"Prim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The prim and the precise, or the exact, the homogeneous, the single, the puritanic, the mathematic, the pure, the perfect. We can have illusion of this state—but only by disregarding its infinite denials. It's a drop of milk afloat in acid that's eating it. The positive swamped by the negative. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... people in the world live in them, but their collective effect is below the quality of any individual among them. Cambridge is a world of subdued tones, of excessively subtle humours, of prim conduct and free thinking; it fears the Parent, but it has no fear of God; it offers amidst surroundings that vary between disguises and antiquarian charm the inflammation of literature's purple draught; one hears there a peculiar thin scandal like no other scandal in the world—a covetous ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... has no effect on the skin—no, I really dare not." As she said this she looked as prim as a vestal. "It is the first time, do you know, that I ever used this liquid white, ah! ah! ah! What a baby I am! I am all ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... of Aberdeen Friends in 1692 a "weighty paper containing several heads of solid advyces and Counsells to friends" sent by Irish Quakers, was read. These counsels abound with amusingly prim suggestions. Among them is the warning to "take heed of being overcome with strong drink or tobacco, which many by custome are brought into bondag to the creature." The Aberdeen Friends themselves a little later were greatly concerned at the ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... The prim courtesy I made in acknowledgment of his good intention satisfied him that I had understood him fully; and changing his whole manner to one more in accordance with business, he observed after ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... dare. No nicety of conscience held me now, rather apprehension. I had not lived my one and twenty years without learning that a young woman may be free of speech and yet discreet of action, that alluring eyes are oft mismated with prim maiden conscience. 'Tis in the blood of some of them to throw down the gauntlet to a man's courage and then to trample on him for daring to ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... fatal movement for him, for his eyes received part of the libation destined for his hair. He closed them with a disagreeable sensation, after seeing Mademoiselle Reine Gobillot's fresh, chubby face, her figure prim beyond measure in a lilac-and-green plaid gingham dress, and carrying a basket on her arm, a necessary burden to maidens of a certain ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... and their determination to have their own way, quite a bevy of friends accompanied them to the railway station—Miss Martineau was there, looking prim and starched, but with red rims round her eyes, and her lips only stern because they were so firmly shut, and because she was so determined not to show any emotion—Mrs. Jenkins, Poppy's mother, was also present; she was sending up a great bouquet of wild flowers and some eggs and butter ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... high-featured matron, encased in the rigidity of her Sunday bombazine, gave a prim poke with her umbrella in the ribs of a sparrow-like little man, with a discoloured, scraggy beard, who nodded in one corner of the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... a famous restaurant in the Champs Elysees, and as it was a warm evening drove afterwards out to the Bois. The next day Adelle ventured forth to the bankers alone, and secured the first quarterly installment of the funds left there to her account by the prim Mr. Smith. With the notes and gold she hastened back to Archie, and the couple began to ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... a while she said in a prim little voice, which she adopted now and then when she wanted to ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... Aunt Winnie,—a Government boat brought weekly mail to the lighthouse on Numskull Nob. They were prim little letters, carefully margined and written, and spelled as the good Sisters had taught her in early youth. She took her pen in hand—so letters had always begun in Aunt Winnie's schooldays—to write him a few lines. ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... they can, unless it was Quiz; but, mamma, don't you think I might go to Beechcroft with Primrose? I should be so much quieter working for the examination there, and I could send my exercises to Miss Vincent; and then I should keep up Prim's lessons.' ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mimi... You see..." was all Natasha managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned against her mother and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter that even the prim visitor ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... surer work with them, that was all; though 'tis to be hoped you are now reformed; and if you are, the whole country round you, east, west, north, and south, owe great obligations to your fair reclaimer. But here is a fine prim young fellow, coming out of Norfolk, with one estate in one county, another in another, and jointures and settlements in his hand, and more wit in his head, as well as more money in his pocket, than he can tell what to do with, to visit ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... enters—a structure of the understanding rising out of the moral and spiritual nature. Then follows a section on Children, which explodes not a few educational fallacies, and propounds certain articles of faith and practice wholesome for these times, though it will probably wear a prim and quakerish aspect to the admirers of Jean Paul's famous tractate[10] on the same theme. The concluding paper in this series, entitled The Life Poetic, is the liveliest, if not the most valuable of the six: it has, however, been charged, with considerable show of justice, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... trooped in to destroy the order of that prim apartment with housekeeping under the black horse-hair sofa, "horseback riders" on the arms of the best rocking-chair, and an Indian war-dance all over the well-waxed furniture. Eph, finding the society of the peaceful sheep and cows ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... you; on the next occasion you do not forget. The Park merges into the forest; you go by winding ways till you reach the trim Dutch garden, moat-encircled, in the centre of which stands the prim old-fashioned villa, which, to the simple Dutchman, appears a palace. The concierge, an old soldier, bows low to you and introduces you to his wife—a stately, white-haired dame, who talks most languages a little, so far as relates to all things within and ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... in Mexico, in which latter country he had acted as one of Bazaine's orderly officers. At the Revolution Keratry was appointed Prefect of Police, but on October 14 he left Paris by balloon, being entrusted by Trochu and Jules Favre with a mission to Prim, in the hope that he might secure Spanish support for France. Prim and his colleagues refused to intervene, however, and Keratry then hastened to Tours, where he placed himself at the disposal of Gambetta, with whom he was on terms of close friendship. It was arranged between them that ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... clover grow Upon a bank of a clear strand, In wrimplings made by Nature's hand Though docks and brambles here and there May sometimes cheat the gardener's care, Yet this to me is Paradise, Compared with prim cut plots and nice, Where Nature has to Act resigned, Till all looks ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... was allowed to run up to the dormitory for something, unescorted by an Enfant de Marie. "Ascend, my child," said Madame Agathe, smiling sweetly, for Eileen had outstripped all her classmates that morning in geography, and Eileen, with a prim "Oui, ma mere," rose and sailed with drooping eyelashes to the other end of the schoolroom, and courtesied herself out of the door, knowing herself the focus of envy and humorously conscious of her goodness. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... words to the Skipper before they started about taking care, to which he replied rather importantly, "Of course, Ma," and about keeping his fresh suit clean; but Mrs. Trevor said nothing to Dot, because, there was no need, for she was about the most prim, neat little creature that ever lived. And, now she paced along by her brother's side, carrying two sticks with iron hooks at their ends, with which she walked in her precise measured way, as if they were wands, while ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn
... orphan if adopted; "you know it would never do to keep that little fellow with us. How old did you say he was—about fifteen? Well, fifteen or sixteen—ya—you recollect how that old priest acted last July, at the village of Scurvy? A little girl I sent out to Brother Prim this priest smelt and hunted out; and actually broke in the room door where she was confined, and took her off by physical force to a Roman Catholic orphan house. These priests are terrible fellows; and your young fancy orphan, Paul, would ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... Krayton, "the organization that calls itself the Prims. Prim for Primitive. They leave little cards and pamphlets around damning the Computer System. I saw one the other day. It had a big title splashed across it: OUR NEW TYRANT—THE COMPUTER. The article complained that some of the new labor and food regulations were the result of conscious ...
— Two Plus Two Makes Crazy • Walt Sheldon
... Church idealizes in form and color the spirit of this noble woman, without attempting portraiture. A real likeness of Miss Cooper, as she appeared in her ripest years, would recall a sweet face framed in dangling curls, a manner somewhat prim, but always gentle and placid, a figure slight and spare, with a bonnet and Paisley shawl that are all but essential to the resemblance. She would best be represented in the midst of orphan children whom she catechises for the benefit of some ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... audience?" She slowed her steps, and he slowed to keep by her side. She lifted her clear face proudly. "I tell you," she said, "the part I am to play to-night will move Europe to its core. Paris! Berlin! Vienna! Even cautious prim London! I have them under my hand; even to-morrow they will be asking an account, crying for the heads of the wrongdoers on a charger. And you ask me if ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... to meet its partner. Come on Judy," the feet were again on the rug, "we will be simply dead in the morning, and we have got to be very much alive. We do miss the Weatherbee. I don't see why we let her go. Dear, prim, prompt Weatherbee! Now we know we loved her. Her successor is too ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... was dressed that day in a maroon brocade, figured with bunches of dim pink flowers; and some of these flowers looked to me like wicked little faces. It was a mocking, silly, creature that I saw at the side of every prim bouquet, and I looked at the faded little imps, until they seemed as much ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... Money-worshippers all!... Well, nearly all! It mattered not whether you were one of the dandies or one of the hatless or Fletcherite corps that lolled on foot or on bicycles, or shot on motor-cycles, through the prim streets of the suburb—the young women would not remain in dalliance with you for the mere sake of your beautiful eyes. Because they were girls they would take all that you had and more, and give you nothing ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... vie d'une femme." They were painted rather in a remarkable style—flat, dead, pale, and formal. The first represented a "Jeune Fille," coming out of a church-door, a missal in her hand, her dress very prim, her eyes cast down, her mouth pursed up—the image of a most villanous little precocious she-hypocrite. The second, a "Mariee," with a long white veil, kneeling at a prie-dieu in her chamber, holding her hands plastered ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... compare our own age with that of Pericles, and congratulate themselves on the reawakening of the feeling of patriotism: I remember a parody on the funeral oration of Pericles by G. Freytag,[9] in which this prim and strait-laced "poet" depicted the happiness now experienced by sixty-year-old men.—All pure and simple caricature! So this is the result! And sorrow and irony and seclusion are all that remain for him who has seen more of ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... have enjoyed hugely one notable evidence of his persuasive eloquence to be seen in a Lebanon Valley town, inhabited by the quaint folk known as Pennsylvania Germans. All along the line of the railroad traversing this valley may be seen these distorted willows decorating the prim front yards, and they are not so offensive when used with other shrubs and trees. In this one instance, however, the tree agent evidently found a customer who was persuaded that if one Kilmarnock willow was a good thing to have, a dozen of them was twelve ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... suspecting that it was on their account he had thought of not marrying her. The revealed whiteness of her wrist, the intimacy of her relaxed posture, for though her mind had played into his as freely as a child in a meadow, she had been always, as regards her person, a little prim with him, had lent to their errand of house visiting a personal note in which it was absurdly apt for them to have run across Captain Dunham of the Merrythought at the door of the Consulate. Mr. Weatheral had some papers which Lessing had sent ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... for." During his breakfast he recalled the fact that Madge was uncommonly well dressed. "She hasn't in externals," he thought, "the provincial air that one might expect, although her ideas are not only provincial, but prim, obtained, no doubt, from some goody-good books that she has read in the remote region wherein she has developed so remarkably. She has some stilted ideal of womanhood which she is seeking to attain, and the more ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... run. It is not dignified. The Baroness Von Aschersleben would be shocked," said the princess with a somewhat prim air. ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... said Dennet, with prim mouth and laughing eyes. "Far be it from me! But 'tis ever the wont of the kitchen, when those come there ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... war-cripples as porters at the station, dirty streets encumbered by hawkers and their wares, strings of pitiful beggars shaking their hands and exposing mortified limbs—can this be Berlin, Berlin the prim, the orderly, the clean? Something has happened here in seven years, some sort of psychological change has been wrought in the mind of a people. Here, as in some Slav countries, there are laws and they are not kept, regulations and they are not observed. Unshaven men and ill-washed women on the ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... house next door. The yards of the houses were only separated by a green hedge, with no gate, so that Cecy spent two-thirds of her time at Dr. Carr's, and was exactly like one of the family. She was a neat, dapper, pink-and-white-girl, modest and prim in manner, with light shiny hair, which always kept smooth, and slim hands, which never looked dirty. How different from my poor Katy! Katy's hair was forever in a snarl; her gowns were always catching on nails and tearing "themselves"; and, in spite of her age and size, she was as heedless ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... handsome he looks!" said Laura, a prim and demure little miss of thirteen: "in his presence, I am sure I could never ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... Maggie? Isn't it four years? And they have been our next-door neighbors, and she has never been inside the house. Nor he either, for that matter, except once when it took fire, you know, and he came in with that funny little chemical engine tucked under his arm, and took off his hat in the same prim, polite way that he takes it off when he talks to Sibyl, and said, 'If you'll excuse me offering advice, Miss Hopkins, it is not necessary to move anything; it mars furniture very much to move it at a fire. I think, if you will allow me, I can extinguish this.' And he did, too, ...
— Different Girls • Various
... scrambling through the dripping hedges; swarming over tarry fence and slimy paling. On, on it pants—through Bishop's Wood, by tangled Churchyard Bottom, where now the railway shrieks; down sloppy lanes, bordering Muswell Hill, where now stand rows of jerry-built, prim villas. At intervals it stops an instant to dab its eyes with its dingy little rag of a handkerchief, to rearrange the bundle under its arm, its chief anxiety to keep well out of sight of chance wanderers, to dodge farmhouses, to dart across highroads when nobody is looking. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... housekeeper is in bed. At each creaking stair they pause, to listen if the noise has awakened her; then, finding all silent, creep forward again, with suppressed laughter, wondering with alarm, half feigned, half real, what the prim, methodical dame would say were she to come down and ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... time Ballarat was a prim town of many churches and strong Wesleyan proclivities, and Eureka had been justified by the concession of nearly all that the diggers fought for. One-armed Peter Lalor was a staid Parliamentarian and a stout Constitutionalist now, and the grave in which Micah ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... connection with a monstrous scandal in politics and finance. How monstrous that scandal was can never be known save by such confidential agents as myself. The honour and careers of many of the chief men in France were at stake. You have seen a group of ninepins standing, all so rigid, and prim, and unbending. Then there comes the ball from far away and pop, pop, pop—there are your ninepins on the floor. Well, imagine some of the greatest men in France as these ninepins and then this Monsieur Caratal was the ball ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... call her the Rose Queen," Barlow was communing with himself. For the oval face with its olive skin, as fair as a Kashmiri girl's, was certainly beautiful. The black hair was smoothed back from a wide low forehead, after the habit of the Mahratti women; the prim simplicity of this seeming to add to the girlish effect. A small white-and-gold turban, even with its jauntiness, seemed just the very thing to check the austere simplicity. The girl's eyes, like Ajeet's, were the eyes of some one unafraid, of one born to a caste ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... eyes and pausing. "Eleanor Grebby," she continues with a prim little air that is quite unnatural, then ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... evening, when the stage came in, Mrs. Dering found a thick, tempting letter, with the Staunton post mark, and Jean's prim, childish hand writing. There had come several short letters from the little girl, who said she would wait until she saw everything about her new home before writing a very long letter to describe it; so it was evident now that the long letter had come, and with this extra joy for herself and ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... ceiling of painted rafters, and iron gratings, like a prison's bars, shutting out the street in the front of the house. Behind these gratings the passer-by may see the Cuban family arranged in two prim rows of arm-chairs vis-a-vis, or gathered about the bars as if looking for some means of escape. Occasionally now in some of the better quarters a child of either sex, but black as night, disports itself in full view, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... my room some morning early and look out to the gate, the cobwebs must be diamond-sprinkled on the circle at the doorway, the catalpa trees must stand like stiff, prim, proper, knickerbockered footmen, on either side of the hedge, the ground must rise in a very gradual swell and culminate in the rose- covered gate. Throw it a kiss for me—(I wonder if there could be any roses left?). All ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... a square, and there is a garden in the middle, with iron railings round it, and everyone who lives in the square has a key to open the gate; but it must not be left open, or other people would get in and use the garden too. It has green grass in it and flower-beds, and it is all very prim and proper, and not at all interesting; and, worst of all, the dear dogs, Scamp and Jim, cannot go there, even when they are led by a string. The gardener would turn them out, for he imagines they would kick about in his flower-beds and rake out the seeds. ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... the pier in the moonlight, leaving me bewildered. This was a queen of cannibals; she was tattooed from hand to foot, and perhaps the greatest masterpiece of that art now extant, so that a while ago, before she was grown prim, her leg was one of the sights of Tai-o-hae; she had been passed from chief to chief; she had been fought for and taken in war; perhaps, being so great a lady, she had sat on the high place, and throned it there, alone of her sex, while the drums were going twenty strong and the priests carried ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spotlessly clean, and its aspect was prim and sober, as was indeed that of the whole city. Men in wide-brimmed hats and wide-skirted coats of sombre hue walked the streets, and talked earnestly together at the corners; whilst the women, for the most part, passed on their way with ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... was a distinction about her that neither grief nor poverty could destroy. She was so unmistakably the gentle-woman. In the simple, but dainty white cap, with its floating strings, which modestly covered her dark waving hair, the plain black dress and prim collar fastened with its mourning pin, she made a reposeful picture of the old-fashioned conception ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... sword! Have you no place for a harper-at-arms in the courts of your lord— Prim fountains, clipped trees, and trim gardens, and music, and rest? Nay, keep your sugared delights and your margents embroidered! My life is the best. In my ears is the sound of a bugle blown, and my pulses like kettle-drums beat For the hungry blind onset, the rally, the stubborn ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... all this, however, for if you have an atom of observation, one glance at his sleek, knowing-looking head and face—his prim white neckerchief, with the wooden tie into which it has been regularly folded for twenty years past, merging by imperceptible degrees into a small-plaited shirt-frill—and his comfortable-looking form encased in a well-brushed suit of black—would give you a better idea of his real ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... extravagance of green and crimson, red and white carnations, red, white, and yellow roses. The sunshine broke into colour, it laughed, it danced, it almost rioted, among the flowers; but in the prim alleys, and on the formal hedges of box, and the quaintly-clipped yews, and the old purple brick walls, where fruit trees were trellised, it lay fast, fast asleep. Without the walls, in the deep cool greenery of the park, there was a perpetual drip-drip ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... replied. "I'm sorry you didn't like the photograph. It never occurred to me when I sent it, that you mightn't think it decent. However, I told Gyp that it didn't quite suit your prim and proper notions, so she's going to send you another, that I hope will please you better. She's always being photographed; in fact, the photographers ask her if they may take her ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... detached villas and stone walls, sheltering prim gardens, right on to the west end of the esplanade, which is, in fact, a continuation of it. For the first few hundred yards Jones thought that nothing could go quicker than the houses and walls rushing past him, towards the ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... then a carriage, filled with well-to-do citizens out for an evening ride, drove slowly by. The people in the carriages always saluted Mrs. Worth and she returned their salutations with a prim little bow. But no one stopped to chat or to offer her a seat. In this, also, there was nothing strange to the woman on the porch of the big, empty house. Sometimes the people in the carriages, entertaining visiting friends, pointed to Jefferson ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... bridling toss of the head, express that she had forgotten locking it, and slip round to the kitchen; but most of the ladies made their way back at once between the roses and syringas of their grassy door-yards, which were as neat and prim as their own persons, or the best chamber in their white- walled, green-shuttered, story-and-a-half house, and as perfectly kept as the very ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... boarded roofs. Above each roof, the high pole of a pigeon-house; over each entry a little short-maned horse of wrought iron. The window-panes of faulty glass shine with all the colours of the rainbow. Jugs of flowers are painted on the shutters. Before each door, a little bench stands prim and neat; on the mounds of earth, cats are basking, their transparent ears pricked up alert; beyond the high door-sills, is the cool ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... about the "English" question: As I said, it seems to me, academical correctness, among the higher characters, will give a prim, old-fashioned tone: and you can look after this, as all my own work has been in the opposite direction in art. I have given it no thought in ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... faith should be cheerful, and trust should be glad, And our follies and sins, not our years, make us sad. Should the heart closer shut as the bonnet grows prim, And the face grow in length as the hat grows ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... PRIM, JUAN, a Spanish general; distinguished as a statesman; rose to be Minister of War, but aspiring to dictatorship, was shot by an assassin; he was the leader of the movement that overthrew Isabella in 1868 and installed Amadeo ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... had unconsciously laid aside her fan, lifted her mantilla from her head with both hands, and, drawing it around her shoulders and under her lifted chin, had crossed it over her bosom with a certain prim, automatic gesture, as if it had been the starched kerchief of some remote Puritan ancestress. With her arms still unconsciously crossed, she stooped rigidly, picked up her fan with three fingers, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... prettiest Master in Town, that no Man teaches a Jigg like him, that she has seen him rise six or seven Capers together with the greatest Ease imaginable, and that his Scholars twist themselves more ways than the Scholars of any Master in Town: besides there is Madam Prim, an Alderman's Lady, recommends a Master of her own Name, but she declares he is not of their Family, yet a very extraordinary Man in his way; for besides a very soft Air he has in Dancing, he gives them ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... in Lexington that her power reached its full development, and she even took prizes in magazines and newspapers for some stories with what her friends called "prim heroes and pasteboard heroines," classifications which she good-naturedly accepted, as she readily acknowledged that she ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... "I—prim?"—and Betty went off into a shout of girlish laughter, as she flung a pine needle at Peter, who dodged it successfully; "that I live to hear myself called what I have so often dubbed Pamela. Fie, Peter, let Miranda dance if she will; I should love to see her. It would ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... it was; and now I can admire and think of how Aunt Jenny, the prim maiden lady, gave up all her own old ways to set to and work and drudge for us all, living in a wagon and then in a tent, and smiling pleasantly at the trees we planted, and bringing us lunch where we were working away, dragging down stones for the house which progressed ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... first bright days of April came a change. He was going back to England, he told her, one Saturday afternoon, as they sat, lover-like, side by side, in the prim salon. She gave a low cry at the words, and looked at ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... thin, prim-looking, rather plain children; but Oliver was the very picture of a father's darling, a boy that any childless man would bitterly covet, any childless woman crave and yearn for, with a longing that ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... of his forsaken Quakerism hung around him; his coat was buff, his hat straight in the brim, his manner prim, and when he spoke it was in the speech of his people. His complexion was very light, hair, eyebrows and lashes, and the down on his chin—almost flaxen; his face was browned by exposure to the weather, but so well formed that Susannah found him very good to look upon, the features ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... brain; four pairs of eyes, of varied color and character, swept the wind-blown wilderness of tender green, and gazed questioningly at the high-piled thunderheads above. A small boy, with an abundance of yellow curls and white collar, almost precipitated himself into the prim lap of a lady on ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... occasions when Mary Hope, with her skirts just hitting her shoe tops in front and sagging in an ungainly fashion behind, had teetered solemnly through a "square" dance with him. Mother Douglas herself had always sat very straight and prim on a bench, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes blinking disapprovingly at the ungodly ones who let out an exultant little yip now and then when they started exuberantly through the mazes of ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... thou leave the beds Where roses and where lilies vie, To seek a prim-rose, whose pale shades Must sicken when those ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... his arm a half-empty basket of cheap wares. The man was ragged; his toes were thrusting through his shoes; it was evident that he wore no linen, and a week's growth of beard dirtily stubbled his chin,—in a word, he was a man from whom M. Chateaudoux's prim soul positively shrank. M. Chateaudoux went quickly by, fearing to be pestered for alms. The hawker, however, remained seated upon the bench, drawing idle patterns upon the gravel with a hazel stick stolen from ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... gay villains rise And reach the heights which honest men despise; Mute at the Bar and in the Senate loud, Dull 'mong the dullest, proudest of the proud, A pert prim prater of the northern race, Guilt in his heart, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... that, even before this era, when "old maids" were open to all kinds of insult, there were women brave enough to refuse to barter their souls for the animal comforts of food and shelter. Speaking about "old maids," by which term we mean now a prim, fussy person, it is well to remember that there are male "old maids" as well as female who remain so all through life; also that many "old maids" marry, and are ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... this poet had not yet tried—to Love. Let it be remembered that the thought has the cast of a strictly pessimist quietism—that the style aims, if it aims at any single thing, at the reproduction of the simpler side of classicalism, at an almost prim and quakerish elegance, a sort of childlike grace. There is, however, by no means any great austerity in the tone: on the contrary, the refrain ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... and Bunsbys, being of another class, viewed the young couple's visit in a different light. "Mr. Feilding has such nice hands and wears such lovely cravats," the younger Miss Cromartin said, and "Miss Collins is too sweet for anything." Prim Mr. Bunsby, having superior notions of life and deportment, only shook his head. He looked for more dignity, he said; but then this Byronic young man had not been invited to any of ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of their attire there was still a formal suggestion of the sect to which their father belonged, their summer frocks—differing in color, yet each of the same subdued tint—were alike in cut and fashion, and short enough to show their dainty feet in prim slippers and silken hose that matched their frocks. As the afternoon sun glanced through the leaves upon their pink cheeks, tied up in quaint hats by ribbons under their chins, they made a charming picture. At least Paul ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... essential to life. This sober Flemish interior expresses my mistress's character almost as well as her own apartment used to do. I always experienced a chill, a sense of formality, when the door was opened, and while I stood waiting for her in the prim drawing-room. Every chair was in its appointed place, large, gilt-edged, illustrated books lay upon the tables.... There was not much light in her rooms; heavy curtains clung about the windows, and tapestries covered ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... as to render an immediate move advisable. An order to this effect was issued at 2 P.M., just as I had succeeded in rendering habitable a very smart little tent, which had previously belonged to the Spanish General Prim, and had been given by him to Omer Pacha after the campaign on the Danube. At 3 P.M. six battalions paraded with eight guns, and some sappers, the whole under the command of Ali Pacha of Scutari, a General ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... open her little gate, hung crookedly in a very compact and prim spruce hedge, she stopped in amazement and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... preoccupations, how was one to bear patiently with foolish, friendly fingers, or with uncomfortable thoughts of your own, pointing you to Lucy Purcell? With the great marriage-night scene from 'Valentine' thrilling in your mind, how was it possible to think of the prim self-conceit, the pettish temper and mincing airs of that little person in ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Bercail, in a house with a steep-pitched roof. There was a little paved courtyard in front, where the rose-bushes grew and clambered up to the windows of the upper story. Behind lay a little country garden, with its box-edged borders, shut in by damp, gloomy-looking walls. The prim, gray-painted street door, with its wicket opening and bell attached, announced quite as plainly as the official scutcheon that "a ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... It's only that at the best. A nasty, prim, 'official' woman who's perched on her little local pedestal and thinks she's a queen for ever because she's ridiculous for an hour! Oh you needn't tell me, I've seen them abroad—the dreariest females—and could imitate them here. I could do one for you on the spot ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... him before we went away, and he called me by my first name as pat as you may please, and I didn't like it. And when he rolled up the towelling he crooked his little finger in such an affected, genteel, Miss Prim sort of way that it made his big fat hands look ridiculous. I don't know exactly what it was about him that irritated me so, but I couldn't bear him. And yet it seemed that he was so near being nice, that he could be awfully likable if he wasn't ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... couple who passed along the deal boards just in front of us." Mrs. Thesiger laughed and her head fell back upon her pillow. But during that movement her eyes had never left her daughter's face. "A middle-aged man with stiff gray hair, a stiff, prim face, and a figure like a ramrod. Oh, there never was anything so stiff." A noticeable bitterness began to sound in her voice and increased as she went on. "There was an old woman with him as precise and old-fashioned as himself. But you didn't see them? I never saw anything so ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... a match, and a moment or two later we saw him strolling along the cliff side, smoking a cigarette, his hands behind him, prim, carefully dressed, walking with the measured ease of a man seeking an appetite for his dinner. He was scarcely out of sight, and Lord Chelsford was on the point of descending for his note, when my heart gave a great leap. Lady Angela emerged from the plantation and crossed ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mssen die Eisenkerne der Transformatoren aus dnnen (kaum 0,5 mm dicken) Eisenblechen mit isolierenden Zwischenlagen von paraffiniertem Papier etc. hergestellt werden. Zur Magnetisierung des Eisenkerns dient die Primrbewickelung desselben, und durch die abwechselnde Magnetisierung des Eisenkerns wird die Sekundarbewickelung desselben induziert und dadurch der transformierte Wechselstrom erzeugt. Man hat es dabei ...
— German Science Reader - An Introduction to Scientific German, for Students of - Physics, Chemistry and Engineering • Charles F. Kroeh
... scandalous reports concerning a certain young man in Richmond should reach us here in the North, relating his unparalleled exploits in the giddier circles of our gay capital, I should know without the telling that it was our prim young ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... against the solemn League and Covenant of the three Kingdoms, and of vile aspersions of Treason, Rebellion, and Sedition most falsly and impudently imputed to the Estates, and most faithfull and loyall Subjects of this Kingdome: Doe therfore declare, That such as have bin prim Instruments of the publishing of that or the Proclamation and Declaration, deserve the highest censures of the Kirks, unlesse they make humble confession of their offence publickely, in such manner as is prescribed by this Assembly; And humbly Recommends ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... was becoming frighted, or, as the doctors call it, narvous. But when I was out—oh, what a change I found in the religious house! no card-playing, for it had been forbidden to the scholars, and there was now nothing going on but reading and singing; divil a merry visage to be seen, but plenty of prim airs and graces; but the case of the scholars, though bad enough, was not half so bad as mine, for they could spake to each other, whereas I could not have a word of conversation, for the ould thaif of a rector had ordered them to send me to 'Coventry,' telling them that I was a gambling ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... and she was so scared she swore like he told her. And so she was that afraid of losin' her fine yellow hair afterward, knowin' Father McNally was a man that didn't make no idle threats, that she kept prim ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... made him picture his Cousin Eleanor as a prim young person, with sharp elbows and a pinched nose and stringy hair. She would be lifeless and oppressively good-mannered, he felt certain. All the ill success of the last three days seemed to be behind his sudden determination to have none of her. But Cousin ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... sister, says: "I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits! I'm not a young lady; and if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails till I'm twenty. I hate to think I've got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a china-aster! Its bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boy's games and work ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... of a hall or large vestibule the figure of a man loomed black against dark gray. Win could see of him only that he was tall and straight and prim, like a well-trained servant, and his voice was a servant's voice as he said: "Please be a little careful, miss, not to trip. We have to keep it rather dark here, but there's plenty of light inside Let me show you ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... that he would be in that afternoon. I did so, and she was very much delighted—ran and told the other members of the household. She seated herself in the parlor and would look at her clothes and brush them and sit in as prim a position as possible. She seemed to want to look her best. Her kindergarten teacher tried to coax her to go to her room; she said, "Oh no, Mr. —— is coming to see me," and would ask impatiently when I thought he would come. She acted the same when ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... a dull, disappointing day to an evening with Felicite Delord. She was expecting him—she would be greatly disappointed. He sighed a second time, for he was far from happy. Life seemed to be one long constant worry over money matters and Myra Nell. Being a prim, orderly man, he intensely disliked searching for mislaid articles, but he began a systematic hunt; for, knowing Myra Nell's peculiar irresponsibility, he was prepared to find the missing slipper anywhere between the hammock on the front gallery and the kitchen ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... the fire came driving straight for it the fire with the wind behind. 'Which things are a parable,' he said, his ugly sunburnt face twitching curiously, his eyes quite handsome, nay, even splendid with honest scorn. He was shaking his fist towards the prim little dorp that we had left behind over the ridges. 'No doubt but ye are the people,' he said, 'ye that have made the freedom of England and the franchise of Jesus of no effect by your tradition your sacrosanct tradition. ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... approached the truth, that she almost seemed to be an old acquaintance as she came to the door as the carriage stopped. She was a tall, upright, elderly lady, with a kind, but very decided face, and a certain prim look about ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... grew more acute. Her corners grew more brutally protuberant beneath the tissue of glamour cast over them by a name. To her also Trelawny's purse was open; but long before the quarrel over "Queen Mab" his generous spirit had begun to groan under her prim banality, and to express itself in ungenerous backbitings. His final estimate he imparted to Claire when he was seventy-eight years old, and it remains for those ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... of the handkerchiefs, she shut the wardrobe and turned the key. She went first to her own small, prim room to restore stolen property to its rightful place, and then she descended towards the kitchen with the other handkerchief. Giving it to her mother, and concealing her triumph beneath a mask of wise, long-suffering ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... be young people, Monsieur Bertram," Madame Vaillant said, smiling, "and my husband and I are not of those who think that it is necessary to carry a prim face, and to attire one's self in ugly garments, as a proof of religion. Youth is the time for mirth and happiness, and nature teaches a maiden what is becoming to her; why then should we blame her for setting off the charms God has given her to their ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... were busy with their bread; Mysseri rattling tea-cups; the little kettle, with her odd old-maidish looks, sat humming away old songs about England; and two or three yards from the fire my tent stood prim and tight, with open portal, and with welcoming look, like “the old arm-chair” of our lyrist’s ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... confined to a few of the most popular of Petrarch's sonnets, and an imperfect acquaintance with Ariosto, through the medium of Mr. Hoole. As to the French poets, he dismisses them in the mass as a set of prim, precise, unnatural pretenders. The truth is, he is in a state of happy ignorance about them and all that they have done. He has never read Zaire nor Phedre. To those great German poets who have illuminated the last fifty years with a splendour to which this country ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Ladies! Until the fact was pointed out, we actually did not know that we had a girls' school as close to us as the school for boys. The garden, equally large with the other, affords no sign whatever of any provision for juvenile recreation; but is entirely laid out with prim grass-plots, gravel-walks, shrubs, and flowers, after the usual suburban style. During five months we have not once had our attention drawn to the premises by a shout or a laugh. Occasionally girls may be observed sauntering along ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... the repelling effect on the eye, and the depressing influence on the mind, of an English country town in the first stage of its existence, and in the transition state of its prosperity? I asked myself that question as I passed through the clean desolation, the neat ugliness, the prim torpor of the streets of Welmingham. And the tradesmen who stared after me from their lonely shops—the trees that drooped helpless in their arid exile of unfinished crescents and squares—the dead house-carcasses that waited in vain for the vivifying human element to animate them with the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... now there 's nought but shy finesse, And mim and prim 'bout mess and dress, That scarce a hand a hand will press Wi' ought o' feeling free; A cauldrife pride aside has laid The hodden gray, and hame-spun plaid, And a' is changed since neebors said Just, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... dignitaries of Church and State make their way beneath the overhanging houses, the lattices are thrust ajar, and you may discern, just in the boundaries of light and shade, the prim faces of the little Puritan damsels, eying the magnificent governor, and envious of the bolder curiosity of the men. Another object of almost equal interest now appears in the middle of the way. It is a man clad in a hunting- shirt and Indian stockings, ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... think otherwise. Nevertheless, it was just such men as Hurd who tended to keep the Church of the eighteenth century in its apathetic state. Hurd was a religious-minded man; but his religion was characterised by a cold, prim propriety which was not calculated to commend it to men at large. Like his friend Warburton, he could see nothing but folly and fanatical madness in the great evangelical revival which was going on around him, and which he seems to ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... only for her—not at being left alone. That part, was a relief. The poor little late Mrs Aylmer Ross had turned out a terrible mistake. She had said the wrong thing from morning till night, and, combining a prim, refined manner with a vulgar point of view, had been in every way dreadfully impossible. He had really been patience and unselfishness itself to her, but he had suffered. The fact was, he had never even liked her. That was the reason ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... the use of the word "wish" in place of "want"; I don't know why, but I always associate it with prim, prudish, highly-conventional old ladies. ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... had turned another corner. We followed him round hotfoot, and found ourselves in a prim little cul-de-sac, with villas on each side. Across the end of the street ran a high wall, obviously screening ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... planks. You can scarcely stand upright beneath the decaying ceiling. Worn boards and ragged walls, and the rusty ribs fallen from the fireplace, are all that meet your eyes, but I see a round, unsteady, waxcloth-covered table, with four books lying at equal distances on it. There are six prim chairs, two of them not to be sat upon, backed against the walls, and between the window and the fireplace a chest of drawers, with a snowy coverlet. On the drawers stands a board with coloured marbles for the game of solitaire, and I have only to open the ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... they swear, have "raked in golden barley," Like the great Fleet Street "Cock." Their jealous jeremiads, sour and snarly, PARTLET'S prim feelings shock. "Luck! Not at all: but the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... Moglaut's price was a prim, brunette soprano who wore her eyes disguised behind heavy tortoiseshell. The ill-cut garb she could afford added greatly to her staid appearance, obscuring a certain full-bodied litheness. She earned a throttled existence soloing at funerals and in the ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... object of my ambition was gained at last. I had taken a pocket-book from a worthy Quaker, and, unfortunately, was perceived by a man at a shop window, who came out, collared, and delivered me into the hands of the prim gentleman. Having first secured his property, he then walked with me and a police officer to Bow-street. My innocent face, and my tears, induced the old gentleman, who was a member of the Philanthropic Society, not only not to prefer ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... but does not waste. The rooms are each furnished forth in spare and righteous daintiness, over which nowadays is poured, in occasional instances, a pretty modern color, timidly laid on, which does not remove the prim Quakerness. Ventures in the use of decoration, however, have been crude in most cases, and the results, so far as they have been effected by the taste of the woman of the Hill, are incongruous in color, and ill-assorted in design. It is in house-furnishing ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... thoughtfully across the lawn. "I like her," she answered, "but she is funny. I suppose it is because she hasn't gone much to school. She isn't like Charlotte, or Katherine, or me. She isn't prim, and yet—it is queer, father, but she makes me feel as I do when I ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... door. He had been gardening, and was in his shirt-sleeves. At sight of his visitor he became exceedingly prim and scholastic, with a touch of defiance. He was short in stature, and, aware of this, often paused in the middle of a sentence to raise himself on his toes. He made a special study of what he called "Voice-Production," and regulated his most ordinary conversation by the laws (as he understood ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the Duke of Northumberland Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Previously the King received the address of the dissenting ministers, and then that of the Quakers, presented by William Allen; they were very prim and respectable persons; their hats were taken off by each other in the room before the Throne Room, and they did not bow, though they seemed half inclined to do so; they made a very loyal address, but without 'Majesty,' and said 'O King.' There was a question ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... with it. Fifteen minutes after his vocal organs had been thus renewed, LEOPOLD was in a condition to see things in an entirely new light, and hesitated no longer to write the following note to General PRIM: ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... thorough knowledge of housekeeping, but the rare habit of doing all things with regularity, neatness, decorum, and quietness. The writer of the above letter has also described one of these Pennsylvania schools with its prim teachers and commendable mingling of the practical and the artistic. "The first was merely a sewing school, little children and a pretty single spinster about 30, her white skirt, white short tight waistcoat, nice handkerchief pinned outside, a muslin apron and a close cap, of the most singular ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... promised to sit in the nursery till it was finished. Lucy came, with her books, to sit with me. She always follows like my shadow. After a while Mrs. Embury called. I hesitated a little about trusting the child to Lucy's care, for though her prim ways have given her the reputation of being wise beyond her years, I observe that she is apt to get into trouble which a quick-witted child would either avoid or jump out of in a twinkling. However, children are often left to much younger girls, ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... must the Disinherited Knight, whose blood has been fired by the suns of Palestine, and whose heart has been warmed in the company of the tender and beautiful Rebecca, sit down contented for life by the side of such a frigid piece of propriety as that icy, faultless, prim, niminy-piminy Rowena? Forbid it fate, forbid it poetical justice! There is a simple plan for setting matters right, and giving all parties their due, which is here submitted to the novel-reader. Ivanhoe's history MUST have had a continuation; ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fancy store, kept by two prim but pleasant spinster sisters. Besides newspapers, stationery, thread and needles, and so forth, they kept a stock of toys, candies, and pickled limes, which insured them a run of custom among the young folk, who ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... for a bridegroom, and one which many regarded at the time as ominous for the future. In truth, no two persons could have been more thoroughly mismated—Byron, the human volcano, and his wife, a prim, narrow-minded, and peevish woman. Their incompatibility was evident enough from the very first, so that when they returned from their wedding-journey, and some one asked Byron ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... door opened, and Joe entered the drawing-room. She was pale, and her great brown eyes had a serious expression in them that was unusual. There was something prim in the close dark dress she wore, and the military collar of most modern cut met severely about her throat. If Ronald had expected a very affectionate welcome he was destined to disappointment; Joe had determined not ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... out," said Andy, lingering behind her. "Since Tuesday night I've followed her through streets an' alleys, night an' day. Jest as prim an' sober as you see. Cryin' softly to herself at times. It's a sore heart-break, Sir. Waitin' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... tokens and they blooed 'em as above, While Jim-o done the hinvalid 'oom Sammy had to shove. Sez I: "No noble 'eroes what's bin fightin' for their king Should smirch theirselves by doin' this dis- 'onerable thing." But fine old gents 'n' donahs prim They stopped 'n' slid the beans to Jim. You betcher life I let 'im hear just what I though ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... eating, his self-absorption showed that. Yet after breakfast he lingered for half an hour; and during this time Miss Walker, who had noticed me no more up to now than as one of the persons at the table, came to a seat near me in the living room. She was lovely to look at, but in a way half prim. The whiteness of her forehead, the fineness of her hands, her air of clear and quick intellectuality, made her a person to inspire something of deference. And yet I felt myself captivated by her. Surely in every thinking man's heart there is a biological groping toward a woman of mind. Shadowy ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... British topsails. "While the negotiation is going on," he said, "the Dane should see our flag waving every time he lifts up his head." Time was worth more than gold; it was worth brave men's lives. The Danes were toiling day and night to prepare the defence of their capital. But prim Sir Hyde anchored, and sent up a single frigate with his ultimatum, and it was not until March 30 that the British fleet, a long line of stately vessels, came sailing up the Sound, passed Elsinore, and cast anchor fifteen miles from ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... to be very prim when I'm with you," and Patty glanced saucily from beneath her long ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... do want to sit at the head of our table, papa," said Patty; "I'd just like to see a housekeeper there! A prim, sour-faced old lady with a black silk dress and dangling ear-rings! No, I thank you. If I have my way I will keep that house myself, and when I get into any trouble, I will fly to Aunt ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... girls—"With God's help I will be a good angel to this man, who has to meet trials and temptations from which I am exempt. So far as in me lies I will make him respect all women, and help, not hinder him in his work." It isn't necessary to be prim and proper—don't think that! The Misses Prunes and Prisms, who are always preaching, weary rather than help, but when the bright, sweet-natured girl, who loves a joke, and can be the whole-hearted companion of a summer day, speaks a word of reproof, or draws back from a proposed enterprise, ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... swept outward musty and yet alluring odours swept them inward. They descended a flight of winding steps to a subterranean anteroom of stone. Dim lights winked at them from stone niches and from a cleft in the rock to one side a prim little maid in a ruched white cap took Joe's hat. There should have been a troglodyte attendant, instead. On the other side of swinging glass doors was much clatter and laughter and the indistinct voice of a woman above a rhythmic strumming and the bleat of a saxophone. The transition to this ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... which deepened the blush of the comparison. Her father had noticed the same funny thing in his effort to balance his tugging accounts: 'Now then for a look at Man and Wife': except that he made Debit stand for the portly frisky female, Credit the decorous and contracted other half, a prim gentleman of a constitutionally lean habit of body, remonstrating with her. 'You seem to forget that we are married, my dear, and must walk in step or bundle into the Bench,' Dan Merion ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in the private office of Tredgold and Son, land and estate agents, gazing through the prim wire blinds at the peaceful High Street of Binchester. Tredgold senior, who believed in work for the young, had left early. Tredgold junior, glad at an opportunity of sharing his father's views, had passed most of the work on to a clerk who had arrived ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... firm, unbending, inelastic, stark, impliable, rigorous, unyielding, inductile; strong, violent, forcible, inopposable; pertinacious, obstinate, tenacious, uncompromising, incompliant; constrained, formal, starched, affected, unnatural, precise, prim, ceremonious, prudish, punctilious; cramped, graceless, inelegant; (Slang) high, immoderate, large. Antonyms: limber, flaccid, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... a cursed shame that, when you feel a continual propensity to quarrel with a man, he should be such a prince Prim as never to give you an opportunity? And why have I this propensity?—I know not!—Confound the fellow, why does he make himself so great a favourite? Why does he not contrive to be hated a little? And then perhaps I might be induced to love him. I dislike to have friendship ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... a very long street of two-story brick houses, neat and prim, with whitened stone steps and little groups of aproned women gossiping at the doors. Halfway down, Lestrade stopped and tapped at a door, which was opened by a small servant girl. Miss Cushing was sitting in the ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... county folk; and as Sydney was young, handsome, and a good talker, he soon made himself popular amongst them. For himself, he did not find the occasion interesting, save as a means of social success. Most of the men were dull, and the women prim and proper: there were not more than two pretty girls ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant |
