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More "Polite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Merla escorted the strangers down the length of the great room toward the royal throne, they met with pleasant looks and smiles on every side, for the sea maidens were too polite to indulge in curious stares. They paused just before the throne, and the queen raised her head upon one elbow to observe them. "Welcome, Mayre," she said, "and welcome, Cap'n Bill. I trust you are pleased with your glimpse of the life beneath the surface ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... thumb. Nine times with averted glance he spat a black bean out of his mouth and cried: "With these I redeem me and mine.'' The ghosts followed and picked up, or perhaps entered into the beans. Then he washed afresh, and rattled his brass vessels, and nine times over bade them begone with the polite formula, Manes exite paterni, "Go forth, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... polite, and let down rope ladders for us. After a few hours they would be on board with us. We ourselves never set foot in their cabins, nor took charge of them. The officers often acted on their own initiative, and signaled to us the nature of their cargo. Then the commandant decided as to whether ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... the dock, with his fate in the balance—the condemned cell or a favoured table at Claridge's. And your meeting! One can imagine him gripping your hands, with tears in his eyes, his voice broken with emotion, sobbing out his thanks. And instead you exchange polite bows. I would not have missed ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have a pleasing address, and be thoroughly posted on the commercial news of the day, and it is requisite that the layer-down be well dressed, quick witted, and possessed of an unlimited amount of polite assurance, a cheek that never pales and an eye that never droops. In selecting a person to fill this important position, the forger prefers to have a man who has, at some time or other, been convicted of crime, so that ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... "You are very polite!" cried Hadria. "Why should I not lay up store for myself in heaven, as well as Mrs. Walker and ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... with her. The visit altogether was one of the pleasantest larks he had ever had, not the less so perhaps because he suspected that his queer cousin Tertius wished him away: though Lydgate, who would rather (hyperbolically speaking) have died than have failed in polite hospitality, suppressed his dislike, and only pretended generally not to hear what the gallant officer said, consigning the task of answering him to Rosamond. For he was not at all a jealous husband, and preferred leaving a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the two bears," she said to herself, "but I'll try again, and when that hateful Miss Deane goes away, everything will be right again. I know Ned has to be polite to her; and it's very silly in me to get vexed when he talks to her; but I can't help it, ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... their mother, who was fast asleep on the rug, with her tail curled round her; but they did not mind that—which I think was not quite polite—for when people and cats are taking a nap, everybody must keep very quiet, and not go near them or make a noise; but our friends, the kittens, did not think, you see: they just went pounce right on top of ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... compelled to eat what was set before me, which I did without any great difficulty. Sir Reginald was too polite to ask me the object of my visit till I had finished. He pressed me to take more, but I declined, and I then told him that I had heard that Mark Riddle had been taken poaching with some other lads ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... of all these officers besetting her with their civilities and polite assiduities, nothing of the old and silly jealousy seemed to stir within me. Perhaps because, although for days I had not seen her, I knew her better. And also I had begun to know myself. Even though she loved not me in the manner I desired, yet the lesser, cruder, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... wet, but she was merry and talkative, and Mrs. Graham was more brusque in her speech than usual, but very talkative too. Every one crowded round them, and Walter had some difficulty in leading his bride through the throng. There was laughter and hand-shaking and a general polite uproar. At last they got themselves into the carriage, which rolled away with them to their new life. It was really Joan and Nancy who had conceived the idea of tying a pair of goloshes on behind, but the Misses Conroy had provided them, one apiece, and ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... despatched a wireless to the agent of his government at Brussels, directing him to secure at once all the information available about Andre Chevrial, 18 Rue des Chantiers, Paris; and that evening a very polite gentleman called at the house in question. It was a tall, hideous house, with a cabaret on the first floor. To its proprietor the visitor addressed himself. But yes, the proprietor knew M. Chevrial, a merchant of wine, who had honoured his house for many years ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... had taught the children to be kind and polite to each other, just as well as to strangers and to "company." Though of course Bunny Brown and his sister Sue had little troubles and "spats" and differences, now and then, ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... His hunch-back daughter kept coming in and out, humming gaily all the time. The father was glum and harsh, and had an anxious look. As soon as we had ordered the box we took our leave. Madame Petit went out first; Leontine's sister held me back by the hand and said quietly, "Father is not very polite, but it is because he is jealous. He wanted my sister to ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... his ideal of fame. Now when I start out of Apia on a dark night, you should see my changed horse; at a fast steady walk, with his head down, and sometimes his nose to the ground—when he wants to do that, he asks for his head with a little eloquent polite movement indescribable—he climbs the long ascent and threads the darkest of the wood. The first night I came it was starry; and it was singular to see the starlight drip down into the crypt of the wood, and shine in the open ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... skeletons to the discreet exhibition of a few carefully chosen bones in the plays of Bernstein and Bataille, direct descendants of Scribe, Sardou, et Cie, but I may be permitted to indulge in a slight snicker of polite amazement when I discover these gentlemen applying their fingers to their noses in no very pretty-meaning gesture, directed at a grandson of Moliere. For such is Georges Feydeau. His method is not that of the Seventeenth Century master, nor yet that of Mirbeau; nevertheless, aside from ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... and began to marshal the broken forces of Irish democracy against his own class. Butt had been a polite parliamentarian, reverencing the courtesy of debate and at heart loving the British Constitution. Parnell felt that his mission lay in breaking rather than interpreting the law. The well-bred House stared and protested when he defied ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... haunt him when waking - They poison his slumbers - Like the Banbury Lady, whom every one knows, He's cursed with its music wherever he goes! Though its words but imperfectly rhyme, And the devil himself couldn't scan them; With composure polite he endures day and night That illiterate ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... to the Island of Manhattan.... Chap. ix. How the city of New Amsterdam waxed great under the protection of St. Nicholas, and the absence of laws and statutes. Book III., chap. iii. How the town of New Amsterdam arose out of mud, and came to be marvellously polished and polite, together with a picture of the manners of our great-great-grandfathers.... Book IV., chap. vi. Projects of William the Testy for increasing the currency; he is outwitted by the Yankees. The great Oyster War.... Book V., chap. viii. How the Yankee crusade against ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... things were characteristics of the old-time American scouts and of the King Arthur knights. Their honor was sacred. They were courteous and polite to women and children, especially to the aged, protected the weak, and helped others to live better. They taught themselves to be strong, so as to be able to protect their country against enemies. They kept themselves strong and healthy, so that they might ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... somewhat awkward in pitching it, and three times did the whole structure come down by the run, burying several of us in the flapping canvas, and inflicting some tolerably hard knocks with the poles. However, at length we succeeded in getting it fixed; and, kindling a blazing fire close to it, as a polite intimation to the bears that they were not wanted, cooked our supper over the embers, and then, wrapped in our blankets, slept far better than the fleas had allowed us to do the ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... molested by any of the "bad men" of the frontier, with whom he had often come in contact. "Only once," he said. The cowboys had always treated him with the utmost courtesy, both on the round-up and in camp; "and the few real desperadoes I have seen were also perfectly polite." Once only was he maliciously shot at, and then not by a cowboy nor a bona fide "bad man," but by a "broad-hatted ruffian of a cheap and commonplace type." He had been compelled to pass the night at a little frontier hotel where the bar-room occupied the whole lower floor, and was, in ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs
... giving me back his shilling fee. "Don't say anything about it, for it mightn't be approved of in a business point of view, if it came to some people's ears. Has the landlord said anything more to you? no, I thought not. He's too polite a man to give me the trouble of pulling him up. Don't stop crying here, my dear. Take the advice of a man familiar with funerals, ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... not have been considered polite in Tellurian social circles the four Primes stood still, each couple facing the other with blocks set tight, studying each other with their eyes. Delcamp was, as Garlock had said, a big bruiser. ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... or of a willingness to generalize from wholly insufficient grounds, and take the chances of hitting or missing, you might affirm a domestic simplicity of feeling in some phases of functions exalted far beyond the range of republican experiences or means of comparison. In the polite intelligence which we sometimes have cabled to our press at home, by more than usually ardent enterprise, one may have read that the king held a levee at St. James's; and one conceived of it as something dramatic, something ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... figure finale finance financier flaccid florid flotsam folio forbade forehead fortnight franchise n. fraternize fratricide fulsome gala gallant (polite) ...
— A Manual of Pronunciation - For Practical Use in Schools and Families • Otis Ashmore
... ashamed that his secret sentiments had been discovered thus, "monsieur, you are very polite, but in truth I am ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the woods for hundreds of feet, twining round trees in its path, and at times forming so dense a wattle that it is impossible to get through it. The stem and leaves are studded with the sharpest thorns, which continually cling to you and draw blood, hence its not very polite name of lawyer-palm." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... train their vows express'd, With feathers crown'd, with gay embroidery dress'd: 'Hither' (they cried) 'direct your eyes, and see 380 The men of pleasure, dress, and gallantry; Ours is the place at banquets, balls, and plays, Sprightly our nights, polite are all our days; Courts we frequent, where 'tis our pleasing care To pay due visits, and address the fair: In fact, 'tis true, no nymph we could persuade, But still in fancy vanquish'd every maid; Of unknown duchesses ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... know, I am telling you the real names and not imaginary ones. Mme. Husson took a special interest in good works, in helping the poor and encouraging the deserving. She was a little woman with a quick walk and wore a black wig. She was ceremonious, polite, on very good terms with the Almighty in the person of Abby Malon, and had a profound horror, an inborn horror of vice, and, in particular, of the vice the Church calls lasciviousness. Any irregularity ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... in Mecklenburgh Square a learned Queen's Counsel, for whose preservation the prayers of the neighborhood constantly ascend. To his more scholarly and polite neighbors this gentleman is an object of intellectual interest and anxious affection. As the last of an extinct species, as a still animate Dodo, as a lordly Mohican who has outlived his tribe, this isolated counselor of her Gracious Majesty is watched by heedful eyes whenever he crosses ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... would rather suppose it to be soil, than any durable material.—The monks still remain, and although the decree has passed for their suppression, they cannot suppose it will take place. They are mostly old men, and, though I am no friend to these institutions, they were so polite and hospitable that I could not help wishing they were permitted, according to the design of the first Assembly, to die in their habitations— especially as the situation of St. Eloy renders the building useless for any other purpose.—A friend of Mr. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... were too sweet and polite to ask for their characters, for fear of hurting their feelings? I suppose you gave them twice as much as they asked? This is the sort of house servants like. ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... ceased to expound her views, when the old courtier began eagerly to refute her arguments, and they started a polite but very heated discussion. ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... for some coloured face, and finally saw one among the porters who were handling the baggage. To Joe's inquiry he gave them an address, and also proffered his advice as to the best way to reach the place. He was exceedingly polite, and he looked hard at Kitty. They found the house to which they had been directed, and were a good deal surprised at its apparent grandeur. It was a four-storied brick dwelling on Twenty-seventh Street. As they looked from the outside, they were afraid that the price of staying in such a place ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... found that Daisy said nothing about her visit, she decided to remain silent. Unless the girl made herself impossible, Anne did not see why she should turn out of a good situation where she was earning excellent wages. Daisy avoided her, and was coldly polite on such occasions as they had to speak. Seeing this, Anne forbore to force her company upon the unhappy girl and attended to ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... her bosom was there no interest awakened for one who thought so much of her? Yes, but it was an interest of a different nature from his. She liked him, because he was so much more polite to her than she had expected him to be, and more than all, she liked him for his kindness to her brother, never dreaming that for her sake alone those kindly acts were done. Of James De Vere she often thought, repeating sometimes to herself the name ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... even had the master been regarding us he would have seen no reason for mortification in the manner of his servant. The man was extremely polite and attentive, suggesting various refreshments, such as wine and biscuits, and I never was treated by a lackey with ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... where they quenched their thirst and reposed themselves in the shade of some trees. Sitting there, and finding no better subject of conversation, one of them asked the others, whether they did not remark how particularly the soldier had distinguished him by his polite salutation. "You!" said another; "it was not you that he saluted, but me." "You are both mistaken," says a third; "for you may remember that when the soldier said, 'Dandamarya!' he cast his eyes upon me." "Not at all," replied the fourth; "it was I only ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... had off-saddled by the side of the road. As they were fully armed and their appearance was not prepossessing, we expected to be ordered to alight while our conveyance was being searched. However, our fears were unfounded, and they were most polite. The driver muttered something in Dutch, whereupon the leader came to the door, and said in broken English: "Peeck neeck—I see all right." I am sorry to say one of the gentlemen of our party muttered "Brute" in an ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... besides she had neither mind nor will enough to have a voice in so important a matter as the disposal of her hand. Nay, she was not even told that she was going to be married. She only got an inkling of it from various phenomena that struck her from time to time, such as the polite attentions of the baron, the whispering of the domestics, the altered attitude towards her of the various members of the family—who now addressed her in the tone you employ when speaking to a baroness that is to be. And then there was ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... indeed," said the man, with a polite bow. "Our mighty Emperor has lately caused himself ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... ask him to come again, and it was plain that he did not expect such an invitation. The few remarks he made about his future plans precluded the supposition that they might meet again. He was pleasant, he was polite, he was even kind; but when he departed he left her with a heart of stone. There was now nothing in the world for which she cared to live. She despised herself for such a feeling, but existence was ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... weak side, again plunged into formulas more than polite, and went as far as the stairhead ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... purple bluffs of the Palisades. To the right towered the long, unbroken rows of brick and stone: story on story of shining windows, draped and muffled in silk and lace; flight after flight of clean granite steps; polite, impersonal, hostile as ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... up! wake up!" cried Langdon. "It's not polite to your hosts to be snoring away when breakfast is almost ready. Go down on a piece of the back porch that's left, and you'll find two pans of cold water in which you can wash your faces. It's true the pans are frozen over, but you can break the ice, and it will ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... him and go aft. We followed him along the ship, which seemed to be very crowded, to the well deck aft, where we met the remaining few passengers and some of the crew of the Hitachi. We had evidently come across a new type of Hun. The young Lieutenant was most polite, and courteous and attentive. He apologized profusely for the discomfort which the ladies and ourselves would have to put up with—"But it is war, you know, and your Government is to blame for allowing you to travel when they know a raider is out"—assured ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... them, and held aloof with her. This kept him a country person in his experiences much longer than he need have remained; and tended to that sort of defensive secretiveness which grew more and more upon him, and qualified his conduct in matters where there was no question of his knowledge of the polite world. It was not until after his wife's death, and until his daughters began to grow up into the circles where his money and his business associations authorized them to move, that he began to see a little of that world. Even then he left it chiefly to his children; for himself he continued ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... strongest accusation against him was his personal love of economy, and his entire indifference to show, literature, or art. It was also considered a fault in him as a French president that he showed little inclination to travel. Socially, the polite world accused him of wearing old hats and no gloves. On cold days he put his hands in his pockets, which in the eyes of some was worse than putting them for his own purposes into ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... thermometer, a toy unknown to the Doctors of my youth, who, indeed, were disposed to regard even the stethoscope as new-fangled. Then "the courtly manners of the old school"—when did they go out? I do not mean to cast the slightest aspersion on the manners of my present doctor, who is as polite and gentlemanlike a young fellow as one could wish to meet. But his manners are not "courtly," nor the least "of the old school." He does not bow when he enters my room, but shakes hands and says it's an A1 day and I had better get out in the motor. Whatever the symptoms presented ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... with great emphasis, "that's what a lot more of us would like to know. P'r'aps if you'd been more polite to Mrs. Cooper, instead o' putting it about that she looked young enough to be his mother, it ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... On another occasion a waiter who mistook his order was rewarded by having the contents of a dish of stew poured over his head. Even where his temper was not concerned his manners were directly opposed to those prevailing in polite society—though, in a large measure, this may have been due to his perfect simplicity and his ignorance of what was expected of him. Thus, it is told that, returning from one of his long walks in the pouring rain, he would make straight for the sitting-room of the house in which ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... windward; the weather conditions, however, were ideal for the frigate, and we overhauled the brig so rapidly that by ten o'clock in the forenoon we were within gunshot of her; whereupon we hoisted our colours and fired a shot across her forefoot as a polite hint to her to heave-to. Her reply to this was to pour in her broadside of seven 8-pounders, the shot from which flew over and between our masts, doing us no damage whatever. Upon perceiving which, and noticing ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... else. Mind: I'm not bigoted about it. I'm not a doctrinaire: not the slave of a theory. You and Lord Summerhays are experienced married men. If you can tell me of any trustworthy method of selecting a wife, I shall be happy to make use of it. I await your suggestions. [He looks with polite attention to Lord Summerhays, who, having nothing to say, avoids his eye. He looks to Tarleton, who purses his lips glumly and rattles his money in his pockets without a word]. Apparently neither of you has anything to suggest. Then ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... the young ladies with polite bows, supplemented by an aimless compliment on the neatness ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... wanted him that they might go together to call upon Lady Clavering. Foker went away disconsolate, and whiled away an hour or two vaguely at clubs: and when it was time to pay a visit, he thought it would be but decent and polite to drive to Grosvenor-place and leave a card upon Lady Clavering. He had not the courage to ask to see her when the door was opened, he only delivered two cards, with Mr. Henry Foker engraved upon them, to Jeames, in a speechless agony. Jeames received ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... day Ivan Petrovich sent his father a letter, which was frigidly and ironically polite, and then betook himself to the estate of two of his second cousins,—Dmitry Pestof, and his sister Marfa Timofeevna, with the latter of whom the reader is already acquainted. He told them everything that had happened, announced his intention of going to St. Petersburg to seek an appointment, ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... northern coast of South America was that of Ojeda in 1499-1500, in company with Juan de la Cosa, next to Columbus the most expert navigator and pilot of the age, and Vespucci, perhaps his equal in nautical science as he {5} was his superior in other departments of polite learning. There were several other explorations of the Gulf coast, and its continuations on every side, during the same year, by one of the Pizons, who had accompanied Columbus on his first voyage; by Lepe; by ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to England a ruined man. He had expended his whole capital, amounting to upwards of a thousand pounds, in settling his family during his absence, and in providing for his outfit and voyage. The first lord of the admiralty expressed polite surprise that such a mistake should have occurred, and promised compensation for his loss and another command on the first opportunity. Neither promise was kept, and Parker's spirit and health gave way under his misfortunes, and he sank into the grave. Cochrane, finding that he too had small ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... the same language, of which he was by no means a master. As for his minor works in the vernacular, the earlier of them shew that he had not as yet wrought himself free from the conventionalism which the polite literature of Italy inherited from the Sicilians. It is therefore inevitable that the twentieth century should find the Filocopo, Ameto, and Amorosa Visione tedious reading. The Teseide determined the form ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... watchful waiter instantly makes his appearance with a tray containing small chunks of a pasty sweetmeat, known in England as " Turkish Delight," one of which you are expected to take and pay half a piastre for, this being a polite way of obtaining payment for the privilege of using the chair. The coffee is served steaming hot in tiny cups holding about two table-spoonfuls, the price varying from ten paras upward, according to the grade of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... leads to the single street, which, passing between two rows of antique gabled houses, and under the chancel of the little parish church, conducts one to the almost interminable flight of stone steps leading to the gateway of the monastery. Upon ringing the bell a polite lay brother opens the iron-studded door, and we are admitted into a solemn, vaulted hall, with another stone staircase opposite. Here we go up and up, to a second vaulted hall, where, in olden times, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... his happiness is nearly perfect. Indeed, if he were not a bureaucrat, he would very much belie his French origin. Take him all in all, however, Jean-Baptiste, as he is familiarly known, from the patron saint of French Canada, has many excellent qualities. He is naturally polite, steady in his habits, and conservative in his instincts. He is excitable and troublesome only when his political passions are thoroughly aroused, or his religious principles are at stake; and then it is impossible to say to what extreme ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... tall man with a dark, handsome face browned with the sun of warm climes, dark eyes that had in them a wistful sadness, and firm lips. He did not look like the gentlemen she was accustomed to. He was polite and respectful. When he heard her name, he took off his hat, and stood uncovered during ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... long neck, the same sweet expression around the bill!" That was just like the Black Spanish Cock. He always said something pleasant about people when he could, and it was much better than saying unpleasant things. Indeed, he was the most polite fowl in the poultry-yard, and the Black Spanish Hen ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... point, Mary insisted on serving lunch for her visitor, saying that she had lived with white people and knew how to cook. After a polite refusal, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... a very honest and sensible gentleman when we came to converse with him; somewhat austere, in the presence of his rattle-headed spouse at least, but polite and well-informed. He spoke pleasantly with me, saying that he was on his way to the farther Lake country on business, and that his wife was to remain, until ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... wearisomeness of his grievances! Those three sons in the Plungers, and their eternal scrapes! How you could manage to keep a civil face! It was a masterpiece of polite patience." ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Fa-Hsien states that the monks of Central Asia were all students of the language of India and even in the seventh century Hsuan Chuang tells us the same of Kucha. Portions of a Sanskrit grammar have been found near Turfan and in the earlier period at any rate Sanskrit was probably understood in polite and learned society. Some palm leaves from Ming-Oi contain fragments of two Buddhist religious dramas, one of which is the Sariputra-prakarana of Asvaghosha. The handwriting is believed to date from the epoch of Kanishka so that we have here the oldest known Sanskrit ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... run in to assist the diners from their couches; the Capuans, with dreams of relief, refreshment, and re-repletion; the Carthaginians, bored, but striving to be polite and to follow the customs of their entertainers. Even Hannibal, while his smile was half a frown, permitted ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... the arrival at Gloucester: the carriage for her mistress, the dog-cart for herself with the luggage; the drive out past the river, the pleasant trees of the carriage-approach; and herself sitting beside Arthur, everybody so polite ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... lantern, Sam," went on the surgeon to the carter, "and search about for them. Of course, even give the Ugly Leap a call, and make inquiry for them; and when I've played the polite man, and seen the doctor well on his way with these young ladies, I'll join you—two heads are better than one even in the matter of looking up two boys that we're not sure are lost ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... yet?" Jason asked. "By tying up Snarbi I'm only conforming to a local code of ethic, like saluting in the army or not eating with your fingers in polite society. In fact I'm being a little slipshod, since by local custom I should kill him before ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... messenger would soon find Jesus. There was little sympathy in the harsh, bald announcement of the death, or in the appended suggestion that the Rabbi need not be further troubled. The speaker evidently was thinking more of being polite to Jesus than of the poor father's stricken heart, Jairus would feel then what most of us have felt in like circumstances,—that he had been more hopeful than he knew. Only when the last glimmer is quenched do we feel, by the blackness, how much light ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... attention of the porter or some other inmate were unavailing. At last, after much ringing, knocking, and shouting, a voice from within asked us who we were and what we wanted. A brief reply from my companion, not couched in the most polite or amiable terms, made the bolts rattle and the door open with surprising rapidity, and we saw before us an old man with long dishevelled hair, who, as far as appearance went, might have been one of the lunatics, bowing obsequiously ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... turning and glaring at this latest polite tormentor, "will you be good enough to remember that I am not extremely ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... seize upon some salient point, or one generally overlooked by foreigners, or some very subtle one known only to the scholar, and devote myself to its mastery. A little knowledge here blinds the hearer to much ignorance elsewhere. In Italian, for example, the polite way of addressing one's equal is to speak in the third person singular, using Ella (she) as the pronoun. "Come sta Ella?" (How are you? but literally ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of Boston, advertises in 1767 to provide all who wish with wigs "in the most genteel and polite taste," assuring judges, divines, lawyers, and physicians, "because of the importance of their heads, that he can assort his wigs to suit their respective occupations and inclinations." He tells the ladies that he can furnish ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... approve of these sports of wit or fancy. Dr. Arbuthnot, in his Tables of Ancient Coins, Weights, and Measures, a topic extremely barren of amusement, takes every opportunity of enlivening the dulness of his task; even in these mathematical calculations he betrays his wit; and observes that "the polite Augustus, the emperor of the world, had neither any glass in his windows, nor a shirt to his back!" Those uses of glass and linen indeed were not known in his time. Our physician is not less curious and facetious in the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... for instance. She's a good woman and her pies have produced more deep religious satisfaction at the Methodist church socials than many a sermon. But St. Peter himself couldn't live on the same telephone line with her. She's polite and refined in any other way, but when she gets on a telephone line she's a hostile monopolist. Early in the morning she grabs it and holds it fiercely against all comers, while talking with her friends about the awful time she ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... It had worked—the Salariki—or these Salariki—were accepting them at their own valuation—a good omen for the day's business. Dane's spirits rose, but he schooled his features into a mask as wooden as his superior's. After all this was a very minor victory and they had ten or twelve hours of polite, and hidden, maneuvering ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... these are fewer than is sometimes taken for granted. But I think some fair defence may be made against the charge of vulgarity. Properly speaking, vulgarity is in the thought, and not in the word or the way of pronouncing it. Modern French, the most polite of languages, is barbarously vulgar if compared with the Latin out of which it has been corrupted, or even with Italian. There is a wider gap, and one implying greater boorishness, between ministerium and metier, or sapiens and sachant, than between druv and drove or agin and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... these calamities in the future, and as a means of restoring this unfortunate talker into his proper position in the ranks of modern polite and intelligent society, I have been led to search in my books for a cure of his fault, and I have discovered the following ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... "it is no great honour for a virtuous woman to refuse a man so ugly as you represent this secretary to have been. Had he been handsome and polite, her virtue would then have been clear. I think I know who he is, and, if it were my turn, I could tell you another story about him that ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... head, and flung himself from the bough, throwing his weight upon his wings; and these, beating the fleeting air, now here, now there, bearing about inquisitively, while his tail served as a rudder to steer him, he came to a gourd; then with a handsome bow and a few polite words, he obtained the required seeds, and carried them to the willow, who received him with a cheerful face. And when he had scraped away with his foot a small quantity of the earth near the willow, ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... like her,—and I'll be polite to her, of course; but I know I shan't want her for an ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... till 2 A.M. on Friday. He was up again at six, left by the 7.15 train, reached Dundee at 10.30, and was worried by deputations till past twelve. Part of the Liberal party had accepted another candidate, and met him with a polite request that he would at once return to the place whence he came. He preferred to take a night's rest and postpone the question. On Saturday he again 'rushed hither and thither' all day; spoke to 2,000 people for nearly ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... conversation, for she gathered a little philosophy and charity from their cheering smile and arch twinkling, and she managed to listen civilly to her neighbour, while she saw that her cousin was being very polite to Mrs. Smithers. She was a great way from all other friends, for the table had been spread for a more numerous assembly, and the company sat in little clusters, with dreary gaps between, where moulds of jelly quaked in vain, and lobster-salads wasted their sweetness on the desert air. Her ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "That's polite," said the girl, indignantly. "After giving you your clothes, too. What do you think my uncle will say to me? He was going to keep you ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... of these tea-parties are exclusively for gentlemen, and their forms and ceremonies rank among the most refined usages of polite society. The customs of these gatherings are so peculiarly characteristic of the Japanese that few foreign observers have an opportunity of attending them. These are the tea-parties of a semi-literary or aesthetic character, and the ceremonious Cha-no-ya. In the first ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... got the crop cut, and they drawed up a list of things that he couldn't do, and then they goes to him, and says they: 'Sign this, yer Highness;' and he takes the paper and wipes his glasses on his hanky, and he reads them all over polite enough, and then he says, says he, handing it back: ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... cup, filled it with water at the little faucet, and, very politely, offered it to his sister first. Freddie was no better than most boys of his age, but he did not forget some of the little polite ways his mamma was continually teaching him. One of these was "ladies first," though Freddie did not always carry it out, especially when he was in ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... played for time, because every minute was of value to the real Feisul, speeding on his way to British territory. The French officer who did the talking for his side—a little squat, pale, pug-faced fellow, who gave the impression of having risen from the ranks without learning polite manners on the way, agreed to accept our surrender and spare our lives for the time being; and by that time the smell in the cave had nearly overcome our party, so ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... behind women drivers frequently. They drive carefully and well and are much kinder to their horses than the old, red-faced, brutal French cochers are. I like them. They have a wonderful command of language, not always entirely or even partially polite, but they are accommodating and less greedy for tips than ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... description had been introduced the night of the escape by a man celebrated, not indeed for robberies, or larcenies, or crimes of the coarser kind, but for address in all that more large and complex character which comes under the denomination of living upon one's wits, to a polite rendezvous frequented by persons of a similar profession. Since then, however, all clue of Philip was lost. But though Mr. Blackwell, in the way of his profession, was thus publicly benevolent towards the fugitive, he did not the less privately represent to his ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... free scope for his doctrine of Delicacy, one day remonstrating with a correspondent for "living in a place with the absurd, and worse, name of 'Marine Retreat'"; another, preaching that "a piano in a Quaker's drawing-room is a step for him to more humane life;" and again "liking and respecting polite tastes in a grandee," when Lord Ravensworth consulted him about Latin verses. "At present far too many of Lord Ravensworth's class are mere men of business, or mere farmers, or mere horse-racers, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... more striking passages of his speech. His delivery was far from animated, and his intonation was rather conversational than declamatory. He has a quiet dignity at all times, which is yet consistent with a polite and amiable demeanor; and while the former inspires the respect, the latter elicits the esteem of all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... little too secure, and too much at home on these prairies, retired to a small grove of willows to amuse themselves with a social game of cards called "old sledge," which is as popular among these trampers of the prairies as whist or ecarte among the polite circles of the cities. From the midst of their sport they were suddenly roused by a discharge of firearms and a shrill war-whoop. Starting on their feet, and snatching up their rifles, they beheld in dismay their horses and mules already in possession of the enemy, who had stolen ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... literary influence, in a raw and crude nation, has been very great; but the defect of this standard is that it ends in utterly renouncing all the great traditions of literature, and ignoring the magnificent mystery of words. Human language may be polite and powerless in itself, uplifted with difficulty into expression by the high thoughts it utters, or it may in itself become so saturated with warm life and delicious association that every sentence shall palpitate and thrill with the mere fascination ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... arose she affectionately turned to the chair and said, "Thank you, dear chair, for making me so good." Having been declared "good" after sitting in the chair, she attributed the beneficent change in her behavior to the chair; and, being a polite little ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... get on better terms with her future mother-in-law met with no success. Lady Gertrude had presented an imperturbably polite and hostile front almost from the moment of the girl's arrival at the Hall. Even at dinner the first evening, she had cast a disapproving eye upon Nan's frock—a diaphanous little garment in black: with veiled gleams of hyacinth and gold beneath ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... very polite," replied Tuppence. "But I dare say you mean it all right. Well, there it is! I'm ready and willing—but I never meet any rich men! All the boys I know are about as hard up as ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... truly. [Aside.]—Your polite address does me too much honour, sir;—I cannot conceive how you can be my obliged slave, as I do not recollect I ever saw ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... hands with her in a paralytic manner, battering his brains for a reply to her polite commonplaces. Inwardly he was furious. He felt that he had been duped, tricked, infamously cheated of his legitimate desire; and he hated the woman as if she, poor soul, ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... explained that the form of government would be based upon the administration of the great corporations of America, which was his extremely polite method of informing them that the Chairman of the Board was the power, and the President was but the icing on ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... conclusion of the "Tale of a Tub," he says, "Among a very polite nation in Greece there were the same temples built and consecrated to Sleep and the Muses, between which two deities they believed the greatest friendship was established. He says he differs from other writers ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... material. Hers was a cumbrous beauty. She usurped rather than charmed. She trod upon hearts. She was earthly. She would have been as much astonished at being proved to have a soul in her bosom as wings on her back. She discoursed on Locke; she was polite; she was suspected ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... atrocious nature. In general, the best of simple words are believed to be such as sound loudest in exclamation, or sweetest in a pleasing strain. Modest words will ever be preferred to those that must offend a chaste ear, and no polite discourse ever makes allowance for a filthy or sordid expression. Magnificent, noble, and sublime words are to be estimated by their congruity with the subject; for what is magnificent in one place, swells into ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... shrugged his shoulders. "Has not the citizen of the country a right to spend his money? I have heard that the Major is polite. He must not be well to-day. Shall I ride on now? Ah, ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... very quiet and very polite, and Mrs. Cristie, who was opposite to him, though not at all quiet, was also very polite, but bestowed her attention almost entirely upon Mr. Tippengray, who sat beside her. The Greek scholar liked this, and his ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... noise from the cloisters, as a playground. He bore an unfortunate name—Ketch—and the boys, you may be very sure, did not fail to take advantage of it, joining to it sundry embellishments, more pointed than polite. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of the two princes, who were well acquainted with the way) they quickly sailed to Colchis. When the king of the country, whose name was AEetes, heard of their arrival, he instantly summoned Jason to court. The king was a stern and cruel-looking potentate, and though he put on as polite and hospitable an expression as he could, Jason did not like his face a whit better than that of the wicked King Pelias, who ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... is unaccountably polite and helpful to his mother some day, and when asked about it replies that he simply wants to help—while his real motive may have been to score against his brother or sister, who is to some extent ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... little, and said little. But they were always extraordinarily polite and courteous to each other. They never neglected their prayers, even ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... retained the feathered end of the arrow-shaft, and he proceeded to examine it with an appearance of polite interest. ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... cheat, deceive, and flatter? Who rarely speak the Meaning of their Hearts? Whose Tongues are full of Promises and Vows? Whose very Language is a downright Lie? Who swear and call on Gods when they mean nothing? Who call it complaisant, polite good Breeding, To say Ten thousand things they don't intend, And tell their nearest Friends the basest Falsehood? I know you cannot think me so perverse, Such Baseness dwells not in an Indian's Heart, And I'll convince you that ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... the latest, four; the meetings at coffee-houses; the book-sales; the visit to the London sights—the lions at the Tower, Bedlam, the tombs in Westminster Abbey, and the puppet-show; the terrible Mohocks, of whom Swift stood in so much fear; the polite "howdees" sent to friends by footmen; these and more are all described in the Journal. We read of curious habits and practices of fashionable ladies; of the snuff used by Mrs. Dingley and others; of the jokes—"bites," puns, and the like—indulged ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... cryed just as much when she was like Alice is. I wish I could see you becose I would like to ask you many questions about when I was a little girl. I am sure if I had a little sister like Alice I would try and be more polite than Peggy is, but Peggy says that families are all like that. Billy is awful. I do not think I like him very much. He says the queerest words and acts rude and rough. Tante would not like his manners at all. I am ashamed becose I do not ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... getting as much money as they can for as little as they can, to please me. Were the London girls to recognize that men do not like a tipsy woman, and that where there is so much competition the person who is most skillful and most polite gets the most custom, the alien invasion in Regent street would soon come ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... relative, LEOPOLD, couldn't get his blood up to accept the Spanish Crown. Well, as it turned out, the Duchess was right. Anyhow, she went for L., (a letter by the way, which few Englishman can pronounce in polite society,) and told him ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... refused to admit the Platypus, because it was of so many kinds; and at last Noah turned it out to swim for itself, because there was such a row. That's why the Platypus is so secluded. Ever since then no Platypus is friendly with any other creature, and no animal or bird is more than just polite to it. They couldn't be, you see, because of that trouble ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... lie to certain misconceptions—which is an extremely polite word—especially the one which holds that the various blocs or groups within a free country cannot forego their political and economic differences in time of crisis and work together toward ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... francs over and above Chesnel's remittance. As Cardot very carefully refrained from using his right of remonstrance, Victurnien now learned for the first time that he had overdrawn his account. He was the more offended by an extremely polite refusal to make any further advance, since it so happened that he had just lost six thousand francs at play at the club, and he could not very well show himself there until ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... with a very polite air, "let me introduce you to Mr. Quirk"—(This was the senior partner, a short, stout elderly gentleman, dressed in black, with a shining bald crown fringed with white hair, and sharp black eyes, and who ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... mother very well. When we were in England, we were a week with them down at their beautiful place in shire the loveliest time! You see, she was over here with Mr. Carleton once before, a good while ago; and mamma and papa were polite to them, and so they showed us a great deal of attention when we were in England. We had the loveliest time down there you can possibly conceive. And, my dear Fleda, he wears such a fur cloak! lined with the ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... all the crowd to a great shed of corrugated iron, and the rain began to fall in torrents. They stood there for some time and then were joined by Mr Davidson. He had been polite enough to the Macphails during the journey, but he had not his wife's sociability, and had spent much of his time reading. He was a silent, rather sullen man, and you felt that his affability was a duty that he imposed upon himself Christianly; ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... nation,—are entitled to a much higher place than they have yet assumed. We believe in this "good time coming," for working men and women,—when an atmosphere of intelligence shall pervade them—when they will prove themselves as enlightened, polite, and independent as the other classes of society; and, as the first and surest step towards this consummation, we counsel them to PROVIDE—to provide for the future as well as for the present—to provide, in times of youth and plenty, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... shall find that, after all, he took more real interest in Seth Peterson, and John Taylor, and Porter Wright, men connected with him in fishing and farming, than he did in the ambassadors of foreign states whom he met as Senator or as Secretary of State, or in all the members of the polite society of Washington, New York, and Boston. He was very near to Nature himself; and the nearer a man was to Nature, the more he esteemed him. Thus persons who superintended his farms and cattle, or who pulled an oar in his boat when he ventured out in search of cod and halibut, thought "Squire ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... by Syrians, is mostly in the hands of Dominicans. The stores are generally small, with a limited stock of goods; they have no show-windows, but are arranged on the style of bazars. Fixed prices are rare and most sales become negotiations with the polite shopkeeper. In the country it is customary for the storekeeper to make advances of merchandise to the smaller farmers until crop time; they then pay him in cacao, coffee, tobacco or other farm products, which he remits ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... wedding will take place in Brixton," said Barry, with an assumption of polite interest, and Owen coloured in spite ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... You will be poor, but not free. You will not gain the independence you seek for. The sight of a vacant, discontented face in that opposite chair will be worse than solitude. And as to grateful affection," added the man of the world, "it is a polite ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dear Praddy: you forget that I have to live with the governor. When two people live together—it don't matter whether theyre father and son or husband and wife or brother and sister—they can't keep up the polite humbug thats so easy for ten minutes on an afternoon call. Now the governor, who unites to many admirable domestic qualities the irresoluteness of a sheep and the pompousness and aggressiveness ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... is not polite, nor am I in a mood of politeness. I consider such phrases as the "progress of art," the "improvement of art" and "higher average of art" distinctly and harmfully misleading. I haven't the leisure just now ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... prompts him to the task. There is plenty of work to occupy his mind during the session of Parliament, and books enough to read and ponder over in the solitude of his chamber; and so long as he is alert and well prepared on every question of business to which his attention is called, affable and polite to persons with whom he is brought into official contact, gentle and generous to the poor and oppressed who appeal to him in person—and no one can deny that he is all this—why should he be blamed for preferring to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... think neither one of us was a great player. John was better than I, but I was the stronger in yon days, and I'd tak' a great swipe sometimes and pocket a' the balls. John was never quite sure whether I meant to mak' some o' the shots, but he was a polite laddie, and he'd no like to be accusing his faither o' just ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... we have an account of the behaviour of the Vespertilio-homo at meals. 'They seemed eminently happy, and even polite; for individuals would select large and bright specimens of fruit, and throw them archwise across to some friend who had extracted the nutriment from those scattered around him.' However, the lunar men are not on the whole particularly interesting beings according to this account. ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... accustomed to the world, or versed in diplomacy, would use some subterfuge, or would make a polite speech, or give a shrug of the shoulders, as the means of getting out of an embarrassing position, Lincoln raised a laugh by some bold west-country anecdote, and moved off in the cloud of merriment ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... Malesherbes, in order to roast onions in them. I don't know what he did not say to me in his passion. For my own part, naturally I got angry at hearing myself addressed in that insolent manner. It is surely the least a man can do to be polite with people in his service whom he does not pay. What the deuce! So I answered him that it was annoying, in truth, but that if the Territorial Bank paid me what it owed me, namely, four years' arrears ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... their "Thirst Dance." An Indian went to the bush and broke off a green bough, and carried it to the place arranged for the dance, and all the other Indians shot at it. Then the Indians got their squaws with them on horse-back; some thought it would not be polite if they did not invite the white women to help them also, and Mrs. Pritchard and another squaw came in and put Mrs. Delaney in one corner and covered her over, and me in another with a feather bed over me, so as not to find us. Then some said, "Oh, let the white women ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... do, most sagacious mariner," answered Lawrence, who had really comprehended the tenor of these remarks; they were of course made in much more broken English than has been used. "The priest may be an honest priest, as he is undoubtedly a most polite gentleman; and his ways may be good ways, in his own sight, though they are not my ways; but that he is not labouring for the good of the poor little fatherless child up there, I ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... here! You are going home to the north soon?" The polite query was in a tone which checked all his new impulses ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... wife noted that his words were not mere polite patter. Farrel's gravely courteous bearing, his respectful bow to Mrs. Parker and the solemnity with which he spoke impressed them with the conviction that this curious human study in light and shadow regarded their approval as an honor, not ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... counsellor that worshippeth persons of wisdom, is endued with learning, virtue, agreeable appearance, friends, sweet speech, and a good heart. Whether of low or high birth, he who doth not transgress the rules of polite intercourse, who hath an eye on virtue, who is endued with humility and modesty, is superior to a hundred persons of high birth. The friendship of those persons never cooleth, whose hearts, secret pursuits, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... will," agreed Grace. "It seems to me this old ocean knows we are greenies the way it tantalizes us. Now there!" and she placed the two black slippers much farther up from the line marked by the incoming tide. "I hope the next set of waves will be polite enough to keep their distance. Come on to the barrel and let's hear about Madaline. Why couldn't she ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... the imperturbable countenance of her grandfather: calm, polite, benignant, she knew the great Sheikh too well to suppose for a moment that its superficial expression was any indication of his innermost purpose. Suddenly she said, in a somewhat careless tone, 'And why is the Lord of the Syrian pastures in this wilderness, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... to get it was by using his acquaintances in Boston and practising only about a few streets of the Back Bay. So at thirty he had begun the ordinary routine of a well-connected physician—the profession he had sneered at in his youth, the profession of polite humbug. ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... half-brother's eldest child—treated him with scant respect, though she never allowed anyone else to be other than polite to him in her hearing. But then she and Nick had been pals from the beginning of things, and this surely entitled her to a certain licence in her dealings with him. Nick, too, was such a darling; ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... involuntary, if not polite—was shaping itself a brief distance below his staring eyes, when, recovering himself and tiptoeing to his full height, he peered into the branches and ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... children are often under foot when she is busiest, when, indeed, she is so distracted as to not be able to think about manners, but if she would acknowledge to herself that she ought to be polite, and that when she fails to be, it is because she has yielded to temptation; and if, moreover, she would make this acknowledgment openly to her children and beg their pardon for her sharp words, as she expects them to beg hers, ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... did not look quite polite; so she scratched out "isn't mouse" and changed it to "I hope it will be fine," and she gave her letter to ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... says of him further: "Lord Fairfax was a man of cultivated mind, educated at Oxford, the associate of the wits of London, the author of one or two papers in the Spectator, and an habitue of the polite circles of the metropolis. A disappointment in love is said to have cast a shadow over his after life, and to have led him to pass his time in voluntary exile on his Virginia estates, watching and promoting the rapid development of the resources of the country, following the hounds through ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... gave the order to pack and start, hoping to achieve the twelve miles which separated us from Domel, even though the last bit had to be done on foot. About two miles from Ghari Habibullah we came to the Kashmir custom-house, presided over by a polite gentleman, whose brilliant purple beard was ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... to kindly, polite questioning from the elder of the bunch, a man designated by the name Siwash, how he was lately graduated from the Kansas Agricultural College at Manhattan, and how he had taken the road with a grip full of hardware to get enough ballast in his jeans to ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... betrayal. Yes, he was his father's son; and so the sight of him was enough to make these wild Chouans suspect far better Royalists than themselves. There was an account to settle with Monsieur des Barres, too. His polite manners were all very well, but his words to Henriette just now were insulting. Angelot was angry with his uncle's guests, and not particularly inclined to help them out of their present predicament. He stood gloomily, without ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... you see him do it to me, never do it to your sister. Men are gentle and polite to women, and little boys should be gentle ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... York. Now I'm sure our Patty, being of proper common-sense and sound judgment, wouldn't put the Elliott family to such inconvenience,—for moving is a large and fearsome proposition. Thus we see that as the Mountain insists on following Mahomet whithersoever she goest, the only decently polite thing for Mahomet to do is to settle in Vernondale. I regret exceedingly that I am forced to express an opinion so diametrically opposed to the advices of Her Grace, the Dowager Duchess, but I'm quite sure she didn't realise what a bother ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... Pilkings, of Pilkings & Son's Standard Shoe Parlor, didn't believe in vacations. He believed in staying home and saving money. So every year it was necessary for Father to develop a cough, not much of a cough, merely a small, polite noise, like a mouse begging pardon of an irate bee, yet enough to talk about and win him a two weeks' leave. Every year he schemed for this leave, and almost ruined his throat by sniffing snuff to make him sneeze. Every year Mr. Pilkings said that he ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... was not polite. I drew my pistol—at which movement Mr. Blocque disappeared, running, at the corner of ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... will show you that a woman can beat a man every time." I was counting out my money to put up, when the lady asked me if I would not let her bet first. I said, "Certainly;" for I knew a man never lost anything by being polite to the ladies, and in this particular case I could see we were going to gain $150. High told her he never bet with ladies, but if she would hand the money to her husband he would bet with him. "Him!" says she, "He can't see as well now as when he picked me out for a wife. No, no; he shan't ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... more of it, but most of the rest was not polite enough for print, because the Arab likes to enter into details. It sounded much better in Arabic, anyhow. And more and more frequently as the song grew lurid and they warmed to the refrain they made their point by changing the third ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... down the steps, a slim young man, dressed immaculately in the height of fashion, came tripping up to them and addressed Miss Annabel in the most abjectly polite manner. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... Borneo Proper, where his wives and children now are, and he has come here to superintend the building of a prahu. The people about him speak of his pursuits without disguise, and many informed us the prahu near his house is intended for a piratical vessel. Nothing could exceed the polite kindness of our rascally host, and I spent the rainy evening in his house with some satisfaction, acquiring information of the coast to the northward, which he ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... of low origin, Jacques Lefevre by name, born at Etaples in Picardy, had for seventeen years filled with great success a professorship in the university. "Amongst many thousands of men," said Erasmus, "you will not find any of higher integrity and more versed in polite letters." "He is very fond of me," wrote Zwingle about him; "he is perfectly open and good; he argues, he sings, he plays, and be laughs with me at the follies of the world." Some circumstance or other brought the young student and the old scholar together; they liked one another, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... this time stood by in a rage. The sight of Jeffreys was to him like the dead fly in the apothecary's ointment. It upset him and irritated him with everybody and everything. He had guessed, on receiving no reply to his recent polite letter, that he had exposed his own poor hand to his enemy, and he hated him accordingly with ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... his ease through the palaces of dukes and princes, with whose sons he drank and jested, and for whose wives—it was de rigueur in those days—he expressed all the ardours of a passionate and polite devotion. Such was his roseate situation when, all at once, the catastrophe came. One night at the Opera the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, of the famous and powerful family of the Rohans, a man of forty-three, quarrelsome, blustering, whose reputation for courage left something ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... stakes were was no business of Mr. Draper's. The gentlemen said they would play for shillings, and afterwards counted up their gains and losses, with scarce any talking, and that in an undertone. A bow on both sides, a perfectly grave and polite manner on the part of each, and the game ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of their friends and kindred, saying there, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." And then, with all this mystery and oppression of life upon them they enter the doors of the house of God and listen to a polite essay, are told of the consolations of art, reminded of the stupidity of evil, assured of the unreality of sin, offered the subtle satisfactions of a cultivated intelligence. In just so far as they are genuine men and women, they resent ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... dashing Princess Elizaveta Romanovna Dashkoff, who helped Katherine to her throne. As Empress, Katherine appointed her to be first president of the newly founded Academy of Sciences, but afterward withdrew her favor, and condemned her to both polite and impolite exile,—because of her services, the princess hints, in her celebrated and ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the large, brilliantly-lighted dining-room were now thrown open, the guests streamed upstairs, and, after much stopping in the doorway and long polite disputes over the order of precedence, took their places round the great loaded horse-shoe table, that glittered gaily with a compact row of wine bottles, treble-branched candlesticks, high cake-dishes, and, especially up by the place of honour, ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... said that her own time was so much occupied with her elder daughters, that she was forced to leave the children entirely to the governess, but, that as Mrs. Arnold had so strongly recommended her she felt sure she should be satisfied, then bidding Miss Leicester a polite good morning, she ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... let him go at that, but now the way to the smoking-den on the floor above was hedged up. He did battle with the polite requirements, as a man must; shaking hands or exchanging a word with one and another of the obstructors only as he had to. None the less, when he had finally wrought his way to the smoking-room ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... had arrived at what is called in polite literature, the grand meridian of life, and was proceeding on his journey downhill with hardly any throat, and a very rigid pair of jaw-bones, and long-flapped elephantine ears, and his eyes and complexion in the state of artificial excitement already ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the feeling of disgust and anger this spy aroused in their breasts. It was for the sake of the safety of their homes, for the lives that were dear to them, that they did this. And he, entirely unconscious in his vileness, was suave and polite, played the man about town, recalled one thing or another, ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... "Charles Stuart MacAllister! It sounds like something Auntie Jinit would brew at a quiltin'. It's positively shameful not to be better acquainted with the terms of polite society." ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... hand he made for me and set out to try it on dat gal. She never had give me a friendly look even, and when I would speak to her polite she just hang her head ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... say that Mrs. Grinstead was enchanted by this proof of his charms; but they were interrupted by Marshall, the polite, patronizing butler, bringing in a card. Miss Mohun would be glad to know how Mr. Underwood was, and whether there was anything that she ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sir," said Professor Socrat, bowing low, "I zank ze giver, an' I zank you for ze most polite attention you have bestowed ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... him that she never appeared much moved, by his charges. Certainly she lived the life of a "fine lady,"—a brilliant life, a luxurious one, a life full of polite dissipation. Once, when in a tenderly fraternal mood, he reproached her with this also, ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... nobility has sometimes been represented as exhibiting the best of manners and the worst of morals. I believe that both sides of the picture have been painted in too high colors. The courtier was not always polite, nor were all great nobles libertines. Faithful husbands and wives were by no means exceptional; although, as in other places, well behaved people did not make a parade of their morality. There is such a thing as a French prig; but prigs are neither common nor popular in France. Before ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... of rough weather, that he provide himself with rubbers and an umbrella, even if he would not hear of a rain-coat. "Am I made of money?" he asked. He gave a like treatment to some intimations contributed by Medora Phillips during her call: he met them with the smiling, polite, half-weary patience which a man sometimes employs to inform a woman that she doesn't quite know what she is talking about. He presently in as active circulation, on the campus and elsewhere, as ever. The few who looked after him at all came to the view that he possessed more ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here described either devoid of all sense of humanity, or consummate in all private and social virtues: here are no Hottentots without religion, polity, or articulate language; no Chinese perfectly polite, and completely skilled in all sciences: he will discover what will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that wherever human nature is to be found, there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and reason; and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... could learn from Willie when he came out of his convulsions, the boys had been very polite to him and had insisted on his joining in a new game which Clarence had just invented, called playing pig-sticker. And, because he was company, Clarence told him that he could be the pig. Willie didn't know just what being the pig meant, but, as he told his father, it didn't sound very nice and ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... inhabitants. One-half of its two score of fishermen's houses lie crouched to the rambling edge of its single street; the other half might have been dropped at random, like stones from the pocket of some hurrying giant. Some of these, including the house of the ruddy little mayor and the polite, florid grocer, lie spilled along the edge of ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... enough for two and no mistake, and spreads along as well as up—well, the time came to begin. The players came out on the stage, a-speakin' of their parts and abrandishin' of their arms as they do, when all at once a gentleman sitting behind Becky Boozer leaned forward and asked her—ever so polite—'Madam,' sez he, 'please be so good as ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... we know something of what passes in polite circles. Your antagonism to this man is to be found in every column of fashionable gossip. The town is divided between you. It is impossible that any public slight upon him should be ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was digesting a polite hint that my terms were too high, and therewith Agatha's earnest appeal to be sent to Girton, there comes this inheritance! Taking my burthen off my back, and making me ready to throw up my heels like a ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... tired of that, because Enna takes all the blocks," said another little girl. "She isn't at all polite ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... over and make Luke introduce me," he said. "He's been out there on the porch with 'em the last five minutes, and you was so busy argufyin' with me you never looked up to see him. And you talk of going over and doing the polite. Yah, you make me laugh. This is shore one on you, Racey. Don't you wish now you hadn't made out to be so drunk? Lookit, Luke. He's a-offerin' 'em something in a paper poke. They're a-eatin' it. He musta bought some candy. I'll bet they's all of a dime's worth in that bag. The spendthrift. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... that she is good-natured. She thinks it necessary to make this statement, lest, after having heard her story, you should, however polite you might be about it, in your heart of hearts suspect her capable not only of allowing her angry passions to rise, but of permitting them to boil over "in tempestuous fury wild and unrestrained." If ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... escadrille was looking interested. He understood that Tom and Jack must have met with some singular adventure; but since they did not see fit to take him into their confidence he was too polite to ask questions, feeling there must be a good reason ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... for ears polite to hear the particulars of the first toilet of a neglected, abused child. In fact, in this world, multitudes must live and die in a state that it would be too great a shock to the nerves of their fellow-mortals even to hear described. Miss ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had ever warned Mollie that it was not good form to speak to the President before he spoke to her. She thought it was polite to make some kind of a remark when she was introduced to him. So all the way up the line she had been wondering ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... the five senses; and healthy young people should throng the lazarettos and alms-houses to learn the nature of their own disadvantages. It is equally desirable that wise men like you and Peyton should accustom yourselves to the society of—well—I use polite diction, of imbeciles, of 'innocents,' in order to set a true value on learning and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... take a fine thick sandwich out of my bag, I always feel like making it a polite bow, and before I bite into a big brown doughnut, I am tempted to say, "By your leave, madam," and as for MINCE PIE——-Beau Brummel himself could not outdo me in respectful consideration. But Bill Hahn neither saw, nor smelled, nor, I think, tasted ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... with a few soft finger-touches, and I remembered no more until I found myself on the rostrum listening to a perfect din of applause that covered the close of my speech. If there were any fire-eaters in the audience, they were Carolina aristocrats an knew how to be polite, even to ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... is worse than fussing over new things that I don't need. Bonnets are my torment, and matinees are wearisome, for people whisper and flirt till the music is spoiled. Making calls is the worst of all; for what pleasure or profit is there in running from place to place to tell the same polite fibs over and over again, and listen to scandal that makes you pity or despise your neighbors. I shall not get up for any of ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... said with a bow; and as he handed it to me, his eyes opened wide in surprise. He, too, perceived the change in my appearance. But he was dignity itself, and instantly suppressed his astonishment into the polite impassiveness of a truly accomplished waiter, and gliding from the room on the points of his toes, as was his usual custom, he disappeared. The note was from ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... out and desirous of showing how well accustomed he was to the casual manners of polite society, consoled himself with an evening paper. Laura Ussher led Riatt to a comfortable corner out ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... we derive our evidence. The writer seems to hold, with Charles II., that Presbyterianism is no fit religion for a gentleman. True, the Moderates were genteel men, of polish and propriety, such as Mr. Jaffray of Dunbar, who never at synod or presbytery did or said anything that was not strictly polite; but then the Moderates had but little of Presbyterianism in their religion, and perhaps, notwithstanding their 'quiet, amiable, and courteous demeanour,' little of religion itself. It is to quite a different class that the hope of the writer turns. He states that 'melancholy ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... "Has not the citizen of the country a right to spend his money? I have heard that the Major is polite. He must not be well to-day. Shall I ride on ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... he saw was a sea-going yacht. Three important-looking men were surveying the deckhouse forward. They glanced at the newcomer but with a cheering absence of curiosity or even of interest. He sauntered past them with a polite but not-too-keen interest. The yacht would be an expensive one. The deck fittings were elaborate. A glance into the captain's cabin revealed it to be fully furnished, with a chart and a sextant on ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Orlando (for the histories call him by all these names), I am of opinion, and hold, that he was of middle height, broad-shouldered, rather bow-legged, swarthy-complexioned, red-bearded, with a hairy body and a severe expression of countenance, a man of few words, but very polite and well-bred." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... commission; but it is absolutely impracticable. I employed one of the most sensible and experienced men in the customhouse; and all the result was, he could only recommend me to Mr. Amyand as the newest, and consequently the most polite of the commissioners—but the Duchess of Richmond had tried him before—to no purpose. There is no way of recovering any of your goods, but purchasing them ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... great examples of old Greece or Rome Enlarge thy free-born heart, and bless kind Heaven, 390 That Britain yet enjoys dear Liberty, That balm of life, that sweetest blessing, cheap Though purchased with our blood. Well-bred, polite, Credit thy calling. See! how mean, how low, The bookless sauntering youth, proud of the scut That dignifies his cap, his flourished belt, And rusty couples jingling by his side. Be thou of other mould; and know that such Transporting pleasures were by ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... had been in New York for two years, and her manner of saying it led Seth to imagine a permanent separation following some sort of disagreement. And now! and now! He remembered Bennie D.'s superior airs, his polite sneers, his way of turning every trick to his advantage and of perverting and misrepresenting his, Seth's, most innocent speech and action into crimes of the first magnitude. He remembered the meaning of those last few months in the Cape Ann homestead. ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... hostility reached such a pass that, at a caucus of Republican senators, it was actually voted to demand the dismission of this long-tried and distinguished leader in the anti-slavery struggle. Later, in place of this blunt vote, a more polite equivalent was substituted, in the shape of a request for a reconstruction of the cabinet. Then a committee visited the President and pressed him to have done with the secretary, whom they thought ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... underwent all the puffing of the adventurous Manager, as well as all the severity of the Critics. The newspapers of the day were filled with histories and observations upon it. No subject engrossed the conversation of the polite and play-going part of the community but Lord Byron, The Doge of Venice, and Mr. Elliston. They were all bepraised and beplastered—exalted and debased—acquitted and condemned; but it was generally ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... G. continued, in measured accents of polite scorn, "that the eloquence of the hon. and gallant Gentleman (meaning SAUNDERSON) is as ungovernable as I am afraid it is sometimes unprofitable. In the exercise of the understanding which the Almighty has given him, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... twin sister, Charity, that the genius of Byron was first developed. Here that he paced with youthful melancholy the halls of his illustrious ancestors, and trode the walks of the long-banished monks. The housekeeper—a remarkably good looking and polite woman—showed us through the different apartments, and explained in the most minute manner every object of interest connected with the interior of the building. We first visited the Monks' Parlour, which seemed to contain nothing ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... Pedro was a man of a few words. He murmured a few polite phrases of greeting, asked Levy of his voyage and whether he had completed the mission which had brought him to Brazil. "For if you have," he ended, "I may have matters of interest to discuss ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... match: Floretta, pale, polite, impractical and intensely romantic; Thad, florid, rough and to the point. Yet the married pair seemed to be happy together. Winslow went to sea on several voyages and, four years after the marriage, remained at home for ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a smile, and with a few pleasant words to Mr. Sherwood, and a polite "good-morning" to Gussie, ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... that fop and gambler. And the fine ladies and gentlemen, who lived in that atmosphere of scandal, and intrigue, and gambling, are also from time to time treated to a little decorous and respectful raillery. Who does not remember the famous laws of polite breeding written out by Mr. Nash—Goldsmith hints that neither Mr. Nash nor his fair correspondent at Blenheim, the Duchess of Marlborough, excelled in English composition—for the guidance of the ladies and gentlemen who were under the sway of ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... bowed down to pompous prebendaries; bluff rectors chatted on cordial terms with suave archdeacons; and in the fold of the Church there were no black sheep on this great occasion. The shepherds and pastors of the Beorminster flock were polite, entertaining, amusing, and not too masterful, so that the general air ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... he can make his clerks polite-looking by turning on his politeness. But politeness in a department store does not consist in being polite-looking. Being polite-looking does not work, does not grip the customer or strike in and do things and make the customer ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... which he retained even to his latest hours. His first step was to involve himself in much misery, and which followed him in after life, as the sequel will evidence. On his arrival at College he was accosted by a polite upholsterer, requesting to be permitted to furnish his rooms. The next question was, "How would you like to have them furnished?" The answer was prompt and innocent enough, "Just as you please, Sir!"—thinking the individual employed by the College. The rooms were therefore ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... friends, in fact I should think that nearly all the labourers in the village were entertained by us during the evening. Mr. Plumb began by being very pleased, and the evening ended in what local newspapers call "harmony," which is the most polite way of saying that any one sang who liked and that the discord was something terrible. I sang a solo, the first and last time I have ever done such a thing, but I was rapturously applauded by an audience who were more kind and thirsty ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... shall be born in the self-same way. The child of the unmarried mother and the child of the married mother come into the world in accordance with the self-same law of reproduction. Nature may not be always polite, but she is ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... to a superficial observer appear closely related to those of the Semitic or Hamitic languages, are ni, "I"; hi, "thou"; gu, "we"; zu, "you" in modern times, zu has become a polite form of "thou," and a true plural "you" (i.e. more than one) has been formed by suffixing the pluralizing sign k—zuek. The pronouns of the third person are mere demonstratives. There are three: hura or kura, "that"; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... ascends, To man's low passions, or their glorious ends, Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise, To fall with dignity, with temper rise; Formed by thy converse, happily to steer From grave to gay, from lively to severe; Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease, Intent to reason, or polite to please. Oh! while along the stream of time thy name Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame, Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale? When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose, Whose ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... Nupkins's turn to feel humble when Mr. Pickwick told him Jingle's real character. He was terribly afraid the story would get out and that the town would laugh at him, so he became all at once tremendously polite, declared their arrest had been all a mistake and begged the Pickwickians to make themselves at home. Sam Weller was sent down to the kitchen to get his dinner, where he met a pretty housemaid named Mary, with whom ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... are kind and polite; they keep them for three days at the public expense; after they have first washed their feet, they show them their city and its customs, and they honour them with a seat at the council and public table, and there are men whose duty it is to take care of and guard the guests. But if strangers ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... gentleman. The proud man is cold, the selfish man hard and griping—the vain man desires to shine, to please, to make himself agreeable; and this amiable feeling works to the outside of suavity and charm of manner. The French are the vainest people in Europe, and the most polite. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... he thinks it will be a fine opportunity for me to see something of the world, and learn the arts and graces of polite society." ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... claims for the direct participation of Turkey in the treaty. The British demand for an indemnity for the expense of supporting French prisoners was to be relegated to commissioners—who never met. Indeed, this was the only polite way of escaping from the untenable position which our Government had heedlessly ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... deal with them in any way. Perhaps God would, later—she was not sure. Anyhow, bad as he was, direct as he was, forceful as he was, he was far more interesting than most of the more conservative types in whom the social virtues of polite speech and modest thoughts ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... near as an Indian girl might come to a party of warriors, and then she understood it like a flash. Red or white, she was only a girl, and she sat down on the grass and began to cry. The Big Tongue had risen as she came near, and he was polite enough to ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... always took good care to skip out of Solomon's reach. And when Jasper Jay met Solomon alone in the woods at dawn or dusk he was most polite to the solemn old chap. Then it was "How-dy-do, Mr. Owl!" and "I hope you're well to-day!" And when Solomon Jasper, that bold fellow always felt quite uneasy; and he was glad when Solomon ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... very trim-looking man of forty, and was promptly conducted to the commander on the promenade deck. He was as polite ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... best express things of an atrocious nature. In general, the best of simple words are believed to be such as sound loudest in exclamation, or sweetest in a pleasing strain. Modest words will ever be preferred to those that must offend a chaste ear, and no polite discourse ever makes allowance for a filthy or sordid expression. Magnificent, noble, and sublime words are to be estimated by their congruity with the subject; for what is magnificent in one place, swells into bombast in another; and what is low in a grand matter, ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... delighted over it as the girl continued to crush me. My day had been dull, my researches had not brought me a whit nearer royal blood; I looked at my little bill-of-fare, and then I stepped forward to the counter, adventurous, but polite. ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... her wants, and I will smoke my pipe in the field. It would not be polite to smoke in the presence of a lady," continued Mr. ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... only to Bath, and little did its belles and beaux dream of the fishified village of Brighthelmstone, in the adjoining county, spreading to a city, and being docked of its syllabic proportions to the Brighton of ears polite. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... "Oh, Mother, you ought to have seen how friendly the lady was, and she is so beautiful and so gentle and so good, and quite an aristocratic lady; and Erick in his velvet suit is like a knight, and so fine and polite. Edi could not ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... indifferently, and accommodate themselves at will to the manners of all classes of society: their fluency of style as writers is only surpassed by their facility of language in conversation, and their attainments in classical and polite literature only by their profound knowledge of the world, acquired by an early introduction into its bustling scenes. The activity, energy, and courage which they occasionally display in the pursuit of information ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... bridle at the proper time. Then the rest of us got behind the school house and waited. For two hours we waited, and I had a chance to think over the situation. Here I was, putting down the rebellion, laying for a woman, who was loaded. At home, I was a polite man, and full of fun, a person any lady might be proud to meet and talk with, but here I was expected to do something, for thirteen dollars a month, to put down the rebellion, which there was not money enough in the whole state of Wisconsin to hire me to do. Was it such a crime to ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... a very nice, polite young man. When I made a mistake yesterday he said: 'Pray, mademoiselle, why do you take so much ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... him wherever the best people congregated, and he invariably seemed to know what to do and how to do it better than his compeers. If it was dancing in the season, Jack Meredith danced, and no man rivalled him. If it was grouse shooting, Jack Meredith held his gun as straight as any man. All the polite accomplishments in their season seemed to come to him without effort; but there was in all the same lack of heart—that utter want of enthusiasm which imparted to his presence a subtle suggestion of boredom. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... be free"—did he "hope"? That was his polite way of putting the matter. Or he may have believed that he had conquered his love for Eleonore Broudou, and that she, as a French girl who understood his obligations to his family, would—perhaps after making a few handkerchiefs ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... all Men know the Chineses are an Ancient, Wise, Polite, and most Ingenious People; so the Muscovites begun to reap the Benefit of this open Trade; and not only to grow exceeding Rich by the bartering for all the Wealth of those Eastern Countries; but to polish and refine their Customs ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... tea? If you knew how to behave yourself in polite society, I'd give you a card to my friend, the Dowager, up ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... her mannerisms, even if it had taken away from her charm. He was disgusted more comprehensively by the tradition, universal in his class and in most classes, according to which relatives could not be formally polite to one another. He obeyed the tradition as slavishly as anyone, but often said to himself that he would violate the sacred rule if only he could count on a suitable response; he knew that he could not count on a suitable response; and he had no mind to be in the excruciating position of one ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... in her place, wriggled with invisible impatience over this carefully polite conversational opening. He had come down here on purpose to see her—there must be something going to happen, even if it was only a request to save a seven-day book for Mrs. De Guenther! Nobody ever wanted something, any kind of a something, ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... the same, for though she gave a smile and a greeting to all, she walked sturdily through the shop, ignoring the chairs pulled out for her by the polite shop-walker, and made her way to the very end, where a pleasant-faced attendant stood alone, rolling up ribbons in ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Quebec, where he studied six years, and he spoke that language with considerable purity. As the cold weather drew on in the fall of 1829, I invited him, with his wife, to live in my basement, and took lessons of him in French every morning after breakfast. He had all the polite and respectful manners of a habitant, and never came up to these recitations without the best attention in his power to ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... up my way it's generally polite to inquire about the appetite. If any one was to ask me, I'd say I was hungry. If any one was to urge me, I'd be obliged to meet up with a little food." I looked him gently in the eyes. He dropped his ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... speculating upon the kind of person Miss Bigelow must be to have thought so much of him. He could account for Miss Owens' gift—the hot-house blossoms, which had not moved him one-half so much as did this bunch of pinks. She had known him before—had met him in Washington; he had been polite to her on one or two occasions, and it was natural that she should wish to be civil, at least while he was sick. But the lady in No. 101—the Miss Bigelow for whom he had discarded his boots and trodden on tiptoe half the time since his arrival—why ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... roars Duke, springin' to the runnin'-board. "Here!" he goes on, talkin' fast. "I'm gonna shoot them two interiors in half a hour, so you better call this joy ride off!" He turns to the strange dame and speaks very polite, "Miss Vincent will show you everything; if you want anything, just 'phone ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... There was O'Leary, for example, who had been in jail with them. But in a country filled with gamblers and sporting men, where the chief end of man is to get gold and to enjoy it forever, it is not deemed polite to enquire too closely into people's antecedents. These men, evidently native-born Americans, bore the good Anglo-Saxon names of Collins and Darcy. What more could you ask? They perspired freely, and their packs were evidently ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... advertises in 1767 to provide all who wish with wigs "in the most genteel and polite taste," assuring judges, divines, lawyers, and physicians, "because of the importance of their heads, that he can assort his wigs to suit their respective occupations and inclinations." He tells the ladies that he can furnish anyone of them with "a ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... country dinner convinces me, that you receive me as a friend and an old acquaintance. "I am glad of it, for thee art heartily welcome. I never knew how to use ceremonies; they are insufficient proofs of sincerity; our society, besides, are utterly strangers to what the world calleth polite expressions. We treat others as we treat ourselves. I received yesterday a letter from Philadelphia, by which I understand thee art a Russian; what motives can possibly have induced thee to quit thy native country and to ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... figure of fun. Not to be beautiful and charming is to fail of being human, seems the judgment of his pencil. This was his limitation. And another was that, whilst professing to be concerned with humanity as a whole, he nearly always broke down with types that outraged the polite standard. He was a master in the description of Bishops and Curates, Generals and Men-about-town, but he broke down when he came to "the out-sider." And, as we have already pointed out, he seldom got away from ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... passions and prejudices of his time, even those which he did not share. The purest types of this kind of falsehood are found in ceremonial forms, official formulae, declarations prescribed by etiquette, set speeches, polite phrases. The statements which come under this head are so open to suspicion that we are unable to derive from them any information about the facts stated. We are all aware of this so far as relates ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... furnished inside, and the sight of them may excite within you stimulating ideas about architecture, hygiene, and many other wise and high-flying subjects. You may meet warmly and neatly dressed folks—all very polite, and turning away from you tactfully, not wishing offensively to notice the lamentable fact of your existence. Well, well, the mind of a hungry man is always better nourished and healthier than the mind of the well-fed man; and there you have a situation from which ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... But that is not to be thought of. And then, my dear Murray, a little private affair of my own, which has put me out sadly. I wrote, when I first came home, to Lady Rogers, asking leave to pay a visit at Halliburton Hall. I got an answer from Sir John, very kind and very polite. At the same time, he gave me to understand that he considered it better I should not make my appearance there; in other words, that I wasn't wanted. I fancied that Lucy had begun to care for me, and so ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... soothingly. But it was lucky Nan could not see the twinkle in her eye. "Have it your own way, Nan. Only stop turning your back to me. It isn't polite. And, oh!" she added, with ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... sorry," said the Queen's Messenger. He turned to those seated about him. "I wonder if the other gentlemen—" he inquired tentatively. There was a chorus of polite murmurs, and the Queen's Messenger, bowing his head in acknowledgment, took a preparatory sip from his glass. At the same moment the servant to whom the man with the black pearl had spoken, slipped a piece of paper into his hand. He glanced at it, frowned, and ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... a waterman answer the polite interrogation "Who are you?" correctly, and designate at the same time, an ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... of us; no, vengeance! let us combat until the end," he repeated to himself; "the power of poetry over people is great; I will bring them back. We shall see which will carry the day, grimaces or polite literature." ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... herself comfortably) I feel just like giving you a lecture, Virginia. You must make Edgar go out more. Anybody will get queer shut up here. The other day when mamma asked him to come to our party he wasn't more than half polite when he refused, and we were going to have Mr. Melrose Libbie to meet him too. Said his work would keep him at home! Now you know, Virginia, that poetry isn't work. It's just dash off a line now and then, and there you are! Mr. ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... be writing itself on the stage. He displays all the tricks of satire—exaggeratedly ironic praise, allegorical names (Miss Giggle, Miss Brilliant, Miss Bashfull), stock characters of satire (Pasquin, Marforio, Hydra, Drawcansir), lists of offenses, parodies of polite conversation reminiscent of Swift, and constant topical references: to the Robin Hood Society to which little Bob Smart belongs; to Mother Midnight; to playwrights (Fielding, Foote, Woodward, Cibber, and himself); to contemporary theatrical taste ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... of Chinamen are almost invariably suspicious that Englishmen cheat them, although some of them are very decent fellows, and, indeed, kind and even polite. Several times I have asked them how they were going to spend the money for which they had sold their gold—say five shillings; and they would answer, ingenuously enough, "Two shillings for opium, three shillings for chow-chow;" leaving no margin ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... Whenever a hen fluttered past the kitchen door, which was about once in three minutes, she would cry: "Here, Johnnie, here's another chicken for you to chase;" and poor Johnnie would feel obliged to dash out into the sun. Being a very polite little girl, she did not like to say to Mrs. Worrett that running in the heat was disagreeable: so by dinner-time she was thoroughly tired out, and would have been cross if she had known how; but she didn't— Johnnie was never cross. After dinner it was even worse; ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... edifice and which may be distinguished from all other buildings by its gilded cupola. It is a superb establishment in every respect, and is furnished with an excellent library. A great many old soldiers are to be seen in this library occupied in reading; they are very polite to all visitors, particularly to ladies. Nothing can better demonstrate the superior character, intelligence and deportment of the French soldiers over those of all other countries than the way in which they employ their time in literary pursuits, their dignified ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... as they presented us with exquisite fishes (amongst them salmon), seeds, and pinole. I had opportunity of visiting them four times and found them always as friendly as the first time, noticing in them polite manners, and what is better, modesty and retirement in the women. They are not disposed to beg, but accept with good will what is given them, without being impertinent, as are many others I have seen during ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... foolish faces and had himself locked away where he would not hear its foolish clacking. O Silence! gift of the gods, deified by Carlyle in many volumes and praised by me in many silly words! My good fellow, society, which is always hypocritical, has to build lunatic asylums in self-defence. These polite jails keep the world in countenance; they give it a standard. If you are ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... with Sam'l Todd, and the knocking at the door was part of the ceremony. Five minutes afterward Joey returned to beg a moment of me in the passage; when I, too, got my invitation. The lad had just received, with an expression of polite surprise, though he knew he could claim it as his right, a slice of crumbling shortbread, and taken his staid departure, when Jess cleared the tea-things off the table, remarking simply that it was a mercy we had not got beyond the first ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... than any durable material.—The monks still remain, and although the decree has passed for their suppression, they cannot suppose it will take place. They are mostly old men, and, though I am no friend to these institutions, they were so polite and hospitable that I could not help wishing they were permitted, according to the design of the first Assembly, to die in their habitations— especially as the situation of St. Eloy renders the building useless for any other purpose.—A friend of Mr. de has a charming country-house near ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... that even to his own ears his accent was polite, but no more. At the same minute he found the useful formula he had been in search of—"I mustn't let her know I'm in love ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... thaws the rigor of the heart and warms the soul, which manifests itself in the softening of the eye, in the glow upon the cheek, and the relaxation of manner. It was not so with Washington. In his reception-rooms he was easily polite and courteously affable; but his dignity and the inflexibility of ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the ship was anchored I sent an officer (Mr. Christian) to wait on the governor and to acquaint him I had put in to obtain refreshments and to repair the damages we had sustained in bad weather. To this I had a very polite answer from the governor, * that I should be supplied with whatever the island afforded. I had also directed the officer to acquaint him that I would salute, provided an equal number of guns were to be returned but, as I received an extraordinary answer to this part of my ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... is impossible to say. It is doubtful whether any experienced engineer would ever try to carry all the weight over the roof, except in the case of back-fill, and even then he would have to make his own assumption (which sounds more polite than "guess"). ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... us over several ditches breast deep in water and grown up with water plants. These ditches, however, were not over eight or ten feet in width. The howitzer was taken to pieces and carried by the men to its destination. When I knocked for admission a priest came to the door who, while extremely polite, declined to admit us. With the little Spanish then at my command, I explained to him that he might save property by opening the door, and he certainly would save himself from becoming a prisoner, for a time at ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... was found. Possessed with this information I wrote in May to the Staff Officer at Purandhur, and told him where and when the bird built and asked him if he would kindly assist me in procuring the eggs. In reply I received a very polite letter saying 'that he knew nothing about eggs or birds himself, but that he would be most happy to offer me any assistance in his power in procuring the eggs referred to, and that he would employ a shikarri to keep the hill-side that I had mentioned ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... him shrinkingly and waveringly, as if she were sorely tempted to retreat through the open window. Mr. Striker swung his long leg a trifle defiantly. No one, evidently, was used to offering hollow welcomes or telling polite fibs. Rowland introduced himself; he had come, he might say, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... assistance from behind, and landed upon the head and shoulders of Lieutenant-Colonel Joselyn, of the Fifteenth Massachusetts Infantry, who passed him around in such a way that the other occupants of the car were moved to sundry objurgations at the expense of our young friend more forcible than polite, and partaking little of the nature of a hospitable reception! However, this is a world of compromises, and Glazier soon found his level among ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... "Isn't he getting polite?" said the American girl approvingly. "Say, Bert! I guess you'll have to take lessons in manners or he'll get ahead ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Elizabethan era, and could barely be said to belong to the nineteenth century. Among other Elizabethan traits she had acquired an unconsciousness of self, together with an enormous self-confidence, and no idea of what people thought of her in polite society ever seems to have occurred to her. She had the heart of a woman, but mentally she was like a composite picture of Shakespeare's dramatis personae, and that Emerson should have spoken of her as "a great exaggerated creature" ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... that that would depend on who the some one was, but thinking this would hardly be polite, ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... waking - They poison his slumbers - Like the Banbury Lady, whom every one knows, He's cursed with its music wherever he goes! Though its words but imperfectly rhyme, And the devil himself couldn't scan them; With composure polite he endures day and night That illiterate ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... she will. Sentiment aside, she is a woman of an excellent memory. Whether she forgives or not I know not; but she certainly doesn't forget. Doubtless, virtue is its own reward; but there is a double satisfaction in being polite to a person on whom it tells. Another reason for my pleasant relations with the Captain is, that I afford him a chance to rub up his rusty old cosmopolitanism, and trot out his little scraps of old-fashioned reading, some of which are very curious. It is a great treat for him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... fever), that she asked anxiously whether his mother were living, and sighed when he answered 'No,' because he had no one to watch and wait for him in far-away England. And when the weary young Englishman, in spite of desperate efforts to be polite, dropped asleep in the royal presence, the sovereigns, with courtesy which would have done honour to a more civilised Court, quietly withdrew, sending him a message that he must stay long with ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... in conduct, you will be no more popular with the world than He was. As long as Christianity will be quiet, and let the world go its own gait, the world is very well contented to let it alone, or even to say polite things to it. Why should the world take the trouble of persecuting the kind of Christianity that so many of us display? What is the difference between our Christianity and their worldliness? The ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Shaw I should state that the present book is entirely my own, and that though he has not renounced a polite interest in Vivie he is in no way responsible for her career and behaviour. He may even ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... relief from this somewhat unpleasant display of Gallic closet skeletons to the discreet exhibition of a few carefully chosen bones in the plays of Bernstein and Bataille, direct descendants of Scribe, Sardou, et Cie, but I may be permitted to indulge in a slight snicker of polite amazement when I discover these gentlemen applying their fingers to their noses in no very pretty-meaning gesture, directed at a grandson of Moliere. For such is Georges Feydeau. His method is not that of the Seventeenth ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... said I, with a candid air. "I protested to this gentleman that my French was sadly to seek; he was polite enough to assure me that I spoke it well. Upon this I owned to some small knowledge, and for an example I said to him, 'J'aime, tu aimes, il aime.' He received the remark, ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... make against me. I may be mistaken; but that is my opinion, and that was the opinion which, as well as I recollect, I intended to convey, and no other; and even this opinion I intended to convey in terms as polite, guarded, and little offensive to anybody ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... very highest line. They drew out leases, and managed property both for the Duke of Omnium and Lord de Courcy; and ever since her marriage, it had been one of the objects dearest to Lady Arabella's heart, that the Greshamsbury acres should be superintended by the polite skill and polished legal ability of that all but ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... best to behave with dignity. In any case it would have been trying to encounter such a man as Redgrave—wealthy, elegant, a figure in society, who must necessarily regard her as banished from polite circles; and in her careless costume she felt more than abashed. For the first time a sense of degradation, of social inferiority, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... the crowd, and got what they could; others seized a mouthful, and ran away to eat it in a corner. The chicks got into the pan entirely, and tumbled one over the other in their hurry to eat; but the mammas saw that none went hungry. And the polite cock waited upon them in the most gentlemanly manner, making queer little clucks and gurgles ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... skull of the tortured criminal. She was very tired of all the Hyde-Lodge lessons and accomplishments, the irregular French verbs—the "braires" and "traires" which were so difficult to remember, and which nobody ever could want to use in polite conversation; the ruined castles and dilapidated windmills, the perpetual stumpy pieces of fallen timber and jagged posts, executed with a BBB pencil; the chalky expanse of sky, with that inevitable flight of crows scudding across it:—why ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... DEVEREUX BLAKE said there is no aspect of this question that strikes us so forcibly as the total ignoring of women by public men. However polite they may be in private life, when they come to public affairs they seem to forget that women exist. The men who framed the last amendment to the constitution seemed to have wholly forgotten that women existed or had rights.... Huxley said in reply to an inquiry as to woman suffrage, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... sufficiently loud to shake a single leaf of the ivy on the towers of Nightmare Abbey; and some months afterwards he received a letter from his bookseller, informing him that only seven copies had been sold, and concluding with a polite ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... pipe and his daily bonfire contented Mr. McBride. Between himself and Katrina, relations were polite but not cordial. Katrina preserved a dignity which deceived neither of them. Both knew that she was awaiting something sensational, and the fact worried the old gentleman, for already he had exhausted his possibilities. He longed for ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... lived in England a brave and noble man whose name was Walter Ra-leigh. He was not only brave and noble, but he was also handsome and polite; and for that reason the queen made him a knight, and called ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... telling you the real names and not imaginary ones. Mme. Husson took a special interest in good works, in helping the poor and encouraging the deserving. She was a little woman with a quick walk and wore a black wig. She was ceremonious, polite, on very good terms with the Almighty in the person of Abby Malon, and had a profound horror, an inborn horror of vice, and, in particular, of the vice the Church calls lasciviousness. Any irregularity before ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Citizen—a weekly newspaper which continues to maintain an honourable position. Previous to leaving Edinburgh he was entertained at a public dinner, attended by men of letters and other leading individuals. The drudgery of newspaper life has left Mr Hedderwick little leisure for contributions to polite literature. While in Edinburgh, however, he wrote one number of "Wilson's Tales of the Border," and has since contributed occasionally to other works. In 1844 he published a small collection of poems, but in too costly ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Burgundy's features were naturally harsh and severe; and when he attempted to smile, in polite acquiescence to the truth of what the King told him, the grimace which he made was ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... writers."—Philosophy of Rhet., p. 217. So far as I have observed, the use of of for on has never been frequent; and that of on for of, or on't for of it, though it may never have been a polite custom, is now a manifest archaism, or imitation of ancient usage. "And so my young Master, whatever comes on't, must have a Wife look'd out for him."—Locke, on Ed., p. 378. In Saxon, on was put for more than half a dozen of our present ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... be polite to mention actual names; but take by way of example such a district as Dickens's "Coketown," or Disraeli's "Wodgate," or George Eliot's "Milby," or any of those towns which Cobbett expressively called ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... conveniently sewed to the camisole and worn next the heart. Her pretty lips once touched this piece of peel'—and she dangled the peel right in front of Judy's eyes. 'Get out of my room quick,' said our polite little Judy, 'and take your garbage with you!' Jane said it gave her a nasty turn. It's my belief that Judy wants to come first in history or something, and she wants to ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... (the solitary one on the island), stood a short way above the landing quay; and once or twice, catching sight of her in her doorway and lifting his hat as he went by (for the Commandant was ever polite), he had found it in his mind to stop and inquire after ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... in my letter to amount to anything," he replied. "Miss Emory only wanted to know if I'd please have her trunks shipped out here from New Orleans—only that; and she asked me please to bring her a box of marshmallows, as hers were all gone. She's polite, always, dear old Helena—she says, here, 'So pleasant is our journey in every way, and so kind have you gentlemen been, and so thoughtful in providing every luxury, that I can not think of a single thing I could ask for except some more marshmallows. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... feel them toes till they're took an' buried an' rotted away in the ground.' An' then 'e tells 'bout 'is sister's boy. 'Nonsense,' sez the doctor, 'tain't 'is toes at all. 'Is toes 'as nothin' to do with it.' 'W'at then?' asks father quite polite. 'It's the feelin' of 'is toes 'e's feelin'.' ''Ow can 'e 'ave any feelin' of 'is toes if 'e hain't got no toes?' 'Well,' sez the doctor, ''is feelin's hain't in 'is toes at all.' 'Well, that's ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... talked a polite amount with their respective neighbors. But if so, they regarded it as untimely interruption of the real business of the evening. It was amazing the number of things they found to discuss and they discussed ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... Capetown until we reached Johannesburg, which (taking evidence at the various places on the way) occupied several weeks. This sumptuous train consisted of dining car, sleeping cars and parlour car, was liberally staffed and provisioned; with a skilful chef, polite and attentive waiters and attendants. It was practically our hotel during those forty days ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... much left out and desirous of showing how well accustomed he was to the casual manners of polite society, consoled himself with an evening paper. Laura Ussher led Riatt to a comfortable corner out of ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... pointed to an old woman who, seated before the door of her hut, was spinning at her wheel. Then the young men went up to her with polite salutations and said, "Mother, we are travelling traders, and our stock is coming after us; we have come on in advance for the purpose of finding a place to live in. If you will give us a house, we will remain ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... man of fifty. He was tall, spare, with closely shaven face and gray hair, worn rather long. He spoke with the accent of a Southerner, and although to Ford he was studiously polite, he was obviously greatly ill at ease. He had the abrupt, inattentive manners, the trembling fingers and quivering lips, of one who had long been a slave to the drug habit, and who now, with difficulty, was holding himself ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... Boulevard Malesherbes, to cook onions in. I don't know what he didn't say to me in his effervescent state. For my part, I was naturally vexed to be spoken to in that insolent tone. The least one can do is to be polite to people whom one neglects to pay, deuce take it! So I retorted that it was too bad, really; but, if the Caisse Territoriale would pay what they owe me, to wit my arrears of salary for four years, plus seven thousand francs advanced by ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the courtier; he came on another errand. Whoever, reading these colloquies of his with the Queen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them altogether. It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the Nation and Cause of Scotland. A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field for intriguing ambitious Guises, and the Cause of God trampled underfoot of Falsehoods, Formulas and the Devil's ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... hitherto evinced nascent and budding life by these exfoliations from its slender stem, died of a sudden blight the moment its sun, in the shape of Uncle Jack, set in the Cimmerian regions of the Fleet; and a polite letter from another printer (O William Caxton, William Caxton, fatal progenitor!) informing my father of this event, stated complimentarily that it was to him, "as the most respectable member of the Association," ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her speech than usual, but very talkative too. Every one crowded round them, and Walter had some difficulty in leading his bride through the throng. There was laughter and hand-shaking and a general polite uproar. At last they got themselves into the carriage, which rolled away with them to their new life. It was really Joan and Nancy who had conceived the idea of tying a pair of goloshes on behind, but the Misses Conroy had provided them, one apiece, and claimed an equal ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... was the first to give him warning, for he was often on duty at or near the Commissary's quarters, and, indeed, had often taken notes from Foster to the fair Dolly. He showed a warm interest in the matter, for Foster was always polite to the sergeant, and did not turn up his nose at "soldier men," as other masters of ships were but ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... selfish fear of his own downfall with that of State supremacy was so well known that a smile wrinkled across the polite group of gentlemen surrounding him, deepened his colour to purple under this assault, and stammered: "Sir, have I not myself proposed an enlargement of the powers of Congress, in order to counteract the damnable policy of Britain? Did ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Tower, and Bolingbroke a voluntary exile in France, and an open adherent of the Pretender. Swift came to Dublin to be met by the jeers of the populace, the suspicion of the government officials, and the polite indifference of his clerical colleagues. He had time enough now in which to reflect and employ his brain powers. For several years he kept himself altogether to his duties as Dean of the Cathedral of St. Patrick's, only venturing ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... It was not very polite for Mrs. Cricky to laugh, but really she could not help it. Never did she see such a buzzing, clumsy attempt at imitation as this. By this time the Noisy Fly had spied Mrs. Cricky, and his popping black eyes scanned her anxiously, for he was accustomed ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... always treated her as if she were a mere acquaintance, some one who was of no consequence to you. Oh, yes, you have been polite, kind, in a way, but not in a way a woman wants. I am only a girl, but—but"—she thought again of Drake, of her own love story, and her lips trembled—"but I have seen enough of the world to know that there is nothing which will hurt and harden a woman more than the 'kindness' with which ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... are brought to me. There will be no one else now to-night, I think, unless Colonel Goldapp sends for me. They are very polite. I think I shall be alone most of the time. They have no idea that I will try to get away, because they think I know they have so many sentries and patrols about that it would be useless for me to ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... also, to meet Mr. Knox, the bookseller, who was polite and affable to all, particularly to ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the presence of the emperor, the bishop paid his respects to him, in the most polite and proper manner. Then he was about to retire from the palace, without taking any special notice of the emperor's son. This made the father angry. He said to the bishop, "Do you take no notice of my son? Have you not heard ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... prove yourself a man of erudition in polite literature and cosmography, manage that the river Tagus shall be named in your story, and there you are at once with another famous annotation, setting forth—The river Tagus was so called after a King of Spain: it has ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... view this matter entirely from the standpoint of the polite world, from the outlook of social respectability, where self rules every action with the question, 'What will others say?' So should I two years ago, but conditions have somewhat changed my views. Professional necessity can never afford to be quite ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... old saying that "you must summer and winter" a man before you know him. Mr. Parasyte was considered a tyrant; not a coarse and brutal tyrant, but a refined and gentlemanly one, who cows you by his polite impertinence. He seldom indulged in harsh speech, never in personal violence—at least no instance of it was known to the students. He indulged in sneers and polished browbeating. A boy was never stupid—he lacked common intelligence; never a blockhead—his perceptions ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... "you can't rub me the right way till I'm contented here as I was yesterday. Florence is all right, and the Florentines are mighty polite; but—" She looked at the fire a moment, while he tried, and failed, to find something effectively soothing to say. "In the State of Massachusetts there's a sort of spit running into the sea, and on a sand hill of this there's a little shingled ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... too polite to tell that to his cousin. And when Mr. Mole Cricket asked him how he liked the tune, Chirpy replied that it was very, ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... neat and austere. He fancied it would not be pleasant to be very late for one's meals—in fact, Sidney had hinted as much. Some of the "mealers"—the Street's name for them—ventured on various small familiarities of speech with Tillie. K. Le Moyne himself was scrupulously polite, but reserved. He was determined not to let the Street encroach on his wretchedness. Because he had come to live there was no reason why it should adopt him. But he was very polite. When the deaf-and-dumb book agent wrote something ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that it might have had with an Englishman in similar circumstances, and the manager became polite and anxious to assist. Yes, the gentleman had come about a room. He had ordered lunch in a private room for a party of seven for 1.30 on the following Tuesday. He had been very particular about the room, had insisted on seeing it, and had ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... neither laugh nor sing nor talk an hour upon nothing. The latter of these is a sensible loss, for it excludes a gentleman from all good company and makes him entirely unfit for the conversation of the polite world." "I don't know how the mathematics may assist the judgment, but they have a great tendency to make men dull. I who am far from being sprightly even in my gaiety, am the very reverse of it at this time." Certainly to produce sprightliness ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... appeal to conductors, "Set me down as near as you can to Brown and Hodgkinson's!"), and there was purchased a blouse of white lace—costing so much that Gertie, on hearing the amount, had to clutch at one of the high chairs; and as Clarence paid readily with gold, the polite young woman on the other side of the counter assured him it was well worth the money. Gertie, at another establishment, bought a pair of slippers, saying to herself that they would come in handy, even though she did not go to Ewelme. ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... August W. went to his Conseil-General at Laon, and I went down to my brother-in-law's place at St. Leger near Rouen. We were a very happy cosmopolitan family-party. My mother-in-law was born a Scotch-woman (Chisholm). She was a fine type of the old-fashioned cultivated lady, with a charming polite manner, keenly interested in all that was going on in the world. She was an old lady when I married, and had outlived almost all her contemporaries, but she had a beautiful old age, surrounded by children and grandchildren. She had lived through many vicissitudes from the ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... Gres, in 1391, Heliot, 1390, and Henry de Senlis, in 1484. Heliot is recorded as having produced for Philip the Bold "two large ivory tablets with images, one of which is the... life of Monsieur St. John Baptist." This polite description occurs in the Accounts ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... and made two low bows. I felt for my scalp-knife, for I thought they was approaching to take me, but I couldn't use it —they was so darned polite. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the general in this company, where he had himself the 'vantage ground—so different now from what it had been in the Old-Forest battle, when only man to man, ward to guardian. Before these distinguished persons there was a look—a tone of deference at once most affectionate and polite. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... magnificently. At the close Queen Victoria asked to have Will presented to her, and paid him so many compliments as almost to bring a blush to his bronzed cheek. Red Shirt was also presented, and informed her Majesty that he had come across the Great Water solely to see her, and his heart was glad. This polite speech discovered a streak in Indian nature that, properly cultivated, would fit the red man to shine as a courtier or politician. Red Shirt walked away with the insouciance of a king dismissing an audience, ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... thereafter Mrs. Potter called upon Mrs. Drysdale and passed the afternoon very pleasantly. When Mr. Drysdale came home he was very polite and agreeable; he seemed glad to find his wife enjoying herself, and when Mrs. Potter rose to go, both husband and wife urged her warmly ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... friend Fouque asked him whether he hadn't also lost his shadow? The friends pleased their fancies in imagining what would have happened to him if he had. Not long afterwards he was reading in La Fontaine of a polite man who drew out of his pocket whatever was asked for. Chamisso thought, He will be bringing out next a coach and horses. Out of these hints came the fancy of "Peter Schlemihl, the Shadowless Man." In all thought that goes with invention of a poet, there are depths as well as shallows, and the reader ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... if not polite—was shaping itself a brief distance below his staring eyes, when, recovering himself and tiptoeing to his full height, he peered into the branches and ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... blew out behind and her ribbons flew like blue butterflies all about her hat. She forgot to hold down the brim, as polite little girls did who knew how to wear their Sunday clothes. She, too, held three small packages in her lap. For days, ever since Peter Junior and Richard Kildene had taken tea with them in their new uniforms, the little girls had patiently sewed to make the articles which ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... boarders from their rich portrait frames on the parlor wall! Fallen greatness always gives me an uncomfortable thrill. Yet here was the heiress of these shadows on the wall, gay, talkative, bustling, active; with a word of caution, or a word of advice to all; polite, attentive, agreeable to her guests, quarreling and exacting with her servants, grasping and avaricious with all; singing a piece from "Norma" in a voice, about the size of a thread No. 150, that showed traces of former excellence; or cheapening a bushel of corn meal ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... the whole trouble with the Newfoundland Labrador. All moneys granted for education are handed to the churches for sectarian schools. It is almost writing ourselves down as still living in the Middle Ages, when the Clergy had a monopoly of polite learning. In more densely populated countries this division of grants need not be so disastrous. Here it means that one often finds a Roman Catholic, a Church of England, a Methodist, and a Salvation Army school, all in one little village—and no school ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... deemed a token of elegant and fashionable taste, and while the charms of this beverage in the reigns of Queen Anne and George I. were so highly esteemed by courtiers, by lords and ladies and fine gentlemen in the polite world, the learned physicians extolled its medicinal virtues." From the coffee house and its more aristocratic relative the chocolate house, there developed a new feature in English social life—the Club. As the years passed the Chocolate House remained a rendezvous, but the character of its habitues ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... the eyes of everyone who knew anything of her at this prospect of getting rid of the trial. Both the ladies, and everyone who had known her for longer than the week, voted, hands and feet, for her extinction, but four of the men were foolishly too polite to express their real wishes. So she herself was left with the casting vote, and chose to go on! Thus The Instigator's well-thought plan to remove an incubus was frustrated. He was so disgusted with his failure in a laudable object that, ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... seeing her free. "I have done the heavy polite act, discussed D'Annunzio, polo and psycho-analysis and finished all three subjects neatly. Do I get ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... confidence that they will be found deserving the same mark of distinction that has been conferred upon an officer junior to me in the list of admirals. I beg leave to express my unfeigned acknowledgments to your lordship for the polite manner in which you have been pleased to convey to me the ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... comprehend our mirth. He had, he thought, delivered himself of very sound and very gentlemanly philosophy, and he was really shocked to find it had made an impression so different from what he had expected. He had travelled much, he said, and met men of many lands, of whom Irishmen were ever the most polite and best bred gentlemen; a fact which rendered our laughing in his face rather inexplicable. The conversation was again resumed and again waxed warm. I expressed my opinion of English paupers in Ireland, and said they ought to be transported in a convict ship back to Liverpool, in the same ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... afraid with a bull to protect us. We went down the ladder and the farmer didn't say a word. I guess he was thinking about the money he got from Brown's hats all right. He said to Mr. Bull, very nice and polite, "I kinder thought they wuz trespassin', you know. 'N I was a-scared they'd ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... certain that he would a few thousand times rather have been standing there upon the old-gold sand, with only one eye doing duty and an unspeakable agony in the other eye, than be that herring-gull in the condition he was then, going back to the bosom of his tribe. It is not a thing to dwell upon in polite society, but I tell you that the gull-folk do not always treat their wounded well, and there would be no chance, no earthly chance at all, of his finding a place in all that vast horizon of sea and sky and island where they, the ceaseless, never-resting "White ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... explained Miss Gascoigne, when, Dr. Grey having quitted the room, Christian, for want of something to converse about, began to make a few polite inquiries concerning it. "So you have got your piano just in time, and may practice all day long, to be ready for your performance. Of course you will be asked to perform, since every body knows about your father and his musical genius. By- the-by, I met lately ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... not so good, but they are worthy of registration. One boy described a blackguard as "one who has been a shoeblack,'' while another thought he was "a man dressed in black.'' "Polite'' is said to be derived from "Pole,'' owing to the affability of the Polish race. "Heathen'' means "covered with heath''; but this explanation is commonplace when compared with the brilliant guess—"Heathen, from Latin ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... for the pleasures of the mind is moreover so natural to the heart of civilized man, that amongst the polite nations, which are least disposed to give themselves up to these pursuits, a certain number of citizens are always to be found who take part in them. This intellectual craving, when once felt, would very soon have been satisfied. But at the very time when ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Influence is extended thro-out the united States. Boston has its full share of them and yet I do not hear that Measures have been taken to suppress them. On the Contrary I am informd that the Citizens are grown so polite as to treat them with Tokens of Civility and respect. Can a Man take fire into his Bosom and not be burnd? Your Massachusetts Tories communicate with the Enemy in Britain as well as New York. They give and receive Intelligences ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... ugly things went on in the Osborn bungalow. It was known that scenes occurred between the husband and wife which were not of the order admitted as among the methods of polite society. One evening Mrs. Osborn walked slowly down the Mall dressed in her best gown and hat, and bearing on her cheek a broad, purpling mark. When asked questions, she merely smiled and made no answer, which was extremely awkward for ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... him and moved in there with her suit case and rugs. When the train had started and she had parried one or two polite enquiries as to place and ventilation, she said: "I think I ought to tell you who I am, in case you would not like to be seen speaking to me—I imagine you are in diplomacy, as I noticed you went through with a Red passport.—I am Vivien Warren, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... house as his prison, and withdrawing him to an apartment, he seized all Don Esteban's goods; by this time the afternoon was ended. On the following day, Don Juan de Vargas, having returned to the city, was promptly visited; and after a polite visit, he was told that he must remain a prisoner in his own house, without leaving it, under a penalty of one thousand ducados. On this day, it was published that all acts by the royal Council in favor of the archbishop, the governor, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... were all very polite, and I rested as sweetly that night as if in my own room at Levi Coffin's, or in my own Michigan home. The next day the colonel was very free to talk of the false ideas of Northern people about slavery; spoke of Elizabeth Margaret ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... would be so!" he exclaimed, when he recovered himself. "Mynheer Von Kniper was very polite, and so was his wife; and they introduced me to all their company. I believe the governor-general was there, or some great person. They paid me much more attention than they did the captain, who, if he had not been a right honest, good-natured ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... or should share power with the Duke of Portland. In all those barterings and borrowings we never hear the name of the nation. No whisper announces that there is such a thing in existence as the people. No allusion ever proceeds from the stately lips, or offends the "ears polite," of the embroidered conclave, referring to either the interests, the feelings, or the necessities of the nation. All was done as in an assemblage of a higher race of existence, calmly carving out the world for themselves—a tribe of Epicurean deities, with the cabinet for their Olympus, stooping ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... long time, he suddenly went over to the enemy, and swore to everything his sister said. However, as Tom observed the same night before going to bed, it was only in joke, and John had always been famous for being polite to ladies, even when he was quite a boy. Ruth said, 'Oh! indeed!' ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... swarms a vari-coloured crowd, but it was out of the question for the time being. I thought that Cairo, more complaisant in this respect than the mountain to the prophet, would come to me if I could not go to it, and as a matter of fact, Cairo was polite enough to do so. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... taught the children to be kind and polite to each other, just as well as to strangers and to "company." Though of course Bunny Brown and his sister Sue had little troubles and "spats" and differences, now and then, just ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... you are, the more certain you will be to practice in your own home every courtesy which you know is due elsewhere. If you are not polite and considerate in your home, you cannot help showing that fact away ...
— Manners And Conduct In School And Out • Anonymous
... appeared suddenly from behind a curtain; oh, he was an awful Beast, and Beauty's heart beat fast! But he seemed a polite Beast ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... I take a fine thick sandwich out of my bag, I always feel like making it a polite bow, and before I bite into a big brown doughnut, I am tempted to say, "By your leave, madam," and as for MINCE PIE——-Beau Brummel himself could not outdo me in respectful consideration. But Bill Hahn neither saw, nor smelled, nor, ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... his most flute-like tones, "I have brought a friend to see you, my little girl; turn round and give him your pretty hand. It is good to be devout; but it is necessary to be polite, my niece." ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... sent in a polite message to the girls, and on the receipt of the answer that they would be very pleased to have the captain's company, he and Harry went down. The meal was an excellent one, but the girls ate but little, for ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... professor. It is a liberality which shines more brightly, as reflected by one, whose religious education was drawn solely from the pure fountain of truth—the holy oracles; and however unlettered he was, as to polite literature or the learned languages, his Christian liberality can no more be enlightened by the niggard spirit of learned sectarians, than the sun could be illuminated by a rush-light. The inquiry was then, as, alas, it ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hope. Distances in Capernaum were short, and the messenger would soon find Jesus. There was little sympathy in the harsh, bald announcement of the death, or in the appended suggestion that the Rabbi need not be further troubled. The speaker evidently was thinking more of being polite to Jesus than of the poor father's stricken heart, Jairus would feel then what most of us have felt in like circumstances,—that he had been more hopeful than he knew. Only when the last glimmer ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... is true," she agreed, "but why London? I think that of all great cities it is the most provincial. It lacks what you call the atmosphere. The people are all so polite, and so deadly, deadly dull. How different in Paris ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... half-holiday I went out with the boys from my brothers' school. They always liked me to play with them, and, though not pleasant-tongued boys, were always civil and polite to me. I organized games and fortifications that they would never have imagined for themselves, led storming parties, and instituted some rather dangerous games of a fighting kind. I taught my brothers; to throw ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "MA'AM! dear, how polite we are grown of a sudden!" cried Bab, winking at her maid. "One may see you've been in good company this morning—hey, Susan? Come, let's hear ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... more agreeable. That is to say she was very polite, her smile was more fixed and her eyes more unfathomable than ever. Evidently Zikali had spoken to her and she had listened. Yet to tell the truth my distrust of this handsome young woman grew deeper day by day. ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... cultivation. In active service Grodman had been clean-shaven, like all members of the profession—for surely your detective is the most versatile of actors. Mrs. Drabdump closed the street door quietly, and pointed to the stairs, fear operating like a polite desire to give him precedence. Grodman ascended, amusement still glimmering in his eyes. Arrived on the landing he knocked peremptorily at the door, crying, "Nine o'clock, Mr. Constant; nine o'clock!" When he ceased there was ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... ourselves, for some cause unknown to us was considerably disturbed, internally or externally. It was impossible for any land-lubbers to stand; it was equally impossible to eat in the form prescribed by the rules of polite society, food being snatched at a venture, and not always arriving at the mouth for which it was originally intended. One or two were pitched out of their cots, and a murmuring of fear that this should be a tempest, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... This polite person, now taking his wife aside, asked her "what she thought of the ladies lately arrived?" "Think of them?" said the wife, "why, what should I think of them?" "I know," answered he, "what I think. The guides ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the "Jenan" for Sept. 1, 1872, written by Frances Effendi Merrash, brother of the Sitt Mariana, whose paper we have translated on a preceding page. It is evident that the Effendi writes from the atmosphere of Aleppo. The more "polite" society of that city is largely made up of that mongrel population, half French and half Arab, which is styled "Levantine" and too often combines the vices of both, with the virtues of neither. It will be seen that the able author is combatting ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... chatting with Rose. He rose with a bland, "Good-evening," and gallantly handed Elsie to a seat. Arthur was a good deal changed since his recall from college; and in nothing more than in his manner to Elsie; he was now always polite; often cordial even when alone with her. He was not thoroughly reformed, but had ceased to gamble and ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... from him proved to me in a thousandfold manner how deep and strong was the bond that bound me to him. We had scarcely more than become well settled in Rome than a letter arrived which he had mailed at Vienna, and which the polite consul came and delivered in person. And what a letter it was!—only a page or two, but words alive with the love and passion of his heart. And that was the last letter, as it was the first, that I ever received ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... of you speak of it, and I noticed Oliver stammer dreadfully when Mrs. Maxwell mentioned Mr. Jardine; but I thought that at this time of day, when everybody knew there was no malice borne originally, and Uncle Crawfurd might have been killed, you might have been polite and neighbourly with quiet consciences. I tell you, I mean to set my cap at young Mr. Jardine of Whitethorn, and when I marry him, and constitute him a family connexion, of course the relics of that old accident will be scattered ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... both the major and he speedily showed that they were not unfamiliar with the use of a gun. Whether the birds came at them like bomb-shells, or sprung like a sky-rocket through the leafless branches, they met with the same polite attention; though occasionally one would double back on the beaters and get clear away, sailing far into the silver-clear sky. Lord Beauregard scarcely shot at all, unless he was fairly challenged by a bird flying right past him: he seemed quite ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... done votin', Sonny, after first thankin' 'em,—which I think was a mighty polite thing to do, an' they full o' the giggles at his little expense that minute,—why, he went on to say thet he requie'd 'em to make thess one condition, an' that was thet any question he missed was to be passed on to them thet had been a-gradj'atin' ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... her untutored faiths and instincts, shaking off all rule, ignorant of all conventionalities, only bent, amidst difficulties, and obstacles, and delays, on steadily working towards one fixed and well-defined end—surely, tried by any of the received laws of polite society, concerning correct, well-educated young ladies of thirteen, she would be found sadly wanting. Shall we blame her? or shall we not rather, with a kindly compassion, try for a while to understand from what point of view she had learnt to look at life, and to arrive at some comprehension ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... to pay a fifty dollar fine. At last in a fit of desperation, Paul said he would call on the editor and see what kind of a man he was, anyway, and if he proved to be all right, he might be induced to join them as a guest, which would be a more polite way to put it. They were willing to give twenty-five or thirty dollars; but they felt a delicacy in making such ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... question, with his own end in view. Paving the way for Mr. Vimpany's departure from the cottage at Passy, he made a polite offer of ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... answered, perfunctorily polite, and with her eyes still fixed darkly on space. And as if half to herself, she added, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... its haunches, it said, in tones polite, "There seems to be but two of us to stay in here to-night!" Tim muttered in a trembling voice, as for the door he run, "Perhaps you think there will be two, but ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... loud crowing," said the Portuguese duck; "but, still, he's a handsome bird, there's no denying that, although he's not a drake. He ought to moderate his voice, like those little birds who are singing in the lime-trees over there in our neighbor's garden, but that is an art only acquired in polite society. How sweetly they sing there; it is quite a pleasure to listen to them! I call it Portuguese singing. If I had only such a little singing-bird, I'd be kind and good as a mother to him, for it's in my ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... cowardice, imbecility or weakness; and because there can be no middle course in carrying on a war. We have suffered enough by it already in money and men; we must suffer no more. Besides, we lose self-respect, and gain only the contempt of the enemy. When the bearer of General Sherman's polite proclamation, addressed 'to the loyal citizens of South Carolina,' communicated it to the two officers near Beaufort, they replied, with courteous nonchalance, 'Your mission is fruitless; there are no loyal citizens in the State.' The general's action in the premises reminds us of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... perfectly. Six years ago, as I went down to my early breakfast at our Pension in Vevey, I saw that a stranger had arrived. He was a tall youth, of eighteen or twenty, with a thin, intelligent face, and the charmingly polite manners of a foreigner. As the other boarders came in, one by one, they left the door open, and a draught of cold autumn air blew in from the stone corridor, making the new-comer cough, shiver, and cast wistful glances towards the warm corner ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... man raised in camp, and brought up in the midst of the rough and tough elements that are collected together there, should possess qualities not calculated to fit him for the polite transactions that take place in drawing rooms and parlors. General Clarke's self-reliance was extreme. Having commanded men from the time he was sixteen, it was natural that his temper and his manners should be offensive, ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... Buddhist as well as Christian professors. Doctors Anderson and Franklin were also guests, and when they followed me, they made the same mistake and made Christian addresses. But the Japanese management is very polite and very liberal, and even in the dinner that followed our faux pas did not provoke a word of criticism. The guests at that dinner served by the students were from the most prominent educational institutions of Japan. We highly ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... words. I believe it has never been successfully reduced to writing, and the restoration of pure Arabic has been proposed, with much reason, as preferable to an attempt to improve or refine it. Italian is the language used in the courts of justice and polite society, and is spoken here with much more purity than either in Naples ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... leave the house with her lover? Why does a man never kill a man? Why does a man never kill himself? Why is nothing ever accomplished? In real life murder, adultery, and suicide are of common occurrence; but Mr. James's people live in a calm, sad, and very polite twilight of volition. Suicide or adultery has happened before the story begins, suicide or adultery happens some years hence, when the characters have left the stage, but bang in front of the reader nothing happens. The suppression or maintenance of story in a novel is a matter ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the eighteenth century was sharply assailed. Then Barere found an old stone inscribed with three Latin words, and wrote a dissertation upon it, which procured him a seat in a learned Assembly, called the Toulouse Academy of Sciences, Inscriptions, and Polite Literature. At length the doors of the Academy of the Floral Games were opened to so much merit. Barere, in his thirty-third year, took his seat as one of that illustrious brotherhood, and made an inaugural oration which was greatly admired. He apologises for recounting these triumphs of his youthful ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... unbroken silence while she poured out the tea, "for the last time, dear," as her step-mother jocosely remarked, and for his sake alone she exerted herself to make polite conversation with this new mistress ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... manner toward me is quite as polite, nay, rather more considerate than when I first came here. Beside, you know, we are almost strangers; sometimes weeks elapse without ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... respectability, he perhaps erred on the side of virtue. Honest, brave, and high-minded, he was also penurious and cold, and the ostentatious good humour of the colonists dashed itself in vain against his polite indifference. In opposition to this official society created by Governor Arthur was that of the free settlers and the ticket-of-leave men. The latter were more numerous than one would be apt to suppose. On the 2nd ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... himself was a living contradiction of the fallacious statement that all men are equal, and now, moved by her unhappiness, she caught a glimpse of that lying beneath the impregnable reserve of a polite and agreeable exterior which made the distinction. She realized more strongly than before that he lived upon a different plane from that of any man she ever ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... looked about her for the guest of honor. It transpired that the affair was quite informal, after all. The Englishwoman was sitting in a tea-tent discoursing with a number of gentlemen who hung over her with polite attentions. They were well-known bachelors of advanced ideas—men with honorary titles and personal ambitions. The great suffragist was very much at home with them. Her deep, musical voice resounded like a bell as she uttered her dicta and her witticisms. She—like the men—was smoking ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... footfall was heard upon the marble floor, soft, quick and decided. She paused a moment in the middle of the room when she saw that the artist was not alone. He went forward to meet her and asked leave to present Orsino, with that polite indistinctness which leaves to the persons introduced the task ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... thrust into his swelling bosom, he rose and fell on his toes, and for ten minutes, almost without drawing breath, went on hurling himself intellectually to the assault of Charles Gould's polite silence; and when, stopping abruptly, he fell back into his chair, it was as though he had been beaten off from a fortress. To save his dignity he hastened to dismiss this silent man with a solemn inclination of the head and the words, pronounced ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the Channel. It is a proverb, that the London policemen are never at hand. The stout fellows with their clubs look as if they might do service; but what a contrast they are to the Paris sergents de ville! The latter, with his dress-coat, cocked hat, long rapier, white gloves, neat, polite, attentive, alert,—always with the manner of a jesuit turned soldier,—you learn to trust very much, if not respect; and you feel perfectly secure that he will protect you, and give you your rights in any corner of Paris. It does look as ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Disposition. That he had acquired a Fortune by Commerce, and having no Relations to leave it to, he travelled through Arabia, Persia, India, Libia and Utopia in search of a real Friend. In this Pursuit he found several with whom he exchanged good Offices, and that were polite and obliging, but they often flew off for Trifles; or as soon as he pretended to be in Distress, and requested their Assistance, left him to struggle with his own Difficulties. So true is that Copy in our Books, which says, Adversity ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... him after a moment by his voice. We have reckoned it up, and find that she has not seen him since the Easter before last. At first he called her Fraulein, but her mother said: Don't be silly. It did not seem silly to me, but most polite!!! ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... man to put off the work," Matilda went on. "The man was very polite, but he said his orders from Mrs. De Peyster had been strict, and if he wasn't allowed to go on with the work, he said, in order to protect himself, he'd have to cable Mrs. De Peyster that the people occupying her house wouldn't let him. Judge Harvey didn't want Mrs. De Peyster to find out ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... French oficers. There awful polite. I wish the Captin could hear them. Joe says he was made a gentleman by an act of Congress when they made him an oficer. Congress certinly has a lot of power in ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... Arthur Payson Noyes, National Theatre. With the simplicity and dispatch that characterized her, she went to that place. To the man reposing somnolently in the broken old chair beside the door she said she had a letter for Mr. Noyes. The doorkeeper saw it was a large, swanking envelope with very polite writing. He straightened up in the chair long enough to pass her in, and ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... your pardon, Yourii Nicolaijevitch; I seem to be always pushing against you," he said, laughing, as he lurched forward in an endeavour to be polite. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... her with polite attention or gushing cordiality, and she was beginning to calm into something like sober ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... published a little book which interests persons who in civilized society form a respectable minority, and in the savage world an overpowering majority. But, savage or polite, almost all men must shave, or must be shaved, and the author of "A Few Useful Hints on Shaving," is, in his degree, a benefactor to his fellow-creatures. The mere existence of the beard may be accounted ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... she might add also of Mr. Slope, depicted her own grievous state, and concluded by being assured that Mrs. Proudie would forgive her extreme hardihood in petitioning to be allowed to be carried to a sofa. She then enclosed one of her beautiful cards. In return she received as polite an answer from Mr. Slope—a sofa should be kept in the large drawing-room, immediately at the top of the grand stairs, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... enthroned her, but made no introductions at the moment; a young man stood by the piano, violin in hand, evidently waiting for the stir over the guest of honor to subside. The hostess gave the signal and the guests were polite if restless. However, the playing was admirable; and Madame Zattiany, at least, gave it her undivided attention. She was, as ever, apparently unconscious of glances veiled and open, but Clavering laid a bet with himself that before the end of the encore—politely demanded—she knew ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... embarkation a portage was necessary. Wilmington was twelve miles distant, and I reached the railroad station of that city with my canoe packed in a bed of corn-husks, on a one-horse dray, in time to take the evening train to Flemington, on Lake Waccamaw. The polite general freight-agent, Mr. A. Pope, allowed my canoe to be transported in the passenger baggage-car, where, as it had no covering, I was obliged to steady it during the ride of thirty-two miles, to protect it from the friction caused by the motion ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... they have been our next-door neighbors, and she has never been inside the house. Nor he either, for that matter, except once when it took fire, you know, and he came in with that funny little chemical engine tucked under his arm, and took off his hat in the same prim, polite way that he takes it off when he talks to Sibyl, and said, 'If you'll excuse me offering advice, Miss Hopkins, it is not necessary to move anything; it mars furniture very much to move it at a fire. ...
— Different Girls • Various
... exceed all truth," exclaimed the second Athenian, not at all angered by the praise. But Simonides, whose tongue was brisk, ran on with a torrent of flattery and of polite insinuation, until Cimon halted ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... superiority. Your bodies, and not your brains, are stronger than ours. Believe me, it is well for you that you are able to beat us; or, such is the superiority of our understanding, we should make all of you what the brave, and wise, and witty, and polite are already—our slaves."—"I am glad I know your mind," answered the squire. "But we'll talk more of this matter another time. At present, do tell me what man is it you mean about my daughter?"—"Hold a moment," ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... plump, middle-aged body who had a little—a very little—English, but whose ideas of discipline, recitation, and study were too well fixed to permit of accommodation to our methods. She was unfailingly polite and kind, though I could see that she was often harassed by the innovations to which she ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... uncle a calm, polite, and clearly worded letter to confirm my decision. He has not answered it, nor did ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the Burlingame treaty may need to be replaced by more careful methods, securing the Chinese and ourselves against a larger and more rapid infusion of this foreign race than our system of industry and society can take up and assimilate with ease and safety. This ancient Government, ruling a polite and sensitive people, distinguished by a high sense of national pride, may properly desire an adjustment of their relations with us which would in all things confirm and in no degree endanger the permanent peace and amity ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... at his watch in that furtive way which polite persons employ when time presses and a companion is garrulous. He had finished his rice pudding and his milk, and in five minutes he would be expected to hang up his hat behind the mirrored partition of the New Era Drug Store and walk out smilingly to serve the New Era customers, patrons, the ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
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