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More "Decent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ham war was a little hard on us, but we're picking up,' says he. 'They're still selling hams way below a decent price over at Henshaw's. I don't see ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... which occasioned disorder in their assemblies for worship; those that had the gift of tongues prevented the prophets, and did not modestly give place to one another. These disorders the apostle reproves, and exhorts them to exercise their gifts in a more regular and decent manner, for the edification of the church. This being the case, it is strange to plead this passage as a warrant for the preaching of the gospel by those who are in no office, and who neither have any miraculous power to prove their immediate call by Christ to the work ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... a man past youth, but of less than middle age, with meagre limbs and shoulders, a little bent. His clothing was rough but decent; his small and white hands gave evidence of occupation which was not rudely laborious. He had a large head, thickly covered with dark hair, which, with his moustache and beard, heightened the wanness of his complexion. A massive forehead, deep-set eyes, thin, straight ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... exclusively our own! The modes of life may be easier on the Continent,—but it is the ease of a beggar's ragged coat which has served twenty masters, and is twitched off and on till it scarcely holds together, in comparison with the decent, close-fitting ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... things. Nevertheless, he was changed. He was less harsh in his opinions of others since he had seen and heard how thousands who were not of his religious faith had gone forth to lay down their lives that the world might be made a decent place in which to live. He, Phares Eby, preacher, had formerly denounced all that pertained to actors and the theatre, yet tears had coursed down his cheeks as he had read the account of a famous comedian ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... trouble in piling up four touchdowns that afternoon, even though three regulars were still out of the line-up. Between the short periods Don coached Kirkwell and Merton again, and Kirkwell, who was a decent chap but fancied himself a bit, ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... memorable by a decent dinner; the special reason for it was the fact that Borasdine had presented our caterer with an old coat. I regretted I could not afford to reduce my wardrobe, else we would have secured another comfortable ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... addant et nostris adimant!... Rogamus, ut, professionis tuae memor, talem te cum Vitebergensibus tuis iam geras, qualem te ab initio huius causae gessisti, hoc est, ut ea sentias, dicas, scribas, agas, quae Philippum, doctorem Christianum, non aulicum philosophum decent." (Tschackert, 506.) ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... who knew Private Ruthven. He had a hopelessly shattered arm, but appeared mightily content and amazingly cheerful. He knew Wally, he said, was in the same platoon with him; didn't know much about him except that he was a very decent sort; no, knew nothing about his people or his home, although he remembered—yes, there was a girl. Wally had shown him her photograph once, "and a real ripper she is too." Didn't know if Wally was ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... life in my own room intolerable, and now I actually take my own letters to the post. I went to the exhibition: it was full of portraits of the most hideous women, with inconceivable spots on their faces, of which I think I've told you my horror, and scarcely six decent pictures in the whole enormous collection; but I had never been in the Tuilleries before, and it was curious to go through the vast dingy rooms by which such a number of dynasties have come in and gone out—Louis XVI., Napoleon, Charles ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... know why I did them, Dick—honestly I don't. Lots of times I knew you and your brothers were right and I was wrong. But the Old Nick got in me and I—well, you know how I acted. Now I'm an outcast—nobody decent wants to have anything to do with me. Even my own father—" Dan Baxter ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... fond of the company of spectators who are disposed to be decent, and treat them politely in their way; but having been frequently imposed upon by the whites, they treat ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... large house. He goes from room to room, finding everywhere evidence of decent taste and sufficient, but moderate, expenditure: nothing to repel and nothing to attract him in what he sees. He suddenly enters the chapel; and here all richness is massed, all fancy is embodied, art of all styles ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... them damned acting dogs," growled the baggageman to his mate. "There ought to be a law against dog-acts. It ain't decent." ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... where; but till that time arrives, the offices of religion appear to engross all thoughts, for the shops are closed, and the streets deserted, except by persons passing to and from their several places of worship. How much more decent, to use no stronger expression, is this, than the sort of scenes which I had occasion to describe in a previous chapter,—how much better calculated to keep alive among the people some sense of religion, some respect at least for its external observances,—not entirely, it is to be hoped, unconnected ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... himself standing in front of a rather shabby three-story house, in a decent, but not fashionable, street. The name Stubbs ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... off and threw it away in the swamp," she said tremulously. "I did hate the thing so, and it was full of hornets and not big enough to take a decent step in anyhow. I hoped no ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... should be celebrated on such a day. Constantia, who was overawed with the authority of her father, and unable to object anything against so advantageous a match, received the proposal with a profound silence, which her father commended in her, as the most decent manner of a virgin's giving her consent to an overture of that kind. The noise of this intended marriage soon reached Theodosius, who, after a long tumult of passions which naturally rise in a lover's heart on ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... working in the Dismal Swamp betimes next morning, was informed that a youth waited in the hall who gave the name of Sloppy. The footman who communicated this intelligence made a decent pause before uttering the name, to express that it was forced on his reluctance by the youth in question, and that if the youth had had the good sense and good taste to inherit some other name it would have spared the feelings of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... [1] He asked me who I was, and what was my profession. I told him that I worked a little in the same trade as his own. This worthy man bade me come into his shop, and at once gave me work to do, and spoke as follows: "Your good appearance makes me believe you are a decent honest youth." Then he told me out gold, silver, and gems; and when the first day's work was finished, he took me in the evening to his house, where he dwelt respectably with his handsome wife and children. Thinking of the grief which my good father might be feeling for me, I wrote him ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... to which of the three night watches is preferable. Perhaps some one who has tried will reply they are all alike detestable, and, if he be Irish, will add that the only decent watch on deck is the watch below—an "all night in." But I also have tried; and while prepared to admit that perhaps the pleasantest moment of any particular watch is that in which your successor touches his cap and says, "I'll relieve you," I ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... North was wont to consign to utter neglect the outcast border of civilisation, where there were no decent parents to pledge themselves; and Partan Jeannie's son had grown up well-nigh in heathen ignorance among fisher lads and merchant sailors, till it had been left for him to learn among the Mohammedans both temperance and devotional habits. His whole faith and ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had an important effect in producing the more disastrous delusion which followed three years after. The Goodwin children soon got well: in other words, they were tired of their atrocious foolery; and the death of their victim gave them a pretense for a return to decent behavior.... ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... their song in warm pleasant places by the Mediterranean, it seemed to taunt the country, and make it still bleaker by suggested contrast. Even the waste places by the side of the road were not, as Hawthorne liked to put it, "taken back to Nature" by any decent covering of vegetation. Wherever the land had the chance, it seemed to lie fallow. There is a certain tawny nudity of the South, bare sunburnt plains, coloured like a lion, and hills clothed only in the blue transparent air; but ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trapped, an' so he went out under the plum tree, where the stun was, an' begun t' turn. The scythe was dull an' the young feller bore on harder'n wuz reely decent fer a long time. Rat begun t' ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... my face whenever I neglect the razor for a few days, when an auto came tooting and roaring down the narrow street, and a moment later three staff officers took the stairs at a run. So far, good; that was unofficial, good-natured, human and entirely decent. The three of them burst through the bed room door, all grins, and took turns pumping with Jeremy's right arm—glad to see him—proud to know him—pleased to see him looking fit and well, and all that kind of thing. Even men who had fought all through the war had forgotten ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... and very decent. One could walk all round, seeing little front gardens with auriculas and saxifrage in the shadow of the bottom block, sweet-williams and pinks in the sunny top block; seeing neat front windows, little porches, little privet ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... a comfortable or decent room in it, from the garret to the cellar. Not one. It's a horrid place to live in; and such a neighbourhood to ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... whole thing is absurdly simple, Don Mike. All you have to do is to get a friend to bid against my father and run the price up on him to something like a half-way decent sum. In that way you should manage to save ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... gentlemen," said Sergeant Buzfuz, looking through Mr. Pickwick, and talking at him, "and when I say systematic villainy, let me tell the defendant, Pickwick,—if he be in court, as I am informed he is,—that it would have been more decent in him, more becoming, in better judgment, and in better taste, if ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... never deny herself the pleasure of giving these little offerings of love with her own hands, and wishing her poor neighbors a "Happy Christmas;" and on this occasion she had learnt the destitution of a poor widow, who struggled hard to support her young family and to maintain a decent appearance, but who was now laid up with sickness, and unable to provide clothing and fuel for herself and her little ones. Mr. Wyndham had immediately sent her a load of wood, and his wife was ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... griffins, and other calligraphic recreations, and where the capital letters go out of their minds and bodies into ecstasies of pen and ink. Nevertheless, he did render the purport of his letter sufficiently clear, to enable Mr Merdle to make a decent pretence of having learnt it from that source. Mr Merdle replied to it accordingly. Mr Dorrit replied to Mr Merdle; Mr Merdle replied to Mr Dorrit; and it was soon announced that the corresponding powers had come to ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... off irreproachable, arrayed in the stiff black-and-white sateen, which, while decent as regards length and certainly not open to the charge of skimpiness, contrived to emphasize every corner and angle of her thin figure. Her hat was a little, flat, glossy, new sailor, the extreme plainness of which had likewise much disappointed Anne, who ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... scream was like the weird high note of a wind-harp. It had its effect on Zelie. She turned back, though muttering against the overruling of her lady's commands by a creature like a bat, who could probably send other powers than a decent maid to bring claviers. ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the solicitors at the inquest? Who gave evidence there and at the police-court? Who has been hand in glove with the prosecuting solicitors all along? Who is sitting by their side at this moment, without a particle of decent shame?' ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... words, and do them not. And there be some of you that only come here to display your gay apparel, caring not how foul you are within, if you are but fair without; and some of you appear here weekly, because it is a decent and seemly thing to be here, and you desire the praise of men, though you care not for pleasing God. Your religious worships and ways are vain, for they are made up only of speaking and singing other men's words, ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... Perfectly normal and marvelously wholesome-minded people are as likely to succumb to it as anybody else. It is significant that the Purity League meeting in the city a few weeks ago discussed the dangers which lay in exposing even decent, law-abiding people to art, ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... the adjective "yellow" indicates, or its connotation of "chink" and "nigger" implies; either it gives up the plan of color serfdom which its use of the other adjective "white" implies, as indicating everything decent and every part of the world worth living in,—or trouble is written in ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... wanderer appeared. A vast mass of matter it was, bulky, heavy, rushing without warning out of the black mystery of the sky into the radiance of the sun. By the second day it was clearly visible to any decent instrument, as a speck with a barely sensible diameter, in the constellation Leo near Regulus. In a little while an opera ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... his brother Leif as the guardsman was different from some of the plain farmers around him. He was long and lean and wiry, and his thin lips were set in cruel lines. His dress was shabby, and out of all decent order. Patches of fur had been torn out of his cloak; he was muddy up to his knees, and there was blood on his tunic and on his hands. He stood staring at the gay company in surprise, blinking in the sudden light, until his gaze en-countered Leif, when he cried out joyously and hastened ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... be thankful to these PURITANS for a political lesson. They began their quarrels on the most indifferent matters. They raised disturbances about the "Romish Rags," by which they described the decent surplice as well as the splendid scarlet chimere[407] thrown over the white linen rochet, with the square cap worn by the bishops. The scarlet robe, to please their sullen fancy, was changed into black satin; but these men soon resolved to deprive the bishops of more than a scarlet ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Lombards, A.D. 595, restored in the sixteenth century. I know; I only asked whether you could get me a decent carriage." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... conjectured there was none; but there might be just cause, if the memorial was not taken into consideration. He placed himself in the case of a slave, and said, that on hearing that Congress had refused to listen to the decent suggestions of a respectable part of the community, he should infer, that the general government, from which was expected great good would result to EVERY CLASS of citizens, had shut their ears against the voice of humanity, and he should despair of any alleviation of the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... that partly set me on the trail. I have said the funeral passed much as at home. But when all was over, when we were trooping in decent silence from the graveyard gate and down the path to the settlement, a sudden inbreak of a different spirit startled and perhaps dismayed us. Two people walked not far apart in our procession: my friend Mr. Donat—Donat-Rimarau: 'Donat ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from London to Reuben Butler, says,—'Ye will think I am turned waster, for I wear clean hose and shoon every day; but it's the fashion here for decent bodies, and ilka land has its ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... stop young Gussie marrying a girl on the vaudeville stage, and I got the whole thing so mixed up that I decided that it would be a sound scheme for me to stop on in America for a bit instead of going back and having long cosy chats about the thing with aunt. So I sent Jeeves out to find a decent apartment, and settled down for a bit of exile. I'm bound to say that New York's a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going on, and I'm ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... office where Bok was sitting, "for hesitating at all about taking an English set of plates of the novel you speak of is because it is of anonymous authorship, a custom of writing which has grown out of all decent proportions in your country since the issue of that stupid book, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... quick whitened through all its quince-tinct. 315 Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once! What meant she?—Who was she?—Her duty and station, The wisdom of age and the folly of youth, at once, Its decent regard and its fitting relation— In brief, my friend, set all the devils in hell free 320 And turn them out to carouse in a belfry And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon, And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on! Well, somehow or ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... of law, commenced and concluded his speech in the following words: "I will explain my mind on the necessity that the Speaker we are about to choose should possess and speak equally well the two languages."—"I think it is but decent that the Speaker on whom we may fix our choice be one who can express himself in English when he addresses himself to the representative of our Sovereign." (Christie's History of Canada, Vol. I., Chap. iv., pp. 127, 128, in ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... reached the hotel: forth streamed from the front door[ko] A tide of well-clad waiters, and around The mob stood, and as usual several score Of those pedestrian Paphians who abound In decent London when the daylight's o'er; Commodious but immoral, they are found Useful, like Malthus, in promoting marriage.— But Juan now is ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... into English as he read for our benefit. Les Etrangleurs was one of the books that he read to us in this way, while we sat and sewed our seams. He seemed to get a good deal of rest as well as amusement from the reading of such books of mystery and adventure. His taste was always for the decent in literature, and he was much offended by the works of the writers of the materialistic school who were just then gaining a vogue. Among these was Emile Zola, and he exacted a promise from me never to read that writer—a promise that has been ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Mrs. Yeobright," said Christian earnestly, "but father there was so eager that he had no manners at all, and left home almost afore 'twas dark. I told him 'twas barely decent in a' old man to come so oversoon; but words ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... what have you got to talk about? You've a decent harbour through no fault of your own, and that's about all you can boast of," said the man ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... Pynaar's River, which consists of a station on the railway, and a few gutted houses. A fine iron bridge over the river had been blown up, and was lying with its back broken in the water. We camped here about one, and thought we were in for a decent rest, after several very short nights. I ate something, and was soon fast asleep by my saddle; but at three "harness up" was ordered, and off we went, but only for a few hundred yards, when the column halted, and after wasting two hours in ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... of the first edition in the Bodleian Library, which had belonged to Gough the antiquary, there is written in his hand, as a foot-note to 'neighbours': 'There is now, as I have heard, a body of men not less decent or virtuous than the Scottish Council, longing to melt the lead of an English Cathedral. What they shall melt, it were just that they should swallow.' It can scarcely be doubted that this is the suppressed passage. ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... was not badly treated at all. I was always doing odd carpentering jobs for the colonel and officers, and armourer's work at the guns. Any odd time I had over, I did jobs for the soldiers and their wives. I got a good many little presents, enough to keep me in decent clothes and decent food—if you can call the food you have up there decent—and to provide me with tobacco; so that, except that I was a prisoner, and for the thought of my wife and you, I had really nothing to grumble ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... there," Arthur cried to the crowd. "Do you call this decent, trying to get more than your share of this stuff? You'll get your portion to-morrow. It is going ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... records of Washington's youth is the copy, written in his beautiful, almost copper-plate hand, of "Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior, In Company and Conversation." These maxims were taken from an English book called "The Young Man's Companion," by W. Mather. It had passed through thirteen editions and contained information upon many matters ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... then took place at Lambeth, a parish in which the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury has a palace though the air there is unhealthy, and a rich library open at certain hours to decent people. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... business anyway. They are quite capable of managing their own affairs. So in Europe: the affairs of the European peoples are their affairs, not your concern at all. But the case is so different with poor, weak, helpless China. China enlists all your sympathies, calls forth every decent instinct ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... another, it was more an act of heroism and bravery to repair the injury, than to persist in error, and enter into mortal combat with the injured party. This would be an aggravation of that which was already odious, and would put him without the pale of all decent society and honorable men. I would strongly inculcate the propriety of being tender of the feelings, as well as the failings, of those around him. I would teach immutable integrity, and uniform urbanity of manners. Scrupulously to guard individual honor, ...
— The Code of Honor • John Lyde Wilson
... be, more and more in the hands of large undertakings with which the individual workman could not compete whatever instruments of production were placed in his hands. For the mass of the people, therefore, to be assured of the means of a decent livelihood must mean to be assured of continuous employment at a living wage, or, as an alternative, of public assistance. Now, as has been remarked, experience goes to show that the wage of the average worker, as fixed ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... Do I want a respectable wedding? Do I want a decent man—a gentleman—a man fit to maintain her? Is this the way she ought to have behaved? Is this what we thought ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... along, followed by the faction, a great body of citizens of the lower orders, decent substantial men, came crowding toward the Campus, and paused to inquire the cause of the tumult, which had left its visible effects in the flushed visages and knotted brows of ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... out and met him at his door, bag in hand. "Hollo!" he cried, and made a decent show ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Pleasing', as "Lucus a non lucendo," containing little pleasantry, and less poetry. He also acts as ["lies as" in 'MS.'] monthly stipendiary and collector of calumnies for the 'Satirist'. If this unfortunate young man would exchange the magazines for the mathematics, and endeavour to take a decent degree in his university, it might eventually prove more serviceable than his ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... could be blamed completely on his crossed eyes. Jason wondered for a second if his assessment of the danger was correct, then remembered where he was and lost his doubts. Snarbi would be committing no crime if he tried to kill or enslave them, just doing what any ordinary, decent slave-holding barbarian would do in his place. Jason searched through his tool box for some rivets that could be used to fasten the ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... that I adopted the youth in order to prop my age, you do as much injustice to my goodwill, as you seem to know little of the merciless intentions of your own people. I have made him my son, that he may know that one is left behind him. Peace, Hector, peace! Is this decent, pup, when greyheads are counselling together, to break in upon their discourse with the whinings of a hound! The dog is old, Teton; and though well taught in respect of behaviour, he is getting, like ourselves, I fancy, something forgetful of the ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of humanity, bare-legged, unkempt, trousers and jackets in holes; however, the woman was quite cheerful—didn't complain nor ask for money. The men accepted two francs to drink our health. One wonders how children ever grow up in such an atmosphere without light or air or decent food. ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... the "Admiral Benbow," a respectable house, and receives none but decent company; and I'll ask you to go somewhere else, for I don't like the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... climates, for he loses not much in fancy, and judgment, which is the effect of observation, still increases. His succeeding years afford him little more than the stubble of his own harvest, yet, if his constitution be healthful, his mind may still retain a decent vigor, and the gleanings of that of Ephraim, in comparison with others, will surpass the vintage of Abiezer."[12] Since Chaucer, none of our poets has had a constitution more healthful, and it was his old age that yielded the best of him. In him ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... different from the dogged surliness of an Englishman, or the who-cares-for-you manner of our own countrymen, is the air of conscious self-respect of certain classes of French tradesmen. In the present condition of our society, we hold it to be among the impossible things to make a decent pastry-cook out of an American citizen, or a decent citizen out of a pastry-cook. But is there any good reason why we should not? Do not pastry-cooks contribute as much toward human happiness as sugar-refiners or importers of molasses? ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... and shelter can be had for eight cents a night. The latter is an enterprise which could be imitated with profit in all our large American cities, where it is very difficult for the homeless and poverty-stricken to obtain a decent lodging, or to find any place, in fact, where liquor is not sold. There are also evangelistic services in the mission here, Sunday-schools, Bible-classes, temperance meetings, a soup kitchen, and a coffee bar, where, during Christmas week, between four and five hundred ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... as my meal was finished, I don't know why, but instead of sleeping a decent siesta of two hours, the Spanish tonic to digest a dinner, I never awoke before sunset; and only then, because I began to feel a motion that was far from being pleasant. In fact, the waves were beginning to rise in sharp ridges, covered with foam; the mild land-breeze had changed ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... battles been, so unavailing the suggestions of elderly relations that gentlemen always yielded to ladies, that a compromise had been arrived at. When Jeremy was eight he should have equal rights with Helen. Well and good. Jeremy had yielded to that. It was the only decent chair in the nursery. Into the place where the wicker, yielding to rude and impulsive pressure, had fallen away, one's body might be most happily fitted. It was of exactly the right height; it made the handsomest creaking noises when one ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... straightway things began to go to the devil." And for my own part I have read enough of family quarrels. I am tired of the tune upon the triangle and I am ready for softer flutings. When I visit my neighbors, I want them to make a decent pretense. It was Charles Lamb who found his married friends too loving in his presence, but let us not go to extremes! And so, after I have read a few books of marital complication, I yearn for the old-fashioned couple in the older books who went hand in hand to old age. At this minute there ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... indeed, he could hardly find space for a word, and quite as little after his admonition as before. Her nimble tongue ran over the whole system of life in the hospital. The brethren, she said, had a yearly stipend (the amount of which she did not mention), and such decent lodgings as I saw, and some other advantages, free; and, instead of being pestered with a great many rules, and made to dine together at a great table, they could manage their little household matters as they liked, buying their own dinners and having them cooked in the general kitchen, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... politicians. You can't keep women away from primary meetings as you do intelligent men. Women know that every corner in the house must be inspected if the house is to be clean. Fathers and brothers want women to vote so that they can have a decent place for a primary meeting, a decent place to vote in and a decent man ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... want us to show any hard feelings," Gus urged, "and he's decent to us. I don't believe Siebold really thinks I'm yellow—do you?"—this last to his ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... made more comfortable than he had been since his flight from Culloden. Their faith was unquestionable, their activity in his service unremitting. Food was abundant, and, in addition, they volunteered to provide him with decent clothing, and tidings of the movements of the enemy. The first was accomplished somewhat ferociously. Two of the outlaws met the servant of an officer, on his way to Fort Augustus with his master's baggage. This poor fellow ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... for nothing. If you will only make marriage reasonable and decent, you can do as you like about divorce. I have not stated my deepest objection to marriage; and I dont intend to. There are certain rights I will not give any ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... governess-cart, sez she was a pretty young woman. I never noticed nothing 'bout 'er 'cept the pink rose in 'er button-'ole. I never 'eard tell of a farm 'and with a pink rose in 'is shirt before. Maybe such carryings on is all right for they grooms an' kerridge-'orses, but it ain't 'ardly decent for a respectable farm 'orse. So when this 'ere woman come along I up and 'as a grab at it. D'ye think she'd 'it me? I never 'ad such a shock in me life, not since I went backwards when the coal-cart tipped! Lor, lumme! if she didn't catch 'old of me round the neck ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... job, they had a quiet talk and smoke and went to bed; they came here to work. Now the Sachem bar's full of slouchers every night, and quite a few of them don't do anything worth speaking of in the daytime, except make trouble for decent folks. If the boys try to put the screw on a farmer at harvest or when he has extra wheat to haul, you'll find they hatched the mischief at Beamish's saloon. But I've no use for giving those fellows tracts with ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... inevitable under the present rule of Cant[FN359] in a book intended for the public: but the same does not apply to my version of The Nights, and now I proceed to discuss the matter serieusement, honnetement, historiquement; to show it in decent nudity not in suggestive fig-leaf ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... for dinner, it was found that both Mrs. Windsor and Madame Valtesi had put on simple black dresses in honour of the curate. Lady Locke, although she never wore widow's weeds, had given up colours since her husband's death. As they waited for Mr. Smith's advent there was an air of decent expectation about the party. Mr. Amarinth looked serious to heaviness. Lord Reggie was pale, and seemed abstracted. Probably he was thinking of his anthem, whose tonic and dominant chords, and diatonic progressions, ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of Yuchovitch it must be recorded that my grandfather never had to stay away from the synagogue for want of his one decent coat to wear. His neighbor Isaac, the village money lender, never refused to give up the pledged articles on a Sabbath eve, even if the money due was not forthcoming. Many Sabbath coats besides my grandfather's, and many candlesticks besides my grandmother's, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... incongruous to you? These so-called aristocrats bring a son into existence, and, providing he's a decent-living, rule-abiding chap, he is sheltered from the world and kept for the enriching of their own hot-house of respectability. But—if one of them upsets the ash-can and otherwise messes up the family escutcheon, the father says, "You have disgraced our traditions. Get thee hence into the cold, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... common to most Eastern countries that women should be kept in subjection and as far as possible in seclusion. Though the morality which the Heian literature reveals is anything but strait-laced, the language is uniformly refined and decent, in this respect resembling the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... "Decent or not," said Captain Glenn, "a pirate's a pirate, and if we can manage to get out of his clutches it's up to us ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... and reported to Brigadier H.Q. It was the cellar of a once decent house by the appearance of the garden. I went down six steps into a chamber reeking with dampness about six feet high by ten feet square; a candle was burning in a bottle on a roughly made table, and, sitting at it, was the General closely studying details ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... you what it is, young man, it would be fitter for you to be looking after your father's property than to be bothering decent quiet people with your foolish questions. There now, while you're idling away your time here, there's the cows have broke into the oats, and are knocking the corn ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Squire Clamp and his new wife to their happiness; it would not be well to lift the decent veil which drops over their household. The dark, perchance guilty, past,—the stormy present, and the retribution of the future,—let memory and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... going to revive Judson Clark, Bassett. I don't owe him anything. Let him die a decent death ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... put the bill through was made by "the bald eagle"; the "black horse cavalry," whose feelings had undergone a complete change in the intervening time, voted unanimously for it, in company with all the decent members; and that was the end. Now here was a bit of work in the interest of a corporation and in the interest of a community, which the corporation at first tried honestly to have put through on its merits. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... to keep it warm. Let none think this swathing of the infant is needless to set down, for it is necessary it should be thus swaddled, to give its little body a straight figure, which is most proper and decent for a man, and to accustom him to keep upon his feet, who otherwise would go upon all fours, as ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... put in Dave, with a shudder. "If there is anything left of the man, we ought to give him a decent burial." ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... Vicar firmly. "It's my duty to try and make a decent member of society of the lad if I can, and I'm sorry you cannot ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... preparation for the meal. The Butlers rose to go, and were persuaded to remain. Mr. Stewart, who had an Old-World prejudice against tippling during the day, was induced by the baronet to taste a thimble of hollands, for appetite's sake. So we waited, with only a decent pretence of interest ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... sheep, and colored with a dye made from the roots of the barberry bushes, or the poke weed, with the aid of a little foreign indigo, or perhaps logwood. A sufficient variety of colors could be manufactured to produce a very decent-looking carpet. ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... the instant. Her tall form was decent in baggy coveralls, but she had dropped the mask. She was not pretty, he supposed: broad-faced, square-jawed, verging on spinsterhood. But he had ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... then he hung, a limp dead thing, in my hands. My outstretched arms seemed made as a gibbet, feeling no fatigue, so lightly did they sustain him. Cords of brass could be no more tense than mine; his weight was as nothing. Softly I eased him down, and composed his limbs in decent ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... French officers appeared among us after the alliance, our officers were often unable to entertain them for lack of decent clothes and food. Washington in an order ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... very busy, full of almost American activity. He thought a greater calm would have been more decent, and waited in the hope that the floor would presently cease to forget itself. As it showed no symptoms of complying with his desire he endeavoured to spurn it, and, in the fulness of time, ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... the man whom you wish to know, on horseback, at the commencement of a long hill, where, unless he has borrowed a friend's favourite hack, he cannot, in decent humanity to the brute creation, ride away from you, I apprehend that it is your own fault if you have not gone far in your object before you have gained the top. In short, so well did I succeed, that on reaching Highgate the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sir, and that is aye something; they were just decent bien bodies. Ony poor creature that had face to beg got an awmous and welcome; they that were shamefaced gaed by, and twice as welcome. But they keepit an honest walk before God and man, the Croftangrys, and as I said before, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... behind you when you leave the institution. When you return to your family, use your very first dollars for buying a sponge and a tin-hat, for each member of the household; and bring up the five children to lead decent lives. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... said Lady Mariamne, with another shriek. "Did I ask anything about teaching? Heaven forbid! Mr. Tatham knows what I mean, Dolly. Has he been at any decent place—or has he been where it will never be heard of? Eton and Harrow one knows, and the dame's schools one knows, but horrible Board Schools, or things, where they might say young Lord Lomond was brought up—oh, goodness gracious! One has to bear a great many things, ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... known that all children pass through the stage illustrated by these cases, in which they have the savage's conception of right and wrong. For most children the difference between going to the reformatory or jail and turning out decent men and women is one of wholesome and sympathetic environment. Undue severity, no less than bad example, confirms many a youth in these habits—which should represent but a passing stage ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... a green carpet which covered the room. Round about were more of the maple chairs, looking quite handsome on their green footing. There was a decent dressing- table and chest of drawers of the same wood, in their places; and a round mahogany stand which seemed to be meant for no particular place but to do duty anywhere. And in the corner of the room was Winthrop, with Mrs. Nettley and Clam for assistants, busy putting up a bedstead. He looked ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... student astray, giving him glimpses that have nothing whatever in common with the truth as we know it from observation. Very often the errors implied by such names are flagrant; sometimes the allusions are ridiculous, grotesque, or merely imbecile. So long as they have a decent sound, how infinitely preferable are locutions in which etymology finds nothing to dissect! Of such would be the word fullo, were it not that it already has a meaning which immediately occurs to the mind. This Latin expression means a fuller; a person who ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... foreign trade. It seems to have been in this manner that the ancient Egyptians and the modern Chinese acquired their great wealth. The ancient Egyptians, it is said, neglected foreign commerce, and the modern Chinese, it is known, hold it in the utmost contempt, and scarce deign to afford it the decent protection of the laws. The modern maxims of foreign commerce, by aiming at the impoverishment of all our neighbours, so far as they are capable of producing their intended effect, tend to render that very commerce insignificant ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... 'There wasn't a decent house to be had then, nor is there-now,' went on Jack. 'The empty ones were all tumbling to pieces, and in such a state of dirt that when the landlord offered this to Mother we jumped at it. It is damp, year in year out. We always have fires burning in the rooms we use. But what of that? It is cheerful, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... people from the degrading Dollar-craze. But now, well!—those who make fortunes there leave it as soon as they can, shaking its dust off their feet and striving to forget that they ever experienced its incalculable greed, vice, cunning, and general rascality. There are plenty of decent folk in America, of course, just as there are decent folk everywhere, but they are in the minority. Even in the Southern States the 'old stock' of men is decaying and dying-out, and the taint of commercial vulgarity is creeping over the former simplicity of the Virginian homestead. ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... the hands of Germans, who probably, however, made their profit mostly out of the pilgrims journeying to Rome. Yet the statements on this point may refer mainly to the country districts, since it is notorious that in the great cities Italian hotels held the first place. The want of decent inns in the country may also be explained by the general insecurity of ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... no brass-bound uniforms, but then we are like brothers here," he wrote. "We all mess together and live like fighting-cocks. . . . All the chaps of the black-squad are as decent as they make that kind, and old Sol, the Chief, is a dry stick. We are good friends. As to our old man, you could not find a quieter skipper. Sometimes you would think he hadn't sense enough to see ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... Johnny Rich, Yelling out at such a pitch, For a decent man to help you, while you fell into the ditch: 'Tisn't quite the thing to say, But we ought to've let you lay, While your drunken carcass died ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... apprenticeship parted from the coarse-minded practitioner his relative, and set up for himself at Bath with his modest medical ensign. He had for some time a hard struggle with poverty; and it was all he could do to keep the shop and its gilt ornaments in decent repair, and his bed-ridden mother in comfort: but Lady Ribstone happening to be passing to the Rooms with an intoxicated Irish chairman who bumped her ladyship up against Pen's very door-post, and drove his chair-pole through the handsomest pink bottle in the surgeon's ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... nodded Higgins musingly. "There WAS something queer about them, and they weren't just ordinary tramps. Did I tell you? I overtook them last night away up on the Fairbanks road by the Taylor place, and I gave 'em a lift. I particularly noticed what a decent sort they were. They were clean and quiet-spoken, and their clothes were good, even if they were rough. Yet they didn't have ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... their cleanliness, and the frequent washing of their beds and blankets, to be the cause of it, which when the French, the Dutch, and Italians do less regard, they more breed this plague. But the English that take great care to be cleanly and decent, are seldom troubled with them." Also, on p. 1092, he says, 'As for dressing the body: all Ireland is noted for this, that it swarms almost with Lice. But that this proceeds from the beastliness of the people, and want ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... dissonant, and the thoughts you seek to inspire, jarring and incompatible. If you must tell me to despair, at least point me to some nobler source of consolation, than the coldness of memory; at least let us prepare for the fate that awaits us in a manner decent, manly, ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... believe I can take you to Dodge's room. Both he and Brayton are absent at the hop. Brayton has always been a decent fellow, I don't believe he admires Dodge any too much, but he has to put up with his roommate. Now, in that room I hope to find evidence which will prove that Dodge is not fit to be a member the corps of United ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... across his knee, with one half of it killed his antagonist, and left him. The parents of the man killed, being present, laid him out on some mats, and appeared to regret their loss very much. They kept a continual drumming over the body of the deceased for two or three days; after which he received a decent burial on another Island at some distance from the Island ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... party, and a deputation of eminent philanthropists waited upon him, believing that in Richard Lalor Shiel the black man had a friend as true as he had been an eloquent advocate, those gentlemen were received with a haughty insolence, and a contemptuousness which there was not even a decent effort to suppress. Upon the Protestant dissenters of England he poured loud and eloquent praise when he was agitating for Roman Catholic emancipation, as the English dissenters gave an ostentatious support to that movement. When the end was gained which he hoped ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... soul! behold her: what decorous calm! She, with her week-day worldliness sufficed, Stands in her pew and hums her decent psalm With decent dippings at the name of Christ! And she has mov'd in that smooth way so long, She hardly can believe ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... melancholy as this group may easily be imagined, it was far less touching than another, that occupied the opposite space of the same area. Seated, as in life, with his form and limbs arranged in grave and decent composure, Uncas appeared, arrayed in the most gorgeous ornaments that the wealth of the tribe could furnish. Rich plumes nodded above his head; wampum, gorgets, bracelets, and medals, adorned his person in profusion; though his dull eye and vacant ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... corpse of him from whom he had received so deep an injury, he repeated the solemn words of Scripture,—"'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay it.'—I, whom thou hast injured, will be first to render thee the decent ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... an' we got our man ditto. Mebbe now I'll soon get a chance to treat my tummy to some decent grub, 'cause my ribs're stickin' to my backbone, I'm ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... accused to stand in such a doubtful situation that from the moment of accusation he assumed either a mourning or some squalid garb, although, by the nature of their constitution, accusations were brought forward by one of their lowest magistrates. The spirit of that decent usage has continued from the time of the Romans till this very day. No man was ever brought before your Lordships that did not carry the outward as well as inward demeanor of modesty, of fear, of apprehension, of a sense ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... paid up, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his place as an inferior with freezing British dignity. He saw in a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext. He wished me to drink with him, but I would none of his drinks. He grew pathetically tender in his professions; but I walked beside him in silence or answered him in stately courtesies; and when we got to the landing-place, passed the word ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... country would undergo a transformation. But it would be better for the country. It would not take five years to pay the national debt, interest and all, if you will apply the money spent by men for tobacco and whisky—if men will learn to be decent. I think it is a great deal better to wear a pretty flower or ribbon than to smoke cigars. It is a great deal better, and less damaging to the conscience, to wear a handsome silk dress, than for a man to put "an enemy into his mouth to steal away ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... crisis in your married life, you get into a window corner with that ogling dame von Rosen. I do not dream that there was any harm; but I do say it was an idle disrespect to your wife. Why, man, the woman is not decent." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... know that; he'll not rob his sister. I lay it on him, now I'm dying, to be patient with her, and look after her. She's not like other children. But it's not her fault; it was born in her. Let him see her married to a decent man, and then give her what's honestly hers. That little lad has nursed me like a woman since I've been ill. He was always a good lad to me, and I'd like him to know when he's grown up ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would be bound to support the adopting mother. By the judicious investment of a dollar in this timely purchase, the worthy woman thus secured for herself a provision for old age, and a security, which she probably appreciates yet more highly, for decent burial when she dies. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... was dragging the bodies of his friends through the streets of the capital, he had sought to save the life of the blood-stained Fimbria, and, when the latter died by his own hand, had given orders for his decent burial. On landing in Italy he had earnestly offered to forgive and to forget, and no one who came to make his peace had been rejected. Even after the first successes he had negotiated in this spirit ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... talking about," Benson broke in. "Not all tricks! Seen funny things in the East; thingsh decent ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... chummy, Red, he was ready to let a knife into me, and now he says he was in the navy; well up to his flag, too, and the queen's commission, all nice and handy. He thinks he's too nice to mix with the likes of us; he says as how we won't know how to blow the loot ladylike and decent. Mind ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... floating through curtain and sash into the street, then skipped on their way with the startled consciousness that the village was wide awake. At last matters grew so uproarious that the grandsire's red kerchief came down from his face with a jerk. What decent old gentleman could sleep in such a racket! Mynheer van Gleck regarded his children with astonishment. The baby even showed symptoms of hysterics. It was high time to attend to business. Mevrouw suggested that, if they wished to see the good St. Nicholas, they should sing ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... company Markovitch first caught my eye. I had never seen him so clean and smart before. His high, piercing collar was of course the first thing that one saw; then one perceived that his hair was brushed, his beard trimmed, and that he wore a very decent suit of rather shiny black. This washing and scouring of him gave him a curiously subdued and imprisoned air; I felt sympathetic towards him; I could see that he was anxious to please, happy at the prospect of being a successful host, and, to-night, most desperately ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... started lending money in a very, very small way in the East End to people connected with the docks, stevedores, minor barge-owners, ship-chandlers, tally clerks, all sorts of very small fry. He made his living at it. He was a very decent man I believe. He had enough influence to place his only son as junior clerk in the account department of one of the Dock Companies. "Now, my boy," he said to him, "I've given you a fine start." But de Barral didn't start. He stuck. He gave ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... about but the two of us, because the old ship-keeper had locked himself up in the galley—both doors. Suddenly poor Charley mutters, in a crazy voice: 'I'm done here,' and strides down the gangway with me at his heels, up the dock, out at the gate, on towards Tower Hill. He used to take rooms with a decent old landlady in America Square, to be ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... our plans," he went on, pleased with our discomfiture and our despising of him. "Next day some chap came to see me, pretending he was my brother. And I carried out my part of it by cursing him at first and then begging him to give me decent burial. So he went away, and, I suppose, received permission to get me right after I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... less the old house because the barber has reared his brood beneath its roof. There were always Negroes in it when we were there—the place swarmed with them. Hammer and plane, soap and water, paper and paint, can make it new again. The barber, I understand, is a worthy man, and has reared a decent family. His daughter ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... familiar, and what we come to find out about our own can be no more than what other people have shewn us. Upon ourselves they react but indirectly, through our imagination, which substitutes for our actual, primary motives other, secondary motives, less stark and therefore more decent. Never had Legrandin's snobbishness impelled him to make a habit of visiting a duchess as such. Instead, it would set his imagination to make that duchess appear, in Legrandin's eyes, endowed with all the graces. He would be ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... that," replied Miss Martha briskly. "Sit with your heels higher than your head, and no decent place to lean, and just at the most important moment have the wind double your paper over or blow it away. No, thank you; but there's room at the table for all of ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... plain English. I don't hold with these foreign lingos, sir; there allers seems something sly and deceivin' about em. No right man 'ud ever think 'fur' meant 'thief'! Thief an' all, sir, he's dead. Mr. Toley and me'll put him away decent like: and it won't do him no harm if we just says 'Our Father' ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... goddess, have to sink in Hell. In course of time, when their sufferings in Hell come to an end, they take birth in the order of humanity, in families that are entirely destitute of wealth. Always suffering from hunger and thirst, excluded from all decent society, hopeless of ever enjoying good things, they lead lives of great wretchedness. Born in families that are destitute of all articles of enjoyment, these men never succeed in enjoying the good things ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... my parole, sir, I shall no longer regard it as binding," said Beverley, by a great effort, holding back a blow; "I will not keep faith with a scoundrel who does not know how to be decent in the presence of a young girl. You had better have me arrested and confined. I will escape at the first opportunity and bring a force here to reckon with you for your villainy. And if you dare hurt Alice Roussillon I will have you ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... thunder and lightning," having taken to their hammocks. At Samarang, as already related, Edwards found the tender, which he had long given up for lost, and the price she fetched enabled the crew to purchase decent clothing. Heywood afterwards asserted that no clothing was given to the prisoners but what they could earn by plaiting and selling straw hats. They were miserably housed, when on board the Rembang, and kept in rigid confinement both at Batavia, and on the Vreedemberg, ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... as cold or heat or pain, and therefore you could not feel cold. But now, since, according to the new creed, such things as uric acid, chromogens and purins had no existence, she could safely indulge in decent viands again. But her unhappy husband was not a real gainer in this respect, for while he ate, she tirelessly discoursed to him on the new creed, and asked him to recite with her the True Statement of Being. And ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... more of her charges till tea-time, when the bell brought them from different quarters, Johnnie with such a grimy collar and dirty hands, that he was a very un-Sunday-like figure, and she would have sent him away to make himself decent, but that she was desirous of ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passengers beside the bishop and myself—a pair of yellow-faced, yellow-fingered Portuguese from down the coast, traders both, with livers like Strasbourg geese. The Skipper was a decent, weak little chap from Lisbon, who might have been good-looking if he had sometimes washed; the Chief Engineer was a Swede, who spoke English and quoted Ibsen; and the other officers I never came specially across. There was only one of my own countrymen on board, a fireman from Hull, one ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... of a restaurant of decent exterior not far from Philippe's. The young man went in, asked for a private room, and told the waiter to send up the coachman, as he had something to say to him, and to procure a boy to hold the horse. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... language alone in the Legislature and in the courts of law, commenced and concluded his speech in the following words: "I will explain my mind on the necessity that the Speaker we are about to choose should possess and speak equally well the two languages."—"I think it is but decent that the Speaker on whom we may fix our choice be one who can express himself in English when he addresses himself to the representative of our Sovereign." (Christie's History of Canada, Vol. I., Chap. iv., pp. 127, 128, in a note.) Mr. Christie, after stating in the text about "J.A. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... thought perhaps 'twould be better To wait till the Irish affairs are decided— (That is, till both Houses had prosed and divided, With all due appearance of thought and digestion)— For, tho' Hertford House had long settled the question, I thought it but decent, between me and you, That the two other Houses ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... from military units, even from the peasants in the surrounding country, poured in upon the Duma, calling it "counter-revolutionary, Kornilovitz," and demanding that it resign. The last days of the Duma were stormy with the bitter demands of the Municipal workers for decent living wages, and the threat ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... the driver, hears that he may probably be given charge of a lavatory at one of the stations. He is a decent, bluff, short-spoken old chap, with his heart in his work. Just now you'll find him at his worst—bitter and suspicious. The thought of swabbing down a lavatory and taking pennies all ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... is going too far. We can't keep a maid or a plough-boy on the place because of this devilish school. It's going to ruin the whole labor system. We've been too mild and decent. I'm going to put my foot down right here. I'll make Elspeth take that girl out of school if I have to horse-whip her, and I'll warn the school against further interference with our tenants. Here, in less than a week, go two plough-hands—and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... around the neck, and over the bosom and the shoulders. The waist is just under her shoulders, and the sleeves are tight, tighter than any of our coat sleeves, and also ruffled at the wrist. Around the plump and rosy neck, which I remember as shrivelled and sallow, and hidden under a decent lace handkerchief, hangs, in the picture, a necklace of large ebony beads. There are two curls upon the forehead, and the rest of the hair flows away in ringlets ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... were certain that there was no hope for the unhappy Euphrosyne, one trusted that she might at least be the only victim. But Ali, professing to follow the advice of some severe reformers who wished to restore decent morality, arrested at the same time fifteen ladies belonging to the best Christian families in Janina. A Wallachian, named Nicholas Janco, took the opportunity to denounce his own wife, who was on the point of becoming a mother, as guilty of adultery, and handed her ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... its full strength, under its full strength, below its full complement. indifferent, middling, ordinary, mediocre; average &c. 29; so-so; coucicouci, milk and water; tolerable, fair, passable; pretty well, pretty good; rather good, moderately good; good; good enough, well enough, adequate; decent; not bad, not amiss; inobjectionable[obs3], unobjectionable, admissible, bearable, only better than nothing. secondary, inferior; second-rate, second-best; one-horse [U.S.]. Adv. almost &c.; to a limited extent, rather &c. 32; pretty, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... between Paul Boneau and her niece. Matters were arranged by means of large sacrifices on the part of the heroic maid. Paul's face ceased to beam over the garden-gate on a Sunday morning; and by degrees the news got abroad that Marie was betrothed to the young artist. One day a decent old woman in sabots came to the farmhouse: it was Claude's mother, who had walked from Aix to see him. It was arranged that Claude should pursue his studies a year longer, and then marry. Whether any explanation ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... decent fellows," said Rupert. (He had a most pestilent trick of perpetually playing monitor, to the wet-blanketing of all ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... addressed had advocated provision against old age, etc.: the writer declares all private provision un-Christian. After decent maintenance and relief of family claims of indigence, he holds that all the rest is to go to the "Benefit Society," of which he draws up the rules, in technical form, with chapters of "Officers," "Contributors" etc., from ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... moment the gate was opened by a decent, respectable woman,—Mrs. Furnival would not quite have called her a lady,—who looked hard at the fly as it turned on ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... fixed for some time at the house, she thought it proper and decent to attempt softening Lady Margaret in her favour. She exerted all her powers to please and to oblige her; but the exertion was necessarily vain, not only from the disposition, but the situation of her ladyship, since ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... with you, Cyd? Shut your mouth, and behave like a decent man," added Dan, rebuking the ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... mother," stopping its noise just long enough for a decent reply, and then continuing the concert ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... treated becomes immediately obvious. After all vanity is more a folly than a crime, and pays its own immediate penalty as no other crime or folly does. The other faults of Boswell, especially drinking, were only too common in a century at the beginning of which Johnson remembered "all the decent people at Lichfield getting drunk every night," and at the end of which the most honoured and feared of English Prime Ministers could appear intoxicated in the House of Commons itself. Drunkenness has ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... overhaul her nets and bring in what fish were caught. Thus she toiled on, and with the assistance of these kind Indians she did very nicely. Her little brothers and sisters loved her dearly, and did what they could to help in the simpler and easier part of the work. Every decent person among the Indians was pleased with her industrious habits, and often, in their quiet way, had some cheery ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... bread changes. The university professor, no less than the day-laborer, finds his income too small for him, and says, "I, too, do income-work which does not bring me bread, books, travel, society, a summer home, and surroundings which are not only decent and ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... think he would do that, Myra," said Tony. "He seems an awfully decent sort of chap. If you'd heard his explanation, you would understand that he was really only paying us both a compliment by pretending to make love to you. I do hope you'll see him, my dear, and let him explain and apologise. I don't understand why ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... Our behaviour is neither disorderly, nor manifestly indifferent: it is decent, serious, respectful. What is the effect in this case? Not absolutely unfavourable certainly; but yet far from being much help towards good. We bear our witness that we are engaged in a matter that should be treated with reverence: this is very right; but do we more than ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... and easy isolation to the dangers and complications which would inevitably attend the final establishment of a just system of public law; or else it would mean that the American people believed more in Americanism than they did in democracy. A decent guarantee of international peace would be precisely the political condition which would enable the European nations to release the springs of democracy; and the Americanism which was indifferent or suspicious of the spread ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... every comer, clean or bestial, without even the excuse of appetite or of passion, what should be yielded alone to love; but it is also that to do this she poisons body and mind with spirit-drinking, leads a life of demoralising indolence and self-indulgence, is cut off from all decent associations, and sinks, under the combined influence of these things and of fell disease, into a loathsome creature whom not the lowest wants; sinks into destitution, misery, suicide, or the outcast's early grave. ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... broke forth to the man nearest to him, one not of the party, but evidently one who found it diverting; "good God! Can they not restrain themselves before a child? Let them be decent for his mere youth's sake! ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... highly commended because he would not allow the Ohio delegation to betray John Sherman in the Republican convention. Other men from other States were perhaps just as loyal, but it is so seldom that an Ohio politician does the decent thing that when one honorable Ohio politician is found he excites quite as much surprise and admiration as a double-headed calf or any other natural ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... interest did any aspiring radical politicians read these lines, whether the German socialist from Hitler learned so much or Lenin during his long stay in Paris around 1906. Taine maybe thought that he was arming decent men to better understand and defend the republic against a new Jacobin onslaught while, in fact, he provided them with an accurate recipe for repeating the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... two of you, are there? Well, you shall share the same fate till I think fit to release you. I'll teach you to stop playing such impish tricks on decent folk.' ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... only three weeks to the holidays, by which time his bruises would hardly have time to disappear. His family were staying for the summer at Scarborough, and his sisters wrote him enthusiastic accounts of the lawn-tennis parties there. How could he present himself in decent society, with one of his eyes in mourning? But he saw something comic in his own annoyance, and it did not affect him sufficiently to interfere with his studies or amusements. He neither feared the contest nor desired it. He had no wish to quarrel with Saurin, a fellow he did not care ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... children long in subjection to servants, is their not being able to wield a knife, fork, or spoon, with decent dexterity. Such habits are taught to them by the careless maids who feed them, that they cannot for many years be produced even at the side-table without much inconvenience and constant anxiety. If this anxiety in a mother were to begin a little sooner, it need never be intense; ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... children to come, as well as risking the contagion of diseases which can only be bottled up by medical treatment but never completely cured; when it gets down to the question of men buying and selling these poor women as they undoubtedly do, the only way to check that is for every decent man in the country to help in the fight. It is a man evil; men must slay it. Every procurer in the country should be sent to prison, and every house of ill fame should ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... a decent place to camp, and then stop for the night," said Jack. We finally came to a little level bench covered with giant pines, and we could hear water beyond. I went on with the lantern, and found a small stream leaping ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... a little wistfully. "A gunman doesn't have friends, Polly. Outside of you an' Lee an' Billie I haven't any. All the newspapers in the territory an' all the politicians an' most of the decent people have been pullin' for a death sentence. Well, they've got it." He stroked her hair softly. "Don't you worry, girl. They won't get a chance to ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... Wheeler was a good enough soul, if he was a little slack-twisted. I'd like to hear anybody say a word against him in my presence. Look at that blessed child, Charlotte. Isn't she the sweetest thing? I'm desperate glad you are coming back home, Charlotte. I've never been able to put up a decent mess of mustard pickles since you went away, and you were always such a hand with them! We'll be real snug and cozy again—you and me and ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... everything is "touch and go." We have no time to stop on the street and give a decent salutation. It is: "How do?" or "Morning," accompanied by a sharp nod of the head, instead of by a graceful bow. We have no time for the graces and the charms. Everything must ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... fried-fish tea, I mounted the night coach to Falmouth,—outside, as there was no room in, and so, through respectable Helstone, remarkable for a florid Gothic arch erected to some modern worthy of the town, to decent Penryn, and then by midnight, to the narrowest of all towns, Falmouth. I longed to get back to my darlings, and resolved to see them by next morning, so booked an outside (no room inside, as before) for an immediate start. Now, you can readily imagine that I was by no means hot, and though ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... to a decision—to two decisions. He considered the possibility of getting Robert out of the way before you came back, and decided that it was impossible. He considered the possibility of Robert's behaving like an ordinary decent person in public, and decided that it was very unlikely. He came to those two decisions instantaneously, as he was reading the letter. Isn't that rather ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... Frankfurter and Jackson found the act too indefinite to be rescued by a restrictive interpretation. With respect to the effect of the requirement of willfulness, they said: "If a statute does not satisfy the due-process requirement of giving decent advance notice of what it is which, if happening, will be visited with punishment, so that men may presumably have an opportunity to avoid the happening * * *, then 'willfully' bringing to pass such an undefined ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... difficulty I could get a peep at her. The bride and her friends were distinguished by having a sort of brass nail-head driven through the right nostril of their noses. Good big boys were running about quite naked. But the conduct of the people, old and young, was quite decent. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... to the second stanza. Note the hint I drop about the baby's parentage: So delicately too! A maid might sing, And never blush at it. Girls love these songs Of sugared wickedness. They'll go miles about, To say a foul thing in a cleanly way. A decent immorality, my lord, Is art's specific. Get the passions up, But ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... replied, "only there is no feud, and it doesn't seem so romantic when you're in it. The man my sister married I thought was frightfully boring except for his family place, and being in the army, which is rather decent. He talks," she smiled, "like a phonograph with only one set ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... mad, my dear—I'm only sick. Now just come over to me, like a decent creature, and give me the dhrop of comfort ye ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... suave and clean and sunny, with its well-kept streets and smooth, broad river, and its air of all prosperity and peace, the very type and pattern of a decent English country-town; and almost within stone's throw of it the moors begin, lying widely under the expanse of the sky, with the perpetual running of waters, and the lonely farms, from which the smoke ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... her. Allie is doing wonders with herself, too. By the way, she needn't be lonely any more; I've talked to some of the guests, and they want to make friends with her. She'll find them nice people, and you must make her meet them halfway. Perhaps she'll become interested in some decent young fellow. I'd like ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... photographed by me, but feebly indicated: for it was just four hundred years ago, the raillery was coarse, she returned every stroke in kind, and though a virtuous woman, said things without winking, which no decent man of our day would say ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... live, not one of them shall come into this house. All my life they have begged me to settle down, to come up here and live the life my father did. Very well, now I've done it. And I wrote to them and told them that I intended to live henceforth like a gentleman and a decent citizen—more than some of them do. No, I wash my hands of them. If they were to crawl up here from the gate on their knees, I'd ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... laity, and set many hands to work; so they would find their advantage in the cheapness; which is a circumstance not to be neglected by too many among that venerable body.[6] And, in order to this, I could heartily desire, that the most ingenious artists of the weaving trade, would contrive some decent stuffs and silks for clergymen, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... we have just shown out at the street-door (and whom the two female servants are now inspecting from the second-floor windows) was exceedingly vulgar, ignorant, and selfish. Her deceased better-half had been an eminent cork-cutter, in which capacity he had amassed a decent fortune. He had no relative but his nephew, and no friend but his cook. The former had the insolence one morning to ask for the loan of fifteen pounds; and, by way of retaliation, he married the latter next day; he made a will immediately ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... quality of Eau de Cologne is given, to show that a very decent article can be produced with ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... your capacity for wonder, Bunny. I took some sweet old rags with me on purpose, carefully packed inside a decent suit, and I had the luck to pick up a foul old German cap that some peasant had cast off in the woods. I only meant to leave it on them like a card; as it was—well, I was waiting for the best barber in the place to open his ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... boys be!" thought he, very discontentedly; "howsomever, the man does seem like a decent country gentleman, and we are two to one: besides, he's old, little, and—augh, baugh—I dare say, we are safe enough, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... convents remain. I have detailed our visit to one of them in my journal; we found every thing decent and well conducted, but not with any thing like the strictness and rigour we expected. At Aix there was a small establishment of Ursulines, a very strict order; there was also a penitentiary establishment of Magdalenes, the rules of which were said by the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... book. He asked many questions about the tendency of men's minds in America, and was especially interested in Arthur Carey, with whose influence among American Episcopalians and early death the reader has been made acquainted. They lodged at a decent little inn over a pastry cook's shop and did not go sight-seeing to any extent. McMaster's companions did not wait for his return from Oxford, but when the packet sailed for Antwerp, which was Sunday, the 30th of ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... his wife. "Get me the box, and pray that you may have decent luck at whist for the next few weeks; we shall want all the sovereigns you can scrape together to buy wedding presents before ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... everywhere. The school will have its shops and its gardens—and to use tools will be the chief end of culture. Man got away from the monkey by his power to make and use tools. He goes back to the ape when his hands have to be cased in gloves and his brain is ashamed of decent labor. In these school-gardens botany will be applied to horticulture. In the shops our boys and girls will learn to create things. The trouble with education now is that it divorces knowledge from work—the brains from ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... containing, beneath a long row of red shanties, a very decent-looking lot of ponies of various kinds, some of which were being trotted out for the inspection of a circle of possible purchasers. Every bungalow seemed to be provided with one or two tennis-grounds, and all had players on them. When at last, by a charming drive, we reached the ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... about that," he answered. "Were I master of this ship I should make all snug for it; but if I were to advise Gregson to do so, he'd only crack on more sail to show his superior seamanship. I've had a talk with the surgeon, McDow, a very decent sort of young fellow, and so I know the man we have ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... O'Neill. He was thinking confusedly. "You know you're like a spoiled child, Regnault. You'd die for a thing so long as some one denied it you. Now, what strikes me is this. Your wife ought to be with you, as a matter of decent usage and—and all that. But if you want her here just so that you can flog up the thrill of one of your old beastly adventures, I'll not lift a finger to ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... his old dissatisfaction with his daughter. "Why haven't you married and settled down like a decent woman?" he shouted. "Tell me that. Why haven't you married and settled down? Why are you always getting in trouble? Why haven't you ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... discredited and hateful in the sight of the German people; until that people shall have awakened to a consciousness of the unfathomable guilt of those whom they have followed into calamity and shame; until a mood of penitence and of a decent respect for the opinions of mankind shall have supplanted the sway of what President Wilson has so trenchantly ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... British journalists, such as Mr Hugh Martin, establish it beyond possibility of contradiction—that when the "Black and Tans" were let loose on the Irish people they began a villainous campaign of cowardly murder, arson, robbery and drunken outrage, which should have made all decent Englishmen and Englishwomen shudder for the deeds committed in their name. Whenever the particulars are fully disclosed they will, I venture to say, horrify every honest man in the Empire. Not the least disgraceful feature of this black business was the manner in which the Chief Secretary ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... set off again, revived and refreshed. Purdy caught at a bunch of aromatic leaves and burst into a song; and Mahony. ... Good God! With a cloudless sky overhead, a decent bit of horseflesh between his knees, and the prospect of a three days' holiday from storekeeping, his name would not have been what it was if he had for long remained captious, downhearted. Insufficient ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... you stay at home? You ran away to become an artist. You refused a professional position and ordinary morals; a decent occupation at so much a week. You wanted to go out and seek the Golden Fleece of Fame. Now, fight your battle; fight it alone; don't ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... state of stiffness,—lie cheek by jowl with hams, preserved meats, oysters, and other groceries, in hopeless confusion. From the barroom you ascend by four steps into the parlor, the floor of which is covered by a straw carpet. This room contains quite a decent looking-glass, a sofa fourteen feet long and a foot and a half wide, painfully suggestive of an aching back,—of course covered with red calico (the sofa, not the back),—a round table with a green cloth, six cane-bottom chars, red-calico curtains, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... of the practice of using tobacco, is a sufficient argument to induce all decent people to wage war against it. Stage coaches, rail cars, steamboats, public houses, courts of justice, halls of legislation, and the temples of God, are all defiled by the loathsome consumers of this dirty, Indian herb. For the sake of decency, for the ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... entangled among those water-weeds," said Tristram, in tones broken by emotion, "and had just dragged her to shore when you came up. As you hope to prosper, now and hereafter, give her a decent burial. For me ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... scarf; and to prevent it trailing on the ground, throw it in a graceful way over the shoulder, so that part of it falls on the bosom, while the end hangs down the back. It is often ornamented with cotton tassels, and is the most decent and serviceable, as well as the most picturesque, covering worn by any of the native tribes. Sometimes a coronal of flowers surrounds the head, which is usually adorned by a large daub of arnatto on the hair above the brow; while the forehead and cheeks are painted in various patterns with the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... is resting, shh!' They made me coffee before I went to work and boiled cream for me! They began to get real cream for me, do you hear that? And how they managed to get together the money for a decent outfit—eleven roubles, fifty copecks, I can't guess. Boots, cotton shirt-fronts—most magnificent, a uniform, they got up all in splendid style, for eleven roubles and a half. The first morning I came back from the office I found Katerina ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... horse having at length returned from the fiddler hunt, and being whisped over, and made tolerably decent, Mr. Watchorn, having exchanged the postilion saddle in which it had been ridden for a horn-cased hunting one, had mounted, and, opening the kennel-door, had liberated the pent-up pack, who came tearing out full cry and spread ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... against the gentleman; "which may be a warning to honest men not to enter into topicks of this nature with barbers." One would not willingly, even now, discuss the foreign policy of her Majesty's Ministers with the person who shaves one. There are opportunities and temptations to which no decent person should be wantonly exposed. The bad effect of Whiggery on the temper was evident in this, that "the Mohocks are all of the Whiggish gang, and indeed all Whigs are looked upon as such Mohocks, their principles and doctrines ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... number of Americans in Esperitu, but they were all in business or grafts of some kind, and wouldn't take any hand in politics, which was sensible enough. But they showed me and Denver a fine time, and fixed us up so we could get decent things to eat and drink. There was one American, named Hicks, used to come and loaf at the headquarters. Hicks had had fourteen years of Esperitu. He was six feet four and weighed in at 135. Cocoa was his line; and coast fever and the climate had taken ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... genteeler a thing than John Anderson's!" But, as this would have betrayed secrets, she refrained, and merely added, "Now, my man, Tammas, ye'll just wear't when ye gang about the doors and the yard. It'll mak ye look decent and respectable—what ye wasna in that creeshy cloot ye're wearin, that made ye look mair like a tauty bogle ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... the grievances of the nation: under the decent pretext of preventing the misapplication of the revenue, a demand was repeatedly made that the appointment of the officers of state should be vested in the great council; and at length the constitution was entirely overturned by the bold ambition ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... is co-responsible for these things begins to talk idealistic reforms, the ordinary decent man refuses to have anything more to ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... small his joy, small is his spirit's pain. He tills the soil, for him the wild flowers bloom, And lovely daisies shed their meek perfume. His happy wife, relieves his every care, And bliss is double when enjoyed with her. His flocks supply his little household dear, With decent garments, and salubrious fare. Glad he beholds the smiling god of day, Walk from the East upon his radiant way, Gild all the fields—the lengthy plains—the peaks Of giant mountains, with vermillion streaks— While all his farm spreads out beneath ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... ain't a swell like you," he replied, casting, what he meant for a scornful look at the other boy's clean outing shirt and decent suit. Theodore had reached the point now where he had at least one clean shirt ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... to say a decent word in favor of the I. W. W. I have. (Here several in the crowd yelled, ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... But she could have fixed this if she'd loosened up a bit. She could have gone to Washington as I told her to do and—hell, it wouldn't have cost her half as much as it will to defend me in court. She can't get a decent lawyer under—well, God knows ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... sure," said another; "I knew no good would come of his goings on; he never was a decent sort of man like his neighbours, and many queer things have been said of him that I have no doubt are true enough, if we did but know the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Partly as a result of such attacks and partly by the natural course of events the pendulum, by the end of the period, was swinging back, and not long thereafter Restoration comedy died and the stage was left free for more decent, though, as it proved, not for ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... spoke of her with that degree of pity which it is pleasant to experience, every one was ready to do her the little kindnesses, which are not costly, yet manifest good-will; and when at last she died, a long train of her once bitter persecutors followed her, with decent sadness and tears that were not painful, to her place by ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... if you can live on L2, 2s. a week, the rest of your time is free as air! Moreover, you have the option of going about with a feeling that you are a being vastly superior to your fellows, because forsooth you can string fourteen lines together in decent Petrarcan form, and they cannot. And to return for a moment to Clarinda: it seems to me that your publisher, with all his ill-gotten gains, compares favourably with you in your treatment of your partner in the production of that sonnet What about the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... station on a good road. The school system was well rated but the graded school for this section drew a majority of its pupils from a textile mill settlement two or three miles away. The children of the English spinners and weavers were decent, well-behaved youngsters but their speech was distinctly along cockney lines. Within a few months the three small sons of the new country dweller had developed habits of speech native to the English textile towns. Stern correction ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... would have said to himself. "You must remember that you live away down in the Ashdales, by Dove Lake, where there isn't but one decent farmhouse and here and there a poor fisherman's hut. Who'll you find hereabout with a name that's pretty enough to give to your ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... into his pocket, all the while eying the slave with keen scrutiny, as though calculating the market value of every hair upon his head. Then, with a sigh, he handed back the purse, most wofully lightened of its contents, and turned from the room, endeavoring to compose his features into a decent appearance of sober indifference, and muttering that he would not have allowed himself to be betrayed into giving up such a prize so cheaply had it not been that he had an especial regard for the imperator Sergius Vanno, and that the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... she married, would be bound to support the adopting mother. By the judicious investment of a dollar in this timely purchase, the worthy woman thus secured for herself a provision for old age, and a security, which she probably appreciates yet more highly, for decent burial when she dies. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... though slaves to Adooley, are very respectable, and are never called upon by their master, except when required to go to war, supporting themselves by trading for slaves, which they sell to Europeans. They wore decent nouffie tobes, (qu Nyffee,) Arab red caps, and Houssa sandals. The mallams, both in their manners and conversation, are infinitely superior to the ungentle, and malignant natives ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... expression of the ci-devant ploughman of the mains of Tillietudlem; "it's an unco thing that decent folk should be harled through the country this gate, as if ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... kind of second mourning," he explained to Puttany, who received his word on any matter as law. "Joe La France wasn't worth wearing first mourning for, but second mourning is decent for her, and it won't show in the camp like bright ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and suppose the Touricar didn't go so awfully well, and we had to be poor, and couldn't go running away, but had to stick in one beastly city flat and economize! It's all very well to talk of working things out together, but think of not being able to have decent clothes, and going to the movies every night—ugh! When I see some of the girls who used to be so pretty and gay, and they went and married poor men—now they are so worn and tired and bedraggled and perambulatorious, and they worry about ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... fulfil it. Numberless modern women have rebelled against domesticity in theory because they have never known it in practice. Hosts of the poor are driven to the workhouse without ever having known the house. Generally speaking, the cultured class is shrieking to be let out of the decent home, just as the working class is shouting to be ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... leave here, Jimmy," she had said quite calmly. "Go down to Rome, to Palermo, to Ragusa, or somewhere where you can put in a month or so in comfort. The Villa Igiea at Palermo would suit you quite well—lots of smart people, and very decent cooking." ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... questionable whether there is much in these inimitable romances half so objectionable as many of the chapters in Rabelais and Boccaccio. Nor do the most archaic of the passages which Captain Burton declines to "veil in the decent obscurity of a learned language" leave much room for the admirers of Shakespeare, or Greene, or Nash, or Wycherley, or Swift, or Sterne to cry shame. Their coarseness was a reflection of the times. The indelicacy was not offensive to those who ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... extravagant little fool. Had made George take a house in Norwood. Live up to a lot of people better off than themselves. I saw her once; silk dress, pretty boots, all feathers and scent, pink face. More like the Promenade at the Alhambra than a decent home, it looked to me. But some women do get a devil of a ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... tomahawks above her head. The intrepid woman still continued to express her indignation and detestation. The savages, admiring her courage, refrained from inflicting any injury upon her. She soon after managed to effect her escape and returned to her desolate home, where she gave decent interment to the mangled remains of her husband. During all the trying scenes of the massacre and captivity Mrs. Glendenning proved herself worthy of being ranked with the bravest women of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... passing remark from those present. The negro was his own, and he had a right, it was stated, to correct him, as and when he pleased; who could dispute it? For my own part, I entertained the most abhorrent feelings towards a man, who, without sense of shame, or decent regard for his station, thus unblushingly published his infamy amongst strangers, and this man a would-be patriot, too, and candidate for the Presidential chair, which, it will be remembered, he afterwards obtained. I was told that flogging ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... such cases, there are people who for a price were getting people out of town and over the Finish border. It was very dangerous work for them—dangerous for the people trying to leave and also expensive. We established contact with one such person who turned out to be a very decent fellow, and he agreed to try and get us out. He had peasants along the border whom he knew and who were helping him. These he had to pay and quite highly for it was all dangerous work for them also. He warned us that he could not tell when ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... you fellows," said Gosse, approaching the "Firm" with a troubled face, "do you know anybody in the lower Fourth who isn't a cad? I've got down all the other forms, but I can't get a single decent name for ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... third boat full of strangers! And do you know what kind of people these Persians are? The high-priest says that in the whole of their kingdom, which is as large as half the world, there is not a single temple to the gods; and that instead of giving decent burial to the dead, they leave them to be torn in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... any other way. His wife should not be bound to him by oath, nor by custom, nor even by their child. Nor would he plead for himself in this contest. Against the other man, he would play merely himself,—the decent years of their common life, their home, her own heart. And he was losing,—Vickers felt ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... I did; and I thought as much over the matter as ought to have got me a decent husband. Well, when the last night come I lay me down to sleep as peaceful as an angel, and I folded my hands and shut my eyes, and wondered what his beautiful name would be, and if he'd be a dook or a marquis. I incline to a dook myself, having, so to speak, fallen in love with the Dook ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... grey, nearly white, and she is a nice clean woman; have us both, and you can see the black and white together." So a fattish middle-aged woman certainly fifty and who seemed to me sixty, came; her hair was nearly white, Camille lent her stockings and chemise to make her decent I suppose, and the old woman who spoke scarcely a word, but drank furiously, turned up to me. She made some objection to showing her grummit, remarking she did not know it was to such a young man, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... scamp of a stoker on one of the Thames steamers. He deserted her, and I found her living, or rather dying, in an awful place at Rotherhithe, surrounded by tipsy women, raging in opposite corners. I got her into a decent room, but too late to save her life—and a good thing too; so I solaced her last moments with a promise to look after her child, such a jolly little mortal, in spite of her name—Boadicea Ethelind Davidina Jones. She is two years old, and quite delicious—the darling ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the new giant and the old—the struggle for the caucuses and the polls—had begun. Miss Sadler cared but little and understood less of all this matter. She lingered over the sentences which described Jethro Bass as a monster of iniquity, as a pariah with whom decent men would have no intercourse, and in the heat of her passion that one who had touched him had gained admittance to the most exclusive school for young ladies in the country ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sufficient to observe, that the use of beer and ale had produced none of those dreadful effects which were the consequences of drinking geneva; and since the prohibition of the distilling of malt-spirits had taken place, the common people were become apparently more sober, decent, healthy, and industrious: a circumstance sufficient to induce the legislature not only to intermit, but even totally to abolish the practice of distillation, which has ever been productive of such intoxication, riot, disorder, and distemper, among the lower class of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... prelates and ministers who would have sent to the flames an unoffending woman if she denied the authority of the Pope, were not the men to suffer him to escape who had not only overturned the papal power in England, but had deprived them of their sees and sent them to the Tower. No matter how decent the forms of law or respectful the agents of the crown, Cranmer had not the shadow of a hope; and hence he was certainly weak, to say the least, to trust to any deceitful promises made to him. What his enemies were bent upon was his recantation, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... but a sorry hospitality that you will receive from us, regard had to that which should behove unto you, an I may judge by that which I apprehend from your carriage and that of your companions; but in truth you could nowhere out of Pavia have found any decent place of entertainment; wherefore, let it not irk you to have gone somedele beside your way, to have a little less unease.' Meanwhile, his servants came round about the travellers and helping them to dismount, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... don't make life very interesting, do you? Do you think it's interesting to spend the summer in this horrible old house with the paper falling off the walls and our rotten old furniture that I work my hands off trying to make look decent and can't, and every other girl I know at the seashore with motor-cars and motor-boats, or getting a trip abroad and buying her clothes in Paris? What do you offer to ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... attracted into the hole. Golf, he contends, is a recreation, and the true aim of golf legislation should be to make the game easier, not more difficult; to attract the largest possible number of players and so to keep up the green-fees and pay a decent salary to secretaries ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... getting late in the afternoon so I proposed to the men that we take the bodies back to where we had found their camp, as we had no way of burying the bodies in a decent manner, we had to wait until the train came up to us. We laid the bodies side by side under a tree and then we went into camp for the night as there was good grass for the horses. We staked them out close to camp. We had seen no Indians all day, so we did not think ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... the warrant that morning, Charley Balaam had shown Carrington the road to the Forks, assuring him when they separated that with a little care and decent use of his eyes it would be possible to fetch up there and not pass plumb through the settlement without knowing where he was. But Carrington had found the Forks without difficulty. He had seen the old mill his grandfather had built almost a hundred years ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... any rate it's worth trying," cried Robin impatiently. "We must, I suppose, eat humble pie after the things you said to him, Aunt Clare, the other day, but I must confess it's the only chance. He will be decent about it, I'm sure—I think you scarcely realise how ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... what they could be made into decent soldiers in time; but they don't seem to have anybody ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... developed this character at full length in a book he would have preserved for ever in literature a type of great humour and great value, and a type which may only too soon be disappearing from English history. He would have eternalised the English waiter. He still exists in some sound old taverns and decent country inns, but there is no one left really capable of singing his praises. I know that Mr. Bernard Shaw has done something of the sort in the delightfully whimsical account of William in You Never Can ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... friendly arm Ashurst went along, up a hill, down a hill, away out of the town, while the voice of Halliday, redolent of optimism as his face was of sun, explained how "in this mouldy place the only decent things were the bathing and boating," and so on, till presently they came to a crescent of houses a little above and back from the sea, and into the centre one ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of domestic happiness, would we earnestly advise a decent, nay, a strict regard to personal habits, so far, at least, as the feelings of others are concerned. "It is seldom." writes a traveller, "that I find associates in inns who come up to my ideas of what is right and proper ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... he swept along, followed by the faction, a great body of citizens of the lower orders, decent substantial men, came crowding toward the Campus, and paused to inquire the cause of the tumult, which had left its visible effects in the flushed visages and knotted ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... course, Lancaster, though he will have retired from business, will have quite a decent income of his own when the mines ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... His forehead mark'd with many a care-worn furrow, Whose feeble body, bending o'er a staff, Still shew that once it was the seat of strength, Tho' now it shakes like some old ruin'd tow'r, Cloth'd indeed, but not disgrac'd with rags, He still maintains that decent dignity Which well becomes those who have serv'd their country. With tott'ring steps he to the cottage moves: The wife within, who hears his hollow cough, And patt'ring of iris stick upon the threshold, Sends out her little ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... as if not hearing the interruption, "have been for years doing what seems now to recoil on my unhappy head, strengthening his belief in himself by training his people for him, and turning savages into decent, well-drilled soldiers, who have made him the dread of the country for hundreds ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... striking evidences of the warm interest which the King felt in the colony was his sending out, in 1728, a number of decent girls, each with a trunk filled with linen and clothing (from which they were called filles a la cassette, or girls with a chest), who were to be disposed of under the direction of the Ursuline nuns, in marriage to the colonists. Other consignments followed; ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... Le Roy, the King's watch-maker, a man of character in his business, who shewed a small clock made to find the longitude[1163].—A decent man. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of a brutal militarism (though you were that, all right). We knew that you must have something of the beast in your hearts. How it got there was another matter; we only knew that it was there and that while it remained you were not fit for intercourse with decent men. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... I ask you not to smoke? When a chap's honour an' reputation an' all that sort of thing is being weighed in the balance, sir, believe me, smokin' isn't decent—it isn't ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... celestial, and to every limb Suitable grace diffused, so well he feigned: Under a coronet his flowing hair In curls on either cheek played; wings he wore Of many a coloured plume, sprinkled with gold; His habit fit for speed succinct, and held Before his decent steps a silver wand. He drew not nigh unheard; the Angel bright, Ere he drew nigh, his radiant visage turned, Admonished by his ear, and straight was known The Arch-Angel Uriel, one of the seven Who in God's ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... what you are," answered Seabrooke, continuing his reproaches, instead of giving the straightforward answer which he considered unnecessary, "that you have not the decent manliness to demand that which rightfully belonged to you because you were ashamed of your own folly and weakness, but must go and ransack in my quarters to find your money. Let me go; I wish nothing more to ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... barrow-fulls of soil only to cover the sand which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why not put my house, my parlor, behind this plot, instead of behind that meagre assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and Art, which I call my front-yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments, acorn-tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... a lot—and Hattie is beginning again her old talk that she MUST have more money in order to live 'even decent.' It sounds very familiar to me, and to Jim, I suspect, poor fellow. I saw him the other night, and from what he said, and what she says, I can see pretty well how things are going. She's trying to get some of her rich friends to give Jim a better position, ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... garments of enlightened self-government, but underneath those garments are, or were, the same vermin that infested the garments of so many communities less clean—parasites that suck existence from God's gifts to decent people. Indeed, that human vermin at one time infested East Haven even more than the other and neighboring towns; perhaps just because its clothing of civilization was more soft and warm than theirs; perhaps (and upon the face this latter is the more likely explanation of the two) because, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... rather have alledged their cleanliness, and the frequent washing of their beds and blankets, to be the cause of it, which when the French, the Dutch, and Italians do less regard, they more breed this plague. But the English that take great care to be cleanly and decent, are seldom troubled with them." Also, on p. 1092, he says, 'As for dressing the body: all Ireland is noted for this, that it swarms almost with Lice. But that this proceeds from the beastliness of the people, and want of cleanly women ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... merely for the purpose of deciding personal supremacy, there remained sufficient public morality to condemn any baron who suffered himself to be guided openly by ambition alone. Some reasonably decent cause had to be found. Now the Emperor, though, as above stated, communicating his will verbally to Nobunaga, had not sent him any written commission. The necessary pretext was furnished, however, by the relations between the members of the Saito family of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... in my letters that I did not like it. It would have been more decent in you to stay in Portland, among the people whom I had requested to take care of you. However, you are accustomed to have your own way. I can only observe that when a woman will have her own way, she ought to ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... Library, the World's Classics, the Universal Library. Such volumes are to be found in many refined and strenuous homes—oftener unopened than opened—but still there! But does this estimable practice aid the living author to send his children to school in decent clothes? He whom I am anxious to meet is the man who will not willingly let die the author who is not yet dead. No society for the prevention of the death of corpses will help me to pay ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... rereading. At the top of all I should place Fay Yauger's "Planter's Charm," published in a volume of the same title. With it belongs "The Hired Man on Horseback," by Eugene Manlove Rhodes, a long poem of passionate fidelity to his own decent kind of men, with power to ennoble the reader, and with the form necessary to all beautiful composition. This is the sole and solitary piece of poetry to be found in all the myriads of rhymes classed as "cowboy poetry." I'd want Stanley Vestal's ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... inch and a half, black bobwig in buckle, a check shirt, a silk handkerchief, a hanger, with a brass handle, girded to his thigh by a furnished lace belt, and a good oak plant under his arm. Thus equipped, he set out with me (who by his bounty made a very decent appearance) for my grandfather's house, where we were saluted by Jowler and Caesar, whom my cousin, young master, had let loose at our approach. Being well acquainted with the inveteracy of these curs, I was about to betake myself to my heels, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... he was the life of their house; and Frank said he knew how that was,—that he had a life of the house of his own; and then the father thanked him very simply and touchingly, and with the decent New England self-restraint, which is doubtless so much better than any sort of effusion. "Say good-night to the gentleman, Freddy," he said at the door; and Freddy with closed eyes murmured a good-night from far within the land of ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... condemn as beneath contempt the spirit which drives him to an isolation, in bearing which the black shows himself the superior of the white. We do not ask nor do we care to encourage any thing more than decent courtesy. But the young gentlemen who boast of holding only official intercourse with their comrade should remember that no one of them stands before the country in any different light from him. West Point is an academy for the training of young ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... wounded modesty for anything that he ever read secretly of Hood's? Dr. Johnson says that dirty images were as natural to Swift as sublime ones were to Milton;—we may say that images at once lambent and laughable were those which were natural to Hood. Even when his mirth is broadest, it is decent; and while the merest recollection of his drollery will often convulse the face in defiance of the best-bred muscles, no thought arises which the dying need regret. Who can ever forget "The Lost Heir," or remember it but to laugh at ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Still the nurse had said how pleased Polly was. By George, it is strange what will please people. He remembered when he went down to Indiana buying horses, how tired he got of the look of corn-fields, and how the sight of the first decent sized wheat field just went to his heart, when he was coming back. Someway he could not laugh at anything that morning, for Polly was dead. And Polly was a willing thing for sure; he seemed to see her yet, how she ran after the colt the day ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... live in the good day of which John Bright spoke. Yet while a public speaker today is in no dread of arrest or imprisonment for any decent expression of opinion, the platform is not without its hindrances; and some of these will never be cured, while babies cry, architects sacrifice acoustics to style, young people do their courting in public, janitors smother ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... important advantage that the scheme is applicable to all cases. For instance, although we have in English from 30 to 40 different ways of forming the feminine such as father, mother; brother, sister; uncle, aunt; bull, cow; stallion, mare; fox, vixen; etc., yet in most cases we possess no decent or sensible way to indicate the sex of the individuals; as, for instance, in the cases of teacher, doctor, friend, cousin, neighbor, witness, elephant, camel, goat, typist, stenographer, companion, ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... paternal benediction on the young pair, and on the happy country which was to possess them for its king and queen. France being thus securely riveted to Rome, other matters could be talked of more easily. Francis made all decent overtures to the pope in behalf of Henry; if the pope was to be believed indeed, he was vehemently urgent.[177] Clement in turn made suggestions for terms of alliance between Francis and Charles, "to the advantage of the Most Christian king;"[178] and thus parried the remonstrances. The ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... he protested fiercely. "You got a charge against me you haven't proved, and I don't guess you ever will prove. I'm a prisoner by force, not by law. I demand the right to decent treatment. I need to get papers from the Fort. There's things there to help my case. Maybe you figger to beat me through holding me from my rights. It would rank well with the way you've already acted. I need to see Father Jose ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... forgot the "only decent-looking woman in Gumbolt," she did not forget him. The invitation of a sovereign is equivalent to a command the world over; and Terpsichore was as much the queen regnant of Gumbolt as Her Majesty, Victoria, was Queen of England, or of any other country in her wide realm. She was more; she ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... and give her to Vinicius! Thou hast the right to do so, for she is a hostage; and if thou take her, thou wilt inflict pain on Aulus.' He agreed; he had not the least reason not to agree, all the more since I gave him a chance to annoy decent people. They will make thee official guardian of the hostage, and give into thy hands that Lygian treasure; thou, as a friend of the valiant Lygians, and also a faithful servant of Caesar, wilt not waste any of the ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... It was nothing else than the fear that you'd get aboard before them that made the men think of boarding the barque in such a hurry, and so far out. I knew the men well, poor fellows, and they were all decent men and good ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... inconsistent—to be a Conservative at home and a Liberal abroad. There were very good reasons for keeping the Irish in their places; but what had that to do with it? The point was this—when any decent man read an account of the political prisons in Naples his gorge rose. He did not want war; but he saw that without war a skilful and determined use of England's power might do much to further the cause of the Liberals in Europe. It was a difficult ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... United States, July 4 (N.A.N.A.)—'A decent respect for the opinion of mankind' dictates the content of this summary. Less than two centuries past, a small group of smugglers, merchants and planters united in an insurrection which in its course gathered to itself ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... is left for them. They are not needed. The cow and the pig have gone, and the horse is still more undesirable. A higher public ideal of health and cleanliness is working toward such banishment very swiftly; and then we shall have decent streets, instead of stables made out of strips of cobblestones bordered by sidewalks. The worst use of money is to make a fine thoroughfare, and then turn it over to horses. Besides that, the change will put the humane societies out of business. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... as the clock struck eleven, and entered by the dark, arched door, and went up the damp, stone steps, as Bosio had done a fortnight earlier. She was admitted by the decent woman whose one eye was of a china blue, and she waited for Giuditta in the same small sitting-room, of which the one heavily curtained window looked out upon an inner court. She did not know that Bosio had ever been there, but in her thoughts of him she felt his presence, and ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender to a company, and though the French availed themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not always occur. Their very numbers and their crowded and swift movement deprived them of that possibility and rendered it not only difficult but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, to which the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... know very well, and to my sorrow, how servilely historians copy from one another, and how little is to be learned from reading many books; but at the same time, when one writes upon any particular period, it is both necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to it upon which he can lay his hands." This avowal proves that Robertson knew little of the history of Charles V. till he began the task; and he further confesses that "he had no knowledge of the Spanish or German," which, for the history of a Spanish ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... pleased Constantine to the point of saying: "Do you want a loan, O'Valley? I think you'll make good. Then it's up to my daughter; she knows whom she wants to marry better than I do. You're a decent sort—her mother would ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... as well as I do the contents of my linen chest? I have never before known you open your purse strings one inch wider than was necessary. Have I not always had to ask, until I am verily ashamed, before I can get a new gown for myself, or a decent cloak for the girls? You have ever been hard fisted with your money, and never disposed to spend a groat, save on good occasion. There is not the wife of a trader of your standing in Plymouth but makes a braver ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... and in one little chapel the priest was baptizing an infant. We went in and looked on. It was the first time I had ever witnessed this monstrous mummery in the Catholic church; and I called in the Dr. and Mr. S., who were looking at some statuary. The priest was hardly decent at his work. He did it all in a hurry,—put oil and something else on the child, fore and aft,—and how men and women could stand and let the stupidity take place on their children, I cannot understand. After seeing Pascal's grave, and thinking ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... commanding officer on board, and the Major called out to me to beat to quarters. It might have been for a wedding, he sang it out so cheerful. We'd had word already that 'twas to be parade order; and the men fell in as trim and decent as if they were going to church. One or two even tried to shave at the last moment. The Major wore his medals. One of the seamen, seeing I had work to keep the drum steady—the sling being a bit loose for me, and the wind what you remember—lashed it tight with a piece of rope; and ...
— The Roll-Call Of The Reef • A. T. Quiller-Couch (AKA "Q.")
... I might have a book I needed. She did our household drudgery that the servant's wage might go for my tuition in a thorough school. Oh, how we labored, she and I together, cheating night of many hours o'er books and study that were to repay us at the last with decent independence. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... artificial polity continued unchanged. The ancient form of the representation remained; and precisely because the form remained, the spirit departed. Then came that pressure almost to bursting, the new wine in the old bottles, the new society under the old institutions. It is now time for us to pay a decent, a rational, a manly reverence to our ancestors, not by superstitiously adhering to what they, in other circumstances, did, but by doing what they, in our circumstances, would have done. All history ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... better not take it off altogether before so many decent people; for, to say the truth, I've got nothing under it but my bare skin," said Larry to ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... his room and dress quickly, in order not to add to his crimes the additional one of unpunctuality, for unpunctuality, so Lord Ashbridge held, was the politeness not only of kings, but of all who had any pretence to decent breeding. His father gave him a carefully-iced welcome, his mother the tip of her long, camel-like lips, and they waited solemnly for the appearance of Aunt Barbara, who, it would seem, had forfeited her claims ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... that, after the birth of Frances, Sir Edward and Lady Elizabeth "lived little together, although they had the prudence to appear to the world to be on decent terms till the heiress was marriageable." Coke had been astute enough to secure a comfortable country-house, at a very convenient distance from London, through Lady Elizabeth. Her ladyship had held a mortgage upon Stoke Pogis, a place that belonged formerly to the Earls ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... thoughts as much as the catastrophe itself; but I constantly draw the curtain across it with this wish, that the Disposer of all things may so order it, that it happen not to me in my own house—but rather in some decent inn—at home, I know it,—the concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows, and smoothing my pillow, which the quivering hand of pale affection shall pay me, will so crucify my soul, that I shall ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... "How can you say such things? If he came to me at that hour, I would settle him. No, Boris Pavlovich, live like other decent people. Stay with us, have dinner with us, go out with us, keep suspicious people at a distance, see how I administer your estate, and find fault ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... room, but decent. The boy was discovered sitting up in bed—a bright-faced little fellow with black hair. Clara closed the door, then turned and looked at her husband. The light made a glistening appearance on her eyes; she had become silent, allowing facts to speak ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... in everything he did. He sold his goods at the marked price, for cash only—got a decent profit and told ...
— Sam Lambert and the New Way Store - A Book for Clothiers and Their Clerks • Unknown
... Vertrees. I made him understand that," said Edith, demurely, "and he's promised to try and meet Mr. Vertrees and be nice to him. It's just this way: if we don't know THEM, it's practically no use in our having build the New House; and if we DO know them and they're decent to us, we're right with the right people. They can do the whole thing for us. Bobby Lamhorn told Sibyl he was going to bring his mother to call on her and on mamma, but it was weeks ago, and I notice he hasn't done it; and if Mrs. Vertrees decides not ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... hung out, and I noticed this question was cleverly eluded, but I heard him say afterwards that he was in regular work, and liked his present governor, and that the old woman who looked after him was a tidy, decent lady, and kept things comfortable. My thoughts strayed a little after this. The sight of Mr. Hamilton had disturbed me. What would he think when Gladys showed him my telegram? He had promised to finish our conversation this ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to be christened, and the parson said: 'You'll never be able to put that child in a decent bed on account of his prickles.' Which was true, but they shook down some straw for him behind the stove, and there he lay for eight years. His father grew very tired of him and often wished him dead, but he did not die, but lay ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... at Rock Spring, I wanted to go to a Fourth of July celebration. Those celebrations was mighty rough them days and Grandpa didn't think that would be a good place for a decent little girl, so he didn't want me to go. I cried and hollered and cut up something awful. Grandma told him to give me a good thrashin' but Grandpa didn't lak to do that, so he promised me I could go to ride if I wouldn't go ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... all subjects were most decided, but on no single subject were they more decided than on this very one of a Kiss. No Decent Woman, said Miss Eliza with a terrible emphasis, would allow a man's lips to Touch hers, or permit him to embrace her, unless ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... shall; and it will be a treat to sit down at a decent table with a white cloth on, and eat bread ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... week in August, when the messenger arrived with the long-hoped-for report of the ratification of the treaty of peace, and General Mason's proclamation officially announcing it, there were not enough men left in the valley, outside of the barracks, to give a decent round of cheers for the blessing ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... he says, "but by the grace of God I fret at nothing." Goethe, who reached his eighty-third year, is another good example. Then there is Boerhaave, one of the most celebrated physicians of modern times, who held that decent mirth is the salt of life. Indeed in the case of most old people, we believe it will be found that cheerfulness is ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... chosen to build this country house, in which he received strangers with a generosity free from ostentation. He went himself to meet the two travelers, whom he led into a commodious apartment, where he desired them to repose themselves a little. Soon after he came and invited them to a decent and well-ordered repast during which he spoke with great judgment of the last revolutions in Babylon. He seemed to be strongly attached to the queen, and wished that Zadig had appeared in the lists to dispute the crown. "But the people," added he, "do not deserve to have ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... also has everything to do with how your dough behaves and how your bread comes out. And how well your bread nourishes you. Thirteen percent wheat will not make a decent loaf—fourteen percent is generally considered 2 quality and comprises the bulk of cheap bread grain. When you hear in the financial news that a bushel of wheat is selling for a certain price, they mean 2. Bakers ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... tuae memor, talem te cum Vitebergensibus tuis iam geras, qualem te ab initio huius causae gessisti, hoc est, ut ea sentias, dicas, scribas, agas, quae Philippum, doctorem Christianum, non aulicum philosophum decent." (Tschackert, 506.) ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... other; "my dear, he was as poor as a church mouse, and left Daisy only a hundred a year to live on. That is the one decent thing about Morley. He did take Daisy in, and he does treat her well, though to be sure she is a pretty girl, and, as I say, he ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... sad night,—that at the Commandant's hut, and a sad morning followed upon it. It must be remembered that they had there none of those appurtenances which are so necessary to make woe decent and misfortune comfortable. They sat through the night in the small hut, and in the morning they came forth with their clothes still wet and dirty, with their haggard faces, and weary stiff limbs, encumbered with the horrid task of burying that loved body among the forest ...
— Returning Home • Anthony Trollope
... back, Captain Manual, welcome, welcome, all of you, my boys! as welcome as a breeze in the calm latitudes." As his eye, however, passed along the deck of the Alacrity, it encountered the shrinking figures of Cecilia and Katherine; and a dark shade of displeasure crossed his decent features, while he added: "How's this, gentlemen? The frigate of Congress is neither a ballroom nor a church, that is to be thronged ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... offspring, he will be fairly well posted, and he will be ready to imbibe more details, and you will have done much of your duty. His curiosity will be quickened and his interest is awakened. It depends upon the father. If your boy is honest and clean, open and decent, he will not fall without a fight, and while he is fighting he is maturing. If your picture of the consequences of the venereal diseases has been effective and vivid, he will grow up with a healthy horror of them. If your conduct as a father has been wise and exemplary, and if your home has the right ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... 'pegging away' until we get something done. And, one word more, Mrs. Mitchell; do not bring Juliet up to the slop-work trade. Get her a situation. When your husband is strong again and goes to work, then set the girl up with some decent clothes, and we will find her a ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... made memorable by a decent dinner; the special reason for it was the fact that Borasdine had presented our caterer with an old coat. I regretted I could not afford to reduce my wardrobe, else we would have secured another comfortable repast. Both steward and cook were somewhat negligently ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... unfortunate ones as I should have been. I had made assertions similar to this: "If you can't trust the Lord for healing, I would advise you to use remedies. Mother says that any one who would keep such an affliction any length of time is not decent." Many of the people were wounded because of my heartless way of talking, though I did ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... established in America. He had seen the effects of woman's presence in associations upon men, and he was sure that this same agency would have the effect of bringing politics to such a condition as that decent people of either sex might take part in it. As to the Bible declaring that man shall rule over woman, he found a similar case where it used to be quoted in support of the institution of slavery, but when the grander and more beautiful ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... but good that could be told of her," he said warmly. "I have known something of her for a long time, and there is not a more decent, respectable woman in the township. It is a mystery how she ever married that wretched fellow; but after she had married him she was a good wife, and did what little she could to keep him out of mischief. What is strangest of all, however, ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... He had observed the great men of both parties in hours of careless relaxation, had seen the leaders of opposition without the mask of patriotism, and had heard the prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not over decent. During some months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson; and then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson remained in London to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the West of England, lived there as he had lived everywhere, and in 1743, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... known ... in other directions. I could give you four addresses ... but of course I wasn't going to give her one. Though there again ... if she'd told me the whole truth!... My God, women are such fools! And they prefer quackery ... look at the decent doctors they simply turn into charlatans. Though, there again, that all comes of letting a trade work mysteriously under the thumb of a benighted oligarchy ... which is beside the question. But one day I'll make you sit up on the subject ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... the Bawe, but they could only refer to custom. Some among them had always liked it for no reason in particular: shame seemed to lie dormant, and the sense could not be aroused by our laughing and joking them on their appearance. They evidently felt no less decent than we did with our clothes on; but, whatever may be said in favour of nude statues, it struck us that man, in a state of nature, is a most ungainly animal. Could we see a number of the degraded of our own lower classes in like guise, it is probable that, without the black colour which ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... sot," began the gambler, "you listen to me! I suppose if they could shift suspicion so that it would appear you had had something to do with the old man's murder, it would take Moxlow and the judge and any decent jury no time at all to hang you; for who would care a damn whether you were hanged or not! But you needn't worry, I'm going to manage this thing for you, I'm going to see that you don't get into trouble. Now, listen, you're ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... the British citizen of 1860 is above the rudimentary personage in prehistoric times from whom he has been gradually improved up to his present state of enlightenment and perfection. But each state has also its own troubles as well as its pleasures; and, though the former are a price which no decent fellow would boggle at for a moment, it is useless to pretend that ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... primary meetings as you do intelligent men. Women know that every corner in the house must be inspected if the house is to be clean. Fathers and brothers want women to vote so that they can have a decent place for a primary meeting, a decent place to vote in and a decent ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... support. Well, in his quiet way he draws on his courage. The history of the two years that passed before he came to Mr. Sloane is really absolutely edifying. He rescued his sisters and nieces from the deep waters, placed them high and dry, established them somewhere in decent gentility—and then found at last that his strength had left him—had dropped dead like an over-ridden horse. In short, he had worked himself to the bone. It was now his sisters' turn. They nursed him with all the added tenderness of gratitude for the past and terror ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... the villages were so numerous and near together, as hardly to exceed a coss from each other in any direction. This town was the best built of any I had seen in India, many of the houses being two stories high, and most of them good enough for decent shop-keepers, all covered with tiles. It had been the residence of a Rajput rajah, before the conquests of Akbar Shah, and stood at the foot of a great and strong rock, about which were many excellent works of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... benevolence, its active charity, and its mission of good will, I admire. When death's unwelcome presence rests within our portals, and obedient to his call a loved one has gone hence, we should give the mortal remains of the departed brother a decent sepulture; fondly cherish the remembrance of his virtues, and bury his frailties "beneath the clods which rest upon his bosom." We should then direct our thoughts and cares to the desolate home, where the widow, clad in the robes of grief, ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... held over David's body, and that it had been decided that David Findlay had met his death at the hands of some unknown person or persons. There was nothing more left to be done but to give the body a decent burial. ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... It was the face of a Roman mother, tight-lipped, brown-eyed, and fierce. You may understand the kind of woman she was from the hands she employed on the farm. They were smugglers and night-malefactors to a man—and she liked that. The decent, slow-witted, gently devious type of rustic could not live under her. The neighbours round declared that the Lady Mary Kemp's farm was a hotbed of disorder. I expect it was, too; three of our men were hung up at Canterbury on one day—for horse-stealing and arson.... ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... gathered together over the doomed carcass of the city. Inquiring our way from Ram Allah to Jifna, some said there was a road without going to Beeri; some said there was none. At length we were put upon a pretty decent path. ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... should not be taken to prevent the fall of it into ruin. And it would be no less disgrace to religion, happily established in this kingdom, if it should have so little power over the minds of men as not to prevail with them to keep those eminent places of God's service in due and decent repair, which their forefathers built in times, by their own confession, not so full of the knowledge of God's truth as this present age is. I am not ignorant how many worthy works have been done of late in and about this City towards the building and repairing ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... tenderness of conscience, such a fervent desire of improvement, will rarely be found. It is, surely, not decent in those who are hardened in indifference to spiritual improvement, to treat this pious anxiety of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... out all right. Charlie's gone to fight, same as every decent young feller wants to do. He thinks the world of Maud and she does of him, but he was honorable enough not to ask her while he worked for you, Sam. He wrote the letter after he'd gone so as to make it easier for her to say no, if she felt like ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... is the august Prussian Travelling-Party: shove aside your bewitchments and bewilderments; hang a decent screen over many things! Poor Eberhard Ludwig, who is infinitely the gentleman, bestirs himself a good deal to welcome old royal friends; nor do we hear that the least thing went awry during this transit of the royalties. "Field of Blenheim, says your Majesty? ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... our quarters?" one of them said. "We have got some decent wine, and some really good cigars which came up from Lisbon last week, and there are lots of our fellows who will ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... Cedric, raising him up. "The son of Hereward knows how to keep his word, even when it has been passed to a Norman. But let me see thee use the dress and costume of thy English ancestry—no short cloaks, no gay bonnets, no fantastic plumage in my decent household. He that would be the son of Cedric, must show himself of English ancestry.—Thou art about to speak," he added, sternly, "and I guess the topic. The Lady Rowena must complete two years' mourning, as for a betrothed husband—all our Saxon ancestors would disown ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... very well off and successful, and thought ourselves of some consequence (as we now very often are, I beg to say), and showed it (as, I'm afraid, we sometimes do). He preferred the commonest artisan to M. Jourdain, the bourgeois gentilhomme, who was a very decent fellow, after all, and at least clean in his habits, and didn't use bad language or beat ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... of the sea as they were, found it advisable to disguise themselves in the sheep's clothing of zeal against the idolater. More creditable to the cause was the adherence of men like Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, a man of cool judgment and decent conversation. Coverdale, still active, was made a bishop. John Foxe published, all in the interests of his faith, the most popular and celebrated history of the time. Roger Ascham, Elizabeth's tutor, still looked to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... intelligence or superior acquirement to atone for his, crapulous; licentious, shameless life. His military efficiency at important emergencies was impaired and his life endangered by vile diseases. He was covetous and greedy beyond what was considered decent even in that cynical age. He received subsidies and alms with both hands from those who distrusted and despised him, but who could not eject him from his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... pleased with the celerity, if not with the perfection, of our work. Five-and-forty beds are ready; the rest will be so in a very few days. An old bad stable is converted into an excellent school-room. The chapel is decent, in place and in furniture. The eating-room is reasonably good. Twenty-five boys are received, clad in a cleanly and not unpleasing manner, and they are fed in an orderly way, with a wholesome and abundant diet. The masters are pleased ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... was not getting on. I would discover at odd times (generally about midnight) that I was totally inexperienced, greatly ignorant of business, and hopelessly unfit for any sort of command; and when the steward had to be taken to the hospital ill with choleraic symptoms I felt bereaved of the only decent person at the after end of the ship. He was fully expected to recover, but in the meantime had to be replaced by some sort of servant. And on the recommendation of a certain Schomberg, the proprietor of the smaller of the two hotels in the place, I engaged a Chinaman. Schomberg, ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... Warrington, and can't afford to be more particular than my neighbours. Video meliora, deteriora sequor, as we said at college. I have got a little sister, who is at boarding-school, not very far from here, and, as I keep a decent tongue in my head when I am talking with my little Patty, and expect others to do as much, sure I may try and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be made, the names of the most deserving applicants are to numbers of people perfectly well known. The members have now got before them a plain statement of fact as to these charges; and it is for them to say whether they are justifiable, becoming, or decent. I beg most earnestly and respectfully to put it to those gentlemen who belong to this institution, that must now decide, and cannot help deciding, what the Literary Fund is for, and what it is not ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... for such a strait, will not be so very frightened at an amount of plain-speaking, neither in itself immoral, nor, on the whole, impertinent. Had he docked his work of everything condemned by prudish theories, he might have made it more conventionally decent; but Michelet would have been puzzled to recognize himself in the poor maimed cripple that would then have borne ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... where Bok was sitting, "for hesitating at all about taking an English set of plates of the novel you speak of is because it is of anonymous authorship, a custom of writing which has grown out of all decent proportions in your country since the issue of that stupid ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... distorted mind. His regard for Necia was a careless whim, a rather aimless, satisfying hobby, not at all serious, entirely extraneous to his every-day life, and interesting only from its aimlessness, being as near to an unselfish and decent motive as the man had ever come. But it was not of sufficient consequence to stand out against or swerve the course of a quarrel; wherefore, he was gladdened by the news of ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... with which they had previously been acquainted. As soon as I had gone, the Turks and Circassians returned in full force; the old Bashi-Bazouk system was re-established; my old employes were persecuted; and a population which had begun to appreciate something like decent government was flung back to suffer the vast excesses of Turkish rule. The inevitable result followed; and thus it may be said that the egg of the present rebellion was laid in the three years during which I was allowed to govern the Soudan on ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... Daisy," said Patty, sternly. "Now, look here, if you'll just be friendly and decent, we needn't have such a bad time, but if you're going to be cross and cry all the time, I shall simply let you alone, and we'll have a horrid, ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... following his ancient models, ignored metaphysics altogether: jumped the life to come, and made his be-all and his end-all here:—in what was necessary, in deeds and thought and speech, to make individual, social, and political life staid, sincere, orderly, quiet, decent, and happy. He died a broken- hearted failure; than whom perhaps no man except the Lord ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... right. And Harboro wondered what was the matter with a man who saw the whole world, always, solely in relation to women. He sensed the fact that Peterson was not entirely comfortable. "He's probably never grown accustomed to being in the company of a decent woman," he concluded. He tried to launch the subject of old associates. It seemed that Peterson had been out in Durango for some time, but he had kept in touch with most of the fellows on the line to the ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... and, with a flaming countenance, called upon me peremptorily to produce her 'lawful husband.' Her loud, insolent, outrageous attack had the effect of enhancing my indignation, and I quite forget what I said to her, but I well remember that her manner became a good deal more decent. She was plainly under the impression that I wanted to appropriate her husband, or, at least, that he wanted to marry me; and she ran on at such a pace, and her harangue was so passionate, incoherent, and unintelligible, that I thought her out of her mind: she was far from it, however. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... can work and pay your way? The newspapers are always trying to persuade us to meddle in other folks's business;—I say, take care of your own affairs!—serve God and obey the laws of the country, and there won't be much going wrong with you! If you must read, read a decent book—something that will last—not a printed sheet full of advertisements that's fresh one day and torn up ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... next morning, his funeral was attended, and all the Europeans in the place, with many natives, were present. It may be some consolation to you to know that everything was performed in as decent a manner, as if he had been buried in our own dear native land. By his own request, he was interred on the south side of our darling first-born. It is a pleasant circumstance to me, that they sleep side by side. But it is infinitely more consoling to think, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... said I; let me advise thee to be a little decent; or I shall teach thee a lesson thou never learnedst ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... civility, as the conduct of the English missionaries may be thought, in withholding a decent reception to these persons, the latter were certainly to blame in needlessly placing themselves in so unpleasant a predicament. Under far better auspices, they might have settled upon some one of the thousand unconverted isles of the Pacific, rather than have forced themselves thus ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... you are tolerably made, Nor in assurance will you be deficient: Self-confidence acquire, be not afraid, Others will then esteem you a proficient. Learn chiefly with the sex to deal! Their thousand ahs and ohs, These the sage doctor knows, He only from one point can heal. Assume a decent tone of courteous ease, You have them then to humor as you please. First a diploma must belief infuse, That you in your profession take the lead: You then at once those easy freedoms use For which another many a year must plead; Learn how to feel with nice address The dainty ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... custom when death takes place. The two great toes are tied together, to make the body look decent; and formerly the hands were placed with the palms together, as if in the attitude of prayer, and were kept in that posture by tying ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Charles proceeded to Bentley. It took but little time to transform the woodcutter into a domestic servant, and to exchange his dress of green jump for a more decent suit of grey cloth. He departed on horseback with his supposed mistress behind him, accompanied by her cousin, Mr. Lassells; and, after a journey of three days, reached[b] Abbotsleigh, Mr. Norton's house, without interruption or danger. Wilmot stopped at Sir John Winter's, a place ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... Mayhew. "That sort of trick isn't played on folks in any decent resort on shore. I don't understand Mr. Benson's conduct. I remember his mishap at Dunhaven. I remember the plight he got into at Annapolis; and now he and Mr. Hastings are found in this questionable shape. I am very much afraid these young men do not conduct themselves, on ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... messages had reached Grismet; he would not have had to justify himself then. But they had not, and he could not find a way to tell this cold old man of what he had learned about the robots and their unity with men. "I did it because it was the only decent thing to do." ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... in the least believe his own argument. If he had come from a city he would have dismissed the matter as none of his business. But he came from the clean Southwest where every straight girl is under the protection of every decent man. If she was in danger because of her innocence it was up to him to look after her. There was no more competent man in Graham County than Clay Lindsay, but he recognized that this was a delicate affair in which ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... gracious, Mr. Berry!" gasped Mrs. Harmon, "what have you done?" "If it's back pay, Mrs. Harmon, we'll pass round the hat. Don't you be troubled. That fellow wasn't fit to be in a decent house." ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... exceptional and experimental cannot possibly find a place in a syllabus which is to bind all schools and all teachers alike, and which must therefore be so framed that the least capable teacher, working under the least favourable conditions, may hope, when his pupils are examined on it, to achieve with decent industry a decent modicum of success. Under the control of a uniform syllabus, the schools which are now specialising and experimenting, and so giving a lead to the rest, would have to abandon whatever was interesting in their respective curricula, and fall into ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... her son presented the stranger as his good friend and neighbor, Keith Cameron. She was still privately convinced that he looked a criminal—though, if pressed, she must surely have admitted that he was an uncommonly good-looking young outlaw. It would seem almost as if she regarded his being a decent, law-abiding citizen ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... substantial and very decent. One could walk all round, seeing little front gardens with auriculas and saxifrage in the shadow of the bottom block, sweet-williams and pinks in the sunny top block; seeing neat front windows, little porches, little ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... profit out of the follies and the vices of the world. Its prices are too high, its houses are too large, its promenades and its public places have cost too much for it to be able to pay its way as the sober, decent capital of a moderate-sized country, where there are few great fortunes. If the Parisians decide to become poor and respectable, they are to be congratulated upon the resolve, but the present notion seems to be that they are to become rich and respectable—a ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... coarsest materials, are patched, and threadbare, and valueless; hundreds of houses without anything in them deserving the name of furniture; hundreds of beds without clothing, and hundreds of children whose excuses for clothes are barely sufficient, with every contrivance decent poverty can suggest, to cover the body as civilized society demands. In the towns I have enumerated, in fact, if the least reliance may be placed in newspaper reports, in every town and village in the country ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... now high time to look about me for a decent Execution against next Sessions. I hate a lazy Rogue, by whom one can get nothing 'till he is hang'd. A Register of the Gang, [Reading.] Crook-finger'd Jack. A Year and a half in the Service; Let me see how much the Stock owes to his industry; one, two, three, four, five Gold Watches, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... down moodily, "That," said I, as a series of small explosions popped like pistol shots, "is the cafe; and, oh, Lord! there goes the only decent Scotch in all Liege!" ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... confused richness the terribly distinct little faces characteristic of these artists stare at you with a solemn formalism. Some are faded and injured, and many so ill-lighted and ill-placed that you can only glance at them with decent conjecture; the great group, however— four paintings by Giotto on the ceiling above the altar—may be examined with some success. Like everything of that grim and beautiful master they deserve examination; but with the effect ever of carrying one's appreciation in and in, as ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... before her marriage; and the London world to which she had belonged pitied poor Fanny Evelyn when she married the young clergyman, and went to settle in that smoky hole Turley; a very nest of Chartism and Atheism, in a part of the country which all the decent families had had to leave for years. However, somehow or other she didn't seem to care. If her husband's living had been amongst green fields and near pleasant neighbours she would have liked it better—that ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... will be over, as far as Lola is concerned. Not that she will be getting more stupid with increasing age! indeed, as she grows older, she will probably be better than ever able to understand what is said to her, but she will no longer find it worth her while to pull herself together so as to do decent work. I shall, of course, do all I can as far as trying to influence her so as to put off the evil moment—but the fact is that one has here to do with a remarkably sensitive and obstinate living-creature, and one that is quite ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... the Rectory's strict rules of conduct as little as its feckless poverty (for so she called it). That a household which held its head so high should be content with a parlour furnished like a barn, sit down to meals scarcely better than the day-labourers' about them, and rest ignored by families of decent position in the neighbourhood, puzzled and irritated her. "Better he paid his debts and fed his children," was her answer when Sam put in a word for his father's spiritual ambitions. Her slight awe of the Wesleys' abilities—even she could ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it was frightfully decent to do what you liked; the lectures were nothing; and there were some very good chaps. "Only," he added, "of course I wish I was in town, and could ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... everybody within twelve miles round, has heard over and over again. Now, Mr. Hunter, I have one thing to say, if you choose to go into the field behind the house, and fight the young man, you can. I'll back him for ten pounds; but no fighting in my kitchen—because why? I keeps a decent kind of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... are turned. Let us go up into the higher land for the present—some place where they won't know where we are. They may grow friendlier when they see we mean no harm. They have honest, open faces and look like a decent crowd to me. They're just ignorant—probably never saw ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... disapproval that was far from being inarticulate. His most innocent flirtations were watched with the straining eagerness which a group of unexercised terriers concentrates on the slightest movements of a human being who may be reasonably considered likely to take them for a walk. No decent-souled mortal can long resist the pleading of several pairs of walk-beseeching dog-eyes; James Cushat-Prinkly was not sufficiently obstinate or indifferent to home influences to disregard the obviously expressed wish of his family that he should become enamoured of some nice marriageable ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... afternoon a decent middle-aged woman came to the house, with a letter from Mr. Merrick. She was well known to the doctor as a trustworthy and careful person, who had nursed his own wife; and she would be assisted, from time to time, by ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... hundred and eighty-four years. The spotless white walls, the green blinds, the graceful Colonial spire, are meetly set in an environment which strikes no note of dissonance. On either side are quaint, narrow streets, lined with decent door-yards and houses almost as old as the church. Within the cool interior the cottagers, and representatives of a native aristocracy—direct descendants of the English of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who are ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... flattering vote to his credit, however, he could be very sure that he had made a wise choice between the forge and the lawyer's desk. At first he did not come into special notice in the legislature. He wore, according to the custom of the time, a decent suit of blue jeans, and was known simply as a rather quiet young man, good-natured and sensible. Soon people began to realize that he was a man to be reckoned with in the politics of the county and State. He ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... a taking of her part, B. A woman as has a husband as finds her with her wittels regular, and with what's decent and comfortable beside, ought to be contented. I've never said no other than that. I ain't no patience with your saucy madames as can't remember as they're eating an honest man's bread. Drat 'em all; what is it they wants? They don't know what they wants. It's just hidleness,—cause ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the objects of satire, but the satirists rarely had any inclination for the role of revolutionaries or martyrs. The recent revival of learning had developed a scepticism which was however habitually accompanied by a decent profession of orthodoxy. That there was prevalent unrest had long been obvious; that there was risk of disturbing developments was not unrecognised; but that these things were the prelude to a vast revolution had been realised neither ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domrmy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish priest (cur) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a statistical view: certain weeds mark poverty in the soil; fairies mark its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before cities does the fairy sequester herself from the haunts of the licensed victualer. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... applied, the expenses of tobacco, pipes, snuff, and spitting boxes—and of the injuries which are done to the clothing, during a whole life, the aggregate sum would probably amount to several hundred dollars. To a labouring man this would be a decent portion for a son or daughter, while the same sum saved by a man in affluent circumstances, would have enabled him, by a contribution to a public charity, to have lessened a large portion of the ignorance or misery of mankind." But Lord Stanhope makes a far more liberal estimate ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... sent you this Letter, But Yarmouth and I thought perhaps 'twould be better To wait till the Irish affairs are decided— (That is, till both Houses had prosed and divided, With all due appearance of thought and digestion)— For, tho' Hertford House had long settled the question, I thought it but decent, between me and you, That the two other ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... fact, he's a very decent five. And there you are again. In any other family, Bob would be thought rather a nut. ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... when I saw the diggers looking at one another significantly and tapping their foreheads. I resolved to tell them nothing further about myself, well knowing that the more I told them the more convinced they would be that I was a wandering lunatic. I learned that these men were a party of decent young fellows from Coolgardie. They offered me a meal of tea and damper, and pressed me to stay the night with them, but I declined their hospitality. I gratefully accepted a pair of trousers, but declined the offer of a pair of boots, feeling ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... in the evening, in a street of Liverpool, I saw a decent man, of the lower orders, taken much aback by being roughly brushed against by a rowdy fellow. He looked after him, and exclaimed indignantly, "Is that a Yankee?" It shows the kind of character ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I was only a little bit vexed. Things can be also very nice; of course, there are certainly decent men in the world as well as others. Oh, yes, things can be very nice, ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... no sympathy for the unsuccessful man who is not hungry. If a fellow mortal be ragged, humanity will subscribe to mend his clothes; but humanity will subscribe nothing to mend his ragged hopes so long as his outside coat shall be whole and decent. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... letters, on a strip of wood nailed to the bricks over his door, tell us he is a dealer in "Imported and other liquors." Next door to Mr. Korner's tipsy looking grocery lives Mr. Muffin, the coffin-maker, who has a large business with the disciples who look in at Korner's. Mrs. Downey, a decent sort of body, who lives up the alley, and takes sixpenny lodgers by the dozen, may be seen in great tribulation with her pet pig, who, every day, much to the annoyance of Mr. Korner, manages to get out, and into the pool of decaying matter opposite ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... said the more and more interesting Master, "don't imagine I talk about my books specifically; they're not a decent subject—il ne manquerait plus que ca! I'm not so bad as you may apprehend! About myself, yes, a little, if you like; though it wasn't for that I brought you down here. I want to ask you something—very much indeed; I value this chance. Therefore sit down. We're practical, but there is a ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... on, another complained that when the river was falling, the water was so muddy the fish would not bite; and even in the best of seasons, a fisherman had "a hard pull uv it; hit ain't no business fer a decent man!" The other day, when the river was rising, a Cincinnati follower of the apostle's calling averred that there was no use fishing when the water was coming up. As the variable Ohio is like the ocean tide, ever rising or falling, it would seem that the thousands in this valley who make fishing ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... here Bonbright man has come up on Turkey Track to give us a show at law. If they's persons engaged in unlawful practices on this here mountain top, mebbe he'll knock up against 'em. Them that keeps the law and lives decent has no reason to fear the law. Ain't that what you say, Blatch?" turning ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... sunrise to sunset. The little fellow hops about, in his bright red waistcoat, from tree to tree. He flutters to the fence, and from the fence to the garden path, and so to the door and into the kitchen. If you will give him decent encouragement he will come on to your hand and take his meal with absolute confidence in your good faith. Then he will trip away and resume his song on ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... of great tension, and it required not only the wise forbearance of Hyde and Cornelia, but the domineering selfishness of Arenta and the suave clever diplomacies of Madame Jacobus to preserve at times the merely decent conventionalities of polite life. To keep the peace until the wedding was over—that was all that Rem promised himself; THEN! He often gave voice to this last word, though he had no distinct idea as to what measures he ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... Buster Jack got over that awful punch he'd got from the old man he made up to Collie harder than ever. She didn't tell me then, but I saw it. An' she couldn't avoid him, except by stayin' in her room, which she did a good deal. Then Jack showed a streak of bein' decent. He surprised everybody, even Collie. He delighted Old Bill. But he didn't pull the wool over my eyes. He was like a boy spoilin' for a new toy, an' he got crazy over Collie. He's sure terribly in love with her, an' for days ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... generally could understand it in English. He was continually making terrific indictments of the German Government, yet he hated England to such a degree that he would splutter and get purple in the face whenever he mentioned the word. However, he could find it in his heart to be decent to ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... his own conscience; but in drawing out a system of rules he is obliged to go by logic, and follow the exact deduction of conclusion from conclusion, and must be sure that the whole system is coherent and one. You hear of even immoral or irreligious books being written by men of decent character; there is a late writer who says that David Hume's sceptical works are not at all the picture of the man. A priest might write a treatise which was really lax on the subject of lying, which might come under the condemnation of the Holy See, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... later, he sat with me in the dining-room of a hotel which faced The Hoe. His nondescript garments were discarded, and he was now clothed in decent British attire. That he had a good upbringing, and was accustomed to the polite forms of society, was more than ever evidenced while we were together at the hotel. There was no suggestion of awkwardness in his movements, and everything he did betrayed ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... Facciolati and Forcellini's Lexicon]. Now we ought to be guided by the measure in all things appertaining to us: for it is written (Titus 2:12): "We should live soberly and justly and godly," where a gloss remarks: "Soberly, in ourselves"; and (1 Tim. 2:9): "Women . . . in decent apparel, adorning themselves with modesty and sobriety." Consequently it would seem that sobriety regards not only the interior man, but also things appertaining to external apparel. Therefore drink is not the matter ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... lousy auto smash the radio car covered as though it were the story of the Second Coming, and maybe it helped circulation. But I had been on it for four months and, wouldn't you know it, there wasn't a decent murder, or sewer explosion, or running gun fight between six P.M. and six A.M. any night I was on duty in those whole four months. What made it worse, the kid they gave me as photographer—Sol Detweiler, his name was—couldn't drive worth a damn, so I ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
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