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More "Mincing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... married, those things you would have to do to keep your heart up would cause your next showing to degenerate into a slight motion of slime at the base of mountains. Think of the distance lost, Charles, for such a little mincing forward step. Come, the morning wanes. Fortunately there are things to do, no matter what cannot be done. I shall return you half of your fortune, which, you will remember, is wholly confiscate to the Crown, but upon the condition that you ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... support me. A second later, over Halsey's shoulder, I saw something that turned my emotion into other channels, for, behind him, in the shadowy card-room, were Gertrude and Alex, the gardener, and—there is no use mincing matters—he was kissing her! ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... keener appreciator of the tendencies to a rise or fall in colonial produce—sugars more especially—than John Linden, of Mincing Lane, it would have been difficult to point out in the wide city of London. He was not so immensely rich as many others engaged in the same merchant-traffic as himself; nothing at all like it, indeed, for I doubt that he could ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... Miss Deborah; taking little mincing steps as she tried to run after him. "You won't mention it? You won't speak of it to ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... about little or nothing else than ensnaring the hearts of the younger Cowfold males—that is to say, the hearts which were converted, and yet she encouraged none of them, save by a general acceptance of little attentions, by little mincing ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... I first set eyes on him at the station at Villahorrenda, and he spoke to me with his honeyed voice and his mincing manners," declared Licurgo, "I thought him a great—I will not say what, through respect for the mistress. But I knew him—I put my mark upon him from that moment, and I make no mistakes. A thread shows what the ball is, as the saying goes; a sample tells what the cloth ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... without preamble, "we don't want to pry into your affairs, nor trouble you in any way, but if we can help you we will be glad to—Miss Lavillotte and I. We believe you are man enough to wish to know the worst, without mincing, whatever it may be, and have come to tell you all. Your old chum, William Hapgood, is dead. The blow you gave him in your anger was harder than you meant. It crushed in his temple. He never knew what killed him." Nate ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... west, and that part of the Tower itself which lies to the westward of the White Tower is held by some to be within this ward. The principal streets and places contained in it are Great Tower Street, part of Little Tower Street and Tower Hill, part of Thames Street, Mark Lane, Mincing Lane, Seething Lane, St. Olave Hart Street, Idle Lane, St. Dunstan's Hill, Harp Lane, Water Lane, and Bear Lane, with the courts and alleys that fall ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... builds her nest, and each dancer comes forward at a mincing trot, in his hands a few twigs and leaves, which he deposits in front of the "orchestra," and, having built his nest, retires. And so they go on mimicking with laughable accuracy the more common beasts ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... with a hundred eyes. Never sprouts in less than ninety-eight places. Should be put through the mincing-machine before planting. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... of another mold; she played the ladies of high comedy with grace, distinction, and delicacy. But in Sir Harry Wildair she parted with a woman's mincing foot and tongue, and played the man in a style large, spirited and elance. As Mrs. Day (committee) she painted wrinkles on her lovely face so honestly that she was taken for threescore, and she carried out the design with voice and person, and did a vulgar old woman ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... it down, Kit—the poor thing is scared," returned the man, and the child reluctantly let it fly. It made straight for the distant roofs behind them, but the rest of the pigeons still strutted and pecked round the perambulator with tiny mincing steps, like court ladies practising the minuet. Malcolm looked on with unabated relish—the ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... with impatience, stood watching Count Cobenzl, as with his mincing gait he tripped out of the room, and turned again at the door to make his last bow. Scarcely had the portiere fallen when he sprang across the room, and darted toward his sleeping-chamber. Near his bed stood an escritoire. He flung it open and taking thence a casket filled with ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... immediately gives you especial attention and the benefit of his judgment. If you should happen to serve in the right wing of Orthodoxy, you will have the inestimable boon of the freest criticism from the left wing. And it is the religious newspapers for not mincing matters. Between Jew and Gentile hostility is the normal condition of things; and is carried on peaceably enough; but when Jew meets Jew, then comes the tug of war! These people obey to the letter the Apostolic injunction, and confess your faults one to another with a relish that is marvellous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... feathers is so comical as a crow baby, with its awkward bows and ungainly hops, its tottering steps on the fence and its mincing, tight-boot sort of gait on the ground, its eager fluttering when it has hopes of food, and its loud and ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... Frau Rittergutsbesitzer. I have lived in the Herr Professor's house for five-and-thirty years. I have pickled his cabbage and preserved his fruit. I have minced with my own hand the pork for his sausages before they had mincing-machines in Schleswig-Holstein. I have seen personally to the smoking of his hams and fish. I make his Apfelkuchen and Nusskuchen myself, and do not buy them in the shop, like that lazy Hausfrau opposite us at No 2, who comes from that God-forgotten ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... one English one and then I must stop to-day. I flatter myself I can tell this with a nice mincing ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... thither, Pucelle," I said, mincing in my speech; whereat she laughed, for of her ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... resum'd And clos'd the song, with "Blessed they whose sins Are cover'd." Like the wood-nymphs then, that tripp'd Singly across the sylvan shadows, one Eager to view and one to 'scape the sun, So mov'd she on, against the current, up The verdant rivage. I, her mincing step Observing, with as ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... herself with a start. The woman to whom she had spoken had passed quickly. Jacqueline wheeled in time to catch a glimpse of her in the crowd; a flashily dressed, too-stylish figure, mincing along on very high heels, and dangling in one hand a gilt-mesh bag. The paint that made a mask of her face, the heavy black rimming her eyes, the very perfume that left its trail behind her, told their own story. But the carriage of the head, the free, country-girl's ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... at all, as far as I can see," he said to Peter, with the same mincing, finicking pronunciation that had pleased the boy Peter eight years ago. "Only my sight isn't what it was. Are you changed at all? Do you still like Bow rose-bowls better than anything except Denis? Denis is coming here soon, you know, so I shall be able to ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... I started to say, Tom, and there is no need of my mincing words, if you'll raise that boy of mine—" he was silent awhile, then smiling: "He is mine and more of a Travis to-day than his father ever was. If you can ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the mincing accent. "Yes, yes, Maximin let it be. To all the world you are Maximin, the body-guard of Severus. When we have reached Rome, we will soon see that your dress shall correspond with your office. Meanwhile march with the guard until you ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my sin is ever before me.' Though, then, thou art to blush and be ashamed when thou rememberest thy sins and iniquities, yet do not hide them—'He that covereth his sins shall not prosper.' Do not lessen them; do not speak of them before God after a mincing way—'Acknowledge thine iniquities, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree; and ye have not obeyed my voice, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... country people, who, when buying their shoes at fairs—which were the usual mart—might have been seen thrusting in their hand to try the breadth, when they had ascertained that the length was suitable. A short foot gives a mincing walk, while a long one requires the person to bring his body aplomb with the foot before taking the step, which thus resembles a stride. Good dancers have the limbs short as compared with the body, which has thus the necessary power over them; but if too short, there is a deficiency ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... said the slim man, uncovering and saluting obsequiously, and then seeing that my aunt rested dumb-stricken, the rod which had been in pickle fallen to the floor behind her, he added with a little mincing smile and a kind of affected heel-and-toe dandling of his body, "I am Mr. Wrighton Poole, of the firm of Smart, Poole, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... the genuine new poets, who know what they are about, and doubtless why they are about it, I regard with all deference, hailing especially their good fight to free poetry of its ancient inversions, its mincing vocabulary, its thous and thees, its bosky dells and purling streams, its affectations and unrealities, both of speech and subject. But I do say they miss a certain triumphant craftsman's joy at packing precisely what you mean, hard enough to express in unlimited prose, into a fettered, singing ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... Charlotte, with her little air that was not quite prim and not quite mincing, and that yet suggested both. "Charley left me just after you did; he had an engagement with Straker." She reached for a macaroon, and ate it with a brightly disengaged air, her eyes, behind their not unbecoming glasses, studying the golf links with ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... easily, and, indeed, was ever ready to fulfil them for all. Song, speech, or sentiment, he poured them all forth; nor were pastimes more active wanting. He could dance a Tarantella like a Lazzarone, and execute a Cracovienne with all the mincing graces of ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Lord said, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... slattern, who kept shuffling in and out with plates and glasses—perceived his need, and placed a stool for him. Through confusion and annoyance he caught nothing of the conversation till Elias, in a mincing voice, announced: ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... was collecting, and evinced lively signs of pleasure at the prospect of seeing the Bishop of Beorminster as umpire in a street row. But the bishop had heard quite enough of the affray, and without mincing matters fled as quickly as his dignity would permit towards the friendly shelter of The Derby Winner, leaving Mesdames Pansey and Trumbly in the thick of a wordy war. The first-named lady held her own for some considerable time, until routed by her antagonist's superior ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... to him in regained colour. Some quarrel with Peggy. What it was all about he had entirely forgotten; but he remembered her little flushed face and her angry words: "Well, I'm a sport and you ain't!" He remembered also rebuking her priggishly for unintelligible language and mincing away. He read the letter again in the light of this flash of memory. The only difference between it and the childish speech lay in the fact that instead of a declaration of contrasts, she now uttered ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... and to decide together. You can teach them what political action will do when they know enough. And all the time you can drive and hammer into them the socialistic ideas. Tell them always, without mincing matters, that they are robbed as they would probably rob others if they had a chance, and that there never can be happiness until men live like mates and pay nothing to any man for leave to work. Tell them what life might be if men would only love one another and teach ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... Shepherds, back, anough your play, Till next Sun-shine holiday, Here be without duck or nod 960 Other trippings to be trod Of lighter toes, and such Court guise As Mercury did first devise With the mincing Dryades On the Lawns, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... their chaises; servants, black of skin and radiant of garment; officers in scarlet and white uniforms (Colonel "Ol" de Lancey lost his patrimony a bit later because he clung to his!)—a soft, fluttering, mincing crowd—most representative of the Colonies, and loathed ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... khaki. He felt as if the hideous cloth went into his blood and made it gritty and dirty. Then Winifred so ready to serve the soldier, when she repudiated the man. And this made the grit worse between his teeth. And the children running around playing and calling in the rather mincing fashion of children who have nurses and governesses and literature in the family. And Joyce so lame! It had all become unreal to him, after the camp. It only set his soul on edge. He left at dawn on the Monday morning, glad to get ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... it had been waiting for—"a tale of the times of old"; and the solemn, dirge-like chant of MacPherson's sentences, with the peculiar manner of his narrative, its repetitions, its want of transitions, suited well with his matter. "Men had been talking under their breath, and in a mincing dialect so long," says Leslie Stephen, "that they were easily gratified and easily imposed upon by an affectation of vigorous and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the exploits of the morning, the Prince turned towards the Princess's ante-room, bent on a more difficult enterprise. The curtains rose before him, the usher called his name, and he entered the room with an exaggeration of his usual mincing and airy dignity. There were about a score of persons waiting, principally ladies; it was one of the few societies in Gruenewald where Otto knew himself to be popular; and while a maid of honour made her exit by a side door to announce his arrival to the Princess, he moved round the apartment, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... together, and sat together, and drank a noble Rhine wine together—true Rauenthal. His robustness of body and soul inspired the wish that his well-born wife might be, in her dainty fashion, yet honestly and without mincing, his possible boonfellow: he and she, glass in hand, thanking the bountiful heavens, blessing mankind in chorus. It belonged to his hearty dream of the wife he would choose, were she to be had. The position of interpreter of heaven's benevolence to mankind through his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... they, so bright of intellect, and courteous in manner,—a type distinct from any he had formerly observed. Others were antipathetic to him. Their aggressive gentility conflicted with the wariness of his self-esteem; such a one, for instance, as Bruno Chilvers, the sound of whose mincing voice, as he read in the class, so irritated him that at times he had to cover his ears. Yet, did it chance that one of these offensive youths addressed a civil word to him, on the instant his prejudice was disarmed, and his emotions flowed forth ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... saint his lady seemed, With step demure and slow, And gravely to the mantle With mincing ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... are prepared by mincing cold boiled potatoes fine, putting them in a spider with a little melted butter in it, and letting them fry slightly, keeping them well covered. Add a very small piece of fresh butter, season with pepper and salt, and pour over them cream or rich milk. Let ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... written three or four plays, in which he showed a young and ardent zeal for setting the world to rights, together with that high sense of the poet's calling which put lasting force into his work. He poured contempt on those who frittered life away. He urged on the poetasters and the mincing courtiers, who set their hearts on top-knots and affected movements of ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... outward carriage, behaviour, and gesture, which is odious for Christians to be tainted with; and this pride is discovered by mincing words, a made carriage, and an affecting the toys and baubles that Satan, and every lightheaded fool bringeth into the world. As God speaketh of the daughters of Zion, 'they walk with stretched forth necks, and wanton eyes, mincing as they go, and making a tinkling ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... all a matter of discipline. The ploughman comes up from the country with a long ungainly stride. The city man, accustomed to crowded pavements, comes with a short and mincing step. They are drilled for a fortnight side by side, and away they go. Right! Left! Right! Left! Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp! The harmony is perfect. Jock must submit himself to the same rigid process of training. He may be firmly ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... it was pure affectation. He had a muddled idea, common to men of his stamp, that women assume nervousness because they think it pretty and becoming to them, and that if one could only convince them of the folly of it they might be induced to lay it aside, in the same way that they lay aside mincing steps and simpering voices. A man who prided himself, as he did, upon his knowledge of horses, might, one would think, have grasped a truer notion of the nature of nervousness, which is a mere matter of temperament. But the man was ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... one hundred miles. All the fight, naturally, was gone out of the little creature. It was whimpering like a woman when Francois came up with it—poor little tortured broken-hearted thing! And some empty-headed heiress goes mincing into the Metropolitan, on a Caruso night, very proud and peacocky over her new ermine coat, without ever dreaming it's a patchwork of animal sufferings that is keeping her fat body warm, and that ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the lady is not a Dreadnought," Mr. Clarkson replied soothingly, and he began saying "Brava! Brava!" quite loud. Instantly, Albert's opponents caught up the word, and echoed it in mockery, imitating his correct pronunciation. Mincing syllables of "Brava! Brava!" were ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... flame-colored silk, and his shoes of black velvet, the long, pointed toes being turned up and fastened to his knees, and on either instep was embroidered a cross in gold thread. Beside the Bishop rode the Prior of Emmet upon a mincing palfrey. Rich were his clothes also, but not so gay as the stout Bishop's. Behind these were two of the higher brethren of Emmet, and behind these again two retainers belonging to the Bishop; for the Lord Bishop of Hereford strove to be as like the great barons as was in ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... kept the door of the outhouse carefully closed and did his work with great secrecy. He was cooking the whole night, and the next morning at breakfast he ordered the children not to say a word of what he had been doing. During the morning he disappeared and returned with a mincing-machine, he took the block too into the outhouse. He came to his meals covered with blood, fat and scraps of meat. He looked dreadful and smelled even worse. But he certainly worked hard; he did not even allow ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... "Modesty," he said with mincing primness, "is the brightest jewel in my crown. Litter and literature are not identical, really, though the superficial observer might be misled to think so. And yet, in a higher sense, perhaps, it may almost be said, ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... you first made her acquaintance, that she was lively even to giddiness, heedless, bold, even coquettish, and appeared to be incapable of a reasonable attachment? However, to-day, you tell me, she has become a serious melancholic; pre-occupied, timid, affected; sentiment has taken the place of mincing airs; at least she appears to so fit in with the character she assumes to-day, that you imagine it to be her true one, and her former one, borrowed. All my philosophy would be at fault in such a case, if I did not recognize in this metamorphosis the effects of love. ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... her place in a corner of the room, ran over the cheap attractions of this unwelcome visitor with an expression of scornful wonder—who understood the tinsel of her jewellery, the cheap shoddiness of her ready-made gown; who appreciated, with merciless judgment, her mincing speech, her cheap, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... If your foolish principles were made the test, there would hardly be a free man in Mincing Lane. We should have to lock up the whole City. Come, let me have your signature, and I will do the rest. To refuse is madness. You are offered the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... eyes; and she knew that she was looking at it in imagination only, and that she would never see the real picture again, for the wild old place was wild no longer, and in Nora's opinion the glory had departed. She turned when Linda's somewhat mincing voice fell upon ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... horses,' says he, in his mincing way (for Londoners are mostly all tongue-tied, and can't say their a's and i's properly, 'and it's our business to keep you from molesting the ladies and gentlemen ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... she said. "But, Duane, there's a sort of exquisite impudence about what you've done! Did you mean to gently and disrespectfully jeer at our mincing friends, Boucher, Nattier, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... ashamed of their country, betray themselves by mincing out their abjuration, by calling tables teebles, and chairs cheers! To such renegadoes we prefer the honest quixotism of a modern champion[55] for the Scottish accent, who boldly asserted that "the broad dialect rises above reproach, scorn, and laughter," enters the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... said Mr Moffat, again putting out his hand, and allowing it to slip through Frank's grasp, as he spoke in a pretty, mincing voice: "Lady Arabella quite well?—and your father, and sisters? Very warm isn't it?—quite hot in town, I do ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... ostrich feathers in some branches surrounds the face and stands high above the head. In the southern districts the warriors wear two single black ostrich plumes tied one either side the head, and slanting a little backwards. They walk with a mincing step, so that the two feathers bob gently up and down like the waving of the circus ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... I force you to; we understand that. But tell me! Bluntly, without mincing matters, if necessary. You know that I have no objection to that sort of thing, so go on. Do not keep me in suspense like this. I am burning with curiosity. What does ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... considerably more to the side, and with a wave of his hand, caught from the Major, took ten little mincing steps; and without turning, glanced back over his shoulder and inquired, "Ain' dat ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... anything will sicken and disgust a man, it is the affected, mincing way in which some people choose to talk. It is perfectly nauseous. If these young jackanapes, who screw their words into all manner of diabolical shapes, could only feel how perfectly disgusting they were, it might induce them to drop it. With many, it soon becomes such ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... for me if he were not mine? See!" He drew from his coat a little whip and struck the organ with a snap, at which Topaz jumped. Then he dropped the dog and began to grind, and the crowd saw the trembling animal raise itself to its hind legs and begin to dance. Oh, the mincing little uncertain steps! No tossing of the yellow curls ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... Sybaritical puppies the smaller they be (and thereto if they have a hole in the fore parts of their heads) the better they are accepted, the more pleasure also they provoke, as meet playfellows for mincing mistresses to bear in their bosoms, to keep company withal in their chambers, to succour with sleep in bed, and nourish with meat at board, to lie in their laps, and lick their lips as they lie (like young Dianas) in their waggons and coaches. And good reason it should be so, for coarseness with ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... shepherds, back; enough your play Till next sun-shine holiday: Here be, without duck or nod, Other trippings to be trod Of lighter toes, and such court guise As Mercury did first devise With the mincing Dryades, On the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... train we might meet—just accidentally run into one another. And you'll say, 'Why, there's Mr. Mayer! How odd. How d'ye do, Mr. Mayer.'" He bowed with a mincing imitation of Chrystie's best society manner. "'I didn't expect to see ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... (there was jealousy of the Duke of Newcastle's favour already under the coals): in short the nephew earl called the favourite earl such gross names, that it was well they were ministers! otherwise, as Mincing says, "I vow, I believe they must have fit." The public, that is half-a-dozen toad-eaters, have great hopes that the present unfavourable posture of affairs in America will tend to cement this breach, and that we shall all unite hand and heart ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... again, a look toward the husband checked any inclination toward lightness of mood. Finally, he regarded Ferguson, and there, too, he beheld a passionate reproach. He did not trouble to stare at the girl. He remembered perfectly her cheap prettiness, her mincing manner, her flamboyant smartness of apparel from Grand Street emporiums of fashion. The strain of a false situation gripped him evilly, so that for the moment he faltered before it, uncertain as to his course. Denial, he felt, must be almost ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... Levi went out in the evening, Mincing, her skirt bunched up, Through the long, empty ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... been thus treated in infancy, and who hobbled about with much difficulty, but no young girls were to be seen thus hampered. When this hideous deformity has been adopted, the knee and ankle joints do not bend at all in walking; all movement is from the thigh joints, a mincing gait is imparted, and the arms swing from side to side, the whole body being at all times liable to topple over. A traveler is not competent, however, to speak of the higher classes of women, as no access is afforded to domestic life in wealthy families. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... some polite observation, he spoke in a high-pitched voice of the balmy weather and the sweet profusion of birds and flowers, when there was more like to be a "sweet profusion" of Indians; and I nigh stifled with laughter to see this lumbering, free-voiced forest-runner transformed to a mincing, anxious, backwoods macaroni at the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... foreign fashion, but built and rigged near St Margaret's Hope. It was full of men; we could hear them cheering and shouting in our own good Scots tongue, which fell kindly on our ears after the soft mincing English which had been thrown at our heads ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... fell into the same happy mood. Soon we were smiling at each other in the frankest comradeship, we two who but the other day had carried ourselves like game-cocks. He had forgotten his fine manners and his mincing London voice, and we spoke of the outland country of which he knew nothing, and of the hunting of game of which he knew much, exchanging our different knowledges, and willing to learn from each other. Long ere we had reached York Ferry I had found that there was much in common between the ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... Langdon arrived here alone, in your roadster, she gave us no explanation whatever of what had happened, and, while we believed that some unpleasant incident must have occurred, we did not press her for the story of it. Then, you came, and without mincing your words you told the whole brutal truth; and you uttered it with a spirit of brutality and bravado that would be unbelievable under any other circumstances. And when, in your own self-abasement ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... was handsome, a tall, long-limbed sapling of a girl, with a flaming crest of copper-colored hair and movements as lithe and supple as a cat's. She danced buoyantly, without losing breath, advancing and retreating with mincing steps, her face grave as though the performance had its own dignity and was not to be taken lightly. Her partner, a tanned and long-haired man, took his part in a livelier spirit, laughing at her, bending his body grotesquely and growing red with his caperings. Meanwhile ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... the churches about Mark-lane, for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat; and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock in one of them. From Rood-lane to Tower-street, and thereabouts, there was often a subtle flavour of wine: sometimes, of tea. One church near Mincing-lane smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument the service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little further down towards the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of the church ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... rises in Paradise? Are you sleeping or drinking that you will not lend us the staff of Friar John wherewith he slaughtered and bashed the invaders of the vineyards, who are but a parable for the mincing pedants and bloodless thin-faced rogues ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... was Aunt Betsey, you fool! Aunt Nancy used to—she has been dead these eighty years, so there is no use in mincing matters—she used to keep a bottle and a stick, and when she had been tasting a drop out of the bottle the stick used to come off the shelf and I had to taste that. And here she is made a saint of, and poor Aunt Betsey, that did everything for me, is slandered ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... is "aise." The softer sound of e is broadened out by the natural Irishman,—not, to my ear, without a certain euphony;—but no one in Ireland says or hears the reverse. The Irishman who in London might talk of his "neetive" race, would be mincing his words to please the ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... Slowness. — N. slowness &c. adj.; languor &c. (inactivity) 683; drawl; creeping &c. v., lentor[obs3]. retardation; slackening &c. v.; delay &c. (lateness) 133; claudication|. jog trot, dog trot; mincing steps; slow march, slow time. slow goer[obs3], slow coach, slow back; lingerer, loiterer, sluggard, tortoise, snail; poke* [U.S.]; dawdle &c. (inactive) 683. V. move slowly &c. adv.; creep, crawl, lag, slug, drawl, linger, loiter, saunter; plod, trudge, stump along, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... an opportunity of observing at my leisure the king and queen. The king was of medium height, and though not strictly handsome had a pleasant face. His nose was very long, his voice high-pitched and disagreeable; and he walked with a mincing air in which there was no majesty, but this, however, I attributed to the gout. He ate heartily of everything offered him, except vegetables, which he never ate, saying that grass was good only for cattle; and drank only water, having it served ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... that classic beauty felt, or pretended to be felt, by the spectacled savant. My mind was not formed to live on the ideal, or dream over the past. I delight rather in the real, the positive, and the present. Don Quixotes may play the troubadour among ruined castles, and mincing misses cover the ground of the guide-books. For my part I have no belief in the romance of old-world life. In the modern Tell I behold a hireling, ready to barter his brawny limbs to the use of whatever tyrant; and the picturesque Mazzaroni, upon closer acquaintance, dwindles down to ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... Now, without mincing the matter, we must admit that Mr. Cave was a liar. He knew perfectly well where the crystal was. It was in the rooms of Mr. Jacoby Wace, Assistant Demonstrator at St. Catherine's Hospital, Westbourne Street. It stood on the sideboard partially covered ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... utterance of the faith and hope which are in it. We are told of those nice preachers who 'never mention hell to ears polite.' They are the preachers of your highly-refined, sentimental society. Whatever hell may be, they are the very teachers that, by their mincing forbearance, conduct the poor soul that relies on them into its jaws. It is a sort of lie not to use the properest language to express our thoughts, but rather so to falsify our thoughts by a sort of lack-a-daisaical phraseology which deprives ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... in manner most absurd. I should not miss him! But the boss, I fear, Would miss his custom; so I still must hear His odious "Miss-ing" word! But oh! I'd sooner bear a monkey's kisses, Than some of these cheap mashers' mincing "Misses"! And there is one young ape!—I'd stand "two d" Could I hit him each ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... floor we sat. Wilfrid put his treasures between his knees before him, I sat opposite, and the barter began. "What for this fellow, huh?" and he held up a piece of carved ivory, a little triangular mincing-knife, a fur mat that his wife had made, or the skin of a baby-seal. The first thing he asked for was scented soap, the ring that I was wearing, and my porcupine-quill hat-band which looked good to him; every exchange was ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... persons had not life long enough to serve them to acquire a complete knowledge of one single subject, such as the human body; and then they want to comprehend the mind of God in which the universe is included, weighing it minutely and mincing it into infinite parts, as if they had to dissect ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... inordinate jealousies of these numerous princelings, had upon his native country. Accordingly, towards the end of his life he sketched what he thought would be the ideal political status for the German people. As in everything that he wrote, he went straight to the heart of the matter and, without mincing words, stated just exactly what he thought ought to be done. Considering that this scheme of Cusanus for the prosperity and right government of the German people was not accomplished until more than four centuries after his death, it is interesting, indeed, to ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... pointed with his forefinger as Bill Smith, A.B., came on deck with a plate held at arm's length, and a nose disdainfully elevated. He affected not to see the skipper, and, walking in a mincing fashion to the side, raked the food from the plate into the sea with his fingers. He was followed by George Simpson, A.B., who in the same objectionable fashion wasted food which the skipper had ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... restlessness and a tendency to peculiar impulses. But I am a mother and you are an impartial spectator, and therefore qualified with your intelligence to form a more impartial opinion. I implore you, in fact' (yes, that word, 'implore' was uttered!), 'to tell me the whole truth, without mincing matters. And if you will give me your word never to forget that I have spoken to you in confidence, you may reckon upon my always being ready to seize every opportunity in the future to show my gratitude.' Well, what do you ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... devil!" exclaimed Tchelkache, motioning with his hand. "Are you in love with me? Say? Look at you mincing like a young girl. Are you distressed at leaving me? Eh! youngster, speak, or else ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... it. It is better to write great things than to execute small ones. Then the soul rises on wings, the imagination is kindled; whereas it shrivels in amazement at the applause which the absurd public lavishes so perversely on that mincing creature of a Dangeville, who plays so flatly, who walks the stage nearly bent double, who stares affectedly and incessantly into the eyes of every one she talks to, and who takes her grimaces for finesse, and her little strut for grace; or on that emphatic Clairon, who becomes more ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... three kinds right with us all the time. Though I don't go much on mincing words, I won't specify the priest nor the Levite right here in Cedar Mountain; but I will make mention of ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... must remind you that the persecution of Miss Morriston by your brother had gone on for a very considerable time, and had latterly developed into an atrocious system of bullying. It is not an occasion for mincing one's expressions, and I must say that in my opinion your own conduct has been very little, if any, better; and that will be the judgment of every decent man if the truth comes out, as come out it shall, unless you agree to my terms before ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... sausages. If young pork is used, remove the skin as thinly as you can—it is useful for various purposes—and then with a sharp knife cut all the flesh from the bones, take away all sinew and gristle, and cut the fat and lean into strips. Some mincing-machines require the meat longer than others; for Kent's Combination, cut it into pieces about an inch long and half-an-inch thick. To each pound of meat put half a gill of gravy made from the bones, or water will do; ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... it is, indeed, to see "fools rush in where angels fear to tread;" nor have we words to express our disgust and horror at the sight of fools, not rushing in among those awful sanctities before which angels vail their faces with their wings, but mincing in, with red slippers and flowered dressing-gowns—would-be fashionables, with crow-quills in hands like those of milliners, and rings on their fingers—afterwards extending their notes into Sacred Poems for the use of the public—penny-a-liners, reporting the judgments of Providence as they ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Sommers immediately arose, and advancing towards her with a mincing step, bowed with an air of mock ceremony, and said in an affected tone, "Welcome, fair mistress, to the king's kitchen. We are all right glad to see ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... consequence of this adventure. Life in the court of His Most Christian Majesty is one of the most artificial possible. The women hide their faces with powder and patches, lace themselves until they are ready to faint, walk with a mincing air, and live chiefly upon scandal; but they are women, after all, and every woman has a spice of romance in her nature, and such an adventure as yours is the very ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... garments, with a huge hat covered in feathers, a tight modern skirt that forced her to walk with mincing steps, high-heeled shoes, open-work stockings and gloves reaching to the elbow—was indeed a curious apparition in amongst these peasant girls, with their bare heads and high red-leather boots and petticoats standing round ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... said, with a mincing, apologetic gesture of her head; and then "Dear me!" Having committed the solecism, she found it necessary to draw attention to it. She may have been a Shropshire Norman, but at that relaxed hour of the night, she displayed all the signs ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... at the moment as fine in her that she met it with no wincing nor mincing. She might for the grace of silence, for favour to their conditions, have only answered him with her eyes. But her lips bravely moved. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... which Egyptians call after their mincing fashion "Irminiyeh" hence "Ermine" (Mus Ponticus). Armaniyah was much more extensive than our Armenia, now degraded to a mere province of Turkey, and the term is understood to include the whole of the old ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... no mistake. Harry Robinson, junior partner of the firm of Robinson & Co., of Mincing Lane. Vain, indeed, would it be to seek the help of Great Scotland Yard. Harry had blown out his brains in the South Western ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Valero, also a magistrate of the Court, a man of an agreeable presence, with a fine expressive face, albeit somewhat marked by the fast life he had lived. As shown by his strong accent, which was mincing and lisping, he was Andalusian, of the ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... Dixie Hart's cottage, Henley had only a minute to wait. Mrs. Hart, followed by her sister with an arm in a sling, came down the steps with a mincing step, her weak eyes shaded by her thin ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... within mingled incongruously with the alien odors of musk and hair oil, of which several young barbers in the company were especially redolent. There was a play of sparkling eyes and glancing feet. Mary B. danced with the languorous grace of an Eastern odalisque, Mis' Molly with the mincing, hesitating step of one long out of practice. Wain performed saltatory prodigies. This was a golden opportunity for the display in which his soul found delight. He introduced variations hitherto unknown to the dance. His skill and suppleness brought a glow ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... young man was his strength; now it is his chrysanthemum and his collar. And it is going from bad to worse in a ratio of geometrical progression; for how can effeminate men—a canesucking, primping, mincing, affected conglomeration of masculine inanity and asininity beget world-compellers. How can women who care much what is on the outside and little what is on the inside of their heads, and whom a box of lily-white, a French novel, a poodle-dog and another ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a few mincing steps. His compact one hundred and fifty-eight pounds left the ground and turned sideways. Jimmy's right hip struck one of the blue coats right back of the knees at the joints. The man uttered a howl of anguish. There was a nasty snap. The man had a bad fracture that would keep ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... hours earlier he had been mincing among the elect and the select and the intellectual and the poetic and the aristocratic; among the lah-di-dah and Kensingtonian accents; among rouged lips and blue hose and fixed simperings; in the centre of the universe. And he had conducted himself with ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... used to the sea, and as the regulations call for at least two years' sea experience certified to by some reputable skipper before a mate's certificate is issued, this struck me as strange. Besides, he walked with a short mincing step that failed to swing his rather broad hips, and his knees were well set back at each stride, that went to show more conclusively than anything else that he was not used to a heaving deck. An old sailor, or a young one either, for that ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... his schoolmistress away from him he had flared up. 'Oh, but I don't think that your schoolmistress would suit a convent school. I shouldn't like my daughter—' 'What do you mean?' Her face changed expression, and in her nasty mincing manner she began to throw out hints that Nora Glynn would not suit the nuns. He could see that she was concealing something—there was something at the back of her mind. Women of her sort want to be persuaded; their bits of scandal must be dragged from them by force; they are the unwilling victims ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... philander along to the close of the chapter. But I prefer your word,—to the close of the "comedy," say. It implies something artificial. Mallinson and Clarice give me that impression,—as of Watteau figures mincing a gavotte, and made more unreal by the juxtaposition of a man. Let's hope they will never perceive the flimsiness of their pretty bows and ribbons! But I think of your one o'clock in the morning of the ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Ma, with a mincing air, for to that damned "parley-voo" she was as anxious to make Lily out a child now, in order to keep a firmer hold of her, as she had been to increase her age in America, so ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... splendid feasts and banquets, and the cooks were busy plucking geese, killing little pigs, flaying kids, basting the roast meat, skimming pots, mincing meat for dumplings, larding capons, and preparing a thousand other delicacies, a beautiful dove came flying to the ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... get the supper'm? You said as 'ow I could get it done this afternoon so as to go to church this evening. I can't do nuffink with the mincing machine gone." ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... suggestion came from that source. There is no use in going further into detail. I convinced the landlord and secured another secretary of the treasury to look after the income, and we got out of town next morning as happy as clams at high water. Well, without mincing matters, I must say we had as rough a road to travel any band of poor ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... I see no progress in prostrate forests, in soft-coal smoke, in noise! I see nothing gained in trimming and cutting and ploughing and macadamising a heavenly wilderness into mincing little gardens for the rich." He was smiling at his own vehemence, but she knew that he was more than ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... may be," said Parlamente, "I could not love a man who had sown such division between my husband and myself as would lead even to blows; for beating banishes love. Yet, by what I have heard, they [the friars] can be so mincing when they seek some advantage over a woman, and so attractive in their discourse, that I feel sure there would be more danger in hearkening to them in secret than in publicly receiving blows from a husband in ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... foot thick in there. An' a good stall to stand in instead of millin' around a corral all night." The rope slackened, and securing a firm grip on the halter, the Texan edged slowly toward the door, the horse following with nervous, mincing steps, and nostrils aquiver. From her place beside the corral, the girl watched in astonishment as man and horse passed from sight. From the black interior of the stable the voice of the Texan sounded its monotonous drone, and presently the man himself appeared ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... Montreal," said the servant—"to Montreal, you know, sir," she repeated, in a mincing tone, bridling and blushing at the ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... which I am sure you will remember. When I first met little DABCHICK, I thought I had never seen a happier mortal. He was clever, good-natured, and sprightly. He sold tea somewhere in Mincing Lane, and on the proceeds of his sales he managed to support a wife and two pleasant children in reasonable comfort at Balham. Mrs. DABCHICK could not be accused by her best friends of over-refinement, but everybody agreed that she was just the homely, comfortable, housewifely person who would ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... Age made him fussy, and his family included two very recent additions. Also, Finn brought a baffling mixture of scents with him, including those of men and of wild creatures such as the stallion had never seen and did not wish to see. So he continued his threateningly mincing progress toward Finn, and whinnied out a declaration to the effect that this could be no resting-place for dingoes, however huge and diversified in their smells. Finn was not in the least like a dingo; but, on the other hand, he was not like a kangaroo-hound. He was twice the ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... autocrat, whose style, however cavalier, should have grace and firmness and clarity to commend it. When Irving began to express himself, there was very little straightforward simple writing being done, either in America or in England. The stuffed buckram of Johnsonese had been succeeded by the mincing hifalutin of Mrs. Anne Radcliffe and her like. It is at least to Irving's credit that his taste led him back half a century to the comparative simplicity and purity of the prim Augustan style. But it is odd that it should ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... brought in, and Derues was ordered to put them on, which he did readily, affecting much amusement. As he was assisted to disguise himself, he laughed, stroked his chin and assumed mincing airs, carrying effrontery so far as ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... my ever going to Mincing Lane again! Says the box of "Incomparable Congou" was mere ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... come in with the Fair Maid in ballast to look for a freight in the Sofala's port of registry, and her letter met him there. Its tenor was that it was no use mincing matters. Her only resource was in opening a boarding-house, for which the prospects, she judged, were good. Good enough, at any rate, to make her tell him frankly that with two hundred pounds she could make a start. He had torn the envelope open, hastily, on deck, where it was handed to him by ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... of an hour she had no opportunity of satisfying her curiosity, for Sheila was quite hungry enough not to waste too much time in conversation. At last, however, a chance came, when Mr. Assheton said in his mincing voice— ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... Aldersgate. But it was on the right, and to the south-east, that the conflagration assumed its most terrific aspect. There, from Bow Church to the river-side, beyond the bridge as far as Billingsgate, and from thence up Mincing-lane, crossing Fenchurch-street and Lime-street to Gracechurch and Cornhill, describing a space of more than two miles in length and one in depth, every habitation was on fire. The appearance of this bed of flame was like an ocean of fire agitated by a tempest, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... abounding in merchants and business. Dr. Guest was of opinion that the Roman fort was made in A.D. 43. It stood above the outfall of the Walbrook, its western wing being where Cannon Street terminus is now, and its eastern extremity reaching to Mincing Lane. These limits were determined in a paper by Arthur Taylor in Archaeologia in 1849, and were confirmed during the building of Cannon Street Station. The road from the bridge divided in East Cheap and passed ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... not at all what will look nicest in his song; that is the preoccupation of mincing rhymesters, whose well is soon dry. Shelley's abundance has a more generous source; it springs from his passion for picturing what would be best, not in the picture, but in the world. Hence, when he feels he has pictured or divined it, he ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... your head out of window, loudly bawl "Thomas!" or plain "Tom!" or "Steward!" according to the terms of friendship and familiarity on which you may stand with this dignitary, who, by the way, has a vote on board worth canvassing for;—I say bawl out, because, firstly, your mincing and Clarendon-like lisp of "Waiter!" would not be heard by one used to listen to the rush of the tempest and the shriek of the scourged Atlantic; also, for that your stirring call may remind some wretched skulker of a circumstance which he is miserably dozing out of remembrance, viz. that ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... mincing, piping little voice, "Orlando, dear, the train is coming. Let me out. I'm not afraid of that bad man. I want to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... absence may not injure them. Among these Menander, famous[3] for his Comedies (which Demetrius, who did not know him, had read, and had admired the genius of the man), perfumed with unguents, and clad in a flowing robe, came with a mincing and languid step. As soon as the Tyrant caught sight of him at the end of the train: "What effeminate wretch," said he, "is this, who presumes to come into my presence?" Those near him made answer: "This is Menander the Poet." Changed in an instant, he exclaimed: ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... laughs at you, you foolish, plain, overdressed, mincing, cheaply-organized, self-saturated young person, whoever you may be, now reading this,—little thinking you are what I describe, and in blissful unconsciousness that you are destined to the lingering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the girl aside and spoke rapidly in French to his companion. Then with mincing agility he stepped ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... to; we understand that. But tell me! Bluntly, without mincing matters, if necessary. You know that I have no objection to that sort of thing, so go on. Do not keep me in suspense like this. I am burning with curiosity. What does ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... with the Fair Maid in ballast to look for a freight in the Sofala's port of registry, and her letter met him there. Its tenor was that it was no use mincing matters. Her only resource was in opening a boarding-house, for which the prospects, she judged, were good. Good enough, at any rate, to make her tell him frankly that with two hundred pounds she could make a start. He had torn ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... were suited to the galligaskin. She was a true disciple of Maltre Francois, hating nothing so much as mincing obscenity, and if she flavoured her discourse with many a blasphemous quip, the blasphemy was 'not so malicious as customary.' Like the blood she was, she loved good ale and wine; and she regarded it among her proudest titles to renown that she was ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... between a mincing and lackadaisical young lady and a bouncing one who talked noisily; and she changed her attitudes, her accent, the expressions of her face in such droll ways, and altogether contrasted the two characters so well, that a round of applause and laughter greeted and encouraged her. Then followed a ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... enraged scorn even undertook a grotesque and mincing imitation of the peacocking aforesaid. 'Let goo!' muttered Louie between her shut teeth, and with a wild strength she at last flung off her aunt and sprang for the door. But Hannah was too quick for her and put her back against it. 'No—yo'll not goo till your ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... herself—isn't that the phrase? I hope the reverse now; that she and her husband will philander along to the close of the chapter. But I prefer your word,—to the close of the "comedy," say. It implies something artificial. Mallinson and Clarice give me that impression,—as of Watteau figures mincing a gavotte, and made more unreal by the juxtaposition of a man. Let's hope they will never perceive the flimsiness of their pretty bows and ribbons! But I think of your one o'clock in the morning of the masquerade ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... them horses,' says he, in his mincing way (for Londoners are mostly all tongue-tied, and can't say their a's and i's properly, 'and it's our business to keep you from molesting the ladies and gentlemen going to ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the train we might meet—just accidentally run into one another. And you'll say, 'Why, there's Mr. Mayer! How odd. How d'ye do, Mr. Mayer.'" He bowed with a mincing imitation of Chrystie's best society manner. "'I didn't expect ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... for she carried the family follies several degrees farther than Miss Emmeline. Taken altogether, she was an absurd compound. Personally, she was thoroughly American, very pretty and delicate in form and features, and thus far appeared to great advantage; but she had, also, an affected mincing manner, and drawling voice. Of course, her dress was as Parisian as possible; everything she wore was a faithful copy from "Le Courier des Dames." Her feelings and opinions; Mrs. Hilson was proud ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the more widespread was the floe. Beyond—hauling down the Spotted Horses, which lay in the open—the proportion of new ice would be vastly greater. At a trot for the time over the pans, which were flat, and in delicate, mincing little spurts across the bending ice, Doctor Rolfe proceeded. In a confidence that was somewhat ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... Oh, you New Yorkers! You think we are nothing—fit, perhaps, for a May-pole frolic with the rustic gentry! Do not deny it, Mr. Renault. Have we not heard you on the subject? Do not your officers from Philadelphia and New York come mincing and tiptoeing through Halifax and Quebec, all smiling and staring about, quizzing glasses raised? And—'Very pretty! monstrous charming! spike me, but the ladies powder here!' And, 'Is this green grass? Damme, where's the snow—and the polar ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... not. I wish I could say I was! It is very horrid, I know, but where's the good of mincing matters? If I did not call the thing by its name, the thing would be just the same. You know, people in our world have to do as they must; they can't pick and choose like you happy creatures. I dare say, now, you are engaged to a young man you love with all your ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... was! There was Mr. Bentley—that was mild. And there never was a hold-up of a western express that could compare to the Consolidated Tractions. Some of these big fellows have the same kind of brain as the professional thieves. Well, they are professional thieves —what's the use of mincing matters! They never try the same game twice. Mr. Parr's getting ready to make another big haul right now. I know, because Plimpton said as much, although he didn't confide in me what this particular piece of rascality is. He knows better." Phil ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the cowboy appeared, mincing in on his high-heeled boots, his silver spurs jingling, the fringe of his chaps impacting softly on the leather. He stood at ease, his broad hat in both hands, his dark, level brows ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... there be something very slow and pianissimo for the hors d'oeuvres: something gentle and soothing for the oysters; there can be an indication of heartiness in the melody that ushers in the soup, as though giving it a warm welcome. There should be a mincing minuet-like movement for the entrees, a sparkling air for the champagne, and something robust for the joint. A sporting tune for the game: sweet melody for the sweets, and a grand and grateful Chorale—a kind of thanksgiving service as it were—when the last ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... when the julep appeared on a silver tray, he left the room and went upstairs to where Betty was waiting. "He's awful, there's no use mincing words, he's simply awful," he remarked in an ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... expostulation (there was jealousy of the Duke of Newcastle's favour already under the coals): in short the nephew earl called the favourite earl such gross names, that it was well they were ministers! otherwise, as Mincing says, "I vow, I believe they must have fit." The public, that is half-a-dozen toad-eaters, have great hopes that the present unfavourable posture of affairs in America will tend to cement this breach, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... for Shelley is not at all what will look nicest in his song; that is the preoccupation of mincing rhymesters, whose well is soon dry. Shelley's abundance has a more generous source; it springs from his passion for picturing what would be best, not in the picture, but in the world. Hence, when he feels he has pictured or divined ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... stung, and was about to turn furiously upon the boy, under the impression that he was the nigger in question; but at the same moment he caught sight of a full-blooded, woolly-headed West Coast African leading a very large camel by a rope, the great ungainly beast mincing and blinking as it gently put down, one after the other, its soft, spongy feet, which seemed to spread out on the gravelled road, while their high-shouldered owner kept on turning its bird-like head from side to side, muttering and whining discontentedly, as if objecting to be seen by such an elongated ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... of Grace's apprenticeship to what she was determined to learn in spite of it—a consequence of one of those sudden surprises which confront everybody bent upon turning over a new leaf. She had finished her lunch, which he saw had been a very mincing performance; and he brought her out of the house as soon ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... heard the quaver of Miss Bessy Dicky's voice over the club report; but he saw and heard nothing, and now he was seated in the midst of the feminine throng, and Miss Bessy Dicky's voice quavered more, and she assumed a slightly mincing attitude. Her thin hands trembled more, the hot, red spots on her thin cheeks deepened. Reading the club reports before the minister was an epoch in an epochless life, but Karl von Rosen was oblivious of her except as a disturbing element ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... think that this great force for evil should be swayed by the same sentiment that sets a lassie mincing to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... This last feature of degradation had developed itself in Isaiah's day; and he attacks it with a strange combination of humour and moral indignation: "Because the daughters of Jerusalem are haughty, and walk with outstretched neck and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, making a tinkling with their feet, therefore ... the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls and their round tires like the moon, the chains and the bracelets ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... choosing her mate! Some mincing artificer, I trow, fiddling away with wood and wire to make gauds for the fair-day! Hast got him here? If I like him, and she likes him, I'll bring her back when her work ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his prejudice made a last rally. He muttered something about Ned's being a nice boy if he were not so "airy;" always "fussing about his clothes and talking in a mincing way—just like ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... but awful, as Pope says—approach "with mincing steps and bow profound;" we are about to introduce you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... no mincing and begging institution. It has, at its disposal, the entire military battery. No mayor holds a whip handle over it. I must confess I was happy as I witnessed the blessed effect of this Moral Department. All evil is not extirpated, neither is all lawlessness overcome, but there ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... suit the taste of those who will eat the sausages. If young pork is used, remove the skin as thinly as you can—it is useful for various purposes—and then with a sharp knife cut all the flesh from the bones, take away all sinew and gristle, and cut the fat and lean into strips. Some mincing-machines require the meat longer than others; for Kent's Combination, cut it into pieces about an inch long and half-an-inch thick. To each pound of meat put half a gill of gravy made from the bones, ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... wife of Karlsberger—a bulky slattern, who kept shuffling in and out with plates and glasses—perceived his need, and placed a stool for him. Through confusion and annoyance he caught nothing of the conversation till Elias, in a mincing voice, announced: ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... You surely would not have us a couple of mincing girls peacocking round in this fashion, would you now?' And the captain's boys affectedly pirouetted up and down on the shingle below the low wall of the Vicarage garden, laughing ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... her room, and sat now, in the centre of it, staring toward the garden. Noon had crept upon it, devouring all shadow. Her eyes saw little but the golden blur. A fusuma opened softly, and two women, Mata and the attendant seamstress, came mincing and smirking toward her, each with an armful of white silk. Ume rose like an automaton. They began her toilet, talking the while in low voices. They robed her in white with a thin lining-edge of crimson, and threw over her shining ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... lately to frighten any quiet gentleman out of his senses. I'll not get a wink of sleep, I fear, for a week to come. There must have been something dreadful upon Sir Piers's mind; sure—nay, there's no use in mincing the matter with you—in a word, then, some crime too deep to ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... required some polite observation, he spoke in a high-pitched voice of the balmy weather and the sweet profusion of birds and flowers, when there was more like to be a "sweet profusion" of Indians; and I nigh stifled with laughter to see this lumbering, free-voiced forest-runner transformed to a mincing, anxious, backwoods macaroni at the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... within the house I found my deare and sweet love Fotis mincing of meat and making pottage for her master and mistresse, the Cupboord was all set with wines, and I thought I smelled the savor of some dainty meats: she had about her middle a white and clean apron, and shee was girded about her body under the paps with a swathell of red silke, and she stirred ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... my fingers. Well, I waited most impatiently for her appearance, and at last saw her coming; and what d'ye think she'd gone back for? By the powers, for her doll, which she held in her hand! And just as she came to the chaise, who should come round the corner but her father, who had walked from Mincing Lane. He caught my mincing Miss by the arm, with her doll and her bundle, and bundled her home, leaving me and the postchaise, looking like two fools. I never could see her again, or ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... virtuous; some are unlearn'd, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learn'd. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing Lady Prioress and the broad-speaking gap-tooth'd Wife of Bath. But enough of this: there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. 'Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty. We have ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... were down in the blubber-room cutting the "blanket-pieces", as the largest masses are called, others were pitching the smaller pieces on deck, where they were seized by two men who stood near a block of wood, called a "horse", with a mincing knife, to slash the junks so as to make them melt easily. These were then thrown into the melting-pots by one of the mates, who kept feeding the fires with such "scraps" of blubber as remain after the oil is taken out. Once the fires were fairly ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... not mincing words to-night. I do not talk of taking the lands from the Indians by crooked methods. You all know the law. An Indian may not sell the lands allotted to him. I want you to send me to Congress to change that law. I want the Indian to be able ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... with their hand luggage, trooped down the long dock to the Lanawaxa's boarding-plank. Heavy Stone turned suddenly in the hot sunshine (for it was a glowing noon) to find two of the smaller girls mincing along in ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... living, at present, on that widow Hardyng. How are those two to get through the winter, I should like to know? As for the child, it will have to be bound out to somebody who will make it work, and then there will be an end of all these mincing lady airs. One thing I know, it's out of our power to help them. She must have some relations somewhere, I should think. I wonder what her antecedents really are, any way. I could never quite ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... explain our theory: An animal which has been at rest in his stable is taken out to work, and it will be presently noticed that there is something unusual in his movement. His gait is changed, and he travels with short, mincing steps, without any of his accustomed ease and freedom. This may continue until his return to the stable, and then, after being placed in his stall, he will be noticed shifting his weight from side to side and from one leg to another, continuing the movement until rupture of the bony ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... '75, across the Styx! Make way for stately '76, Who comes with mincing, minuet pace, Well-powdered hair and patch-deckt face— An antiquated kerchief on: White-capped, like Martha Washington; Clock-hosed and high-heeled slipper-shod, To give no Nineteenth Century nod; Nay, but a courtesy profound, Whose look demure consults the ground. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... nothing of the sort," he said. "She believes herself to be serving her country." He was speaking very slowly, almost mincing his words. "She has—has ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... audience urged the chairman by acclamation to extend Martin's time. They appreciated him as a foeman worthy of their intellect, and they listened intently, following every word. He spoke with fire and conviction, mincing no words in his attack upon the slaves and their morality and tactics and frankly alluding to his hearers as the slaves in question. He quoted Spencer and Malthus, and enunciated the biological ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... student quarters come many of the cleverest and most beautiful songs. Here men sing their own creations, and they have absolute license to sing or say what they please; there is no mincing of words, and many times these rare bohemians do not take the trouble to hide their clever songs and satires under a double entente. No celebrated man or woman, known in art or letters, or connected with the Government—from ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... no harm in the book. It is true that the Author is any thing but mincing in his expressions and descriptions, but there is nothing in the Sleeping Bard which can give offence to any but the over fastidious. There is a great deal of squeamish nonsense in the world; let us hope however that there ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... if her heart would break, when there was nothing more for her to bear or do, and Mary took charge of her, to see her to bed, Mrs. Grant and the doctors taking Oscar into their keeping. Well, there was no use in mincing matters—the boy's face was much beaten and battered by the fall; it would show the scars for some time to come—perhaps for ever: concussion of the brain, a fractured leg; even Mrs. Grant's heart grew sick, hearing the doctors enumerate the ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... He had never heard Elsie complain of the hill before. Usually they scampered up it, and rolled down the steepest side—not, truly, when there was milk to carry, but at other times. And now Elsie was walking along in a languid, mincing fashion, as if she had no more fun in her than Robbie himself, and had never scampered bare-foot over the moor six days out of every week, no matter what ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of such importance, that without it speech or reading becomes not only inelegant, but often absolutely unintelligible. The opposite faults are mumbling, muttering, mincing, lisping, slurring, mouthing, drawling, hesitating, stammering, misreading, and the like. "A good articulation consists in giving every letter in a syllable its due proportion of sound, according to the most approved custom of pronouncing it; and in making such ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... samples, to the buyers some days beforehand, so that they were able to decide what they wished to purchase and the price they were willing to pay. The sales always took place at 11 o'clock on Tuesdays in the Commercial Sale Room in Mincing Lane, that narrow street off Fenchurch Street, where the air is so highly charged with expert knowledge of the world's produce, that it would illuminate the prosaic surroundings with brilliant flashes if it could become visible. On the morning of the sale samples of the cacaos ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... left an orphan by manliness and taste, and no longer remembered his lost parents. Never can I forget the stare of Baron Pougens, (a Swiss by birth, but a Russian noble) as this specimen of elegance, with mincing step and gait, moved onward, something like a new member tripping it to the table to take his oaths. How he had got so far from Grange's, I really cannot say; but he had the policy of assurance in his favour; and in his own idea, at the least, was what ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... longer be stared at like a curio in a shop window. Inquisitive fingers would no longer clutch at the long sleeves of, crinkled silk, or try to probe the secret of the huge butterfly bow on her back. She could step out fearlessly now like English women. She could give up the mincing walk and the timid manner which she felt was somehow inseparable ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... last year, with hems and haws and sidelong steps and nervous caws, the crows came mincing forth to mail gay valentines, you know. The post box was a hollow tree. They did not know, unluckily, that squirrels had gnawed the floor away, and ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... flared, but caught herself, musingly crossed the room, returned half-way, and with frank design resumed the stool warily vacated by the unslippered foot; whose owner was mincing on, just enough fluttered to play ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... James's Street," continued he, as they turned the corner rather short; in doing which, somewhat animated by the description he had just been giving, Tom's foot caught the toe of a gentleman, who was mincing along the pathway with all the care and precision of a dancing-master, which had the effect of bringing him to the ground in an instant as effectually as a blow from one of the fancy. Tom, who had no intention of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... character was simplicity. Unaided he rose to be pre-eminent as a bricklayer, but in private life he never became accustomed to the exclusive society to which by his genius he had won admittance. He never quite lost the mincing speech of the class from which he sprang, nor could he acquire facility in the vigorous mode of expression proper to his new and exalted station. "Not 'arf" and "'Strewf" ever came haltingly to his tongue, and to the last he struggled painfully with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... oats, an' hay, an' beddin' a foot thick in there. An' a good stall to stand in instead of millin' around a corral all night." The rope slackened, and securing a firm grip on the halter, the Texan edged slowly toward the door, the horse following with nervous, mincing steps, and nostrils aquiver. From her place beside the corral, the girl watched in astonishment as man and horse passed from sight. From the black interior of the stable the voice of the Texan sounded its monotonous drone, and presently ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... afterwards. Pulled in pieces by the fingers, called teezing No. 36. This is done now with flesh of turkeys, and thought better than mincing. Vide ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... know then, what it is to be a lady and what not. You know that it is not to go, like the daughters of Zion in Isaiah's time, with mincing gait, and borrowed head-gear, and tasteless finery, the head well-nigh empty, the heart full of little save vanity and vexation of spirit, busy all the week over cheap novels and expensive dresses, and on Sunday over ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... come to the 'ead. On the south side of the 'ead we discover the mouth. The 'orse's mouth was constructed for mincing 'is victuals, also for 'is rider to 'ang on by. As the 'orse does the other forty-five per cent. of 'is dirty work with 'is mouth it is advisable to stand clear of that as well. In fact, what with his mouth at one end and 'is 'ind-legs at t'other, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... wager, When we are both accouter'd like young men. I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two, And wear my dagger with the braver grace And speak, between the change of man and boy With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps Into a manly stride; and speak of frays, Like a fine bragging youth; and tell quaint lies— How honorable ladies sought my love, Which I denying, they fell sick and died; I could not do withal: then I'll repent, And wish, for all that, that I had not killed them; And twenty of ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Enough your play Till next sun-shine holiday. Here be, without duck or nod, Other trippings to be trod Of lighter toes, and such court guise As Mercury did first devise With the mincing Dryades On the ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... eyes lowered and fixed on Clementine's pretty feet. "You do not know, countess, what charm, what unexpected piquancy of mind she has." Then, feeling his courage fail him, he added hastily, "There is not a woman in society, with her mincing airs, that is worth the honest nature of ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... evidently taken from individuals whom he had observed and who continue to live for us in his pages. His gallery of priests is for all time. Frei Pa[c,]o comes, with his velvet cap and gilt sword, 'mincing like a very sweet courtier'; Frei Narciso starves and studies, tinging his complexion to an artificial yellow in the hope that his hypocritical asceticism may win him a bishopric; the worldly courtier monk fences and sings and woos; ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... married, made the Champs-Elysees the end of his walks as soon as he heard from Contenson that Monsieur de Nucingen's mistress might be seen there. Peyrade could dress so exactly like an Englishman, and spoke French so perfectly with the mincing accent that the English give the language; he knew England itself so well, and was so familiar with all the customs of the country, having been sent to England by the police authorities three times ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the most beautiful animals of the woods. Their grace, poise, agility, and alertness make them a lovely and inspiring sight. To see them feed undisturbed is wonderful; such mincing steps, such dainty nibbling is a lesson in culture. With wide, lustrous eyes, mobile ears ever listening, with moist, sensitive nostrils testing every vagrant odor in the air, they are the embodiment of hypersensitive self-preservation. And yet deer ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... "lady moshuns," he would take little mincing steps, and toss his head from side to side, and pretend to be fanning ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... him to take his hammer away; it was boy's business; he might have known me before this; I told him not to prick the buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw; ain't those mincing knives down in the forecastle there, men? look to those handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the word; don't be a fool; forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treat us decently, and we're your men; but ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... "Blessed they whose sins Are cover'd." Like the wood-nymphs then, that tripp'd Singly across the sylvan shadows, one Eager to view and one to 'scape the sun, So mov'd she on, against the current, up The verdant rivage. I, her mincing step Observing, with as tardy step pursued. Between us not an hundred paces trod, The bank, on each side bending equally, Gave me to face the orient. Nor our way Far onward brought us, when to me at once She turn'd, and cried: "My brother! look and hearken." And ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... with him to his hut. Down on the floor we sat. Wilfrid put his treasures between his knees before him, I sat opposite, and the barter began. "What for this fellow, huh?" and he held up a piece of carved ivory, a little triangular mincing-knife, a fur mat that his wife had made, or the skin of a baby-seal. The first thing he asked for was scented soap, the ring that I was wearing, and my porcupine-quill hat-band which looked good to him; every exchange was accompanied ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... points," cried Kirkpatrick, "I am ready to die for him at any time, for I believe a trustier Scot treads not the earth; but I repeat, why, by this mincing mercy, seek to turn our ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... teeth bared yellow At the Dakkanese, his stable-fellow. Then Forward-Ho, then a chestnut weed, Skysail, slight, with a turn of speed. The neat Gavotte under black and coral, Then the Mutineer, Lord Leybourne's sorrel, Natuna mincing, Syringa sidling, Stormalong fighting to break his bridling, Thunderbolt dancing with raw nerves quick, Trying a savage at Bitter Dick. The Ranger (winner three years before), Now old, but ready for one try more; Hadrian; Thankful; the stable-cronies, ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... and messenger, and, my senior tells me, has been employed by the firm in this capacity for about thirty years. He is a negro, about sixty years old, rather short and stout, with a mincing, noiseless gait, broad African features, beautiful teeth, and small, round, twinkling eyes, the movements of which are accompanied by little abrupt, sidewise turns of the head, like a bird. His manner is a curious mixture of deference and self-importance, his voice a soft, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... on—the church being situated about a quarter of a mile from the house, and the way to it through the Park being so completely sheltered by evergreens that to have got wet, save in a downright pour of rain, was next to impossible. At last we would get under way—the ladies mincing along with their magnificently covered prayer-books, affecting an air of unwilling decorum; the dandies carrying cloaks, shawls, and umbrellas for their respective goddesses, and following them, so to speak, under protest, as if there was something ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... darker hue than the lord of the wallow, and of much slimmer build,—altogether less formidable in appearance. But he looked very fit and fearless as, after a moment's supercilious survey of his rival's ooze-dripping form, he came mincing forward to the attack. The two, probably, had never seen each other before; but in rutting season all caribou bulls are enemies ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... kind a' financerin aside, Colonel. What's the use of living in a free country, where every man has a right to make a penny when he can, and talk so? Now, 'pears to me t'aint no use a' mincing the matter; we might a' leaked ye in for as many thousands as hundreds. Seein' how ye was a good customer, we saved ye on a small shot. Better put the niggers out: ownin' such a lot, ye won't feel it! Give us three prime chaps; none a' yer old sawbones what ye puts up at auction when ther' ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... finally lift her head and begin to look timidly about her, she found herself in a country unfamiliar, which, for all she knew, might be an hour's or a week's journey from High March, where Prosper was. Prosper! She knew that every mincing step of the donkey took her further from him, but she was powerless to protest or to pray; life scarce whispered in her yet. And what span of miles or hours, after all, could set her wider from him than discovery, the shame, the yelling of ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... Oh the mincing step he had with him! and the delicate hand on a horse, fingering the reins as St. Cicely does ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... also see such a stationary camp at Richborough, near Sandwich; and at Pevensey, in Sussex; and at Silchester, near Reading, but the two latter are not rectangular. One end of this fort was on the top of the Walbrook bank and the other, if you look in your map, on the site of Mincing Lane. This gives a length of about 700 yards by a breadth of 350, which means an enclosure of about 50 acres. This is a large area: it was at once the barrack, the arsenal, and the treasury of the station; it contained the residences of the officers, the ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... that this declaration contained the essence of the information which Lord Etherington had designed to extract by his momentary flirtation with Mrs. Pott; for when, retreating as it were from this sore subject, she asked him, in a pretty mincing tone, to try his skill in pointing out another love-letter, he only answered carelessly, "that in order to do that he must write her one;" and leaving his confidential station by her little throne, he lounged through ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... back—they do pay something in return; a full measure. They pay by the beauty of their presence, and they are surely very beautiful, with their dainty mincing pink feet and the sheen on the proudly arched breast coverts of the cock birds; and they pay by giving you their trust and their friendship. To gobble the gifts of dried peas, which you buy in little cornucopias from convenient venders for distribution among them, they come wheeling in ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... concealment, a lamentable and wretched sheaf of verbiage, worse, it seemed, than the efforts of his boyhood. He was not longer tautological, he avoided tautology with the infernal art of a leader-writer, filling his wind bags and mincing words as if he had been a trained journalist on the staff of the Daily Post. There seemed all the matter of an insufferable tragedy in these thoughts; that his patient and enduring toil was in vain, that practice went for nothing, and that he had wasted the labor of Milton ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... a man hidden somewhere in Edward Bulwer's perfumed clothes and mincing attitudes, else the world had long since forgotten him. Amidst his dandyism, he learned how to speak well in debate and how to use his hands to guard his head; he paid his debts by honest hard work, and would not be dishonorably beholden to his mother or any one else. He posed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... they were preparing splendid feasts and banquets, and the cooks were busy plucking geese, killing little pigs, flaying kids, basting the roast meat, skimming pots, mincing meat for dumplings, larding capons, and preparing a thousand other delicacies, a beautiful dove came flying to the kitchen window, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... who, ashamed of their country, betray themselves by mincing out their abjuration, by calling tables teebles, and chairs cheers! To such renegadoes we prefer the honest quixotism of a modern champion[55] for the Scottish accent, who boldly asserted that "the broad ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... a mincing air, for to that damned "parley-voo" she was as anxious to make Lily out a child now, in order to keep a firmer hold of her, as she had been to increase her age in America, so as to ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... she flourished in wiping her wares, for a china crook, and the figure in question might have passed for a miniature of the mistress. In one respect they differed The china shepherdess was a silent personage. Miss Philadelphia was not; on the contrary, she was reckoned to make, after her own mincing fashion, as good a use of her tongue as any woman, gentle or simple, in the whole town ...
— Miss Philly Firkin, The China-Woman • Mary Russell Mitford
... our sons cultivate the Henglish hawkcent and the London lope. In the olden days the glory of the young man was his strength; now it is his chrysanthemum and his collar. And it is going from bad to worse in a ratio of geometrical progression; for how can effeminate men—a canesucking, primping, mincing, affected conglomeration of masculine inanity and asininity beget world-compellers. How can women who care much what is on the outside and little what is on the inside of their heads, and whom a box of lily-white, a French novel, a poodle-dog ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... grotesque dance with Bruin Boru, the wonderful dancing bear. Jack Fenn was very funny in his bear-skin costume, and he pawed and scraped as he ambled ludicrously about, and kept time to the music with mincing steps or sprawling strides. ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... marriage. He was harsh at times, and though he had, even in their more humble quarters, surrounded her with a certain amount of luxury, there was a laxity in his manners and conversation that jarred upon her. Geoffrey, she remembered, had not been addicted to mincing words, but, at least, he had lived in accordance with a Spartan moral code. Millicent was not a scrupulous woman, and her ideas of ethical justice were rudimentary, but she possessed in place of a conscience a delicate sense of refinement which ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... Kendrick, and of the day, not very far in the future, he hoped, when, in going home, he should be driving towards her instead of away from her. He paid no attention to the fact that, as he neared the creek, his horse subsided from a swinging trot to a mincing gait that betrayed indecision; nor did it strike him as anything unusual that the horse should begin to splash water with his feet long before he had reached the banks of the creek; no doubt it was a pool left standing ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... back in her chair, "that is exactly what I mean. There is no use of our mincing matters, and as I hold that it is the duty of every young woman to get herself well married, I think it is your duty to marry Mr. Haverley if you can. You will never meet a man better suited to you, ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... those gifts which proclaim the gifted, though he was true to his race in many of its phases of simplicity. His skill, or rather his supreme striving to appease aesthetic thrills, made Wylo superb in the fight. He developed a meek, affected voice, somewhat mincing ways, and a faraway look in his eyes. These distinctive traits, worn with careless hair, were so original, so intensely entertaining and notoriety-provoking in a camp which had never possessed the copyright ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the spirited little jade, the off-leader in the third stage, the petted belle of the route, the nervous, coquettish, mincing mare of Marshy Hope. A spoiled beauty she was; you could see that as she took the road with dancing step, tossing her pretty head about, and conscious of her shining black coat and her tail done up "in any simple knot,"—like ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... her partner glided and dipped and bowed, Miss Ann tripping and mincing and Major Fitch pointing his toes and crooking his elbows with much elegance and occasionally taking fancy steps to the ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... was attacked by Alan Cope (Nicholas Harpsfield) for his inaccuracy, Foxe replied: "I hear what you will say: I should have taken more leisure and done it better. I grant and confess my fault, such is my vice, I cannot sit all the day (Moister Cope) fining and mincing my letters, and combing my head, and smoothing myself all the day at the glass of Cicero. Yet, notwithstanding, doing what I can, and doing my good will, methinks I should not be reprehended, at least not so much be railed of at M. ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... the affectation pure and simple, which is the mere affectation of manner, such as is shown in the drawling voice, the mincing gait, the extreme gracefulness of attitude that by consciousness ceases to be grace, and the thousand little minauderies and coquetries of the sex known to us all. And there is the affectation which people of a higher social sphere show when they condescend to those of low estate, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... personal hatred and vengeance which are characteristic of religious wars, and which add so much of the moral sufferings to the physical calamities of life. L'Hospital, when sending the seals to the queen-mother, who demanded them of him, considered it his bounden duty to give her without any mincing, and the king whom she governed, a piece of patriotic advice. "At my departure," he says in his will and testament, "I prayed of the king and queen this thing, that, as they had determined to break ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... people who have these tender places," said aunt Rachel. "I never get hurt at what is said to me. No—never! To be ever picking and mincing, and chopping off your words—to be afraid to say this or that—for fear somebody will be offended! I can't ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... hour in the bungalow, Chellalu would wander off, apparently because she was tired of us, but really because she was full of a new and original idea, and wanted an audience. Once she puzzled the nursery community who had not been visiting the bungalow, by mincing about on pointed toes, with shoulders shrugged like a dancing master in caricature. The babies thought this a very nice game, and for weeks ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... with one another. Yet, while amendment in these matters is to be striven for, there is nothing that the teacher who wishes to establish habits of orthoepy has to be more watchful in guarding against, than bestowing upon his pupils an affected or mincing utterance, all the more ludicrous and objectionable, it may be, in that a certain set of words are pronounced with over-nicety, while almost all others are left in ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... part of the Tower itself which lies to the westward of the White Tower is held by some to be within this ward. The principal streets and places contained in it are Great Tower Street, part of Little Tower Street and Tower Hill, part of Thames Street, Mark Lane, Mincing Lane, Seething Lane, St. Olave Hart Street, Idle Lane, St. Dunstan's Hill, Harp Lane, Water Lane, and Bear Lane, with the courts and alleys that fall ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... at her. "And you're the gal I took from your mammy and promised I'd bring up a decent woman. You've got none o' her blood in you—not a drop. You're the brat of that damned, mincing brother of mine, that was always riding horseback and showing off in town while I was ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... attracted by small processions of men and women, possessed of the Phepo, or demon, passing up the palisaded streets, turning into the different courts, and paying each and every house by turns a visit. The party advanced in slow funereal order, with gently springing, mincing, jogging action, some holding up twigs, others balancing open baskets of grain and tools on their heads, and with their bodies, arms, and heads in unison with the whole hobbling-bobling motion, kept in harmony to a low, mixed, droning, humming chorus. As the sultan's door was approached, he ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
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