"Old country" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... London; and the old country lady inside, who had put her head out of the coach-window a mile or two this side Kingston, and cried out to the driver that she was sure he must have passed it and forgotten to set her ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... America have, without the shadow of a doubt, already written back to their relatives and friends in the old country—and very frequently—about the difficulties of the antiquated Julian calendar, and these, in turn, can disseminate common sense about the change in a way which the Government, aided by the Holy Synod and the explanations of home-staying parish priests, unaided, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was pale and wrinkled; her forehead was surmounted by a toupee, whose flattened ringlets, ranged around it, deceived no one, but only emphasized, instead of concealing, the wrinkles by which it was deeply furrowed. The lady was slightly roughed, and had the appearance of an old country actress. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... dealing with wedlock were exceedingly strict in all the colonies; for there were many reckless immigrants to America, many of whom had left a bad reputation in the old country and were not building a better one in the new. It was no uncommon thing for men and women who were married in England to pose as unmarried in the colonies, and the charge of bigamy frequently appears in the court records of the period. Sometimes ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... rich, but I am in a fair way to be independent. I am very fond of work, for work's sake, and I'm thirty years of age. Been in this country now for over fourteen years. Had I had a nest egg when I started, I'd have been half a millionaire by now. But, wae's me! I left the old country with nothing belonging to me but my crook and ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... rising moon, none of the objects wore the attractiveness in this their real presentation that had ever accompanied their images in the field of his imagination when he was more than two thousand miles removed from them. The peculiar charm attaching to an old village in an old country, as seen by the eyes of an absolute foreigner, was lowered in his case by magnified expectations from infantine memories. He walked on, looking at this chimney and that old wall, till he came to the churchyard, which ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... true, but more than enough, for it had been saved up all the year expressly for the Christmas and New Year's festivities. Thus they were enabled to drink to absent friends, and bring up all the old toasts and songs that used to be so familiar long ago in the "old country." But these sturdy traders needed no stimulants. There were one or two who even scorned the wine, and stuck to water, and to their credit be it said, that they toasted and sang with ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... in for work that feebler men must leave untried; you have taken care of that for me. Such a life would be more like old Felix Merle's than a London curacy. You let your own sons emigrate, believing that the old country is getting over-populated; and I ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... out to America and do well they stay there and become citizens. My father did. Do you think he'd live in Ireland now? Not he. He talks all the time about Ireland and the hated Sassenachs—that's what he calls you English—and he urges the fellows at home in the old country to fight for their rights. But since he made his fortune and became an American citizen the devil a foot has he ever put on Irish soil. He's always going, but he hasn't go there yet. And as for living there? Oh, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... him with great expectations; and no wonder, for everywhere at that time Governments, municipalities, and wealthy magnates talked as if they were ready to assist him immediately to place the deserving, though poor, crowds of the Old Country on the magnificent tracts of land he saw everywhere unoccupied, or ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... what Germany accomplished in the eighteenth century we cannot accomplish in the nineteenth, because circumstances are so very different, chiefly because Germany is an old country and we are a young country. The circumstances are not so very different, and the difference, however great it may be estimated, is in our favor. We are a union of thirty or forty States: in the Germany ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... have strange health-giving qualities; and the water is drunk beneath the moon by old country folk for wasting and weakening complaints. Its strength and potency have no enmity to animal life, for the water-voles burrow in the banks and plunge with a splash in the stream; but it seems that no vegetable thing can grow within it, for the pool and channel are always ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... interesting touch of this old country house life is to be seen in the Corinium Museum at Cirencester—a mural painting whereon has been scratched a squared word (the only known ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... reprobation of slavery, in a little while, pretty nearly where it used to be of old. The orange has been squeezed: what use can the rind be of? It rests with the re-United States, by a just and successful treatment of the still formidable negro question,[B] to persuade unreluctant minds in the Old Country that slavery is, in very deed, the unmitigated wrong and nuisance which they used to reckon it; and those who have sympathized with the North look ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... on his bench before the shop, but mysteriously disappears when he sees us, and returns presently with a little ship he has fashioned for me that winter, all complete with spars and sails, for Jonas was a shipwright on the Severn in the old country before he came as a king's passenger to the new. Dolly and I are off directly to the backwaters of the river, where the new boat is launched with due ceremony as the Conqueror, his Majesty's latest ship-of-the-line. Jonas himself trims ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... gold, out of our hitherto drab civilization,—an Order into which I was ready and eager to be initiated,—was that of Adolf Scherer, the giant German immigrant at the head of the Boyne Iron Works. His life would easily lend itself to riotous romance. In the old country, in a valley below the castle perched on the rack above, he had begun life by tending his father's geese. What a contrast to "Steeltown" with its smells and sickening summer heat, to the shanty where Mrs. Scherer took boarders and bent over the wash-tub! She, too, was an immigrant, but ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... whether 'change of air' has so limited a meaning. Hygienically speaking, it includes, we suspect, change of habits, change of diet, change of company, change of thought. The miseries of the old country lodgings were better for the health than the comforts of the new. The very grumbling they gave rise to was a wholesome exercise. The short allowance was worth a whole pharmacopoeia. The ravenous appetite that fastened upon things common and unclean was a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... 'The old country's waked up this time,' said Dave to Ken, as he tried the sights of a new rifle. 'There's stuff ashore here for an army corps, they tell me. It's no slouch of a job to fit us all out fresh in a few hours. They'd never have done it in ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... Dutch foods are a part of their folklore. No Shrove Tuesday would be complete without raised doughnuts called "fastnachts." One of the many folk tales traces this custom back to the burnt offerings made by their old country ancestors to the goddess of spring. With the coming of Christianity the custom became associated with the Easter season and "fastnachts" are eaten on Shrove Tuesday to insure living to next Shrove Tuesday. Young dandelion greens are eaten on Maundy Thursday in order to remain well throughout ...
— Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking • Unknown
... you, if I know how, Armstrong. I ha'n't seen no two in my life, Old Country or New Country, Saints or Gentiles, as I'd do more for 'n you and your brother. I've olluz said, ef the world was chock full of Armstrongs, Paradise wouldn't pay, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob mout just as well blow out their candle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... whirled like a fairy at the whistling, and was rewarded with a little enamel padlock as a brooch, and two keys as ear-rings; indeed she professed, with evident sincerity, that she was delighted with these sports of the old country, and thought the two genies exquisite specimens of the fair, useless, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... melted away into the impenetrable darkness of the past. They were no high and haughty race of soldiers and scholars, churchmen and lawyers, or the tracing of them would have been a much easier matter. Burke would have told of them. There would have been old country houses filled with portraits, and garrulous old housekeepers learned in the traditions of the past. There would have been mouldering tombs and tarnished brasses in quiet country churches, with descriptive epitaphs, and many escutcheons. There would ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... a time. Except when I went, to McGill with money I earned on a wheat barge, I haven't stopped work since I was a boy. Now I'm getting tired and think I'll pull out and go across to look at the Old Country. My father was an Englishman, and I have some ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... school in the old country and I attended night school in New York for about four winters; that's all the ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... their huge, cross-cut saws, and went to sawing the old gable roof clean off. Off it went, with all its birds' nests, and dormer windows. It was replaced with a modern roof, more fit for a railway wood-house than an old country gentleman's abode. This operation—razeeing the structure some fifteen feet—was, in effect upon the chimney, something like the falling of the great spring tides. It left uncommon low water all about the chimney—to abate which appearance, the same person now proceeds to slice fifteen ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... sort of pressed me to take a pathway that lay through the trees. It was clear to me they didn't take me for a British citizen, whatever else they thought of me, and for my own part I was never less anxious to own up to the old country. ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... native of the old country, however, and he entered but little into the colonial jealousies. He had lived from boyhood, and had married in New York, and was not apt to betray any of the overweening notions of superiority that we sometimes encountered in native-born Englishmen, though I can remember instances in which ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... dull, meek droning of a drab-coat seer; Leaving the sport of Presidents and Kings, Where men for dice each titled gambler flings, To meet alternate on the Seine and Thames, For tea and gossip, like old country dames No! let the cravens plead the weakling's cant, Let Cobden cipher, and let Vincent rant, Let Sturge preach peace to democratic throngs, And Burritt, stammering through his hundred tongues, Repeat, in all, his ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... shoulders. Wilson, the overseer, was in the army, and Hosea had gradually risen to take his place. "We must keep things up," the girl had insisted, "don't let us go to rack and ruin—papa would have hated it so," and, with the negro's aid, she had struggled to keep up the common tenor of the old country life. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... colony, the mores of a colony are heterogeneous and are always in flux. That is because the colonists are all the time learning to live in a new country and have no traditions to guide them, the traditions of the old country being a hindrance. Any one bred in a new country, if he goes to an old country, feels the "conservatism" in its mores. He thinks the people stiff, set in their ways, stupid, and unwilling to learn. They think him raw, brusque, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... perhaps be stretching truth too far to say that you are trying to undo some of Columbus's work, and to stop up the hole he made in Ireland when he found a channel into which so much of what was best in the Old Country war destined to flow; for you and he have each your places in the great circle of Time and Compensation, and though you may seem to oppose one another across the centuries you are really answering the same call and working in the same vineyard. For we all set out to discover new worlds; and they ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... home, sir. I've got six or seven little things—bits of hair, and a silver ring, and a lucky shilling, and such-like, along with messages to take back with me for the poor fellows' mothers and sisters and gals; and please goodness I ever get back to the old country from this blessed bean-feast we're having, I'm going to take those messages and things to them they're for, even if ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... an opportunity of hearing any expression of the public mind. Crowds at any public gathering have always given cheers for Canada. The great gathering of to-day is a renewed symptom of the same favourable augury, for a good augury I hold it to be, that men in the old country are ready to call "Hurrah for Canada!" On the other side of the ocean they are as ready to call "Hurrah for the old country!" and these cries are no mere words of the lips, but come from the heart of great peoples. So long as the feelings ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... episodes redounding to the glory of the young republic, surely England has glory enough to forgive him, for the sake of his excellence, the patriotic bias at her expense. The interest of his tales is convincing and unflagging; and there runs through his work a steady vein of friendliness for the old country which the succeeding generations of his compatriots have replaced by a less ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... like der old country. Mein gran'mutter used to be one of der mos' famous yodlers. When I was leedle, I haf seen dem joost ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... silent for a moment or two. He trusted his comrade, but suspected that there was something in his past history that he meant to hide. For one thing, Featherstone never spoke about his life in the Old Country, and Foster was surprised when he stated his intention of spending a few months there. It looked as if Daly knew his secret and had used his knowledge to ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... poor Columbus. He elaborated a deep plan to find a new route to an old country. Circumstance revised his plan for him, and he found a new WORLD. And HE gets the credit of it to this day. He hadn't anything ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... (October 31) the children and their cousins were invited to a beautiful old country place five miles across the ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... abundance and cheapness of provisions, for instance, and the ease with which fruits and other luxuries—to say nothing of books and newspapers—were procurable by the working-classes, presented, at that time at least, a striking contrast to the state of things in the 'old country.' I liked, too, at first, the sort of free-and-easy intercourse of the working-men with those, conventionally speaking, above them. Jack considered himself as good as his master, though not without occasional mortifications at not finding the sentiment reciprocated. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... another immigrant to our hospitable shores, this vigorous invader shows a tendency to outstrip native blossoms in life's race. Having won in the struggle for survival in the old country, where the contest has been most fiercely waged for centuries, it finds life here easy, enjoyable. What are its methods for insuring an abundance of fertile seed? We see that the tube of the flower is so nearly closed by the stamens and five-styled pistil as to be adapted ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... two companions returned to New Netherland before long. He, however, remained in the old country until the summer of 1653, occupied with the business of his mission, with legal studies, taking the degree of doctor of laws at he University of Leyden, and with the preparation of his Beschryvinge van Nieus-Nederlant. The ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... seemed to be setting in a bed of molten gold. Our conversation was animated and incessant. In the old and curious church of Guibray, the Count shewed us his family pew with the care and particularity of an old country squire. Meanwhile Mr. Lewis was making a hasty copy of one of the very singular ornaments—representing Christ bearing his cross—which was suspended against the walls of the altar of a side chapel. You have it here. It is frightfully barbarous, and characteristic of the capricious style ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... home! Then he could hear bands playing—playing the "Star-Spangled Banner"—and the soldiers cheering and cheering again. Suddenly there was quiet; the bands were playing hymns—old, old hymns that the soldier had heard with bowed head at his mother's knee, or in some little old country church at home—and what hardships, privations, wounds, death of comrades had rarely done, those old hymns did now—they brought tears. Then some thoughtful soldier pulled a box of hardtack across the trenches and the little Spanish soldiers fell upon it like schoolboys ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... of my heart, for all the trouble that I gave you with my Berrichon Despruneaux. They are friends from the old country, a whole adorable family of fine people, fathers, children, wives, nephews, all in the close circle at Nohant. He must have been MOVED at seeing you. He looked forward to it, all personal interest aside. And I who am ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... cannot fail to be delighted with a young gentleman who can give them all the news of the old country," he answered, leading the ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the man; but, as she had said, he had been right not to come and live on her wages, and he certainly was right not to say a word as to their loss, when neither of them had wages on which to live. It would have suited in the United States, but she knew that it would not suit here in the old country, and therefore when the letter was written she was sitting worn-out, jaded and unhappy in her ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... according to Minsheu (Dict. 1617), is "an old word used by old country-women, by manner of swearing by my halidome; of the Saxon word haligdome, ex halig, sanctum, and dome, dominium aut judicium." Shakespeare puts it into the mouth of the host in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... of the United States Government believe at least three millions of Slovaks, Greeks, etc., will leave America after the war, taking with them the money they have earned, for investment in new opportunities in the Old Country. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... disappointment at Xmas. Further, the weather on the day itself was certainly about the worst of the whole winter; blowing hard and raining incessantly, it was scarcely with a feeling of contentment that the men "turned in" that night—all doubtless thinking of brighter surroundings in the old country! ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... birth exhibits an astonishing lack of tact as well as lack of judgment. The former Secretary of State seems to be going on the presumption, like many other native Americans not actuated by a feeling of prejudice or race hatred, that German-Americans have left their hearts behind them in the old country and are, therefore, unable to feel as true American citizens should feel toward their country and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... precipitous woods in the valley. Time, taking advantage of neglect, had made a wilderness of the gardens, the lawns, and the orchards, which, less than a century ago, surrounded with quiet beauty this home of a typical old country squire. A few garden flowers still lingered near the porch; but the once well tended borders were overgrown with grass, or occupied with wild blossoms brought from the fields by the hundred agents employed by Nature to scatter seed. Owls inhabited the outhouses, and ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... guinea-pig variety at all," Thorpe asserted, warmly. "He's really a splendid fellow—with his little oddities, like the rest of us, of course, but a decent chap all through. Place? I should think he HAD got a place! It's one of the swellest old country-houses you ever saw—older than hell, you know—and it's kept up as if they had fifty thousand a year. Do you happen to know what his real income is supposed ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... its brethren. Buds and blossoms of America are sprouting forth all over the Old World, and we gather in the fruit. They do not find themselves at home there, but they know where their home is. The old country feels them like thorns in her old flesh, and is gladly rid of them; but such prickings are the only wholesome and hopeful symptoms she presents; if they ceased to trouble her, she would be dead indeed. She has an uneasy experience before her, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... English gentleman's seat when "nobody is at the hall." The companions are an old decayed gentlewoman housekeeper—a far away cousin of the squire's—and a young French child, Jane's pupil, Mr. Rochester's ward and reputed daughter. There is a pleasing monotony in the summer solitude of the old country house, with its comfort, respectability, and dulness, which Jane paints to the life; but there is one circumstance which varies the sameness and casts a mysterious feeling over the scene. A strange laugh is heard from time to time in a distant part of the house—a laugh ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... and she's found peace an' happiness at last. Want to know her story? Well, I'll tell it to you, for it's me that can, havin' known her since we was wee scraps of babies playin' on the floor together back there in the old country. Yes, indeed, we were babies together, we grew up together, an' we come out here to America on the same ship. Dear, dear, how long ago that was, an' it don't seem much ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... be interested to find out whether in this really old country they talk about "ages eternal" as freely as they do in Japan; the authentic history of the latter begins about 500 A.D., their mythical history 500 B.C., but still it is a country which has endured during myriads of ages. In spite of the fact that they ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... Conquest, and boasting since its foundation a succession of royal inmates, while at its foot lies a region of unequalled fertility and beauty-full of happy homes, and loving, loyal hearts—a miniature of the old country and its inhabitants. What though the smiling landscape may he darkened by a passing cloud!—what though a momentary gloom may gather round the august brow of the proud pile!—the cloud will speedily vanish, the gloom disperse, and the bright and sunny scene look yet brighter and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Blades! smack your niece's shoulders: she deserves it, begad! she does. Come in, Jinks, present me to the Perkinses.—Hullo! here's an old country acquaintance—Lady Bacon, as I live! with all the piglings; she never goes out without the whole litter. (Exeunt ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Chief Justice, Lord Coleridge visited the United States, he was continually pestered by interviewers, and one of them failing to draw him, began to disparage the old country in its physical features and its men. Lord Coleridge bore it all in good part; finally the interviewer said, "I am told, my lord, you think a great deal of your great fire of London. Well, I guess, that the conflagration we had in the little village of Chicago ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... distinguished and rising young light of science—the ordinary glib commonplaces of obituary notices which a practised journalist knows so well how to adapt almost mechanically to the passing event of the moment; but they seemed to afford the shattered old country grocer an amount of consolation and solemn relief that no mere spoken condolences could ever possibly have carried with them. 'See what a wonderful lot they thought of our boy up in London, Mr. Le Breton,' he said, looking up from the paper tearfully, and wiping his big gold spectacles, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... with a motherly manageress, who would insist on kissing the girls, although happily she stopped short at that, leaving the boys with a mere handshake. She was English herself, so she said, and just ached for a sight of the old country, which made her welcome so warmly everyone who came ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... spirits. Every bit of the day was a keen pleasure to them—the train journey, the walk from the station to the old country house belonging to Mr. Allonby's friend, and then the adjournment to the artificial lake in the park, where a large number of skaters were assembled. There were other children there who at once made friends ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... into wooden cases made expressly for their accommodation. They were at once taken to the warm interior of the horticultural building, and I saw them spending their Sabbath in some degree of comfort in the tepid water of the basin, without even guessing that in the old country ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... fragrant beverage just set before him. "They make it better here than at the Gezireh Palace. Well, Denzil, my boy, when you get into Cairo, give my love to Helen and tell her we'll all go home to the old country together; I, myself, have got quite enough out of Egypt this time to satisfy my fondness for new experiences. And let me assure you, my good fellow, that your proposed duel with Gervase will ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... is, to let a domineering old reprobate send her poor lad away, just because he did not like to see him around, and him his own child! And even you, Mr. Tilton, who have been out here living with civilized people for three years, have enough of the old country way in you yet to say that a true wife should consent to this to please the old tyrant! Faith, I don't blame the Suffragettes for smashing windows, and if I wasn't so busy feeding hungry men, I believe I would go over and give them a hand, only I would ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... reservation on the Mississippi above the Oneota; one of their villages in 1832 was at Prairie la Grosse. They suffered several visitations of smallpox; the third, which occurred in 1836, carried off more than a quarter of the tribe. A part of the people long remained widely distributed over their old country east of the Mississippi and along that river in Iowa and Minnesota; in 1840 most of the tribe removed to the neutral ground in the then territory of Iowa; in 1846 they surrendered their reservation for another above the Minnesota, and ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... furnished like a lord's, and only Bridget and Biddy and Polly to do the work of cook, scullery-maid, butler, footman, laundress, nursery-maid, house-maid, and lady's maid. Such is the array that in the Old Country would be deemed necessary to take care of an establishment got up like hers. Everything in it is too fine,—not too fine to be pretty, not in bad taste in itself, but too fine for the situation, too fine for comfort ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... not see the particular clock of the poem, which stood upon another staircase, in another quaint old mansion,—although the verse belongs truly to all old clocks in all old country-seats, just as the 'Village Blacksmith' and his smithy are not alone the stalwart man and dingy shop under the 'spreading chestnut-tree' which the Professor daily passes on his way to his college duties, but belong wherever a smithy stands. Through ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... they seemed to me to be what the author had made them—i.e., stagey. Miss DOLORES DRUMMOND, as Mrs. Veale, is very good, and Miss MARIE LINDEN, except in one stagey bit in the Third Act, plays with great care and judgment. The interior of the old country church (Act III.) is a masterpiece of scenic art and stage arrangement,—a perfect picture by Mr. W. HARFORD. I wish I could say the same of the denoument of the interrupted marriage, which strongly reminded me of a pictorial heading to some ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... smile, Madame de Mussidan rose and bowed gracefully to the Duchess de Champdoce, making a series of half-jesting apologies for her intrusion. She had been utterly unable, she said, to resist the pleasure she should experience in seeing an old country neighbor, the more so as they were now separated by so short a distance. She had, therefore, disregarded all the rules of etiquette so that they might have a cozy chat about Poitiers, Bevron, Champdoce, and all the country ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... not among the earliest emigrants from the old country. He had remained in England during the first years of the civil war, in which he had borne some share as a cornet of dragoons, under Cromwell. But when the ambitious designs of his leader began to develop themselves, he quitted ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... averse to go near, was so beautifully and nicely arranged that it had none of its usual repulsiveness; and the sight of the whole place, and the quaint-looking rustic people, was so pleasantly envious. We stopped to gossip with a bewitching old country dame, whose market stock might have sat, with her in the middle of it, for its picture; the veal and poultry so white and delicate-looking, the bacon like striped pink and white ribbons, the butter ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... at the White Farm; father and mother had been taken from there to the old country churchyard, and "Martha, aged 17," poor, pretty, willful Martha, the greatest pride and greatest sorrow of the family, was lying under the apple ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... things Mary has brought from Nome is her little hand sewing machine, which is an old-fashioned thing, to be fastened to a table and the wheel turned by hand. It was brought from the old country, and looks quite well worn, but is still useful and far better than no machine, if it does have a chain stitch which is liable to rip easily. We have a lot of amusement with this machine, for when Alma is sewing and one of the boys happens to be idle about her she makes him turn the ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... as I pass on to that "terrible thoroughbred" letter H (I have heard men speak of others who ignored it in conversation as though they must be capable of any crime), of a stout old lady in the manufacturing districts, whose husband had been very successful in business, and had purchased a fine old country residence from some dilapidated squire. She was complaining to a visitor of the difficulty which she had in walking upon the polished floors. "First I sluther," she said, "and then I hutch; and then I sluther, and then I hutch; and the more I ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... such as May Day, were kept up. The most frequent and fashionable amusements of that time were balls and parties. We hear of the gentlemen and dames going to "routs" in their sedan chairs, much as they did in the old country: arriving at eight—they kept better hours than our modern fashionable people—they would dance the staid and stately minuet and the gayer contra-dance, to the music mainly of fiddles, till midnight, and then separate, horrified at the lateness of ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... by the most worthy descendants of the most illustrious nobles. In America, where public distinction is within the reach of all, it is difficult to conceive of the restraints which beset the humble aspirant in the old country. But notwithstanding such obstacles, the examples of such men as Eldon, Stowell, Truro, St. Leonards, Ashburton, Canning, and Campbell exhibit the gratifying fact, that hereditary power or wealth can not bide the dignity of great genius; that greatness will thrust aside the lesser ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... after awhile, and the Pole's face lighted almost into rapture at sight of her. He knew what she had done for him, and he felt that no ikon of his hut in the old country had ever seemed more beautiful, or more worthy of his honor. He would have knelt to her readily enough, but that his few months in America had taught him that such demonstrations were not admissible on democratic ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... success of the rather pretentious celebration he had planned. His annoyance was correspondingly keen at the disturbing appearance, in the afternoon reception before the new portrait, of the late professor's aunt, "an entirely insignificant old country woman," he hastily assured M. Falleres after she had been half forced, half persuaded to retire, "whose criticisms were as negligible as ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... in a sort of thick flannel blouse and a singular quantity of brief petticoats. Her head was bare, and she looked far better than in her Sunday clothes. If the morning were fine she sat out in the sun and baited the lines, all the while lilting old country songs in her guttural dialect. In the evening she would spend some time chatting with other lasses in the Row; but she never had a very long spell of that pastime, for she had to be at work winter and summer by about five or six in the morning. The fisher-folk ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... ancient Gaul. Two colonies on the southern shore of the Mediterranean were Cyrene, west of Egypt, and Naucratis, in the Delta of the Nile. From this time many Greek travelers visited Egypt to see the wonders of that strange old country. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... the state of feeling in England with regard to the war, he assured me that it had all along given him the greatest pleasure to feel that the Southern cause had the sympathies of so many in the 'old country,' to which he looked as a second home; but, in answer to my questions, he replied that he had never expected us to give them material aid, and added that he thought all governments were right in studying only the interests of their own people and in not going to war for an ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... of the old country games in which the players all have to do the same things. They first join hands and ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... The old country folk hold that the man or beast who hears the devilish music of the Wish Hounds will surely die within the year, and that any unhappy mortal that stands in the way of the hunt will be pursued until dawn, and if caught will inevitably lose his soul; for the dark huntsman, they say, is the ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... about beating the Germans, who strut about with their patent-leather boots and fine clothes, and try to make out that they are gentlemen, but who won't face the music; that's what sickens me. Who are we fighting for, I should like to know? We are fighting for them, and for our women, and for the old country. They think they can stop at home and criticise, and then when we have done the work, share the benefits. Great God!"—and here the sergeant indulged in some unprintable language—"I would like to get ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... spring of the year 1780 two ladies attired in morning neglige were sitting together in the parlor of a fine old country mansion in lower South Carolina. The remains of two or three huge hickory logs were smouldering on the capacious hearth, for the cool air of the early morning made fires still comfortable, though as the day wore on and the southern sun gathered power the small-paned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... he flung himself down upon the couch, which, as in many draughty old country houses, was constructed with a hood, being in fact a legitimate development from the settle. He tried to read as he reclined, but having sat up till three o'clock that morning, the book slipped from his ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... companies visited Victoria, except at irregular intervals, so that theatre-goers had to rely, to a great extent, on the productions of the Victoria Amateur Dramatic Club to fill up the intervals. At this date there were many well-educated and professional men here who had come from the Old Country to get rich in a short time; and, thinking the mines were close to this city, many of these joined the club. Charles Clarke was a prominent member, also W. M. Anderson, C. B. Tenniel, together with many of our young business men, viz., Arthur ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... great soldier drove up with his splendid coach and pair. His young wife sat beside him. He had little time for talk. He was on his way to breakfast. Jack presented his compliments and the good tidings which he had brought from the Old Country. Arnold listened as if he were hearing the price of codfish ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... spell of those old thrilling times was strong upon him again, "with tears in his eyes—and I'll tell you there was no braver man in all the American army than Arnold Dempsey; he was good for two Boches any day —that it would be the happiest moment of his life when he got back to the old country and announced to his proud and admiring pater that he had come home to turn the tables; that Jimmy and he were going to make the old fellow take a rest and do the work themselves for a change. And he asked me, in case anything did happen ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... that has estate to use it in keeping house, or followers, for those wayes he cries against, for Eating sins, dull Surfeits, cramming of Serving-men, mustering of Beggars, maintaining Hospitals for Kites, and Curs, grounding their fat faiths upon old Country proverbs, God bless the Founders; these he would have ventured into more manly uses, Wit, and carriage, and never thinks of state, or means, the ground-works: holding it monstrous, men should feed their bodies, ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... of Congregationalism so successfully put into practice soon afterwards in the wilderness of New England, and to which so much of American freedom political as well as religious is due, was not easy to adopt in an old country like the Netherlands. Splendid churches and cathedrals, the legal possession of which would be contended for by rival sects, could scarcely be replaced by temporary structures of lath and plaster, or by humble back parlours of mechanics' shops. There were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... frum the old country only the day before; so I went to the bank and they writ out one of them pieces of paper which is called a check, and I signed it—with my mark; and they give me the money I wanted—an even two hundred dollars. And part of that there money ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the days spent by me at Brentwood, a fine old country seat near Washington, and picture to my mind those forms of "life and light" arrayed in the charms of simplicity which were there portrayed. The far West had not then poured its coffers into the National Capital, and the mining element of California was then unknown. It is true that Washington, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... but to the natives. If we desire to enlighten a savage race, we could scarcely devise a worse plan than that of sending amongst them the refuse of a civilized country, who carry into the new community, the worst vices and crimes of an old country. These soldiers consider themselves to be exiled for life from their native land, and as they entertain no hope whatever, under such forlorn circumstances, of redeeming their character, they abandon themselves ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... used to vote—the Republican ticket. We ain't nothin' now, we can't vote. I never had any trouble 'bout votin' here but in the old country we had some trouble. The Democrats tried to keep us from votin'. Had to have the United States soldiers to open the way. That was when ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... paste ye wid 'em. Reason wid 'em, and they'll insult ye. Refine 'em, Jawn! Ye're crazy. Luk at thot felly down there under the hatch. He's here on his weddin' trip, but he lift his wife behind in the old country." ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... successor of Ashurbanipal made the mistake that cost him his life and his empire. He appointed Nabopolassar, a Chaldean of ancient lineage and of enthusiastic patriotism for his age-old country. Nabopolassar immediately entered into an alliance with Cyaxerxes that had for its purpose the overthrow of Nineveh and the establishment of Babylonia ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... there any good fortune like what ye've just told me? Sure I'm ten times the happier man since I came into this room." He put his arm around her and sitting beside her drew her closely to him. "Listen, dear," he said, "listen. We'll go back to the old country. Our child shall be born where we first met. There'll be no danger. No one shall harm us with that little life trembling in the balance—the little precious life. If it's a girl-child she'll be the mother of her people; and if it be a man-child he shall grow up to carry on his father's ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... lot of curious and interesting things that Austin sees all round him every day; and when I was a child at home in the old country I used to play and pretend to myself that I saw things of the same kind—that the rooms were full of orange and nutmeg trees, and the cold town gardens outside the windows were alive with parrots and with lions. What do the little girls in the cellar think that Austin does? ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I wonder where she learnt all those profane songs? From some liberal folk in the old country, no doubt; they ill become a puritan. If she were a little slower in her speech, what an angel she would be! As it is, she is a very ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... little curious that you haven't heard. Anyway, somebody is bound to tell you. Waynefleet had to get out of the Old Country. Some trouble about trust-money. He came out to Victoria and set up in the land agency business, but it was his misfortune that he couldn't keep out of politics. There are folks like that. When they can't handle their own affairs, they're anxious to manage those of the ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... the family went to the fine old country-house just out of town, and here Christie and her charge led a freer, happier life. Walking and driving, boating and gardening, with pleasant days on the wide terrace, where Helen swung idly in her hammock, ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... in Concord, not far from Boston,—a man of great wisdom and goodness, who had been very sad to see the noble Connecticut school-master so shabbily treated in Boston,—and he invited his friend to come and live in Concord. So Louisa went to that old country town with her father and mother when she was eight years old, and lived with them in a little cottage, where her father worked in the garden, or cut wood in the forest, while her mother kept the house and did the work of the cottage, aided by her three ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... that the Mother Country derives from the possession of her Colonial Empire; including, as they do, a home for her surplus children, a vast and varied market for her productions, and a wealth of old-fashioned loyalty and deep attachment to the Old Country—"home," as it is always called—which, even if it is out of date, might prove useful on emergency. It seems therefore, almost a pity that some Right Honourable Gentlemen and their followers should adopt the tone they ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... left that morning, Mr. Lestaire, he was painting, too? Well, Mr. Graham, I always good girl in old country and here. I go to confession. I always keep good. Mr. Lestaire, he kiss me, say bad tings to me. He scare me. I afraid if I stay I no be good girl. So I run queeck away. I never dare come bade. That Mr. Lestaire he ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison |
