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More "Buttonhole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for thousands of years has longed to witness, still remains a theory, and Adrian Brownwell traipsed up and down the earth, in his lavender gloves, his long coat and mouse-coloured trousers, his high hat, with his twirling cane, and the everlasting red carnation in his buttonhole. His absence made it necessary for Molly Brownwell to leave the sacred precincts of the home many and many a Saturday afternoon, to go over the books at the Banner office, make out bills, take them out, and collect the money due upon them and pay off the printers ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... foreground was a dead Confederate boy, lying in the angle of a worm fence. His uniform was worn and ragged, mud-stained as well as blood-stained; the cap which had fallen from his head was a tatter, and the torn shoes were ready to drop from his stiffening feet; but in a buttonhole of his tunic was stuck the inevitable toothbrush, which continued even to the end of the war to be the distinguishing mark of gentle nurture,—the souvenir that the Confederate so often received from fair sympathizers in border towns. I am not a realist, but I would not exchange that ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... deputation had departed, and Hans found himself alone, he dressed, put a flower in his buttonhole, and walked over to the Counselor's house; for now the moment had arrived when ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... in, my dear, you know y' way, I guess," sighed Mrs. Bowker, passing a small, worn hand across her faded eyes. "There's five dozen more collar-bands I must stitch an' buttonhole t'night—so go your ways, my dear." So saying, Mrs. Bowker went back to her labour, which was very hard labour indeed, while Hermione led the way into a tiny room, where, on a small, neat truckle-bed covered by a faded quilt, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... that bored and commiserating expression with which city men are apt to regard the shallow skyline of a small town. He was of medium height and carefully groomed from his well-tailored clothes to the carnation in his buttonhole and manicured polish of his nails. His face, clean-shaven save for a close-cropped and sandy mustache, held a touch of the florid and his figure inclined to stoutness. At the livery stable where he called for a buggy, after learning that no taxis were to be had, he gave ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... child replied; "I'm going to try to sell some. Will you have one?—as a present, I mean." Mr. Codlin stuck it in his buttonhole with an air of ineffable complacency, and laid ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... drew him demurely about the garden. Presently she stopped with a little start of hypocritical admiration; at their feet shone a marigold. Susan culled the gaudy flower and placed it affectionately in George's buttonhole. He received it proudly, and shaking hands with her, for it was time to part, turned away slowly. She let him take a step or two, then called him back. "He was really going off with that nasty thing." She took it out of his buttonhole, rubbed it against his nose with well-feigned ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the visitor and swept him with an appreciative glance, her eye lingering a second on the oleander in his buttonhole. ...
— Jerry Junior • Jean Webster
... of the Caucasian become as oil and water in the mingling, Mulberry Street, bounded by sixteen languages, runs its intact Latin length of pushcarts, clotheslines, naked babies, drying vermicelli; black-eyed women in rhinestone combs and perennially big with child; whole families of buttonhole-makers, who first saw the blue-and-gold light of Sorrento, bent at home work round a single gas flare; pomaded barbers of a thousand Neapolitan amours. And then, just as suddenly, almost without osmosis and by the mere stepping ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... shrubs which his experienced eye recognised as having once borne these unusual blossoms. One or two blooms still hung to the bushes and the detective, who was a great lover of flowers, picked them and put them in his buttonhole. While he did this, his keen eyes were darting about the place taking in all the details. This vacant lot had evidently been used as an unlicensed dumping ground for some time, for all sorts of odds and ends, old boots, bits of stuff, silk and rags, broken ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... quarters. I could not sit down on a bench by myself or set my foot any place without being assailed by insignificant accidents, miserable details, that forced their way into my imagination and scattered my powers to all the four winds. A dog that dashed by me, a yellow rose in a man's buttonhole, had the power to set my thoughts vibrating and occupy me for a ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... beginning.] The Professors, being busy and important men, lecture from their particular standpoints, and having lectured, bolt; there is no provision whatever for the intelligent discussion of knotty points, and the only way to get it is to buttonhole a demonstrator and induce him to neglect his task of supervising prescribed "practical" work in favour of educational talk. Let us, therefore, in view of this state of affairs, deal with the general question how a branch of thought and knowledge may be most beneficially studied under modern conditions, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... shade as they sat there in the eye of the westering sun. The man (aged about one-and-twenty) wore the uncomfortable Sunday-best of a mechanic, with a shrivelled, but still enormous, bunch of Sweet-William in his buttonhole. The girl was dressed in a bright green gown and a white bonnet. Both were flushed and perspiring, and I still think they must have ordered hot cocoa in haste, and were repenting it at leisure. They lifted their eyes and blushed ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to be alone in the National Gallery in the dead of the night with a tiny electric lamp in one's buttonhole and a sponge of alcohol and turpentine in one's hand. While he worked the little Madonna's eyes rested upon him and it could hardly have been mere fancy that made him believe they were full of gratitude and trust. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... his rooms about one o'clock the next morning, with his hat a little on the back of his head, and wearing, very much against his prejudice, a white rose in his buttonhole. Brightman, who was awaiting him there, looked up eagerly at ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his buttonhole, for he had been a major of dragoons in the time of the Emperor. M. de Nucingen, who had been a contractor before he became a banker, had had reason in those days to know the honorable disposition of his cashier, who ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... remembering now one circumstance," he said, smiling. "When, five years ago, Kosorotov received the order of St. Anna of the second grade, and went to thank His Excellency, His Excellency expressed himself as follows: 'So now you have three Annas: one in your buttonhole and two on your neck.' And it must be explained that at that time Kosorotov's wife, a quarrelsome and frivolous person, had just returned to him, and that her name was Anna. I trust that when I receive the Anna of the second grade His Excellency ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... said ungratefully. He fussed at the carnation in his buttonhole, picked up his doggy walking stick, glanced over his carefully pressed trousers and light coloured spats, strolled across to the mirror, and leisurely drew on his ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... just set free when the busy-looking man came back along with a tall red-nosed fellow. I noticed his red nose because it was the same colour as a book he held, whose leather cover was like a bad strawberry. He had a little ink-bottle hanging at his buttonhole and a pen in his mouth, and was followed by quite a crowd ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... which the wedding takes place. If it is in the evening, the conventional evening dress is imperative. Black suit, dress coat, low-cut waistcoat, white tie, white or pale pearl-colored gloves, thin patent leather shoes and possibly a white flower in the buttonhole, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... unbiased opinion into a man's house each day for less than he now pays for gas. Just before election you could go into your private office, throw in a large dose of campaign whisky, light a campaign cigar, fasten your buttonhole to the wall by an elastic band, so that there would be a gentle pull on it, and turn the electricity on your mechanical thought supply. It would save time and money, and the result would be the same as it is now. This would only be the beginning, of course, and after a while every qualified voter ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... would bully them, and knock them about, just as his master did to him; and make them carry home the soot sacks, while he rode before them on his donkey, with a pipe in his mouth and a flower in his buttonhole, like a king at the head of his army. Yes, there were good times coming; and when his master let him have a pull at the leavings of his beer, Tom was the jolliest boy in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... would have bodices to her frocks that buttoned up in front, that she might pass the little silver bar through the buttonhole; and she set herself to make watch-pockets in all her skirts, which she managed by cutting slits in them just below the waistband, and sewing to the slits on the inside little pockets like small bag purses. Lydia showed her how to do it; and if the work was somewhat rough, and not quite finished, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... take you a buttonhole lower. Do you not see Pompey is uncasing for the combat? What mean you? You will ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... him came Birdie Andrews, hat in hand, and when the halfback arrived he bowed and asked him to stop. The runner declined. McMurty was right behind and he also begged the runner to stop. Boggs tried to buttonhole him. Skeeter Wilson, who was as fast as a trolley car, ran along with him for twenty-five yards, pleading with him to listen to reason and consent to be downed. It was no use. The halfback went over the goal line. The Kiowa delegation didn't ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... girl should be taught to do the following kinds of stitch with propriety: Over-stitch, hemming, running, felling, stitching, back-stitch and run, buttonhole-stitch, chain-stitch, whipping, darning, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... polished leather boots, yellow gloves, handsome studs, and a very pretty gold chain passed through the buttonhole of his waistcoat of black silk with blue flowers. Madame de la Chanterie took a little silver whistle from her pocket and blew ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... coat-tails clung as close as a scabbard to his thin legs. He wore a high silk hat and a white carnation in his buttonhole. He looked neither to the right nor to the left. Apparently he was the one man in sight who was not concerned about the question of what had become or would become of the ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... lappet of his coat; she had kept it in her hand even while she detached herself from his embrace. There was a white flower in his buttonhole that she looked at and played with a moment before she said; "I've a better idea—you needn't come to Griffin. Stay in your studio—do as you ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... by a ring of the bell, immediately answered by Ballard's man, and Jerry entered. He was, I think, attired in one of Jack's "Symphonies," wore a blossom in his buttonhole, swung a stick jauntily, and altogether radiated health and good humor, greeting us both in ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of his life was open, yet he longed to communicate its smallness also; and, while contemporaries bowed before him, he must buttonhole posterity with the news that his periwig was once alive with nits. But this thought, although I cannot doubt he had it, was neither his first nor his deepest; it did not colour one word that he wrote; and the Diary, for as long as he kept it, remained what it was when he began, a private ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the round of mechanical drudgery took its place. An hour later someone knocked at an inner door which led to steep side stairs connecting with a side street entrance. Wondering who it was Mary opened it, to find Steve, very flushed and handsome, a flower in his buttonhole yet no hint of rice ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... of Sweden?" Dora was beginning, when a very nice tall, thin man, with white flowers in his buttonhole like for a wedding, came ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... a number of orders at his buttonhole, presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the marble table, before which reposed Simon and his clerical friend. "Excuse me, gentlemen," he said, as he took a place opposite them, and began reading the papers ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... blossom for his buttonhole, and then proceeded to draw David out. Under the skillful, ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... his hat may not have been a Lincoln Bennett, or his necktie the latest production of Burlington Arcade, but who could wear a tall white hat with a black band, with the least little rakish tilt, and a light grey frock coat with a rose in the buttonhole, with such an air and grace as he? He appreciated keenly all the good things that life can give and loved his fellow men. Pax vobiscum, kind, warm-hearted Edward John! You were an ornament to the railway world ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... remains in perfection for two weeks in ordinary weather. This is a charming variety; grown by the side of the different blues its beauty is enhanced. It is very effective as a cut flower, though rather stiff, but if sparingly used it is attractive for bouquets, whilst for a buttonhole one ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... for ever sketching in pen and ink, indoors and out—he used at one time to carry a little ink-bottle at his buttonhole, and steel pens in his waistcoat-pocket, and thus equipped he would sketch whatever took his fancy in his walks abroad—houses, 'busses, cabs, people—bits of street and square, scaffoldings, hoardings with advertisements—sea, ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... Colonel Faversham went to the hall at eleven o'clock, wearing a flower in his buttonhole. Carrissima accompanying him dutifully to the door, remarked that he had a new ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... young lady who grabbed my walking-stick and presented me with a shilling cloakroom ticket, or the other who placed a buttonhole in my coat (two-and-sixpence), or the third who sprayed me with scent (one shilling, but had I known of the threatened attack I would have paid two shillings for immunity), or the fourth, who snatched ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... her thirst, shook the cramp from her limbs, and said: "Some time we will have to see where this road leads. There may be more surprises beyond." She broke a flower from its stem and fastened it in Kirk's buttonhole, while he gazed down at her ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... bits of ribbon are worn in the buttonhole by members of the Legion of Honor, established by Napoleon in 1802. Membership in it is a purely honorary distinction, conferred by the government for conspicuous services of any kind, civil as well as military, and usually much coveted. ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... Frenchmen are changed, until I hear that there is no ballet in Paris; you might as well tell me, that the Swiss will abjure the money which makes a part of his distinction, as the Frenchman give up the laced coat, the powdered queue, and the order of St Louis at his buttonhole. Those things are the man, they are his mind, his senses, himself. He is a creation of monarchy—a clever, amusing, ingenious, and brave one; but rely upon my knowledge of human nature—if French nature be any thing of the kind—that Paris, a capital ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... did not extend to his person. Sir Mallaby Marlowe was a dapper little man, with a round, cheerful face and a bright eye. His morning coat had been cut by London's best tailor, and his trousers perfectly creased by a sedulous valet. A pink carnation in his buttonhole matched his healthy complexion. His golf handicap was twelve. His sister, Mrs. Horace Hignett, considered ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... Reginald perfectly, and she dismissed him with a twinkle which promised well. Then Polly proceeded to cudgel her brain, while the needle went in and out, and a buttonhole formed itself in the firm, narrow line that makes of a buttonhole ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... ominous cough in the doorway caused them both to start. Mr. Tucker, in widower's weeds, but with a jonquil jauntily thrust through his buttonhole, stood with his hand still on the knob, evidently transfixed by ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... Nassau street, shifted the porksteaks to his other hand. His collar sprang up again and he tugged it down. The blooming stud was too small for the buttonhole of the shirt, blooming end to it. He met schoolboys with satchels. I'm not going tomorrow either, stay away till Monday. He met other schoolboys. Do they notice I'm in mourning? Uncle Barney said he'd get it into the paper tonight. Then they'll ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... went to receive him myself at the railway station. The train comes in; and at once I make out my man in the crowd: a fine head, well set in grizzly hair, a noble eye, eloquent lips. 'There he is!' I say to myself. 'Hm!' He looked rather dandyish, to be sure, a lot of decorations in his buttonhole, whiskers trimmed as carefully as the box in my garden, and, instead of honest spectacles, a pair of eye-glasses. But no man is perfect. I go up to him, I give him my name, we shake hands, I ask him to breakfast, he accepts; and here ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... is for the good sense of the public to distinguish true remedies from false, pure wine from adulterated; or, it is for the good sense of the public to distinguish in a buttonhole the decoration awarded to merit from that prostituted to mediocrity and intrigue. Why, then, do you call yourselves the State, Power, Authority, Police, if the work of Police must be performed by the good sense of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... find the game worth the candle. What they add to their incomes I do not know, but it cannot be very much, and the trouble they have to take is colossal. Nobody loves them, and they must see it; yet they persevere. Glossop, for instance, had been trying to buttonhole me every time there was a five minutes' break in the ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... must live—but not with a view to my fame. I might have the desire to communicate myself to a larger circle, but is he likely to be listened to who intrudes? I cannot and will not intrude. You surely have done enough to attract the attention of people towards me; shall I too buttonhole them and ask them for a hearing? Dear friend, these people are flabby and cowardly; they have no heart. Leave them alone! If I am to succeed, it must be through people who care about the matter. Where I must offer myself I lose all my power. How ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... who seemed to have been proud of the official visit to his guest. He was profuse in his attentions, and even introduced him to a singularly artistic-looking man of middle age, wearing an order in his buttonhole, whom he met ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... hair, and a nose reddened by the cold, and a pale, wrinkled face like an old woman's, came shuffling slowly along in list slippers, a shiny alpaca overcoat hanging on his stooping shoulders, no ribbon at his buttonhole, the sleeves of an under-vest showing below his coat-cuffs, and his shirt-front unpleasantly dingy. He approached timidly, looked at the coach, recognized Lisbeth, and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the dairy window, which, overgrown with creepers, made a dark frame for the brightly-coloured picture. There was Mr Buckle, a young farmer of the neighbourhood, in a light-grey suit with a blue satin tie and a rose in his buttonhole. There was Bella, her face covered with self-satisfied smiles, mounting to his side. There was Agnetta carrying the new parasol high in the air with all its lace fluttering. How gay and happy they all looked! Mrs Greenways stood nodding at the ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... never given you bad advice, Abel— don't let that thing hang any longer from your buttonhole. Put it into an envelope and keep it, and if you don't hear from me again in regard to it, write me out a fool and forget we were ever chums when ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... wretch, she may be passing fair. She may say how lovely you are while her fingers are still moist with your blood. Tell me, will this be kindness? It may be your fate to be imprisoned in the hair of one whom you know to be heartless or to be thrust into the buttonhole of one who would not dare to look you in the face were you a man. It may even be your lot to be confined in some narrow vessel with only stagnant water to quench the maddening thirst ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... breast, and his way of speaking and everything he did indicated his unusual position. But Dolokhov, who in Moscow had worn a Persian costume, had now the appearance of a most correct officer of the Guards. He was clean-shaven and wore a Guardsman's padded coat with an Order of St. George at his buttonhole and a plain forage cap set straight on his head. He took off his wet felt cloak in a corner of the room, and without greeting anyone went up to Denisov and began questioning him about the matter in hand. Denisov told him of the designs the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of individuals scrutinising me in what I deemed a most suspicious manner. Both were Frenchmen evidently; they wore billycock hats and carried stout sticks; and one of them, swarthy and almost brigandish of aspect, had the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in his buttonhole. It was easy to take these individuals for French detectives, and I hastily jumped to the conclusion that they ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Mrs. Fairfax said, returning his kiss and dropping basket and scissors to bestow all her attention upon his buttonhole rose. "There is no special occasion for all this extravagance," she added, giving a complacent downward glance at the filmy embroideries of her gown, and her small whiteshod feet. "In fact, to-day breaks before me a long and delicious blank. I don't ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... rich diamond pin from my dress, and fastened it at the buttonhole of Matthias's coat. Neither he nor I spoke a single word, but I am sure that while each wondered inwardly at the strange fulfilment of the prophecy, each was still more surprised that it had realized none of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... began with an accent of surprise in her voice, but got no further, for the gentleman turned and she beheld Mac in immaculate evening costume, with his hair parted sweetly on his brow, a superior posy at his buttonhole, and the expression of ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... heard something move on the far side of the wall: he paused to make sure, and then he whistled, the sounds outside ceased, and in a moment something fell softly behind him. He turned quickly and snatched up a little buttonhole of flowers with a still smaller note tied to ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... about it. First of all, there was a perfect jam in the town hall. I sat up in front, with a lot of fellows, and had a splendid view. The old Italian came out dressed in his best suit of clothes black broadcloth, flower in his buttonhole, and so on. He made a fine bow, and he said he was 'pleased too see ze fine audience, and he was going to show zem ze fine animals, ze finest animals in ze world.' Then he shook a little whip that he carried in his hand, and he said 'zat zat whip didn't ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... had taken four times that already, for the news of the giant had spread, and trades-people in carts, and gentlepeople in carriages, came from far and near. One gentleman with an eyeglass, and a very large yellow rose in his buttonhole, offered Robert, in an obliging whisper, ten pounds a week to appear at the Crystal Palace. ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... did see it, and it really did look pretty from a distance, with its little close-clustered red roofs like a buttonhole bouquet floating on the sea. As the steamer brought us nearer the island something of the glamor faded; but there were about a dozen girls assembled to watch the arrival of the boat, wearing rather nice, winged white caps and ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... coat over his arm and hands filled with wild-flowers, was passing leisurely along, singing at the top of his voice. Once he stopped, and, bending over, picked a bunch of mountain-berries which he tucked into a buttonhole of his flannel shirt, just before disappearing in a turn ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to see the Major stroll down Main Street to the post office every pleasant spring morning. Coat buttoned tight, silk hat the veriest trifle on one side, one glove on and its mate carried with the cane in the other hand, and the buttonhole bouquet—always the bouquet—as fresh and bright and jaunty as its ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... now got out. He looked the personification of fasting; but he carried his nose very high, for he was a weather prophet. In his buttonhole he wore a little bunch of violets, but they were ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the coming of the messenger of Satan. At half-past nine o'clock precisely the Prince arrived. He was in full evening dress (but contrary to his usual custom, wearing no decoration or ribbon in his buttonhole), and his face was ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... of reviews, several volumes of poetry, and a couple of library books. In the centre of the mantelpiece was a photograph, the photograph of a man a little older, perhaps, than this newly-arrived visitor, with rounder face, dressed in country tweeds, a flower in his buttonhole, the picture of a prosperous man, yet with a curious, almost disturbing likeness to the pale, over-nervous, loose-framed youth whose eye had been attracted by its presence, and who was gazing at ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Patricia, but Arabella put her left hand over her lips, while with her right she slipped another button into its buttonhole, ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... Taking me by the buttonhole, pulling off my boots, hustling me with the elbows; Sitting down with me to clams and the chowder-kettle; Plunging naked at my side into the sleek, irascible surges; Soothing me with the strain that I neither ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... implying that he considered this offering a homage to his merits, and an attempt on the part of the heiress to ingratiate herself into his priceless affections. Sweeting alone received the posy like a smart, sensible little man, as he was, putting it gallantly and nattily into his buttonhole. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... hydropathic establishment at the top of the Faubourg Saint-Honore Twenty minutes' fencing, boxing, or single-stick followed by a bath and a cold douche; then a little halt at the flower-shop, as he came out, to have a carnation stitched in his buttonhole; then a constitutional as far as the Arc de l'Etoile, Stenne and the phaeton following close to the footway. Finally came a turn in the Bois, where Paul, thanks to his observance of fashionable hygiene, displayed a feminine delicacy of colouring ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... rest village in the neighborhood, I met a soldier from one of the battalions which was encamped in the charnel house. He was a boy twenty years old, who hurried along with a flower in his buttonhole, whistling a tune.... He was so ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... noted that the young captain wore in the second buttonhole of his tunic the black-and-white-striped ribbon and the black-and-white Maltese Cross; and now when I looked about me I saw that at least every third man of the present company likewise bore such a decoration. I knew the Iron Cross was ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... figure approaching her across the square; and a moment later she was shaking hands with Elmer Moffatt. In the bright spring air he looked seasonably glossy and prosperous; and she noticed that he wore a bunch of violets in his buttonhole. His small black eyes twinkled with approval as they rested on her, and Undine reflected that, with Paul's arms about her neck, and his little flushed face against her own, she must present a not ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... said of her, 'was a rare 'and at doin' the music proper.' Each man and woman wore their Sunday best,—each girl had some extra bit of finery on, and each lad sported either a smart necktie or wore a flower in his buttonhole, as a testimony to the general festal feeling inspired by a day when ordinary work is set aside for the mingled pleasures of prayer, meditation and promiscuous love-making. The iconoclasts who would do away with the appointed seventh day of respite from the hard labours of every-day life, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... with her head on one side, and a finger hooked confidentially through the Captain's buttonhole. "Well," she said, "I've had a very interesting time, Daddy Captain. First I cleaned the lamps, of course, and filled and trimmed them. And then I played ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... have Constantinople under their guns. If K. won't listen to me, then, having been officially mis-informed that the War Council wish to see me (the last thing they do wish), I will take them at their word. I will buttonhole every Minister from McKenna and Lloyd George to Asquith and Bonar Law,—and grovel at their feet if by doing so I can hold them on to this, the biggest scoop that is, or ever has been, open to ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... whether it would probably take the form of poetry or prose. You are suddenly informed that your house is on fire, and have to scramble out of it, without stopping to tie your neck-cloth neatly or to put a flower in your buttonhole. Do you think a poet turning out in his night-dress, and looking on while the flames were swallowing his home and all its contents, would express himself in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... suppose, is adequate; the institution, I dare say, is useful or it would not have endured. But the human relation thus recognized is a mysterious thing in its origins, character and consequences. Unfortunately you can't buttonhole familiarly a young girl as you would a young fellow. I don't think that even another woman could really do it. She would not be trusted. There is not between women that fund of at least conditional loyalty which men may depend on in their ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... fair Mistress Kate Greenaway at the head of a mischievous throng, that he causes one to seriously consider whether his old head be turned or no. A scholar and statistician buried in heaps of flowers, with a rope of daisies round his neck, and a belt of primroses round his waist; a sunflower in his buttonhole, and a singing bird upon his shoulder; and, worst of all, the picture of a pink-frocked, pink-faced girl next his heart—can he be relied upon? But he persists in his claim to be listened to, and we must take his word for it that this is Christmas day in the morning, although ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... kept at home by a little dancing-party to-night.... I write this arrayed in my dress-coat with a rose in my buttonhole, a circumstance, I think, worth mentioning. It reminds me of Buffon, who used to array himself in his full dress for writing 'Natural History.' Why should we not always do it when we write letters? ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... students at the table were interrupted by the approach of a tall, dudish-looking individual, who wore a reddish-brown suit, cut in the most up-to-date fashion, and who sported patent-leather shoes, and a white carnation in his buttonhole. The newcomer took a vacant chair, ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... and they turned with disappointment to obey Glinda's command. But before they left the garden the Tin Woodman, who was fond of flowers, chanced to espy a big red rose growing upon a bush; so he plucked the flower and fastened it securely in the tin buttonhole ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... garden was a mixture: flowers and fruit, park and kitchen garden; and whenever he went into Paris M. Chebe was careful to decorate his buttonhole with a rose ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... wall behind them. Madame Joubert came over and stood beside him, looking at him and at the rosier, "Oui, c'est joli, n'est-ce pas?" She took the scissors that hung by a ribbon from her belt, cut one of the flowers and stuck it in his buttonhole. "Voila." She made a little flourish with ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... buttonhole flowers naturally. Martin smiled at my choice for him, which was a small, but chubby, red and yellow, uncompromising Dutch tulip, far too stout to be able to follow its family habit of night closing, except to contract itself ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... consequence. It was at first reported that the captain was a Radical, and that that was the reason of the prohibition, but this story was contradicted by his appearance that same evening with a yellow ribbon in his buttonhole. It was next insinuated that as he had not been allowed to go down himself he was determined no one else should, and Willoughby, having once taken up the idea, convinced itself this was the truth. However, ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... had been pasted in thin separated strands across the shiny bald pate. A low collar of enormous circumference encircled his short neck and his tie was drawn through a Zodiac ring. His clothes were ill-fitting—shapeless trousers and a voluminous morning coat, in the buttonhole of which was a pink carnation with a silver papered stem, an immense watch-chain spread across a coarsely knitted waistcoat of Berlin wool. And he seemed out of breath. The pistol in his extended hand vibrated in sympathy with an accelerated ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... said Mrs. Stubbs, and she pointed dramatically to the life-size head and shoulders of a burly man with a dead white rose in the buttonhole of his coat that made you think of a curl of cold mutting fat. Just below, in silver letters on a red cardboard ground, were the words, "Be not ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... the buttonhole parts, $60. This last is beyond all question the simplest, easiest to manage and to keep in order, of any machine in the market. Machines warranted, and full instruction given ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... poking their pasteboard countenances close to the sculptor's with an unchangeable grin, that gave still more ludicrous effect to the comic alarm and sorrow of their gestures. Just then, a figure came by, in a gray wig and rusty gown, with an inkhorn at his buttonhole and a pen behind his ear; he announced himself as a notary, and offered to make the last will and testament of the assassinated man. This solemn duty, however, was interrupted by a surgeon, who brandished a lancet, three feet long, and proposed ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... looked at my betrayer with a calmly critical eye. He was what the English would call "got up for effect." Though in black, he had donned a velvet coat instead of the cloth one he had worn in the morning—he had a single white japonica in his buttonhole—his face was pale and his eyes unusually brilliant. He looked his best—I admitted it, and could readily understand how an idle, pleasure-seeking feminine animal might be easily attracted by the purely physical beauty of his form ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... woman of seventy dressed as a man, thin and emaciated, but still proud of her looks, and with claims to past beauty. His cheeks and lips were painted, his eyebrows blackened, and his teeth were false; he wore a huge wig, which, exhaled amber, and at his buttonhole was an enormous bunch of flowers, which touched his chin. He affected a gracious manner, and he spoke so softly that it was often impossible to hear what he said. He was excessively polite and affable, and his manners ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... cry, remembering the happy days when she lived with her father, who kept seventeen cows and lived quite in the country, and when John used to come courting her in the summer evenings, as smart as smart, with a posy in his buttonhole. And now John's hair was getting gray, and there was hardly ever ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... come to lunch. While he was finishing dressing it came to me that his clothes had undergone much the same change as his dwelling. In his golden days in London he had been a good deal of a dandy; he usually wore white waistcoats at night; was particular about the flowers in his buttonhole, his gloves and cane. Now he was decently dressed and that was all; as far below the average as he had been above it. Clearly, he had let go of himself and no longer took pleasure in the vanities: it seemed to me ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... at that time) in light silk gowns, covered with diamonds and precious stones, in carriages decorated with flowers. Coachmen and footmen wore powdered wigs, white or grey, silk stockings and knee-breeches and a flower in the buttonhole matching the colour of their livery and the flowers which hung about the horses' ears. Some of the carriages had no coachman's box or driver, but were harnessed to four horses ridden by postillions in green satin or scarlet ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... life were written in their eyes. But these made expressions were broken at the sight of some young girl's fragility, or the paraded charms of a woman of thirty; and then each feared that his neighbour had discovered thoughts in him unappropriate to the red ribbon which he wore in his buttonhole. ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... undertaking business. Absalom Magoffin, who had had all the post-mortem trade of the town for forty years, was a queer old cuss, and he had some mighty aggravating ways. Never wanted to talk anything but business. Would buttonhole you on the street, and allow that, while he wasn't a doctor, he had had to cover up a good many of the doctor's mistakes in his time, and he didn't just like your symptoms. Said your looks reminded ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... established for the peasants, without the assistance of the priest, sans le concours du clerg. On such days Ivan Matveitch had been in the habit of going in to the peasants in the hall or on the balcony, with a rose in his buttonhole, and putting his lips to a silver goblet of vodka, he would make them a speech something like this: 'You are content with my actions, even as I am content with your zeal, whereat I rejoice truly. We are all brothers; ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... that the Haverly Mastodon Minstrels headed the third division of the Garfield inaugural parade. Ever mindful and proud of his men, Frohman, at his personal expense, bought a buttonhole bouquet for every member for the occasion and fastened it on their coats himself. On the sidewalk he followed with admiring eye and flushed face ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... quietly about the usual business of his toilet. In taking off his dress-coat he noticed the Legion of Honor which Miss Talcott had given him at the ball. He pulled it out of his buttonhole and tossed it into the fire-place. When he had finished dressing he saw with surprise that it was nearly ten o'clock. Ruby Glenn was ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... eager inquiry, and we were received into a family which could not have been more to our wish if it had been created expressly for us. It was that of Monsieur Le Fort, a professor in the Medical College, a handsome elderly man with the bit of red ribbon coveted by Frenchmen in his buttonhole. Madame Le Fort, a charming, graceful woman midway between thirty and forty, and a pretty daughter of seventeen, completed the family. With great satisfaction we took possession of the pretty rooms, all white and gold, that overlooked the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... silk hat and frock-coat and spats, with a carnation in his buttonhole, he seized the wheelbarrow like a man, and away we went. I steered him up the Main Street, and people began to hail us with laughter from automobiles, and to jest with us on the sidewalk, and Marie came along with ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... hypocritical world worked overtime trying to rival the Billingsgate Calendar. The newspapers employed watchers, who picketed the block where Parnell and his wife lived, and telegraphed to Christendom the time the lights were out, and whether Mr. Parnell appeared with a shamrock or a rose in his buttonhole. The facts that Mrs. Parnell wore her hair in curls, and smilingly hummed a tune as she walked to the corner, were construed into proof of brazen guilt and a desire ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... ten thousand francs to Jenny, but the two hundred francs to the servants—nay the six sous given to the waiter at the restaurant, even the money he had spent on the bunch of violets. The bouquet still hung in his buttonhole, faded and shrivelled. What good did it do him? While the sous which he had paid for it—! He did not think of his wasted millions, but could not drive away the thought ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... you, my dear children, kept up most carefully. There was always a button to sew on, a buttonhole to remake, or a tear to be mended. Thus constantly in touch with the household Madame Hen soon thought she belonged to it. Indeed, worn out by the teasing of her companions, by the constant arguments she had with them, and touched on the other hand by the affectionate care of her ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... comes the Commissioner and his friends, very grand indeed, all dressed like swells always do in the evening, I believe, black all over, white tie, shining boots, white kid gloves, flower in their buttonhole, all regular. People may laugh, but they did look different from the others—showed more blood like. I don't care what they say, there ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... the shed, between two piles of sacks filled with oats, lay the Commander, on a mattress borrowed from the Hospitality reserve supply. He wore his everlasting frock-coat, with its buttonhole decked with a broad red riband, and somebody who had taken the precaution to pick up his silver-knobbed walking-stick had carefully placed it on the ground ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of a fighting-cock. He is a little man, much the height and build of the late General Funston, with hair cropped close to the skull, after the Russian fashion; through a buttonhole of his green service tunic was drawn the orange-and-black ribbon of the Order of St. George. He can best be described as "a live wire." His staff-officers impressed me as being as efficient and razor-keen as their chief. ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... handsome but equally picturesque. His white head and iron-grey beard placed him outside the active army. He wore in his buttonhole a tiny bow of ribbon, the usual badge of the ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... it, but deceivingly unconventional to the eye of the uninitiated. This he put on, taking particular pains to select a very plain cravat, and to fasten in it with care the scarf-pin bestowed upon him by old Benson, the little watchmaker on the corner below. Through the buttonhole in the lapel of his coat he drew a spicy-smelling sprig of ground-pine, chanting whimsically as he did so ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... for money. Each time he performed the journey with greater swagger, but he never brought more than a few dollars at a time. He grew maudlin, familiar, could hardly see the cards or sit upright. As a preliminary to another journey to his bunk, he hooked Wolf Larsen's buttonhole with a greasy forefinger and vacuously proclaimed and reiterated, "I got money, I got money, I tell yer, an' I'm ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... familiar grey frock-coat, with the red rose in his buttonhole, as made famous by Punch. His massive head he carried very high, looking downward through the pebbles ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... library, where she found Ross and Elinor in front of a gloriously burning wood fire. But they were both garbed in what to her inexperienced eyes seemed the most pronounced party garments. Ross had donned a Tuxedo and pinned a tiny, pink rose in his buttonhole. Elinor wore a black gown that was very low in the neck to Arethusa, although in reality it was the most modest of decolletage, and a few of the same pink roses were clustered at ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... hear her; he was absorbed in watching Connie who stood on tiptoe, pinning a flower in Don Morley's buttonhole. ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... so desperately at about Christmas-time when you can only get mistletoe, which is pale right through to its very scent, and holly which pricks your nose if you try to smell it. So now everyone had a rose in its buttonhole, and soon everyone was sitting on the grass in Regent's Park under trees whose leaves would have been clean, clear green in the country, but here were dusty and yellowish, and ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... it, from "his breadth of beam," - but also from his free-and-easy costume. "To get himself into wind," as he alleged, Mr. Blades had just been knocking the wind out of the Honourable Flexible Shanks (youngest son of the Earl of Buttonhole), a Tuft from Christ Church, who had left his luxurious rooms in the Canterbury Quad chiefly for the purpose of preparing himself for the forthcoming Town and Gown, by putting on the gloves with his boating friend. The bout having terminated by Mr. Flexible Shanks having ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the occasion, and I tell you they were sights! The bank clerk had on a collar so high that he could hardly turn his head, a high silk hat, long black frock-coat, and an immense white rose in his buttonhole. ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... to run a seam, overcast, roll and whip, hem, tuck, gather, bind, make a French seam, make buttonhole, sew on buttons, hooks and eyes, darn and patch. Submit samples ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... that there was a man leaning over the parapet of the Embankment and looking out across the river. As a figure he was quite conventional, clad in a silk hat and frock-coat of the more formal type of fashion; he had a red flower in his buttonhole. As Syme drew nearer to him step by step, he did not even move a hair; and Syme could come close enough to notice even in the dim, pale morning light that his face was long, pale and intellectual, and ended in a small triangular tuft of dark beard at the very point of the chin, all else ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... in Cleek's buttonhole was jauntily erect, his immaculately garbed figure fitted in perfectly with every detail of the whole scene of which he was a part. He looked—and was—the exquisitely turned-out man-about-town. Only his eyes told of other things, and they, as the organs welled ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... from the bosom of her dress and placed it in Craig's buttonhole. Then she led him without a word ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stood a tall, gaunt man, gazing in upon the scene before him with an expression of distinct aversion, mingled with indifference. He was dressed just like the other men, in a long frock coat, and he had a white gardenia in his buttonhole. But there was something about him distinct and noticeable—something in the quiet easy manner with which he at last moved forward to greet his hostess, which seemed to thrill her through and through with a sense of sweet familiarity. And then she caught a turn of his head ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a sinister voice here added in my ear, "that if he wishes to effect an entrance into the gambling den which his son haunts, he must take the precaution of tying a bit of blue ribbon in his buttonhole. It is a signal meaning business, and must not be forgotten," chuckled the old fellow, evidently deceived at last into thinking I was really one ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... He is very young, genteel, and handsome. He has a pair of very good eyes in his head, which not being sufficient, as it should seem, for the many nice and difficult purposes of a senator, he has a third also, which he suspended from his buttonhole. The boys halloo'd, the dogs barked, puss scampered, the hero, with his long train of obsequious followers, withdrew. We made ourselves very merry with the adventure, and in a short time settled into our former ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... all its kinds was cultivated, and it was his invariable custom to come up on a Monday from Pyrford with a spray of his favourite white heather in his buttonhole. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... pieces of stuff in such a way that the edges to be fastened together touch one another from top to bottom. Then, if it is a buttoning-frame, the teacher will show the child the different stages of the action. She will take hold of the button, set it opposite the buttonhole, make it enter the buttonhole completely, and adjust it carefully in its place above. In the same way, to teach a child to tie a bow, she will separate the stage in which he ties the ribbons together from that in which he ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... gone into the luggage van—how I trembled for Kinko!—and there, with Popof's assistance, had got out of one of his boxes a somewhat free-and-easy costume, but one certain of success at a wedding: A primrose coat with metal buttons, and a buttonhole, a sham diamond pin in the cravat, poppy-colored breeches, copper buckles, flowered waistcoat, clouded stockings, thread gloves, black pumps, and white beaver hat. What a number of bridegrooms and uncles of bridegrooms our friend had been in ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... her appreciation through the dainty lips of a boutonniere arranged by her own fingers. Now while he recognized the roses resting on her corsage, her eyes dwelt on her favorite double lilac violets, nestling in the buttonhole of his coat. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... quarter to seven, Leslie came in, top-hatted and morning-coated, with a yellowing gardenia in his buttonhole and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... here I am," said a gentleman with a grey moustache, who entered my study, dressed in a dark-brown frock-coat and a wide-brimmed hat, with a red ribbon in his buttonhole. "What's the matter?" ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... spray of forceythia out of his buttonhole. "I can believe it. I found this in one, of the squares, and I think it belongs to you." He. offered it with a bow and a laugh, and she took it in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... they will say, art thou a magician, Spiegelberg? 'Tis a pity, the king will say, that thou wert not made a general, Spiegelberg, thou wouldst have thrust the Austrians through a buttonhole. Yes, I hear the doctors lamenting, 'tis a crying shame that he was not bred to medicine, he would have discovered the elixir vitae. Ay, and that he did not take to financiering, the Sullys will deplore in their cabinets,—he would have ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... down, "let it at least have THIS!" With which she detached a rich white rosebud from its company with another in the front of her dress and flung it down to him. He caught it in its fall, fixing her again after she had watched him place it in his buttonhole. "Come down quickly!" he said in an Italian not loud ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... "Freeman" of J. Young's letter, to the discomfiture of the Whigs and Lord Melbourne, suggested to Thackeray the line: "Young's Night Thought—Wish I hadn't franked that letter!" Its appearance in Punch caused Mr. Sparkes to buttonhole the writer at the Reform Club, and excitedly dilate on the mischief that was being done to the Party by such very public and sarcastic means. Thackeray burst out laughing—"the mountain shook," says the historian—but felt a ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... skillets hung on the barrels of their rifles, simple kitchen utensils which constituted almost the whole of their cooking equipment. Their blankets and rubber sheets for sleeping were carried in light rolls on their backs. A toothbrush was stuck in a buttonhole. On their flanks or in front rode the cavalry, led by the redoubtable Turner Ashby, and there was in all their number scarcely a single horseman who did not ride like the Comanche Indian, as if he were ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... silence, she was full of lively talk, and as unblushing in her eagerness to sell as a 'bouquetiere' by profession. She had grown dangerously pretty. Fred was dazzled when she wanted to fasten a rose into his buttonhole, and then, as he paid for it, gave him another, saying: "And here is another thrown in for ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... same that he has not been congratulated himself, since they were about it. It is true that the best of congratulations awaits him on the 16th March on the front page of the Official Journal in a decree which flames in advance before his eyes and makes him glance every now and then at his buttonhole. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... making. It was a construction of blocks, according to patchwork law, every alternate block of the border having an applied rose cut from printed calico in alternate colors of yellow, red, and blue. These roses were carefully applied with buttonhole stitch, and the cotton ground underneath cut away to give uniform thickness for quilting. The main body of the quilt was unnoticeably good, being a collection of faintly colored patches of correct ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... that hanging on the arm of our dear Prince?" asked a little fat man, girt in a white satin waistcoat, and a spray of white lilac in his buttonhole. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... of the spirit of adventure, and looked forward to that spring Wednesday when he should leave for Queenstown, his mother made up for his heartless joy by her lugubriousness. As the time drew near she would buttonhole all and sundry whom she could catch to pour out her sorrows. The trailing gown and ragged lace shawl became a danger signal which we would all flee from, an it were not sprung upon us too suddenly. We had a shrewd suspicion that the tears Mrs. Sheehy shed so freely were of the variety ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... position midway between porter and butler and deserved the title of factotum if any one ever did. His name was Kurschner; he was a big-boned, square-built fellow about thirty years old, who always wore in his buttonhole the little ribbon of the order he had gained as a soldier at the siege of Antwerp, and who had been taken into the house by our mother for our protection, for in winter our home, surrounded by its spacious grounds, was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... corruptions of the Establishment. "The clargy," he once declared, "they're here, and they ain't here; they're like pigs in the garden, and yeou can't git 'em out." On which an old woman, a member of the flock, sprang up and cried, "That's right, Brother Pepper, kitch 'em by the fifth buttonhole!" {22} Tom went once to hear Gavazzi lecture at Debenham, and next day my father asked him how he liked it. "Well," he said, "I thowt I should ha' beared that chap they call Jerry Baldry, but I din't. Howsomdiver, ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... She had on a new habit, and a gardenia in her buttonhole, and she gave Nikky her hand to kiss, but only ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... all alone under this terribly big sky. I wouldn't like it even if I were only a weed," and she looked around and shivered with the thought of her fearful ride alone in the night. But she tucked the little spray of brave green into the buttonhole of her riding habit and it looked of prouder lineage than any weed as it rested against the handsome darkness of the rich green cloth. For an instant the missionary studied the picture of the lovely girl on the horse and ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... sensation which roused me up as I endeavored in imagination to swallow at one draught the contents of a metal tankard of half-and-half—half laurel-water, and half decoction of henbane—handed to me on a leaden salver by a demon-waiter, with a sprig of hemlock in the third buttonhole of his coat. This Lethean influence could hardly be that of the ailantus-tree alone. What of the plants on the balcony beneath,—the strange, rooty coilers which the mysterious planter sedulously fosters at the glooming of dusk, with a weird watering-pot held ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... himself away and stand drinks to himself until he is put out. This is, of course, only one way of being a poet. If he perseveres he will ultimately write lyrics for the music halls and make a fortune. He will then wear a fur coat that died of the mange, he will support a carnation in his buttonhole, wear eighteen rings on his right hand and one hundred and twenty-seven on his left. He will also be entitled to wear two breast-pins at once and yellow boots. He will live in England when he is at home, and be very ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... folks over in Spring Road. The chairs in Widow Green's orchard told plainly that her sister's girls had come in from the city for the week-end. On the Fenton's front porch sat pretty Millie Fenton, waiting to put a flower in Robbie Longman's buttonhole. While everybody knew that just next door homely Theresa Meyer was putting an extra pan of fluffy soda biscuits into the oven as the ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... saw the Count Louis, Madelaine's fiance. He was a very handsome young man, of majestic and distinguished air. He had hair and eyes as black as ink, red lips, and a fine mustache. He wore in his buttonhole the cross of the royal order of St. Louis, and on his shoulders the epaulettes of a major. He had lately come from San Domingo [where he had been fighting the insurgents at the head of his regiment].[23] Yes, he was a handsome young man, a ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... me hear from you very soon. I don't mind if you telegraph; and just 'come' would be all you'd have to say. Then I'd get ready right away and let you know what train to meet me on. And, oh, say—if you'll wear a pink in your buttonhole I will, too. Then we'll know each other. My address is just ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... now, out here," retorted Prescott, slipping the silver watch into a vest pocket and passing the chain through a buttonhole. ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... sold buttonhole bouquets at the theater door could have seen that Charlie was handsome, with his pale brown smoothness and regularity of feature; the pretty mustache accentuating and not concealing the neat and agreeable mold of ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... not yet satisfied. "But, oh ma," she said, as she hastily worked a buttonhole. "You don't know about the diseases that are goin' 'round. Mind ye, there's tuberoses in the cows even, and them that sly about it, and there's diseases in the milk as big as a chew o' gum and us not seein' them. Every drop of it we use should be scalded well, and ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... accommodated two or three hundred for every unit he had before him. That was the first occasion in my life on which I wore a dress suit; and amidst the unwashed, coally-flannelled handful, I daresay that my expanse of shirt front, and the flower in my buttonhole, made me conspicuous. I was a red-hot Liberal in those days, for no better reason, probably, than that my father held that form of creed, and I was quite persuaded that Kenealy was a paid impostor. So when, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... get used to it," Joey told him; "eight o'clock, then, on Sunday; plain evening dress. If you like to wear a bit of red ribbon in your buttonhole, why, do so. You can get it ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... p.m. your grace is requested to be at the Piccadilly end of the Burlington Arcade with five hundred pounds in gold. You will there be accosted by an individual in a white top hat, and with a gardenia in his buttonhole. You will be entirely at liberty to give him into custody, or to have him followed by the police, in which case the duchess's left arm, cut off at the shoulder, will be sent home for dinner—not ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... to a bush of briar roses which he had seen and admired earlier in the day. So fresh, and fair, and innocent! Were all young girls so fragrant and flower-like as this? Then he thought of the little prickles which had stung his hand as he had picked a bud from the same bush for his buttonhole, and smiled with latent mischief. After all, the remembrance did not lessen the likeness. Miss Margot looked as if she might—under provocation—display a prickle or two ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... described. When we saw him, his hair danced wildly over his shoulders, as if electrified: he had a quick eye, and wore enviably well-fitting ducks: his neck, besides supporting his head and all its contents, supported an inextricable labyrinth of gold chains; from every buttonhole of his waistcoat the chains they came in, and the chains they came out, like the peripatetic man on the Boulevards who sells them: his gloves, well-fitting, and buttoning at the wrist, were of the whitest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Lady Wolfer; and a gentleman entered. He was young and good-looking, his tall figure clad in the regulation frock coat, in the buttonhole of which was a delicate orchid. The hat which he carried in his lavender-gloved hands shone as if it had just left the manufacturer's hands, and his small feet were clad in the brightest of ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... for I have come home to care for you, and in the future you have nothing to do but to sit still, with your dear old lame feet on a cushion;' now helping Harold water the flowers in the borders, and pinning a June pink in his buttonhole, while he longed to take her in his arms and kiss her as in the days when they were children together; now, going with him to milk Nannie, who, either remembering Jerrie, or recognizing a friend in her, ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... and in 1839 became mayor of his arrondissement and judge in the Court of Commerce. He kept a carriage, had a country-place near Lagny; his wife wore diamonds at the court balls, and he prided himself on the rosette of an officer of the Legion of honor in his buttonhole. ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... followed that the decisions of a Krijgsraad were often purely those of the Boer soldiers, who hung on its outskirts, and did not scruple, when their predilections were in danger of being disregarded, to buttonhole their representatives and dictate their votes. Finally, there were not wanting instances of unauthorised Krijgsraads being assembled at critical junctures, avowedly in mutinous opposition to a lawful assembly, and actually overriding ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... wimmen and girls on the streets, some on 'em sellin' posies for charity, I bought two little bunches, one on 'em I put in Josiah's buttonhole, though he objected and said it would probable make talk for a man of his age and dignity ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... to what plant is "the real shamrock." This matter has become so involved and developed by wild enthusiasm, ignorance, and false sentiment that it is difficult to deal with it. A distinguished Irishman once showed me the "shamrock" he was wearing in his buttonhole as "the true" plant of that name. He assured me that he had studied the subject from boyhood and knew well the true and the false. "What is its flower like?" I asked him. "It never has a flower at all," he said. Another injustice to Ireland, one must suppose, or a miracle of ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... on the lawn, and played at ball; they wandered among the flowers, and each of the young girls broke off a flower, and fastened it in a young gentleman's buttonhole. But the young Scotch lady looked round, for a long time, in an undecided way. None of the flowers seemed to suit her taste. Then her eye glanced across the paling—outside stood the great thistle bush, with the reddish-blue, sturdy flowers; she saw them, she smiled, and asked the son of the house ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... fine. Just mind me. [She goes to chiffonier and takes out a case which contains a Russian Annae order. She tries to put it in Axel's buttonhole.] ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... with the new clothes. This morning he was dressed in a suit of the lightest gray, with a white marseilles waistcoat, over which his glittering chain shone ostentatiously. White tennis-shoes, a white rose in his buttonhole, and a white straw hat in his hand completed a toilet over which much time had evidently been spent. Kate noted these details as she held out ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... decoration, i.e., the Cross of the Legion of Honor, founded by Napoleon I., and since always regarded as the highest of such distinctions in France. The cross is not usually worn, but in its place a bit of red ribbon in the buttonhole.] ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... entered the room, Margaret arose and faced him. The Englishman was well dressed, and newly shaven, and wore a rosebud in his buttonhole. Evidently, he had spent some time over his toilet in honor ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... more honoured in the breach than the observance. Barely a dozen Members sported Lord BEACONFIELD'S favourite flower (for salads), and one of them found himself so uncomfortably conspicuous that shortly after the proceedings opened he furtively transferred his buttonhole to his coat-pocket. Among those who remained faithful were Lord LAMBOURNE (in the Peers' Gallery), who had for this occasion substituted a posy of primroses for his usual picotee, and, quaintly enough, Mr. HOGGE, who had not hitherto ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... Paul Astier came to take his douche at Keyser's hydropathic establishment at the top of the Faubourg Saint-Honore Twenty minutes' fencing, boxing, or single-stick followed by a bath and a cold douche; then a little halt at the flower-shop, as he came out, to have a carnation stitched in his buttonhole; then a constitutional as far as the Arc de l'Etoile, Stenne and the phaeton following close to the footway. Finally came a turn in the Bois, where Paul, thanks to his observance of fashionable hygiene, displayed ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Establishment. "The clargy," he once declared, "they're here, and they ain't here; they're like pigs in the garden, and yeou can't git 'em out." On which an old woman, a member of the flock, sprang up and cried, "That's right, Brother Pepper, kitch 'em by the fifth buttonhole!" {22} Tom went once to hear Gavazzi lecture at Debenham, and next day my father asked him how he liked it. "Well," he said, "I thowt I should ha' beared that chap they call Jerry Baldry, but I din't. Howsomdiver, this one that spook fare to laa it into th' owd Pope good tidily." Another time my ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... as close as a scabbard to his thin legs. He wore a high silk hat and a white carnation in his buttonhole. He looked neither to the right nor to the left. Apparently he was the one man in sight who was not concerned about the question of what had become or would become of ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... that evening; first, because he belonged to a great family; secondly, because he was the handsomest man of his year. He wore a large golden star on his breast (for his fellow-students had made him a Knight of the Golden Boar) and a badge of colored ribbons in his buttonhole. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... how to run a seam, overcast, roll and whip, hem, tuck, gather, bind, make a French seam, make buttonhole, sew on buttons, hooks and eyes, darn and patch. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... movement he shook and bowed continually. Probably he was the husband whom in a bitter mood at Talta she had called a lackey. And, indeed, in his long figure, his side-whiskers, the little bald patch on the top of his head, there was something of the lackey; he had a modest sugary smile and in his buttonhole he wore a University badge exactly like ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... outburst of melody, and such a shaking of the gorse-bushes, as plainly showed there was no safety for Reynard in cover; and great was the bustle and commotion among the horsemen. Mr. Fossick lowered his hat-string and ran the fox's tooth through the buttonhole; Fyle drew his girths; Washball took a long swig at his hunting-horn-shaped monkey; Major Mark and Mr. Archer threw away their cigar ends; Mr. Bliss drew on his dogskin gloves; Mr. Wake rolled the thong of his whip round the stick, to be better able ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the danger past. To-morrow about dusk, however, you, personally, take him for a walk near the Park, and if, among the other Cingalese you may meet, you should see one dressed as an Englishman, and wearing a scarlet flower in his buttonhole, take no notice of how often you see him nor of what ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... convulsive sensation which roused me up as I endeavored in imagination to swallow at one draught the contents of a metal tankard of half-and-half—half laurel-water, and half decoction of henbane—handed to me on a leaden salver by a demon-waiter, with a sprig of hemlock in the third buttonhole of his coat. This Lethean influence could hardly be that of the ailantus-tree alone. What of the plants on the balcony beneath,—the strange, rooty coilers which the mysterious planter sedulously fosters at the glooming of dusk, with a weird watering-pot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... trousers by the waist and place together the first two suspender buttons, one on the left and the other on the right. This will make the fold preserve the natural crease and dispose of the extra material, button and buttonhole tab at the waist. Trousers carefully folded will only need pressing about twice a year. Hose should be well shaken, and unless perfectly clean, thrown in the soiled-linen basket. Evening silk hose can ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... came about that the Haverly Mastodon Minstrels headed the third division of the Garfield inaugural parade. Ever mindful and proud of his men, Frohman, at his personal expense, bought a buttonhole bouquet for every member for the occasion and fastened it on their coats himself. On the sidewalk he followed with admiring eye and flushed face ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Mr. Leath's opinions was enhanced by the distinction of his appearance and the reserve of his manners. He was like the anarchist with a gardenia in his buttonhole who figures in the higher melodrama. Every word, every allusion, every note of his agreeably-modulated voice, gave Anna a glimpse of a society at once freer and finer, which observed the traditional forms but had discarded the underlying prejudices; whereas the world ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... eye of the uninitiated. This he put on, taking particular pains to select a very plain cravat, and to fasten in it with care the scarf-pin bestowed upon him by old Benson, the little watchmaker on the corner below. Through the buttonhole in the lapel of his coat he drew a spicy-smelling sprig of ground-pine, chanting whimsically as he did so a ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... Thessalonian play was the topic of the hour, and the very mention of it almost made him ill. If he had been elected he would have been an usher at the play with the other new members and worn the club colors in his buttonhole to be admired by the girls and envied by the other fellows. But now there was none of that charmed fellowship for him. He nourished his feeling of bitterness and hatred until his scheming mind began to ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... going to the scene of the contest. Both were dressed for the occasion, and I tell you they were sights! The bank clerk had on a collar so high that he could hardly turn his head, a high silk hat, long black frock-coat, and an immense white rose in his buttonhole. ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... not have sadly to tell him: 'My poor boy, it is impossible to make you that—for there are no longer any whole-tailors. You may, if you like, be a thread-waxer or a needle-threader; you may be one of the thirty men it takes to make a buttonhole, but a complete tailor—alas! it ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... began the other stiffly, but broke down, shook his seal ring at Rex, and walking over to the glass, rearranged the bit of wild hyacinth in his buttonhole with care. ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... countenances close to the sculptor's with an unchangeable grin, that gave still more ludicrous effect to the comic alarm and sorrow of their gestures. Just then, a figure came by, in a gray wig and rusty gown, with an inkhorn at his buttonhole and a pen behind his ear; he announced himself as a notary, and offered to make the last will and testament of the assassinated man. This solemn duty, however, was interrupted by a surgeon, who brandished a lancet, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Marechale his arm, and they strolled along through the streets together. She was highly diverted by the display of rosettes in every buttonhole, by the banners hung from every window, and the bills of every colour that were posted upon the walls, and threw some money here and there into the collection-boxes for the wounded, which were placed on chairs in the middle ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... time I thought he might not be dead, after all, and might come home any day. He used to seem so old to me, and he really was just out of college and not so old as I am now. That day at the circus he had a pink rosebud in his buttonhole, and—ah! when have I ever thought of this before!—a woman sat before us who had a stiff little cape on her bonnet like a shelf, and I carefully put peanuts round the edge of it, and when she moved her head they would fall. I thought it was the best fun in the world, and I wished ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a fighting-cock. He is a little man, much the height and build of the late General Funston, with hair cropped close to the skull, after the Russian fashion; through a buttonhole of his green service tunic was drawn the orange-and-black ribbon of the Order of St. George. He can best be described as "a live wire." His staff-officers impressed me as being as efficient and razor-keen as their chief. The general asked ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... make sure that I was still there. At the house-boat he put me in a tumbler of water out of sight of his friend, and frequently he stole to the spot like a thief to look at me. Early next morning he put me in his buttonhole, calling me sweet names. When his friend saw me, he too whistled, but not in the same way. Then my owner glared at him. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... its kinds was cultivated, and it was his invariable custom to come up on a Monday from Pyrford with a spray of his favourite white heather in his buttonhole. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... about one o'clock the next morning, with his hat a little on the back of his head, and wearing, very much against his prejudice, a white rose in his buttonhole. Brightman, who was awaiting him there, looked ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thousands of lorettes (as they were called at that time) in light silk gowns, covered with diamonds and precious stones, in carriages decorated with flowers. Coachmen and footmen wore powdered wigs, white or grey, silk stockings and knee-breeches and a flower in the buttonhole matching the colour of their livery and the flowers which hung about the horses' ears. Some of the carriages had no coachman's box or driver, but were harnessed to four horses ridden by postillions in green satin or scarlet velvet, with white feathers ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... a purple pansy. "This looks to me as though it would like to get into your buttonhole, ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... that," he interrupted, as he drew it through his buttonhole, "but it will assuredly bring ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... what on earth should we men do going about with purity and innocence? A carefully thought-out buttonhole is much more effective. ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... get rid of his one absorbing idea, and he felt constantly unhappy because he had not the right to wear a little bit of colored ribbon in his buttonhole. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... While he was finishing dressing it came to me that his clothes had undergone much the same change as his dwelling. In his golden days in London he had been a good deal of a dandy; he usually wore white waistcoats at night; was particular about the flowers in his buttonhole, his gloves and cane. Now he was decently dressed and that was all; as far below the average as he had been above it. Clearly, he had let go of himself and no longer took pleasure in the vanities: it seemed to me a ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Mel and Emmy had gone off to see Emmy's folks over in Spring Road. The chairs in Widow Green's orchard told plainly that her sister's girls had come in from the city for the week-end. On the Fenton's front porch sat pretty Millie Fenton, waiting to put a flower in Robbie Longman's buttonhole. While everybody knew that just next door homely Theresa Meyer was putting an extra pan of fluffy soda biscuits into the oven as the best preparation ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... Mick was full of the spirit of adventure, and looked forward to that spring Wednesday when he should leave for Queenstown, his mother made up for his heartless joy by her lugubriousness. As the time drew near she would buttonhole all and sundry whom she could catch to pour out her sorrows. The trailing gown and ragged lace shawl became a danger signal which we would all flee from, an it were not sprung upon us too suddenly. We had a shrewd suspicion ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... curious choice of men! It would be called even an unhappy one. Thurlow Weed, with his offhand, apparently sincere, if not polished ways, may not be too repulsive to English refinement, provided he does not buttonhole his interlocutionists, or does not pat them on the shoulder. So Thurlow Weed will be dined, wined, etc. But doubtless the London press will show him up, or some "Secesh" in London will do it. I am sure ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... wrinkled her nose. Then she flushed, conscious that he was a bit surprised at her tone of disdain. "Why, he will wear a frock-coat and a flower in the buttonhole and will bow in my customers. You didn't think my young man was ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... we've run over some one," announced a fussy little man with a monocle and a flower in his buttonhole. ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... made a sign to the lawyer, who went out of the door. He came back almost instantly, but not alone. Behind him, dressed up in his best clothes, with a flower in his buttonhole and a ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... on feeling a thousand years younger." She smiled caressingly, and began to twist a finger in a buttonhole of his coat. "U'm—don't you think, daddy, that such a very young gentleman as you are, such a regular roaring ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... levelling, strive in all wise ways to smooth and soothe. With such gradual mild levelling on the one side; as with solemn funeral-service, Cassolettes, Courts-Martial, National thanks,—all that Officiality can do is done. The buttonhole will drop its flat ball; the black ashes, so far as ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... sharply. Though I couldn't see him, I knew exactly how he would be looking at Ivor, his keen grey eyes narrowed, his clean-shaven lips drawn in, the long, well-shaped hand, of which he is said to be vain, toying with the pale Malmaison pink he always wears in his buttonhole. ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... the groom, should be waiting in the vestibule. They should be in charge of a boy from the florist's, who has nothing else on his mind but to see that they are there, that they are fresh and that the ushers get them. Each man puts one in his buttonhole, and also puts on his gloves. The head usher decides (or the groom has already told them) to which ushers are apportioned the center, and to which the side aisles. If it is a big church with side aisles and gallery, and ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... no escort now, for such an expedition, could have been more suitable than their devoted young countryman, whose mission in life, it might almost be said, was to find chairs for ladies, and who appeared on the stroke of half-past five with a white camellia in his buttonhole. ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... deserve a more responsible post than that, Comrade Windsor. Where is your proprietor? I must buttonhole him and point out to him what a wealth of talent he is allowing to waste itself. You must ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... invitation. He then proceeded to distribute to each of those invited a small cross, made of blue and rose coloured ribbon—the rose for the bride, the blue for the bridegroom; and the guests had to keep this token—the women to deck their head-dress, and the men their buttonhole, on the day of the wedding. This is their ticket of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... of the castle" himself made his appearance. I knew him at once by the descriptions I had read and heard, and the likeness that had been published of him. He was tall, and of a large and powerful frame. His dress was simple, and almost rustic: an old green shooting-coat, with a dog-whistle at the buttonhole, brown linen pantaloons, stout shoes that tied at the ankles, and a white hat that had evidently seen service. He came limping up the gravel-walk, aiding himself by a stout walking-staff, but moving rapidly and with vigor. By his side jogged along a large ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... Bertin was most considerable, yet he only used this influence to obtain orders and decorations for his contributors. As to himself, to his honor and glory be it stated, that he never stuck the smallest bit of riband to his own buttonhole, or, during the seventeen years of the monarchy of July, ever once put his feet inside the Tuileries. At the Italian Opera or the Varietes, sometimes at the Cafe de Paris, the Maison Doree, or the Trois Freres, M. Bertin may be seen enjoying the music, or his dinner and wine, but never was he ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... he had risked his life vainly to save the aged Colonel Delavigne from a furious mob, for the red rosette in the old officer's buttonhole had cost him his life in an awkward promenade, and this sent the orphans, Valerie and Alixe Delavigne, adrift upon the mad maelstrom of Paris incendie. While Ram Lal glowered in his dissatisfaction, Madame Berthe Louison ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... have dared; to-day there was a slight indefinable change in the manner of Mr. Carlisle towards herself, which cast a spell over her. He stood beside Black Maggie, the carnations making a rosy spot in the buttonhole of his white jacket, while he gave some order to the groom—Eleanor did not hear what, for her mind was on something else; then turned to her and took her down, that same indescribable quality of manner and handling saying to all her senses that he regarded ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... that what he left behind him was indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of his life was open, yet he longed to communicate its smallness also; and, while contemporaries bowed before him, he must buttonhole posterity with the news that his periwig was once alive with nits. But this thought, although I cannot doubt he had it, was neither his first nor his deepest; it did not color one word that he wrote; the Diary, for as long as he kept it, remained what it was when he began, a private ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... extremely well dressed, wears a posy of spring flowers at his buttonhole, and betrays in his whole bearing that he is under some extraneous influence of an unbusinesslike nature. Bargrave subsides into his leather chair with a grunt, shuffles his papers, dips a pen in the inkstand, and looks over ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... thought, for a long time before, of the dear old woman who supposed her son was turning his wits to good account in the city. But Miss Sydney did not know how much he wished for a bit to put in his buttonhole when she indignantly went back to the dining-room to wait until that impertinent ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... of knights and nobles that accompanied her, and to admire the magnificence of the dresses and decorations which were so profusely displayed. Every body came wearing a daisy in his cap or in his buttonhole, for the daisy was the flower which Margaret had chosen for her emblem. At every town through which the bride passed she was met by immense crowds that thronged all the accessible places, and filled the windows, and in some places covered the roofs of the houses and the tops of the walls, ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... was the following day: how fearful, when the morning broke grey and lowering: how grateful, when the benignant sun shone out later, and promised a brilliant afternoon: how carefully I dressed, and what a price I paid for the flower for my buttonhole! ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... roll of money as thick as the old man's thin neck, and stood with it in his hand. The old man slipped the leather thong from his buttonhole and laid the watch on the ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... this wretch, with his face in a pool of blood. Curled, pomaded, with laced waist, the hips of a woman, the bust of a Prussian officer, the murmur of admiration from the boulevard wenches surrounding him, his cravat knowingly tied, a bludgeon in his pocket, a flower in his buttonhole; such was ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... relating the things they had seen—not because they were more wonderful than the fantasies of the Ananiases of print, but because they were so different. And I was a perpetual wedding-guest, always striving to cast my buttonhole over the finger of one of these mariners of fortune. This Captain Malone was a Hiberno-Iberian creole who had gone to and fro in the earth and walked up and down in it. He looked like any other well-dressed man of thirty-five whom you might meet, except that he was hopelessly weather-tanned, and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... still sniffing at my buttonhole when I reached the second niche. There was a black varnished wicker tray heaped with fruit and a Brittany platter filled with ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... takes the scouts' oath and is enrolled as a tenderfoot and is entitled to wear the buttonhole badge. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... German officers' club, with the distinction of a double guard posted at the front door, sits a short, fiercely mustached General of some sort—evidently a person of great importance from the commotion his entry caused among all the other officers in the room. In his buttonhole he wears the Iron Cross of the second class, the Iron Cross of the first class pinned to his breast, and underneath the rare "Pour le Merite Order, with Swords." His bill amounts to about 7 francs, for he consumed the regular ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... speaker by sight: he was a medical student, named Herries, who, on the ice, had been conspicuous for his skill as a skater. He had a small dark moustache, and wore a bunch of violets in his buttonhole. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... was dressed in the garments of summer; and save that his white waistcoat was redundant and bulging these things favoured, they determined, his expression. He wore a straw hat such as his friend hadn't yet seen in Paris, and he showed a buttonhole freshly adorned with a magnificent rose. Strether read on the instant his story—how, astir for the previous hour, the sprinkled newness of the day, so pleasant at that season in Paris, he was fairly panting with the pulse of adventure and had been with Mrs. Pocock, unmistakeably, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... it in his buttonhole with what must have seemed to her elaborate care. Luckily the curtain rose, and he was free to ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... to rest on his knees. "Now listen, old fellow, and I'll tell you all about it. First of all, there was a perfect jam in the town hall. I sat up in front, with a lot of fellows, and had a splendid view. The old Italian came out dressed in his best suit of clothes—black broadcloth, flower in his buttonhole, and so on. He made a fine bow, and he said he was 'pleased too see ze fine audience, and he was going to show zem ze fine animals, ze finest animals in ze world.' Then he shook a little whip that he carried in his hand, and he said 'zat zat whip didn't mean zat he was cruel. He cracked ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... Day and Evacuation Day, when the British redcoats got out of Boston and Patrick evicted the snakes from Ireland. For observing the day, wear a turkey-red coat, or vest, and put a bit of green ribbon, or a shamrock, in the buttonhole—the green above the red. On Easter day, wear a scrambled egg in the ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... water. Result,—the ladies secure the political plums, and the men are rapidly being driven to manual labor, their natural sphere of action, though not without vigorous kicking against the inevitable. These ex-men-superintendents buttonhole you at every turn, reciting the outrages perpetrated upon them ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... as his age, "the place will lose its charm. They grow for the End of the World, and the End of the World belongs to them. This wonderful spot will have no beauty when they're gone." To wear a blossom in the hair or buttonhole was to be protected ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... direction. On the threshold stood a tall, gaunt man, gazing in upon the scene before him with an expression of distinct aversion, mingled with indifference. He was dressed just like the other men, in a long frock coat, and he had a white gardenia in his buttonhole. But there was something about him distinct and noticeable—something in the quiet easy manner with which he at last moved forward to greet his hostess, which seemed to thrill her through and through with a sense of sweet familiarity. And then she caught a turn of ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a heavy-set man with a debonnaire, dapper way about him. He wore a flower in his buttonhole, a smart touch which seemed very fetching, evidently, to the ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... Thomas says the two sneak off together every chance they get, and sometimes are n't back till eleven or twelve. I wish dadda would put a stop to it. Like as not, 't is for pilfering they are bound." Miss Meredith began anew on the buttonhole, and had she been thrusting her needle into either man or dog, she could not have sewed ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... shaving him and had turned him out as only a well-trained English valet can, glanced with satisfaction at his work. "I think, sir, when His Majesty sees you, sir, he will ask, sir, who is your tailor, sir. A buttonhole, sir?" ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... something move on the far side of the wall: he paused to make sure, and then he whistled, the sounds outside ceased, and in a moment something fell softly behind him. He turned quickly and snatched up a little buttonhole of flowers with a still smaller ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... had noticed members of the diminutive army to smile down on them. I saw the princely arms and colours on various houses and in the windows of shops. Emblems of a small State, they belonged to the history of the Empire. The Court-physician passed with a bit of ribbon in his buttonhole. A lady driving in an open carriage encouraged me to salute her. She was the wife of the Prince's Minister of Justice. Upon what ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... out. This is, of course, only one way of being a poet. If he perseveres he will ultimately write lyrics for the music halls and make a fortune. He will then wear a fur coat that died of the mange, he will support a carnation in his buttonhole, wear eighteen rings on his right hand and one hundred and twenty-seven on his left. He will also be entitled to wear two breast-pins at once and yellow boots. He will live in England when he is at home, and be very ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... of too great emotion in her face, and all the tremor of her form. She was so young—not quite sixteen—and small for her age, a mere child; and she had just been married—and married to Jurgis,* (*Pronounced Yoorghis) of all men, to Jurgis Rudkus, he with the white flower in the buttonhole of his new black suit, he with the mighty shoulders and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... ride that morning; he walked round to a certain gymnasium and had three quarters of an hour with the fencing-master (this was an appointment which he invariably held sacred); on his way back to his rooms he called in at Solomon's for a buttonhole; and then, having got home and made certain alterations in his toilet, he went out again, jumped into a hansom, and was driven up to the top of Campden Hill, arriving ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... by it, in her wonted place, the Vidame was hanging over the chair of the visitor, and later, played billiards with her, a game at which Matilda did not excel. At family prayers next morning (the service was conducted by Mrs. Malory) the Vidame appeared with a white rosebud in his buttonhole, Mrs. Brown-Smith wearing its twin sister. He took her to the stream in the park where she fished, Matilda following in a drooping manner. The Vidame was much occupied in extracting the flies from the hair ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... gone toward certain debts. His clothes, save what were upon him, had descended to his man-servant for back wages. As he sat there was not in the whole city for him a bed or a broiled lobster or a street-car fare or a carnation for buttonhole unless he should obtain them by sponging on his friends or by false pretenses. Therefore ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... bore out of one's skull, bore out of one's life, weary out of one's life, tire out of one's life, bore out of all patience, weary out of all patience, wear out one's patience, tire out of all patience; set to sleep, send to sleep; buttonhole. pall, sicken, nauseate, disgust. harp on the same string; drag its slow length along, drag its weary length along. never hear the last of; be tired of, be sick of, be tired with &c. adj.; yawn; die with ennui. [of journalistic ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... recreation or his religious convictions. These, I venture to say, are grave omissions. The picture is sadly wanting in suitable accessories. If I had been painting it I should have put a simple yellow daffodil in the MINISTER'S buttonhole, and pictured through an open window a sunlit bed of leeks, with perhaps a goat gambolling among them. I should have represented the MINISTER OF MUNITIONS in his study practising putting with a small bomb. And on the wall should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... a very good hand. Her husband is also one of the highest chiefs in Fiji, and speaks good English. They proved most hospitable, and presented me with some Fijian fans when I left the next morning, and the Princess gave me a buttonhole of flowers out of her garden. Dick Seddon, the Premier of New Zealand, had once visited them, and I noticed his portrait that he had given them fastened to a post in their hut. I left Navuso by steam launch which called at ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... cut short by a ring of the bell, immediately answered by Ballard's man, and Jerry entered. He was, I think, attired in one of Jack's "Symphonies," wore a blossom in his buttonhole, swung a stick jauntily, and altogether radiated health and good humor, greeting us both in ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... the young lady who grabbed my walking-stick and presented me with a shilling cloakroom ticket, or the other who placed a buttonhole in my coat (two-and-sixpence), or the third who sprayed me with scent (one shilling, but had I known of the threatened attack I would have paid two shillings for immunity), or the fourth, who snatched my rather ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... loyalty, is he not the chosen dragoman of kings and princes when they journey into far distant lands (he speaks seven languages and many tribal dialects), and is he not today wearing in his buttonhole the ribbon of the order of the Mejidieh, bestowed upon him by his Imperial Highness the Sultan, in reward for ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... through the group; and then, towering above them, and steadying himself by the hand-rail in a desperate effort at erectness, Mr. Royall stepped stiffly ashore. Like the young men of the party, he wore a secret society emblem in the buttonhole of his black frock-coat. His head was covered by a new Panama hat, and his narrow black tie, half undone, dangled down on his rumpled shirt-front. His face, a livid brown, with red blotches of anger and lips ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... leafy twigs bearing different sorts of nuts in one hand, and a long ripe hop-bine trailing after him from the other. A dahlia is stuck in his buttonhole.] ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... that could be easily remedied," she added, with a touch of archness. Then Mr. Iglesias thought it time to depart. In the hall his host held him, literally by the buttonhole, looking up with squinting blue eyes into ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... all over indeed when I ought to be plucking nosegays of Lysimachia clethroides and Pyrethrum uliginosum to put in my buttonhole! I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... remember where the saying was found, or else confess himself beaten. Mackay thought it might be a good habit for the graduates of his own alma mater across the wide sea to adopt. He wondered what some of his old college chums would think, if, when he got back to Canada, he should buttonhole one on the street some day, recite a quotation from Shakespeare or Macaulay, and demand from his friend where it could be found. He had a suspicion that the old friend would be afraid that the Oriental sun had ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... bridegroom made up for it. There was something almost spiritual in the look of Arthur Alce's eyes, as he stood beside Ellen, his arm held stiffly for the repose of hers, his great choker collar scraping his chin, lilies of the valley and camellias sprouting from his buttonhole, a pair of lemon kid gloves—split at the first attempt, so he could only hold them—clutched in his moist hand. He looked devout, exalted, as he armed his little bride and ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... spectacles, I saw that I was fondling a snake, or smelling at a bud with a worm in it, I sprang up in horror and ran away; or, if it seemed to me through the glasses that a cherub smiled upon me, or a rose was blooming in my buttonhole, then I felt myself imperfect and impure, not fit to be leading and training what was so essentially superior in quality to myself, and I kissed the children and left ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... governess, and a man who held a position midway between porter and butler and deserved the title of factotum if any one ever did. His name was Kurschner; he was a big-boned, square-built fellow about thirty years old, who always wore in his buttonhole the little ribbon of the order he had gained as a soldier at the siege of Antwerp, and who had been taken into the house by our mother for our protection, for in winter our home, surrounded by its spacious ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... homes. The wretch, she may be passing fair. She may say how lovely you are while her fingers are still moist with your blood. Tell me, will this be kindness? It may be your fate to be imprisoned in the hair of one whom you know to be heartless or to be thrust into the buttonhole of one who would not dare to look you in the face were you a man. It may even be your lot to be confined in some narrow vessel with only stagnant water to quench the maddening thirst that warns of ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... stopt again; and after my friend had made a note respecting some additional relief for the family, we bade the woman good day. We had not gone far before a little ragged lass looked up admiringly at two pinks I had stuck in my buttonhole, and holding up her hand, said, "Eh, gi' me a posy!" My friend pointed to one of the cottages we passed, and said that the last time he called there, he found the family all seated round a large bowl of porridge, made of Indian meal. This meal is sold at a penny a pound. ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... writing-table and began to separate a bunch of tiny flame-coloured rosebuds. "May I?" Selecting one, he sat down on the chair from which he had lately risen, and leaned forward while Kitty pinched the thorns from the stem and arranged the flower in his buttonhole. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... had been too engrossed in the surgical profession to observe much apart. "I believe I'm going to decorate you." And she dimpled up at the Senior Surgeon, coquettishly. Selecting one of the blossoms with great care, she drew it through the buttonhole in his lapel. "See, I'm decorating you with the Order of the Golden Primrose—for brilliancy." Whereupon she dropped her ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... the railroads or Mr. Mann for the shippers had departed from openly-presented argument to buttonhole Senators or Assemblymen to tell them they must vote for or against a given measure, or look out for trouble, immediately would he be open to criticism. If either went during roll call from Legislator to Legislator to tell the members how they were to vote, again would ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... "You did a thousand things which no one else did. First, when you sat down at the table, what did you do with your napkin?" "My napkin? Why just what every body else did with theirs. I unfolded it entire]y, and fastened it to my buttonhole." "Well, my dear friend," said Delille, "you were the only one that did that, at all events. No one hangs up his napkin in that style; they are contented with placing it on their knees. And what did you, do when you took your soup?" "Like the others, I believe. I took my spoon ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... unpopular announcement, and had a bad time of it in consequence. It was at first reported that the captain was a Radical, and that that was the reason of the prohibition, but this story was contradicted by his appearance that same evening with a yellow ribbon in his buttonhole. It was next insinuated that as he had not been allowed to go down himself he was determined no one else should, and Willoughby, having once taken up the idea, convinced itself this was the truth. However, when ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... to Solly, with a wink at myself, 'here's the first dinner-station we've struck where we can get a real good plate of beans.' And while he was up in his room trying to draw water out of the gas-pipe, I got one finger in the buttonhole of the head waiter's Tuxedo, drew him apart, inserted a two-dollar bill, and closed ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... woman in a fine equipage. The Countess di Moccoli had left her own phaeton for a seat beside Mrs. Denvil—an attention the most gratifying in public—to discuss the Nile voyage. Also the Count Martellini, in faultless attire, a jasmine blossom in his buttonhole, and yellow gloves, having assisted at this exchange, had consented to take a seat opposite the two ladies. He seldom drove with Mrs. Denvil. The count punctiliously observed appearances. He did not dislike the circulation of a rumor which ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... not look very pleased. I am afraid, after all, you ought to have asked Lady Fitzroy," she said, in a low voice; but Dick turned a deaf ear. He showed her the rose in his buttonhole; and when Nan told him it was withered, and wanted him to take it out, he gave her a reproachful ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... be alone in the National Gallery in the dead of the night with a tiny electric lamp in one's buttonhole and a sponge of alcohol and turpentine in one's hand. While he worked the little Madonna's eyes rested upon him and it could hardly have been mere fancy that made him believe they were full of gratitude and trust. At the end of an hour the outline of a child, faint and misty, appeared ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... witness, still remains a theory, and Adrian Brownwell traipsed up and down the earth, in his lavender gloves, his long coat and mouse-coloured trousers, his high hat, with his twirling cane, and the everlasting red carnation in his buttonhole. His absence made it necessary for Molly Brownwell to leave the sacred precincts of the home many and many a Saturday afternoon, to go over the books at the Banner office, make out bills, take them out, and collect the money due upon them ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... her now with a bright, boyish look. There was something gay in his buttonhole,—it was ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... not to wait long for the appearance of the lawyer, a fat, pale-faced gentleman, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, tightly buttoned up in a frock-coat, the buttonhole of which was adorned with the red rosette of ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... him and smiled. There were no visible signs of agitation about Reggie. He had come to take Alice to church, and he was exquisitely groomed and perfumed, and wore a wonderful scarlet orchid in his buttonhole. Montague, lounging back in a big leather chair and watching him, smiled to himself at the thought that Reggie regarded Lucy as a new kind of flower, with which he might parade down the ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... shiny bald pate. A low collar of enormous circumference encircled his short neck and his tie was drawn through a Zodiac ring. His clothes were ill-fitting—shapeless trousers and a voluminous morning coat, in the buttonhole of which was a pink carnation with a silver papered stem, an immense watch-chain spread across a coarsely knitted waistcoat of Berlin wool. And he seemed out of breath. The pistol in his extended hand vibrated in sympathy with an accelerated ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... assumption of a right to give him orders and hold him to obedience, which was almost intoxicating in its sweetness. And why should she not be familiar with him? Why should she not hold him to obedience by his buttonhole? Was he not her own? Had she not chosen him and taken him up to the exclusion of all other such ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... on which his life was moulded: such as the duty of using two silver-backed brushes with his monogram in blue enamel to part his hair, and of never appearing in society without a flower (preferably a gardenia) in his buttonhole. ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... ill-fitting, long, green calico tail-coat, with a huge yellow bandana dangling from a rear pocket; a red cotton umbrella with a brass ring on one end and a glass hook on the other; light blue shapeless trousers; a flaming orange—colored vest; a huge standing collar, and in his buttonhole a ridiculous artificial flower. This type of comic singer is unknown in American concert-halls of any grade, though he is sometimes seen at the German concerts in the Bowery of the lowest class. Here he is very cordially esteemed. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... first he put it down to mere niggerish taste, and his dislike for the girl edged his stricture; then, on second thought, the oddness of sumac for a nosegay caught his attention. Nobody used sumac for a buttonhole. He had never heard of any woman, white or black, using sumac for a bouquet. Why should this Cissie Dildine ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... it now, out here," retorted Prescott, slipping the silver watch into a vest pocket and passing the chain through a buttonhole. ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... at one stroke the Opposition and the average popular man. This he did by standing up gallantly for the Censor, to whose support the Opposition was in no way committed, and by visibly defying the most cherished conventions of the average man with a bunch of carnations in his buttonhole as large as a dinner-plate, which would have made a Bunthorne blench, and which very nearly did make Mr Granville Barker (who has an antipathy to the ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... about six months before this history begins, he had privately presented himself to Madame Beauvisage as a suitor for her daughter's hand. No step of that nature is ever taken secretly in the provinces. The procureur-du-roi, Frederic Marest, whose fortune, buttonhole, and position were about on a par with those of Antonin Goulard, had received a like refusal, three years earlier, based on the difference of ages. Consequently, the two officials were on terms of strict politeness with the Beauvisage family, and laughed at them severally ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... Snuffin!" said the big man, mopping his face with a large silk handkerchief, which, even at that distance, gave out a powerful perfume. "Go ahead, Snuffin, and we will settle this matter later," and, adjusting a large rose in his buttonhole, the self-important individual took his place on the cushioned seat at the wheel, while the big red motor boat ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... forceythia out of his buttonhole. "I can believe it. I found this in one, of the squares, and I think it belongs to you." He. offered it with a bow and a laugh, and she took ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... glance at the closet door, he opened that of the entry, and then the outer door, to admit a good looking, fair-haired young fellow of about five-and-twenty, most scrupulously dressed, a creamy rose in his buttonhole, and a look of vexation in his merry face as he stood looking at his ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... a prize is given to the person who guesses most, and to the person whose title is considered the best. Thus, a person wearing a card having the letter R represented Middlemarch, and a person with catkins in his buttonhole, Hazell's Annual. But simpler devices are ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... family of small children there are a great many buttonholes to be made. A quick way to make them in the everyday underwear, is on the sewing machine. Sew back and forth, leaving a small space in the center, three or four times where the buttonhole is wanted, and cut in the space left, being careful not to cut the stitching. In making little dresses, or slips after the skirts are sewed up, attach the gatherer to the machine and gather the top and bottom of sleeves and skirt. In this way work ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... will say, art thou a magician, Spiegelberg? 'Tis a pity, the king will say, that thou wert not made a general, Spiegelberg, thou wouldst have thrust the Austrians through a buttonhole. Yes, I hear the doctors lamenting, 'tis a crying shame that he was not bred to medicine, he would have discovered the elixir vitae. Ay, and that he did not take to financiering, the Sullys will deplore in their ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... is a short-sighted old lady. [Cecily puts the rose in his buttonhole.] You are the ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... next morning, in great agony. When I first saw the French soldiers I thought them a dirty, ragged set—their clothing was originally white. Many of them, particularly in the 'Regiment de la Reine,' had a bit of blue ribbon to the buttonhole of their coat, with a little white shell fixed to it, which they called 'Papa,' and this, it seems, was a mark of honour for having distinguished themselves on some former occasion. I, at first, mistook them for Freemasons! After the battle of the Plains of Abraham, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... you going?" demanded Patricia, but Arabella put her left hand over her lips, while with her right she slipped another button into its buttonhole, and sidled toward ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... must have been amazingly handsome, I thought, as I gazed admiringly at my comrade. Our staring made him shy, and as he blushed and touched up the stephanotis in his buttonhole, the engineer changed the subject by saying, "Talking of the squire, is it true, Dennis, what Jack tells me about the twenty pounds? Did he really forget to put ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... waistcoat of his evening livery, he freed the heavy silver watchchain from its buttonhole, drew from its pocket an old-fashioned silver watch of that obese style which first earned the portable timepiece its nickname of "turnip," and opening its back inserted a key attached to the other end of the chain. Its winding was ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... course, but just the two-legged, complicated shape they ought to be! It was like a miracle to Betsy! Then Cousin Ann helped them sew the seams on the machine, and they all turned to for the basting of the facings and the finishing. They each made one buttonhole. It was the first one Betsy had ever made, and when she got through she was as tired as though she had run all the way to school and back. Tired, but very proud; although when Cousin Ann inspected that buttonhole, she covered ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... the corner of the street leading to his Bloomsbury attic, the author was tapped on the shoulder by a resplendent Bond Street being. That is, the said being wore a perfectly-fitting frock-coat, a silk hat, trousers with the regulation fold back and front, an orchid buttonhole, grey gloves, boots that glittered, and carried a gold-topped cane. The fact that Paul wheeled without wincing showed that he was not yet in debt. Your Grub Street old-time author would have leaped his own length ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... John Kenyon could say what he had resolved to do, the door opened, and there entered unto them Mr. William Longworth, with his silk hat as glossy as a mirror, a general trim and prosperous appearance about him, a flower in his buttonhole and ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... Absalom Magoffin, who had had all the post-mortem trade of the town for forty years, was a queer old cuss, and he had some mighty aggravating ways. Never wanted to talk anything but business. Would buttonhole you on the street, and allow that, while he wasn't a doctor, he had had to cover up a good many of the doctor's mistakes in his time, and he didn't just like your symptoms. Said your looks reminded him ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... couldn't be uttered, staggered month after month among ruins, and found America untouched, comfortable, fat, still with time to worry over the suspected amorousness of the rich, still putting people into uniforms in order to buttonhole a man on landing and cross-question him as to ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... no head-covering. She wore one glove (wrong side out), and was carrying the other one. Her dress, evidently donned hastily for the street, was unevenly fastened, showing the topmost button without a buttonhole. ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... now do tell me all about her! [Putting in her last roses; she keeps one rosebud in her hand, of a size suitable for a man's buttonhole. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... "I've yet all these sleeves to set, and stitch in, and the fronts to finish off; and a buttonhole ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... The men appropriated their buttonhole flowers naturally. Martin smiled at my choice for him, which was a small, but chubby, red and yellow, uncompromising Dutch tulip, far too stout to be able to follow its family habit of night closing, except to contract itself slightly. Evan caressed ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... an attempt on the part of the heiress to ingratiate herself into his priceless affections. Sweeting alone received the posy like a smart, sensible little man, as he was, putting it gallantly and nattily into his buttonhole. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... if she hired a woman, some one who needed the work and knowed dressmaking, to come and really learn the girls to make their dresses. Learn 'em from the start, from cuttin' out the cloth to sewin' up the seams and makin' the last buttonhole. Them girls don't want to learn how to make them big pants and that shirt; they want to make their clothes—something pretty they can wear. I think a lot of Daphne, but she'd be doin' more good if she hired some one who knowed her business instead of tryin' to ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... why you put away the rose—for my sake, in case Mr. Smith should turn up, after all. Will you give it to me? I won't flaunt it in my buttonhole. I'll hide it sacredly, in memory of this evening—and of you. Not that I shall need to be reminded of anything which concerns this night—you especially, and your generosity, your courage. But it may be that the men I spoke ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... criticisms. Among strangers he was as a fish out of water, but among friends discrepancies in wisdom or age made no difference to him. With us boys he was a boy. When he took his leave, late in the evening, from the mujlis of our elders, I would buttonhole and drag him to our school room. There, with undiminished geniality he would make himself the life and soul of our little gathering, seated on the top of our study table. On many such occasions I have listened ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... from the door with a low bow. The Prince—in the buttonhole of whose frock-coat was a large bunch of Russian violets, passed across the threshold. Mr. Sabin rose slowly ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... find this embarrassing; he said he had hit upon them at odd times ('very odd times,' he could not help remembering), and shifted his ground a little uneasily, but he was held fast by the buttonhole. 'They're remarkably sound and striking, I must say that, and your story is interesting, too. I found myself looking at the end, sir, ha, ha! to see what became of your characters. Ah, I knew there was something I wanted to ask you. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Aunt Maria, Molly would never have known her but for the portrait—kissed her uncle, and then she took a Christmas rose out of her dress and put it in Mr. Sheldon's buttonhole, and put up her face to him and said, 'Good-night, James.' He kissed her; Molly heard the loud, jolly sound of the kiss, and Aunt Maria ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... the little sprays set ready for them, and putting one in his own buttonhole, fastened the other in her bodice ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... sprigs to the tops of their heads by a tiny daub of wet clay, and had evidently been surprised trying to put a sprig into the mouth of one of the doves, for it hung by a little thread of clay from the beak. He detached it and put it in his buttonhole. Poor little Sylvia! she took things awfully to heart. He would be as nice as ever he could to her all day. And, balancing on his stool, he stared fixedly at the wall against which she had fallen back; the line of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... round the fingers of the left hand through the picot with a needle, pulling through a loop large enough to admit the shuttle. Slip this through, then draw the thread tight again over the fingers, and continue the work. In many patterns a needle is used to work over, in buttonhole stitch, the thread which passes from one loop to another. A long needleful of the same cotton or silk used for the tatting is left at the beginning of the work, and a common needle used to buttonhole over ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... Lord Henry, settling his buttonhole in his coat; "and when they grow older they know it. But I don't want money. It is only people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay mine. Credit is the capital of a younger son, and one ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... was a hearing before the General Assembly. The opponents had rushed into town every farmer and small politician they could secure and the women "antis" pinned a red rose in his buttonhole. The suffragists had given a yellow jonquil to every friend. Behind the Speaker's desk hung a huge yellow banner inscribed "Votes for Women," and so crowded was the room with determined men and eager women that the sergeant-at-arms had to clear a space for the Senate. The suffragists had two hours ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... talk, and talked with great volubility, showing that once embarked upon this theme, he felt himself in his proper element. Now and then he paused to buttonhole me or press me against the rocks. When he had said something he thought very convincing, he swiftly screwed his eyeglass into his eye and scrutinized my face to see what impression he had made upon me. This, added to his voice, which was like the sound of creaking hinges, and the reiteration ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the best of congratulations awaits him on the 16th March on the front page of the Official Journal in a decree which flames in advance before his eyes and makes him glance every now and then at his buttonhole. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... old gentleman, with a number of orders at his buttonhole, presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the marble table, before which reposed Simon and his clerical friend. "Excuse me, gentlemen," he said, as he took a place opposite them, and began reading the papers ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... if nothing could turn him from this folly; he became daily younger and faster. He wore the most eccentric hats on one ear. He ordered his coats to be made in the very last fashion; and never went out without a camellia or a rosebud in his buttonhole. He no longer contented himself with dyeing his hair, but actually began to rouge, and used such strong perfumes, that one might have followed his track through the streets by the odors he ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... moment, however, Miss Anita Ferguson, clad in a black habit, with a white rose in her buttonhole, and a neat black derby with a scarf of white crepe de chine wound about it, had gone on the mesa for a horseback ride, so Polly and Margery had borrowed the cosy ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... in the streets and brings them home and doesn't eat them, and then I am obliged to put them in the balcony because they make the room smell faint. Also he meets countrymen with honeycomb on their heads, and leads them (by the buttonhole when they have one) to this gorgeous establishment and requests the bar to buy honeycomb for his breakfast; then it stands upon the sideboard uncovered and the flies fall into it. He buys owls, too, and castles, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... to the horns with flowers and coloured ribbons harmoniously blended. And last of all came the exhibitor who was to receive the first prize—a slouching man, plainly dressed, with a pair of farmer's gaiters on, and without even a flower in his buttonhole. "Who is he?" asked the spectators. "Why, he is the Englishman," was the reply. "The Englishman!—that the representative of a great country!" was the general exclamation. But it was the Englishman all ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... to his rooms about one o'clock the next morning, with his hat a little on the back of his head, and wearing, very much against his prejudice, a white rose in his buttonhole. Brightman, who was awaiting him there, looked up eagerly ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... babies as naturally as ducks take to the water. Result,—the ladies secure the political plums, and the men are rapidly being driven to manual labor, their natural sphere of action, though not without vigorous kicking against the inevitable. These ex-men-superintendents buttonhole you at every turn, reciting the outrages perpetrated upon them by their successful ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... who looked about eighty, with perfectly white hair, and a nose reddened by the cold, and a pale, wrinkled face like an old woman's, came shuffling slowly along in list slippers, a shiny alpaca overcoat hanging on his stooping shoulders, no ribbon at his buttonhole, the sleeves of an under-vest showing below his coat-cuffs, and his shirt-front unpleasantly dingy. He approached timidly, looked at the coach, recognized Lisbeth, and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... room. These were Fancy, who had assumed the garb and aspect of an itinerant showman, with a box of pictures on her back; and Memory, in the likeness of a clerk, with a pen behind her ear, an inkhorn at her buttonhole and a huge manuscript volume beneath her arm; and lastly, behind the other two, a person shrouded in a dusky mantle which concealed both face and form. But Mr. Smith had a shrewd idea that it was Conscience. How kind of Fancy, Memory and Conscience to visit the old gentleman just ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were rich and tony. They didn't flash any jewelry, but her shoes and gloves were made to order and her coat had a Paris mark inside. The brother and sister must be way up, too; he was dressed quiet but rich, and he had a Bankers' Association pin in his buttonhole. Yes, they wasn't paupers, and that's the only fake sign I've seen about Mrs. Markham. But that's nothin'. Stands to reason the best people go to the best mediums, just like they go to ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... ceremony, I suppose, is adequate; the institution, I dare say, is useful or it would not have endured. But the human relation thus recognised is a mysterious thing in its origins, character and consequences. Unfortunately you can't buttonhole familiarly a young girl as you would a young fellow. I don't think that even another woman could really do it. She would not be trusted. There is not between women that fund of at least conditional loyalty which men may depend on in their dealings with each ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... speak! You put ideas into my poor head, and my poor head lets them out, and then you put them in again. What noble perseverance! If I live a while longer I do really think you will make a clever man of me. Let me put the rose in your buttonhole for you. And I say, I wish you would allow me to go ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... town when I was a boy, and allowed that he was going into the undertaking business. Absalom Magoffin, who had had all the post-mortem trade of the town for forty years, was a queer old cuss, and he had some mighty aggravating ways. Never wanted to talk anything but business. Would buttonhole you on the street, and allow that, while he wasn't a doctor, he had had to cover up a good many of the doctor's mistakes in his time, and he didn't just like your symptoms. Said your looks reminded him of Bill Shorter, who' went off sudden in the fifties, and was buried by the Masons with ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... themselves on the lawn, and played at ball; they wandered among the flowers, and each of the young girls broke off a flower, and fastened it in a young gentleman's buttonhole. But the young Scotch lady looked round, for a long time, in an undecided way. None of the flowers seemed to suit her taste. Then her eye glanced across the paling—outside stood the great thistle bush, with the reddish-blue, sturdy flowers; she saw them, she smiled, and asked ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... melancholy man with the new clothes. This morning he was dressed in a suit of the lightest gray, with a white marseilles waistcoat, over which his glittering chain shone ostentatiously. White tennis-shoes, a white rose in his buttonhole, and a white straw hat in his hand completed a toilet over which much time had evidently been spent. Kate noted these details as she held ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... over the cot until the blush rosebud that Miss Amanda had shyly pinned in his buttonhole as her good-by before she had retired, brushed the little fellow's cheek as he ran his arm under the sturdy little nightgowned shoulders and drew him as close as ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... construction of blocks, according to patchwork law, every alternate block of the border having an applied rose cut from printed calico in alternate colors of yellow, red, and blue. These roses were carefully applied with buttonhole stitch, and the cotton ground underneath cut away to give uniform thickness for quilting. The main body of the quilt was unnoticeably good, being a collection of faintly colored patches of correct construction. ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... Lord Reggie alone in the room reading his letters. He was dressed in loose white flannel, and in the buttonhole of his thin jacket a big green carnation was stuck. ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... books and least of all story books in the woods—these are for the library—but rather scraps and extracts and condensations from which thoughts can be plucked like flowers and carried for a while in the buttonhole. So it is that I am fond of all kinds of anthologies. I have one entitled "Traveller's Joy," another, "Songs of Nature," and I have lately found the best one I know called "The Spirit of Man" by Robert Bridges, ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... finger in his buttonhole, and stood looking in his face with a saucy gaze. Clarence yielded at once. His small despot knew very well how to rule him and to put down such short-lived attempts at insubordination as ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... back skirts. The gilt buttons also bore fleurs-de-lis; on the shoulders a pair of straps cried out for useless epaulettes; these military appendages were there like a petition without a recommendation. This old gentleman's coat was of dark blue cloth, and the buttonhole had blossomed into many colored ribbons. He, no doubt, always carried his hat in his hand—a three cornered cocked hat, with a gold cord—for the snowy wings of his powdered hair showed not a trace of its pressure. He might have been taken for not more ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... papa Sechard, your son will be a credit to you, you will see; he will make money and be a rich man one of these days, and wear the Cross of the Legion of Honor at his buttonhole." ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... some excuse of putting away designs, but presently peeped from the window, and Gillian, with excited curiosity, imitated her, and beheld, lingering about, a young man in the pink of fashion, with a tea-rose in his buttonhole and a cane in ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sue, but I've got two buttons left over, and there's only one buttonhole to put 'em in! What'll I ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... whole a most loving, kissing, kind-hearted gentlemen. He has a pair of very good eyes in his head, which not being sufficient as it should seem for the many nice and difficult purposes of a senator, he has a third also, which he wore suspended by a riband from his buttonhole. The boys halloo'd, the dogs barked, Puss scampered, the hero, with his long train of obsequious followers, withdrew. We made ourselves very merry with the adventure, and in a short time settled into our former tranquillity, never probably to be ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... white night-cap and a round hat, composed of some iron-hard substance, well calculated to protect the head from any loose stones that might fall on it, completed the equipment; to which, three tallow-candles were afterwards added, two to hang at the buttonhole, one to carry in ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Miss Raeburn turned her buttonhole in fine style, and at lightning speed, to show the coolness of her mind, then with a rattling of all her lockets, looked up and waited ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all that could be easily remedied," she added, with a touch of archness. Then Mr. Iglesias thought it time to depart. In the hall his host held him, literally by the buttonhole, looking up with squinting blue ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... his Sabbath clothes, with a rose from the Dovecot hot-house for buttonhole (which he slipped into his pocket when he saw other boys approaching), delivered them at the doors of the aristocracy, where, by the way, he had been a few weeks earlier, with ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... Cross of the Legion of Honor, founded by Napoleon I., and since always regarded as the highest of such distinctions in France. The cross is not usually worn, but in its place a bit of red ribbon in the buttonhole.] ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... following day: how fearful, when the morning broke grey and lowering: how grateful, when the benignant sun shone out later, and promised a brilliant afternoon: how carefully I dressed, and what a price I paid for the flower for my buttonhole! ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... me the horrible details! I think you might take a little interest in me. I thought of wearing a buttonhole. Though you may have forgotten it now, before I was a dull old married man, I was supposed to dress ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... the parapet of the Embankment and looking out across the river. As a figure he was quite conventional, clad in a silk hat and frock-coat of the more formal type of fashion; he had a red flower in his buttonhole. As Syme drew nearer to him step by step, he did not even move a hair; and Syme could come close enough to notice even in the dim, pale morning light that his face was long, pale and intellectual, and ended ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... something, old-timer," said Dave, with emotion. For the first time he saw the rosette in De Launay's buttonhole. "You done a little more'n caf fightin' though, ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... individuals scrutinising me in what I deemed a most suspicious manner. Both were Frenchmen evidently; they wore billycock hats and carried stout sticks; and one of them, swarthy and almost brigandish of aspect, had the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in his buttonhole. It was easy to take these individuals for French detectives, and I hastily jumped to the conclusion that they were ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... and Evacuation Day, when the British redcoats got out of Boston and Patrick evicted the snakes from Ireland. For observing the day, wear a turkey-red coat, or vest, and put a bit of green ribbon, or a shamrock, in the buttonhole—the green above the red. On Easter day, wear a scrambled ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... the angle of a worm fence. His uniform was worn and ragged, mud-stained as well as blood-stained; the cap which had fallen from his head was a tatter, and the torn shoes were ready to drop from his stiffening feet; but in a buttonhole of his tunic was stuck the inevitable toothbrush, which continued even to the end of the war to be the distinguishing mark of gentle nurture,—the souvenir that the Confederate so often received from fair ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... housework she used to nurse the baby and cry, remembering the happy days when she lived with her father, who kept seventeen cows and lived quite in the country, and when John used to come courting her in the summer evenings, as smart as smart, with a posy in his buttonhole. And now John's hair was getting gray, and there was ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... is a gold watch and chain. The man who was killed, Mrs. Brenner, had a piece of gold chain to match this in his buttonhole. The rest of it had ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... parted Sam wore a sprig of mistletoe in his ragged buttonhole, and Michael carried several handsome branches of holly back ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... pile of reviews, several volumes of poetry, and a couple of library books. In the centre of the mantelpiece was a photograph, the photograph of a man a little older, perhaps, than this newly-arrived visitor, with rounder face, dressed in country tweeds, a flower in his buttonhole, the picture of a prosperous man, yet with a curious, almost disturbing likeness to the pale, over-nervous, loose-framed youth whose eye had been attracted by its presence, and who was gazing at ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... someone knocked at an inner door which led to steep side stairs connecting with a side street entrance. Wondering who it was Mary opened it, to find Steve, very flushed and handsome, a flower in his buttonhole yet no hint ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... plant, but it should have plenty of room given it in the bed of sweet odours and be used as a border on the sunny side of wall or fence, where, protected from the wind and absorbing every ray of autumn sunlight, it will often give you at least a buttonhole bouquet ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... I can remember was the arrival of the new baby, my brother Jack, when I was two years old. Dr. Cox was spoiling my mother's good-night visit while I was being dried after my bath. My pink flannel dressing-gown, with white buttonhole stitching, was hanging over the fender; and he was discussing some earnest subject in a low tone. He got up and, pinching ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... simply must promise to come before he went away; she insisted. And she asked suddenly: "When I saw you on the seventeenth, didn't you have a bow in your buttonhole?" ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the departure from the dairy window, which, overgrown with creepers, made a dark frame for the brightly-coloured picture. There was Mr Buckle, a young farmer of the neighbourhood, in a light-grey suit with a blue satin tie and a rose in his buttonhole. There was Bella, her face covered with self-satisfied smiles, mounting to his side. There was Agnetta carrying the new parasol high in the air with all its lace fluttering. How gay and happy they all looked! Mrs ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... took a rose from the green vase, stuck it in his buttonhole, and went forth—into his own office. He there rang his buzzer for Mr. Meyers, and seated himself with the air of a man who has had a burden lifted off his shoulders rather than with the air of one about to give away ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... employed watchers, who picketed the block where Parnell and his wife lived, and telegraphed to Christendom the time the lights were out, and whether Mr. Parnell appeared with a shamrock or a rose in his buttonhole. The facts that Mrs. Parnell wore her hair in curls, and smilingly hummed a tune as she walked to the corner, were construed into proof of brazen guilt and a desire to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... marriage as Mrs. Luna had tattled about. Mr. Burrage was successful, he could see that in the turn of an eye; not perhaps as having a commanding intellect or a very strong character, but as being rich, polite, handsome, happy, amiable, and as wearing a splendid camellia in his buttonhole. And that he, at any rate, thought Verena had succeeded was proved by the casual, civil tone, and the contented distraction of eye, with which he exclaimed, "You don't mean to say you were not moved ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... probably at the bazaar," said Pateley, and as he reflected on the scene he had just left, Stamfordham surrounded by a bevy of attractive ladies beseeching him to give them an autograph, to buy a buttonhole, to drink their tea, to put into their raffles, and to have his fortune told, he felt still more dubious as to the mission he was engaged upon. Fortunately Rachel realised ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... the big man, mopping his face with a large silk handkerchief, which, even at that distance, gave out a powerful perfume. "Go ahead, Snuffin, and we will settle this matter later," and, adjusting a large rose in his buttonhole, the self-important individual took his place on the cushioned seat at the wheel, while the big red motor boat drew ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... selfish and pompous about all this," said Howard; "MY work, MY sphere—what nonsense it all is! Why should I come down to Windlow, take possession, and having picked the sweetest flower in the garden, stick it in my buttonhole ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Caillard could not get rid of his one absorbing idea, and he felt constantly unhappy because he had not the right to wear a little bit of colored ribbon in his buttonhole. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... up, nipped in his waist and disclosed a cashmere waistcoat crossed in front, beneath which was another waistcoat of white material. His watch, negligently slipped into a pocket, was fastened by a short gold chain to a buttonhole. His gray trousers, buttoned up at the sides, were set off at the seams with patterns of black silk embroidery. He gracefully twirled a cane, whose chased gold knob did not mar the freshness of his ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Greenaway at the head of a mischievous throng, that he causes one to seriously consider whether his old head be turned or no. A scholar and statistician buried in heaps of flowers, with a rope of daisies round his neck, and a belt of primroses round his waist; a sunflower in his buttonhole, and a singing bird upon his shoulder; and, worst of all, the picture of a pink-frocked, pink-faced girl next his heart—can he be relied upon? But he persists in his claim to be listened to, and we must take his word for it that this is Christmas day in the morning, ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... showed, in the first place, that the eye was not like any eye that Nature ever made; and, indeed, being examined closely, and abstracted from the rest of the face, it has a very queer look,—less like a human eye than a half-worn buttonhole! Then he attacked the ear, which, he affirmed and demonstrated, was placed a good deal too low on the head, thereby giving an artificial and monstrous height to the portion of the head above it. The forehead met with no better treatment in his ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... am going to put a piece of scarlet geranium in your buttonhole, and I am going to take you out into the garden and hand you over to my brother, and tell him that my task is done, that you are my slave, and that he has only to speak and you will go out into the world with a revolver in one hand and ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not a church hymn. It was a new method of shouting out the odds, attracting attention to an exceedingly well-got-up gentleman in a grey frock suit, patent leather boots, white spats, grey gloves, tall white hat, and a flower in his buttonhole. A new bookmaker had made his appearance. He informed the crowds in song that he betted "only for cash," not "on the nod"—"I pay on the winner, immediately after the race." It only wanted an organ to accompany him. It was quite amusing to watch the ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... fellow, what on earth should we men do going about with purity and innocence? A carefully thought-out buttonhole is much ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... diamond, and from the front of his rimless cap waved a plume of diamonds. On his wrists were heavy gold bracelets of Malayan workmanship, and his fingers were cramped with almost priceless rings. In his buttonhole blazed a diamond orchid. The handle and scabbard of his sword were a solid mass of precious stones. Altogether this little known Oriental potentate possessed $10,000,000 worth of diamonds, the second largest collection ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... going it faithfully ever since. What the Marines are to the Senior Service, "I." is to us. Should a Subaltern come in with the yarn that the spook of HINDENBURG accosted him at Bloody Corner and offered him a cigar, or a balloon cherub buttonhole you with the story of a Bosch tank fitted with rubber tyres, C-springs and hot and cold water, that he has seen climbing trees behind St. Quentin, we retort, "Oh, go and tell it to 'I.'" and then sit back and see what the inspired official organ of the green ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... morning. His furniture had gone toward certain debts. His clothes, save what were upon him, had descended to his man-servant for back wages. As he sat there was not in the whole city for him a bed or a broiled lobster or a street-car fare or a carnation for buttonhole unless he should obtain them by sponging on his friends or by false pretenses. Therefore he had chosen ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... of Antoun lit with a spark of surprise and laughter. "I don't want either, thanks. I admire flowers, but I never gather them. I leave them growing. However, you might tell me which one you want for your own buttonhole?" "Really, I don't know," I mumbled, taken aback. "All I do know is, it's not likely ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... dear, good clever one, whom I love very much. Do you know what? From this day forth I confer on you the rank of page to me; and don't you forget that pages have to keep close to their ladies. Here is the token of your new dignity,' she added, sticking the rose in the buttonhole of my jacket, 'the token of ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... Just as you say. Holidays are not in the least wearisome any more. Plague on it! When a man tells me now that he hates holidays, I find myself getting very wroth. I pin him by the buttonhole at once, and tell him my experience. The fact is, if I were at dinner on a holiday, and anybody should ask me for a sentiment, I should say, 'God ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... and listenin' with both ears stretched and his mouth open, was a blond young gent with a bristly Bat Nelson pompadour. He's rigged out in a silk faced tuxedo, a smoke colored, open face vest, and he has a big yellow orchid in his buttonhole. By the way he's gazin' at Maizie, you could tell he approved of her from the ground up. She don't hesitate any on droppin' ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... Any Rosina who sold buttonhole bouquets at the theater door could have seen that Charlie was handsome, with his pale brown smoothness and regularity of feature; the pretty mustache accentuating and not concealing the neat and agreeable mold ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... believe he has not been described. When we saw him, his hair danced wildly over his shoulders, as if electrified: he had a quick eye, and wore enviably well-fitting ducks: his neck, besides supporting his head and all its contents, supported an inextricable labyrinth of gold chains; from every buttonhole of his waistcoat the chains they came in, and the chains they came out, like the peripatetic man on the Boulevards who sells them: his gloves, well-fitting, and buttoning at the wrist, were of the whitest kid, and grasped a yet whiter and highly-scented cambric: his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... a rich diamond pin from my dress, and fastened it at the buttonhole of Matthias's coat. Neither he nor I spoke a single word, but I am sure that while each wondered inwardly at the strange fulfilment of the prophecy, each was still more surprised that it had realized ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... labour market of the world. To do this she will have to sacrifice some of her present intelligence; it is impossible to imagine a genuinely intelligent human being becoming a competent trial lawyer, or buttonhole worker, or newspaper sub-editor, or piano tuner, or house painter. Women, to get upon all fours with men in such stupid occupations, will have to commit spiritual suicide, which is probably much further than they will ever actually go. Thus a shade of their present superiority to men will always ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... III Buttonhole edging with darned centre, centre filled with strands of wool caught down at intervals with double ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands
... the lappet of his coat; she had kept it in her hand even while she detached herself from his embrace. There was a white flower in his buttonhole that she looked at and played with a moment before she said; "I've a better idea—you needn't come to Griffin. Stay in your studio—do as you ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... his buttonhole, welcomed Roger uproariously. "Here's Whittington," he said. "You ought to hear his poem, fellows, about a little cat. He had us all ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... and there stood in the doorway a rubicund-nosed gentleman, in a green coat and huge wonderfully gay coloured cravat, leather breeches, and top-boots, with a hunting-whip under his arm, a peony in his buttonhole, and a white hat which he flourished in his right hand, while he kept scraping with his ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... lots of wimmen and girls on the streets, some on 'em sellin' posies for charity, I bought two little bunches, one on 'em I put in Josiah's buttonhole, though he objected and said it would probable make talk for a man of his age and dignity to be ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... kind-hearted gentleman. He is very young, genteel, and handsome. He has a pair of very good eyes in his head, which not being sufficient, as it should seem, for the many nice and difficult purposes of a senator, he has a third also, which he suspended from his buttonhole. The boys halloo'd, the dogs barked, puss scampered, the hero, with his long train of obsequious followers, withdrew. We made ourselves very merry with the adventure, and in a short time settled into our former tranquillity, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... sprays set ready for them, and putting one in his own buttonhole, fastened the other in her bodice with a loving, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... I assure you, my dear children, kept up most carefully. There was always a button to sew on, a buttonhole to remake, or a tear to be mended. Thus constantly in touch with the household Madame Hen soon thought she belonged to it. Indeed, worn out by the teasing of her companions, by the constant arguments she had with them, and touched on the other hand by the affectionate ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... simply; and then stood watching him, while he began to clamber. Rowland was not shaped for an acrobat, and his enterprise was difficult; but he kept his wits about him, made the most of narrow foot-holds and coigns of vantage, and at last secured his prize. He managed to stick it into his buttonhole and then he contrived to descend. There was more than one chance for an ugly fall, but he evaded them all. It was doubtless not gracefully done, but it was done, and that was all he had proposed to himself. He was red in the face when he offered Miss Garland the flower, and she was ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... own, and thus establishes his right to borrow—a right very rarely to be conceded. Much that he has learned from Shelley he passes on to his readers, but before they receive it, it has become, not Shelley's, but Francis Thompson's. To stick a lotos-flower in our buttonhole—harris-cloth or broadcloth, it does not matter—is an impertinent folly that makes a guy of the wearer. But this man's raiment is his own, not that of other men, and Shelley himself would willingly have ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... where he died the next morning, in great agony. When I first saw the French soldiers I thought them a dirty, ragged set—their clothing was originally white. Many of them, particularly in the 'Regiment de la Reine,' had a bit of blue ribbon to the buttonhole of their coat, with a little white shell fixed to it, which they called 'Papa,' and this, it seems, was a mark of honour for having distinguished themselves on some former occasion. I, at first, mistook them for Freemasons! After the battle of the Plains of Abraham, on the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... you with the nosegay in your buttonhole to talk of selling! You who wanted to sell your own client,—and you know it. [Levy recoiled.] Why, gentlemen, that's Levy the Jew, who talks of selling! And if he asperses the character of this constituency, I stand here to defend ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... without the buttonhole parts, $60. This last is beyond all question the simplest, easiest to manage and to keep in order, of any machine in the market. Machines warranted, and full instruction given ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... gun he had in his pocket there would be a dead Yankee in about four minutes. Well, I thought dad had nerve before, but he beat the band, right there. He unbuttoned his overcoat and put his finger on a Grand Army button in his buttonhole, and said, "Gentlemen, I am an American citizen, visiting the crowned heads of the old world, with credentials from the President of the United States, and day after tomorrow I have a date to meet your king, on official business that means much to the future peace of our respective ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... Alan's wonderful success," replied Katharine lightly, as she took out the daffodil she had been wearing in her buttonhole and tossed it over to her cousin. Then she added soberly, "It isn't any story at all, but I believe, while we wait, I'll tell you about the saddest funeral I ever saw ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... DES RUBANS; little bits of ribbon are worn in the buttonhole by members of the Legion of Honor, established by Napoleon in 1802. Membership in it is a purely honorary distinction, conferred by the government for conspicuous services of any kind, civil as well as military, and usually much coveted. Beranger refused all such favors from the government. 26. ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... button and buttonhole. For one is something and the other nothing, and what in the very nature of things could be ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... a little bunch of flowers into Garrone's buttonhole, for him to carry to his mother in her name. Garrone said, "Thanks," in his big voice, without raising his chin from his breast. But all his kind and noble ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... was had been pasted in thin separated strands across the shiny bald pate. A low collar of enormous circumference encircled his short neck and his tie was drawn through a Zodiac ring. His clothes were ill-fitting—shapeless trousers and a voluminous morning coat, in the buttonhole of which was a pink carnation with a silver papered stem, an immense watch-chain spread across a coarsely knitted waistcoat of Berlin wool. And he seemed out of breath. The pistol in his extended hand vibrated in sympathy with ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... house-front a vine-tree straggled, but its foliage was too thin to afford a speck of shade as they sat there in the eye of the westering sun. The man (aged about one-and-twenty) wore the uncomfortable Sunday-best of a mechanic, with a shrivelled, but still enormous, bunch of Sweet-William in his buttonhole. The girl was dressed in a bright green gown and a white bonnet. Both were flushed and perspiring, and I still think they must have ordered hot cocoa in haste, and were repenting it at leisure. They lifted their eyes and blushed with ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... flowers, the forest made up of immense trees with luxuriant foliage, overladen with parasitic orchids—eternally in bloom, of course, in the dreamy minds of the untravelled, and just waiting to be picked and to be placed in one's buttonhole. The sky, naturally, over such a forest, could only be swarming with birds of all sizes, with plumage of the richest colours and hues; and what else could such a luxuriant country have in the way of butterflies and insects than some which resemble precious gems ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... preceding chapter. The "woman's sphere" argument is still being worked overtime by anti-suffrage societies, whose members rather inconsistently leave their "sphere," the home, to harangue in public and buttonhole legislators to vote against the franchise for women. "A woman's place," says the sage Hennessy, "is in th' home, darning her husband's childher. I mean——" "I know what ye mean," says Mr. Dooley. "'Tis a favrite argument iv mine whin I can't think iv annything to say." A century ago, ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... before going to the scene of the contest. Both were dressed for the occasion, and I tell you they were sights! The bank clerk had on a collar so high that he could hardly turn his head, a high silk hat, long black frock-coat, and an immense white rose in his buttonhole. ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... thousands of years has longed to witness, still remains a theory, and Adrian Brownwell traipsed up and down the earth, in his lavender gloves, his long coat and mouse-coloured trousers, his high hat, with his twirling cane, and the everlasting red carnation in his buttonhole. His absence made it necessary for Molly Brownwell to leave the sacred precincts of the home many and many a Saturday afternoon, to go over the books at the Banner office, make out bills, take them out, and collect the money due upon them and pay off the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... In the buttonhole of his light linen coat she placed a flower of satin face of purest gold, the five petals rounded, but sharply tipped, a heavy mass of silk stamens, pollen dusted in the heart. She pushed back the left side of his coat and taking one ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... like a cauliflower, the upper one reaching to his heels. He wears a broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat; a huge roll of colored handkerchief about his neck, knowingly knotted and tucked in at the bosom; and has in summer time a large bouquet of flowers in his buttonhole, the present, most probably, of some enamored country lass. His waistcoat is commonly of some bright color, striped, and his small-clothes extend far below the knees, to meet a pair of jockey boots which reach about ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... are a great many buttonholes to be made. A quick way to make them in the everyday underwear, is on the sewing machine. Sew back and forth, leaving a small space in the center, three or four times where the buttonhole is wanted, and cut in the space left, being careful not to cut the stitching. In making little dresses, or slips after the skirts are sewed up, attach the gatherer to the machine and gather the top and bottom of sleeves and skirt. In this ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... "Good-morning," and walked with him into the garden, among the roses and sweet-smelling things of summer. And then—oh, wonderful, exquisite marvel!—plucked a sprig of mignonette, smelled it, and placed it in his buttonhole. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... best to state on paper what I have to say. I can readily appreciate that the encounter is disagreeable. To meet one who has made a thing impossible to you sets the nerves on edge." He caught up his opera hat, his cane and gloves. He raised the lapel of his coat and sniffed at the orchid in the buttonhole. ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... he slipped a finger into a buttonhole of the good parson's, (the only man in the parish who would have ventured upon such familiarity,)—"I think we've been a little strict with Reuben,—a little strict. He's a fine, frank, straight-for'ard lad, but impulsive,—impulsive, Doctor. Your father, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... straight or turned-over collar, a cravat tied in a sailor's knot, a gardenia in the buttonhole, long trousers and varnished boots completed the dress of these modern Amazons, who, having nothing in common with the female warriors of ancient times, are not deprived, as were those unfortunates, of any ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... top of the Faubourg Saint-Honore Twenty minutes' fencing, boxing, or single-stick followed by a bath and a cold douche; then a little halt at the flower-shop, as he came out, to have a carnation stitched in his buttonhole; then a constitutional as far as the Arc de l'Etoile, Stenne and the phaeton following close to the footway. Finally came a turn in the Bois, where Paul, thanks to his observance of fashionable hygiene, displayed a feminine delicacy of colouring and a complexion rivalling any lady's. ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... long curls all down her back and a brown alpaca gown; and they all seemed under the impression that the most important sights which awaited them were the Metropolitan Tabernacle and some tunnel under the Thames. The only other passenger was a rather smart-looking gentleman with a flower in his buttonhole, who made himself very pleasant; engaged Austin in conversation, gave him hints as to how best to enjoy himself in London, asked him a number of questions about where he lived and how he spent his time, and finished up by inviting him to lunch. ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... be otherwise. She greeted him with a soft "Good-morning," and walked with him into the garden, among the roses and sweet-smelling things of summer. And then—oh, wonderful, exquisite marvel!—plucked a sprig of mignonette, smelled it, and placed it in his buttonhole. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... if electrified: he had a quick eye, and wore enviably well-fitting ducks: his neck, besides supporting his head and all its contents, supported an inextricable labyrinth of gold chains; from every buttonhole of his waistcoat the chains they came in, and the chains they came out, like the peripatetic man on the Boulevards who sells them: his gloves, well-fitting, and buttoning at the wrist, were of the whitest kid, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... I cried, with enthusiasm. "You are, Dawson, the perfect detective. As a criminal I should be mightily afraid of you. But, as in my buttonhole I always wear the white flower which proclaims to the world my blameless life, I am thoroughly enjoying this visit and our cosy chat beside the fire. Shall I telephone to my office and say that I shall be unavoidably detained ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... opinion as well as before the rulers. But what a curious choice of men! It would be called even an unhappy one. Thurlow Weed, with his offhand, apparently sincere, if not polished ways, may not be too repulsive to English refinement, provided he does not buttonhole his interlocutionists, or does not pat them on the shoulder. So Thurlow Weed will be dined, wined, etc. But doubtless the London press will show him up, or some "Secesh" in London will do it. I am sure ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... effect. For example, in 1845, the disclosure in the "Freeman" of J. Young's letter, to the discomfiture of the Whigs and Lord Melbourne, suggested to Thackeray the line: "Young's Night Thought—Wish I hadn't franked that letter!" Its appearance in Punch caused Mr. Sparkes to buttonhole the writer at the Reform Club, and excitedly dilate on the mischief that was being done to the Party by such very public and sarcastic means. Thackeray burst out laughing—"the mountain shook," says the historian—but felt a little genuine ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... had parted, and now on this first occasion of her freedom she felt it again. What did he think of her? Did he suppose that she could transfer her love in that way, as a flower may be taken from one buttonhole and placed in another? He read it all, and knew that he was hurrying on too quickly. "I can understand well," he said in a whisper, "what your present feelings are; but I do not think you will be really angry with me because I have been unable to repress my ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... What he borrows he first makes his own, and thus establishes his right to borrow—a right very rarely to be conceded. Much that he has learned from Shelley he passes on to his readers, but before they receive it, it has become, not Shelley's, but Francis Thompson's. To stick a lotos-flower in our buttonhole—harris-cloth or broadcloth, it does not matter—is an impertinent folly that makes a guy of the wearer. But this man's raiment is his own, not that of other men, and Shelley himself would willingly have ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... bachelor, courtly and quaint, who lives in "Old Gardiston," the home of his ancestors "befo' de wah." He has but one suit of clothes, so he dresses for dinner by donning a ruffled shirt and a flower in his buttonhole. His work is among "documents," his life in the past; without murmur at poverty or change he keeps up the even routine of life until one evening, trying to elevate his gentle little voice as he reads to his niece, so as to be heard above the rain ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... was a new method of shouting out the odds, attracting attention to an exceedingly well-got-up gentleman in a grey frock suit, patent leather boots, white spats, grey gloves, tall white hat, and a flower in his buttonhole. A new bookmaker had made his appearance. He informed the crowds in song that he betted "only for cash," not "on the nod"—"I pay on the winner, immediately after the race." It only wanted an organ to accompany him. It was quite amusing to watch the ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... run a seam, overcast, roll and whip, hem, tuck, gather, bind, make a French seam, make buttonhole, sew on buttons, hooks and eyes, darn and ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... conclusions enough to last them through the campaign and put an unbiased opinion into a man's house each day for less than he now pays for gas. Just before election you could go into your private office, throw in a large dose of campaign whisky, light a campaign cigar, fasten your buttonhole to the wall by an elastic band, so that there would be a gentle pull on it, and turn the electricity on your mechanical thought supply. It would save time and money, and the result would be the same as it is now. This would only ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... before me a woman of seventy dressed as a man, thin and emaciated, but still proud of her looks, and with claims to past beauty. His cheeks and lips were painted, his eyebrows blackened, and his teeth were false; he wore a huge wig, which, exhaled amber, and at his buttonhole was an enormous bunch of flowers, which touched his chin. He affected a gracious manner, and he spoke so softly that it was often impossible to hear what he said. He was excessively polite and affable, and his manners were those of the Regency. His whole appearance was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... herself affectionately to his buttonhole, "I went round the links in eighty-three this morning. I did the long hole in four. One under par, a thing I've never done before in my life." ("Bless my soul," said Lord Marshmoreton weakly, as, with an apprehensive eye on his sister, he patted his daughter's shoulder.) ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... fond of flowers, and was rarely without a rose in his buttonhole, I conceived the idea of filling his room with them in honour of his birthday. With this view I got up very early, before anybody in the hotel was stirring, and hurried off to Covent Garden, through the empty ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... picked a bouquet for himself and stuck it in his buttonhole, and after that he hopped away singing a song. And if Robbie Redbreast hadn't heard it I never would have been able to tell it to you. Wasn't it lucky that the little robin sang it to me this morning while I was still ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... her head on one side, and a finger hooked confidentially through the Captain's buttonhole. "Well," she said, "I've had a very interesting time, Daddy Captain. First I cleaned the lamps, of course, and filled and trimmed them. And then I played Samson ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... but equally picturesque. His white head and iron-grey beard placed him outside the active army. He wore in his buttonhole a tiny bow of ribbon, the usual badge of the ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... my fame. I might have the desire to communicate myself to a larger circle, but is he likely to be listened to who intrudes? I cannot and will not intrude. You surely have done enough to attract the attention of people towards me; shall I too buttonhole them and ask them for a hearing? Dear friend, these people are flabby and cowardly; they have no heart. Leave them alone! If I am to succeed, it must be through people who care about the matter. Where I must offer myself I lose all ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... he left behind him was indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of his life was open, yet he longed to communicate its smallness also; and, while contemporaries bowed before him, he must buttonhole posterity with the news that his periwig was once alive with nits. But this thought, although I cannot doubt he had it, was neither his first nor his deepest; it did not colour one word that he wrote; and the Diary, for as long as he kept it, remained ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he would bully them, and knock them about, just as his master did to him; and make them carry home the soot sacks, while he rode before them on his donkey, with a pipe in his mouth and a flower in his buttonhole, like a king at the head of his army. Yes, there were good times coming; and when his master let him have a pull at the leavings of his beer, Tom was the jolliest ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the humanity interwoven with it, as well as the skill of its making. It was a construction of blocks, according to patchwork law, every alternate block of the border having an applied rose cut from printed calico in alternate colors of yellow, red, and blue. These roses were carefully applied with buttonhole stitch, and the cotton ground underneath cut away to give uniform thickness for quilting. The main body of the quilt was unnoticeably good, being a collection of faintly colored patches of correct construction. The quilting was a marvel—a ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... unlovely big town, which flounders under the questionable dignities of being a station of an army corps and a prefecture: Bureaucracy and Officialdom are writ large all over everything, and a poor mortal without a handle to his name, or a ribbon in his buttonhole, is looked upon as a sort of outcast when he enters a cafe, and accordingly he waits a long time to ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... the husband whom in a bitter mood at Talta she had called a lackey. And, indeed, in his long figure, his side-whiskers, the little bald patch on the top of his head, there was something of the lackey; he had a modest sugary smile and in his buttonhole he wore a University badge ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... I had read and heard, and the likenesses that had been published of him. He was tall, and of a large and powerful frame. His dress was simple, and almost rustic. An old green shooting-coat, with a dog-whistle at the buttonhole, brown linen pantaloons, stout shoes that tied at the ankles, and a white hat that had evidently seen service. He came limping up the gravel walk, aiding himself by a stout walking-staff, but moving rapidly and with vigor. By his side jogged along a large iron-gray stag-hound of most grave ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... what I deemed a most suspicious manner. Both were Frenchmen evidently; they wore billycock hats and carried stout sticks; and one of them, swarthy and almost brigandish of aspect, had the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in his buttonhole. It was easy to take these individuals for French detectives, and I hastily jumped to the conclusion that they were on ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... point to the lean cheeks. The man wore very dark clothes of extreme simplicity, and at a time when pins and chains were much in fashion, he had not anything visible about him of gold or silver. He wore his watch on a short, doubled piece of black silk braid slipped through his buttonhole. He dressed almost as though he ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... in the room reading his letters. He was dressed in loose white flannel, and in the buttonhole of his thin jacket a big green carnation was ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... you a buttonhole lower. Do you not see Pompey is uncasing for the combat? What mean you? ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... a small, flat, black packet from her breast, and Gedge saw that it was envelope-shaped, but home-made in oil-skin, and instead of being adhesive; there was a neat button and buttonhole. "Put that in your breast-pocket, my boy," she said, "and never part with it. Bandages, oiled silk, needles and thread, and a pair o' scissors. And mind this: plug a bullet-hole directly; and whatever you do, clean water, and lots of it, ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... flutter of the eyelids, while she sipped her tea, she took in the salient changes the last five years had produced in him, noting in particular that though slightly older he had improved in looks, and that the dark-red carnation still held its place in his buttonhole. ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... kodak in the dingy window. He went in with his watch in his pocket ticking cheerfully the minutes and hours that were so full of work and worry. When he came out, the watch was ticking just as cheerfully in a drawer and the chain was looped prosperously across his vest from buttonhole to empty pocket. He went straight across to a grocery store and bought some salt pork and coffee and cornmeal and matches which Rosemary had timidly asked him if he could get. She explained apologetically that she was beginning to run out of ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... seaport, it was very cosmopolitan, and one saw all sorts of people on its streets. Many were just natural-looking people, like Pirlaps and Avrillia; but some were of chocolate, like Yassuh, and some were Chinese, with long pigtails of black buttonhole-twist; and some were Parisians, with hats exactly like the one that the Japanese doll wore so unbecomingly. (Yes, Sara knew in her heart that it was unbecoming, though she would not have admitted it, even to you.) On the ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... in my own name, you know," he observed lightly, at last laying down his bow, and replacing the dainty white rose in his left top buttonhole. "Not official for a bank EMPLOYE to operate on the Stock Exchange. The chiefs object to it. So I do my little ventures in Tom's name instead, my brother-in-law, Tom Whitley's. Those Cedulas went up another eighth yesterday. Well hit ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... will have Constantinople under their guns. If K. won't listen to me, then, having been officially mis-informed that the War Council wish to see me (the last thing they do wish), I will take them at their word. I will buttonhole every Minister from McKenna and Lloyd George to Asquith and Bonar Law,—and grovel at their feet if by doing so I can hold them on to this, the biggest scoop that is, or ever has been, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... Faversham went to the hall at eleven o'clock, wearing a flower in his buttonhole. Carrissima accompanying him dutifully to the door, remarked that he had ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... of him? Thomas says the two sneak off together every chance they get, and sometimes are n't back till eleven or twelve. I wish dadda would put a stop to it. Like as not, 't is for pilfering they are bound." Miss Meredith began anew on the buttonhole, and had she been thrusting her needle into either man or dog, she could not have sewed with a more ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... saw him come into the dining-room with his hair carefully combed, his mustache curled, wearing his best suit with a rose in the buttonhole. The Bohemian laughed boisterously. The last straw! He was crazy; they ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... expressed her appreciation through the dainty lips of a boutonniere arranged by her own fingers. Now while he recognized the roses resting on her corsage, her eyes dwelt on her favorite double lilac violets, nestling in the buttonhole of his coat. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... influence as the eloquence of a revivalist preacher would suffice to divert the story into absolutely different channels, make him a white-soured hero, a man still pure, walking untainted and brave and helpful through miry ways. The appearance of some daintily gloved frockcoated gentleman with buttonhole and eyeglass complete, gallantly attendant in the rear of customers, served again to start visions of a simplicity essentially Cromwell-like, of sturdy plainness, of a strong, silent man going righteously through the world. This day there had predominated a fine leisurely person immaculately ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... excuse for withdrawal, when the door at the end of the room was thrown open, and two men came in, talking as they did so. The one was young and well dressed, with an easy, swaggering manner, which ignorant people mistake for good breeding. He had a many-colored rosette at his buttonhole, showing that he was the knight of more than one foreign order. The other was an elderly man, with an unmistakable legal air about him. He was dressed in a quilted dressing-gown, fur-lined shoes, and had on his head an embroidered cap, most likely the work of the hands of some one dear to ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... wary and sophisticated eye on the Manufacturers' Association and a finger in the buttonhole of every legislator, the socially awake of St. Louis have secured more humane child labor legislation, and the Nine-Hour Day for women and children with no ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... back, displaying a crimson—velvet facing, also richly embroidered, and an embroidered scarlet waistcoat; a large solitary star glittered on his breast, and the grand cross of the Legion of Honour sparkled at his buttonhole; his black neckerchief had been taken off; and his cocked hat lay beside him on a sofa, massively laced, the edges richly ornamented with ostrich down; his head was covered with a red velvet cap, with ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... finishing dressing it came to me that his clothes had undergone much the same change as his dwelling. In his golden days in London he had been a good deal of a dandy; he usually wore white waistcoats at night; was particular about the flowers in his buttonhole, his gloves and cane. Now he was decently dressed and that was all; as far below the average as he had been above it. Clearly, he had let go of himself and no longer took pleasure in the vanities: it seemed to ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... seen and admired earlier in the day. So fresh, and fair, and innocent! Were all young girls so fragrant and flower-like as this? Then he thought of the little prickles which had stung his hand as he had picked a bud from the same bush for his buttonhole, and smiled with latent mischief. After all, the remembrance did not lessen the likeness. Miss Margot looked as if she might—under provocation—display a prickle or ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and over; pass the three haversack binding straps through the loops on the inside flap and secure by means of the buckles on the opposite side of the haversack; pass the lower haversack binding strap through the small buttonhole in the lower edge of the haversack, fold the outer flap of the haversack over the whole, and secure by means of the buckle on its underside and the lower ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... seemed as if nothing could turn him from this folly; he became daily younger and faster. He wore the most eccentric hats on one ear. He ordered his coats to be made in the very last fashion; and never went out without a camellia or a rosebud in his buttonhole. He no longer contented himself with dyeing his hair, but actually began to rouge, and used such strong perfumes, that one might have followed his track through the streets by the odors ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... shake his mane. His face was clean shaven, and he had a wide mouth and rather small dark eyes, set quite too near together: Mr. Braham wore a brown frock coat buttoned across his breast, with a rose-bud in the upper buttonhole, and light pantaloons. A diamond stud was seen to flash from his bosom; and as he seated himself and drew off his gloves a heavy seal ring was displayed upon his white left hand. Mr. Braham having seated himself, deliberately ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... engages the Union to perform all the tailoring, operating, pressing, finishing, cutting, and buttonhole-making work to be done by the firm in the cloak and suit business during one year ... from date; and the Union agrees to perform said work in a good and ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... was only a fawn Nimble became very fond of water lilies. But he didn't carry them as a bouquet, nor wear one in his buttonhole. He was fond of lilies in a different way: he liked to eat them, and their flat, round, glossy pads. At night his mother often led him to the edge of the lake on the other side of Blue Mountain and ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... was some charm about this rose so strangely cherished, for he stood gazing at it, as it twirled between Captain Frere's strong fingers, as though it fascinated him. "You're a pretty man to want a rose for your buttonhole! Are you going out with your sweetheart next Sunday, Mr. Dawes?" The gang laughed. "How did you get this?" Dawes was silent. "You'd better tell me." No answer. "Troke, let us see if we can't find Mr. Dawes's tongue. Pull off your shirt, my man. I expect that's the way ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... RUBANS; little bits of ribbon are worn in the buttonhole by members of the Legion of Honor, established by Napoleon in 1802. Membership in it is a purely honorary distinction, conferred by the government for conspicuous services of any kind, civil as well as military, and usually much coveted. Branger refused all such favors from the government. ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... numerous among the street venders. They sell matches, tooth-picks, cigars, newspapers, songs and flowers. The flower-girls are hideous little creatures, but their wares are beautiful and command a ready sale. These are made into hand bouquets, and buttonhole bouquets, and command from ten cents to several dollars each. When the day is wet and gloomy, and the slush and the mud of Broadway are thick over everything animate and inanimate, and the sensitive soul shrinks within itself at the sight of so much discomfort, the flower-girls ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... a more responsible post than that, Comrade Windsor. Where is your proprietor? I must buttonhole him and point out to him what a wealth of talent he is allowing to waste ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the students at the table were interrupted by the approach of a tall, dudish-looking individual, who wore a reddish-brown suit, cut in the most up-to-date fashion, and who sported patent-leather shoes, and a white carnation in his buttonhole. The newcomer took a vacant chair, sitting down ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... died the next morning, in great agony. When I first saw the French soldiers I thought them a dirty, ragged set—their clothing was originally white. Many of them, particularly in the 'Regiment de la Reine,' had a bit of blue ribbon to the buttonhole of their coat, with a little white shell fixed to it, which they called 'Papa,' and this, it seems, was a mark of honour for having distinguished themselves on some former occasion. I, at first, mistook them for Freemasons! After the battle of the Plains of Abraham, on the 13th September, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... were twined with yellow and green and white. There were two white horses, flower-trimmed reins, and in the floral bower, seated on maple boughs, were the twelve girls of the class, while the ten boys marched on either side of the vehicle, wearing buttonhole bouquets ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fro, with an air of having a great deal to do, and not knowing at all how to do it. Beyond the darkness there was a steady hum, like the distant whirr of a great machine. There was a very faint smell in the air of boots and human flesh. A stout gentleman with a rosette in his buttonhole showed us to our seats. Vera sat between Uncle Ivan and myself. When I looked about me I was amazed. The huge hall was packed so tightly with human beings that one could see nothing but wave on wave of faces, or, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... she, this little Lisette, who had the impudence to flout him? A girl in a florist's, if you can believe me, with no particular beauty herself, and not a son by way of dot! And yet—one must confess it—she turned a head as swiftly as she made a "buttonhole"; and Pomponnet, the pastrycook, was paying court to her, too—to say nothing of the homage of messieurs Tricotrin, the poet, and Goujaud, the painter, and Lajeunie, the novelist. You would never have guessed that her wages were only twenty ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... He was very dapper in a new tailcoat and a flower in his buttonhole. He was very nervous, too, for he was to give the address of the day. He pulled a small box ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... of the back skirts. The gilt buttons also bore fleurs-de-lis; on the shoulders a pair of straps cried out for useless epaulettes; these military appendages were there like a petition without a recommendation. This old gentleman's coat was of dark blue cloth, and the buttonhole had blossomed into many colored ribbons. He, no doubt, always carried his hat in his hand—a three cornered cocked hat, with a gold cord—for the snowy wings of his powdered hair showed not a trace of its pressure. He might have been taken ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... the party, not only from his dimensions, - or, as he phrased it, from "his breadth of beam," - but also from his free-and-easy costume. "To get himself into wind," as he alleged, Mr. Blades had just been knocking the wind out of the Honourable Flexible Shanks (youngest son of the Earl of Buttonhole), a Tuft from Christ Church, who had left his luxurious rooms in the Canterbury Quad chiefly for the purpose of preparing himself for the forthcoming Town and Gown, by putting on the gloves with his boating ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... many blisters would you have if you did not mend it, pray? May I suggest that you make the experiment and see? No marks at all for that answer! Question number four is, Work a buttonhole on the accompanying strip ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... of what is given or achieved. He already not only regretted giving the ten thousand francs to Jenny, but the two hundred francs to the servants—nay the six sous given to the waiter at the restaurant, even the money he had spent on the bunch of violets. The bouquet still hung in his buttonhole, faded and shrivelled. What good did it do him? While the sous which he had paid for it—! He did not think of his wasted millions, but could not drive away the thought ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... me; Taking me by the buttonhole, pulling off my boots, hustling me with the elbows; Sitting down with me to clams and the chowder-kettle; Plunging naked at my side into the sleek, irascible surges; Soothing me with the strain that I neither permit nor prohibit; ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... priceless value. Each button of his coat and low-cut vest was a diamond, and from the front of his rimless cap waved a plume of diamonds. On his wrists were heavy gold bracelets of Malayan workmanship, and his fingers were cramped with almost priceless rings. In his buttonhole blazed a diamond orchid. The handle and scabbard of his sword were a solid mass of precious stones. Altogether this little known Oriental potentate possessed $10,000,000 worth of diamonds, the second largest ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... the figures in the foreground was a dead Confederate boy, lying in the angle of a worm fence. His uniform was worn and ragged, mud-stained as well as blood-stained; the cap which had fallen from his head was a tatter, and the torn shoes were ready to drop from his stiffening feet; but in a buttonhole of his tunic was stuck the inevitable toothbrush, which continued even to the end of the war to be the distinguishing mark of gentle nurture,—the souvenir that the Confederate so often received ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... time since Mary had seen him so closely, and as he approached she noticed the faultlessness of his dress, the lily of the valley in his buttonhole, and that slightly ironic but smiling manner which is generally attributed to men of the world, especially to those who have travelled far on adventurous and forbidden paths. In another age he might have worn lace cuffs and a sword, and have just returned from a gambling house where ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... tries to be humorous. He's the quietest, meekest old relic you ever saw, slidin' in soft and easy with his hat off, and walkin' almost as though he had his shoes in his hand. But the faded umbrella under one arm and the big buttonhole bouquet he always wears puts him in the joke book class without takin' the face lambrequins ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... predominating colour. Her shoes, her gloves, the little tie about her throat, were all the last word in the simple elegance of suitability. Fischer walked by her side—a powerful, determined figure in a carefully-pressed blue serge suit and a brown Homburg hat. He wore a rose in his buttonhole, and he carried a cane—both unusual circumstances. After fifty years of strenuous living, Mr. Fischer seemed suddenly to have found a new thing ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dear fellow, what on earth should we men do going about with purity and innocence? A carefully thought-out buttonhole is much more effective. ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... to put on a tail coat and white waistcoat, not a dinner jacket as usual, and had even a buttonhole of a gardenia, found by Burton for this ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... a compartment all to myself by men who glanced at me with eyes of hate and passed on to another compartment which was already crowded or stood up in the aisle of the car, I made a point of buying an American flag for my buttonhole. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... amazingly handsome, I thought, as I gazed admiringly at my comrade. Our staring made him shy, and as he blushed and touched up the stephanotis in his buttonhole, the engineer changed the subject by saying, "Talking of the squire, is it true, Dennis, what Jack tells me about the twenty pounds? Did he really forget ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... full of the spirit of adventure, and looked forward to that spring Wednesday when he should leave for Queenstown, his mother made up for his heartless joy by her lugubriousness. As the time drew near she would buttonhole all and sundry whom she could catch to pour out her sorrows. The trailing gown and ragged lace shawl became a danger signal which we would all flee from, an it were not sprung upon us too suddenly. We had a shrewd suspicion that the tears Mrs. Sheehy shed so freely were of the variety ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... sitter's nationality, his profession, his love of home, his favourite recreation or his religious convictions. These, I venture to say, are grave omissions. The picture is sadly wanting in suitable accessories. If I had been painting it I should have put a simple yellow daffodil in the MINISTER'S buttonhole, and pictured through an open window a sunlit bed of leeks, with perhaps a goat gambolling among them. I should have represented the MINISTER OF MUNITIONS in his study practising putting with a small bomb. And on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... everybody in the same seat because he stood up a moment and let the water in under the lap covers. His umbrella was a dainty en-tout-cas with a mother-of-pearl handle, that had answered well enough in heavy mist or soft drizzle. His hat of fine straw was tied with a neat cord to his buttonhole; but although that precaution insured its ultimate safety, it did not prevent its soaring from his head and descending on Mrs. Shamrock's bonnet. He conscientiously tried holding it on with one hand, but was then reproved by both neighbours because ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... it is for the good sense of the public to distinguish true remedies from false, pure wine from adulterated; or, it is for the good sense of the public to distinguish in a buttonhole the decoration awarded to merit from that prostituted to mediocrity and intrigue. Why, then, do you call yourselves the State, Power, Authority, Police, if the work of Police must be performed by the good sense ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... my readers imagine a line formed by the Espana, Barcelona and Habana regiments, the artillery, and a lancer regiment, splendid troops all of them, under the command of General Count de Mirasol, with his baton slung at his buttonhole. And, facing this line, another of the most exquisitely charming aspect. All the volantes in Havana drawn up in battle array! The said volantes, peculiar to the place, are gigs without hoods or aprons, perched on two huge wheels, and each ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... you as a clothes rack. Take the trousers by the waist and place together the first two suspender buttons, one on the left and the other on the right. This will make the fold preserve the natural crease and dispose of the extra material, button and buttonhole tab at the waist. Trousers carefully folded will only need pressing about twice a year. Hose should be well shaken, and unless perfectly clean, thrown in the soiled-linen basket. Evening silk hose can be worn several times. The undervest, or undershirt, and the drawers should be also subjected ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... poor head, and my poor head lets them out, and then you put them in again. What noble perseverance! If I live a while longer I do really think you will make a clever man of me. Let me put the rose in your buttonhole for you. And I say, I wish you would allow me to go on with ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... mentioned. Every now and again a wandering evangelist comes along the coast, pitches a tent, and begins a series of gospel services. Those who are converted, neglect the church and all its ordinances, and begin preaching on their own account; nay, they even buttonhole the minister and preach to him, accusing him of being an unjust steward, a hireling, and no shepherd, and so on. Such conduct creates a very painful situation. With a good deal of detail, the long-suffering clergyman gave me an account of a visit he had paid to ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... imagination to swallow at one draught the contents of a metal tankard of half-and-half—half laurel-water, and half decoction of henbane—handed to me on a leaden salver by a demon-waiter, with a sprig of hemlock in the third buttonhole of his coat. This Lethean influence could hardly be that of the ailantus-tree alone. What of the plants on the balcony beneath,—the strange, rooty coilers which the mysterious planter sedulously fosters at the glooming of dusk, with a weird watering-pot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... eyes. But these made expressions were broken at the sight of some young girl's fragility, or the paraded charms of a woman of thirty; and then each feared that his neighbour had discovered thoughts in him unappropriate to the red ribbon which he wore in his buttonhole. ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... had spotted dad as an American embezzler, and if he drew that gun he had in his pocket there would be a dead Yankee in about four minutes. Well, I thought dad had nerve before, but he beat the band, right there. He unbuttoned his overcoat and put his finger on a Grand Army button in his buttonhole, and said, "Gentlemen, I am an American citizen, visiting the crowned heads of the old world, with credentials from the President of the United States, and day after tomorrow I have a date to meet your king, on official business that means much to the future peace of our respective countries. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... and always have been," affirmed Kathleen, and leaning over she placed a spray of lilies-of-the-valley from her bouquet in his buttonhole. ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... sculptor's with an unchangeable grin, that gave still more ludicrous effect to the comic alarm and sorrow of their gestures. Just then, a figure came by, in a gray wig and rusty gown, with an inkhorn at his buttonhole and a pen behind his ear; he announced himself as a notary, and offered to make the last will and testament of the assassinated man. This solemn duty, however, was interrupted by a surgeon, who brandished a lancet, three ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Mr. Ancrum sincerely. Even in the midst of some rising troubles of his own he found the energy to buttonhole Reuben again, and torment him afresh on the subject of a trade for ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by the buttonhole, and withdrawing him from the depth of the recess, looked into his eyes as if he wished to penetrate his very soul. Suddenly he spoke, in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... presence of this wretch, with his face in a pool of blood. Curled, pomaded, with laced waist, the hips of a woman, the bust of a Prussian officer, the murmur of admiration from the boulevard wenches surrounding him, his cravat knowingly tied, a bludgeon in his pocket, a flower in his buttonhole; such was this dandy ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to find this embarrassing; he said he had hit upon them at odd times ('very odd times,' he could not help remembering), and shifted his ground a little uneasily, but he was held fast by the buttonhole. 'They're remarkably sound and striking, I must say that, and your story is interesting, too. I found myself looking at the end, sir, ha, ha! to see what became of your characters. Ah, I knew there was something I wanted to ask you. There's a heading you've got for one ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... flowers, and recognizing many favorites that recalled the hothouse at Le Bocage, her eyes filled with tears, and she hastily put her lips to the snowy cups of an oxalis. How often she had seen just such fragile petals nestling in the buttonhole of ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... society howdydoes," replied the mayor hotly. "There's a little score to be settled between me and you, Hayden. I ain't quite wise to your orchid-in-the-buttonhole ways. I don't quite follow them. I ain't been bred in the club you hang around—they blackballed me when I tried to get in. You know that. I'm a rough rude man. I don't understand your system. When I give my word, I keep it. Has that ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... listen, old fellow, and I'll tell you all about it. First of all, there was a perfect jam in the town hall. I sat up in front, with a lot of fellows, and had a splendid view. The old Italian came out dressed in his best suit of clothes—black broadcloth, flower in his buttonhole, and so on. He made a fine bow, and he said he was 'pleased too see ze fine audience, and he was going to show zem ze fine animals, ze finest animals in ze world.' Then he shook a little whip that ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... compared to eight mirrors. But somehow the black man was like the black hat. He also was black, and yet his glossy skin flung back the light at eight angles or more. It is needless to say that he wore white spats and a white slip inside his waistcoat. The red flower stood up in his buttonhole aggressively, as if it had suddenly grown there. And in the way he carried his cane in one hand and his cigar in the other there was a certain attitude—an attitude we must always remember when we talk of racial prejudices: something innocent ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Durnovo appeared at the Gordons' house. He had managed to borrow a dress-suit, and wore an orchid in his buttonhole. It was probably the first time that Jocelyn had seen him in this garb of civilisation, which is at the same time the most becoming and the most trying variety of costume left to sensible men in these days. A dress-suit finds a man out ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... of the Malee's art is the making of nosegays, from the little "buttonhole," which is equivalent to a cough on occasions when baksheesh seems possible, to the great valedictory or Christmas bouquet. The manner of making these is as follows. First you gather your flowers, cutting the stalks as short as possible, and tie each one firmly to an artificial stalk ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... that the man who did that was serving his country. Well, I am cheerful—I didn't turn a hair even over Mons—slept exactly the same, and had bacon and tomato for my breakfast. Then they say, "Carry on." And I do carry on. I go out as usual, dress just as carefully—spats, fancy waistcoat, buttonhole, etc. One night it's the Imperial and another it's the Cinema. Men are wanted to cheer the patriotic songs and to sing the chorus of "Tipperary." I help here. Then I spend my money freely—freely, I tell you. Any Tommy I meet can have a drink—half a dozen at my expense, and no return expected. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... had on a new habit, and a gardenia in her buttonhole, and she gave Nikky her hand to kiss, but only nodded to the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stream of guests was slowly making its way into the car, while Yerkes at the further end, resplendent in a buttonhole and a white cap and apron, was watching the scene, and the special engine, like an impatient horse, was puffing and hissing to be off, a man, who had entered the cloak-room of the station to deposit a bundle just as the car-party arrived, approached the cloak-room ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... loom to its full size. Tie two rings together and fasten them at the back of the loom, to head, foot, and sides, as in the illustration. One must then decide how close the warp is to be strung. Measure the string, which should be continuous, allowing enough to go to the rings at the back and make a buttonhole stitch each time. Then wind on a long thin stick or dress steel, in such a way that it will pass easily through the rings. In stringing the hammock in the illustration, a penholder was used. The rings are tied, with white cord, to the four sides of the loom. By doing this, all tangling of the ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd
... days after the events last narrated, Transome Kent called at the boarding-house of Miss Alice Delary. The young Investigator wore a light grey tweed suit, with a salmon-coloured geranium in his buttonhole. There was something exultant yet at the same time grave in his expression, as of one who has taken a momentous decision, affecting ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... accommodation was required for the governess, and a man who held a position midway between porter and butler and deserved the title of factotum if any one ever did. His name was Kurschner; he was a big-boned, square-built fellow about thirty years old, who always wore in his buttonhole the little ribbon of the order he had gained as a soldier at the siege of Antwerp, and who had been taken into the house by our mother for our protection, for in winter our home, surrounded by its spacious grounds, was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... consider whether his old head be turned or no. A scholar and statistician buried in heaps of flowers, with a rope of daisies round his neck, and a belt of primroses round his waist; a sunflower in his buttonhole, and a singing bird upon his shoulder; and, worst of all, the picture of a pink-frocked, pink-faced girl next his heart—can he be relied upon? But he persists in his claim to be listened to, and we must take his word for it that this is Christmas day in the morning, although it ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... works! This would not happen once in a hundred years. Towards the end of his dinner with the two Chaplains, the Colonel let out his waistcoat and leaned over the table to look at some Mission Reports. The bar of the watch-guard worked through the buttonhole, and the watch—Platte's watch—slid quietly on to the carpet. Where the bearer found it next ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... things out on the table, and gave the slippers a final shake. A red morocco case, no larger than half a dollar, fell out of the toe of one of them. Inside the case was a tiny buttonhole watch, with its wee hands pointing to six o'clock. It was the smallest watch that Joyce had ever seen, Cousin Kate's gift. Joyce could hardly keep back a little squeal of delight. She wanted to wake up everybody on the place and show it. Then ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... set between bushy whiskers of the same dark gray as the hair. The most cursory observer could not but recognize power and character in the head; yet one would scarcely have guessed it to be the power of a poet, the character of a prophet. Misled, perhaps, by the ribbon at the buttonhole, and by an expression of reserve, almost of secretiveness, in the lines of the tight-shut mouth, one would rather have supposed one's self face to face with ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... stairs she met Doctor Harris, gallant and gay, with a rose in his buttonhole, followed by the nurse and child, on a visit of reassurance to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... home by a little dancing-party to-night.... I write this arrayed in my dress-coat with a rose in my buttonhole, a circumstance, I think, worth mentioning. It reminds me of Buffon, who used to array himself in his full dress for writing 'Natural History.' Why should we not always do it when we write letters? We should, no doubt, be more courtly and polite, ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... role of trusty she had constrained herself to civility. She had taken Mrs. Carder the flowers last night, and Rufus had put some tiny blooms in his buttonhole and caressed them at supper-time ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... this powerful half-savage, his fierce brows bent over a tiny piece of linen, his strong fingers fussing with little stitches, will always appeal to my sense of the incongruous. Through a piece of linen he punched holes with a porcupine quill. Then he "buttonhole" stitched the holes, and embroidered patterns between them with fine white thread. The result was an openwork pattern heavily encrusted with beautiful fine embroidery. It was most astounding stuff, such as you ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... wearing a pair of white trousers and thin boots, a white waistcoat and a black coat on which shone the grand cross of the Legion upon the right breast, and fastened to a buttonhole on the left was the order of the Golden Fleece hanging by a short gold chain. He had arranged his hair himself, and had, no doubt, put himself in full dress to do the honors of Presles to Monsieur Margueron; and, possibly, to impress the good ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... excitement died down and the round of mechanical drudgery took its place. An hour later someone knocked at an inner door which led to steep side stairs connecting with a side street entrance. Wondering who it was Mary opened it, to find Steve, very flushed and handsome, a flower in his buttonhole yet no hint of ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... white substance most carefully at the breast buttonhole of his coat. It could hardly be a flower. Some drooping exotic of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... out, and gave up the reception-days he had established for the peasants, without the assistance of the priest, sans le concours du clerg. On such days Ivan Matveitch had been in the habit of going in to the peasants in the hall or on the balcony, with a rose in his buttonhole, and putting his lips to a silver goblet of vodka, he would make them a speech something like this: 'You are content with my actions, even as I am content with your zeal, whereat I rejoice truly. We are all brothers; at our birth we ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... journey with greater swagger, but he never brought more than a few dollars at a time. He grew maudlin, familiar, could hardly see the cards or sit upright. As a preliminary to another journey to his bunk, he hooked Wolf Larsen's buttonhole with a greasy forefinger and vacuously proclaimed and reiterated, "I got money, I got money, I tell yer, an' I'm ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... and smelt of summer—the kind of roses you always want so desperately at about Christmas-time when you can only get mistletoe, which is pale right through to its very scent, and holly which pricks your nose if you try to smell it. So now everyone had a rose in its buttonhole, and soon everyone was sitting on the grass in Regent's Park under trees whose leaves would have been clean, clear green in the country, but here were dusty and yellowish, ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... rather sharply. Though I couldn't see him, I knew exactly how he would be looking at Ivor, his keen grey eyes narrowed, his clean-shaven lips drawn in, the long, well-shaped hand, of which he is said to be vain, toying with the pale Malmaison pink he always wears in his buttonhole. ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... gentleman, with a number of orders at his buttonhole, presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the marble table, before which reposed Simon and his clerical friend. "Excuse me, gentlemen," he said, as he took a place opposite them, and began reading the papers ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Mr. Richard Vanderpole took place on a Thursday night. On Monday morning a gentleman of middle age, fashionably but quietly dressed, wearing a flower in his buttonhole, patent boots, and a silk hat which he had carefully deposited upon the floor, was sitting closeted with Miss Penelope Morse. It was obvious that that young lady did not altogether appreciate the honor ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... two crocuses in his fingers, and cleverly slipped them into a buttonhole, for which they were not very well suited. Then he went on talking about flowers for a minute or two, but the subject was soon exhausted, for his knowledge lay among garden flowers, and Riette knew none but those that grew among ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... machine, without the buttonhole parts, $60. This last is beyond all question the simplest, easiest to manage and to keep in order, of any machine in the market. Machines warranted, and full ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
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