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More "Neatness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a bit awry, as though he had run his hands many times through it in some mood of desperation. This, in itself, was in defiance of West Point traditions for the personal neatness ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... very limited means, about the young man, which induces one to set him down at once as a junior clerk to a tradesman or attorney. The girl no one could possibly mistake. You may tell a young woman in the employment of a large dress- maker, at any time, by a certain neatness of cheap finery and humble following of fashion, which pervade her whole attire; but unfortunately there are other tokens not to be misunderstood—the pale face with its hectic bloom, the slight distortion of form which ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... half-hour was up, Poco Tiempo was a model of neatness and order. The girls, booted and hatted in spite of Blue Bonnet's objections, were ready to the minute, and when the young scouts appeared they set out at once, exactly—as Blue Bonnet ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... exercise, his hands were naturally horny, and they were almost always cold. For the rest, he was careful of his appearance and scrupulous in matters of dress, like many of his fellow-countrymen. In his household he insisted upon a neatness as fastidious as his own, and nothing could have induced him to employ a Neapolitan servant. His family colours were green and black, and the green of his servants' liveries was of the very darkest ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... Ruth into her present life had given Basil his chance. Into the gap which now lay between them he had slipped with a smooth neatness ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... always, was feeling very comfortable in Miss Burns's company. Her presence always gave him, spiritually speaking, a sense of neatness and order. A man could tell her everything, and her replies straightened things out, instead of muddling them, steadied things and gave them a mooring, instead of tossing them about tempestuously. But ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... we shall devote some time to the consideration of the prevailing character, and national peculiarities, of European cottages. The principal thing worthy of observation in the lowland cottage of England is its finished neatness. The thatch is firmly pegged down, and mathematically leveled at the edges; and, though the martin is permitted to attach his humble domicile, in undisturbed security, to the eaves, he may be considered as enhancing the effect of the cottage, by increasing its usefulness, and ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... all this is that the hymn, in spite of its neatness and adequacy, is wanting in spontaneity, and presents the casual reader with an apparently unmeaning jumble of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. The only way to clear it up is by taking it in immediate relation with what we know about the places ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... could do,'" Julius repeated; and he sang the doleful refrain over and over, as they strolled back to the oak under which they had had their little feast. Then Sophia, who had a natural love of neatness and order, began to collect the plates and napkins, and arrange them in the basket; and this being done, she looked around for the housemaid in order to put it in her charge. The girl was at the other end of the field, and she went ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... to a table, upon which was some cold meat, arranged with more attention to neatness than could have been expected from Meg's habits. "Eat," she said, "eat; ye'll need it this ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... first, man's disobedience to the physical laws under which he must live to have a sound mind in a sound body. Man in his primitive stages is emphatically not a clean animal. On the contrary, he is a very dirty one. He has none of the cat's dainty neatness and cleanliness, none of her instinctive recognition of the deodorizing and purifying power of the earth, that makes the foulest thing once buried spring up in fresh grass and fragrant flowers. He has nothing of the imperative ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... Bloomer with Miss Anthony on the corner of the street waiting to greet us. There she stood with her good, earnest face and genial smile, dressed in gray delaine, hat and all the same color relieved with pale-blue ribbons, the perfection of neatness and sobriety. I liked her thoroughly from the beginning." Both Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Bloomer on this occasion wore what is known as the Bloomer costume. In the summer Miss Anthony went to Seneca Falls to a meeting of those interested in founding the People's College. Horace Greeley, Lucy Stone and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... house devolved upon her. Mrs. Whitney would read for hours to Aunt Patty; often the old lady went soundly asleep. To be sure, matters were not attended to with the niceness of Mrs. Underhill; but Barbara was a treasure with her German neatness, and Bridget kept her kitchen at sixes and sevens. Mr. Theodore brought home one guest or three, with the same indifference; and if Ben's mother could have seen the cheerful manner in which Delia hurried about and arranged the table on short notice, ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... surrounding sweets; The lily, silver mistress of the vale; The rose of Sharon, which perfumes the gale; The jessamine, with which the queen of flowers, To charm her god, adorns his favourite bowers, Which brides, by the plain hand of Neatness dress'd, Unenvied rival, wear upon their breast, 260 Sweet as the incense of the morn, and chaste As the pure zone which circles Dian's waist; All flowers, of various names, and various forms, Which the sun into strength and beauty warms, From the dwarf daisy, which, like infants, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... then out seeking work, seemed in no better case as to finding it than her father. She was English, and by nature, of a buxom figure and cheerful. Both in her poor dress and in her mother's there was an effort to keep up some appearance of neatness. She knew all about the sufferings of the unfortunate invalid, and all about the lead-poisoning, and how the symptoms came on, and how they grew,—having often seen them. The very smell when you stood inside the door ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... George I shall not attempt to give any account. I cannot delineate it scientifically, and a loose and popular description is of use only when the imagination is to be amused. There was every where an appearance of the utmost neatness and regularity. But my suffrage is of little value, because this and Fort Augustus are the only garrisons that I ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... to take a Walk with him in the Gardens: To which Sir Lucius readily consented, designing to disclose that to him for a Secret, which was but too apparent to all that were present at Table: When therefore he thought he had sufficiently admir'd and commended the Neatness of the Walks and Beauty of the Flowers, he ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... pieces given her, I suppose, by persons for whom she works, for she goes about fitting and making carpets. It looked bright and cheerful. She had a nice bed in the corner, covered with a white quilt, and some little ornaments were arranged about the room. Mother complimented her on her neatness, and said a queen might sleep in such a bed as that, and hoped she found it ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... intense interest, for the shock-headed boy was staring hard too, with his mouth half open and his forehead wrinkled into furrows, till he saw Captain Marsham approach from the wheel, when he hurried forward to commence altering the coil of a rope which needed no touching and whose neatness ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... Freddie C., Emma S., Pussy K., and Robbie V. R. are very youthful correspondents who favor us with letters printed with remarkable neatness. May R. also writes a very legible "Wiggle." When you learn to print, ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... servant for one day. I saw no necessity for delay, and immediately made my request to Clithero. I was fashioning an implement, I told him, with respect to which I could not wholly depend upon my own skill. I was acquainted with the dexterity of his contrivances, and the neatness of his workmanship. He readily consented to assist me on this occasion. Next day he came. Contrary to my expectation, he prepared to return home in the evening. I urged him to spend the night with ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... trouble of this sort in future, I substituted drain-pipes set on end; the first of those ideas which have won commendation from great authorities. Drain-pipes do not encourage insects. Filled with earth, each bears a showy plant—lobelia, pyrethrum, saxifrage, or what not, with the utmost neatness, making a border; and they last eternally. But there was still much stooping, of course, whilst I became more impatient of it. One day a remedy flashed through my mind: that happy thought which became the essence or principle of ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... simple kind discovered by the long experience of mankind and often put in use by our grandmothers. The defect contemporary medicine was that it was almost wholly empirical. The ancient surgeon could doubtless perform ordinary operations—amputations and excisions—with neatness, and the ancient physician knew perfectly well what to do with the ordinary complaints—the fevers and agues, the bilious attacks, the gout, or the dropsy—but he was baffled by any new conditions. Moreover, if he could ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... the lines that we now have, they are among the noblest in the world. For aggregate comfort, convenience, safety, speed, and cheapness, they are not equalled by the most famous British lines. More luxurious tables, more neatness, cleanliness, and roominess, more general comforts than have always been characteristic of our Havre, Liverpool, and California lines, can not be found in the world. The only objection to them is, that the service is not sufficient; that the trips are not frequent enough; and that the companies ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... gaze at an apple and tell you that he ought not to eat it, and why not; he will even amble long and wishfully about that apple; but it takes Eve to wake in him the living impulse to take it. Just so with matters of personal neatness. He knows—oh, yes, knowing is his long suit!—he knows he "ought" to be neat; and he thinks he wants to be; but unless Eve and the serpent come along he hasn't the ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... the rattan-palm. Those who have seen this most graceful "palmijuncus" in its native forest will recognize the neatness of the simile. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... we met a party of natives about seven miles from the mouth, in a very pretty bark canoe, fifteen feet long, and about two deep. The bark was sewn together with much neatness, and it was altogether the most artistic piece of workmanship I had seen among the Aborigines of Australia. It was the last of that description we met with in this direction, for we did not find canoes in ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... first the solemn purpose of the early work. This takes on neatness of detail, then fineness; a great maturity dignifies all the northern side. Upon the western you already see that spell beneath which the Middle Ages died. The mystery of the fifteenth century; none of its wickedness but all its final vitality is there. You see in ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... not done this with her own children is a question that cannot perhaps be solved till we know why so many soldiers, used for, it may be, a quarter of a century to personal cleanliness as scrupulous as a gentleman's, and to enforced neatness of clothes, rooms, and general habits, take back to dirt and slovenliness with greediness when they leave the service; and why many a nurse, whose voice and manners were beyond reproach in her mistress's nursery, brings ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... square near the wharf was the scene of an early market, and afforded my first glimpse of the neatness and good taste that characterize nearly everything in France. Twenty or thirty peasant women, coarse and masculine, but very tidy, with their snow-white caps and short petticoats, and perhaps half as many men, were chattering and chaffering over little heaps of fresh country produce. The onions ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... later, half an hour after the usual time, Helbeck, all the traces of his muddy walk removed, and garbed with scrupulous neatness in the old black coat and black tie he always wore of an evening, was sitting opposite to Miss Fountain ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... voyage; and his protege complied with the injunction. It is to this fact that we owe some entertaining passages from young Flinders' pen concerning the voyage. The letters despatched to Pasley are lost; but Flinders, with the love of neatness which was ever characteristic of him, sent only fair copies, and some of his original drafts remain in manuscript. Pasley's letter was ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... delighted to meet him. I had parted from him, that sad day, three years ago, when our school scattered to the war. I had seen him last, the quiet gentleman, the thoughtful teacher, the pale student, the pink of neatness. Here I find him a dashing officer of the Third Virginia Cavalry, girt with saber and pistols, covered with mud from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, and just resting from the bloody work of the ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... at sublimity is all the more to be regretted, because it never succeeds completely. Shade, or magnify, or mystify as he may, even Turner cannot make the minute neatness of the English fort appeal to us as forcibly as the remnants of Gothic wall and tower that crown the Continental crags; and invest them as he may with smoke or sunbeam, the details of our little mounded hills will not take the rank of cliffs of Alp, or promontories of Apennine; and ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... for several years occupied by families of mill operatives, and had gradually acquired that indefinable, but unmistakable tenement-house look, which not even neatness and good repair can wholly banish from a house. The orchard behind the house had so run down for want of care that it looked more like a tangle of wild trees than like any thing which had ever ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... attack was not to be pressed at that point. A fresh body of slaves, however, came down from the town to relieve those who had been all night at work, and the repair of the defences was continued, and with greater neatness and method than had been possible ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... all, Trina lost her pretty ways and her good looks. The combined effects of hard work, avarice, poor food, and her husband's brutalities told on her swiftly. Her charming little figure grew coarse, stunted, and dumpy. She who had once been of a catlike neatness, now slovened all day about the room in a dirty flannel wrapper, her slippers clap-clapping after her as she walked. At last she even neglected her hair, the wonderful swarthy tiara, the coiffure of a queen, that shaded her little pale forehead. In the ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... have it, Terence P. Reardon was the only one offered a helping hand—and he did not despise it; neither did he forget Cappy's last instructions. With neatness and ample force he brought his monkey wrench down on the German's skull; and then to Cappy Ricks, waiting on the bridge of the Narcissus, came the ancient Irish battlecry of Faugh-a-ballagh! ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... Gib. to Smyrna, maneuvering always, yet with never a chance of a fight. His well-shaven face bore the mark of the southern suns, and the backs of his hands were tanned by the heat and the sea. He was, indeed, as smart an officer as any at the Junior, for the Marines are proverbial for their neatness, and his men on board the Bulwark had received many a pleasing ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... practicable, or when I cannot decide upon anything else, I will endeavour to acquire facility and elegance in the expression of my thought by writing essays or other matters which I will preserve for future comparison. And in this practice it will be well to aim at mechanical neatness and grace, as well as at proper and ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... they guarded. It transpired that the keeper wanted rabbits for commerce. The couples that speedily met fate in the nets were insufficient. He required fifteen couple. M. rolled over a white scut with obvious neatness and dispatch, and in shifting over to another hedgerow he shot a jay and gloried in its splendour. The keeper, however, moderated any secret intentions there might have been as to the plumage by one sentence: "That's another for the vermin book. I gets ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... breakfast I drove to Lee and Kennedy's, and commissioned seeds and flowers for about L10, including some specimens of the Corsican and other pines. Their collection is very splendid, but wants, I think, the neatness that I would have expected in the first nursery-garden in or near London. The essentials were admirably cared for. I saw one specimen of the Norfolk Island pine, the only one, young Lee said, which has been raised from all the seed that was sent home. It is not ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... can be preserved in European climates only by the utmost care in guarding it from the operation of atmospheric temperature. The cold and humidity of our winters are fatally injurious to its health. Neatness and cleanliness to a fastidious degree are constitutional traits of the marikina, and the greatest possible attention must be paid to it in this way, in a state of captivity. The slightest degree of dirt annoys them beyond ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... they ever appear! Among the beasts of the field we find that those which are the most cleanly are generally the most gay and cheerful; or are distinguished by a certain air of tranquillity and contentment; and singing birds are always remarkable for the neatness of their plumage. And so great is the effect of cleanliness upon man, that it extends even to his moral character. Virtue never dwelt long with filth and nastiness; nor do I believe there ever was a person SCRUPULOUSLY ATTENTIVE TO CLEANLINESS ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... How, reader, shall I give thee an adequate idea of this lovely young creature? the bloom of roses and lilies might a little illustrate her complexion, or their smell her sweetness; but to comprehend her entirely, conceive youth, health, bloom, neatness, and innocence, in her bridal bed; conceive all these in their utmost perfection, and you may place the charming ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... order and cleanliness seems almost like a matter of pride and show on the part of these humble people—as if the inner purity of their souls must needs be manifested in this extreme, outward neatness," said the ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... have each cell swept every morning. This end was accomplished by my obtaining permission from the warden to furnish a broom and sweep my own cell. For a few mornings thereafter the deputy warden would pass, glance into my cell, compliment me on its neatness, and go on to the inspection of the other cells. After a few days my cell was allowed to go without any inspection whatever, and then we were ready to begin work, having obtained, through some of our associates who had been sent to the hospital, some table-knives made ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... to sit beside them on their humble seat, hearing their simple and sorrowful story, sharing their homely meal—ascertaining the condition of their children—stirring them up to diligence, to economy, to neatness, to order—putting them into the way of obtaining suitable employment for themselves and suitable places for their children—distributing among them the word of God, and tracts calculated to familiarize its first principles to their understanding—cherishing them ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... little white gate, walked up the path, and hesitatingly raised the latch of the house door. What a sight met his eyes! it was a perfect picture. If the three sisters, Cleanliness, Neatness, and Order, had been looking out for a home, they certainly might have found one there. In some of the neighbours' houses, go when you would, you would find the inmates always cleaning, but never clean; it ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... existence from the time of the Romans. In fact, no stretch of road of equal distance in our entire tour was superior to the one we followed from St. Albans to Coventry. It was nearly level, free from sharp turns, with perfect surface, and cared for with neatness such as we would find only in a millionaire's private grounds in the United States. Everywhere men were at work repairing any slight depression, trimming the lawnlike grasses on each side to an exact line with the edges of the stone surface, and even sweeping ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... hum of a thousand human beings working with all their might. Everything went at full speed in fairly regular order, but not only was there an absence of smartness and neatness, but there was not the smallest trace or cleanliness to be seen anywhere. On the contrary, in every corner one was struck by neglect, dirt, grime; here a pane of glass was broken, there the plaster ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... a widow, was arrested on a warrant dated April 30, and examined at the Village church May 2. She is described as a short active woman, wearing a hood and scarf, plump and well developed in her figure, of remarkable personal neatness. One of the items of the evidence against her was, that, "in an extraordinary dirty season, when it was not fit for any person to travel, she came on foot" to a house at Newbury. The woman of the house, the substance of whose testimony ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... tells in Parliamentary as in other prize fights. The Old Man, however, is all alive. He passes on from this mighty announcement as though he had said nothing in particular, and taking a bundle of notes—put together with characteristic care and neatness even in the very centre of all this storm—he proceeds to tell Mr. Goschen something about the currency question, and the state of the silver market in India. The currency—who cares about the currency now? Even the hardiest bimetallist cannot be got to ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... It might pass muster with disputants in search of a verbal triumph, but to any man seriously concerned for the welfare of the nation must appear childishly irrelevant. The welfare of the State cannot turn upon the neatness of a tu quoque; retorts are not reasons, and had every Unionist, down from the Duke of Devonshire to the present writer, pressed in 1886 for the retention of the Irish members at Westminster, the ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... servant to be afflicted with the whole catalogue, that the mistress who discovers her hired girl to be possessed of a single good quality, the reverse of any I have named, as for example, economy, neatness, or a conscientious devotion to the interests of her employers, although she may utterly lack any other, fears to dismiss her, for fear that the next may prove an average 'help,' and have not a solitary good point. A girl who combines all the above-named good qualities ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... us three were present to correct the Press, and as my handwriting is not eminently distinguished for neatness or legibility, the Printer has made a few mistakes. The Reader will consult equally his own convenience, and our credit if before he peruses the volume he will scan the Table of Errata and make the desired alterations. S. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... thus forcing the pace and winning successes north of the Somme, their brothers in arms south of the river were carrying out some important operations with neatness and dispatch. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... eight-thirty, but at a quarter to eight, to gallop down to a cafeteria for coffee and a sandwich at noon, to be patient with callers, and to try to develop some knowledge of spelling in that child of nature, Bessie Kraker. She walked about the office quickly, glancing proudly at its neatness. Daily, with an operator's headgear, borrowed from the telephone company, over her head, she spent half an hour talking with Mr. Wilkins, taking his dictation, receiving his cautions and suggestions, reassuring him that in his absence the Subway ran and Tammany still ruled. After an agitated ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... supports, resembling two inflated frogs erect on their hind legs. In one corner was a cottage piano, close to a writing-table heaped with books and papers; this nook, sacred to Christian, was foreign to the rest of the room, which was arranged with supernatural neatness. A table was laid for breakfast, and the sun-warmed air ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... as well as most other points of his mysterious life. It is the chamber over the butcher's shop, and is lighted by one broad window containing a great many small, irregular panes of glass. The floor is made of planks, very rudely hewn, and fitting together with little neatness; the naked beams and rafters, at the sides of the room and overhead, bear the original marks of the builder's broad-axe, with no evidence of an attempt to smooth off the job. Again we have to reconcile ourselves to the smallness of the space inclosed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... though his countenance was the image of his mind, he was vain even of his personal appearance, and never adopted the external habits of a sans culotte. Amongst his fellow Jacobins, he was distinguished by the nicety with which his hair was arranged and powdered; and the neatness of his dress was carefully attended to, so as to counterbalance, if possible, the vulgarity of his person. His apartments, though small, were elegant and vanity had filled them with representations of the occupant. Robespierre's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... there. A man owes it to himself and his business to appear well pressed. It's a slogan of mine. Clothes may not make the man, but neatness often goes a long way toward making the opportunity. Don't you worry about me becoming baggy, Lilly. I'm going to send one of those folding ironing boards up from ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... inaccessible by railway, it has retained more of a sylvan character than we often find in English country towns. In this retired neighborhood the road is narrow and bordered with grass, and sometimes interrupted by gates; the hedges grow in unpruned luxuriance; there is not that close-shaven neatness and trimness that characterize the ordinary English landscape. The whole scene conveys the idea of seclusion and remoteness. We met no travellers, whether ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... indulgently, and busied herself in tidying the apartment; an occupation which would have incensed Ninian, since her idea of neatness seemed to him to be but the "disarrangement" of the heaps of papers and manuscript sheets scattered everywhere about, had he not been otherwise interested. A hasty examination of the messages he had received evoked his ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... a beautiful underwood behind, and a prattling river before; on one side a meadow, on the other a green. My farm consisted of about twenty acres of excellent land, having given a hundred pounds for my predecessor's goodwill. Nothing could exceed the neatness of my little inclosures, the elms and ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... great river. Waiting under the shade of a tree, for the morning was very hot, the Landers observed a large canoe paddled by twenty young black men singing as they rowed. In the centre of the boat a mat awning was erected: in the bows sat four little boys "clad with neatness and propriety," while in the stern sat musicians with drums and trumpets. Presently the king stepped forth. He was coal black, dressed in an Arab cloak, Haussa trousers, and a cap of red cloth, while two pretty little boys about ten years of age, acting ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... of the world by this strict old Puritan, who, under this unpromising exterior, possessed the kindliest heart in Christendom. Her dress, if of rigid severity, was of saintly purity, and almost pained the eye with its precision and neatness. So fond are we of some freedom from over-much care as from over-much righteousness, that a stray tress, a loose ribbon, a little rent even, will relieve the eye and hold it with a subtile charm. Under the snow white hair of Dame Rochelle—for she it was, the worthy old housekeeper and ancient ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... talents, no pedantry, no affectation of knowledge. She was of middle size; her complexion very fair, her eyebrows and hair dark brown, her teeth superb, her smile enchanting, and her whole person graceful. She was seen almost always in a demi-toilet, remarkable only for neatness and good taste. I do not think I ever once saw diamonds about her, even at the climax of her fortune, when she had the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and being supposed to have some petition for the visier, was permitted to enter. He surveyed the spaciousness of the apartments, admired the walls hung with golden tapestry, and the floors covered with silken carpets, and despised the simple neatness of his own ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... with which she must bear the whole of her future life, if Dr Levitt's news should prove to be founded in fact. The door opening seemed to prick the nerves of her ears: her heart heaved to her throat at the sight of the white paper: yet it was with neatness that she broke the seal, and with a steady hand that she held the note to read it. The handwriting was only too distinct: it seemed to burn itself in upon her ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... on that subject or any other; but she managed to do all that was demanded of her without changing her dress, and yet without damaging its fresh neatness. In silence, and in an uncomfortable mute antagonism which each one felt in every movement of the other. Odd it is, that when words for any reason are restrained, the feeling supposed to be kept back manifests itself in the turn of the shoulders and ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... into the tiny kitchen, with its shining brasses and its white deal floor, Winifred exclaimed at the exquisite neatness ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... prepared, and hastily and weakly finished. Nor should the balance be too striking and exact, for the one rule is to be infinitely various; to interest, to disappoint, to surprise, and yet still to gratify; to be ever changing, as it were, the stitch, and yet still to give the effect of an ingenious neatness. ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time and were partly buried. They were sitting up or lying forward in every attitude of agony. Some of them clasped their wounds; some of them pointed with their hands. Their faces had changed to every colour and glared at us like swollen bruises. Their helmets were off; with a pitiful, derisive neatness the ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... to add to the general sense of melancholy, a cold, raw wind was blowing down from the North Sea and a drizzling rain had set in. Though La Panne is within easy range of the German batteries, which could eliminate it with neatness and despatch, it has, singularly enough, never been bombarded, nor has it been subjected to any serious air raids. This is the more surprising as all the neighboring towns, as well as Dunkirk, a dozen miles beyond, have ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... found themselves, proved to be a combination kitchen and dining room. Its neatness and orderliness impressed them ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... fired from them in all directions, or missiles could also be showered down on the heads of any assailants who might reach the gallery below. The rooms were furnished in a way suitable to the climate, and wore an air of neatness and comfort. Two of them, I guessed, from their appearance, belonged to my fair cousins; while another, the walls of which were ornamented with guns and pistols, swords, bows and other Indian weapons, Carlos told ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... chequered her straw bonnet, her prim black cape, her white skirt. There had been no meddling of freakish hands with her dark hair this morning. It was tightly plaited at the back of her head. Her plain sun-shade, her black kid gloves were neatness itself—middle-class, ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... slap on the face. I instantly struck out in a state of fury—was stopped with great neatness—and received in return a blow on the head, which sent me down on the carpet half stunned, and too giddy to know the difference between ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... ridicule by carrying an Umbrella. He probably felt the benefit of one during his travels in Persia, where they were in constant use as a protection against the sun, and it is also said that he was in ill health when he first made use of it. It was more than likely, however, that Jonas Hanway's neatness in dress and delicate complexion led him, on his return from abroad, to appreciate a luxury hitherto only confined to the ladies. Mr. Pugh, who wrote his life, gives the following description of his personal appearance, which may be regarded as ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... letters when Brooks Insall came in. "I don't mean to intrude in business hours, but I wanted to ask if you would do a little copying for me," he said, and he laid on her desk a parcel bound with characteristic neatness. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... showed the least flaw in personal neatness. Moreover, the tents which these cadets had just quitted were in absolute order and wholly clean. At West Point no excuse whatever is accepted for untidiness of person ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... I must say that the first two days were a trial, the more so as I was very despondent from having quitted Madame d'Albret. I was delighted with Madame Bathurst's country seat, the well-arranged gardens, the conservatories, the neatness displayed in every thing so different from France, the cleanness of the house and furniture; the London carpets over the whole of the rooms and staircases, were, in my opinion, great improvements; but I cared little for the society, which I found not only dull, but it appeared to me to be ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... disposition, with a nature as sweet as the daisies that grew in the green meadows about her home, and a mind as clear as the brook that rippled through them. Fond of pretty things in the house, a daintily set table, tidy rooms, and loving neatness and order, she was a good cook, a capable housekeeper and a charming hostess as well. She loved the flowers that bloomed each summer in the wide dooryard, and had enough romance to enjoy nature's ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... highest tone of serious poetry has in it, like Alfieri's, a note of self-conscious stoicism and somewhat arrogant self-control; while as a comic writer he is but too apt, like too many transalpine wits, to mistake filth for fun, and to measure the neatness of a joke by its nastiness. Dirt for dirt's sake has never been the apparent aim of any great English humorist who had not about him some unmistakable touch of disease—some inheritance of evil or of suffering like the congenital brain-sickness ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... point. The fore royal, which fell to my lot (as I was in the mate's watch), was more than twice as large as that of the Pilgrim, and, though I could handle the brig's easily, I found my hands full with this, especially as there were no jacks to the ship, everything being for neatness, and nothing left for Jack to hold ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... looked full, but for a moment only, of ghostly shadows. There we saw boats suspended halfway from the ceiling, other mysterious apparatus ranged on either side, anchors, great cables coiled accurately in heaps, and all in as exact neatness as though upon the deck ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... sharp-edged goodness myself nor in any way at all virtuous. I'm terrible easy-going myself and I know just how kids like Charlie Pinley feel working for a man, a careful, exact man like Mr. James D. Austin. By gosh! if I had to work a whole week for Mr. Austin I'd kill myself. Never could stand too much neatness and worrying about time being money and human nature too full of meanness. No, sir,—I can't live like that. I guess maybe it's because I'm kind of no-account myself that I understand these kids and they understand me. They all like horses same as me and I pay them all I can afford and will do more ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... upon me with a full stream was tremendous, enabling me—who say it that should not say it—to lay by a wheen bawbees for a sore head, or the frailties of old age. Somehow or other, the clothes made on my shopboard came into great vogue through all Dalkeith, both for neatness of shape and nicety of workmanship; and the young journeymen of other masters did not think themselves perfected, or worthy a decent wage, till they had crooked their houghs for three months in my service. With regard to myself, some of my acquaintances told ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... which he adapted, on his return to Mainz, to the art of printing. These new means enabled him to cast movable leaden types in a copper matrix, with greater precision than before, and thus to give great neatness to the letters. It was by this new process that the Psalter, the first book bearing a date, was printed in 1457. Soon afterward the Mainz Bible, recognized as a masterpiece of art, was produced under the direction of Gutenberg, from types ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... and Canadian sleighs and Russian sledges; and there were her carriage and riding horses, and Prince Albert's hunters, and the children's ponies. The stables are handsome and comfortable buildings, and are kept with the utmost care, order, and neatness. Thousands of poor people might envy the high-blooded brutes such a home as this. Some of the horses were very beautiful and graceful animals, and all were groomed so carefully it seemed no one hair ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... details Durant took in with keen interest. Nothing could have exceeded the simplicity of this dwelling by the sea. There had obviously been no attempt at artistic arrangement. Cleanliness and a neatness almost severe were ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... side porch and looked about her with a glance of pleasure in the neatness and charm of the little place. House and fence had been painted and mended, put in tidy order. A new gate and a cement sidewalk in front running down to the corner of the street spoke for the industry of Harvey Spencer who had worked like a ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... expenses than the American. He spends more on wine, on entertainments, on horses, and on amusements. He has a more numerous establishment, and keeps up the adjuncts and outskirts of his residence with a more finished neatness. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... again, and gradually fading out of view. Shortly afterwards, his mouth began to widen again. After an interval of suspense on my part that was quite enthralling and almost painful, I saw his hand appear on the other side of Miss Skiffins. Instantly, Miss Skiffins stopped it with the neatness of a placid boxer, took off that girdle or cestus as before, and laid it on the table. Taking the table to represent the path of virtue, I am justified in stating that during the whole time of the Aged's reading, Wemmick's arm was straying from the path of virtue and being ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Millar's professional notions as to the human figure being left easy and untrammelled! Rose was a pattern of decorous neatness and trimness compared to Hester; indeed, Rose was appalled by the total absence of order and ceremony, not to say of embellishment, in her friend's toilet. Hester abandoned herself permanently to deshabilles. She appeared ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... way to the house, he showed her as her future apartments two large whitewashed rooms, whose sole ornament was their exquisite neatness. On the threshold stood Pyrrhus's grey-haired wife, a young woman, and a girl scarcely beyond childhood; but the older one modestly welcomed Barine, and also begged her to accept their hospitality. Recovery was rapid in the pure air ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Elinor's house when she reached it. It stood in the district, but not of it, withdrawn from the street in a small open space which gave indication of being a flower garden in summer. There were two large gaunt trees on either side of a brick walk, and that walk had been swept to the last degree of neatness. The steps were freshly scoured, and a small brass door-plate, like a doctor's sign, was as bright as rubbing could make it. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and dishearteningly foreign to the orderly arrangement, the meticulous neatness of the home wherein Thompson had grown to young manhood under the tutelage of the prim spinsters that he could scarcely accept as a reality that this, henceforth, was to ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was compelled to surrender on what conditions he demanded. One hears it said by Lacedaemonians that Lysander wrote to the Ephors thus: "Athens is taken;" and that these magistrates wrote back to Lysander, "Taken is enough." But this saying was invented for its neatness' sake; for the true decree of the magistrates was on this manner: "The government of the Lacedaemonians has made these orders; pull down the Piraeus and the long walls; quit all the towns, and keep to your own land; if ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... by his appearance that he is a member; he takes the joint and his half-pint of wine, for Minchin does everything like a gentleman. He is rather of a literary turn; still makes Latin verses with some neatness; and before he was called, was remarkably ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the women; and some neatness in the dressing of their hair is perceptible. It is tied up on the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... to and fro, whirled round and round, clawing and snapping at the empty air, roaring and bawling with rage, scourged in flesh and insulted in spirit. As he swung, the bean-pole searched out the different parts of his anatomy with a wonderful degree of neatness and precision. Between rage and indignation the grizzly nearly exploded. A moving-picture camera was there, and since that day that truly moving scene has amazed and ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... "The neatness, the comfort, the gentleness, the unaffected devotion, the accomplishments, and the virtues of the brethren of the order, are well fitted to strike the man of the world with the conviction that 'there is another and a better' even in ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the relationship between the laboratory work and that of the class room. The student should endeavor to cultivate the power of observation and to grasp the principle involved in the work, rather than do it in a merely mechanical and perfunctory way. Neatness is one of the essentials for success in laboratory practice, and too much emphasis cannot be laid upon this requisite to good work. The student should learn to use his time in the laboratory profitably and economically. ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... employed in the new Lagrange pit, and though I was much struck by the neatness of his person and apparel, I was more struck by the general absence of anything like the griminess which we commonly associate with mines and mining among his fellows, whom I found still at work around the pits. M. Guary told me that this is a characteristic trait ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... and was about her morning work. Her education was that of the soldier, who must know himself no more, whom no personal pain must swerve from the slightest minutiae of duty. So she was there, at her usual hour, dressed with the same cool neatness, her brown hair parted in satin bands, and only the colorless cheek and lip differing from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... at about half an hour after six, accordingly; and driving pretty smartly, got at this truly neat house at half an hour after eight; and I was much pleased with the neatness of the good woman, and her daughter and maid; and he was so good as to say he would now and then take a turn with me to the same place, and on the same occasion, as I seemed to like it; for that it would be a pretty exercise, and procure us appetites ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... hero looked round with surprise at the exceeding neatness which reigned over the whole apartment. But what chiefly engrossed the attention of one to whose early habits books had always been treasures were several volumes, ranged in comely shelves, fenced with wirework, on either side of the fireplace. "Courage," thought he, as he ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that his friends never even guessed at his natural fastidiousness. That which might have been selfish in this fastidiousness was conquered, though the refinement remained. Even to the last, in his most solitary hours, this personal neatness never relaxed, but the victory over disgust was a real triumph over self, which no doubt was an element ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vine-wreathed lodge at the great entrance gate. He had been happy all that summer, never more so; yet happier than ever now as he stepped into the freshly furbished upper chamber which was his own, his very home. All the dear familiar books on the shelves, the snowy bed, the dainty neatness of the place that showed the motherly touch of old Griselda everywhere, even to the bunch of flowers upon the ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... employed. She had had the idea of giving it a certain daintiness, and she made much use of blue and red inks; she bound the copy in coarse paper, that looked vaguely like watered silk, in various pale colours; and she had acquired a reputation for neatness and accuracy. She was making money. But she could not get over the idea that to earn her living was somewhat undignified, and she was inclined to remind you that she was a lady by birth. She could not help bringing into her conversation the names of people she knew ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... is nearest to ours; it stands, indeed, but a few yards down the road which leads past our gate. It is a white-walled, thatched house of one story only—like most of the habitations in Ardmuirland; it stands in a little garden whose neatness and the prolific nature of its soil are standing proofs of Willy's industry in ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... the day of the accident Lucie had taken the management of affairs in her hands, and having been brought up in the country, and being possessed of a large share of the shrewdness and common sense for which Frenchwomen are often conspicuous, she succeeded admirably. The neatness and order of the house, since their marriage, had been a matter of surprise to her husband's friends; and it was not long before the farm showed the effects of her management. Gaspard Vaillant assisted her with ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... lasted more than a week or ten days. His editors know him as a brilliant genius, irresponsible, unreliable, but at times inestimably valuable. He cares little for personal appearance beyond a certain degree of neatness. He is quick on the trigger, and in a time of over-heated argument can go some distance with his fists; in fact, his whole career is ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... the last few weeks. It's a patent fact, at any rate, that my house hasn't been properly looked after. Iroquois Annie, that sullen-eyed breed servant of ours, will never have any medals pinned on her pinny for neatness. I'd love to ship her, but heaven only knows where we'd find any one to take her place. And I simply must have help, during the next ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... sight a pace or two before you come abreast of the boat. There, at a signal from me, you will creep down to the boat—on hands and knees, or on your stomach if you will—and bore me three small holes close alongside her keelson, using as much expedition as may consist with neatness. You understand? Then the quicker you set about it, the less will ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... boot leather that lingered in the road long after the train had passed. An external silence broken only by the cough of a jaded horse in the suffocating dust, or the cracking of harness leather. Within one of the wagons that seemed a miracle of military neatness and methodical stowage, a lazy conversation carried on by a ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... and kindly, and so without trying they disarmed their hosts and won their sympathy. Notwithstanding their dejection and lassitude, they maintained the habits of their lives, and unwittingly gave Mrs. Atwood and her daughter a vague impression that neatness, attractiveness, and order were as ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... of it. It was, indeed, a pleasant sight to see Elise, with the same quiet cheerfulness, acting at one moment the part of cook in the kitchen, at another setting her little chamber to rights with busy hands, and making amends in cleanliness and neatness for what was wanting in elegance and beauty. True, she was altered, but never since she had been. Bertram's wife had her brow been darkened or her eye dimmed. Her face was always bright and clear: for her husband, when he returned home, she had always a smile of welcome, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... conditions. They see each other in society, in Sunday dress and with Sunday manners. They doubtless do not mean to deceive each other, but there is little to draw out the real self. There is nothing to disturb or irritate, nothing to prove the honesty, the neatness, the industry, the persistence, the business ability; nothing to disclose the true ideas in matters of serious import, of health, religion, duties of husbands and wives, the government of the home; and too often the intimacy ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... very stroke she hurried on to the platform. How could he have strained his eyes after other women, as if a second glance were ever needed when it was really she! The perfectly graceful figure, the trimness and neatness of it, the beautiful womanly poise of the head, the quick elastic step, he could have sworn to her among ten thousand. His heart gave a bound at the sight of her, but he had the English aversion to giving himself away, and so he walked quickly forward ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... mind our being in all this mess. So darling of you to come! You can help cheer Clarence up; you know his Christmas Eve dumps." She runs to them and clasps them in her arms with several half-open packages dangling from her hands and contrasting their disarray with the neatness of their silk-ribboned and tissue-papered parcels which their embrace makes meet at her back. "Minnie! Aggie! To lug here, when you ought to be at home in bed dying of fatigue! But it's just like you, both of you. Did you ever see anything like the stores to-day? Do ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... should be cooked. This became quite a joke among us. He was very independent, and it never seemed to occur to him to ask to have anything done for him if he could do it himself—and he could do many things, such as sewing on buttons and tapes and packing up parcels, with great neatness. When unpacking parcels he never cut the string if it could be untied, and he would fold it up before removing the paper, which in its turn ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... of modes an' styles, when I get all lit up in that gray woosted suit of mine, I guess I make the jaded sight-seers set up an' take notice—eh? Somethin' doin' every minute in the cranin' of necks—what? Nothin' gaudy, but the acme of neatness an' form, as the feller said who sold it ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... care of the house, she was neatness itself. She scoured and swept and washed until the rooms were literally spotless. Order was Heaven's first law, in her opinion, and she expected everyone else to keep up to the standard. Captain Perez and Captain Eri soon got used to the change and gloried ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... allow, by any means, that this should be called pride, but rather neatness, handsomeness, comeliness, cleanliness, &c., neither would he allow that following of fashions was anything else, but because he would not be proud, singular, and esteemed fantastical ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Farmer's mind was to the practical, yet he took pride in the appearance of his estate. "I shall begrudge no reasonable expense that will contribute to the improvement and neatness of my farms," he wrote one of his managers, "for nothing pleases me better than to see them in good order, and everything trim, handsome, and thriving about them; nor nothing hurts me more than ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... extracts are taken at hazard from an account of the weekly receipts of the Theatre, for the year 1778, kept with exemplary neatness and care by Mrs. Sheridan herself: [Footnote: It appears from a letter of Holcroft to Mrs. Sheridan, (given in his Memoirs, vol. i. p. 275,) that she was also in the habit of reading for Sheridan the new pieces sent in by dramatic candidates:—"Mrs. Crewe (he ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... almost challenge Pope on his own {183} ground, meeting his rapier-like dexterity of neatness with heavy sword-strokes of sincerity and strength. But here, as in the prose, the true Johnsonian excellence is best seen when he ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... the mattress up over the foot of the bed so the air could get underneath it. The white spread she kept by itself, and had Margaret help fold it up in its creases. "Nothing wrinkles more easily," she told Margaret, "and a wrinkled spread spoils the look of neatness a bed ought to have when it is made. If you have a heavy Marseilles spread, do not sleep under it; fold it at night and put it away, and use only the blankets, because it is not good for any one to sleep under such a weight. Now hang up your night-dress, ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... of the poorer settlers, having more hard work to do than before, very frequently become slatterns; but the ladies, accustomed to a refined neatness, feel that they cannot degrade themselves by its absence, and struggle under every disadvantage to keep up the necessary routine ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... some of the best wooded ground in the county of Hampshire. Its fine streams afforded means of enjoyment for those who devote their pastime in angling and other such health-giving recreation. Its gardens were carefully cultivated, showing much neatness and elegance, though not affording ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... balance; though whether I was right in this latter, I am unable to say. Yet, before I had finished my arrow, the bo'sun had made the groove, and called me over to him, that I might admire it, the which I did; for it was done with a wonderful neatness. ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... was dressed for the evening with his usual fastidious neatness. He had the air of a man who had been engaged for many nights in some arduous occupation. There were dark rims under his eyes, the lines upon his forehead were deeper. Nevertheless, he smiled with something of his old gayety as ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... punctuation indicates neatness, order, method and love of arrangement; nor is it necessary that the punctuation should be strictly correct, for the art is but imperfectly mastered by most people, ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... bestowed on the boots, considered with reference to art, though in this respect the Author is quite sensible that both himself and the maker of their originals have been greatly flattered. He is also perfectly aware that there is a degree of neatness, elegance, and spirit in the tie of the cravat, to which he has in reality never yet ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... according to her physical development, but was now full with the devil's beauty of youth. A common type, one that would not arrest masculine eyes as she passed by. Dozens of the girls there round about might have called her sister. She was dressed with cheap neatness, the soiled white wing of a bird in her black hat being the only touch of bravura. She spoke with the ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... his disorderliness was anything more than personal, always contending that he had a love of order and neatness with regard to his surroundings and arrangements. Yet here is a sketch of the condition of his living-room, as seen by one of his friends: 'The most exquisite confusion reigned in his house. Books and music were scattered in all directions; here the residue ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... remarkably pleasing expression; his eye small and brilliant; and, notwithstanding the roughness of his outward attire, there was a degree of precision in the arrangement of his hair and whiskers, which proved that with him neatness was habitual. He had a worsted mitten on his left hand; the right, which held his pipe, was bare, and remarkably white and small. Perceiving the situation of the boy, he called to one of the men—"Here, Phillips, take this poor ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... air of a man who has remembered something which he had overlooked, shoved a sock in his guest's mouth and resumed his packing. He was what might be called an impressionist packer. His aim appeared to be speed rather than neatness. He bundled his belongings in, closed the bag with some difficulty, and, stepping to the window, opened it. Then he climbed out on to the fire-escape, dragged the suit-case after him, ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... the eating part of the play, she rose immediately to change places, when, to her disgrace, a quantity of crumbs, which had lodged unobserved in a fold of her frock, fell out, and disordered the neatness of the table. ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... Scribner's Monthly, and were collected in book form in 1879, under the title of Old Creole Days. The characteristics of the series—of which the novelette Madame Delphine (1881) is virtually a part—are neatness of touch, sympathetic accuracy of description of people and places, and a constant combination of gentle pathos with quiet humour. These shorter tales were followed by the novels The Grandissimes (1880), ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... housework man, if I lose my job. I can sew—you ought to see the elegant patch I put on the seat of my old blues—I can 'scrub and wash' clothes, I can sweep beautifully, I can make a bed with neatness and despatch. And I have been known to get on my knees and ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... shirts or shifts, in the room of sordid and filthy woollen, long worn next the skin, is a matter of neatness comparatively modern, but must prove a great means of preventing cutaneous ails. At this very time woollen, instead of linen, prevails among the poorer Welsh, who ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... many panes; gazebos, or summer-houses, hanging over pea-green canals; kind-looking, dumpling-faced farmers' women, with laced caps and golden frontlets and earrings; about the houses and towns which we pass a great air of comfort and neatness; a queer feeling of wonder that you can't understand what your fellow-passengers are saying, the tone of whose voices, and a certain comfortable dowdiness of dress, are so like our own;—whilst we are remarking on these sights, sounds, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the great Schlachthof kitchen, where I have eaten the stew, and I have nothing but praise for the work being done. This kitchen, like the others I have visited, is the last word in neatness. The labour-saving devices, such as electric potato-parers, are of the most modern type. In fact, the war is increasing the demand for labour-saving machinery in Germany to at least as great an extent as high wages have caused such a demand in America. ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... pleasant spot, situated upon the gentle declivity of a hill, at the foot of which winded along a swift and clear little stream. The house itself was small, but warm and convenient, furnished with the greatest simplicity, but managed with perfect neatness. As Mr Barlow approached, he saw the owner himself guiding a plough through one of his own fields, and Harry, who had now resumed the farmer, directed the horses. But when he saw Mr Barlow coming across the field, he stopped ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... disadvantages attend this expedient, but till a better is suggested they have to be endured. The cost of the oil expended in maintaining in proper condition the axles of the machinery in a foundery, or of the rolling stock of a railroad, amounts to a large sum annually; while the want of neatness which its use makes, to a certain extent, inevitable, and the labor which must be constantly employed to prevent this want of neatness from becoming much greater than it is, are serious items to be set off against ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... one day. I saw no necessity for delay, and immediately made my request to Clithero. I was fashioning an implement, I told him, with respect to which I could not wholly depend upon my own skill. I was acquainted with the dexterity of his contrivances, and the neatness of his workmanship. He readily consented to assist me on this occasion. Next day he came. Contrary to my expectation, he prepared to return home in the evening. I urged him to spend the night with us: but no; it was equally convenient, and more ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... sight of the house. She had been told that she was ill of a fever when she was brought down from the Mountain; and she could only remember waking one day in a cot at the foot of Mrs. Royall's bed, and opening her eyes on the cold neatness of the room that was afterward ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... which in the fading light looked full, but for a moment only, of ghostly shadows. There we saw boats suspended halfway from the ceiling, other mysterious apparatus ranged on either side, anchors, great cables coiled accurately in heaps, and all in as exact neatness as though upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... hard, but not very successfully, to pass for about forty years of age; the good woman, though called Mrs. Dickinson, was a spinster, and according to her own account was of a good family, for her great uncle was a clergyman. She was remarkable for the neatness of her dress, for the fineness of her muslin aprons, and the accurate arrangement of her plaited caps. In one respect Mr. Bryant thought that she carried her love of dress too far, for she would always wear a hoop when her day's work was done. Mr. Bryant's apprentice, who was at the period ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... keep him from school, but they did not keep him from study. The year 1828 saw the beginning of another great work, "Eudosia, a Poem on the Universe"; it was "printed" with even greater neatness and labour; but this, too, after being toiled at during the winter months, was dropped in the middle of its second "book." It was not idleness that made him break off such plans, but just the reverse—a too great activity of brain. His parents seem to have thought that there was no harm in this ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... that unacceptable moustache of Breede's like a series of exhausts from a motorcycle. Bean recorded them in his note-book. His shorthand was a marvel of condensed neatness. Breede had had trouble with stenographers; he was not easy to "take." He spoke swiftly, often indistinctly, and it maddened him to be asked to repeat. Bean had never asked him to repeat, and he inserted the a's and the's and all the minor words ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... their clothes with more than usual neatness—which was the only way of being good ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... enlightened belief that books written by any but English hands were necessarily destructive of men's innocence," said Arabella; and her sisters thrilled at the neatness of the stroke, for the moment, while they forgot the ignoble object it transfixed. Laura was sufficiently foiled by it to be unable to return to the Chips-Barrett theme. Throughout the interview Cornelia had maintained a triumphant posture, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be made at a certain hour and in a certain style—for the coming heroes of America have to be their own chambermaids; while valises and other baggage must be stowed away in as orderly a way as possible. Every morning the tents are inspected, and any lack of neatness or order insures for the chambermaid of the day a misconduct mark. It may be easily conceived that under a regime so strict as this the cadets are particularly careful as to their quarters, inasmuch as one hundred of these marks mean ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... bonds, cementing each fragment in its place until a perfect cylinder, proportionate in dimensions, uniformly expanding in circumference, smooth within, rugged without, scientifically correct in design, is the result! How apt, too, the frictionless lining! And all this laborious neatness and precision absorbed in the construction of a tenement which has no time! Does the inmate possess any sense of duration? Addison (quoting a French authority) says that it is possible some creatures may ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... editions of English classics at the sale of the valuable library of Dirck Ten Broeck, Esq., of Albany, and his room in a short time showed the elements of a library and a cabinet of minerals, and drawings, which were arranged with the greatest care and neatness. Having finished his primary studies, with high reputation, he prepared, under an improved instructor, to enter Union College. It was at the age of fifteen that he set on foot, as Mr. Van Kleeck mentions, an association for mental improvement. These meetings drew together persons of literary ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... evening in January—one of those dark and gloomy evenings which fill one with sadness—there sat watching by the bed of a sick man, in a little room on the fifth floor, a woman of about forty, and two pretty children—a boy of twelve and a little girl of eight. The exquisite neatness of the room almost concealed its wretchedness: everything announced order and economy, but at the same time great poverty. A painted wooden bedstead, covered with coarse but clean calico sheets, blue calico curtains, four chairs, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... contained a small woodworker's bench, a lathe, a bench for metal work and a number of mechanical appliances which I was not then able to examine; but I noticed that the entire place presented to the eye a most unworkmanlike neatness, a circumstance that did not escape Thorndyke's observation, for his face relaxed into a grim smile as his eye travelled over the bare benches and ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... Radbourn, of his almost fierce sympathy for these poor supine farmers, hopeless, and in some cases content in their narrow lives. The children almost worshipped the beautiful girl who came to them as a revelation of exquisite neatness and taste,—whose very ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... half true. Personal cleanliness is rather expensive when one takes into account the time, energy, and frequent changes of clothing required to keep the body daintily clean. Visitors should realize this in any effort to introduce a higher standard of personal neatness, and should not be impatient when they do not immediately succeed. Cleanliness and health are so nearly related, however, that the effort is very well worth making. A visitor who hesitated to complain to a mother about ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... thatched with cocoanut leaves, which required poles to keep them in place. It had several doors, and cross-latticed windows. There was no particular shape to the structure, and certainly nothing of neatness or comeliness about it. A large banana tree grew near it; a woman stood at one of the doors, staring with wonder at the strangers, and a couple of half-naked coolies were at work farther away. The morality of the residents of this section ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... of indignation died rapidly away. It was, indeed, her notion that the guardians of the public peace should show some degree of sobriety, respect, neatness, and self-control, as well as a reasonable familiarity with the accents of the country; but her Arcadia was full of painful discrepancies, and she did not add to her own pain by too serious an attempt to reconcile them. Besides, what is a policeman ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... round set his mind at ease. The place was in the same state of neatness and order as when he and Harding locked ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... in the second ranks of the middle-classes, is for the mistress to give her orders in the kitchen in the morning, leaving the cook to pass them on to the tradespeople when they call. If she is not very indolent, and if she has a due regard for neatness and cleanliness, she may supplement her kitchen commands by going up stairs through some of the bedrooms; but after a kind word of advice to the housemaid if she is sweet-tempered, or a harsh word of censure if she is of the cross-grained type, her work in that ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... entreat his aid in an affair of some moment. 'Mr. Trevor is a young gentleman, my dear Quisque, that you will be proud to be acquainted with; a man of talents; a poet; an orator; an author; a great genius; an excellent scholar; a fine writer; turns a sentence or a rhyme with exquisite neatness; very prettily I assure you. I mention these circumstances, my dear Quisque, because I know you have a taste for such things: and so has Mrs. Quisque, and the two Miss Quisques, and all the family. I now and then see very pretty things of their writing in the Lady's Magazine. An elegy ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... that unaccustomed and unexplained absence always produces, but with no actual apprehension, Mrs. Pember went back to her work. Mellony had certain mild whims of her own, but it was surprising that she should have left her room in disorder, the bed unmade; that was not like her studious neatness. With a certain grimness Mrs. Pember ate her breakfast alone. Of course no harm had come to Mellony, but where was she? Unacknowledged, the shadow of Ira Baldwin fell across her wonder. Had Mellony cared so much for him that her disappointment had driven her to something wild and fatal? ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... sides. He was altogether so extraordinary looking that I felt myself staring almost rudely at him on our first interview; yet his dress was in no way remarkable except for an air of old-fashioned and speckless neatness. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... effect when it is evident that the words have been prepared. A good deal may be done in dispute by calling a man an ass or a knave,—but the resolve to use the words should have been made only at the moment, and they should come hot from the heart. There was much neatness and some acuteness in Mr. Daubeny's satire, but there was no heat, and it was prolix. It had, however, the effect of irritating Mr. Gresham,—as was evident from the manner in which he moved his hat ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... a hundred families of Indians, each living on their own homesteads, off reservation limits, cultivating their farms, dwelling in comfortable log-houses, dressed in civilized garb, and showing as much neatness and industry as the average white man. These people are recognized as citizens and are voters. They have a neat chapel, a native pastor, sustain admirable prayer-meetings—a woman's prayer-meeting among them—and live good reputable lives. In this spot and at Santee Agency the Indian ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... several joint appearances in our musical centres of the time. Thalberg was a pupil of Hummel, and felt the influence of his teacher's cold, severely classic style. He possessed a well-trained, fascinating mechanism, with scales, chords, arpeggios and octaves that were marvels of neatness and accuracy, and a tone that was mellow and liquid, though lacking in warmth. His operatic transcriptions, in which a central melody is enfolded in arabesques, chords and running passages, have long since become antiquated, but his art of singing on ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... night; but Kenyon sought out the wife of the person who sublet them, and prevailed on her to give him admittance by means of the duplicate key which the good woman had in her possession. On entering, the maidenly neatness and simple grace, recognizable in all the arrangements, made him visibly sensible that this was the daily haunt of a pure soul, in whom religion and the love ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Army or Navy officers hadn't been doing any hard work that would ruffle the neatness of their uniforms," finished Tom triumphantly, "and there you are! I can dress up on Sundays or holidays, but on the work days, when I'm a civil engineer, I want to wear clothes that show that I'm not afraid to tackle the rough and ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... arch, I found myself in the castle court. Three sides of the edifice were still standing, darkened, indeed, and distained by the winds and rains of centuries, but with an air of modern comfort and neatness about the doors and windows that seemed more in keeping than the moat and towers with the habits of the present day. The other curtain had been thrown down years before,—how or why nobody could tell me, but not improbably ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... sunk out of sight. The First Consul might have examined with interest the iron bridge, but could never have borne with the soiled person and the threadbare principles of the philosopher of two hemispheres. Bonaparte loved neatness and elegance, and disliked idologues and bavards, as he styled all gentlemen of Paine's turn ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... hut or cattle station, then a resting-place for whoever might occasionally pass; and inhabited by grim-looking stockmen of whom Charley, as my friend called him, seemed one. Now the march of improvement had told wonderfully on the place. The hut was converted into a house, in which the curtained neatness and good arrangement were remarkable for such an out-station. Mr. Booth himself looked younger by some years, and we at length discovered the source of the increased comforts of his home in a wife whom he had wisely selected from among ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... change was visible in the family arrangements, for though a sensitive she was a spirited woman. Her garden, which had been the pride and delight of her husband, still flourished in perfect neatness. After the usual time of decent seclusion, she again interchanged visits with her friends and neighbors, and continued to maintain the stand in the village society which had always been conceded to her. But this state of things did not long continue, for alas! the gathering as well ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... mother of the arts. Under a spur so immediate, Morris surprised himself by the neatness and dispatch of his new forgery, and within three-fourths of an hour had ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... months, however, before this story begins, a terrible misfortune had come to Peter Harris. He had come home on a certain evening worse than usual from the effects of drink. Connie happened to be in. She had dressed herself with her usual exquisite neatness. She always kept the place ship-shape. The hearth was always tidily swept. She managed her father's earnings, which were quite considerable, and the wretched man could have had good food and a comfortable home, and been happy as the day was ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... as a stranded sea-God, was sitting in an arm chair, his broad Quaker hat on his head, waiting to receive me. He was spotlessly clean. His white hair, his light gray suit, his fine linen all gave the effect of exquisite neatness and wholesome living. His clear tenor voice, his quiet smile, his friendly hand-clasp charmed me and calmed me. He was so much gentler and sweeter than I had ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... I asserted my right to be as poor as I chose. And, certainly, my censors were right, whatever were the temper in which they spoke, kind or unkind; for a little extra care in the use of clothes will always, under almost any extremity of poverty, pay for so much extra cost as is essential to neatness and decorum, if not even to elegance. They were right, and I was wrong, in a point which cannot ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... in the hall, staring in at the weeping woman as if watching the contortions of a dying dog. A dozen women entered and lamented with her. Under their busy hands the rooms took on that appalling appearance of neatness and order with which death ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... before the war made me the guest of Virginians of all grades. Brightest by far of the memories of those days ... is that of the Virginia mother. Her delicacy, tenderness, freshness, gentleness; the absolute purity of her life and thought, typified in the spotless neatness of her apparel and her every surrounding, it is quite impossible to convey. Withal, there was about her a naivete mingled with sadness, that gave her a ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... grandly in the street and too dowdily in the theater. All this has changed. The stores in New York are now the most beautiful in the world, and the women are dressed to perfection. They are as clever at the demi-toilette as the Parisian, and the extreme neatness and smartness of their walking-gowns are very refreshing after the floppy, blowsy, trailing dresses, accompanied by the inevitable feather boa of which English girls, who used to be so tidy and "tailor-made," now seem so fond. The universal ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... a candle of yellow wax, lighted the table; the dishes were placed on a table cloth of coarse but very white linen. There was no silver; the steel knives, and spoons of maple wood, were of great neatness. A bottle of blue glass contained about a pint of canary; in a large pewter pot bubbled the oagou, a fermented beverage made from the grain of sugar cane; a sealed earthen vessel held water, as fresh as if it ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... and went towards him. He was begirt with a clean linen apron, which fell below his knees, and with a sort of bib that went half way-up his breast; upon the top of this hung his croix. His basket of little pates was covered over with a white damask napkin; and there was a look of proprete and neatness throughout, that one might have bought his pates of him, as much from ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... elegant volumes of the season, and yet purchasable for a crown. We did not expect a dull, unsatisfactory guidebook—a mere finger-post folio—nor has the author produced such a commonplace volume. Hence these "Sketches" have much of the neatness and polish, the patient investigation and research of an author who has delighted in attachment to his subject. The work contains a few of the scenes and objects of the road from London to the Wells in outline; a panoramic ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... the Nature of the Climate, and the Time of the Year in which military Operations are carried on; the Nature of the Ground on which the Army is encamped, or the Situation of the Towns or Villages in which they are cantonned; the Cleanness, Neatness, and Dryness of the Camp, and of the Tents or Houses in which the Soldiers are lodged; according as the Men are supplied with Provisions, and good Water, good Beer, Wine, or other fermented Liquors; or are well cloathed, and well furnished with Straw and Blankets; in proportion ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... at home." She would inquire if she could see the little girl from London. She invited Cecile to step into the hall; and a moment or two later showed her into a very small, neatly furnished parlor. This small room was quite in English fashion, and bore marks of extreme neatness, ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... cups inserted one within the other, each lessening till the innermost of all appeared not larger than a pigeon's egg. On looking carefully within the orifice of the last cup, a small comb, containing twelve cells, of the most exquisite neatness, might be perceived, if anything, superior in regularity to the cells in the comb of the domestic bee, one of which was at least equal to three of these. The substance that composed the cups was of ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... could divest herself of none. How, reader, shall I give thee an adequate idea of this lovely young creature? the bloom of roses and lilies might a little illustrate her complexion, or their smell her sweetness; but to comprehend her entirely, conceive youth, health, bloom, neatness, and innocence, in her bridal bed; conceive all these in their utmost perfection, and you may place the charming Fanny's picture ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... seem to have dawned on a vision unsullied by the shadows of earth. Which truth, moreover, leaves Perugino all delightful as composer and draughtsman; he has in each of these characters a sort of spacious neatness which suggests that the whole conception has been washed clean by some spiritual chemistry the last thing before reaching the canvas; after which it has been applied to that surface with a rare ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... headquarters of the company and wandered over to the Grand Pacific where the strikers held forth, must have been struck forcibly by the vast difference in the appearance of the two places upon this particular morning. At the first place all was neatness and order in spite of the deplorable condition of affairs outside; and a single man handled the almost endless flood of letters and telegrams that fell like ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... a fine red in the cheeks. The lofty pose of her head expressed an habitual sense of her own consequence given her by the admiration of the youth of the neighborhood, which was also, perhaps, the cause of the neatness of her inexpensive black dress, and of her irreproachable gloves, boots, and hat. She had been waiting to introduce herself to the lady of the castle for ten minutes in a state of nervousness that ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... on with amazement at the rapidity and neatness with which the work was executed, the builder let himself out as a mole does out of his mole-hill. He cut away the door till he had formed a gothic arch, about three feet high, and two and a half wide at the bottom. From this door in the same way two passages were constructed about twelve ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... the poet of nature or of humanity; he was the poet of "the town," and of the Court. He was greatly influenced by the neatness and polish of French verse; and, from his boyhood, his great ambition was to be "a correct poet." He worked and worked, polished and polished, until each idea had received at his hands its very neatest and most epigrammatic expression. In the art of condensed, compact, pointed, and yet harmonious ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... eight, to gallop down to a cafeteria for coffee and a sandwich at noon, to be patient with callers, and to try to develop some knowledge of spelling in that child of nature, Bessie Kraker. She walked about the office quickly, glancing proudly at its neatness. Daily, with an operator's headgear, borrowed from the telephone company, over her head, she spent half an hour talking with Mr. Wilkins, taking his dictation, receiving his cautions and suggestions, reassuring him that in his absence the Subway ran and Tammany still ruled. After an agitated ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... course I do not mean by calling these fables "paltry," to dispute their neatness, ingenuity, or moral depth; but only their want of apprehension of the extent and awfulness of the phenomena introduced. So also, in denying Homer's interest in nature, I do not mean to deny his accuracy of observation, or his power of seizing on the main points of landscape, but I deny the power ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... substituted drain-pipes set on end; the first of those ideas which have won commendation from great authorities. Drain-pipes do not encourage insects. Filled with earth, each bears a showy plant—lobelia, pyrethrum, saxifrage, or what not, with the utmost neatness, making a border; and they last eternally. But there was still much stooping, of course, whilst I became more impatient of it. One day a remedy flashed through my mind: that happy thought which ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... composed of white and colored threads. In this instance blue and white threads were woven about the pin-heads inserted at some distance outside the edges of the hole, one for each thread. The darning replaces the fabric, not only with neatness and strength, but in ornamental patterns. Squares, plaids, herringbone and lozenge patterns were done by this process in such a manner as to ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... favourite seat in the corner furthest from the window. Two or three men of widely different types were already at the table, and Marzio exchanged a friendly nod with each. One was a florid man of large proportions, dressed in the height of the fashion and with scrupulous neatness. He was a jeweller. Another, a lawyer with a keen and anxious face, wore a tightly-buttoned frock coat and a black tie. Immense starched cuffs covered his bony hands and part of his fingers. He was supping on a salad, into ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... squares in French cities, where not a blade of grass is allowed to grow. As to other symptoms of devastation and obstruction, such as deserted houses, unfenced fields, and a general aspect of nakedness and ruin, I know not how much may be due to a normal lack of neatness in the rural life of Virginia, which puts a squalid face even upon a prosperous state of things; but undoubtedly the war must have spoilt what was good, and made the bad a great deal worse. The carcasses of horses were scattered along ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Jack, and had left Tom far behind. The same talent which had induced him to mend his ragged clothes, made him do, with rapidity and neatness, everything else he undertook, while he showed a peculiar knack of being quick at understanding and executing the ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... as he lay stretched out on the sand, watching the women coming out of the water, a little foot had struck him by its neatness and daintiness. He raised his eyes and was delighted with the whole person, although in fact he could see nothing but the ankles and the head emerging from a flannel bathrobe carefully held closed. He was ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... without the relief of striking out with manly blows. An enemy guessing his case and possessing the infernal gift whose joy is to dishearten and do hurt with courteous despitefulness, may plant a poisoned arrow here and there with neatness and fine touch, while his bound victim can, with decency, neither start, nor utter brave howls, nor guard himself, but must sit still and listen, hospitably supplying smoke and drink and being careful not to make ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... door stood Hallisey, smoking revolver in hand, smiling grimly in the moonlight at the neatness of his own aim. What is the use of killing a man, when you can wing him ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... crowded with spectators, who ran to see so extraordinary and magnificent a procession. The dress of each slave was so rich, both for the stuff and the jewels, that those who were dealers in them valued each at no less than a million of money; besides the neatness and propriety of the dress, the noble air, fine shape and proportion of each slave were unparalleled; their grave walk at an equal distance from each other, the lustre of the jewels curiously set in their girdles of gold, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... his being unperceived, to throw a curious look around this room, which he found deserved more praise than Mrs. Pipelet had given to the extreme neatness of Miss Dimpleton's humble home. Nothing could be gayer or better arranged than this little room. A gray paper, with green flowers, covered the walls; the red-waxed floor shone like a mirror; a saucepan of white earthenware was on the hob, where was also arranged a small quantity of wood, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... the charm—partly a perilous charm—of French literature is, before all else, its incomparable clearness, its precision, its neatness, its point; then, added to this, its lightness of touch, its sureness of aim; its vivacity, sparkle, life; its inexhaustible gayety; its impulsion toward wit,—impulsion so strong as often to land it in mockery; the sense of release that it breathes and inspires; its freedom from ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... writing them, not allowing myself to re-copy them, never having them re-copied by others, but sending them up with their original blots and erasures,—if blots and erasures there were. It is hardly manly, I think, that a man should search after a fine neatness at the expense of so much waste labour; or that he should not be able to exact from himself the necessity of writing words in the form in which they should be read. If a copy be required, let it be ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... their habits and manner of life, are much less cleanly than the Spaniards. The hovels in which they reside exhibit none of the neatness which is observable in the habitations of even the poorest of the other race. The floors are unswept, and abound with filth and mud, and in their persons they are scarcely less vile. Inattention to cleanliness is a characteristic of the Gypsies, in ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... not inglorious under such odds; but it remains to the discredit of the British commander that his ship did no more execution, when well within the most effective range of her guns. In commenting upon this engagement, after noticing the dandy neatness of the "Peacock," James says, "Neglect to exercise the ship's company at the guns prevailed then over two thirds of the British navy; to which the Admiralty, by their sparing allowance of powder and shot for practice, were in some ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... generally was not sustained by regular labour and sober industry. Rents, however, were paid for the cottages, or the cottagers would have been turned adrift; and Mrs. Burrows had lived in hers for five or six years, and was noted in the neighbourhood for her outward neatness and attention to decency. In the summer there were always half-a-dozen large sunflowers in the patch of ground called a garden, and there was a rose-tree, and a bush of honeysuckle over the door, and an alder stump in a corner, which would still put out leaves and bear berries. When Head ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... over Clarence; his spirit was too aspiring to be bound by rules of constant neatness, and he grew jealous of Pete's increasing ability. So he proposed a partnership on new terms; namely, that the cash on hand should be devoted to the purchase of some new fonts, and that afterwards the earnings should be divided; but that as he would always ink the tablet, and as the workshop ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... accustomed to notice the sanitary appearance of camps, the neatness observable both in the streets and tents of 'Camp Saxton' was an agreeable surprise. Few camps in any department of the army are better policed, or present to the visitor such a general air of order and cleanliness as this first encampment of Colonel Higginson's regiment. As we enter one of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that there was a good deal more in some men than in others. Those who have the largest share of it may be humorists, but wit demands only a clear and nimble intellect, presence of mind, and a happy faculty of expression. This perfection of phrase, this neatness, is an essential of wit, because its effect must be instantaneous; whereas humor is often diffuse and roundabout, and its impression cumulative, like the poison of arsenic. As Galiani said of Nature that her dice were always loaded, so the wit must throw sixes ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... inhabitants. Considering its situation, on the verge of this rich plain, and many other local circumstances, it is, I suppose, a very favourable example of a German settlement in Transylvania. I had been struck by the extreme neatness of the dwellings and the generally well-to-do air of the people, but there is nothing progressive about these Saxons. I saw plainly that what their fathers did before them they do themselves, and expect their sons to follow in the same groove. There is amongst them generally a dead level of ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... hence, also, the complicated manner in which the whole or each part is ruined, even walls still standing being twisted out of shape and out of position. Actual measurements were much less efficacious here than in B; and, although I have worked with not less zeal and conscientiousness, the result in neatness and precision is certainly less satisfactory. This explanation will, I hope, induce subsequent explorers to look up ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... space in the place of the house, and had so strongly suspected that he should see the street blackened by the smoke of a conflagration, that the street and the house appeared to him miracles of neatness, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... elegies, and other occasional verses thrown off by Burns and diligently collected by his editors need little discussion. They not infrequently exhibit the less generous sides of his character, and but seldom demand rereading on account of their neatness or felicity or energy. One may ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... facing each other an observer would have remarked that Elton's visage possessed a clean-cut compactness of expression despite its rotund contour. His closely trimmed whiskers, his small, clear, penetrating eyes, and the effect of neatness conveyed by his personal appearance were so many external indications of ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... element, the right time must be chosen for each lesson, an exact arrangement observed, and the suitable apparatus, which is necessary, procured. It is in the arrangement that especially consists the educational power of the lesson. The spirit of scrupulousness, of accuracy, of neatness, is developed by the external technique, which is carefully arranged in its subordinate parts according to its content. The teacher must therefore insist upon it that work shall cease at the exact time, that the work be well ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... spurring on Francesco to finish the saloon. Mr. Gilfil had the responsibility of procuring a lady's horse, Miss Assher being a great rider. Lady Cheverel had unwonted calls to make and invitations to deliver. Mr. Bates's turf, and gravel, and flower-beds were always at such a point of neatness and finish that nothing extraordinary could be done in the garden, except a little extraordinary scolding of the under-gardener, and this addition Mr. Bates did ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... a Quaker cap encircled that mild old face, with bands of silver hair parted on a forehead marked with many lines. But the eyes were clear and sweet; winter roses bloomed in the cheeks, and an exquisite neatness pervaded the small figure, from the trim feet on the stool, to the soft shawl folded about the shoulders, as only a Quakeress can fold one. In Mrs. Sterling, piety and peace made old age lovely, and the mere presence of this tranquil ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... Terence P. Reardon was the only one offered a helping hand—and he did not despise it; neither did he forget Cappy's last instructions. With neatness and ample force he brought his monkey wrench down on the German's skull; and then to Cappy Ricks, waiting on the bridge of the Narcissus, came the ancient Irish battlecry of Faugh-a-ballagh! For the benefit of those not versed in the ways of the fighting Celt, be it known that Faugh-a-ballagh ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... threshold and peered about with her palm above her eyes. The hut was very small, but its cleanness and neatness caught the eye at once. From behind the stove a young woman bowed silently and disappeared. On a table in a corner toward the front of the room burned a lamp. The master of the hut sat at the table, tapping his fingers on its edge. He fixed his glance ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
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