinces, was preserved from the rapid dissolution to which the flimsy products of court-flattery are subject. The mythopoetic faculty was extinct, or in its last phase of decadent vitality. There was nothing in the life of Antinous to create a legend or to stimulate the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... soon afterwards saw lowered from the towering height what appeared at first to be a thin black cord, but which, when the end fell at our feet, we found to be a ladder of curiously-knotted ropes about as thick as packing twine, so flimsy in construction that it seemed as though the weight of a single ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... this series of works will present over all others—more especially the closely printed double column editions, and the new fashioned, though equally objectionable, Shilling books, with their numerous errors, thin paper, and flimsy binding, are ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... herself was now burdened, did not influence Tunis Latham. It was the logic of the idea which convinced him that they had been totally wrong in what they had done. He should have married Sheila on the night they had met in Boston and set about first of all tracing back her trouble and disproving the flimsy evidence which must have convicted her of ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... Messrs. Wilberforce, William Smith, Brougham, Lushington, and others, urged the necessity of interference upon the representatives of a people unanimous in demanding it; and he repeatedly urged it in vain. The Government always leaned towards the planter, and the most flimsy excuses were constantly given for preferring to the effectual measures propounded by the Abolitionists, the most flimsy of expedients, useless for any one purpose, save that of making ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... to these chances by constructing another craft which would tempt us out upon the perfidious element. My wife's fears were, however, speedily allayed, for I assured her that the boat I intended to construct should be no flimsy cockleshell, but as safe and stout a craft as ever floated upon the sea. The Greenlander's cajack I intended to be my model, and I resolved not only to occupy the children, but also to produce a strong and serviceable ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... arrived,—nor is it difficult to foresee, even from once passing through the streets, that only the more solid-built English carriages will stand the wear and tear of a Mexican life, and that the comparatively flimsy coaches which roll over the well-paved streets of New York, will not endure ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... coyotes, but then in her glory, consisted of two stores, five saloons, a half-dozen less reputable places of entertainment, a steepleless board church, a schoolhouse, also of boards, a hotel, a post office, a feed stable, fifty or more board shacks of miners, and a few flimsy buildings at the mouths of shafts. It was nearly noon when the three drew ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... no worshipper of that flimsy culture which is, and has been for a hundred years, an obsession of the German. He knew, none knew better indeed, that the choicest knowledge is only mitigated ignorance. He surprised Disraeli with his mastery of English, and Napoleon with his ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... have been a little frightened by such an apparition, if she had led a life of less reality than frontier settlers are apt to lead; but dealing with hard fact does not engender a flimsy habit of mind, and this woman was too sincere and earnest in her character, and too happy in her situation, to be thrown by antagonism merely upon superstitious fancies and chimeras of the second-sight. She did not even believe herself subject ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... circumstances it will not seem marvellous that I felt somewhat forlorn. I found refuge, however, in books, and energetically carried on my favorite studies; next, I thought I would try writing, and took up two very different lines of composition; I wrote some short stories of a very flimsy type, and also a work of a much more ambitious character, "The Lives of the Black Letter Saints". For the sake of the unecclesiastically trained it may be well to mention that in the Calendar of the Church of England there are a number of Saints' ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... had disappeared. Pete heard a faint shuffling sound in the hall outside. Before he could turn the door crashed inward. He leapt to his feet. With the leap his hand flashed to his side. Unaccustomed to a coat, his thumb caught in the pocket just as the man who had shouldered the flimsy door down, reeled and sprawled on the floor. Pete jerked his hand free, but in that lost instant a gun roared in the doorway. He crumpled to the floor. The heavy-shouldered man, followed by two officers, stepped into the ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... other person, Francine would have instantly seen through that flimsy pretense. But the love which accepts the meanest crumbs of comfort that can be thrown to it—which fawns and grovels and deliberately deceives itself, in its own intensely selfish interests—was the love that burned in Francine's breast. The wretched girl believed ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... side of the injured de Lamotte, but the bourgeoisie accepted the grocer's story and made merry over the deceived husband. Interrogated, however, by the magistrate of the Chatelet, Derues' position became more difficult. Under the stress of close questioning the flimsy fabric of his financial statements fell to pieces like a house of cards. He had to admit that he had never paid Mme. de Lamotte 100,000 livres; he had paid her only 25,000 livres in gold; further pressed he said that the 25,000 livres had been made up partly in gold, partly in bills; ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... will give you a little confidential advice. All I know on temperance (pretty nearly) I put into a tract which was long ago printed at the Organ office.... Now, as to tracts: Make it your first rule to Be Thorough. Most of our temperance tracts are too short and flimsy and not calculated to convince reasoning beings. Let each tract take up some one aspect of the question and exhaust it, none of your fly-away five or six pages but from twelve to thirty-two, the whole case presented in all its aspects and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... rooms there was the sound of the Daniels family going to bed—noises distinctly heard throughout the flimsy frame of the house. After that a deep silence fell which lasted many hours, but in that darkest moment which just precedes the dawn, a light creaking came up the hall. It was very faint and it occurred only at ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... his horns and tail, you would find excuses to make for him," fired Miss Corny. "You are as bad as Archibald! Notice Afy Hallijohn, when she dresses and flirts and minces as you saw her but now! What creditable servant would flaunt abroad in such a dress and bonnet as that, with that flimsy gauze thing over her face. It's as disreputable as ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... my own story was written by unknown hands. The epilogue remained, in which I was to go on seeking what contentment I could find in action. But my whole story was not written on these flimsy pages. It was before me always and always I was turning to it, always asking myself how it would have run had this not happened or had that occurred. Studying it over and over again in my room at night and on my long walks up-town, I found that I could not think of Penelope ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... hard at me, as if seeking to penetrate the flimsy mask I wore, and I beheld a pride in her uplifted face such as had never ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... as if their intention was to pick us off without exposing themselves. The thing could be done too. For a rifle ball would tear through the flimsy woodwork of our shelter as if ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... himself up again; Sheila propped the flimsy pillow behind him, then went into her room to come back with a plastic cup filled with brown liquid that passed for coffee here. It was ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... for it low down in the ship, far below the water line. An electrically driven horizontal fan, with its motor, can be got into the thickness of a deck with its beams, if needs be. This would clearly be better than depending on a flimsy construction, which would certainly be greatly damaged, if not entirely shot away, in action. If clear decks are wanted, the windsail is about as inconvenient as it is ugly, and that is saying ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... the place: long ago I lived here some months, or, it may be, years. It is the fairest of cities—and the greatest. I believe that London in England was larger: but no city, surely, ever seemed so large. But it is flimsy, and will burn like tinder. The houses are made of light timber, with interstices filled by earth and bricks, and some of them look ruinous already, with their lovely faded tints of green and gold and red and blue and yellow, like the hues of withered flowers: for it is a city of paints and ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... type. If there was in it nothing that could actually offend the eye, there was certainly nothing to satisfy it. There was a profusion of gilt mirrors, and an aching lack of pictures: the lighting was too new and glaring: the upholstery too flimsy. But there were baths and soap! It was too late for the baths, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... adopted the traditional principle that death is preferable to dishonour, that a lie is essentially dishonourable, will be far more likely to die for the truth, than one who has philosophized much about honour and veracity, and whose resolution is enfeebled by the consciousness of the weak and flimsy support which theory lends to these healthy and universally received maxims. And similarly those who have received the faith by tradition, who for years have assumed it in their daily conduct as a matter of course, in whom therefore it has become ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... grating, on which the crew sat or stood to work the vessel. A long bamboo, with a circular board at the end fixed astern, served as a rudder; the oars also being long bamboos of the same description. The mast was a stout bamboo, carrying a squaresail and topsail of a coarse and flimsy canvas. ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... with only two flimsy bulkheads between us, I wrote my first letter to Seraphina, while Sebright went on deck to make arrangements to send me ashore. He was some time away; long enough for me to pour out on paper the exultation of my thought, the confidence of my hope, my desire to have her safe ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... Greek were now over; insomuch that when we were required to write essays on the authors we had studied, I had the audacity to produce a composition in which I weighed Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced him wanting in the balance. I supported this heresy by a profusion of bad reading and flimsy argument. The wrath of the Professor was extreme, while at the same time he could not suppress his surprise at the quantity of out-of-the-way knowledge which I displayed. He pronounced upon me the severe sentence—that dunce I was, and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... lovely. The blue organdie had seen the day at last, and she was in such a flutter of delight at the coming of the gentlemen that she could scarcely be recognized as the pale, flimsy young person who had moped so unblushingly all ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... by no means consider themselves as a class of persons distinguished above the general run, or obliged to live more expensively; but, in a manufacturing country, to live without working, implies a degree of gentility that is extremely ruinous to those who enjoy that fatal and flimsy pre-eminence. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... these make an over-measure of reward here, and in their perfect form hereafter are heaven. Nothing done for Him is ever wasted. 'Thou shalt find it after many days.' We are all writing our lives' histories here, as if with one of these 'manifold writers'—a black blank page beneath the flimsy sheet on which we write, but presently the black page will be taken away, and the writing will stand out plain on the page behind that we did not see. Life is the filmy, unsubstantial page on which our pen rests; the black page is death; and the page beneath is that indelible ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... it, but if he had to—well, there could be no harm in having it handy. A door slammed as the two detectives climbed the second flight of stairs. Green flung himself against the one that had been indicated by Israels, and the flimsy fastening gave way under the shock of his thirteen stone. There was no one in the room. Savagely Heldon Foyle turned and caught the handle of a second door. It turned, and they entered the room, empty like the first, but with an open window looking out on a series of low roofs a ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... and vagrants.[983] Hence England entered the period of maritime discoveries with a redundant population. This furnished the raw material for her colonies, and made her territorial expansion assume a solid, permanent character, unknown to the flimsy trading stations which mark the mere extension of a ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the technique are now absolutely uninteresting. The sonata, in the key of F major, commences with a brief introductory Adagio, followed by a long, tedious Allegro abounding in passages of thirds. A brief Andante comes between this Allegro and the Finale, consisting of flimsy variations on the popular melody "Life let us Cherish." In a book of small compass such as the present one, we only wish to dwell upon matters of interest. For some particular purpose Woelfl's sonatas might possibly prove of importance and even interest; but not here. The "Non plus Ultra," ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... was the instrument chosen by fate to bring about this terrible end. The power of the sunbeams is twice as great here as upon the earth, and the heat in the focus of a mirror a couple of feet in diameter would suffice to set fire to the flimsy materials which abounded on the tower. Once started in such a place it ran like sparks in a ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... indeed, but she had no leisure hours at her disposal, and although she felt honored, she really could not do it. This was written on flimsy paper, in a big unformed handwriting, and it caused him to betake himself once more to Miss Snell's studio, where he found her alone—Cora ...
— Different Girls • Various
... hard, though, when I'm so done up too;" and then he thought how beautiful it was with the soft yellow moonlight of the tropical night shining through the Indian corn leaves down through the roof of the flimsy hut, on to the floor close by where Dick ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... inquired Quarrier, showing the edges of his well-kept teeth. "Is this intimidation, Mr. Siward? Do I understand that you are proposing to bespatter others with scandal unless I am frightened into going to the governors with the flimsy excuse you attempt to offer me? In other words, Mr. Siward, are you bent on making me pay for what you believe you know of my private life? Is ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... sky. Ask him his griefs; what midnight demons plough The lines of torture on his lofty brow; Unlock those marble lips, and bid them speak The mystery freezing in his bloodless cheek. His secret? Hid beneath a flimsy word; One foolish whisper that ambition heard; And thus it spake: "Behold yon gilded chair, The world's one vacant throne,—thy ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... like ants. But Ypres is majestic in death, poor Nieuport gruesomely comic. About its splendid nucleus of mediaeval architecture a modern town had grown up; and nothing stranger can be pictured than the contrast between the streets of flimsy houses, twisted like curl-papers, and the ruins of the Gothic Cathedral and the Cloth Market. It is like passing from a smashed toy to the survival ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... Republics, the gradual liberation of Russia the use made of the caravan routes by some of the most active of the Western clergy, are the chief notes of the time between the Polos and Prince Henry; and the flimsy fabrications of Mandeville—"of all liars that type of the first magnitude"—would be fairly left without a word even in a minute history of discovery, if he had not, like Ktesias with Herodotus, won a hearing for himself and drawn ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... suits you best." Mrs. Ericson had dropped into a blandly agreeable tone which Nils well remembered. It seemed to amuse him a good deal and his white teeth flashed behind his pipe. His mother's strategies had always diverted him, even when he was a boy—they were so flimsy and patent, so illy proportioned to her vigor and force. "They've been waiting to see which way I'd jump," he reflected. He felt that Mrs. Ericson was pondering his case deeply as she sat ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... watching the first attempt, his face blank of expression, a sign Drew had come to recognize as the Texan's withdrawal from a situation or action of which he did not approve. There were five men squeezed together on the flimsy-looking raft and they had strung out their mounts in a line, the head of one horse linked by leading rope to the tail ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... busted letters which contained stamps sent in payment of small accounts. You've no idea, ma'am, what a lot o' queer things get mixed up in the mail-bags out of bust letters and packages—all along of people puttin' things into flimsy covers not fit to hold 'em. Last year no fewer than 12,525 miscellaneous articles reached the Returned Letter Office (we used to call it the Dead Letter Office) without covers or addresses, and the number of inquiries dealt with in regard ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... came again, with a flimsy excuse concerning a mare he was thinking of purchasing; and so, by this and by that, he managed to spend most of his time at Stair, and in Nancy's society, seemingly unconscious of a wife he left at Arran for Sandy ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... for his trade seems to have been that of a stone-cutter, he wasted his time in discoursing with such youths as his lecherous countenance and satyr-like person could gather around him, leading them astray from the gods of his country, the flimsy veil of his hypocrisy being too transparent to conceal his infidelity. Nevertheless, he was a very brave soldier, as those who served with him testify. It does not appear that he was observant of those cares which by most men are probably considered as paramount, giving himself ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... we seek in the world is not the flimsy peace which is merely an interlude between wars, but a peace which can endure ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
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