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More "Swagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... good-humoured countenance, sat under the shade of a neighbouring tree smoking a pipe of that excessive shortness and blackness that seems to be peculiarly beloved by Irishmen in the humbler ranks of life. The man was very, tall and broad-shouldered, and carried himself with a free-and-easy swagger, as he rose and approached the ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... adj.; high notions, hauteur; vainglory, crest; arrogance &c (assumption) 885. proud man, highflier^; fine gentleman, fine lady. V. be proud &c adj.; put a good face on; look one in the face; stalk abroad, perk oneself up; think no small beer of oneself; presume, swagger, strut; rear one's head, lift up one's head, hold up one's head; hold one's head high, look big, take the wall, bear like the Turk no rival near the throne [Pope], carry with a high hand; ride the high horse, mount on one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... at that, but she liked extreme Americanism never the more. Perhaps she was a bit of a snob, though fate was getting ready to beat the snobbery out of her. And hers was an unintentional, superficial snobbery, at worst. Some people said she was affected and that she aped the swagger dialect. But she had a habit of taking on the accent and color of her environments. She had not been in England a month before she spoke Piccadilly almost impeccably. She had caught French and German intonations with equal speed ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... chair close to mine, and as he knew my weak side, the scamp continued: 'Just think what a swagger thing it will be to do, and how amusing to tell about; the whole army will talk about it, and it will ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... your light hair out of the way; pull your cap over your eyes; gather your veil down close; draw up your figure; throw back your head; walk with a little springy sway and swagger, as if you didn't care a damson for anybody, and—there! I declare no one could tell you from me!" exclaimed Capitola in delight, as she completed the disguise and the instructions ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... desolating braying began. "If you love Swagger Literature, put your telephone on to Bruggles, the Greatest Author of all Time. The Greatest Thinker of all Time. Teaches you Morals up to your Scalp! The very image of Socrates, except the back of his head, which is like Shakspeare. He has six toes, dresses in red, and ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... English, French or German. His voice had been quiet and deferential, but by no means genteel; nor had it any hint of the roystering joviality of a sailor. More than anything else his gait, in its sedate unobtrusiveness, seemed to me utterly at variance with the rolling swagger which we conventionally ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... and Harrison, How they swagger from their garrison! Such a triplet could you tell Where to find on this side hell? Harrison, D——ks, and Clements, Keeper, see they have their payments; Every mischief's in their hearts; If they ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... from barracks, clad in the "walking-out" finery of shell-jacket and overalls, with the jingle of spurs and effort at the true Cavalry swagger, or rather the first attempt at a walk abroad, for the expedition had ended disastrously ere well begun. Unable to shake off his admirer, Trooper Herbert Hawker, Dam had just passed the Main Guard and main gates in the company of Herbert, and the two recruits had encountered the Adjutant ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... and, though not very tall, of a good figure, with handsome features, and a remarkably dark complexion; he was dressed in a rich semi-oriental military costume, and had a dashing independent air about him, which Morton thought approached very much to a swagger, but perhaps at that moment he was not a very unprejudiced judge. Ronald could not help staring at him in a ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... meet Parry, who, followed by D'Artagnan, advanced slowly on account of his age. D'Artagnan walked slowly but nobly, as D'Artagnan, doubled by the third of a million, ought to walk, that is to say, without conceit or swagger, but without timidity. When Buckingham, very eager to comply with the desire of the princess, who had seated herself on a marble bench, as if fatigued with the few steps she had gone,—when Buckingham, we say, was at a ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... eagerly scanned the figures about the station. Three or four swagger young drummers had scrambled off the smoker, and these ambassadors of fashion as many hotel bus drivers were inviting with importunate hospitality to honour their respective board and bed. There was the shirt-sleeved ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... the fatal defect of all foreign Clubs is, the existence of some one, perhaps two tyrants, who, by loud talk, swagger, an air of presumed superiority and affectation of "knowing the whole thing," browbeat and ride rough-shod over all their fellows. It is in the want of that wholesome corrective, public opinion, that this pestilence is possible. Of public opinion the Continent knows next to nothing in any ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... meks him joomp ovver my swagger-cane, an' shek hands, an' beg, an' lie dead, an' a lot o' them tricks as laadies teeaches dogs, though I doan't haud with it mysen, for it's makin' a fool o' a good dog to do ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... was a man—a splendid dark ruffian lounging along. He wanted to show off, and his swagger was perfect. Long black onyx eyes and a tumble of black curls, and teeth like almonds. But what do you think he carried on his wrist—a hawk with fierce yellow eyes, ringed and chained. Hawking is a favourite sport in the hills. Oh, why doesn't some great painter come and paint it all before ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... with a poor attempt at a swagger, without his customary protestations of duty and humble offers of service. And I thanked Heaven he had not made a scene, which in my state of mind I could not have borne, but must have laid hands ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... like his in the whole school. No end of swell pictures—foreign mostly; lovely little books, which, I believe, were foreign also; an etching of his own place up in Yorkshire; carpets, and rugs, and little statuettes—swagger through and through; a little too much so, I believe, for the rules, but Biffen evidently had not put his foot down. Acton was standing on the hearthrug with his back to the fire, and on seeing us he politely offered us chairs with ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... life that Martin had given her. A new life had begun for her on Christmas Day—in fact, it would be true to say that a new Joanna had begun. Something in her was broken, melted, changed out of all recognition—she was softer, weaker, more excited, more tender. She had lost much of her old swagger, her old cocksureness, for Martin had utterly surprised and tamed her. She had come to him in a scheming spirit of politics, and he had kept her in a spirit of devotion. She had come to him as Ansdore to North Farthing—but he had stripped her ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... comes from Insterburg. He seemed to swagger very much, this gentleman—very much. I should have liked to have ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... the rascal's hands, a rattling shower of blows fell on his back, and he took an involuntary header into the river. He crawled up the bank a sad and sober man, and all three at once tumbled from the height of saucy swagger to a low depth of slavish abjectness. The musket was found to have an enormous charge, and might have blown our man to pieces, but for the promptitude with which his companions administered justice in a lawless land. We were all ferried safely across ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... a touch of foppery about him, in the enormous white tie and the much-cherished whiskers of the fifties, which was only redeemed by that other touch of devilry that he had shown me in the corridor. By the rich brown of his complexion, as well as by a certain sort of swagger in his walk, I should have said that he was a naval officer ashore, had he not told me who he was ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... expressed in his countenance, the muscular strength of his stalwart frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots, and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in the Baron's costume was a large diamond, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... twenty-five at least instead of his twenty-two years, with a kindly face, like his father's, brown hair, hazel eyes, and a clean-shaven, sensitive mouth more suited to a girl than to a man. Now, Ormsby smiled sardonically at the unconscious swagger of the young man, and he wondered, too. Indeed, he had more than a suspicion about that check. Everybody knew of his rival's heavy debts, but that he should put his head into the lion's mouth was ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... remark, he said, was a libel on the character of the place. The meeting, he declared, was not composed of a fourth part of the population, or a hundredth part of the respectability of the village. The resolutions he described as being the work of presuming boys, who swagger of time immemorial; of strangers who had lived but a brief time in the county; and of a few disreputable persons who, bent on construing liberty entirely on their own side, interposed against palpable rights ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... the route of their advance knew them at a glance by their uniform, their Indian tan, and their jaunty swagger and gave a cheer as they passed. They touched the chord of romance in the hearts of officers, who regarded them as an archaic survival which sentiment permitted in an isolated instance in Africa, where it excellently served. And officers looked at one another and shook their ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... my friends looking out of all the club windows. My reputation is gone. I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled by whipper-snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. I am found out. And in the days of my triumphs, when people were yet afraid of me, and were taken in by my swagger, I always knew that I was a lily-liver, and expected that I should ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... step one or the other called delighted attention to some new exhibit. Most extraordinary were, possibly, the men from the gold mines of the Sierras, These were mostly young, but long haired, bearded, rough, wilder than any mortal man need be. They walked with a wide swagger. Their clothes were exaggeratedly coarse, but they ornamented themselves with bright silk handkerchiefs; with feathers, flowers; with squirrel or buck-tails In their hats; with long heavy chains of nuggets; ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... still, but I only leant further back, and by the time it was all over I had resumed an horizontal position, and resolved, like the man in "Happy Thoughts," not to move again whatever happened. I soon felt all right again, and was able to reply in a very swagger voice to Henry's rather meek enquiry concerning the state of the weather. By-and-bye a short interchange of experiences occurred between Henry and a boy who had been put into our third berth at the last moment, the latter in the innocence of his youth ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... man, probably twenty—possibly twenty-five, for life advanced quickly under the sun of Africa. His figure was slender and boyish, his face thinly bearded, a lack which was accentuated by the beard being divided into two points. Yes, now they, saw; it was his eyes that had dispelled the boast and swagger of the Gaul, the superciliousness of the Capuan, and whatever of brawling boldness had been in either. These eyes were black and large and flashing with courage and energy and the pride of noble birth. No detail of the scene seemed to escape their first glance, and he ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... worthy sergeant—was one of those men who love a drop of the native, and whose heart besides it expands into a sort of surly kindness that has something comical and not disagreeable in it. In addition to this, he never felt a confidence in his own authority with half the swagger which he did when three quarters gone. Steen and he were never friends, nor indeed was Steen ever a popular man among his acquaintances. In matters of trade and business he was notoriously dishonest, and in the moral and social relations of life, selfish, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... been very swagger little shoes in the beginning—Ikey had made rather a specialty of footgear—but they were her "escape" shoes; and their looks told the tale of their wanderings. Also, she had had ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... himself the "love lit" eyes of Rose Maynard which would greet him on his return; of the poverty in which she and her father existed, and the joy which would be his when he took them from their squalid surroundings. They would all go to Pfahlert's Hotel—that was the swagger hotel in Sydney—and whilst he and old Mr. Maynard "trotted around" and enjoyed themselves, Rose, sweet Rose, and Mrs. Tracey would fuss about over the coming wedding and buy the trousseau and all ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... replied the boy stubbornly, "and I'll drink it if he says so." He lifted the glass and stood looking inquiringly at the man across from him. "Shall I drink it?" he asked, and waited with a boyish swagger. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... spared the rod, in the boy's youth, as he certainly spared the sword when Absalom had murdered his brother. His own immorality had loosened the bonds of family purity, and made him ashamed to punish his children. He had let Absalom flaunt and swagger and live in luxury, and put no curb on him; and here was the end of his foolish softness. How many fathers and mothers are the destroyers of their children to-day in the very same fashion! That grave in the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... feelings—to do so is not manly and bores your fellows. Don't cry out when you're hurt, making yourself a nuisance to other people. Tell no tales about your companions, and no lies about yourself. Avoid all 'swank,' 'side,' 'swagger,' braggadocio of speech or manner, on pain of being laughed at." (This maxim is carried to such a pitch that the Englishman, except in his press, habitually understates everything.) "Think little of money, and speak less ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... "This swagger about killing birds is mere cant," sez this wobbling old wag. From Arran he'd tramp to Dunrobin without the least chance of a bag! "Peaceful hills," that's his patter, my pippin; no gillies, no luncheons, no game! Wy, he ought to be tossed in a blanket; it fills a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... exclaimed the other with a swagger. "That's how yer paw used ter put it. Your maw warn't much good no how, with her finicky notions 'bout eddicati'n an' sech. A little pone and baken with plenty good ol' red eye's good 'nough fer us. Yer ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... the limelit boards: With false moustache, set smirk and ogling eyes And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash, and clatter; And over the brassy blare and drumming din She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin Spirtle of sniggering ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... Clay comes up from the works hurriedly and gives a whistle, and from one of the bedroom doors emerges Jones, looking rather like a schoolboy who has been in disgrace and means to carry it off with swagger. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... daring to the square inch, into any day before. He lounged back a little in his chair, put his hands in his pockets and tried to feel swaggering and at ease. Madame Beattie, he knew, wouldn't object to swagger. And if it would help him dramatically, so much the better. "Madame Beattie," he repeated, "I've a proposition to make to you. I thought of it ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... moved from where she had first seen him—he struck her as confessing, with strange tears in his own eyes, to sharp identity of emotion. "Poor thing, poor thing"—it reached straight— "ISN'T she, for one's credit, on the swagger?" After which, as, held thus together they had still another strained minute, the shame, the pity, the better knowledge, the smothered protest, the divined anguish even, so overcame him that, blushing to his eyes, he turned short away. The affair but of ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Don't I know your goodness? A stupid heart gone sour with jealousy, To feel its blood too dull and thick for sinning.— Yes, Huff would figure a wicked thought, but had No notion how, and flung the clay aside.— O they were gaudy colours both! But now Fear has bleacht their swagger and left them blank, Fear of a loon that cried, End of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... bill for my little entertainment as quickly as possible. Then I dismounted from my chair and beckoned to the dwarf, still sitting white and piteous, to join me. He obeyed like a frightened child who had been naughty. All his swagger and braggadocio were gone. His bosom heaved with suppressed sobs. He sat down on the chair I had vacated and buried his face on the ecarte table. We remained thus aloof from the crowd who were intent on the calculation at the baccarat table. At last the raven ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... of mutual compliment; That thought the other Gracchus, this supposed His brother Mucius; so they praised and prosed. Our tuneful race the selfsame madness goads: My friend writes elegies, and I write odes: O how we puff each other! "'Tis divine; The Muses had a hand in every line." Remark our swagger as we pass the dome Built to receive the future bards of Rome; Then follow us and listen what we say, How each by turns awards and takes the bay. Like Samnite fencers, with elaborate art We hit in tierce to be hit back in quart. I'm dubbed Alcaeus, and retire in force: ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... marriage. It was a grave example, at any rate, of what a man—and such a man!—might make of a woman. She could see how the Condrip pair pressed their brother's widow on the subject of Aunt Maud—who wasn't, after all, their aunt; made her, over their interminable cups, chatter and even swagger about Lancaster Gate, made her more vulgar than it had seemed written that any Croy could possibly become on such a subject. They laid it down, they rubbed it in, that Lancaster Gate was to be kept in sight, and that she, Kate, was to keep it; so that, curiously, or at all events sadly, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... I wasn't the least bit scared, though I admit it was a dangerous feat," Daddy Longlegs told them. Then he would strut and swagger about, trying to appear as if there wasn't a braver person than he in all Pleasant Valley. And he talked about his wild ride to everybody that ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... to droop apologetic heads, because we know that some women are sentimental, that they don't all "look at things in the large," as men invariably do. In view, however, of the record of this youthful movement of ours, we have a right rather to swagger than ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... we don't tell.... Pride! Rotten pride! We come home from our first voyage sick of it all.... Would give up but for pride.... Afraid to be called 'stuck sailors' ... of the sneers of our old schoolmates.... So we come home in a great show of bravery and swagger about in our brass-bound uniform and lie finely about the fine times we had ... out there! ... And then nothing will do but Jimmy, next door, must be off to the sea too—to come back and play the same game on young Alick! That's ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... were scanty and irregular, he never could bring himself into habits of prudence and economy; often he was stripped of all his present finances at play; often he lavished them away in fits of unguarded charity or generosity. Sometimes among his boon companions he assumed a ludicrous swagger in money matters, which no one afterward was more ready than himself to laugh at. At a convivial meeting with a number of his fellow-students, he suddenly proposed to draw lots with any one present which of the two should treat the whole party to the play. The moment the proposition ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... one there but knew that, faster than the ticking of a clock, guns might gleam and spurt fire and lead in case of trouble. It was all being done ethically enough. They did not know exactly what the entrance of Wyatt meant, but Sandy's talk gave them a hint and his poise was correct, without swagger, without intent to start general ruction. It was up ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... how Joe Bradley stared: and as they rounded the corner of the hedge he remarked suddenly "I say! There's that swagger ayah of yours walking with Lady Despard. She's jolly smart, for an ayah. Did you bring her from India? You ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... and slink of the derelict and the pompous strut of the pharisee, or the swagger of the bully or the dandy, there is the golden mean in posture, which stands for self-respect and self-confidence, combined with courtesy and ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... it was! It seems they're going to have the very devil of a week of it—balls—dinner parties—swagger house party—general junketings—and obviously a houseful of diamonds as well. Diamonds galore! As a general rule nothing would induce me to abuse my position as a guest. I've never done it, Bunny. But in this case we're engaged like the waiters and the band, and by heaven ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... of his adventure, with swelling chest and so considerable swagger that he quite impressed even his bitterest enemies, while Kala fairly danced ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... still swagger it, after having worn that livery for three years?" he asked, and his lean forefinger pointed at my hideous motley of red ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... guess I got some brains around me," he added, inspired by Sam's presence to assume a slight swagger. "They'd have to get up pretty early to find any good ole revolaver, once I got my hands ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... spoke to those men in a most overbearing manner. Why, you could not have been more downright had you been an officer of the Emperor himself. What passed through my mind as I listened was, 'Where did this youth get his swagger?' You ordered Kurzbold out of the ranks, ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... utter contempt for nonsense was too evident. Bacchus was the same size as his master, and often fell heir to his cast-off clothes. A blue dress-coat and buff vest that he thus inherited, had a great effect upon him, bodily and spiritually. Not only did he swagger more when arrayed in them, but his prayers and singing were doubly effective. He secretly prided himself on a likeness to Mr. Weston, but this must have been from a confusion of mind into which he was thrown, by constantly ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... politics seriously?' said Count Rouvaloff, when Lord Arthur had told him the object of his mission; but Lord Arthur, who hated swagger of any kind, felt bound to admit to him that he had not the slightest interest in social questions, and simply wanted the explosive machine for a purely family matter, in which no one was ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... humorists of the period made a market, the Napoleonic scare was no laughing matter for the poor people, who had nothing to gain and everything to lose, by even the possibility of the thing. We, who, in these peaceful times, are apt to swagger about Britannia ruling the waves, cannot perhaps realize what it meant to have this great military genius sitting down with his legions of three hundred thousand opposite our shores, keenly watching for and calculating our weakest point of defence! What should we think if, ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... might reasonably reply, "But this is how I support my friend Anne in her sublime evolutionary effort." Whenever he laughed at an old-fashioned actor for ranting, the actor might answer, "My exaggeration is not more absurd than the tail of a peacock or the swagger of a cock; it is the way I preach the great fruitful lie of the life-force that I am a very fine fellow." We have remarked the end of Shaw's campaign in favour of progress. This ought really to have been the end of his campaign against romance. All the tricks ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Molo, whither they go every evening to taste the air and to look at the ladies, while the Austrians and the other foreigners listen to the military music in the Piazza. They are both young, our friends; they have both glossy silk hats; they have both light canes and an innocent swagger. Inconceivably mild are these youth, and in their talk indescribably ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Didn't you know? Oh, there's an awfully swagger party on downstairs. They were all trooping in as ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... view of the case seemed to cheer Billy Williams so much that he began to smile on the world again, and felt able to swagger a little, almost as if he had won the race instead of losing it. Somehow, Ceddie Errol had a way of making people feel comfortable. Even in the first flush of his triumphs, he remembered that the person who was beaten might ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... mouths of all warriors and sea-rovers round the coasts as the most likely young champion of the time, able to rival, if he had the opportunity, the prowess of Harold Hardraade himself. Yes, he would go and see his mother: he would be kind if she was kind; if she were not, he would boast and swagger, as he was but too apt to do. That he should go back at the risk of his life; that any one who found him on English ground might kill him; and that many would certainly try to kill him, he knew very well. But that only gave special zest to ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... say as I'm disturbing on ye, Passon," he remonstrated, mildly; "I ain't said a mortal wurrd! I was onny jes' keepin' my eye on the clap gate yonder, in case the party in the churchyard might walk through, thinkin' it a right-o'-way. Them swagger folk ain't got no sort of idee as to ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... for, though he was a short man, he was round and broad, and stood with his hands in his pockets, and his legs just wide enough apart to express a mind at rest upon the subject of the cellar, and an easy confidence - too calm and virtuous to become a swagger - in the general resources of the Inn. The superabundant moisture, trickling from everything after the late rain, set him off well. Nothing near him was thirsty. Certain top-heavy dahlias, looking over the palings of his neat well-ordered ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... swagger that takes a man in Helmeted, clattering, proud. Sweet are the honors the arrogant win, Hot from the breath of a crowd. Precious the spirit that never will bend— Hot challenge for insolent stare! But—talk when you've tried it!—to win in the end, Go ahsti!* ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... as before with his hand firmly thrust down into his pocket, as if determined not to shake that of his departing guest, while Jacob opened the door as wide as he could. Gaffin, unabashed, nodded to the fisherman and his dame, and with a swagger in his walk to conceal the irritation he felt, left the cottage. Jacob watched him till he had ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... With a swagger he lifted the bottle to his lips, and, stopping short, let it fall untouched to the ground. He had straightened in his saddle, and was looking up the street. With a deep curse he threw the Winchester to his shoulder, fired, and before his yell had died on his lips horse ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... his breast, his eyes fixed upon the glowing embers. For half an hour he was silent and still. Then, with the gesture of a man who has taken his decision, he sprang to his feet and passed into his bedroom. A little later a rakish young workman with a goatee beard and a swagger lit his clay pipe at the lamp before descending into the street. "I'll be back some time, Watson," said he, and vanished into the night. I understood that he had opened his campaign against Charles Augustus Milverton; but I little dreamed ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... against By-ends, Sir Having Greedy, and the Lord Old-man on the other, are in these drawings as simply distinguished by their costume. Good people, when not armed cap-a-pie, wear a speckled tunic girt about the waist, and low hats, apparently of straw. Bad people swagger in tail-coats and chimney-pots, a few with knee-breeches, but the large majority in trousers, and for all the world like guests at a garden-party. Worldly-Wiseman alone, by some inexplicable quirk, stands before Christian in laced hat, embroidered waistcoat, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... corner of which there now comes the tail of Louka's double apron. His eye gleams at once. He takes a stealthy look at her, and begins to twirl his moustache nervously, with his left hand akimbo on his hip. Finally, striking the ground with his heels in something of a cavalry swagger, he strolls over to the left of the table, opposite her, and says) Louka: do you know ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... married him for, his old Knickerbocker name, was no longer in the slightest degree necessary for social acceptance; while she could feed people, her trough would be well thronged. Kitty was neat, Kitty was trig, Kitty was what Beverly would call "swagger "; her skilful tailor-made clothes sheathed her closely and gave her the excellent appearance of a well-folded English umbrella; it was in her hat that she had gone wrong—a beautiful hat in itself, one which would have wholly become Hortense; ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... substantial middle mass of Germany has never been on friendly terms with the Germany of the court and the landowner. It has inherited a burgerlich tradition and resented even while it tolerated the swagger of the aristocratic officer. It tolerated it because that sort of thing was supposed to be necessary to the national success. But Munich, the comic papers, Herr Harden, Vorwaerts, speak, I think, for the central masses of German ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... confessed to nothing. Certainly he was what some might call handsome, of a pictorial, exuberant style of beauty, all attitude, profile, and impudence: a man whom I could see in fancy parade on the grand stand at a race-meeting, or swagger in Piccadilly, staring down the women, and stared at himself with admiration by the coal porters. Of his frame of mind at that moment his face offered a lively if an unconscious picture. He was lividly pale, and his lip was caught up in a smile that could almost ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were trying to make them exhibit signs of surprise. Impassivity is a point of honour with many uncivilised races, and we cannot infer that a savage has no curiosity because he does not excite himself over a mirror, or when his European visitors try to swagger with their mechanical appliances. Mr. Herbert Spencer founds, on the statements of Mr. Bates already quoted, a notion that "the savage, lacking ability to think and the accompanying desire to know, is without tendency ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... seeing his proposed son-in-law. Mr. Crowe, fully crediting the power confided to him, did as he was bidden. He was very harsh to the poor Captain; but in such a condition a man can hardly expect that people should not be harsh to him. The Captain endeavoured to hold up his head, and to swagger, and to assume an air of pinchbeck respectability. But the attorney would not permit it. He required that the man should own himself to be penniless, a scoundrel, only anxious to be bought; and the Captain at last admitted the facts. The figure was ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... man; "if it comes to that, I've business enough. Perhaps you'll just pay me this debt," he continued, changing his fawning manner into a bullying swagger. ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... of the doorway to the sidewalk. He was a big fellow, with something of the slouch and swagger that are to be observed in the tough the ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... half-dozen of natives who stood upon the deck, gazing in wonder at all they saw, "here's for you;" and he handed them a tray of broken biscuit and a can of water. Then thrusting his hands into his pockets, he walked up and down the deck with an enormous swagger, ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... spite of his irritation, he could not but admire the sort of affectionate swagger with which McVay rose to greet her, as if the brother of so tender a creature must ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... at last, and the mother who bore him would not have known him as he looked in the glass when it was done. He chucked Poll a diamond worth about a million piastres, and, remarking that he would not trouble him for the change, he walked out. By this characteristic swagger, of course, he more than confirmed my belief that he was, indeed, the celebrated foreigner the Count of Monte Cristo; whose name and history even YOU must be acquainted with, though you may not be what I have heard ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... it; you didn't know me that first night; you had never seen me but once before, and you couldn't have known me. How did you know me to-night? You won't answer, or if you do you'll say you knew me by my swagger. Anything to insult a woman. I'd like to be a man for a few hours just to see how they feel toward women—just how much more contempt they feel than they show. I tell you, you didn't know ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... strut, vapour, and swagger as thou dost; but why offended at this? Oh, but he has been a naughty man, and I have been righteous! sayst thou. Well, Pharisee, well, his naughtiness shall not be laid to thy charge, if thou hast chosen none of his ways. But since thou wilt yet bear me down that thou art righteous, ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... steps of the inn. He had altered the fashion of his hair, had fastened on large bushy eyebrows which he had obtained from a skilful perruquier in Cadiz, and a moustache of imposing size turned up at the tips; he wore high buff leather boots, and there was an air of military swagger about him, and he was altogether so changed that at the first glance the muleteer failed to recognize him. As soon as the mules were unburdened, Gerald found an opportunity of ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... light of many stars. Even so, in time one's eyes grew accustomed and it was a glamorous spectacle—twenty-eight beasts moving through dark defiles and over steep passes among the rugged, ragged hills. From any one spot they seemed at once to swagger and to slink, swaying as they moved on and vanished into obscurity. The small wild things in the night paused affrightedly in their scurryings until they had gone ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... imply a silent agitation, or a softer kind of lateral motion; as sway, swag, to sway, swagger, swerve, sweat, sweep, swill, swim, swing, swift, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... darted out over the emptying aisles; and, even as she pinned on her velveteen poke-bonnet at a too-swagger angle, and fluffed out a few carefully provided curls across her brow, she kept watch and with obvious subterfuge slid into her little unlined silk coat with a deliberation not ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... our pretensions to be a "swagger" ship and crew, the wardroom mess took lunch, instead of dinner, at one o'clock, dining at seven o'clock in the evening. This was the hour adopted by the saloon party, who, I learned, were regularly reinforced by one or more members of the wardroom contingent, by special invitation ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... the white man's title to certain alleged bequests of the Fathers in wage and position, authority and training; and when his attitude toward charity is sullen anger rather than humble jollity; when he insists on his human right to swagger and swear and waste,—then the spell is suddenly broken and the philanthropist is ready to believe that Negroes are impudent, that the South is right, and that Japan wants ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... dropped these words—they would have been admirable on the stage—made him reply with prompt ease: "What I meant just now was that you're not to tell him, after all my swagger, that I consider that you and I are really required ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... on the part of the objectionable relative, Brown. When the wagon which contained his personal effects and the few articles of furniture necessary for his occupancy of the cabin arrived, the exaggerated swagger which his companions had put on in their passage through the settlement gave way to a pastoral indolence, equally half real, half affected. Lying on their backs under a buckeye, they permitted Rice to voice the general sentiment. "There's a suthin' soothin' and dreamy in this kind ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... her failures and blunders, and there were hours when she still felt his dominion and exulted in it. But there were others when she saw his defects and was irritated by them: when his loudness and redness, his misplaced joviality, his familiarity with the servants, his alternating swagger and ceremony with her friends, jarred on perceptions that had developed in her unawares. Now and then she caught herself thinking that his two predecessors—who were gradually becoming merged in her memory—would have said this or that differently, behaved otherwise in such and such a ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... "hold on here, everybody! This is all right. You just let me inform you, Mr. Butter-in, that Mr. Burke has full authority to solemnize a marriage. He is a notary and was commissioned at the last meeting of the governor and council. And I know that," he added, attempting a bit of a swagger, "for I secured the commission for him myself." He came out of his corner and shook his cane at Farr. "I want you to understand that I have political power ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... presence of the Dewan, Chunerbutty's defiant manner dropped from him, for he had always held that official in awe. His swagger vanished; he bent low and his hand went up to his head in a salaam. The Premier of the State, a wrinkled old Brahmin, was seated on the ground propped up by white bolsters, with a small table, a foot high, crowded with ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... got a lift to the nearest town, and there rigged themselves out with new clothes, silver buttons, five-pound serapes, and a horse for each, with magnificent silver mountings to the saddle and spurs. Here they have dinner, and lots of pulque, and swagger about outside the door, smoking cigarettes. There, quite by chance, an acquaintance meets them, and admires the horses, but would like to see their paces tried a little outside the town. So they pace and gallop along for half a mile or so; ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... took part in the show; for the spectators thrilled with excitement, and applauded the popular victors. There was a whole set of conventions which were generally understood—there was even a new language. You were told that these "turnouts" were "nobby" and "natty"; they were "swagger" and "smart" and "swell." ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... meeting in the "entrance," fall suddenly into each other's arms, with a cry of "Camille!" "Armand!" Or if a man enters the greenroom with his hat on, and a half-dozen people call, "Do you take this for an ale-house, that you can enter with such a swagger?" and the hat comes off with a laughing apology. Or if the man with the cane is everlastingly practising "carte and tierce" on somebody, or doing a broadsword fight with any one who has an umbrella. If a woman passes with her eyes cast down, reading a letter, and some one says, ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... dickens don't you get out of a fellow's way?" snapped Herbert, supporting the machine and glaring round at Phil. He bore little resemblance to the usual dapper, immaculate, self-possessed young fellow from the city whose tailored clothes and swagger manners had aroused the envy and admiration of a number of ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... to where the strange Indian was standing erect and majestic, in all the pride of his plumage. There was no appearance of triumph or swagger about him, as he stood leaning on his rifle, in an attitude ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... bit, Harriet, but 'tis not an offensive swagger. As to his hat: 'tis a standing joke of the army as to how he keeps it on in battle. The hotter the fight the further on the side it gets. I saw a letter that General Greene writ to His Excellency in which he declared that ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... was not to be outdone in SANG FROID. I cocked my hat, and drawing my cloak over my shoulders, went out with a swagger which drove the curs from the gate before I came within a dozen paces of it. The rascals outside fell back as quickly, and in a moment I was in the street. Another moment and I should have been clear of the place and free to lie by for a while—when, without warning, ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... gazing at a dial; there were dials everywhere, showing pressures and speeds. And then I had come to the dynamo-room, where the revolutions were twelve hundred to the minute, and then to the turbines themselves—insignificant little things, with no swagger of huge crank and piston, disappointing little things that developed as much as one-third of the horse-power required for all ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... in his neat, serviceable undress uniform, with a cigar between his lips. He had abandoned the swagger frogged coat and silk sash for the unpretending patrol jacket of his brethren in the Line. He had been hard at work all day in barracks, inspecting meals, visiting the hospital, attending parades. He had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... candelabra on the billiard-table, made Semyon Matveitch a low bow, and with a slight swagger and a malignant smile, moved towards me. A cat, I imagine, approaches a mouse who has no chance of escape in that way. All my daring left me in an instant. I knew the man was capable of... beating me. I began to tremble; yes; oh, shame! oh ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... his best to put on a little swagger. He stuck one hand in his pocket, and twitched his hat a trifle on one side. Heathcote, too, instinctively let slip his jacket button so as to betray his watch- chain, and laughed rather loudly at something which nobody said. Poor ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Raveloe. Dunstan Cass's absence was hardly a subject of remark: he had once before had a quarrel with his father, and had gone off, nobody knew whither, to return at the end of six weeks, take up his old quarters unforbidden, and swagger as usual. His own family, who equally expected this issue, with the sole difference that the Squire was determined this time to forbid him the old quarters, never mentioned his absence; and when his uncle Kimble or Mr. Osgood noticed it, the story of his having killed Wildfire, and committed some ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... of a second and more gratuitous Crimea. But it was not only in Eastern Europe that his saving influence was felt. In Africa and India, and wherever British honor was involved, he was the resolute and unsparing enemy of that odious system of bluster and swagger and might against right, on which Lord Beaconsfield and his colleagues bestowed ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... of a very personal and pungent nature the little fellow marched off with a delicious swagger and an heroical air. I at once turned to the warder and asked, "Who is that little fellow?" "The Governor!" he gasped out. "If he had only heard you!" and then followed a pantomime that implied something very dreadful. ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... he seems to stagger, with a hey, with a hey, Who but now did so swagger, with a ho; God's fish he's stuck in the mire, And all the fat's in the fire, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... home, Pepita Le Roy came up to them. She was a handsome woman, in a foreign way, with large, dark eyes and an abundance of raven black hair. She was rather flashily dressed and walked with a sort of swagger that in a vague ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... to have this out, Julia," he was saying. "If anybody or anything has come between us, there's going to be trouble. If that's the great Maraton, with his swagger evening clothes and big house, well, he's not the man for our job, and I shan't mind being the first to ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were quite black, and he had a very pleasant and genial expression. He wore a tall hat, set rather jauntily on his head, and he was dressed in black with a long frock coat buttoned across the chest and fitting him close to the body. As he came, with a half saunter, half swagger, along the street, I knew him again at once by his appearance; and, as he came nearer, I saw from his manner that he was intending to stop and speak to me, for he slightly raised his hat and in a soft, melodious voice with a colonial "twang" which was ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... separate the combatants. After which he rebuked Billy Silver with a swagger-stick. Wren's share in the business he overlooked. He was by way of being a patron of Wren's, and he disliked Billy Silver, partly for his own sake and partly because he hated his brother, with whom ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... evening when this conversation took place; soon after, when the dark cloak of night had enveloped the bright radiance of day, Merdek entered the chamber of his spouse, with something of a martial swagger, armed with a scimitar. The unsuspecting cat came forward as usual, to welcome the husband of her mistress, but in an instant her head was divided from her body by a blow from the hand which had so often caressed her. Merdek, having ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... and I fetched more. I do not know whether Wolf Larsen cheated or not,—a thing he was thoroughly capable of doing,—but he won steadily. The cook made repeated journeys to his bunk for money. Each time he performed the journey with greater swagger, but he never brought more than a few dollars at a time. He grew maudlin, familiar, could hardly see the cards or sit upright. As a preliminary to another journey to his bunk, he hooked Wolf Larsen's buttonhole with a greasy forefinger ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... presence. At the moment, I felt firmly persuaded that the three of them were engrossed solely with the question of whether I should merely PASS the examination or whether I should pass it WELL, and that it was only swagger which made them pretend that they did not care either way, and behave as though they ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... the three golden balls, with, the swagger and general air of ownership I thought most likely to impose upon the self-satisfied female who presided over the desk, I asked to ...
— The Staircase At The Hearts Delight - 1894 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... red-coated infantry or blue-coated artillery the whole year round. All summer long great iron-clads bring their imposing bulks to anchor off the Dockyard, and Jack Tars in foolish, merry, and alas! too often vicious companies, swagger through the streets in noisy enjoyment of their day ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... was an officer who had served on two campaigns. He knew what makes a soldier, and judging by the appearance and the talk of those persons, by the swagger with which they had recourse to the bottle on the journey, he considered them poor soldiers. Moreover, he lived in a district town, and he was longing to tell how one soldier had volunteered from his town, a drunkard and a thief whom no one would employ ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... by the guard, and appeared before the tribunal. Suleiman, although pinioned, retained the same haughty swagger that had always distinguished him. The charges against ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... head was Gordon in Ferguson's dressing-gown (a great white confection with pale pink frogs) with a white Colts' cap on his head; he beat time with a small swagger cane. Then came the trumpeters, Crosbie and Forbes, who were producing strange harmonies on two pipes that they had bagged from the armoury. Behind them Mansell walked in corps clothes and a Second Fifteen cap. He was chanting a low ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... negotiators saw fit to imitate the coon and come down. Whether they would have done so had they known the weakness of Diebitch may be questioned; but again it may be questioned whether, that weakness unknown, he could not have occupied Constantinople on the swagger. His master was prepared promptly to reinforce him; Constantinople was perhaps nearer its fall in 1828 than in 1878, and certainly Diebitch was much smarter than were the Grand Duke Nicholas, his fossil Nepokoitschitsky, ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... depth of emotion expressed, and expressed with perfect simplicity and directness and an entire absence of parade. The negro troops are marching steadily, soberly, with high seriousness of purpose, and their white leader rides beside them, drawn sword in hand, but with no military swagger, courageous, yet with a hint of melancholy, ready not only to lay down his life but to face, if need be, an ignominious death for the cause he believes to be just. And above them, laden with poppy and with laurels, floats the Death Angel ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... her dictates, and sustain her laws; Rich with her spoils, his sanction will dismay, And bid the insurgents tremble and obey. He comes!—but where, the amazing theme to hit, Discover language or ideas fit? Splay-footed words, that hector, bounce, and swagger, 380 The sense to puzzle, and the brain to stagger? Our patriot comes! with frenzy fired, the Muse With allegoric eye his figure views! Like the grim portress of hell-gate he stands, Bellona's scourge hangs trembling in his hands! Around him, fiercer than the ravenous shark, "A cry of hell-hounds' ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... furtive trot, as if he were going to pawn his bat. When your turn comes to go in, take care to be just within the regulation two minutes, but school yourself to emerge from the pavilion at a leisurely stride with more than a suspicion of swagger in it. The bat should not be carried as a shy curate carries a shabby umbrella, but either boldly across the shoulder, like a rifle, or tucked under the armpit, so that you may do up your batting-gloves in your progress across the greensward. An excellent effect will be produced ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... annoyed, allowed himself to be convinced; he threw the gun on to his shoulder with a swagger, and both our heroes, followed by Carefinotu, returned to ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... to the Reader," announcing the fulfilment of the first half of the promised production, and bidding him not be downhearted, for the first of the second half (the Sixth Part or eleventh volume of the whole) is actually at Press. It may be noticed that there is a swagger about these avis and such like things, which probably is attributable to Georges, and not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... peculiar, and rather like that of a cat, but of a cat that was well acquainted with the ground it was moving over; the step showed no doubt or apprehension, it could hardly be called stealthy, but it glided on firmly and cautiously, without haste, or swagger, or unevenness.... The oftener you heard him speak, the more his speaking gained upon you.... He never seemed occupied with himself. His effort was evidently directed to convince you, not that he was eloquent, but that he was right.... He seemed rather to aim at gaining the doubtful, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Lady Cunning are invited to meet his Royal Highness; the rescued girl is claimed as a slave by Lord Overstone; philanthropic Jonathan, after some difficulty, succeeds in keeping her, having first ordered Lord Overstone's servants to the right-about with all the swagger of a northern negro-driver. It appears that Jonathan was formerly a boy in the mines himself, and had conceived an affection for this girl. Lord Overstone finds out that Jonathan has papers requisite for him to prove his right to ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the tips of Lucien's boots (he had brought the pair from Angouleme, and was wearing them out). "My dear fellow, I strongly recommend you to put your ink on your boots to save blacking, and to take your pens for toothpicks, so that when you come away from Flicoteaux's you can swagger along this picturesque alley looking as if you had dined. Get a situation of any sort or description. Run errands for a bailiff if you have the heart, be a shopman if your back is strong enough, enlist if you happen to have a taste for military music. You have the stuff of three ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... most salutary? Was it not enough that they had filled his council-board with his enemies, and his prisons with his adherents? Was it not enough that they had raised a furious multitude, to shout and swagger daily under the very windows of his royal palace? Was it not enough that they had taken from him the most blessed prerogative of princely mercy; that, complaining of intolerance themselves, they had denied all toleration to others; that they had urged, against forms, scruples ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... abandon himself to the joy of the present! The future—even the narrow bounds of an earthly future—holds men prisoners. A few careless dogs, to be sure, live their day, blind to the years to come, but that is brute stupidity. A few brave souls swagger through their prime with some bravado, knowing the final cost, but willing to pay it by installments through the dribbling years which follow; but the usury of time makes that folly. The wise choke such gypsy impulses—admit the mortgage ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... in dispute Milton opposes the Independent view. A refutation, which follows each step of an adverse book, is necessarily devoid of originality. But Milton is worse than tedious; his reply is in a tone of rude railing and insolent swagger, which would have been always unbecoming, but which at this ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... it however—either by word, or the movement of a feature. On the contrary, he appears perfectly indifferent to the character of the reception given him. Not that his manner betrays anything like swagger—for he is evidently not one of the swaggering sort. Rather is his behaviour characterised by a cool, quiet effrontery—a sort of sarcastic assurance—ten times more irritating. This is displayed in the laconic style of his salutation: "Morning girls! ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... half-naked savages, standing like statues with fierce, movable eyes, each one holding, with its butt end on the ground, a huge spear, with a head the size of a shovel. I purposely sauntered down them coolly with a swagger, with my eyes fixed upon their dangerous-looking faces. I had a six-shooter concealed in my waist-belt, and determined, at the first show of excitement, to run up to the Amir, and put it to his ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... sword alone, boy," he said sternly. "You, Michael Purlrose, knowing you as I do of old, for a mouthing, cowardly bully, do you think that I am going to be frightened by your swagger? Yes, I tell you that ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... two stood near the entrance to their shack watching the eddying currents of almost naked humanity they saw Pud-Pud detach himself from his companions and swagger ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... hand, as against By-ends, Sir Having Greedy, and the Lord Old-man on the other, are in these drawings as simply distinguished by their costume. Good people, when not armed cap-a-pie, wear a speckled tunic girt about the waist, and low hats, apparently of straw. Bad people swagger in tail-coats and chimney-pots, a few with knee-breeches, but the large majority in trousers, and for all the world like guests at a garden-party. Worldly-Wiseman alone, by some inexplicable quirk, stands ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... returned Elmer nonchalantly. He was a thin, anaemic-looking young fellow a couple of years younger than Virginia who affected a swagger and gloves and who had a cough which was insistent, but which he strove to disguise. And yet Florrie's hyperbole had not been entirely without warrant. He had something of Virginia's fine profile, a look of her in his eyes, the stamp of good blood upon him. He suffered his sister to kiss him, meantime ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... scold at any one; also to bluster, bounce, ding, or swagger. A captain huff; a noted bully. To stand the huff; to be answerable for the reckoning ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... you, and find out when you went to him, and why you were sometimes a poor devil in a miserable hole like this, and sometimes a swell going to swagger places with him." ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... khaki struts the limelit boards: With false moustache, set smirk and ogling eyes And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash, and clatter; And over the brassy blare and drumming din She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin Spirtle of ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... Palace gates, and they saw two lines of blue-jackets, spread out like the sticks of a fan, dragging the gun between them, the middies in their tight-buttoned tunics and gaiters, and behind them more blue-jackets with bare, bronzed throats, and with the swagger and roll of the sea in their legs and shoulders. An American flag floated above the white helmets of the marines. Its presence and the sense of pride which the sight of these men from home awoke in them made the fight just ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... a minister has committed bribery and perjury, or that a littery man has committed perjury and murder, or that a Duke has stabbed his wife in fifty places, or some story equally horrible; yet for all that it's admiral to see how the French gents will swagger—how they will be the scenters of civilization—how they will be the Igsamples of Europ, and nothink shall prevent 'em—knowing they will have it, I say I listen, smokin my pip in silence. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... murderer, the rustler, and the outlaw spurred their ponies on eastward when the valley of the San Pedro was too hot for them and took refuge here among their kind. On occasion the bolder ones among them ventured back to show themselves on Tombstone's streets or swagger into Charleston's dance-halls; but never for long and never unless they were ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... length by a man whom he had scarcely heard utter half a dozen words in his life, that he was left speechless. He was still standing before the window when Mr. Weatherley crossed the pavement to the waiting taxicab. In his walk and attitude the signs of the man's deterioration were obvious. The little swagger of his younger days was gone, the bumptiousness of his bearing forgotten. He cast no glance up and down the pavement to hail an acquaintance. He muttered an address to the driver and ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... translate: Natale solum, my estate; My dear estate, how well I love it, My tenants, if you doubt, will prove it, They swear I am so kind and good, I hug them till I squeeze their blood. Libertas bears a large import: First, how to swagger in a court; And, secondly, to show my fury Against an uncomplying jury; And, thirdly, 'tis a new invention, To favour Wood, and keep my pension; And, fourthly, 'tis to play an odd trick, Get the great seal and turn out Broderick;[3] And, fifthly, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... a crisis one day when Maxwell was informed that some one was waiting to see him in the parlor. The visitor was dressed in very pronounced clothes, and carried himself with a self-assertive swagger. Maxwell had seen him in Bascom's office, and knew who was waiting for him long before he reached the parlor, by the odor of patchouli which penetrated to ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... Lecture Bureau may be found in a swagger Club any evening with a Bourbon H. B. at his Right, a stack of Student Lamps at his Left and Two Small Pair ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... crossing Westminster Bridge—old Thames marched all a-glitter. I watched his passage gratefully. It was that of a never-ending band. Playing all the way, too, but silently. Yet, the music was there. The pity was that one could not hear it. The pomp, the swagger, the swing of the Guards, the shifting movement, the bright array—all these were unmistakable. The very lilt of the air made itself felt. Very cheery. Certainly, ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... slid down from his sitting-room balcony to the one below. And my emeralds were not in the japanned box after all; and just as he had assured himself of the fact, the folding-doors opened "as it might be these," and there stood Dan Levy "in a suit of swagger ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... Sir, 'twas from my knowledge, And shall have no protection. And to you Sir, You have shew'd more heat than wit, and from your self Have borrowed power, I never gave you here, To do these vile unmanly things: my house Is no blind street to swagger in; and my favours Not doting yet on your unknown deserts So far, that I should make you Master of my business; My credit yet stands fairer with the people Than to be tried with swords; and they that come To do me service, must not ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... avoiding an altercation which might possibly detain us, and would be certain to add to our notoriety, I remained quiet; and presently the entrance of a tall, dark-complexioned man, who carried himself with a peculiar swagger, and seemed to be famous for something or other, diverted the attention of the company ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... looked once shrewdly at him in the dim light on the ferry-boat. No; he did not have the perfidious smirk or the brazen swagger of the lady-killer. Sincerity and modesty shone through his boreal tan. It seemed to her that it might be good to hear a little of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... his hand on Eells' desk and slammed the door when he went out and mounted his big mule with a swagger. The citizens of Blackwater made way for him promptly, though many a lip curled in scorn, and he rode out of town sitting sideways in his saddle while he did a little jig in his stirrups. He had come into town and bearded their leading citizen ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... (though I don't say they are visible), and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe were to step in at that open window by the little garden yonder? Suppose Uncas and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide in silent? Suppose Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter, with a noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches? And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby's arm; and Tittlebat Titmouse with his hair dyed green; and all the Crummles company of comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and Sir Roger de Coverley; and the greatest ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... Dick, chuckling with delight at being completely understood. "I couldn't resist one little bit of sheer swagger. It's a French trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got at by slewing round the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of the left ear. That, and deepening the shadow under the lobe of the ear. It was flagrant ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... early days of my acquaintance with the family I was somewhat tempted to this opinion myself. For she not only flouted the old lady to her face, but would upon occasion disregard her utterly, and do it all with what I can only call a swagger that seemed to demand a local application of drastic measures. But Katje knew her victim, if such a word can be applied to the Vrouw Grobelaar, and never prodded her save on her armor. For instance, to say the Kafirs were ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... they added Ippolito to their party. He was delighted at the change of duty, because, as Norvin discovered, it brought him to the side of Lucrezia Ferara. Thus it happened that Martel had reason to regret the choice of his bodyguard, for on the very first visit Ippolito began to strut and swagger before the girl and allowed the secret to escape him, whereupon it was carried ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... the Judge playfully called him. To himself Tommy promised that it would not be his own fault if he did not measure up to the Judge's estimate of what a right hand man should be. Bet was amused to notice the slight swagger that Tommy assumed as he took his place beside his friend in the car. She exchanged a smile ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... these Pedagogues to huff and swagger in the heighth of all their Arrogance. I cannot but think it great Pity, that in our Considerations, for Refinement of the English Tongue, so little Regard is had to Antiquity, and the Original of our present Language, which ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... been less red; and if he had ever looked you in the face, you would have seen that they were blue. His complexion was fair by nature and discoloured by drink. His manner was something between a sneak and a swagger, and he generally wore his cap a-one-side, carried his hands in his pockets and a short stick under his arm, and whistled when any one passed him. His chief characteristic, perhaps, was the habit he had of kicking. Indoors ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... concern, he takes fire in an instant; swears that he is the richest and stoutest fellow in the country; talks of laying out large sums to adorn his house or buy another estate; and with a valiant swagger and grasping of his cudgel longs exceedingly to have ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... the more, and he sobbed at my knee in sheer enjoyment of the luxury of being babied. After that I think he took occasion to hurt himself upon every possible opportunity in order that he might come to my room to be taken care of and petted and comforted. He left all his swagger and bluster and bravado outside, and I babied him to his heart's content, feeling sure that it was the first time in all his dozen years that this child's right had come to him. But he did not allow these private seasons of relaxation, which he trusted ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... stood boldly upright, and began to contemplate his irresistible face and figure in a glass, and arrange with cool coxcombry his darling tuft of hair; which done, he approached us with a mild swagger, and proceeded to address me with a freedom which I found it expedient to snub. I told him that, although I did not require any human being to go down on his face and hands before me, I should nevertheless tolerate no familiarity or disrespect from any one. The fellow understood me well ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... took a tighter grip on the swagger stick that he carried jauntily in his right hand. Cartwright was a smart, soldierly looking chap, but was well known as an officer who was not addicted to ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... without delay, going back to the Tyrol later on if the investigation of the diamond mystery renders your return necessary. The Duchess of Chiselhurst is giving a great ball on the 29th. It is to be a very swagger affair, with notables from every part of Europe, and they seem determined that no one connected with a newspaper shall be admitted. We have set at work every influence to obtain an invitation for a reporter, but without ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... The scorn expressed in his countenance, the muscular strength of his stalwart frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots, and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in the Baron's costume was a large diamond, worth about ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... cheeks must have gone a trifle pale, for Mistress Appleby asked me anxiously what was amiss. I hastened to reassure her, but begged her to close the door into the inn place which her husband had left open. She wonderingly complied, but was enlightened a moment afterwards, when she saw Dick Cludde swagger in, followed by the two naval captains whom his ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... tears and trembling as she wiped the tears away. After a time she was able to make herself ready for another appearance in the street of Sour Creek. She practiced back and forth in her room that exaggerated swagger, jerked her sombrero rakishly over one eye, cocked up her cartridge belt at one side, and ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... had the lead, showed a tendency to swagger. She bounced and tossed. The fair lad, swaying to the motions of his horse, rode the fretting creature patiently ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... together, but not to its end, she had called it "so ungenuine." How rakishly now it came ripping out. "My fortune is too hard for thee," it declared, "'twould chill thy dearest joy. I'd rather weep to see thee free," and ended with "destroy"; but it had the swagger of ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... for that," the soldier said bluntly, "for I shall be right glad to be away from these Normans who fill every place at court and swagger there as if Englishmen were but dirt under their feet. Moreover, I love not London nor its ways, and shall be glad to be down again among honest country folk, though I would still rather be following my lord the earl ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... possible, but he lacks the exact air, notwithstanding the black broadcloth and the white hat. The city men are of two varieties—the smart, perky-nosed, vulgar young ward worker, and the heavy-featured, gross, fat old fellow. One after another they glide in, with an always conscious air, swagger off to the bar, strike attitudes in groups, one with his legs spread, another with a foot behind on tiptoe, another leaning against the counter, and so pose, and drink "My respects"—all rather solemn and stiff, impressed perhaps by the decorousness of the place, and conscious ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... liked it: distinctly it remained on his mind as an attraction, almost obscuring Quincy itself. The want of barriers, of pavements, of forms; the looseness, the laziness; the indolent Southern drawl; the pigs in the streets; the negro babies and their mothers with bandanas; the freedom, openness, swagger, of nature and man, soothed his Johnson blood. Most boys would have felt it in the same way, but with him the feeling caught on to an inheritance. The softness of his gentle old grandmother as she lay in bed and chatted with him, did not come ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Q.C., rose with a swagger and a rustle of his silk gown, and proceeded to set forth the theory of the defence. He said he did not purpose to call many witnesses. The hypothesis of the prosecution was so inherently childish and ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... demeanour of his troops. They evidently thought that British soldiers had gone never to return, and they swaggered about in swash-buckler fashion, as only Natives who think they have the upper hand can swagger. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... went on Parmalee, "of swagger residences; very exclusive and reserved, you know. You've certainly unearthed startling news, but I can't help thinking that it will be a wild goose chase that leads us to look for our ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... this region are more youthful in aspect, carry themselves with more swagger, wear their hats jantily, with greasy curls coaxed to project beyond the brim. They affect a sort of secondhand gentility, cultivate great brooches, silver guard-chains, and whiskers, and have the air of persons claiming vice-royalty in the dominions in which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... expressed with perfect simplicity and directness and an entire absence of parade. The negro troops are marching steadily, soberly, with high seriousness of purpose, and their white leader rides beside them, drawn sword in hand, but with no military swagger, courageous, yet with a hint of melancholy, ready not only to lay down his life but to face, if need be, an ignominious death for the cause he believes to be just. And above them, laden with poppy and with laurels, floats the Death ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... are of great beauty and excellence. The elaboration of French keys has a peculiar origin. Henry III., as a mark of royal favour, permitted his minions to possess a key of his private apartment: as a piece of swagger the royal favourite was wont to wear the key ostentatiously on his breast, whereby French smiths were spurred in emulation to produce keys of exquisite craftsmanship and design. Another kind of interest attaches to the key (No. 5962 in the case on the L. as we enter) which was ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... compartment, divided into three, of an altar-piece) is perhaps, besides the Orvieto Resurrection, his most superb and poetical work. The figures, only three inches high, have his highest quality of powerful grandeur, solemnly rustic in the kneeling shepherds—solemn in the very swagger, hand on hip, of the parti-coloured bravoes of the Magi; the landscape, only a few centimetres across, is one of the amplest and most austere that ever has been painted: a valley, bounded by blue hills ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... troop of each succeeding regiment. This done, they would again sink back and each would sit leaning his head against his musket, or with his forehead resting heavily on his folded arms. In comparison the relieving column looked like giants as they came in with a swinging swagger, their uniforms blackened with mud and sweat and bloodstains, their faces brilliantly crimsoned and blistered and tanned by the dust and sun. They made a picture of strength and health and aggressiveness. Perhaps the contrast was strongest when the battalion ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... themselves and their past exploits with Garibaldi; they had certainly proved that there was plenty of sturdy pluck about them. They are in general a small, swarthy, handsome set of men, but with rather too much of a swagger for soldiers who had seen service. The ladies are graceful and dignified; a trifle too pale, I thought, but I have since learnt that this pallor is studiously acquired—I suppose, to give more sentiment to the expression: in other ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... as they loitered about the streets, their stomachs empty, said to each other that it was a great honour for Mugsborough that their Member should be promoted in this way. They boasted about it and assumed as much swagger in their gait as ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... praise bestowed upon him and gave his shoulders a swagger. "Speakin' of that, boss," he said, "reminds me of a chap who rode into Cabin Gulch a few weeks ago. Braced right into Beard's place, where we was all playin' faro, an' he asks for Jack Kells. Right off we all thought ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... points. Several crows are walking about a newly sowed wheat field we pass through, and we pause to note their graceful movements and glossy coats. I have seen no bird walk the ground with just the same air the crow does. It is not exactly pride; there is no strut or swagger in it, though perhaps just a little condescension; it is the contented, complaisant, and self-possessed gait of a lord over his domains. All these acres are mine, he says, and all these crops; ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... man's part, with back humped in mimicry, would you not fear that it bordered on the truth? But doubtless there was a time when you ranged upon these heights—when Kazrac the magician was not too heavy for your art. In those soaring days, let us hope that you played the villain with a swagger, or being cast in a softer role, that you won a pink and fluffy princess before the play was done. Your earliest practice, it may be, was in rigging the parlor hangings as a curtain with brown string from the pantry and safety pins. Although you had no show to offer, you said "ding" ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... least bit scared, though I admit it was a dangerous feat," Daddy Longlegs told them. Then he would strut and swagger about, trying to appear as if there wasn't a braver person than he in all Pleasant Valley. And he talked about his wild ride to everybody that would ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... their advance knew them at a glance by their uniform, their Indian tan, and their jaunty swagger and gave a cheer as they passed. They touched the chord of romance in the hearts of officers, who regarded them as an archaic survival which sentiment permitted in an isolated instance in Africa, where it excellently served. And officers looked at one ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... at Venice is superior in many ways: yet the radical distinction between them is that whereas Gattamelata is the faithful portrait of a modest though successful warrior, it must be confessed that Verrocchio makes an idealised soldier of fortune, full of bravado and swagger, a Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre of the Quattrocento. But, striking as the contrast of sentiment is, noticeable alike in the artist and his model, these two statues remain the finest equestrian monuments ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... handsome tools at his side, Go in disguis'd attire, wear iron enough, Is held a tall man and a soldier. He that with greatest grace can swear Gog's-zounds, Or in a tavern make a drunken fray, Can cheat at dice, swagger in bawdy-houses, Wear velvet on his face, and with a grace Can face it out with,—As I am a soldier! He that can clap his sword upon the board, He's a brave man—and such ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... honest lad in Clovelly, A bold, fisher lad of Clovelly, With purpose as straight and swagger as free As the course of his boat when breasting a sea, The ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the latch, and turned with a smile. But the smile faded almost at once as she recognised her visitor. It was Tom Trevarthen, and he entered with a grin and a defiant, jaunty swagger which did not at all ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the battle of Naseby, Miles was slain, And Huntly sank from his wounds that week; We left young Clare upon Worcester plain— How the "Ironside" gash'd his girlish cheek. Aye, strut, and swagger, and ruffle anew, Gay gallants, now that the war is done! They fought like fiends (give the fiend his due)— We fought like fops, it was thus they won. Holdsworth is living for aught I know, At least he ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... simple-mindedness, while Frederick's features showed the alternating play of a sympathy evidently more selfish than good-humored, and his eyes, in almost glassy clearness, for the first time distinctly showed the expression of that unrestrained ambition and tendency to swagger which afterwards revealed itself as so strong a motive in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... crooked little staircase with a who's-afraid kind of swagger, but he took his hat off on entering ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Foudroyant, the vessel was trim When it fought with the French, for JOHN BULL, under Him, The Star of the Nile. Yes, it carried his flag, When it captured the Frenchman. There's no need to brag, Or to say swagger things of a generous foe. Besides, things have doosedly altered, you know. We're no more like NELSON than I to a Merman; We can sell his flag-ship ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... announcing the fulfilment of the first half of the promised production, and bidding him not be downhearted, for the first of the second half (the Sixth Part or eleventh volume of the whole) is actually at Press. It may be noticed that there is a swagger about these avis and such like things, which probably is attributable to Georges, and not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... bluff had failed. Something in Peterson's manner forced her to believe that he had indeed served out his full sentence, and for the moment had nothing to fear from the police. Clodagh hid her disappointment with a little swagger. ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... period made a market, the Napoleonic scare was no laughing matter for the poor people, who had nothing to gain and everything to lose, by even the possibility of the thing. We, who, in these peaceful times, are apt to swagger about Britannia ruling the waves, cannot perhaps realize what it meant to have this great military genius sitting down with his legions of three hundred thousand opposite our shores, keenly watching for and calculating ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... affair. At first she had liked him exceedingly; he had seemed to her ardent, natural, and generous. She had liked his affection for his mother and his demonstrativeness in showing it; she had liked his well-bred swagger, his manner with servants, his impulsive courtesy to herself. It was a real pleasure to her to see him, morning by morning, in his knickerbockers and Norfolk jacket, or his tweed suit; and evening by evening in his swallow-tail ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... way,' he decided, and ordered his men to fall in and proceed. They passed through the village, which they now observed had been much abused by the Prussians, and on out into the country, with the lad marching beside the captain with a swagger that amused ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... leading a very gay life in Melbourne. His good looks and clever tongue had made him a lot of friends, and he was very popular both in drawing-room and club. The men voted him a jolly sort of fellow and a regular swagger man, while the ladies said that he was heavenly; for, true to his former tactics, Vandeloup always made particular friends of women, selecting, of course, those whom he thought would be likely to be of use to him. Being such a favourite entailed going out a great deal, and as no one ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... They drank whisky, they drank it neat, and I fetched more. I do not know whether Wolf Larsen cheated or not,—a thing he was thoroughly capable of doing,—but he won steadily. The cook made repeated journeys to his bunk for money. Each time he performed the journey with greater swagger, but he never brought more than a few dollars at a time. He grew maudlin, familiar, could hardly see the cards or sit upright. As a preliminary to another journey to his bunk, he hooked Wolf Larsen's buttonhole with a greasy forefinger and vacuously proclaimed ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... in my juvenile estimation, during my short escapade from the middy's berth, had its charms, and I was rolling in with a tolerable swagger, when Mr ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... morning with painstaking detail. Too late she had discovered that she didn't possess a dress fit to wear at any one's wedding, not to mention her own. From time to time she had dreamed of a swagger tailored suit, but the paradox of a swagger tailored suit in San Pasqual had been so apparent always that Donna could not bring herself to the point of submitting to a measurement in the local dry-goods emporium, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... could it be avoided?" Amos asked, impatiently; for the tone in which the barber's apprentice spoke, and the swagger he had assumed, grated harshly ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... little lemon and orange trees. Waiters in white aprons were already laying out on white tables the insignia of an early and elegant lunch; and this seemed to increase a satisfaction that already touched the top of swagger. Muscari had an eagle nose like Dante; his hair and neckerchief were dark and flowing; he carried a black cloak, and might almost have carried a black mask, so much did he bear with him a sort of Venetian melodrama. He acted as ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... are truths you Americans need to be told, And it never'll refute them to swagger and scold; John Bull, looking o'er the Atlantic, in choler At your aptness for trade, says you worship the dollar; But to scorn such eye-dollar-try's what very few do, And John goes to that church as often as you do, No matter what John ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... a trifle hard that this merely playful affectation of superiority should be made a serious fault. For the future I would promise to be careful, if it were worth avoiding the misunderstanding of men who won't take a joke. Meanwhile, I can only state that when Alpine travellers indulge in a little swagger about their own performances and other people's incapacity, they don't mean more than an infinitesimal fraction of what they say, and that they know perfectly well that when history comes to pronounce a final judgment upon the men of the time, it won't put mountain-climbing ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... declared, I found that I had risen to the dignity of Sergeant, and carried my Halberd with an assured strut and swagger, nobody dreaming that I was a wild Irish girl from the Wicklow Mountains. I might have risen, in time, to a commission and the Cross of St. Louis; but the piping times of peace turned all such brave grapes sour. I was glad enough, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... himself only too apt a pupil in the lessons in the midst of which his childhood had been passed. He had at his tongue's tip all the slang of the stables and all the blackguardisms of the betting-ring; and boy—almost child—as he was, he affected the swagger and habits of a "fast man," like a true son of ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... along with bent shoulders, his hands behind his back, trailing his umbrella and brooding as though he contemplated bankruptcy. Then suddenly his pace would quicken, the umbrella whirled round and round like a Catherine wheel, and with his head held jauntily and the merriest smile he would swagger along like a young blood of twenty-six who had just been accepted by an heiress. And then abruptly he would ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... tradition, savoring anything but the odor of sanctity. With the warning of La Masque fresh in their mind, both looked at him earnestly. His gay livery was that of Lord Rochester, and became his graceful figure well, as he marched along with a jaunty swagger, one hand on his aide, and the other toying with a beautiful little spaniel, that frisked in open violation of the Lord Mayor's orders, commanding all dogs, great and small, to be put to death as propagators of the pestilence. In passing, the lad turned his face ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... go at once to Roderic and make him an oration. I shall tell him I've recovered my forgotten moral senses, And I don't care twopence-halfpenny for any consequences. Now I do not want to perish by the sword or by the dagger, But a martyr may indulge a little pardonable swagger, And a word or two of compliment my vanity would flatter, But I've got to die tomorrow, so ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... letter in all my life; so saucy, so journalish, so sanguine, so pretending, so everything. I satisfied all your fears in my last: all is gone well, as you say; yet you are an impudent slut to be so positive; you will swagger so upon your sagacity that we shall never have done. Pray don't mislay your reply; I would certainly print it, if I had it here: how long is it? I suppose half a sheet: was the answer written in Ireland? Yes, yes, you shall have a letter when you come ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... can die of light! Death is the common right Of toads and men, — Of earl and midge The privilege. Why swagger then? The gnat's supremacy Is ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... dependants, in a most exorbitant manner, he was weak enough to imagine that he had provided a support against an evil day. He had the best among all false appearances of courage, which was a most unlimited assurance, whereby he would swagger the boldest men into a dread of his power, but had not the smallest portion of magnanimity, growing jealous, and disgracing every man, who was known to bear the least civility to those he disliked. He had some small smattering in books, but no manner of politeness; nor, in ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... that morning, we were struck by meeting several groups of the Turkish inhabitants hanging about outside the town. Arriving in the town, only Montenegrins were to be seen in the streets, walking somewhat ostentatiously up and down, their natural swagger greatly exaggerated. The news of the elopement of another Turkish maiden soon reached us, and that day at dinner, an officer, detailed to prove the matter, told ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... young, but you may to some extent judge from the delicacy of his present work of the heights he will attain by diligence. Yasha!" A swarthy youth in a blue silk blouse and long glace boots, like a gipsy, came forward with a swagger, fingering the tassels of his belt, and merrily screwing up his big, impudent black ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... was absurd, of course. Chauffeurs do not swagger through the world dressing for dinner each night and distributing gold in their leisure moments. But Smith's bump of inquisitiveness was well developed, as the phrenologists say, and he was already impressed by the fact that no firm could afford to send out for hire a ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... as he leveled a displeased stare upon the speaker, a young farmer with a bibulous eye and slight swagger of defiance. At the proper moment, with the right audience, the Judge was willing to impart information with lavish generosity. But any attempt to force his hand was looked upon as a distinct infringement of ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... influencing the others to do the same, yet there is no denying that you spoke to those men in a most overbearing manner. Why, you could not have been more downright had you been an officer of the Emperor himself. What passed through my mind as I listened was, 'Where did this youth get his swagger?' You ordered Kurzbold out of ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... soil of the tilled field flew in every direction as thirty or more horses raced across it, and the usual retinue of foot runners raised an ecstatic yell as Mrs. Pat forged ahead and sent her big horse over the fence at the end of the field in a style that happily combined swagger with knowledge. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... place of voting, on the prairie, and hitched their horses to their wagons, and were quietly going about their business, when with a great whoop and hurrah, which frightened their horses and made them break loose from their wagons, a company of men came in sight, and with swagger and bluster, took possession of the polls, and proceeded to do the voting. Meantime whisky flowed like water, and the men, far gone in liquor, turned the place into a bedlam. In utter humiliation and disgust many of the squatters went home. Caleb ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... inadequate cause for such serious uneasiness; but my alarm was caused neither by his acts nor words, but entirely by his manner, which was strange and even intimidating to excess. At the beginning of the yesterday's interview there was a sort of bullying swagger in his air, which towards the end gave place to the brutal vehemence of an undisguised ruffian—a transition which had tempted me into a belief that he might seek even forcibly to extort from me a consent to his wishes, or by means still more horrible, of which I scarcely dared to trust myself to ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... bits and chains and buckles; the glinting bridles, reins and saddles; Lord Tybar's exquisitely poised figure, so perfectly maintaining and carrying up the symmetry of his horse as to suggest the horse would be disfigured, truncated, were he to dismount; his taking swagger, his ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... pipe of that excessive shortness and blackness that seems to be peculiarly beloved by Irishmen in the humbler ranks of life. The man was very tall and broad-shouldered, and carried himself with a free-and-easy swagger, as he rose and approached ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... sue to be despised than to deceive so good a commander with so slight, so drunken, and so indiscreet an officer. Drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse fustian with one's own shadow? O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... more swagger down Princes Street than Johnny Gurkha down the bazaar of Darrapore, particularly in the evening, when he doffs khaki for the mufti suit of his clan—the spotless white shorts, coat of black sateen, little cocked cap ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... to separate the combatants. After which he rebuked Billy Silver with a swagger-stick. Wren's share in the business he overlooked. He was by way of being a patron of Wren's, and he disliked Billy Silver, partly for his own sake and partly because he hated his brother, with whom he had come into contact once or twice ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... "you tink everyting foreign should be for English. You swagger off with other people's country and say, 'This mine.' You like old J——b and G——d; they speak all the time same as you. English, English, everyting English! an' I say what for you stay? I Greek, an' I stay ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... synonym. As we went, she danced and sang, and laughed out joyously at everything and at nothing, and talked the most fascinating nonsense—all in the role of "Cousin Burwell." She could imitate him to perfection; her strut and swagger and slang threw me into paroxysms of delight. We picked huckleberries, and dived into the woods to feast upon wild plums that had ten drops of syrupy juice between tough skins and flinty stones encased in the pulp of bitterness, and gathered handfuls of wild flowers because their beauty tempted ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... she would make some awful blunder, and that they would refuse to let us have the horse and wagon, for I knew that I could not have stood the test as she did; and then, too, these colonial horses seem to have such a good opinion of themselves, and they carry their heads with a swagger that is entirely different from the meek, downtrodden air of the Turpins, and Smilers, and Sharpers of the old country; and their names are as bumptious as themselves. Fancy a horse being named Rockefeller! ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... set the candelabra on the billiard-table, made Semyon Matveitch a low bow, and with a slight swagger and a malignant smile, moved towards me. A cat, I imagine, approaches a mouse who has no chance of escape in that way. All my daring left me in an instant. I knew the man was capable of... beating me. I began to tremble; yes; oh, shame! oh ignominy! ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... positively Chum's last appearance in print—for his own sake no less than for yours. He is conceited enough as it is, but if once he got to know that people are always writing about him in the papers his swagger would be unbearable. However, I have said good-bye to him now; I have no longer any rights in him. Yesterday I saw him off to his new home, and when we meet again it will be on a different footing. "Is that your dog?" I shall say to his master. "What is he? A Cocker? Jolly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... Eddrees were led by the guard, and appeared before the tribunal. Suleiman, although pinioned, retained the same haughty swagger that had always distinguished him. The charges against him were ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Mac; it would take months of research to discover it. I can't explain your psychology, but I'll tell you something about my own. These swagger corduroys I'm wearing . . . when I bought them someone asked me why I chose corduroy, and I at once answered: 'Economy! They'll last ten years!' But that wasn't the real reason, I bought them because I wanted to have folk stare at me. I've got ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... favorite topic, but she broke off as a man came toward her, carrying one or two small parcels which apparently belonged to the girl at his side. He was a handsome man, tall and rather spare, with dark eyes and a soldierly look. His movements were quick and forceful, but a hint of what Mrs. Keith called swagger somewhat spoiled his bearing. She thought he allowed his self-confidence to be seen too plainly. The girl formed a marked contrast to him; she was short and slender, her hair and eyes were brown, while her prettiness, for one could not ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... never put so much impetuosity, so much daring to the square inch, into any day before. He lounged back a little in his chair, put his hands in his pockets and tried to feel swaggering and at ease. Madame Beattie, he knew, wouldn't object to swagger. And if it would help him dramatically, so much the better. "Madame Beattie," he repeated, "I've a proposition to make to you. I thought of it ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... shoulders, moving forward as if an invisible hand were pressed against the back of his neck, shoving him forward by a series of jerks; and he seems to throw, like Lord Robert, a particular sense of enjoyment into the motion of his legs, as though he would get rid of all perilous swagger at that, the less harmful end of his two extremities—the antipodes of his reason. Like Lord Robert, too, he has a most pleasant voice, and a slow deliberate way of speaking, and a warm kindly smile which ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... time it was all over I had resumed an horizontal position, and resolved, like the man in "Happy Thoughts," not to move again whatever happened. I soon felt all right again, and was able to reply in a very swagger voice to Henry's rather meek enquiry concerning the state of the weather. By-and-bye a short interchange of experiences occurred between Henry and a boy who had been put into our third berth at the last moment, ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... much opposed to the general theory of acting, and the story is told with great gusto of a boy who was sent to see Garrick, we believe, and who was greatly delighted with the fine phrasing and swagger of a supernumerary, but could not understand why people applauded such an ordinary bumpkin as Garrick, who did not differ a whit from all the country boobies he had ever seen. It is insisted that the ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... not to be outdone in SANG FROID. I cocked my hat, and drawing my cloak over my shoulders, went out with a swagger which drove the curs from the gate before I came within a dozen paces of it. The rascals outside fell back as quickly, and in a moment I was in the street. Another moment and I should have been clear of the place and free to lie by for a while—when, ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... up, and his arm, like he'd been shot, and the other two men came jumping up to the door with their guns, but when they saw how many men we had they looked awful scairt. We all had our guns out, too!—Jap Kemp gave me one to carry—" Bud tried not to swagger as he told this, but it was almost too much for him. "Two of our men held the horses, and all the rest of us got down and went into the cabin. Jap Kemp, sounded his whistle and all our men done the same just ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... points in dispute Milton opposes the Independent view. A refutation, which follows each step of an adverse book, is necessarily devoid of originality. But Milton is worse than tedious; his reply is in a tone of rude railing and insolent swagger, which would have been always unbecoming, but which at this ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... a ludicrous account of Lord Byron's insisting upon taking precedence of the 'corps diplomatique' in a procession at Constantinople (when Canning was secretary), and upon Adair's refusing it, limping, with as much swagger as he could muster, up the hall, cocking a foreign military hat on his head. He found, however, he was wrong, and wrote a very frank letter acknowledging it, and offering ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... arching oaks and elms not even the starlight shone. But neither for the darkness nor loneliness cared this young man. With his hands in his pockets he went along at a swinging pace, whistling cheerily. He was very tall; he walked with a swagger. You could make out ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... about that," said the Tennessee Shad. "This chap's no bottle baby; he's more of a sport than you think. I'll bet you he's got a few swagger trophies, in the line ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... mingled all the most remarkable specimens of the race of lions, a kind of game which is hunted in London every spring with more than Meltonian ardour and perseverance. Bruce, who had washed down steaks cut from living oxen with water from the fountains of the Nile, came to swagger and talk about his travels. Ornai lisped broken English, and made all the assembled musicians hold their ears by howling Otaheitean love-songs, such as those with which Oberea charmed ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... are sometimes copied into English and American journals. They lead the reader to infer that the arts and customs of civilized life are rapidly refining the natives of the Sandwich Islands. But let no one be deceived by these accounts. The chiefs swagger about in gold lace and broadcloth, while the great mass of the common people are nearly as primitive in their appearance as in the days of Cook. In the progress of events at these islands, the two classes ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... didn't know me that first night; you had never seen me but once before, and you couldn't have known me. How did you know me to-night? You won't answer, or if you do you'll say you knew me by my swagger. Anything to insult a woman. I'd like to be a man for a few hours just to see how they feel toward women—just how much more contempt they feel than they show. I tell you, you didn't ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... drinkers of the inn had his own individuality of swagger, his truculent independence of mien, which suggested a man by no means habitually used either to receive commands or to render unquestioning obedience. Each of the men resembled his fellows in a certain flamboyant air of ferocity, but no one of them resembled the others by wearing that ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to the Dons,' Carrel said with a short laugh, and he lit a cigarette with all the swagger ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... newly sowed wheat field we pass through, and we pause to note their graceful movements and glossy coats. I have seen no bird walk the ground with just the same air the crow does. It is not exactly pride; there is no strut or swagger in it, though perhaps just a little condescension; it is the contented, complaisant, and self-possessed gait of a lord over his domains. All these acres are mine, he says, and all these crops; men plow and sow for me, and I stay here or go there, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Porthos, the melancholy nobility of Athos: Honour, Chivalry, and Friendship. I declare your characters are real people to me and old friends. I cannot bear to read the end of "Bragelonne," and to part with them for ever. "Suppose Porthos, Athos, and Aramis should enter with a noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches." How we would welcome them, forgiving D'Artagnan even his hateful fourberie in the case of Milady. The brilliance of your dialogue has never been approached: there is wit everywhere; repartees glitter and ring like the flash and clink of small-swords. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... down together to dinner. Two chambermaids came into her room and prepared it without a single word to her about her journey or on any other subject, and when they had gone, 'They are two haughty misses,' said my mother with spirit. But what she most resented was the waiter with his swagger black suit and short quick steps and the 'towel' over his arm. Without so much as a 'Welcome to Glasgow!' he showed us to our seats, not the smallest acknowledgment of our kindness in giving such munificent orders did we draw from him, he hovered around ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... face a supercilious yet not ill-humoured expression; the third was many years younger than his companions, strikingly handsome in face and figure, altogether of a better taste in dress, and possessing a manner that, though it had equal ease, was not equally noticeable for impudence and swagger. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... able to pitch since joining the Camdens, and so he was covering first base. Mower was a professional, and a good man when he attended to business. He played short. Bascomb, a little fellow, with a swagger and a grin that showed some very poor teeth, was change pitcher ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... describes the scene at the examination at the beginning of September last. The streets, he says, are thronged with long-robed, large-spectacled gentlemen, who inform the world at large by every fold of drapery, every swagger of gait, every curve of nail, that they are the aristocracy of the most ancient empire of the world. Wuchang had from 12,000 to 15,000 bachelors of arts within its walls, who came from the far borders of the province for the examination for the provincial degree. About one-half per cent. will ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... one thousand five hundred crowns a year, with the keep of three brave and daring companions (tre compagni bravi e facinorosi), and a palace worth fifty crowns on lease. But Lorenzo had just taken another on the Campo di San Polo at three hundred crowns a year, for which swagger (altura) Pietro Strozzi had struck a thousand crowns off his allowance. Bibboni also learned that he was keeping house with his uncle, Alessandro Soderini, another Florentine outlaw, and that he was ardently in love with a certain beautiful Barozza. This woman was apparently ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... and I was delighted to meet him one day at Kolatschek's lodgings. The vicissitudes which had brought him to Zurich came to my knowledge afterwards in a somewhat offensive and aggressive manner. For the present, Herwegh put on an aristocratic swagger and gave himself the airs of a delicately nurtured and luxurious son of his times, to which a fairly liberal interpolation of French expletives at least added a certain distinction. Nevertheless, there was something about his person, with his quick, flashing eye and kindliness of ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... upon the deck, gazing in wonder at all they saw, "here's for you;" and he handed them a tray of broken biscuit and a can of water. Then, thrusting his hands into his pockets, he walked up and down the deck with an enormous swagger, whistling vociferously. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... questions as to their wounded comrade, and peace reigns. About eleven o'clock Clay comes up from the works hurriedly and gives a whistle, and from one of the bedroom doors emerges Jones, looking rather like a schoolboy who has been in disgrace and means to carry it off with swagger. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... sand to wait for the putting ashore of the freight, he strolled up the beach toward the old trading-post. He did not swagger, though he noticed that many of the be-revolvered individuals did. A strapping, six-foot Indian passed him, carrying an unusually large pack. Kit swung in behind, admiring the splendid calves of the man, and the grace and ease with which he moved along under ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... was suddenly opened. Fenn entered and received a little chorus of welcome. He was wearing a rough black overcoat over his evening clothes, and a black bowler hat. He advanced to the table with a little familiar swagger. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... served long ago in the Chasseurs d'Afrique, and had risen, he said, to the rank of sergeant; but the fumes of absinthe clouded his brain, and he could only swagger and boast of old exploits as a soldier, crying from time to time "Vive l'entente cordiale," and assuring the Englishmen that they could trust him to the death. It was Stephen who, by virtue of his amateur soldiering ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a great swagger. 'Well yer needn't be funny in this waggon,' says he. 'The pair of yer spongin' a ride! Yer needn't be gay—yer ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... directness and an entire absence of parade. The negro troops are marching steadily, soberly, with high seriousness of purpose, and their white leader rides beside them, drawn sword in hand, but with no military swagger, courageous, yet with a hint of melancholy, ready not only to lay down his life but to face, if need be, an ignominious death for the cause he believes to be just. And above them, laden with poppy and with laurels, floats the Death Angel ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... a necessity of all great nations to hate meanness, and nothing under God's heaven ever was so mean as American slavery. Think of it. Men who swagger around with pistols and bowie-knifes to avenge their insulted honor, if any one should question it,—imagine one turning up his sleeves to horsewhip an old woman for burning his steak, or pocketing her wages, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... apt to be egotistical and jealous. They were cautious and reserved with Emil because he had been away to college, and were prepared to take him down if he should try to put on airs with them. The French boys liked a bit of swagger, and they were always delighted to hear about anything new: new clothes, new games, new songs, new dances. Now they carried Emil off to show him the club room they had just fitted up over the post-office, down in the village. They ran down the hill ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... come home from our first voyage sick of it all.... Would give up but for pride.... Afraid to be called 'stuck sailors' ... of the sneers of our old schoolmates.... So we come home in a great show of bravery and swagger about in our brass-bound uniform and lie finely about the fine times we had ... out there! ... And then nothing will do but Jimmy, next door, must be off to the sea too—to come back and play the same game on young Alick! That's the ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... or girl is becoming conscious of himself as a person, and resents being treated as a child; the only way he knows of asserting his personality is by affecting an air of disdain toward those who presume to treat him as a child. This swagger is more likely to be put on when there is a third person present. It is therefore always safer to reserve your discussions and corrections to the time when you are alone with your girl or boy, and can place your conversation on ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... tapestry, we find flowers. The flowers of nature, they are, a simple nature at that, and never to be thought of in the same day as the gorgeous, expansive, proud flowers of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century decoration. Those splendid later blossoms flaunt their richness with assured swagger and demand of man his homage, quite forgetting it is the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... of mind with him to live by his own self-respect and the consciousness that he had done his duty. Like all shy men, he was habitually silent; but his shyness sprang by no means from timidity; it was a kind of modesty in him; he found any demonstration of vanity intolerable. There was no sort of swagger about his fearlessness in action; nothing escaped his eyes; he could give sensible advice to his chums with unshaken coolness; he could go under fire, and duck upon occasion to avoid bullets. He was kindly; but his expression was haughty and stern, and his face gained him ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Jack," and took up her position behind the bar where, if Rance had been looking, he would have seen her start on hearing a voice in the next room and fix her eyes in a sort of fascinated wonder, on a man who, after parting the pelt curtain, came into the saloon with just a suggestion of swagger ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... And he did it. He left off his uneasy swagger and his rocking. He met the heroic and beautiful faces of the Thesigers with his engaging twinkle. He sought out and ministered to two young girls who had been brought there by the minor confraternity and were hiding in a corner ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... art of reading as one likes is the most difficult, perhaps the most impossible, of all the arts in modern times, constitutes one of those serio-comic problems of civilisation—a problem which civilisation itself, with all its swagger of science, its literary braggadocio, its Library Cure, with all its Board Schools, Commissioners of Education and specialists, and bishops and newsboys, all hard at work upon it, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... he said, and laid a finger on the side. His presence rather hindered their efforts, but they succeeded in spite of it. William, however, was under the impression that his strength alone had wrought the miracle. He put on an outrageous swagger. ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... some of his accustomed swagger began to return. "I don't know what the flowery phrases are all about, but the symbols refer to common proteins, lipins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and biomins," he said. "What ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... all right, you can trust Jake Shaggam," replied Gouch, with a swagger. Liquor had deprived him ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... as if he had not a word on his tongue. "If you think you can frighten me,—" he said. Then, without ending his sentence, he swaggered out of the shop. But to Maida his swagger seemed like something put on to conceal ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... availed nothing. His whole candidature had been carried in the face of that. 'I think we shall do pretty well,' he said to the clerk. His very presence in Abchurch Lane of course gave confidence. And thus, when he came home, something of the old arrogance had come back upon him, and he could swagger at any rate before his wife and servants. 'Nor Lord Alfred,' he said with scorn. Then he added more. 'The father and son are two d—— curs.' This of course frightened Madame Melmotte, and she joined this desertion of the Grendalls to her own ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... friends looking out of all the club windows. My reputation is gone. I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled by whipper-snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. I am found out. And in the days of my triumphs, when people were yet afraid of me, and were taken in by my swagger, I always knew that I was a lily liver, and expected that I should be found ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Jock goes with more swagger down Princes Street than Johnny Gurkha down the bazaar of Darrapore, particularly in the evening, when he doffs khaki for the mufti suit of his clan—the spotless white shorts, coat of black sateen, little cocked cap and brightly bordered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... also too large for him, he was wearing very much on the back of his head, and he was smoking a very black cigar, from which he had failed to remove the band. He frowned when he saw Wrayson, but followed the Baroness into the room with a pronounced swagger. ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... struts the limelit boards: With false moustache, set smirk and ogling eyes And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash, and clatter; And over the brassy blare and drumming din She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin Spirtle of sniggering ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... so much, as the queen's dwarf, who being of the lowest stature that ever in that country (for I verily think he was not full thirty feet high) became so insolent at seeing a creature so much beneath him, that he would always affect to swagger, and look big, as he passed by me in the queen's ante-chamber, while I was standing on some table, talking with the lords or ladies of the court, and he seldom failed of a smart word or two upon my littleness; against which I could only revenge ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... I'm bound to be that!" said the man, with a braggart laugh and swagger. "I tell ye, mar, we're going to have the greatest ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... was this idea which later in the afternoon induced him to swagger forward to shake hands with me with a flash insolent leer on his face. I took pains to be especially nice to him, treating him with deference, and making remarks upon the extreme heat of the weather ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... chum," he said, with a suggestion of swagger. "We can manage those dubs down there alone. The rest of you can sit down and tell stories; we'll let you out in ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... corsage of orchids. Merlin started and then gazed at her fearfully. For the first time in the eight years since his marriage he was encountering the girl again. But a girl no longer. Her figure was slim as ever—or perhaps not quite, for a certain boyish swagger, a sort of insolent adolescence, had gone the way of the first blooming of her cheeks. But she was beautiful; dignity was there now, and the charming lines of a fortuitous nine-and-twenty; and she sat in the car with such perfect appropriateness and self-possession that ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... familiarly to all who approach their tables. John Morrissey is occasionally to be seen, walking through the rooms, apparently a disinterested spectator. He is a short, thick-set man, of about 40 years, dark complexion, and wears a long beard, dresses in a slovenly manner, and walks with a swagger. Now and then he approaches the table; makes a few bets, and is then ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... then. Possibly it took on a little swagger; certainly he lost the dignity that he had shown under stress of feeling; he was now more like a cowboy about to boast or affect some stunning maneuver. Walking off the porch, he stood before ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Perhaps sometimes we are inclined to droop apologetic heads, because we know that some women are sentimental, that they don't all "look at things in the large," as men invariably do. In view, however, of the record of this youthful movement of ours, we have a right rather to swagger than ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... no God but God: is it possible that four or five Franks can use all these things to eat, drink and sleep on a journey?' (N.B. I fear the Franks will think the stock very scanty.) Whereupon master Achmet, with the swagger of one who has seen cities and men, held forth. 'Oh Effendim, that is nothing; Our Lady is almost like the children of the Arabs. One dish or two, a piece of bread, a few dates, and Peace, (as we say, there is an end of it). But thou shouldst see the merchants of Escandarieh, (Alexandria), ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... with painstaking detail. Too late she had discovered that she didn't possess a dress fit to wear at any one's wedding, not to mention her own. From time to time she had dreamed of a swagger tailored suit, but the paradox of a swagger tailored suit in San Pasqual had been so apparent always that Donna could not bring herself to the point of submitting to a measurement in the local dry-goods emporium, having the suit made in Chicago and sent out by express. Instead ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... turned across Hyde Park, where a big company of girl guides was drilling, watched by a crowd of curious on-lookers. Across a belt of grass some boy scouts were performing similar evolutions, marching with all the extra polish and swagger they could command, just to show the guides that girls were all very well in their way, but that no one with skirts could really hope to do credit to a uniform. Cecilia ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... trenches—to which they replied "Oh, boy!" with great smacking of tongues and shaking of heads. Some one took a piece of chalk and scrawled on the side of the train, "We won the war—now we're going home," and the officers laughed and let it stay. They were all getting what swagger they could out of this ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... figure. The city was found to be in no little confusion on the arrival of the Movable Column, mutiny being rampant among the troops, and the military authorities taking scarcely any precautions to prevent an outbreak. In the streets it was apparent from the swagger of the native soldiers that they believed the ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... England from the indelible disgrace of a second and more gratuitous Crimea. But it was not only in Eastern Europe that his saving influence was felt. In Africa and India, and wherever British honor was involved, he was the resolute and unsparing enemy of that odious system of bluster and swagger and might against right, on which Lord Beaconsfield and his colleagues bestowed ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... rarely sees. Sometimes a latchkey is heard about half-past six. The man is thick, strong, common; his jaws are heavy; his eyes are expressionless; there is about him the loud swagger of the caserne; and he suggests the inevitable question, Why did she marry him?—a question that every young man of refined mind asks a thousand times by day and ten thousand times by night, asks till he is five-and-thirty, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... to spend the winter down in St. Augustine with the Charles K. Wilmarths, and she knows I hate them. She wanted to go because, as you know, she thinks she's not at all well, and also because the Charles K. Wilmarths are rather swagger. Either because she wished to get rid of me, or because I raised such a fuss, she compromised. I'm to be allowed to stay here for the next four months and take painting lessons from Jorgensen. I intend ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... some profit, and a little snatching up of a few loose trifles such as the Society Islands, which we had, according to our custom, carelessly or benevolently left to gleaners), French arms, despite a great deal of brag and swagger, obtained little glory, while French diplomacy let itself wallow in one of the foulest sloughs in history, the matter ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... art, Bear due proportion to his outer part, As once 'twas said of Macklin in the Jew, 'This is the very Falstaff Shakspeare drew.' To you, with diffidence, he bids me say, Should you approve, you may command his stay, To lie and swagger here another day. If not, to better men he'll leave his sack, And go as ballast, in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots, and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in the Baron's costume was a large diamond, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... of the Lecture Bureau may be found in a swagger Club any evening with a Bourbon H. B. at his Right, a stack of Student Lamps at his Left and Two Small Pair ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... tried to hide the fear that fed upon him with a tinge of swagger. This in the White House—the palace of their President! Storri was more and more convinced that the Americans were a rabble and ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... for Jack, with his cavalry swagger and a white weal all round his sunburned face to show where his chin-strap hung, looked the most unbusiness-like ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... stood watching them haul up to the Adams Street curb. His heart was tired of tall buildings and the endless grimace of windows. Here was a chariot out of another world. Motor vagabonds. Scooting into a city with a swagger to their dust-caked wheels. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... interesting; I could imagine she had lost parents, natural protectors—could conceive even she had inherited money. I was at a pass of my own fortunes when keeping hansoms at doors seemed to me pure swagger. As a trick of this bold and sensitive girl, however, it became romantic—a part of the general romance of her freedom, her errand, her innocence. The confidence of young Americans was notorious, and I speedily arrived at a conviction that no impulse could have been more ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... and humbly born, at that, but she liked extreme Americanism never the more. Perhaps she was a bit of a snob, though fate was getting ready to beat the snobbery out of her. And hers was an unintentional, superficial snobbery, at worst. Some people said she was affected and that she aped the swagger dialect. But she had a habit of taking on the accent and color of her environments. She had not been in England a month before she spoke Piccadilly almost impeccably. She had caught French and German intonations with equal speed and had picked up music by ear with the same ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the coon and come down. Whether they would have done so had they known the weakness of Diebitch may be questioned; but again it may be questioned whether, that weakness unknown, he could not have occupied Constantinople on the swagger. His master was prepared promptly to reinforce him; Constantinople was perhaps nearer its fall in 1828 than in 1878, and certainly Diebitch was much smarter than were the Grand Duke Nicholas, his fossil Nepokoitschitsky, and his ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Americans don't embroil us in a war before long it will not be their fault. What with their swagger and bombast, what with their claims for indemnification, what with Ireland and Fenianism, and what with Canada, I have strong apprehensions. With a settled animosity towards the French usurper, I believe him to have always been sound in his desire to ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... now, Herbinger, you know who I mean, the fellow who's in one of the jobbers' offices; yes, of course, you must know him, he's one of the best-known men in Paris, that great big fair-haired boy who wears such swagger clothes; he always has a flower in his buttonhole and a light-coloured overcoat with a fold down the back; he goes about with that old image, takes her to all the first-nights. Very well! He gave a ball the other night, and all the smart people in Paris were there. I should have ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... vividness the Italian soldiers of adventure of his day. We see before us the long-haired followers of Braccio and the Baglioni; their handsome savage faces; their brawny limbs clad in the parti-coloured hose and jackets of that period; feathered caps stuck sideways on their heads; a splendid swagger in their straddling legs. Female beauty lay outside the sphere of Signorelli's sympathy; and in the Monte Oliveto cloister he was not called upon to paint it. But none of the Italian masters felt more keenly, or more powerfully represented in ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... contained very little water. So with a quick heave he sent a shining spout in the direction of the spy, who was drenched from knee to shoe-buckle. Then he caught up the pails with a clash of their iron handles and with the easiest swagger in the world took the direction of the spring, his spurs jingling as he went. A sailor on guard behind the rock would have aided him to fill them, but he told the man to keep his station, and dipped for himself. He brought them back brimming and with a courtly bow inquired of Patsy if she had ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Japp. He might brag about his knowledge of how to deal with natives, but to my mind his methods were a disgrace to a white man. Zeeta came in for oaths and blows, but there were other Kaffirs whom he treated with a sort of cringing friendliness. A big black fellow would swagger into the shop, and be received by Japp as if he were his long-lost brother. The two would collogue for hours; and though at first I did not understand the tongue, I could see that it was the white man who fawned and the black man who bullied. Once when japp was away one of these fellows came ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... marvellously akin; and such differences as you will see in them are superficial merely. I spoke of Whistler's vanity in life, and I spoke of his timidity and reverence in art. That contradiction is itself merely superficial. Bob Acres was timid, but he was also vain. His swagger was not an empty assumption to cloak his fears; he really did regard himself as a masterful and dare-devil fellow, except when he was actually fighting. Similarly, except when he was at his work, Whistler, doubtless, really did think of himself as a brilliant effortless butterfly. The pose ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... was worth a little inconvenience, and quite a little risk to see those chiefs arrive at the castle gate, toss their reins to a brother cut-throat, and swagger in, the poorest and least important timing their arrival, when they could, just in advance of an important man so as to take precedence of him and ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... gentleman. Not the swagger of the dude nor the cringing of a scapegoat, but the manners of a being permeated with ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... was going to work in his garden, where his vegetables were coming forward very well. Nothing could have been better than his manners—quiet, manly, civil, without the rather aggravating slyness of the ordinary French peasant, and with absolutely nothing of the infantine swagger of the small French bourgeois. These miners here wear a picturesque and practical costume, something between the garb of a sailor and the garb of a fireman, and as their life—like the life of a fireman or a sailor—is lived a good deal apart from the lives of other men, and has a constant spice ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... to-morrow.—Well; I never saw such a letter in all my life; so saucy, so journalish, so sanguine, so pretending, so everything. I satisfied all your fears in my last: all is gone well, as you say; yet you are an impudent slut to be so positive; you will swagger so upon your sagacity that we shall never have done. Pray don't mislay your reply; I would certainly print it, if I had it here: how long is it? I suppose half a sheet: was the answer written in Ireland? Yes, yes, you shall have a letter when you ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... Viktor Hlopakov, a little, thinnish, dark man of thirty, with black hair, brown eyes, and a thick snub nose, is a diligent frequenter of elections and horse-fairs. He walks with a skip and a hop, waves his fat hands with a jovial swagger, cocks his cap on one side, and tucks up the sleeves of his military coat, showing the blue-black cotton lining. Mr. Hlopakov knows how to gain the favour of rich scapegraces from Petersburg; smokes, drinks, and plays cards ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... Colebyville that morning in the new buggy, rather pleased to be the centre of observation and remark. He quite liked to swagger before these country people whom he chose otherwise to ignore. He was well dressed, his buggy was the admired of all admirers, and he was newly married. Country gossip had some pleasing qualifications. When he had arrived at Colebyville, however, John Hunter had found that country people had ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... driven their wagons to the place of voting, on the prairie, and hitched their horses to their wagons, and were quietly going about their business, when with a great whoop and hurrah, which frightened their horses and made them break loose from their wagons, a company of men came in sight, and with swagger and bluster, took possession of the polls, and proceeded to do the voting. Meantime whisky flowed like water, and the men, far gone in liquor, turned the place into a bedlam. In utter humiliation and disgust many of the squatters went home. Caleb May did not get into the neighborhood till ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... wasn't afraid you'd think I swagger, I should say—than anybody! If you leave your place there, where shall you go?" he more ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... dark hours of each night, Dick managed to abstract small quantities of goods from their pack, in room of which he stuffed in pieces of leather to keep up the size and appearance. The goods thus taken out he concealed about his person, and went off with a careless swagger to the outskirts of the village, with Crusoe at his heels. Arrived there, he tied the goods in a small piece of deerskin, and gave the bundle to the dog, with the injunction, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... soldier's pistol was whipped out—a flash, a report, and Jim George fell dead at his feet, a victim to his own swagger and an innocent jest of his companions. So dumbfounded were the innocent "foragers," that they allowed the cavalryman to ride away unmolested ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... more erect and even assumed a military swagger and spoke somewhat contemptuously of the line and mobiles, whose discipline was as lax as their own, and among whom drunkenness was rife, for whatever else failed, the supply of wine and spirits appeared inexhaustible. Cuthbert went not unfrequently ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... pegs, with Barcelonas and comforters, and damp travelling caps of seal-skin, and blue cloth, and tartan, arranged above the same. Nevertheless, such a society in my juvenile estimation, during my short escapade from the middy's berth, had its charms, and I was rolling in with a tolerable swagger, when Mr. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... find these anapaests in the Elizabethan or in the seventeenth-century poets, or most rarely. They were dear to the eighteenth century, and, much more than the heroic couplet, are the distinctive metre of that age. They swagger—or, worse, they strut—in its lighter verse, from its first year to its last. Swinburne's anapaests are far too delicate for swagger or strut; but for all their dance, all their spring, all their flight, all ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... but what nation on the face of the earth is free? My youth is still like a blue and cloudless sky. If I set myself to obtain wealth or power, does it mean that I must make up my mind to lie, and fawn, and cringe, and swagger, and flatter, and dissemble? To consent to be the servant of others who have likewise fawned, and lied, and flattered? Must I cringe to them before I can hope to be their accomplice? Well, then, I decline. I mean to work nobly and with a single heart. I will work ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... of the richest capitalists in Paris one day met an extremely pretty little working-girl. Her mother was with her, but the girl had taken the arm of a young fellow in very doubtful finery, with a very smart swagger. The millionaire fell in love with the girl at first sight; he followed her home, he went in; he heard all her story, a record of alternations of dancing at Mabille and days of starvation, of play-going and hard work; he took an interest in it, and left five thousand-franc ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... success in life is a knowledge of people. This the wise men helped their students to obtain. Let us sit for a while beside one of them and look through his eyes at the people who pass by. Here comes young Mr. Know-it-all. He wears a very fine garment, and walks with a swagger. His father and mother and all his aunts and uncles have always told him that he is the most clever person in the world. And, of course, he agrees with them. He will listen to advice from nobody. The wise man watches him pass, then says to ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... conspiracy. As a matter of fact, I saw little of it and confessed to nothing. Certainly he was what some might call handsome, of a pictorial, exuberant style of beauty, all attitude, profile, and impudence: a man whom I could see in fancy parade on the grand stand at a race-meeting, or swagger in Piccadilly, staring down the women, and stared at himself with admiration by the coal porters. Of his frame of mind at that moment his face offered a lively if an unconscious picture. He was lividly pale, and his lip was caught up in a smile that could almost be called ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into a cardboard box by the clerk, and wrapped in heavy paper to be stowed away in the car. She confronted Gratton smilingly in her new garb, her hands in her pockets, her face saucy, her slim body boyish in its swagger and richly feminine in its unhidden curves. Gratton's eyes shone, quick with admiration. She laughed and a flush came into her cheeks as he gravely paid for her clothing and his own. When they went to their ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... his chair close to mine, and as he knew my weak side, the scamp continued: 'Just think what a swagger thing it will be to do, and how amusing to tell about; the whole army will talk about it, and it will give you a ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... that was well acquainted with the ground it was moving over; the step showed no doubt or apprehension, it could hardly be called stealthy, but it glided on firmly and cautiously, without haste, or swagger, or unevenness.... The oftener you heard him speak, the more his speaking gained upon you.... He never seemed occupied with himself. His effort was evidently directed to convince you, not that he was eloquent, but that he was right.... He seemed rather to aim at gaining the doubtful, than mortifying ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... an idiot of myself," he went on. "I'd no right to come down here like that. I just want you to forgive me now, that's all. I didn't mean to swagger about being rich. I'm not enjoying it a bit till ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... series of unsteady footbeats, and the door of my study was flung back. In the opening, staring at me with quiet dignity, stood a young, careless fellow, about five feet ten in height and decidedly dark of complexion. The swagger of his entrance branded him as an adventurer. The ghastly pallor of his face, which was almost colorless, branded him as a man who has found something ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... said—"tramp steamers, coasting schooners, collier brigs, and timber barques; and those aren't the sort of craft that rub neatness into a man. Our motto in the little drogher yonder is to keep her afloat with the least possible bother to ourselves. We never lie in swagger harbours to be looked at. There isn't a burgee or a brass button on board. Strict Spartan utility is very much the motto of the ship's company. Hence, for example, you find the decks brown and not white, and yet I can assure you ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... a crest was not conspicuous. He spoke with a very good imitation of the accent of the officers he had served with, and in his alertness, his well-trained movements, his upright carriage, and his personal cleanliness, he came so near to looking like a gentleman that he escaped it only by a certain swagger, which proved an ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the praise bestowed upon him and gave his shoulders a swagger. "Speakin' of that, boss," he said, "reminds me of a chap who rode into Cabin Gulch a few weeks ago. Braced right into Beard's place, where we was all playin' faro, an' he asks for Jack Kells. Right off we all thought ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... and his left foot hacked off in the marketplace. No more were marriages to be celebrated with pomp and feasting, no more was the youthful warrior to swagger with flowing hair; henceforth, the believer must banquet on dates and milk, and his head must be kept shaved. Minor transgressions were punished by confiscation of property or by imprisonment and chains. But the rhinoceros whip was the favourite ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Arthur had seen her in such a sorry plight. She wished he might see her at a better advantage. For instance, galloping up on a spirited mount, in a modish riding-habit—a checked one with flaring-skirted coat and shining boots and daring but swagger breeches, perhaps!—galloping insouciantly up ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... a bit, Harriet, but 'tis not an offensive swagger. As to his hat: 'tis a standing joke of the army as to how he keeps it on in battle. The hotter the fight the further on the side it gets. I saw a letter that General Greene writ to His Excellency in which he declared that Drayton fought with it on his right ear all through ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... tenders is a good one and should be acted upon. As it is now, the justice there dispensed is so mixed and doctored that it satisfies only the vitiated taste of the roughs. The proceedings in the McFARLAND and JACKSON case show that swagger, not study—bullying, not brains, are in a fair way to become the important qualifications of a counsel. The lawyers should organize in their own defence and classify themselves. Mr. PUNCHINELLO suggests the following method ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... pride or vanity. He wanted to show off his courage before his followers, who were mostly does; many of them his wives too—for the old antelopes are shocking polygamists. It would never do to appear timid in the eyes of the fair does; and he was determined to cut a swagger. Under this impulse, he walked boldly up, until his sharp snout touched the hair of one of ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... ready to his hand that would have added one of the most amusing and interesting portraits to his gallery. He faintly suggests a moral Falstaff, if we can imagine a Falstaff without vices. As a narrator he has the swagger of a Captain Dalghetty, but his actions are marked by honesty and sincerity. He appears to have had none of the small vices of the gallants of his time. His chivalric attitude toward certain ladies who appear in his adventures, must have been sufficiently amusing ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... up the crooked little staircase with a who's-afraid kind of swagger, but he took his hat ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... went, twirling his club with many intricate and artful movements, turning now and then to cast his watchful eye adown the pacific thoroughfare, the officer, with his stalwart form and slight swagger, made a fine picture of a guardian of the peace. The vicinity was one that kept early hours. Now and then you might see the lights of a cigar store or of an all-night lunch counter; but the majority of the doors belonged to business places that ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... with peculiar heartiness all attempts at realizing history, by evolving its romantic element, and thus demonstrating to the languid and lazy readers of ninepenny nonsense, that the actual heroes and heroines of the world have surpassed in romantic daring the fictitious ones who swell and swagger in most novels and poems. Mr. Gayarre's work is more interesting, both as regards its characters and incidents, than Jane Eyre or James's "last," for, in truth, it requires a mind of large scope to imagine as great things as many men, in every country, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... we hear of others that they have been toiled, nor be tickled at the thoughts of our own manhood; for such commonly come by the worst when tried.[258] Witness Peter, of whom I made mention before. He would swagger, aye, he would; he would, as his vain mind prompted him to say, do better, and stand more for his Master than all men; but who so foiled, and run down ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... old gentleman at the end of the table—Bullding his name is. He will tell you confidentially that he simply hates the place. Yet he's been here for six years, and he's as much a fixture as that sham mahogany sideboard. Everyone will grumble to you confidentially—Miss Ellicot, she's our swagger young lady, you know—up there, next to Miss White, she will tell you that it is so out of the world here, so far away from everyone one knows. Old Kesterton, choleric-looking individual nearly opposite, will curse the cooking till he's black in the face, but he never misses a dinner. The Semitic ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tow, Begins to jow an' croon; Some swagger hame the best they dow, Some wait the afternoon, At slaps the billies halt a blink, Till lasses strip their shoon; Wi' faith an' hope, an' love an' drink, They're a' in famous tune For crack ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... his eyes and a little to one side, and strolled on, humming an old Mexican air. His walk was the swagger of a young Mexican gallant, and in the dimness they would not notice his Northern fairness. Several pairs of eyes observed him, but not with disapproval. They considered him a trim Mexican lad. Some of the men in the doorways took up the air that he was whistling ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... all—all the emotions that a real desperado could feel. He had experienced the impulse to swagger, to pose—really to live the part that ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... sat entranced. Then she was all woman, and the magic of sex kidnapped the irritations of the day and made him forget the big revolver, the Baden-Powell, and all the rest. But what right, the next thought in his brain would whisper, had such a girl to swagger around like a man and exult that adventure was not dead? Woman that adventured were adventuresses, and the connotation was not nice. Besides, he was not enamoured of adventure. Not since he was a boy had it appealed to him—though it would ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... who were running speedily drew near. Most of them were out of breath, and all looked very much excited. The leader, who was quite a character in the Southern town, and a fierce appearing individual, with a military swagger, which Phil believed to be wholly assumed, immediately addressed himself to the two young Northerners on the new-fangled motor boat, which had been the wonder of the townspeople ever since it was dropped ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... realised anew the significance of that still figure at his feet, and tried to shake some of the swagger back into his wretched, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... whether it was a trait of madness or of nobility. I could have told her with absolute confidence that it was neither the one nor the other, but a sort of epicurean selfishness with perhaps a little dash of swagger away down at the bottom of it. What had I ever had from my chronometer like the quiet thrill of satisfaction when the fellow brought me the pawn ticket and told me that the ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... which Nutty had thrown at Eustace had missed the latter, but it had hit the wall, and was now lying in many pieces on the floor, and the air was heavy with the scent of it. The remains seemed to leer at her with a kind of furtive swagger, after the manner of broken bottles. A quick thrill of anger ran through Elizabeth. She had always felt more like a mother to Nutty than a sister, and now she would have liked to exercise the maternal ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... silent agitation, or a softer kind of lateral motion; as sway, swag, to sway, swagger, swerve, sweat, sweep, swill, swim, swing, swift, sweet, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... he was sneaking away struck him like a blow. Sneaking away! He stopped. With a careless, cocky swagger he had always, before this, stood up ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... white tie and the much-cherished whiskers of the fifties, which was only redeemed by that other touch of devilry that he had shown me in the corridor. By the rich brown of his complexion, as well as by a certain sort of swagger in his walk, I should have said that he was a naval officer ashore, had he not told me who he was ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... two small parcels which apparently belonged to the girl at his side. He was a handsome man, tall and rather spare, with dark eyes and a soldierly look. His movements were quick and forceful, but a hint of what Mrs. Keith called swagger somewhat spoiled his bearing. She thought he allowed his self-confidence to be seen too plainly. The girl formed a marked contrast to him; she was short and slender, her hair and eyes were brown, while her prettiness, for one could not have, called her beautiful, was of an essentially ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... a-half of road, with little galvanised-iron-roofed cottages at intervals of a quarter of a mile or so, that constituted the township. She watched Conroy, the policeman, resplendent in breeches and polished boots, swagger out from the court-house yard, leading his horse to water. The town was waking to its daily routine; Garry, the butcher, took down the clumsy board that passed for a window-shutter, and McDermott, ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... from the table with a little swagger, ruffling it gaily in his triumph over me; and so young, so small he seemed, to be boasting of his manhood and his prowess in the warfare of love, that I ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Clinkumbell, wi' ratlin tow, Begins to jow an' croon; Some swagger hame, the best they dow, Some wait the afternoon. At slaps the billies halt a blink, Till lasses strip their shoon: Wi' faith an' hope, an' love an' drink, They're a' in famous tune ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... be American, English, French or German. His voice had been quiet and deferential, but by no means genteel; nor had it any hint of the roystering joviality of a sailor. More than anything else his gait, in its sedate unobtrusiveness, seemed to me utterly at variance with the rolling swagger which we conventionally associate ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... red-nosed man, and the red-nosed man could not move. The red-nosed man heard all the questions and the landlord's answers, and could not even pretend that he did not hear them. "I am my cousin's clerk," said he, putting on his hat, and coming up to Mr Toogood with a swagger. "My name is Dan Stringer, and I'm Mr John Stringer's cousin. I've lived with Mr John Stringer for twelve year and more, and I'm a'most as well known in Barchester as himself. Have you anything ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... example, at any rate, of what a man—and such a man!—might make of a woman. She could see how the Condrip pair pressed their brother's widow on the subject of Aunt Maud—who wasn't, after all, their aunt; made her, over their interminable cups, chatter and even swagger about Lancaster Gate, made her more vulgar than it had seemed written that any Croy could possibly become on such a subject. They laid it down, they rubbed it in, that Lancaster Gate was to be kept in sight, and that she, Kate, was to keep it; so that, curiously, or at all events sadly, our young ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... hoard hidden under the floor of a men's lodging house—that could only be stolen money. Where had he stolen it from? Was he some kind of gentleman burglar, such as plays and novels had been built around? It was a plausible explanation. He looked the part so well; lots of swagger and side, and the whole thing a trifle overdone. What a story! Crowder licked his lips over it, seeing it splashed across the front page. At that moment the parcel Jim had given him slipped off his knee ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... stretched on a bed of rose-leaves; [51] or Vatinius, darting forward to speak, his eyes starting from his head, his neck swollen, and his muscles rigid; [52] or the Gaulish and Greek witnesses, of whom the former swagger erect across the forum, [53] the latter chatter and gesticulate without ever looking up; [54] we see in each case the master's powerful hand. Other descriptions are longer and more ambitious; the confusion of the Catilinarian conspirators after detection; [55] the character of Catiline; ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... mind would swagger him into droll ideas of attempting to chastise his Imperial prisoner, at another, his childish fear of the consequences of his chastisement was pathetic, and when one droll farce after another broke down, he shielded himself ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... only too apt a pupil in the lessons in the midst of which his childhood had been passed. He had at his tongue's tip all the slang of the stables and all the blackguardisms of the betting-ring; and boy—almost child—as he was, he affected the swagger and habits of a "fast man," like a true son ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... Bob in twenty-four hours), but usually so slowly that they saw it resting on the way, and then, when they listened intently, they could hear the thud of Hogmanay. The last halfpenny was a special aggravation, strolling about, just out of reach, with all the swagger of sixpence, but at last Elspeth had it, and after that, the sooner Hogmanay ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... with a swagger and a rustle of his silk gown, and proceeded to set forth the theory of the defence. He said he did not purpose to call many witnesses. The hypothesis of the prosecution was so inherently childish and inconsequential, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... met the fixed gaze of his eyes and was lost. With the ghost of a swagger in her gait she crossed to the red plush sofa upon which Paul was seated and lounged upon the end of it, one foot swinging in the air. She had a trick of rubbing the second finger of her left hand as if twisting a ring, and Paul ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... he learned in childhood from his experience of poverty at home, in his remarks in later life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to strut and swagger, but must be humble and learn to be silent and to trust in God, and to whom God also has given ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... features showed the alternating play of a sympathy evidently more selfish than good-humored, and his eyes, in almost glassy clearness, for the first time distinctly showed the expression of that unrestrained ambition and tendency to swagger which afterwards revealed itself as so strong a motive ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... was heard; and it was found that he had gone below, and had eaten up all the servants' dinner; so they all joined together to punish him, and after some trouble, contrived to kick him out of the house; and very foolish he looked, in spite of his tipsy swagger. ...
— The Dogs' Dinner Party • Unknown
... departure the receipt, and time alone can say, whether your bargain has been a good or a bad one. He has certainly no assumption—it is one of his few good traits; he walks with his arms in motion, but attempts not a swagger; his knock is unassuming, and his words, though much attended to, are few, and to the point. Why, then, abuse him? We know not, but believe it originates in fear. An intuitive feeling of dread—a rushing presentiment of evil—crosses our mind, as our ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... breakwater frames along in the calms; and that we of the screws found our steam vessels all we could wish, somewhat o'er lively, mayhap,—a frisky tendency to break every breakable article on board. But there was a saucy swagger in them, as they bowled along the hollow of a western sea, which showed they had good blood in them; and we soon felt confident of disappointing those Polar seers, who had foretold shipwreck and disaster ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... back legs and begging you with his front paws to come and do something—a trick entirely of his own invention, for no one would think of teaching him anything; his funny nautical roll when he walks, which is nearly a swagger, and gives him always the air of having just come back from some rather dashing adventure; beyond all this there is still something. And whatever it is, it is something, which every now and then compels you to bend down and catch hold of his long silky ears, to look into his honest eyes ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... said Dick, chuckling with delight at being completely understood. "I couldn't resist one little bit of sheer swagger. It's a French trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got at by slewing round the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of the left ear. That, and deepening the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... trying to gather from them what their words might mean. They, deep in their conversation, did not notice her. Then, with a feeling of extraordinary relief—she hardly knew why—she saw a familiar, substantial person coming along the promenade with a sort of friendly swagger. She went forward to meet him, still feeling as though she were walking in ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... stepped from the store he met an old acquaintance from Pinnacle. There was only one thing to do in a case like that, and Casey did it quite naturally. They came out of The Club wiping their lips, and the swagger in Casey's shoulders ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Salem, and without any hesitation—for I must move while my resolve was high—I galloped out to the Dale house. The low sun extended my shadow to a grotesque length as I flung myself from the saddle and with an attempt at a bold swagger advanced to find the maid. I am sure my bearing suggested confidence, but it was ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... meritorious parish-priest, of fair repute too as a preacher, who has striven for years, hard but unavailingly, to divest himself of the martial air he brought with him out of the K.D.G. He strides down the village street with a certain swagger and roll, as if the steel scabbard were still trailing at his heel, acknowledging rustic bows with a slight quick motion of the finger, like troopers' salutes; on the smooth shaven face is shadowed forth the outline ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... And all the lines Are stranger to my lips, and alien quite To car and eye and mind. I tell thee, Cosimo, This play of thine is one in which no man Should swagger on, trusting the prompter's voice; For mountains tipped with fire back up the scene, Out of the coppice roars the tiger's voice: The lightning's touch is death; the thunder rends The very rocks whereon its anger lights, The ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Reuben Ring; still it hath much of the swagger of the other, though their stature be nearly equal—the manner of carrying the musket is much the same with all the borderers too—one cannot easily tell the form of man from a stump by this light—and—yet do I think it will prove ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... o' sunshine over the sea! Ah-ha, the glory o' that time! Sixteen—an' as yet no adventure beyond the waters of our parts! A nobbly time off Mad Mull in a easterly wind—a night on the ice in the spring o' the year—a wrecked punt in the tickle waters; but no big adventure—no right t' swagger—none t' cock my cap—an' no great tale o' the north coast t' tell the little lads o' Rickity Tickle on the hills of a Sunday afternoon. But now, at last, I'd a berth with Davy Junk, a thing beyond belief, an' I was ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... dull rage against the other two. How dared they pretend not to be afraid? It was all swagger—he knew that very well. Various unpleasant recollections began to rise in his mind. He remembered how that Indian spy had stalked the settler's cabin at Earl's Court. He could see him now, stealing over the sand, then listening with his ear ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... soldier individually. He is clean, civil, good-tempered, and with a far closer resemblance to Englishmen in what we regard as essentials than any other Continental. The officers are in the truest sense gentlemen free from swagger, and not over-bearing towards their men and their civilian compatriots. They represent a genuine type of manhood, free from artificiality or falsehood. One feels instinctively that they say what they ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... thoroughly realised. Observing him, listening to him, as he stood there palpably before us, one seemed to understand better than ever Thackeray's declaration in regard to those same menials in plush breeches, that a certain delightful "quivering swagger" of the calves about them, had for him always, as he expressed it, "a frantic fascination!" Immediately afterwards, however, as the Reader turned a new leaf, in place of the momentary apparition of ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... been carried in the face of that. 'I think we shall do pretty well,' he said to the clerk. His very presence in Abchurch Lane of course gave confidence. And thus, when he came home, something of the old arrogance had come back upon him, and he could swagger at any rate before his wife and servants. 'Nor Lord Alfred,' he said with scorn. Then he added more. 'The father and son are two d—— curs.' This of course frightened Madame Melmotte, and she joined this desertion of the Grendalls to her own ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... somewhere several hundred feet above a great open park. It was densely packed with people, most of them wearing clothes a farm tramp on Gram wouldn't be found dead in, but here and there among them were blocks of men in what was almost but not quite military uniform, each with a short and thick swagger-stick with a knobbed head. Across the park, in the distance, the head and shoulders of Zaspar Makann loomed a hundred feet high in a huge screen. Whenever he stopped for breath, a shout would go up, beginning with the ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... very swagger little shoes in the beginning—Ikey had made rather a specialty of footgear—but they were her "escape" shoes; and their looks told the tale of their wanderings. Also, she ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... lawfully her due. This small slip was attended with another indiscretion, which had likewise an unlucky effect upon her reputation. She had been favoured with the addresses of one of those hopeful heirs who swarm and swagger about town, under the denomination of bucks; and, in the confidence of his honour, consented to be one of a party that made an excursion as far as Windsor, thinking herself secured from scandal by the company of another young ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... with men and smoke and talk like men—alas, that there is that variety of woman—but she is not new. Pray did you never see her before she wore bloomers? Bloomers are no worse than the sort of clothes she used to wear. Her swagger is no more pronounced now than it used to be in skirts. She has always had bloomer instincts. You don't pretend to declare, do you, that there never were unconventional women, ill-dressed and rowdy women, before the new woman was heard of? That is the ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... officer who had served on two campaigns. He knew what makes a soldier, and judging by the appearance and the talk of those persons, by the swagger with which they had recourse to the bottle on the journey, he considered them poor soldiers. Moreover, he lived in a district town, and he was longing to tell how one soldier had volunteered from his town, a drunkard and a thief whom no one would employ as a laborer. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... "he excited no little attention. He wore the uniform of the 11th Dragoons at Culloden; and, with the costume, which became him extremely, he contrived to assume the portentous bearing, and the true jack-boot stride and swagger." ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... instinctive criminal may be recognised by an excessive vanity which will often tempt him to steal, the thefts being generally confined to articles of personal adornment or which give an occasion to "swagger." When accused he will deny the charge brought against him with an effrontery which will too often create the conviction that he is innocent. When charged he will challenge the statements of his superiors without ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... moment her deep pansy eyes rested in his. He felt a sudden intoxication of the senses. Almost with a swagger he drew up a chair and seated himself beside her. Already he was the conquering male in headlong pursuit. Nor was he disturbed by the least suspicion of having been filled with the sensations and the impulses ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... innate ability of the Spaniard to adapt himself to the customs of all foreign countries he imitated the manner of the English inhabitants of Gibraltar. He had bought himself a pipe, wore a traveling cap, turned up trousers and a swagger stick. The day on which he arrived, even before night-fall, they already knew throughout Gibraltar who he was and whither he was bound. Two days later the shopkeepers greeted him from the doors of their shops, and the idlers, gathered on the narrow ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Herbinger, you know who I mean, the fellow who's in one of the jobbers' offices; yes, of course, you must know him, he's one of the best-known men in Paris, that great big fair-haired boy who wears such swagger clothes; he always has a flower in his buttonhole and a light-coloured overcoat with a fold down the back; he goes about with that old image, takes her to all the first-nights. Very well! He gave a ball the other night, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the second pail contained very little water. So with a quick heave he sent a shining spout in the direction of the spy, who was drenched from knee to shoe-buckle. Then he caught up the pails with a clash of their iron handles and with the easiest swagger in the world took the direction of the spring, his spurs jingling as he went. A sailor on guard behind the rock would have aided him to fill them, but he told the man to keep his station, and dipped for ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... when this agreeable youth was out of sight, begin to run with his little companion; Mrs. Bolton following after them, with Captain Costigan at her side. But the captain was too majestic and dignified in his movements to run for friend or enemy, and he pursued his course with the usual jaunty swagger which distinguished his steps, so that he and his companion were speedily distanced ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... beautifully done up in the uniform of Vacuum Tube Transport, complete to kilts and the swagger stick of the officer of Rank Colonel or above, stood glaring at them. Age, Joe estimated, even as he came to attention, somewhere in the late twenties—an Upper in caste. Born to command. His face holding that arrogant, ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... don't say they are visible), and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe were to step in at that open window by the little garden yonder? Suppose Uncas and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide in silent? Suppose Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter, with a noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches? And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby's arm; and Tittlebat Titmouse with his hair dyed green; and all the Crummles company of comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and Sir Roger de Coverley; and ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... said the man; "if it comes to that, I've business enough. Perhaps you'll just pay me this debt," he continued, changing his fawning manner into a bullying swagger. ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... he could swagger it out among the guests, yet the master of the feast, at first coming in, strikes him dumb; and having nothing to say for himself, the king had something to say against him. "Then the king said to the servants," the angels, "Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... moin p—fouinq!" (She does not make me afraid) laughs Fafa, boldly following her with a smiling swagger. ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... practical type; he believes largely in telling people what he thinks; and never hesitates to hit rich and poor alike in his discourses. He has been transplanted to the Parish Church, and he will stir up a few of the respectable otiose souls there if he has an opportunity. There is a good deal of swagger about him; he believes in carry a stick and turning it; in admiring himself and letting other people know that he is of a cypher; there is much conceit and ever so much bombast about him; he likes giving historical lectures; ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... with bank notes whose value amounted to a sum so stupendous as to be beyond need of computation. He was a celebrity in the place and people nudged each other as he passed by. And Aristide passed by with a swagger, his head high and the end of his pointed beard sticking ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... the emotions that a real desperado could feel. He had experienced the impulse to swagger, to pose—really to live the part that his ill-fame had ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... her services. Bruant led her to the piano, she accompanied him as best she could, the music being new to her, he sang us his St. Lazare and La Soularde, all the while striding up and down with magnificent swagger, and was about to begin a third of his most famous songs when the pianist arrived, his unmistakable fright quickly lost in his bewilderment at being received with an amiability he had not any right to ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... linen, with yellow boots, in the careless rig-out of a Parisian out for a holiday. He seemed, too, to have become more common, more jolly, more familiar, having assumed along with his would-be rustic garb a free and easy swagger which he thought suited the style of dress. His new apparel somewhat shocked M. and Madame de Meroul, who even at home on their estate always remained serious and respectable, as the particle "de" before their name exacted ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... there which he had got for nothing, and had then almost forgotten about it, and, when reminded of it, still held on to it with that defiant stubbornness which often possesses improvident and careless natures. He had never had any real business instinct, and to swagger a little over the land he held and to treat offers of purchase with contempt was the loud assertion of a capacity he did not possess. So it was that stubborn vanity, beneath which was his angry protest against the prejudice ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... we're late down to breakfast, he snorts at us. He worries our lives out with pic-nics and shoots, And will flourish his Clarets and Ports at us. My wife likes her ease and her breakfast in bed; I hate cellar-swagger and scurry. Entertainment indeed! We're as lumpish as lead When we're not on the whirl or the worry. But turn out to-morrow, my BLOGGS? No, not me, Though I know what your "little hints" signify. Your "dear DICK" forsooth! Such a noodle as he The title ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... of the Dewan, Chunerbutty's defiant manner dropped from him, for he had always held that official in awe. His swagger vanished; he bent low and his hand went up to his head in a salaam. The Premier of the State, a wrinkled old Brahmin, was seated on the ground propped up by white bolsters, with a small table, a foot high, crowded with papers in front of him. He was dressed simply and plainly in white cotton ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... yet he was inclined to be suspicious of his grown-up relations. He marched down the passage, jingling his keys with an air of defiance; but when he entered the visitors' room, and saw the bright smile with which his aunt greeted his appearance, he dropped the swagger and became stolidly polite. She, for her part, had come prepared for the conquest which she always made; his awkward, boyish manner and uncared-for appearance, the dissatisfied look upon his face, and the ink stains on his collar, all were noticed in one loving glance, ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... the young man's manner exasperated the old nobleman. But he liked his young friend in spite of his insolence and tranquil swagger, and he dreaded to say something which might be ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... fearfully. For the first time in the eight years since his marriage he was encountering the girl again. But a girl no longer. Her figure was slim as ever—or perhaps not quite, for a certain boyish swagger, a sort of insolent adolescence, had gone the way of the first blooming of her cheeks. But she was beautiful; dignity was there now, and the charming lines of a fortuitous nine-and-twenty; and she sat in the car with such perfect ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... completion of their studies. The temper of the students is admirable. Rarely if ever do they betray any traces of the hectoring spirit which still lingers at Heidelberg, for instance. But for the display of corps-caps and cannon boots and an occasional swagger in the street, one might pass an entire semester in Leipsic without realizing that the city contains three thousand students. Undoubtedly, the young men perceive, like their colleagues of Yale, that their surroundings are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... already had let slip. What had been the cause of his sudden pulling up of his starting tongue? Would he have spoken too much of that acquaintance? Perhaps a closer look at the loose lips, the high cheeks, the narrow, close-set eyes of young Woodhull, his rather assertive air, his slight, indefinable swagger, his slouch in standing, might have confirmed some skeptic disposed to analysis who would have guessed him less than strong of soul and character. For the most part, such ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... under the possession of a secret—a secret of mighty power. What wonder if he spent much of his day in eating-houses and drinking-houses, obscurely hinting to admiring boon companions of the thing he could do an he would? Then, having drunk his fill, he would swagger, sometimes not over-steadily, out to the Park, and amuse himself by scowling at the Premier, or smiling a smile of hidden meaning at Daisy Medland, as they drove by. Also, he occasionally got into ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... without means of understanding the two or three simple oral ceremonies said over the body, but the woman played a part which it is understood she does not in the Bontoc area. She carried a slender, polished stick, greatly resembling a baton or "swagger stick," and with this stood over the gruesome body, thrusting the stick again and again toward and close to the severed neck, meanwhile repeating a short, low-voiced something. After the body was cut from its shield a blanket was wrapped about it — ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... insignificance), six foot two, perhaps, and—not stout yet, but showing signs that one day he might become so. I noticed that he held himself magnificently, his broad shoulders thrown back, his head up; and that he walked with a slight swagger, more like a cavalryman than an officer in the artillery. Perhaps it was the electric light which made his skin look as white as Diana's, without a touch of the tan that darkened Eagle March's fairer ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in khaki struts the limelit boards: With false moustache, set smirk and ogling eyes And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash, and clatter; And over the brassy blare and drumming din She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... a lounging swagger, but his first ball was caught by the immortal Sibthorp, who uttered more puns on the occasion than the oldest man present recollected to have heard perpetrated in any given time. Russell—who, by the bye, excavated several ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... sort of swagger. He wes less intoxicated than Turner, but ugly enough. He faced the ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a party of Union soldiers headed by Corporal Evans, an insolent young fellow of about twenty-five. He has a very boisterous manner, giving his orders with a swagger. ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... vainglory, crest; arrogance &c. (assumption) 885. proud man, highflier[obs3]; fine gentleman, fine lady. V. be proud &c. adj.; put a good face on; look one in the face; stalk abroad, perk oneself up; think no small beer of oneself; presume, swagger, strut; rear one's head, lift up one's head, hold up one's head; hold one's head high, look big, take the wall, " bear like the Turk no rival near the throne " [Pope], carry with a high hand; ride the high horse, mount on one's high horse; set one's back up, bridle, toss the head; give ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... second ma. Years later one of the inarticulate brats had come home as a collegian in a funny hat, and Mama had become Mater. This had lasted until one of the brattines came home as a collegienne with a swagger and a funny sweater. And then her Latin title was Frenchified to Mere—which always gave father a shock; for father had been raised on a farm, where only horses' wives were ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... fierce encounters. We passed a Stokes mortar battery of the 147th Infantry concealed in low bushes. The boys, lying idly in their dog-tents, wove canes from willow branches wound with wire and capped with bullets. I was presented with a cane by Private Boothby and a swagger stick by ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... native habitat. At every step one or the other called delighted attention to some new exhibit. Most extraordinary were, possibly, the men from the gold mines of the Sierras, These were mostly young, but long haired, bearded, rough, wilder than any mortal man need be. They walked with a wide swagger. Their clothes were exaggeratedly coarse, but they ornamented themselves with bright silk handkerchiefs; with feathers, flowers; with squirrel or buck-tails In their hats; with long heavy chains of nuggets; with glittering and ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... world, Sa'di escapes the depths of misanthropy as well as the transports of unbridled license and somewhat blustering swagger into which Omar at times fell. In his simplicity of heart he says very ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... his birth, and still possessed of sufficient spirit to glory in it, to draw comparisons between himself, his French, his Belgian, and his Japanese fellow-prisoners, and Germans in general, The man's swagger, in fact, delighted them, and helped to bolster up the fading spirits of many an unfortunate captive in the camp—of many a man, who, but for the jibes and uncomplimentary remarks of this robust prisoner, would long since ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... was not displeasing to the ear, though there might be something artificial in the swell of it,—the sort of tone men assume when they desire to seem more frank and off-hand than belongs to their nature,—a sort of rollicking tone which is to the voice what swagger is to, the gait. Still that look! it produced on you the effect which might be created by some strange animal, not without beauty, but deadly to man. Wayfarer the Second was big and burly, middle-aged, large-whiskered, his complexion dirty. He wore ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... breast, his eyes fixed upon the glowing embers. For half an hour he was silent and still. Then, with the gesture of a man who has taken his decision, he sprang to his feet and passed into his bedroom. A little later a rakish young workman with a goatee beard and a swagger lit his clay pipe at the lamp before descending into the street. "I'll be back some time, Watson," said he, and vanished into the night. I understood that he had opened his campaign against Charles Augustus Milverton; ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... room like his in the whole school. No end of swell pictures—foreign mostly; lovely little books, which, I believe, were foreign also; an etching of his own place up in Yorkshire; carpets, and rugs, and little statuettes—swagger through and through; a little too much so, I believe, for the rules, but Biffen evidently had not put his foot down. Acton was standing on the hearthrug with his back to the fire, and on seeing us he politely offered us chairs ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... the country could wear more suitable attire. And he was a well-made man, just such a one as, in this dress, would take the eye of a country girl. There was a little bit of dash about him, just a touch of swagger, which better breeding might have prevented. But it was not enough to make him odious to an unprejudiced observer. I could fancy that an old lady from London, with an eye in her head for manly symmetry, would have liked to look at Larry, and would have thought that a girl in Mary's position would ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... infirmity. She has taught me a lesson by simply offering a kindness without caring how it might be received or rewarded. Is not that a lovely trait in human nature?—one which I have never as yet discovered in what is called 'swagger society'! When I was in the hey-dey of my career, and money was pouring in from all my business 'deals' like water from a never-ending main, I had a young Scotsman for a secretary, as close-fisted a fellow as ever was, who managed to lose me the chance of doing a great many kind actions. More than ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... think they have reason to be satisfied, they cannot help seeing that they have in fact very little power of managing the House. Everybody agrees that the aspect of the House of Commons was very different—the number of strange faces; the swagger of O'Connell, walking about incessantly, and making signs to, or talking with, his followers in various parts; the Tories few and scattered; Peel no longer surrounded with a stout band of supporters, but pushed from his usual seat, which ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... judging by the excerpts used in the anonymous letters, it must have constituted a particularly piquant volume or series of volumes! Thus there was one remark about the emperor which ridiculed "his intolerable swagger." There were also some comical references to Princess Victoria of Prussia, who was jilted by the late Prince Alexander of Battenberg, on the very eve of the day appointed for the wedding, and that for the sake of a little actress. This princess has since then married Prince ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... embroil us in a war before long it will not be their fault. What with their swagger and bombast, what with their claims for indemnification, what with Ireland and Fenianism, and what with Canada, I have strong apprehensions. With a settled animosity towards the French usurper, I believe him to have always been sound in his desire to divide the States ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... draw the veil, for in my mind's eye I behold a burly negro (yes, sah!) staring at me out of fishy, blue eyes. It is said of these gallant rovers of the seas that they were subject to a peculiar malady when on shore. It caused them to stagger and swagger, use violent language, and deport themselves not unlike people who are seized with mal de mer, or sickness of the sea. When attacked by this failing, their wives would cast them bodily into the holds of their ships and start ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... the chief figure. The city was found to be in no little confusion on the arrival of the Movable Column, mutiny being rampant among the troops, and the military authorities taking scarcely any precautions to prevent an outbreak. In the streets it was apparent from the swagger of the native soldiers that they believed the sahibs were powerless ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... their wagons to the place of voting, on the prairie, and hitched their horses to their wagons, and were quietly going about their business, when with a great whoop and hurrah, which frightened their horses and made them break loose from their wagons, a company of men came in sight, and with swagger and bluster, took possession of the polls, and proceeded to do the voting. Meantime whisky flowed like water, and the men, far gone in liquor, turned the place into a bedlam. In utter humiliation and disgust many of the squatters went home. Caleb ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... C., rose with a swagger and a rustle of his silk gown, and proceeded to set forth the theory of the defense. He said he did not purpose to call any witnesses. The hypothesis of the prosecution was so inherently childish and inconsequential, ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... very lives of their sons, seem to have been much like Christian fathers of modern days in their indulgences. The lad was now nineteen years old, and does not appear to have been willing, at the first parental attempt, to give up his military appanages and that swagger of the young officer which is so dear to the would-be military mind. Cicero tells him that if he joined the army he would find his cousin treated with greater favor than himself. Young Quintus was older, and had been already able to do something to push himself with Caesar's friends. "Sed ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... them, repels them from me? I creep into the corners and shed scalding tears of shame. I watch with envious eyes and ears all you to whom the wondrous gift is given. What is your secret? Is it Tommy's swagger? Then I will swagger, too, with anxious heart, with mingled fear and hope. But why—why, seeing that in Tommy they admire it, do they wait for me with imitations of cock-a-doodle-do, strut beside me mimicking a pouter ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... lessons he learned in childhood from his experience of poverty at home, in his remarks in later life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to strut and swagger, but must be humble and learn to be silent and to trust in God, and to whom God also ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... (having no change in my pocket), and the mater could not quite determine whether it was a trait of madness or of nobility. I could have told her with absolute confidence that it was neither the one nor the other, but a sort of epicurean selfishness with perhaps a little dash of swagger away down at the bottom of it. What had I ever had from my chronometer like the quiet thrill of satisfaction when the fellow brought me the pawn ticket and told me that the thirty ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... had accorded a stature of only about five feet, or say five feet one; but by costume, voice, manner (including a little swagger), and character he made himself in every way the capital figure on the Eton stage, and his departure marked, I imagine, the departure of the old race of English public school masters, as the name of Dr. Busby seems to mark its introduction. In connection ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... without preface. "Where do you find food for your laughter in this forsaken country, Montlivet? I have watched you swagger up and down with a smile on your face for the last hour. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... of Dibdin to the heart of the British sailor; and in this lies the proof of their genuineness. His songs are simple and melodious; there is a manly ring in their word and rhythm; they have the swagger and the fearlessness of the typical tar; they have, too, the beat of his true heart, his kindly waggery, his sturdy fidelity to his country and his king. There is nothing quite like ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... uneasiness; but my alarm was caused neither by his acts nor words, but entirely by his manner, which was strange and even intimidating to excess. At the beginning of the yesterday's interview there was a sort of bullying swagger in his air, which towards the end gave place to the brutal vehemence of an undisguised ruffian—a transition which had tempted me into a belief that he might seek even forcibly to extort from me a consent to his ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... girl is becoming conscious of himself as a person, and resents being treated as a child; the only way he knows of asserting his personality is by affecting an air of disdain toward those who presume to treat him as a child. This swagger is more likely to be put on when there is a third person present. It is therefore always safer to reserve your discussions and corrections to the time when you are alone with your girl or boy, and can place your conversation on an ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... from the theatres for supper, and Maxwell found himself with his friends in a group with a charming old comedian who was telling brief, vivid little stories, and sketching character, with illustrations from his delightful art. He was not swagger, like some of the younger men who stood about with their bell-crowned hats on, before they went into supper; and two or three other elderly actors who sat round him and took their turn in the anecdote and mimicry looked, with their smooth-shaven faces, ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... each other and battled. The eye is a more potent weapon than the rapier. The shallow, shifty ones of the gunman fell before the deep, steady ones of the Arizonan. "Slim" Jim, with a touch of swagger to save his face, stepped into the cab and sat down. Clay followed him, closing ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... reins and saddles; Lord Tybar's exquisitely poised figure, so perfectly maintaining and carrying up the symmetry of his horse as to suggest the horse would be disfigured, truncated, were he to dismount; his taking swagger, his gay, fine face; ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... and, having replaced the black bottle in the cupboard, led the way along the cliffs toward the town some half-mile distant, Mr. Stiles beguiling the way by narrating his adventures since they had last met. A certain swagger and richness of deportment were explained by his statement that he had ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... a balloon, I suppose, and we are at home in them," said the Englishman, with just the hint of a swagger ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... been English, the probabilities are that Bob Roberts and Tom Long would have hugged each other. As it was they seemed to think it quite the correct thing to shake hands over and over again, and then walk up and down under the palm-trees of the enclosure, flushed, excited, and as full of swagger as ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... at the table with a semblance of that swagger affected by the weakling in presence of women, yet permitting the wandering eye and uncertain gestures to betray his uneasiness. Something had evidently gone wrong with ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... dentist on the boat, Marcus's gorge rose within him at McTeague's boasting swagger. When McTeague had slapped him on the back, Marcus had retired to some little distance while he recovered his breath, and glared at the dentist fiercely as he strode up and down, glorying in the admiring ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... have been answering Little Billy; it sounded as though he were cursing him. Whatever it was, it was frightened and forceless talk; and when presently Ichi lapsed into English, it was the fear-stricken coolie who entreated, and not the swagger Japanese gentleman ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... gun-belt and pouch to the carrier. This was a blind to me, for I examined and found that he had already been stealing and selling his ammunition: this is all preparatory to returning to the coast with some slave-trader. Nothing can exceed the ease and grace with which sepoys can glide from a swagger into the most abject begging of food from the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... Stories and laughter interspersed, We drowned a long La Bassee thirst— Trenches in June make throats damned dry. Then through the window suddenly, Badge, stripes and medals all complete, We saw him swagger up the street, Just like a live man—Corporal Stare! Stare! Killed last May at Festubert. Caught on patrol near the Boche wire, Tom horribly by machine-gun fire! He paused, saluted smartly, grinned, Then passed away like a ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... gates, and they saw two lines of blue-jackets, spread out like the sticks of a fan, dragging the gun between them, the middies in their tight-buttoned tunics and gaiters, and behind them more blue-jackets with bare, bronzed throats, and with the swagger and roll of the sea in their legs and shoulders. An American flag floated above the white helmets of the marines. Its presence and the sense of pride which the sight of these men from home awoke in them made the fight just over seem mean and petty, ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... still account those cowards, who forbeare (Being possess'd with a religious feare) To slip occasion, when they might erect Hornes on a tradesman's noddle, or neglect The violation of a virgin's bed With promise to requite her maiden-head. Basely low-minded we esteeme that man Who cannot swagger well, or (if he can) Who doth not with implacable desire, Follow revenge with a consuming fire. Extortious rascals, when they are alone, Bethinke how closely they have pick'd each bone, Nay, with a frolicke humour, they will brag, How blancke they ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... pause; during which Lieutenant Chubb looked from me to his principal, with a mirthful grin, as much as to say I was a proven coward after all my swagger. But the ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... that Martin had given her. A new life had begun for her on Christmas Day—in fact, it would be true to say that a new Joanna had begun. Something in her was broken, melted, changed out of all recognition—she was softer, weaker, more excited, more tender. She had lost much of her old swagger, her old cocksureness, for Martin had utterly surprised and tamed her. She had come to him in a scheming spirit of politics, and he had kept her in a spirit of devotion. She had come to him as Ansdore to North Farthing—but he had stripped her of Ansdore, and she was ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... was not Mr. Thackeray's. It is delightful to be sure, on the other hand, that we have the author's own Captain Costigan before us, in his habit as he lived—the unshaven chin, the battered hat, the high stock, the blue cloak, the whiskeyfied stare, and the swagger. Mr. Thackeray did not do his young men well. Arthur Pendennis is only himself as he sits with Warrington over a morning paper; in his white hat and black band at the Derby, he has not the air of a gentleman. Harry Foker is either a coarse exaggeration, or the modern types of Fokers ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... was lunatic; and all because I had held for an instant of time an adorable woman in my arms with no consent of hers. I believe now (and I hope it will not be counted against me) that it was with a little swagger I opened the door and stepped forth into ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... terrible swagger you've got on you, Jim. Walk natural. Your father was niver wan of the swaggerin' sort. And jist remember that takin' care of the little b'ys ain't lordin' it over ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... mind. And then look at the effect throughout Europe if an English milord were to be found with a parcel of Orsini bombs in his possession! every ragamuffin from Naples to St. Petersburg would rejoice; the army of cutthroats would march with a new swagger." ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the three men moved to the door and out, Phinuit with a brazen swagger, Jules without emotion visible, Monk with eyebrows adroop ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... Peter. "You think there is no danger? You advise me to brazen the dina giacca out, to swagger it off?" ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... over the emptying aisles; and, even as she pinned on her velveteen poke bonnet at a too-swagger angle, and fluffed out a few carefully provided curls across her brow, she kept watch and, with obvious subterfuge, slid into her little unlined silk coat with a deliberation not her own. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... are faithful to their post, Mr. George strides through the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave- enough face. It is eight o'clock now, and the day is fast drawing in. He stops hard by Waterloo Bridge and reads a playbill, decides to go to Astley's Theatre. Being there, is much delighted with the horses and ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the icy glance was clean-shaved at last, and the mother who bore him would not have known him as he looked in the glass when it was done. He chucked Poll a diamond worth about a million piastres, and, remarking that he would not trouble him for the change, he walked out. By this characteristic swagger, of course, he more than confirmed my belief that he was, indeed, the celebrated foreigner the Count of Monte Cristo; whose name and history even YOU must be acquainted with, though you may not be what I have heard my friend ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns from one of these Canallers; I thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... governing their publication of submarine sinkings. They argued that the naming of British, Canadian and Australian aces would direct the attacks of German aviators against the most useful men in the British forces. They also felt that publicity would tend toward the swagger which in English slang was "swank" and toward ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... inexhaustible—the schapska-shaped head-gear of Polish officers, the beret of Czecho-Slovaks. And everywhere, too, the gay and well-known red pom-pon bobbed on the caps of French blue-jackets, and British marines stalked in pairs, looking every inch the soldier with their swagger sticks ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... can bear it no longer. Not even for you, not even for the chance of getting Christian back. It's empty swagger to say that I wish to GOD I'd the chance of giving my life to get him back for you. But you must come home now. I've bitten my lip through in holding my tongue, but I won't see you kneel another minute at the feet of that ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... opened. Fenn entered and received a little chorus of welcome. He was wearing a rough black overcoat over his evening clothes, and a black bowler hat. He advanced to the table with a little familiar swagger. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... went to the Southern Hotel, where the great Duff Brown was very well known, and indeed was a man of so much importance that even the office clerk was respectful to him. He might have respected in him also a certain vulgar swagger and insolence of money, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... man looked over to where the strange Indian was standing erect and majestic, in all the pride of his plumage. There was no appearance of triumph or swagger about him, as he stood leaning on his rifle, in an attitude at once ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... culture in Germany. I have been at pains to examine the literature of the German Synagogue, which if Germanism were Judiasm, ought to show a double dose of original sin. But so far from finding any swagger of a Chosen People, whether Jewish or German, I find in its most popular work—Lazarus's "Soziale Ethik im Judentum"—published as late as November, 1913, by the League of German Jews—a grave indictment of militarism. For the ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... and then to become a University professor. He had already left the army and wore serge clothes, with well-cut coats, wide trousers, and expensive ties. My sister was enraptured with his pins and studs and his red-silk handkerchief, which, out of swagger, he wore in his outside breast-pocket. Once, when we had nothing to do, she and I fell to counting up his suits and came to the conclusion that he must have at least ten. It was clear that he still loved my sister, but never once, ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... terminate the war by recognition, and by making a commercial treaty with the South; and he denied that the Yankees really would dare to go to war with Great Britain for doing so, however much they might swagger about it: he said that recognition would not increase the Yankee hatred of England, for this, whether just or unjust, was already as intense as it could possibly be. I then alluded to the supposed ease with which they could overrun Canada, and to the temptation which its unprotected towns must ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... before his betrothal, could conveniently count his riches on the fingers of his left hand—in pence! But he is happy now, because he can bring in a load of wool every year with his own waggon and oxen, and talk to the merchant with all the swagger and assurance ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... growing low on his forehead, and long blackish-gray eyes, there was something Latin in the grace of his movements and in his glance. Life ran strong in Shade Buckheath. He stepped with an independent stride that was almost a swagger, and already felt himself a successful man; but that one of the tribe of borrowing Passmores should presume to such opulence of charm struck him as well-nigh impudent. The pure outlines of Johnnie's features, their aristocratic mould, the ruddy gold of her rich, clustering ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... German. His voice had been quiet and deferential, but by no means genteel; nor had it any hint of the roystering joviality of a sailor. More than anything else his gait, in its sedate unobtrusiveness, seemed to me utterly at variance with the rolling swagger which ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... there—the latest example of the Darwinian theory—apelike, flea and curio hunting! Shamelessly inquisitive and always hungry, what did he know of the Sphinx or the pyramids or the voice—and, for the matter of that, what did they know of him? And yet he was not half bad in comparison with the "swagger people,"—these people who pretend to have lungs and what not, and instead of galloping on merry hunters through the frost and snow of Piccadilly and Park, instead of enjoying the roaring fires of piled logs in the evening, at the first approach of winter steal away to the Land of the Sun, ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... sees. Sometimes a latch-key is heard about half-past six. The man is thick, strong, common, his jaws are heavy, his eyes are expressionless, there is about him the loud swagger of the caserne, and he suggests the inevitable question, Why did she marry him?—a question that every young man of refined mind asks a thousand times by day and ten thousand times by night, asks till he is five-and-thirty, and sees that his generation ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... pitted face, his brogue, and his ungainly figure, was exceedingly nervous and sensitive in society, and was anxious, as such people mostly are, to cover his shyness by an appearance of ease, if not even of swagger; and there can be as little question that he occasionally did and said very awkward and blundering things. But our Japanese friend, whom we mentioned in our opening pages, looking through the record that is preserved to us of those blunders which are supposed ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... vaguely fixed on the horizon of the sea, and his ears filled with the running plaint of the tavernkeeper. A handsome chap Martinez was, an Andalusian from Huelva, slender and trim of person, natty as could be in the old service uniform which he sported with a truly martial swagger, twirling the corner of his blond mustache with an air that people called "distinguished." Sina Tona admired the man. After all, breeding will come out! You can tell it a mile away. How Martinez talked, for instance! You could see from ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... escapes somehow the effeminate effusiveness of the Italian; it does not affect you as decadent, but as something vigorously perfect in its sort, somberly authentic, and ripe from a root and not a graft. In its sort, the high altar, a gigantic triune, with massive twisted columns and swagger statues of saints and heroes in painted wood, is a prodigy of inventive piety, and compositely has a noble exaltation in its powerful ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... toward her, carrying one or two small parcels which apparently belonged to the girl at his side. He was a handsome man, tall and rather spare, with dark eyes and a soldierly look. His movements were quick and forceful, but a hint of what Mrs. Keith called swagger somewhat spoiled his bearing. She thought he allowed his self-confidence to be seen too plainly. The girl formed a marked contrast to him; she was short and slender, her hair and eyes were brown, while her prettiness, ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... the copies of these two letters, I thought that I might then threaten and swagger—'But very little heart have I, said I, to encourage such a visit from Lady Betty and Miss Montague to my spouse. For after all, I am tired out with her strange ways. She is not what she was, and (as I told her in your ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... amazement; 'There is no God but God: is it possible that four or five Franks can use all these things to eat, drink and sleep on a journey?' (N.B. I fear the Franks will think the stock very scanty.) Whereupon master Achmet, with the swagger of one who has seen cities and men, held forth. 'Oh Effendim, that is nothing; Our Lady is almost like the children of the Arabs. One dish or two, a piece of bread, a few dates, and Peace, (as we say, there is an end of ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... he realised anew the significance of that still figure at his feet, and tried to shake some of the swagger back into his ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... without a single word to her about her journey or on any other subject, and when they had gone, 'They are two haughty misses,' said my mother with spirit. But what she most resented was the waiter with his swagger black suit and short quick steps and the 'towel' over his arm. Without so much as a 'Welcome to Glasgow!' he showed us to our seats, not the smallest acknowledgment of our kindness in giving such munificent orders did we draw from him, he hovered around the table ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... years. His mother, who kept a large and prosperous boarding-house, regarded Tip as being one of the manliest fellows in the world. She abetted his idleness by supplying him with too much money. Tip dressed well, though a bit loudly, and walked with a swagger. He was in a fair way to go through life without becoming ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... some awful blunder, and that they would refuse to let us have the horse and wagon, for I knew that I could not have stood the test as she did; and then, too, these colonial horses seem to have such a good opinion of themselves, and they carry their heads with a swagger that is entirely different from the meek, downtrodden air of the Turpins, and Smilers, and Sharpers of the old country; and their names are as bumptious as themselves. Fancy a horse being named Rockefeller! I vote that we ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... abroad from barracks, clad in the "walking-out" finery of shell-jacket and overalls, with the jingle of spurs and effort at the true Cavalry swagger, or rather the first attempt at a walk abroad, for the expedition had ended disastrously ere well begun. Unable to shake off his admirer, Trooper Herbert Hawker, Dam had just passed the Main Guard and main gates in the company of Herbert, and the two recruits had encountered the Adjutant ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... do not know whether Wolf Larsen cheated or not,—a thing he was thoroughly capable of doing,—but he won steadily. The cook made repeated journeys to his bunk for money. Each time he performed the journey with greater swagger, but he never brought more than a few dollars at a time. He grew maudlin, familiar, could hardly see the cards or sit upright. As a preliminary to another journey to his bunk, he hooked Wolf Larsen's buttonhole ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... not very long after, attired in blue linen, with yellow boots, in the careless rig-out of a Parisian out for a holiday. He seemed, too, to have become more common, more jolly, more familiar, having assumed along with his would-be rustic garb a free and easy swagger which he thought suited the style of dress. His new apparel somewhat shocked M. and Madame de Meroul, who even at home on their estate always remained serious and respectable, as the particle "de" before their name exacted a certain amount of ceremonial ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... muzzles; the dazzling bits and chains and buckles; the glinting bridles, reins and saddles; Lord Tybar's exquisitely poised figure, so perfectly maintaining and carrying up the symmetry of his horse as to suggest the horse would be disfigured, truncated, were he to dismount; his taking swagger, his gay, fine face; ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... ogling she might reasonably reply, "But this is how I support my friend Anne in her sublime evolutionary effort." Whenever he laughed at an old-fashioned actor for ranting, the actor might answer, "My exaggeration is not more absurd than the tail of a peacock or the swagger of a cock; it is the way I preach the great fruitful lie of the life-force that I am a very fine fellow." We have remarked the end of Shaw's campaign in favour of progress. This ought really to have been the end of his campaign against romance. All the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... behaved with insolence in proportion to the money they spent, or the time they had been at the university. The chief difference was that those who were less rich and less hardened than he had less spirit: that is, had less noise, nonsense and swagger. But, though the scene was not what I expected, it was new, and in a certain sense enlivening, and my flowing spirits were ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... himself to be convinced; he threw the gun on to his shoulder with a swagger, and both our heroes, followed by Carefinotu, returned to ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... world that awaits them after the completion of their studies. The temper of the students is admirable. Rarely if ever do they betray any traces of the hectoring spirit which still lingers at Heidelberg, for instance. But for the display of corps-caps and cannon boots and an occasional swagger in the street, one might pass an entire semester in Leipsic without realizing that the city contains three thousand students. Undoubtedly, the young men perceive, like their colleagues of Yale, that their surroundings ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Gale heard footsteps and the tinkle of spurs. He strode to the window, and was in time to see a Mexican swagger into the front door of the saloon. Dick had only a glimpse; but in that he saw a huge black sombrero with a gaudy band, the back of a short, tight-fitting jacket, a heavy pearl-handled gun swinging with a fringe of sash, and close-fitting ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... middle height and perhaps five-and-thirty years of age; he was stout and thick-built; he had a fat face with bulging cheeks; his eyes were rather like a frog's; he leant very much forward as he walked, and swayed gently from side to side with a rolling swagger; and as his body rolled, his eye rolled too, and he looked this way and that with a jovial leer and a smile of contentment and amusement on his face. The smile and the merry eye redeemed his appearance ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... though, for in the afternoon the military commandant hove in sight. This official had on the enormous bearskin head-dress, and dark green uniform of the Cossack regiment. An insignificant-looking man, all moustache and swagger. ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... his benighted mind would swagger him into droll ideas of attempting to chastise his Imperial prisoner, at another, his childish fear of the consequences of his chastisement was pathetic, and when one droll farce after another broke down, he shielded himself with manifestations ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... I know!" Barton exclaimed, returning to his customary swagger. It was quite enough that the matter was generally talked about, and he had said nothing to settle it, in either way. But his manner, more than his words, convinced Gilbert that there was no betrothal as yet, and that the vanity of being regarded as the successful suitor of a lovely girl had ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... had had time to recover somewhat from his first surprise, looked a little inclined to defy his young antagonist, but, thinking better of it, suddenly assumed his usual impudent swagger as he replied, with a laugh, "Come, I say, you do do it well, you do! It was a joke—just a joke, young gentleman. You've no occasion to flurry yourself; we wouldn't have hurt a hair of the young ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... their horses to their wagons, and were quietly going about their business, when with a great whoop and hurrah, which frightened their horses and made them break loose from their wagons, a company of men came in sight, and with swagger and bluster, took possession of the polls, and proceeded to do the voting. Meantime whisky flowed like water, and the men, far gone in liquor, turned the place into a bedlam. In utter humiliation and disgust many of the squatters went home. Caleb May did not get into the neighborhood ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... not a gendarme or military policeman. Cloak and uniform were dark blue and fine. He bore himself with the swagger of a personage of no inconsiderable rank, and also of some degree in the nobility. Tall, burly, overbearing, the stranger took a dislike to him from this one glance, and would have hesitated to appeal to him for assistance had ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... fought bravely on the field of battle, was a sportsman and had about him that frank and abundant gaiete de coeur, which powerfully attracts the less exuberant Englishman. For his part CASANUOVA (that was his name) bore all his successes with good-nature and without swagger. Of course there were whispers about him. Where so many women worshipped, it was certain that two or three would lose their heads. Amongst this limited number was little Mrs. MILLETT, one of Lady CALLENDER's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... thou dost appear As boldly as a brigadier Tricked out with marks and signs, all o'er, Of rank, brigade, division, corps, To show by every means he can An officer is not a man; Or naked, with a lordly swagger, Proud as a cur without a wagger, Who says: "See simple worth prevail— All dog, sir—not ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... to say as I'm disturbing on ye, Passon," he remonstrated, mildly; "I ain't said a mortal wurrd! I was onny jes' keepin' my eye on the clap gate yonder, in case the party in the churchyard might walk through, thinkin' it a right-o'-way. Them swagger folk ain't got no sort of idee ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Campbell's wear but kerseymore knee-breeches. He had a figured vest strewn deep with snuff that he kept loose in a pocket (the regiment's gold mull was his purse), and a scratch wig of brown sat askew on his bullet head, raking with a soldier's swagger. He had his long rattan on the table before him, and now and then he would lift its tasseled head and beat time lightly to the chorus of Dugald MacNicol's song. Dugald was Major once of the 1st Royals; he had carried the sword in the Indies, East and West, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... on Monday with the idea implanted in your bosom that you are going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu to the boys on shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus all rolled into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn't come. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a little beef tea, and to sit up on deck, and answer ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... joined us, and I was delighted to meet him one day at Kolatschek's lodgings. The vicissitudes which had brought him to Zurich came to my knowledge afterwards in a somewhat offensive and aggressive manner. For the present, Herwegh put on an aristocratic swagger and gave himself the airs of a delicately nurtured and luxurious son of his times, to which a fairly liberal interpolation of French expletives at least added a certain distinction. Nevertheless, there was something about his person, with his quick, flashing eye ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... left him helpless as a turtle on its back, till the foster came and lifted him back to bed in her jaws. That was how he learned that it was not wise for very small pups to climb over the edges of beds. Towards evening, when many useful lessons had been learned, and the pup was beginning to swagger over the advantage given him by his new-found sense, in the matter of picking and choosing feeding-places, and demanding his foster-mother's attention by planting one foot on her eye, and so forth, Finn came to the conclusion that this new power he had ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... putting a handsome face upon indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger away the sense of them, before strangers, may be not always discommendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even when detected, have more of our admiration than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat upon himself; to play the Bobadil at home; and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... powers, and many that were most salutary? Was it not enough that they had filled his council-board with his enemies, and his prisons with his adherents? Was it not enough that they had raised a furious multitude, to shout and swagger daily under the very windows of his royal palace? Was it not enough that they had taken from him the most blessed prerogative of princely mercy; that, complaining of intolerance themselves, they had denied all toleration to others; that they had urged, against ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the old school, in whom could be seen, shining like a flame, a man's great love of a cane. He had lived a portion of his life in South America, and he used to promenade every pleasant afternoon up and down the Avenue swinging a sharply pointed, steel-ferruled swagger-stick. "What's the use of carrying that ridiculous thing around town?" some one said to him ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... Washington needed Custer. However, his view of the case did not mean theirs. Custer believed in the mailed hand, and if given the power he declared he would settle the Indian Question in America once and forever. His confidence and assumption and what Senator Dawes called swagger were not to their liking. Anyway, Custer was attracting altogether too much attention—the people followed him on Pennsylvania Avenue ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... change in my pocket), and the mater could not quite determine whether it was a trait of madness or of nobility. I could have told her with absolute confidence that it was neither the one nor the other, but a sort of epicurean selfishness with perhaps a little dash of swagger away down at the bottom of it. What had I ever had from my chronometer like the quiet thrill of satisfaction when the fellow brought me the pawn ticket and told me that the thirty ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... ii. 165 dragging or trailing the skirts walking without the usual strut or swagger: here it means assuming the humble manners of a slave in presence of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... and Kaffir languages, but that they are accustomed, in the rough and varied colonial life, to looking after themselves and thinking for themselves, and trusting no one else to do it for them. You can see this self-reliance of theirs in their manner, in their gait and swagger and the way they walk, in the easy lift and fall of the carbines on their hips, the way they hold their heads and speak ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... Pilgrim—why, the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. His cockle hat and staff transformed to a smart cockd beaver and a jemmy cane, his amice gray to the last Regent Street cut, and his painful Palmer's pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacriligious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the pilgrims there—the silly soothness in his setting out countenance—the Christian idiocy (in a good sense) ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... only leant further back, and by the time it was all over I had resumed an horizontal position, and resolved, like the man in "Happy Thoughts," not to move again whatever happened. I soon felt all right again, and was able to reply in a very swagger voice to Henry's rather meek enquiry concerning the state of the weather. By-and-bye a short interchange of experiences occurred between Henry and a boy who had been put into our third berth at the last moment, the latter in the innocence of his youth frankly avowed ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... concealed hoard hidden under the floor of a men's lodging house—that could only be stolen money. Where had he stolen it from? Was he some kind of gentleman burglar, such as plays and novels had been built around? It was a plausible explanation. He looked the part so well; lots of swagger and side, and the whole thing a trifle overdone. What a story! Crowder licked his lips over it, seeing it splashed across the front page. At that moment the parcel Jim had given him slipped off his knee ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... 'She thinks I swagger about the child—that I bore people,' said the Colonel. 'I hope you smoke.' He appeared ten minutes later in the smoking-room, in a brilliant equipment, a suit of crimson foulard covered with little white spots. He ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... was less concise, and seems to have been originally aimed against precocious youths who gave themselves the airs of manhood before their time. "Does your mother know you're out?" was the provoking query addressed to young men of more than reasonable swagger, who smoked cigars in the streets, and wore false whiskers to look irresistible. We have seen many a conceited fellow who could not suffer a woman to pass him without staring her out of countenance, reduced at once into ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... it brings back millions!" boasted Denver with a swagger. "I'm made, if I can only hold onto it. But I'll tell you right now, if you want to hold your claims you'd better do a little assessment work. There's going to be a rush, when this strike of mine gets out, that'll make ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... visible), and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe were to step in at that open window by the little garden yonder? Suppose Uncas and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide in silent? Suppose Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter, with a noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches? And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby's arm; and Tittlebat Titmouse with his hair dyed green; and all the Crummles company of comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and Sir Roger de Coverley; and the greatest of all ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... Blue Lost a holiday shoe, What can old Betty do? Give her another To match the other, And then she may swagger in two. ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... give time for reflection and deliberation, there would be sufficient reason for its adoption. If we can but stay the hand of war until conscience can assert itself, war will be made more remote. When men are mad they swagger around and tell what they can do; when they are calm they consider what they ought ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... his countenance, the muscular strength of his stalwart frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots, and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in the Baron's costume was a large diamond, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... people. Brown, well built, light on his feet, with heavy black hair growing low on his forehead, and long blackish-gray eyes, there was something Latin in the grace of his movements and in his glance. Life ran strong in Shade Buckheath. He stepped with an independent stride that was almost a swagger, and already felt himself a successful man; but that one of the tribe of borrowing Passmores should presume to such opulence of charm struck him as well-nigh impudent. The pure outlines of Johnnie's features, their aristocratic mould, the ruddy gold of her rich, ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... the richest capitalists in Paris one day met an extremely pretty little working-girl. Her mother was with her, but the girl had taken the arm of a young fellow in very doubtful finery, with a very smart swagger. The millionaire fell in love with the girl at first sight; he followed her home, he went in; he heard all her story, a record of alternations of dancing at Mabille and days of starvation, of play-going and hard work; he took ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... colonel's uniform and flicking his swagger stick along his booted leg, stood in the doorway. His voice was lazily arrogant. "And Mr. Holland, I must say, the Middle caste seems to have taken over the house. Well, Major Mauser? I assume you do not labor under the illusion that you are welcome ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... hesitates to hit rich and poor alike in his discourses. He has been transplanted to the Parish Church, and he will stir up a few of the respectable otiose souls there if he has an opportunity. There is a good deal of swagger about him; he believes in carry a stick and turning it; in admiring himself and letting other people know that he is of a cypher; there is much conceit and ever so much bombast about him; he likes giving historical lectures; thinks he is an authority on everything appertaining ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... interpreter stood boldly upright, and began to contemplate his irresistible face and figure in a glass, and arrange with cool coxcombry his darling tuft of hair; which done, he approached us with a mild swagger, and proceeded to address me with a freedom which I found it expedient to snub. I told him that, although I did not require any human being to go down on his face and hands before me, I should nevertheless ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... s.c. a thieves' lodging-house; "spellken," a play-house; "high toby-spice" is robbery on horseback, as distinguished from "spice," i.e. footpad robbery; to "flash the muzzle" is to show off the face, to swagger openly; "blowing" or "blowen" is a doxy or trull; and "nutty" ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... chuckling with delight at being completely understood. 'I couldn't resist one little bit of sheer swagger. It's a French trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got at by slewing round the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of the left ear. That, and deepening ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Lord Provost," said the magistrate, "about Ratcliffe's business. Mr. Sharpitlaw, you will go with me, and receive instructions—something may be made too out of this story of Butler's and his unknown gentleman—I know no business any man has to swagger about in the King's Park, and call himself the devil, to the terror of honest folks, who dinna care to hear mair about the devil than is said from the pulpit on the Sabbath. I cannot think the preacher himsell wad be heading ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 'happy with either were t'other fair charmer away.' Baltazar, the Noble Soldier, is something of a bore. At first we are a little suspicious of him, for he seems to 'protest too much'; and even when these suspicions are set at rest his strut and swagger continue ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... sympathy or concern, he takes fire in an instant; swears that he is the richest and stoutest fellow in the country; talks of laying out large sums to adorn his house or buy another estate; and with a valiant swagger and grasping of his cudgel longs exceedingly to have another bout ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... on sprees; they like gayety and distraction, and all sorts of dissipations, and their wives may sit at home and wait for them till midnight. And they come home drunk, and bully their wives, and swagger. But an old man will just sit near his wife; he'll die before he'll leave her. And he would like to look into her eyes all the time and to caress her and to kiss her hands. [Kisses them] Just ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... instigated, moreover, by a species of pride or vanity. He wanted to show off his courage before his followers, who were mostly does; many of them his wives too—for the old antelopes are shocking polygamists. It would never do to appear timid in the eyes of the fair does; and he was determined to cut a swagger. Under this impulse, he walked boldly up, until his sharp snout touched the hair of one of ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... lolling on a litter with eight bearers, like an Asiatic despot, stretched on a bed of rose-leaves; [51] or Vatinius, darting forward to speak, his eyes starting from his head, his neck swollen, and his muscles rigid; [52] or the Gaulish and Greek witnesses, of whom the former swagger erect across the forum, [53] the latter chatter and gesticulate without ever looking up; [54] we see in each case the master's powerful hand. Other descriptions are longer and more ambitious; the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... pompous and pretentious and insincere is to be vulgar, I really think the vulgar of our time are not these old plutocrats—not even their grandsons, who hunt and shoot and yacht and swagger with the best—but those solemn little prigs who have done well at school or college, and become radicals and agnostics before they've even had time to find out what men and women are made of, or what sex they belong to themselves (if any), and loathe all fun and sport and athletics, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... dip the end of her heavy boom in the water and "trip herself up." When a boat trips up she does not necessarily go down, but she is likely to upset, placing the young sailors in an unenviable, if not dangerous, position. Fourth, when the craft begins to swagger before the wind she is liable to "goose neck," that is throw her boom up against the mast, which is another accident fraught with the ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... fellow, for all his seven feet of height, was almost heavy-set. He wore a plaited leather jerkin beneath his robe, and knee pants of leather out of which his lower legs showed as gray, hairy pillars of strength. He had come into the salon with a swagger, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... likes. He will have his own way after all. He has a will, a knowledge, a purse, friends of his own. He will let the world see that he can get along with his own resources. Barnabas Know-nothing may talk as he please, Job Do-nothing may do all he can, and Richard Bombast may swagger because he thinks matters are done as he planned; but Mr. Grumbler is independent of them all, and will, by-and-by, demonstrate ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... his duty. Like all shy men, he was habitually silent; but his shyness sprang by no means from timidity; it was a kind of modesty in him; he found any demonstration of vanity intolerable. There was no sort of swagger about his fearlessness in action; nothing escaped his eyes; he could give sensible advice to his chums with unshaken coolness; he could go under fire, and duck upon occasion to avoid bullets. He was kindly; but ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... a sort of swagger. He wes less intoxicated than Turner, but ugly enough. He faced the ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... him? Dared she trust? But he was no deceiver, no flirt, like the lady-killers who used to come to the Palazzo to bow over Lucia's hand and eye each other with that half hostile, half knowing swagger. She had watched them. . . ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... county after the triumphant season in Edinburgh that formed the climax of his career. But no detailed knowledge of circumstances is necessary to rouse interest in a man who wrote like that. You may be offended by the self-consciousness and the swagger, or you may be charmed by the frankness and dash, but you can not remain indifferent. Burns had many moods besides those reflected in these sentences, but here we can see as vividly as in any of his poetry the fundamental characteristics of the man—sensitive, passionate, independent, and as ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... man swagger tow'rds the footlights at Shoreditch, Sing out "Heave aho! my hearties," and perpetually hitch Up, by an ingenious movement, trousers innocent of brace, Briskly flourishing a cudgel ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... had of Dan withered in the summer. When he came home for the holidays, he brought with him an unmistakable swagger and a supply of coloured neckerchiefs. On his first visit to Uplands he called Virginia "my pretty child," and said "Good day, little lady," to Betty. He carried himself like an Indian, as the Governor put it, and he ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... fragments, of ill-fitting parts—physically, mentally, spiritually. It was as if a soul had seen itself in a crooked mirror and had fashioned a form to match the distorted image. Hugh wouldn't, couldn't force himself to be inconspicuous. He would swagger; he would talk loud; his big, beautiful voice would challenge attention, create an audience. He would have some impossible, splendid tale ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... field of vision, into the corner of which there now comes the tail of Louka's double apron. His eye gleams at once. He takes a stealthy look at her, and begins to twirl his moustache nervously, with his left hand akimbo on his hip. Finally, striking the ground with his heels in something of a cavalry swagger, he strolls over to the left of the table, opposite her, and says) Louka: do you know what the ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... a silent agitation, or a softer kind of lateral motion; as sway, swag, to sway, swagger, swerve, sweat, sweep, swill, swim, swing, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... scanty and irregular, he never could bring himself into habits of prudence and economy; often he was stripped of all his present finances at play; often he lavished them away in fits of unguarded charity or generosity. Sometimes among his boon companions he assumed a ludicrous swagger in money matters, which no one afterward was more ready than himself to laugh at. At a convivial meeting with a number of his fellow-students, he suddenly proposed to draw lots with any one present which of the two should treat the whole party to the play. The moment the proposition ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... elms not even the starlight shone. But neither for the darkness nor loneliness cared this young man. With his hands in his pockets he went along at a swinging pace, whistling cheerily. He was very tall; he walked with a swagger. You could make out no more in ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... chintz frock-coat. There is a great diversity of hues in garments. A doctor, a stout, tall, round-paunched, red-faced, brutal-looking old fellow, who gets drunk daily. He sat down on the step of our stoop, looking surly, and speaking to nobody; then got up and walked homeward, with a morose swagger and a slight unevenness of gait, attended by a fine ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from a world of sin and vanity altogether, did not prevent me from coming personally to your aid in this delicate crisis of your affairs; for, to lead them to a good end, it requires not only the indomitable courage, swagger, and audacity, which you possess beyond any young man I have ever known' (as for the 'swagger,' as the Chevalier calls it, I deny it in toto, being always most modest in my demeanour); 'but though you have the vigour to execute, you have ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the file, Captain Tony advanced through the clearing, and what with his flowing black beard, his portly form, and a certain dramatic swagger which he possessed, he looked so entirely Italian and operatic that you expected to hear him at any moment burst out in a sonorous basso. With a sweeping gesture he flung down upon the table two brown canvas bags, which opened and discharged ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... cut away in front; tried on before the glass a narrow-brimmed hat of his son's, which appeared to fit him perfectly, and, leaving his cane in the corner where he had deposited it, he took up a small bamboo switch, cut the air with it once or twice, and walked about with that easy swagger which was one of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... entered the room through the apartment in which the coffin had been originally placed. His manner was changed; there was something of a swagger in it. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... surprised hum—a faint hum that sounded like the suppressed mutter of the word "Nigger"—ran along the deck and escaped out into the night. The nigger seemed not to hear. He balanced himself where he stood in a swagger that marked time. After a moment he said calmly:—"My name is ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... the brace of baboons answer'd, Yes; and said thou wert a pitiful poor fellow, and didst live upon posts: and hadst nothing but three suits of apparel, and some few benevolences that lords gave thee to fool to them, and swagger. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... breast-pocket with a great swagger, looking around to observe the impression he was making on his audience; then, jerking the bridle violently, so as to make his horse rear, he rode off like Alexander on Bucephalus, and swung down upon ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... classes of the French as the great chartist demonstration has done. For days and days it was a leading topic in the newspapers, and for days the general subject of conversation. Both newspapers and talkers, relying on the big swagger of the Chartists, and the undisguised alarm of the government, confidently expected a stern and terrible straggle, with barricades, and bayonets, and pikes, and deluges of blood, and awful slaughter. To this expectation many ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sterling Dick of old. He was less sensitive, so thought Ellery, in his code of honor as he saw more and more of the crooked ways of men. Once Norris met him walking with one of the cheaper aldermen, and he wore a duplicate—in gilt—of the alderman's walk and swagger. He talked politics and reform, but with less emphasis on his ideals and more on the game, which seemed to mean the fun of catching the rascals red-handed and ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... the young Countess, she sat there smiling, while the clumsy dragoons came rattling up, beaming at my red riding-breeches, and all saluting the Countess with a cheerful yet respectful swagger that touched me deeply as I noted the lines of hunger in ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... with his hand firmly thrust down into his pocket, as if determined not to shake that of his departing guest, while Jacob opened the door as wide as he could. Gaffin, unabashed, nodded to the fisherman and his dame, and with a swagger in his walk to conceal the irritation he felt, left the cottage. Jacob watched him till he had got to ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... Alpines manoeuvring ... a company from Noirmont.... Listen ... listen.... What gaiety!... What swagger!... I tell you, close to the frontier like this, it takes ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... were almost there—that is, the main body. Kendrick noted, with sudden uneasiness, that there were stragglers. A gaily decorated old rooster, a fowl with a dissipated and immoral swagger and a knowing, devil-may-care tilt of the head, was sidling off to the left. Two or three young pullets were following the lead of this ancient pirate, evidently fascinated by his recklessness. The captain turned to head off the wanderers. They squawked and ran hither and thither. He succeeded ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Oberlies had picked up in Germany. He was an older man than Yoeder, wore a short beard that was white and curly, like his hair, and though he was low in stature, his puffy red face and full blue eyes, and a certain swagger about his carriage, gave him a look of importance. He was boastful and quick-tempered, but until the war broke out in Europe nobody had ever had any trouble with him. Since then he had constantly found fault and complained,—everything was better in ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... which overlooked the Mediterranean, was covered by an awning and fenced by little lemon and orange trees. Waiters in white aprons were already laying out on white tables the insignia of an early and elegant lunch; and this seemed to increase a satisfaction that already touched the top of swagger. Muscari had an eagle nose like Dante; his hair and neckerchief were dark and flowing; he carried a black cloak, and might almost have carried a black mask, so much did he bear with him a sort of Venetian melodrama. He acted as if a troubadour ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... intended movements are duly heralded beforehand; their approach announced with a flourish of trumpets. They carry on a vast wordy traffic in "great principles;" they condescend upon nothing less than the overthrow or manufacture of "constitutions"—in talk. The big swagger about "great principles" eventuates, however, in denouncing by speech from the throne repeal as high treason, and O'Connell the repealer as a traitor to the state; and next, with cap in hand, and most mendicant meanness, supplicating the said traitor—denounced—repealing O'Connell, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... rising bravely to swagger out to the theatre when Minty Brown came in with one of the club-men he knew. He bowed and smiled, but she appeared not to notice him at first, and when she did she nudged ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... man stepped out of the doorway to the sidewalk. He was a big fellow, with something of the slouch and swagger that are to be observed in the tough the ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... put it in the oven to bake: that is, when Garibaldi and Vittorio Emmanuele had won their victories at Caserta, Naples prepared to give them a triumphant entry. So there sat the little king in his carriage: he had short legs and huge swagger mustaches and a very big bump of philoprogeniture. The town was all done up, in spite of the rain. And down either side of the wide street were hasty statues of large, well-fleshed ladies, each one holding up a fore-finger. ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... nature had accorded a stature of only about five feet, or say five feet one; but by costume, voice, manner (including a little swagger), and character he made himself in every way the capital figure on the Eton stage, and his departure marked, I imagine, the departure of the old race of English public school masters, as the name of Dr. Busby seems to mark its introduction. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... I may read him to-day with enjoyment, but safe from excitation. This is due, perhaps, to a stringy constitution, subject to bilious doubts, which loves to see lusty Youth cock its hat when most nervous, swagger with merry insolence to hide the uncertainty which comes of self-conscious inexperience, assume a cynical shrewdness to protect its credulity, and imitate the abandon of the hard fellow who has been ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... this impassiveness when Europeans were trying to make them exhibit signs of surprise. Impassivity is a point of honour with many uncivilised races, and we cannot infer that a savage has no curiosity because he does not excite himself over a mirror, or when his European visitors try to swagger with their mechanical appliances. Mr. Herbert Spencer founds, on the statements of Mr. Bates already quoted, a notion that "the savage, lacking ability to think and the accompanying desire to know, is without tendency to speculate". He backs ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... find those qualities which she has elected to admire, and finally submits to be satisfied with far less than she had at first supposed could satisfy her. As for young men, they are mostly fools, and they talk of love with a vast deal of swagger and bravery, laughing it to scorn, as a landsman talks of seasickness, telling you it is nothing but an impression and a mere lack of courage, till one day the land-bred boaster puts to sea in a Channel steamer, and experiences a new sensation, and becomes ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Englishman, as he smilingly asserted. With the innate ability of the Spaniard to adapt himself to the customs of all foreign countries he imitated the manner of the English inhabitants of Gibraltar. He had bought himself a pipe, wore a traveling cap, turned up trousers and a swagger stick. The day on which he arrived, even before night-fall, they already knew throughout Gibraltar who he was and whither he was bound. Two days later the shopkeepers greeted him from the doors of their ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... by this time that in this brave palace of mine, wherein I was wont to swagger daily, irresponsible and unquestioned, I was rapidly ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... of a cat, but of a cat that was well acquainted with the ground it was moving over; the step showed no doubt or apprehension, it could hardly be called stealthy, but it glided on firmly and cautiously, without haste, or swagger, or unevenness.... The oftener you heard him speak, the more his speaking gained upon you.... He never seemed occupied with himself. His effort was evidently directed to convince you, not that he was ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... time came for him at last to get out on the road again for home. And, having prepared his team for the journey, he hitched them up to his spring-cart himself, paid his bill, and, with a flourish of his whip, and a swagger which only a team of six such magnificent horses as he possessed could give him, left the hotel at a gallop, the steely muscles of his arms controlling his fiery children as easily as the harsh voice of a northern half-breed controls ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Enforce her dictates, and sustain her laws; Rich with her spoils, his sanction will dismay, And bid the insurgents tremble and obey. He comes!—but where, the amazing theme to hit, Discover language or ideas fit? Splay-footed words, that hector, bounce, and swagger, 380 The sense to puzzle, and the brain to stagger? Our patriot comes! with frenzy fired, the Muse With allegoric eye his figure views! Like the grim portress of hell-gate he stands, Bellona's scourge hangs trembling in his hands! Around him, fiercer than the ravenous shark, "A cry of ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... paper, the Orriflam, without readin that a minister has committed bribery and perjury, or that a littery man has committed perjury and murder, or that a Duke has stabbed his wife in fifty places, or some story equally horrible; yet for all that it's admiral to see how the French gents will swagger—how they will be the scenters of civilization—how they will be the Igsamples of Europ, and nothink shall prevent 'em—knowing they will have it, I say I listen, smokin my pip in ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... negative. To the Royalist view of the points in dispute Milton opposes the Independent view. A refutation, which follows each step of an adverse book, is necessarily devoid of originality. But Milton is worse than tedious; his reply is in a tone of rude railing and insolent swagger, which would have been always unbecoming, but which at this ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... a man can't get what air he wants, what is likely to happen?" continued Brazzier, with an insolent swagger that was exasperating, following upon ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... over a chair which stood in his way and, with a reckless swagger, strode to the door. At the "Horse and Groom," where he spent the remainder of the evening, he was so original in his remarks upon women that two unmarried men offered to fight him, and were only appeased by hearing a full and true account of ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... eyes followed her with a look in them easy to read and unpleasant; something too ardently admiring to be trusted. She had seen the man's face. He was a big man, broad and straight and powerful, builded like a Vulcan. He was branded unmistakably as a rowdy; his very carriage, a sort of conscious swagger, the bold impudence of his face told that. The laughing face stood out before her eyes as she rode on, evil and reckless and handsome, with very bright blue eyes and hair curling in little yellow rings about the forehead from which the hat was pushed back. It was her first ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... Grinnell University's varsity squad, stepped across the threshold of Coach Edward's office. He carried his one hundred and eighty-seven pounds easily and with an athletic swagger. But he scowled as he entered, indicating that his call was ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... Ager and his friend, turning on a question (the point of family honour), finely but perhaps a little tediously argued. The comic scenes, however, which are probably Rowley's, are in his best vein of bustling swagger. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... courage, and hastened to meet Parry, who, followed by D'Artagnan, advanced slowly on account of his age. D'Artagnan walked slowly but nobly, as D'Artagnan, doubled by the third of a million, ought to walk, that is to say, without conceit or swagger, but without timidity. When Buckingham, very eager to comply with the desire of the princess, who had seated herself on a marble bench, as if fatigued with the few steps she had gone,—when Buckingham, we say, was at ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... King's money shall receive them, and that the army is to be paid with them, then he thinks his work shall be done. And this is the difficulty you will be under in such a case. For the common soldier when he goes to the market or alehouse will offer this money, and if it be refused, perhaps he will swagger and hector, and threaten to beat the butcher or alewife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad halfpence. In this and the like cases, the shopkeeper or victualler, or any other tradesman has no more to do, than to demand ten times the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... "Swagger old beggar," he observed. "His guard are well turned out. You know those markings on the shields are a true heraldry—the patterns mean families, and ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... his air of haughty superiority that got him into trouble. Tempted beyond endurance by his cool, insolent swagger, a small boy on the other side of the street discharged a Roman candle at him point-blank. One of the fiery balls struck his right side and dropped into the open pocket of his coat, starting a lively blaze. The garment got a smart ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... reason to be satisfied, they cannot help seeing that they have in fact very little power of managing the House. Everybody agrees that the aspect of the House of Commons was very different—the number of strange faces; the swagger of O'Connell, walking about incessantly, and making signs to, or talking with, his followers in various parts; the Tories few and scattered; Peel no longer surrounded with a stout band of supporters, but pushed from his usual ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... have been to Germany at all have invariably been to Heidelberg, and if they have been there in term time they have been amused by the gangs of young men who swagger about the narrow streets, each gang wearing a different coloured cap. They will have been told that these are the "corps" students, and the sight of them so jolly and so idle will confirm their mental picture ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... the heavy rubber garment she had worn through the swamp. Then she removed her outer clothing and got into the uniform and into the long, polished boots quickly. There was even the swagger cane that ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... good leave—granted, I trust, Master Rattray, granted, I trust—study this—this scabrous upheaval of latent demoralization. What impresses me most is not so much the blatant indecency with which you swagger abroad under your load of putrescence" (you must imagine this discourse punctuated with golf-balls, but old Rattray was ever a bad shot) "as the cynical immorality with which you revel in your abhorrent aromas. Far be it from me to interfere with ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... knowledge and then to become a University professor. He had already left the army and wore serge clothes, with well-cut coats, wide trousers, and expensive ties. My sister was enraptured with his pins and studs and his red-silk handkerchief, which, out of swagger, he wore in his outside breast-pocket. Once, when we had nothing to do, she and I fell to counting up his suits and came to the conclusion that he must have at least ten. It was clear that he still loved my sister, but never once, even in joke, ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... military organization aside, only praise can be given to the Dutch soldier individually. He is clean, civil, good-tempered, and with a far closer resemblance to Englishmen in what we regard as essentials than any other Continental. The officers are in the truest sense gentlemen free from swagger, and not over-bearing towards their men and their civilian compatriots. They represent a genuine type of manhood, free from artificiality or falsehood. One feels instinctively that they say what they ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... Dear is the swagger that takes a man in Helmeted, clattering, proud. Sweet are the honors the arrogant win, Hot from the breath of a crowd. Precious the spirit that never will bend— Hot challenge for insolent stare! ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... out in the distance, but Valden went along willingly enough. When the pair returned the deputy seemed to have lost his swagger. ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... bestowed upon him and gave his shoulders a swagger. "Speakin' of that, boss," he said, "reminds me of a chap who rode into Cabin Gulch a few weeks ago. Braced right into Beard's place, where we was all playin' faro, an' he asks for Jack Kells. Right off we all thought he was a ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... Ben Aboo, with a thrill of voice that was like a swagger. "What's to hinder me? I could do it at this moment, and no man ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... fellow of medium height and just under middle-age, whose face was smooth shaven—or had been some two days back. He smiled chronically, just as chronically he swung his shoulders and body with a sort of swagger, but the smile was vapid, and the swagger ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... afraid you'd think I swagger, I should say—than anybody! If you leave your place there, where shall you ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... words of his the individuality of the man somehow was thoroughly realised. Observing him, listening to him, as he stood there palpably before us, one seemed to understand better than ever Thackeray's declaration in regard to those same menials in plush breeches, that a certain delightful "quivering swagger" of the calves about them, had for him always, as he expressed it, "a frantic fascination!" Immediately afterwards, however, as the Reader turned a new leaf, in place of the momentary apparition of that particular flunkey, three very different ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... shirt, and the swagger kummerbund, Denison presented himself next morning to the editor of the Trumpet-Call. There were seven other applicants for the billet, but Denison's white shirt and new kummerbund were, he felt, a tower of strength to him, and even the editor of the Trumpet-Call seemed impressed—clean shirts ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... for nothing, and had then almost forgotten about it, and, when reminded of it, still held on to it with that defiant stubbornness which often possesses improvident and careless natures. He had never had any real business instinct, and to swagger a little over the land he held and to treat offers of purchase with contempt was the loud assertion of a capacity he did not possess. So it was that stubborn vanity, beneath which was his angry protest against the prejudice felt by the new people of the West for ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... vagaries of stores and indents and mere men and brass hats, on this and the other side of the Channel, all with a very light and engaging pen, and then spreads himself on any old far-off thing that interests him, such as the theatre, perhaps a little self-consciously and with a pleasant air of swagger most forgivable and, indeed, enjoyable. His chief preoccupation is with art and letters, it is clear; but, turning from them to the handling of urgent things and difficult men, he faces the business manfully. Of the men in particular ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... though they were unaware of my presence. At the moment, I felt firmly persuaded that the three of them were engrossed solely with the question of whether I should merely PASS the examination or whether I should pass it WELL, and that it was only swagger which made them pretend that they did not care either way, and behave as though ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... changed then. Possibly it took on a little swagger; certainly he lost the dignity that he had shown under stress of feeling; he was now more like a cowboy about to boast or affect some stunning maneuver. Walking off the porch, he stood before the weary horse ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... short man swagger tow'rds the footlights at Shoreditch, Sing out "Heave aho! my hearties," and perpetually hitch Up, by an ingenious movement, trousers innocent of brace, Briskly flourishing a cudgel in ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... his fourth cuspidor of beer and was in a delightful state of swagger and fight when he saw an unusual commotion up the street. What was it, thought Bonaparte—a crowd of boys and men surrounding another man with an organ and leading a little devil of a hairy thing, dressed ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... his irritation, he could not but admire the sort of affectionate swagger with which McVay rose to greet her, as if the brother of so tender a creature must remember ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... slant—that, absurdly enough, was the nobility of the sight. Why, then? Let's get at the heart of this, he said. Just that little trick of the architect, useless in itself—what was it but the touch of swagger, of bravado, of defiance—going out into the vast, meaningless, unpitying sea with that dainty arrogance of build; taking the trouble to mock the senseless elements, hurricane, ice, and fog, with a 15-degree slope of masts and funnels: ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... he is an adept in all the tricks of the trade; and as a fast young man about town among his kind, he is worthy his white prototype: the swagger, the impertinent look, the coarse remark, the loud laugh, are all in the best style. As a lounger and starer also, on the street corners of a Sunday afternoon, he has taken ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... fashionable greeting from stout, dandified Captain Cluffe, who was by no means so young as he would be supposed, and made up industriously and braced what he called his waist, with great fortitude, and indeed sometimes looked half-stifled, in spite of his smile and his swagger. Sturk, leaning at the window with his shoulders to the wall, beckoned Puddock gruffly, and cross-examined him in an undertone as to the issue of O'Flaherty's case. Of course he knew all about the duel, but the corps also knew that Sturk would not attend on the ground in any affair where ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Harrison, How they swagger from their garrison! Such a triplet could you tell Where to find on this side hell? Harrison, D——ks, and Clements, Keeper, see they have their payments; Every mischief's in their hearts; If they fail, 'tis want ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... French as the great chartist demonstration has done. For days and days it was a leading topic in the newspapers, and for days the general subject of conversation. Both newspapers and talkers, relying on the big swagger of the Chartists, and the undisguised alarm of the government, confidently expected a stern and terrible straggle, with barricades, and bayonets, and pikes, and deluges of blood, and awful slaughter. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Ring; still it hath much of the swagger of the other, though their stature be nearly equal—the manner of carrying the musket is much the same with all the borderers too—one cannot easily tell the form of man from a stump by this light—and—yet do I think it will prove to be ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... him joomp ovver my swagger-cane, an' shek hands, an' beg, an' lie dead, an' a lot o' them tricks as laadies teeaches dogs, though I doan't haud with it mysen, for it's makin' a fool o' a good dog ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... the niggling of Hobbima could have rendered his canvass, if he had worked on it till doomsday." Our author seems to have studied skies, such as they are in Turner or in nature. He talks of them with no inconsiderable swagger of observation, while the old masters had no observation at all;—"their blunt and feelingless eyes never perceived it in nature; and their untaught imaginations were not likely to originate it in study." What is the it, will be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... work shall be done. And this is the difficulty you will be under in such a case. For the common soldier when he goes to the market or alehouse will offer this money, and if it be refused, perhaps he will swagger and hector, and threaten to beat the butcher or alewife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad halfpence. In this and the like cases, the shopkeeper or victualler, or any other tradesman has no more to do, than to demand ten times the price ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... stalked the streets with a swagger, graded according to the number of his homicides, and a nod of recognition from him, was sufficient to make an humble admirer happy for the rest of ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... malt. On entering, I observed Mr. Gordon deposit, at a sort of bar, the sum of three-pence, by which I shrewdly surmised he had gained the sum of two and nine-pence by our admission. With a very arrogant air, he proceeded to the head of the table, sat himself down with a swagger, and called out, like a lusty royster of the true kidney, for a pint of purl and a pipe. Not to be out of fashion, we ordered the same ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for the artist's self in his works of art. This is good cautious advice. But there are occasional exceptions, and of these Mozart is the most radiant. The qualities of eternal youth and of juventine gaiety; of intimate tenderness; of swagger that winks while it swaggers; of love that is ever deep but sunlit to the depth; and of tragedy with a touch of fatalistic horror,—all those qualities that are found scattered through his sonatas and symphonies and his various operas—all the qualities that are combined ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... make-believe, the important deeds of adults. Children like to play at being grown-up, whether by wearing long dresses or by smoking, and it makes them feel important to do what the grown-ups do; you can observe how important they feel by the way they strut and swagger. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... a blind to me, for I examined and found that he had already been stealing and selling his ammunition: this is all preparatory to returning to the coast with some slave-trader. Nothing can exceed the ease and grace with which sepoys can glide from a swagger into the most abject begging of food from the villagers. He has ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... growled Miles, and stalked from the room, his heavy shoulders swinging from side to side in an exaggerated swagger. ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... some merit in putting a handsome face upon indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger away the sense of them, before strangers, may be not always discommendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even when detected, have more of our admiration than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat upon himself; to play the Bobadil at home; and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... knee in sheer enjoyment of the luxury of being babied. After that I think he took occasion to hurt himself upon every possible opportunity in order that he might come to my room to be taken care of and petted and comforted. He left all his swagger and bluster and bravado outside, and I babied him to his heart's content, feeling sure that it was the first time in all his dozen years that this child's right had come to him. But he did not allow these private seasons of relaxation, which he trusted ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... [Lat][Vergil]. pride; haughtiness &c. adj.; high notions, hauteur; vainglory, crest; arrogance &c. (assumption) 885. proud man, highflier[obs3]; fine gentleman, fine lady. V. be proud &c. adj.; put a good face on; look one in the face; stalk abroad, perk oneself up; think no small beer of oneself; presume, swagger, strut; rear one's head, lift up one's head, hold up one's head; hold one's head high, look big, take the wall, " bear like the Turk no rival near the throne " [Pope], carry with a high hand; ride the high horse, mount ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... as the Frenchmen walked along the deck, that there was a good deal of swagger in their manner, but I only set it down to Gallic impudence. While this conversation was going on, one of our midshipmen, a smart youngster—Mowbray, I think, was his name—had been inquisitively examining the Frenchmen, and he ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... look. His youth had been spent with heroes who loved their bottle. He himself had perhaps supped with Sheridan. He was by nature a spendthrift: you saw it in the roll of his walk. Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money rarely swagger. But saunter and swagger both united to stamp PRODIGAL on the Bond Street Lounger. And so familiar as he was with his own set, and so amusingly supercilious with the vulgar residue of mortals whose faces were strange to Bond Street! But he is gone. The world, though sadder for his loss, still strives ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... small parcels which apparently belonged to the girl at his side. He was a handsome man, tall and rather spare, with dark eyes and a soldierly look. His movements were quick and forceful, but a hint of what Mrs. Keith called swagger somewhat spoiled his bearing. She thought he allowed his self-confidence to be seen too plainly. The girl formed a marked contrast to him; she was short and slender, her hair and eyes were brown, while her prettiness, for one could not have, called ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... whom fat Sir John Falstaff's lean, 10 There with her single person fills the scene. Another, with long use and age decay'd, Dived here old woman, and rose there a maid. Our trusty doorkeepers of former time There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme. Tack but a copper-lace to drugget suit, And there's a hero made without dispute: And that, which was a capon's tail before, Becomes a plume for Indian emperor. But all his subjects, to express ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of modest swagger about Miles as he spoke, for he rather prided himself on his business acumen and general smartness, so Katherine's next words were a terrible blow ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... at a popular concert by its side, is our favourite comic singer, the Bobolink. I have thought often, when listening to British birds at their morning rehearsals, what a sensation would ensue if Master Bob, in his odd-fashioned bib and tucker, should swagger into their midst, singing one of those Low- Dutch voluntaries which he loves to pour down into the ears of our mowers in haying time. Not only would such an apparition and overture throw the best-trained orchestra of Old World birds into amazement or confusion, but astonish ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... from the cabin she touched me. Smiled with her mannish swagger, for fear we were still observed, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... was a low, ignorant sailor; could scarcely write his own name; but he had biceps and a thick head. Didn't know when he was whipped. I can see him yet, as he used to look, with his giant shoulders and his swagger as he stepped into the ring. There was no nonsense about him—or his fist; could break a board with that. And how the shouts used to go up; 'the pet!' 'a quid on the pet!' 'ten bob on the stars and stripes!' ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... from home were scanty and irregular, he never could bring himself into habits of prudence and economy; often he was stripped of all his present finances at play; often he lavished them away in fits of unguarded charity or generosity. Sometimes among his boon companions he assumed a ludicrous swagger in money matters, which no one afterward was more ready than himself to laugh at. At a convivial meeting with a number of his fellow-students, he suddenly proposed to draw lots with any one present which of the two should treat the whole party ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... radical distinction between them is that whereas Gattamelata is the faithful portrait of a modest though successful warrior, it must be confessed that Verrocchio makes an idealised soldier of fortune, full of bravado and swagger, a Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre of the Quattrocento. But, striking as the contrast of sentiment is, noticeable alike in the artist and his model, these two statues remain the finest equestrian monuments in the ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... Bureau may be found in a swagger Club any evening with a Bourbon H. B. at his Right, a stack of Student Lamps at his Left and Two Small Pair pressed closely against ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... How can he? We know—but we don't tell.... Pride! Rotten pride! We come home from our first voyage sick of it all.... Would give up but for pride.... Afraid to be called 'stuck sailors' ... of the sneers of our old schoolmates.... So we come home in a great show of bravery and swagger about in our brass-bound uniform and lie finely about the fine times we had ... out there! ... And then nothing will do but Jimmy, next door, must be off to the sea too—to come back and play the same game on young Alick! That's the way ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... praise can be given to the Dutch soldier individually. He is clean, civil, good-tempered, and with a far closer resemblance to Englishmen in what we regard as essentials than any other Continental. The officers are in the truest sense gentlemen free from swagger, and not over-bearing towards their men and their civilian compatriots. They represent a genuine type of manhood, free from artificiality or falsehood. One feels instinctively that they say what they think, and that ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... brings back millions!" boasted Denver with a swagger. "I'm made, if I can only hold onto it. But I'll tell you right now, if you want to hold your claims you'd better do a little assessment work. There's going to be a rush, when this strike of mine gets out, that'll make your ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... the rustler, and the outlaw spurred their ponies on eastward when the valley of the San Pedro was too hot for them and took refuge here among their kind. On occasion the bolder ones among them ventured back to show themselves on Tombstone's streets or swagger into Charleston's dance-halls; but never for long and never unless they were ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... took Grandaddy's advice. That very night he disappeared, to swagger back in a few days in a costume that made him appear almost like Mr. Frog's twin brother—if one didn't look at his face. And there were some among the villagers who even declared that Tired Tim's mouth seemed wider than it had been, and ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... 'ave 'em fitted; I'll buy me a swagger-cane; They'll let me free o' the barricks to walk on the Hoe again In the name o' William Parsons, that used to be Edward Clay, An' — any pore beggar that wants it can draw ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... fashion that might be American, English, French or German. His voice had been quiet and deferential, but by no means genteel; nor had it any hint of the roystering joviality of a sailor. More than anything else his gait, in its sedate unobtrusiveness, seemed to me utterly at variance with the rolling swagger which we conventionally ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... realizing history, by evolving its romantic element, and thus demonstrating to the languid and lazy readers of ninepenny nonsense, that the actual heroes and heroines of the world have surpassed in romantic daring the fictitious ones who swell and swagger in most novels and poems. Mr. Gayarre's work is more interesting, both as regards its characters and incidents, than Jane Eyre or James's "last," for, in truth, it requires a mind of large scope to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... intend this for a compliment by any means, though it may sound like one. Being an irreligious as well as a stupid man, he held that all who professed religion were hypocritical and silly. Manliness, in poor Jo's mind, consisted of swagger, quiet insolence, cool cursing, and general godlessness. With the exception of Fred Martin, the rest of the crew of the Lively Poll resembled him in his irreligion, but they were very different in character,—Lockley, the skipper being genial; Peter Jay, the mate, very appreciative ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... of his accustomed swagger began to return. "I don't know what the flowery phrases are all about, but the symbols refer to common proteins, lipins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and biomins," he said. "What is ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... exclaimed, returning to his customary swagger. It was quite enough that the matter was generally talked about, and he had said nothing to settle it, in either way. But his manner, more than his words, convinced Gilbert that there was no betrothal as yet, and that the vanity of being regarded ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... On the other hand, "lagoon" has replaced the English "pond," except in the case of artificial water. Pasture is "feed," herd and flock alike become "mob." "Country" is used as a synonym for grazing; "good country" means simply good grazing land. A man tramping in search of work is a "swagman" or "swagger," from the "swag" or roll of blankets he carries on his back. Very few words have been adopted from the vigorous and expressive Maori. The convenient "mana," which covers prestige, authority, and personal magnetism; "whare," a rough hut; "taihoa," equivalent to the Mexican manana; ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... the other with a swagger. "That's how yer paw used ter put it. Your maw warn't much good no how, with her finicky notions 'bout eddicati'n an' sech. A little pone and baken with plenty good ol' red eye's good 'nough fer us. Yer ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... of tongues and shaking of heads. Some one took a piece of chalk and scrawled on the side of the train, "We won the war—now we're going home," and the officers laughed and let it stay. They were all getting what swagger they could out of this ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... would perhaps have been excusable in the new owner. Most signally had he turned the tables on his enemies. Yet it was with no undue swagger that he seated himself upon a chair of problematical stability, and began to study the pages of the morning's issue. Sterne ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... object to was the method of those who belonged to the Tirpitz school. The peace was to be preserved; I give that school full credit for this desire; but preserved on what terms? On the terms that the German was to be so strong by land and sea that he could swagger down the High Street of the world, making his ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... American scenery singularly tame and unattractive, and that he finds female beauty (can his standard for this have been Orientalised?) very rare. He predicts that it would be impossible to maintain the Yellowstone National Park as such, and asserts that it was only a characteristic spirit of swagger and braggadocio that prompted this attempt at an impossible ideal. He also seems to think lynching an any-day possibility in the streets of New York. The value of his forecasts may, however, be discounted by his prophecy in the same book that the London County ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... head of the file, Captain Tony advanced through the clearing, and what with his flowing black beard, his portly form, and a certain dramatic swagger which he possessed, he looked so entirely Italian and operatic that you expected to hear him at any moment burst out in a sonorous basso. With a sweeping gesture he flung down upon the table two brown canvas bags, which opened and discharged ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... without him. And this was not due to wholly superficial things like his dandyism, his dark, sinister good looks and a great deal of the mere polished melodrama that he wrote. There was something in his all-round interests; in the variety of things he tried; in his half-aristocratic swagger as poet and politician, that made him in some ways a real touchstone of the time. It is noticeable about him that he is always turning up everywhere and that he brings other people out, generally in a hostile spirit. His Byronic and almost ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... once shrewdly at him in the dim light on the ferry-boat. No; he did not have the perfidious smirk or the brazen swagger of the lady-killer. Sincerity and modesty shone through his boreal tan. It seemed to her that it might be good to hear a little of what he had ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... which he sings has endeared the songs of Dibdin to the heart of the British sailor; and in this lies the proof of their genuineness. His songs are simple and melodious; there is a manly ring in their word and rhythm; they have the swagger and the fearlessness of the typical tar; they have, too, the beat of his true heart, his kindly waggery, his sturdy fidelity to his country and his king. There is nothing quite like them in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... of natives who stood upon the deck, gazing in wonder at all they saw, "here's for you;" and he handed them a tray of broken biscuit and a can of water. Then, thrusting his hands into his pockets, he walked up and down the deck with an enormous swagger, whistling vociferously. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... And there was a touch of foppery about him, in the enormous white tie and the much-cherished whiskers of the fifties, which was only redeemed by that other touch of devilry that he had shown me in the corridor. By the rich brown of his complexion, as well as by a certain sort of swagger in his walk, I should have said that he was a naval officer ashore, had he not told me who he was ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... describe it, and he came down again not very long after, attired in blue linen, with yellow boots, in the careless rig-out of a Parisian out for a holiday. He seemed, too, to have become more common, more jolly, more familiar, having assumed along with his would-be rustic garb a free and easy swagger which he thought suited the style of dress. His new apparel somewhat shocked M. and Madame de Meroul, who even at home on their estate always remained serious and respectable, as the particle "de" before their ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... is a house, s.c. a thieves' lodging-house; "spellken," a play-house; "high toby-spice" is robbery on horseback, as distinguished from "spice," i.e. footpad robbery; to "flash the muzzle" is to show off the face, to swagger openly; "blowing" or "blowen" is a doxy or trull; and "nutty" ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... drawn, turned, shaped, by a woman! He may deny it. He may swagger and lie about it. Heredity, ambition, lust, noble aspirations, weak self-indulgence, power, failure, success, have their turns with him. But the woman he desires above all others, whose breast is his true home, makes ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... advertisement. Mr. Shaw would advertise himself in this sense even if he were the inmate of a workhouse. He is something of a natural peacock. He is in the line of all those tramps and stage Irishmen who have gone through! life with so fine a swagger of words. This only means that in his life ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... hat and bowed low with exaggerated courtesy and much of his old swagger. The heavy dissipation of the last few months was evident in a marked and shocking way. His figure was gross and bloated, and his bold, ruddy good looks had vanished; his swollen face was purple and the features seemed curiously thickened. The hand which held ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... all things see to the punctual collection of the taxes. Do not study popularity. Attend only to those cases which are entrusted to your care, and work them thoroughly. No greater disgrace can attach to an officer of Court than that a Judge's sentence should be left unexecuted[806]. Do not swagger through the streets exulting in the fact that nobody dares meet you. Brave men are ever gentle in time of peace, and there is no greater lover of justice than he who has seen many battles. When you return to your parents and friends let it not be brawls that you have to boast of, ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... dust; and as the street was in a suburb communicating with the high-road, and formed one of the entrances into the town, he had probably, after long day's journey, reached his evening's destination. The looks of this stranger wore anxious, restless, and perturbed. In his gait and swagger there was the recklessness of the professional blackguard; but in his vigilant, prying, suspicious eyes there was a hang-dog expression of apprehension and fear. He seemed a man upon whom Crime had set its significant ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Faculty Club; today was no time to call attention to himself by breaking an established routine. As he entered, trying to avoid either a furtive slink or a chip-on-shoulder swagger, the crowd in the lobby stopped talking abruptly, then began again on an obviously changed subject. The word had gotten around, apparently. Handley, the head of the Latin Department, greeted him with a distantly ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... few more remarks of a very personal and pungent nature the little fellow marched off with a delicious swagger and an heroical air. I at once turned to the warder and asked, "Who is that little fellow?" "The Governor!" he gasped out. "If he had only heard you!" and then followed a pantomime that implied something very dreadful. Then I marched off to the doctor, and next to the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... his stalwart frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots, and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Henri's face haunted her. She could close her eyes and see it, line by line, his very swagger—for he did swagger, just a little; his tall figure and unruly hair; his long, narrow, muscular hands. Strange and rather uncomfortable. Because she could not summon Harvey's image at all. She tried to bring before her, that night in the train ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stop, in a drizzle of rain which prevented sight-seeing for those who had the wish, and the freedom, to go about. As for me, I was ordered by Lady Turnour to mend Mr. Stokes's socks, he having made peace by offering to "give her a swagger ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... called. He comes from Insterburg. He seemed to swagger very much, this gentleman—very much. I should have liked to have ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... scrutiny may properly be esteemed an effect of talent—an effect which has not too often been rehearsed. There is no reason why the Scoundrel, fairly beaten at the last point in the game, should not go to his death without swagger and without remorse. At least he might comfort himself with such phrases as 'a dance without the music,' and he has not often been lacking in courage. What he has missed is dignity: his pitfalls ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... else laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost his swagger in a ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... others to do the same, yet there is no denying that you spoke to those men in a most overbearing manner. Why, you could not have been more downright had you been an officer of the Emperor himself. What passed through my mind as I listened was, 'Where did this youth get his swagger?' You ordered Kurzbold out of the ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... SMART "mug-lumberer" one must be To-day, to "fetch" Sassiety; Not too strict, of swagger free, And as "fly" as "fly" can be. Ever pushing, ever bold, (Else one's left "out in the cold") Thus Success you grasp, and hold. And may sing, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... jacket with bigger brass buttons, and a blue cap with a brass button on either side—each brass button, on coat, cap, and vest, having an anchor of, (apparently), burnished gold in the centre of it. He had clear blue eyes, brown curly hair, and an easy, offhand swagger, which last was the result of a sea-faring life and example; but he had a kindly and happy, rather than a boastful or self-satisfied, expression of face, as he bowled along with his hands in his pockets, kicking ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... never hurried, nor does he loiter. The fashionable gait is comparatively slow, with long steps. The exaggerated stride of the Anglomaniac is as bad form as the swagger of the Bowery "tough." The correct demeanor is without gesture or ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... coals, screw on our cabs, drink the sourest of Bordeaux instead of more generous vintages, dispense with the cream which makes tea palatable, and systematically sacrifice substantial comforts that we may swagger successfully in the face of a critical and carping society. But with the most of us if our position is an anxious one; it is of our own making and if we dared to be eccentrically rational ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... however, returned when he drove into Crabapple, down the familiar street, past the familiar men and women turning to watch him, with a new automatic measure of attention, in his elevated position. He walked back to his dwelling with a slight swagger of hips and shoulders, and, with something of a flourish, laid down the two dollars he had been paid for ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... looked down at Ugolone, lumbering along behind the van. If they jumped it must be almost on top of him, and in the darkness he looked as big as a house and very alarming. Even Beppo lost his swagger, and as for Beppina, she was speechless with terror. The woman ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... daring companions (tre compagni bravi e facinorosi), and a palace worth fifty crowns on lease. But Lorenzo had just taken another on the Campo di San Polo at three hundred crowns a year, for which swagger (altura) Pietro Strozzi had struck a thousand crowns off his allowance. Bibboni also learned that he was keeping house with his uncle, Alessandro Soderini, another Florentine outlaw, and that he was ardently in love with a certain beautiful Barozza. This woman was apparently one of the grand ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... place with a lounging swagger, but his first ball was caught by the immortal Sibthorp, who uttered more puns on the occasion than the oldest man present recollected to have heard perpetrated in any given time. Russell—who, by the bye, excavated several quarts of 'heavy' during his innings—was the last ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... thought Gisli had his due herein for the noise and swagger he had made about himself; and Grettir sang this about their ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... comes the tail of Louka's double apron. His eye gleams at once. He takes a stealthy look at her, and begins to twirl his moustache nervously, with his left hand akimbo on his hip. Finally, striking the ground with his heels in something of a cavalry swagger, he strolls over to the left of the table, opposite her, and says) Louka: do you know what ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... Monday with the idea implanted in your bosom that you are going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu to the boys on shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus all rolled into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn't come. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a little ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... an officer who had served on two campaigns. He knew what makes a soldier, and judging by the appearance and the talk of those persons, by the swagger with which they had recourse to the bottle on the journey, he considered them poor soldiers. Moreover, he lived in a district town, and he was longing to tell how one soldier had volunteered from his town, a drunkard and a thief ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... atmosphere that it was unhealthy, and if the man happened to be alone, he ordered, and paid, and drank, and went out quickly. If he happened to be with friends, he pointedly addressed his conversation to his countrymen, and left with a certain degree of swagger, and without the appearance ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... us? Shall we doubt Of each lout That doth come, With a voice Like the noise Of a drum, And a sword or a buff-coat, to us? Shall we lose our estates By plunder and rates, To bedeck those proud upstarts that swagger? Rather fight for your meat Which those locusts do eat, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... good figure, with handsome features, and a remarkably dark complexion; he was dressed in a rich semi-oriental military costume, and had a dashing independent air about him, which Morton thought approached very much to a swagger, but perhaps at that moment he was not a very unprejudiced judge. Ronald could not help staring at him ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Shamelessly inquisitive and always hungry, what did he know of the Sphinx or the pyramids or the voice—and, for the matter of that, what did they know of him? And yet he was not half bad in comparison with the "swagger people,"—these people who pretend to have lungs and what not, and instead of galloping on merry hunters through the frost and snow of Piccadilly and Park, instead of enjoying the roaring fires of piled logs ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... full-bodied, she seems to have the power of making point take the place of weight. Yet, oddly enough, there is an occasional air of masculine loose-jointedness about her movements, a half-defiant sort of slouch and swagger which would probably carry much farther in her Old World than in our easier-moving New World, where disdain of decorum can not be regarded ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the talk and swagger of McKay I told the General to let him go, and plainly told McKay that I would go with him. That he, McKay, was an arrant coward and could not take any one, much less a company of one hundred men. I then ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... walk abroad from barracks, clad in the "walking-out" finery of shell-jacket and overalls, with the jingle of spurs and effort at the true Cavalry swagger, or rather the first attempt at a walk abroad, for the expedition had ended disastrously ere well begun. Unable to shake off his admirer, Trooper Herbert Hawker, Dam had just passed the Main Guard and main gates in the company of Herbert, and the two recruits had encountered the Adjutant and ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Kahira or The Victorious, to a more deplorable condition of subjection and slavery than any old-world conqueror could ever have done. For the heavy yoke of modern fashion has been flung on the neck of Al Kahira, and the irresistible, tyrannic dominion of "swagger" vulgarity has laid The Victorious low. The swarthy children of the desert might, and possibly would, be ready and willing to go forth and fight men with men's weapons for the freedom to live and die unmolested in their own native land; but ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... in the corner. He had his head tied up, and his arm, like he'd been shot, and the other two men came jumping up to the door with their guns, but when they saw how many men we had they looked awful scairt. We all had our guns out, too!—Jap Kemp gave me one to carry—" Bud tried not to swagger as he told this, but it was almost too much for him. "Two of our men held the horses, and all the rest of us got down and went into the cabin. Jap Kemp, sounded his whistle and all our men done the same just ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... we put up," said Stubbs presently, turning into a large and well-lighted hotel. "Put your best foot foremost now, and walk in like you owned the place. Can you swagger a bit?" ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... him, standing quite motionless. She knew now what had happened. He had grappled with the man's will just as once he had grappled with hers. And he had conquered. She expected him to approach her with the royal swagger of victory, and involuntarily she shrank, dreading to encounter him in that mood, painfully aware of her ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... king alone are now so cheap that the day-laborer has them—all in less than two lifetimes of real science! To-morrow or next day some one will discover, say, the secret of easily and cheaply interchanging the so-called elements. Bang! the whole structure of swagger and envy will collapse!" ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... well-groomed fellow, tall and slim, and, in the matter of years, somewhere in his forties. Duff always dressed well—with a foundation of the late styles of the east, with something of the swagger of the ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... between them was almost fantastic so strongly did the arrogance of the one emphasize the deep abasement of the other. Dacre was of large build and inclined to stoutness. He had the ruddy complexion of the English country squire. He moved with the swagger of the conquering race. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... faltering hand, and yet with an imbecile attempt at a swagger, that he knocked at his new friend's door in Pall Mall when the appointed hour arrived. Mr Bailey quickly answered to the summons. He was not proud and was kindly disposed to take notice of Jonas; but ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... your own good fortune," Galen told him. "You wear all that jewelry, and swagger like the youngest tribune, to conceal your diffidence. Being honest, you are naturally frugal; but you are ashamed of your own honesty, so you imitate the court's extravagance and made up for it with little meannesses that comfort your sense of extremes. The truth is, Pertinax, you are a man ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... and pretentious and insincere is to be vulgar, I really think the vulgar of our time are not these old plutocrats—not even their grandsons, who hunt and shoot and yacht and swagger with the best—but those solemn little prigs who have done well at school or college, and become radicals and agnostics before they've even had time to find out what men and women are made of, or what sex they belong to themselves (if ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... lost their "set." His hat was pulled still farther over his eyes, but at a more rakish angle, and his tie, tucked into his shirt bosom just below the collar, exposed blatantly a diamond shirt stud. But on Jimmie Dale's lips there was an ominous smile not wholly in keeping with the somewhat jaunty swagger he had assumed, and the lines at the corners of his mouth were drawn down hard and sharp. It was miserable work, the work of a hound and cur! Who, better than the janitor of the bank, would have had the opportunity to carry on that ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... to the music of the band in front, and notwithstanding the mire which had to be waded through, the line went on at quiet pace, and with admirable order, but there was no effort at anything like semi-military swagger or pompous demonstration. Every window along the route of the procession was fully occupied by male and female spectators, all wearing green ribbons and crape, and in front of several of the houses black drapery was suspended. The tide of men, women, and children continued ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... wounded comrade, and peace reigns. About eleven o'clock Clay comes up from the works hurriedly and gives a whistle, and from one of the bedroom doors emerges Jones, looking rather like a schoolboy who has been in disgrace and means to carry it off with swagger. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... and was unhitching the bay mare from the buckboard. Eleanor stood by the corral gate, her Panama hat fallen back from her brown hair and a little of the excitement left in her grey eyes. Bertram approached, grinning; he wore a swagger like that of a little boy who has just turned a series of somersaults before the little girls. Eleanor noticed this. Faintly—and in spite of the gratitude she owed him for turning a neighborly service into a heroic deed—she resented it. Also, Dynamo and ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... de la section Sanitaire Ving-et-Un passed through my mind. The doughy face. Imitation-English-officer swagger. Large calves, squeaking puttees. The daily lecture: "I doughno what's th'matter with you fellers. You look like nice boys. Well-edjucated. But you're so dirty in your habits. You boys are always kickin' ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... pretensions to be a "swagger" ship and crew, the wardroom mess took lunch, instead of dinner, at one o'clock, dining at seven o'clock in the evening. This was the hour adopted by the saloon party, who, I learned, were regularly reinforced by ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... What is it shuts me out from them, repels them from me? I creep into the corners and shed scalding tears of shame. I watch with envious eyes and ears all you to whom the wondrous gift is given. What is your secret? Is it Tommy's swagger? Then I will swagger, too, with anxious heart, with mingled fear and hope. But why—why, seeing that in Tommy they admire it, do they wait for me with imitations of cock-a-doodle-do, strut beside me mimicking a pouter pigeon? Is it Dicky's playfulness?—Dicky, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... taking up politics seriously?' said Count Rouvaloff, when Lord Arthur had told him the object of his mission; but Lord Arthur, who hated swagger of any kind, felt bound to admit to him that he had not the slightest interest in social questions, and simply wanted the explosive machine for a purely family matter, in which no one ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... in the hut, I saw the messengers arrive, and they were great truculent-looking fellows. There were four of them, and evidently they had travelled night and day. They entered with a swagger and squatted ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... 'There is no God but God: is it possible that four or five Franks can use all these things to eat, drink and sleep on a journey?' (N.B. I fear the Franks will think the stock very scanty.) Whereupon master Achmet, with the swagger of one who has seen cities and men, held forth. 'Oh Effendim, that is nothing; Our Lady is almost like the children of the Arabs. One dish or two, a piece of bread, a few dates, and Peace, (as we say, there is an end of it). But thou shouldst see the merchants ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... million was less concise, and seems to have been originally aimed against precocious youths who gave themselves the airs of manhood before their time. "Does your mother know you're out?" was the provoking query addressed to young men of more than reasonable swagger, who smoked cigars in the streets, and wore false whiskers to look irresistible. We have seen many a conceited fellow who could not suffer a woman to pass him without staring her out of countenance, reduced at once into his natural insignificance by the mere utterance ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... I've made an idiot of myself," he went on. "I'd no right to come down here like that. I just want you to forgive me now, that's all. I didn't mean to swagger about being rich. I'm not enjoying it a ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... then it was suffused with almost boyish merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten neighbours would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of drought ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... president of the Jarviston First National Bank, was his grandfather. Charlie was an engineer at the new nuclear powerhouse, just out of town. Charlie was what is generally known as a Good Guy. He was brash and sure—maybe too sure. He had a slight swagger, balanced by a certain benignancy. He was automatically the leader of the Bunch, held most likely to succeed in ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... became the fellow and tutor of his college, the Junior Dean, the betrothed of Christina, the idol of the Allaby womankind. From all which it may be gathered that if Christina had been a Barbary hen, and had ruffled her feathers in any show of resistance Theobald would not have ventured to swagger with her, but she was not a Barbary hen, she was only a common hen, and that too with rather a smaller share of personal ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... was peculiar, and rather like that of a cat, but of a cat that was well acquainted with the ground it was moving over; the step showed no doubt or apprehension, it could hardly be called stealthy, but it glided on firmly and cautiously, without haste, or swagger, or unevenness.... The oftener you heard him speak, the more his speaking gained upon you.... He never seemed occupied with himself. His effort was evidently directed to convince you, not that he was eloquent, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... pale, for Mistress Appleby asked me anxiously what was amiss. I hastened to reassure her, but begged her to close the door into the inn place which her husband had left open. She wonderingly complied, but was enlightened a moment afterwards, when she saw Dick Cludde swagger in, followed by the two naval captains whom his ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... deep pansy eyes rested in his. He felt a sudden intoxication of the senses. Almost with a swagger he drew up a chair and seated himself beside her. Already he was the conquering male in headlong pursuit. Nor was he disturbed by the least suspicion of having been filled with the sensations and the ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... End me no ends; engage the whole estate, And force your spouse to sign it: you shall have Three or four thousand more to roar and swagger, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... however, were of course not to be put off without examination; and a boat was immediately despatched from the Vincejo to board, and see what could be made of her. The officer who was sent on board was received by the captain with a good deal of bluster and swagger: he loudly asserted his rights as a neutral, and threatened the vengeance of Congress if they should be infringed. His account of himself was, that he had come out from Boston with a cargo of 'notions,' which he had traded away at Leghorn; and finding some difficulty in getting a return ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... asserting the negative. To the Royalist view of the points in dispute Milton opposes the Independent view. A refutation, which follows each step of an adverse book, is necessarily devoid of originality. But Milton is worse than tedious; his reply is in a tone of rude railing and insolent swagger, which would have been always unbecoming, but which at ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... to refresh themselves and refit the ship. The mate on watch greeted them good-humoredly enough and bade them enter the cabin where the captain awaited them. Jack was all a-flutter again but he managed to imitate Joe's careless swagger. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Duncan was compelled to accept these terms. He saved a small sum out of the wreck of his fortune, and with his family removed to the West, where they were obliged to adopt a very different style of living. Randolph is now an office boy at a salary of four dollars a week, and is no longer able to swagger and boast as he has done hitherto. Mr. Tomkins, Linton's father, was elected president of the Groveton Bank in place of Mr. Duncan, much ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... determine whether it was a trait of madness or of nobility. I could have told her with absolute confidence that it was neither the one nor the other, but a sort of epicurean selfishness with perhaps a little dash of swagger away down at the bottom of it. What had I ever had from my chronometer like the quiet thrill of satisfaction when the fellow brought me the pawn ticket and told me that the thirty shillings had ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... James!" shouted Tom Caldwell, coming up to the sleigh, with a proud swagger, "an' Malcolm here was helpin' us Orangemen put ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... Shakspearean Heroines do a little play-acting between whiles, and the gods and goddesses, or rather their attendants, manoeuvre before the eye becomes weary of watching their approach. For instance, Mars has scarcely time to swagger down to the foot-lights in the most appropriate and approved fashion, before he finds himself called upon to stand near a private box on the prompt side, to be well out of the way of his dancing terpsichorean satellites. Lady Macbeth has hardly "taken the daggers" before King Lear (Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... lions, a kind of game which is hunted in London every spring with more than Meltonian ardor and perseverance. Bruce, who had washed down steaks cut from living oxen with water from the fountains of the Nile, came to swagger and talk about his travels. Omai lisped broken English, and made all the assembled musicians hold their ears by howling Otaheitean love songs, such as those with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Susceptibility sentemo. Suspect suspekti. Suspend pendigi. Suspense (uncertainty) necerteco. Suspicion suspekto. Suspicious suspektema. Sustain subteni. Sustenance nutrajxo. Swaddle vindi. Swaddling clothes vindotuko. Swagger fanfaroni. Swallow (bird) hirundo. Swallow gluti. Swamp marcxejo. Swan cigno. Sward herbejo. Swarm —aro. Swarm of bees abelaro. Swarthy nigravizagxa, dube—nigra. Swathe envolvi, vindi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... band is a boy about fourteen years old, a muscular, sturdy chunk of a lad. He walks with his heels down, his calves bulged out behind, his head up, and the regular, proper swagger of a bandsman. He hasn't any uniform, but he's all right. He plays a solo B part, and he and the other solo cornet spell each other. On the repeat of every strain my boy rests, and rubs his lips with his forefinger, while he looks at the ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... to turn one's moral stomach. His cockle hat and staff transformed to a smart cockd beaver and a jemmy cane, his amice gray to the last Regent Street cut, and his painful Palmer's pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacriligious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the pilgrims there—the silly soothness in his ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... from the background of villa roofs and casino terraces, resolved itself into a figure stolid and sturdy, very brown of leg, and insolent of demeanor—swaggering along as if conscious of there being a full-grown man buttoned up within a boy's ragged coat. The swagger was accompanied by a whistle, whose neat crispness announced habits of leisure and a sense of the refined pleasures of life; for an artistic rendering of an aria from "La Fille de Madame Angot" was cutting the air ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... rest there, but have at the Hebrew also! not contenting themselves to tell the people in general, that they "have skill in the Text, and the exposition they offer, agrees with the Original"; but must swagger also over the poor parishioners, with the dreadful Hebrew itself! with their BEN-ISRAELS! BEN-MANASSES! and many more BENS that they are intimately acquainted with! whereas there is nothing in the church, or near it by a mile, that understands them, but GOD ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... doings in swagger society, eh, Droom? If anyone but Billy Fernmore had done that, he would have been ostracised ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... world, and I was flattered by these uncommon remarks, because he talked to no one else on the ship in the same way. He never sought to make friends, had a thorough contempt for social trifling, and shrugged his shoulders at the "swagger" of some of the other officers. I think he longed for a different kind of sea-life, so accustomed had he been to adventurous and hardy ways. He had entered the Occidental service because he had fallen in love with a pretty girl, and thought ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... she dropped these words—they would have been admirable on the stage—made him reply with prompt ease: "What I meant just now was that you're not to tell him, after all my swagger, that I consider that you and I are really required to ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Zword and Dagger, Were us'd all in vighting; Ch've heard my Father swear and swagger, That it was but a Flea-biting: But these ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... foolhardy. In a sense I walked on air; I was lunatic; and all because I had held for an instant of time an adorable woman in my arms with no consent of hers. I believe now (and I hope it will not be counted against me) that it was with a little swagger I opened the door and stepped forth into the ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... they loitered about the streets, their stomachs empty, said to each other that it was a great honour for Mugsborough that their Member should be promoted in this way. They boasted about it and assumed as much swagger in their gait ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... the exact air, notwithstanding the black broadcloth and the white hat. The city men are of two varieties—the smart, perky-nosed, vulgar young ward worker, and the heavy-featured, gross, fat old fellow. One after another they glide in, with an always conscious air, swagger off to the bar, strike attitudes in groups, one with his legs spread, another with a foot behind on tiptoe, another leaning against the counter, and so pose, and drink "My respects"—all rather solemn and stiff, impressed perhaps by the decorousness of the place, and conscious of their good clothes. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... cold-blooded murder, his was a welcome figure in Timber Town. Men turned to look at him as he tramped past in his heavy, mud-stained blucher boots. One man, standing outside The Lucky Digger, asked him if he had "struck it rich." But the "swagger" looked at ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... two of them weighing no more than one Russian, quiet, taciturn, genial and abstemious, were the children of the "Little White Father." The Russians were an aggressive, big, well set up, heavy type of men, by no means teetotalers, talkative, with overbearing swagger, always posing, talking contemptuously about the possible struggle in the East, invariably referring to the Japanese as "little monkey men." Fortunate for me was it that the Bayern was carrying both Russians and Japanese; the knowledge I acquired ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... the malign and tyrannical qualities of an overseer, he combined something of the lawful master. He had the artfulness and the mean ambition of his class; but he was wholly free from the disgusting swagger and noisy bravado of his fraternity. There was an easy air of independence about him; a calm self-possession, and a sternness of glance, which might well daunt hearts less timid than those of poor slaves, accustomed from childhood and through life to cower ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... days later that a buoyant young figure swung into an elevator in the great office building that housed the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company. Just one more grain of buoyant swing and the young man's walk might have been termed a swagger. As it was, his walrus bag ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten neighbours would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of drought and frost in ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... deepest darkness, lessened only by the light of many stars. Even so, in time one's eyes grew accustomed and it was a glamorous spectacle—twenty-eight beasts moving through dark defiles and over steep passes among the rugged, ragged hills. From any one spot they seemed at once to swagger and to slink, swaying as they moved on and vanished into obscurity. The small wild things in the night paused affrightedly in their scurryings until ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... Dick managed to abstract small quantities of goods from their pack, in room of which he stuffed in pieces of leather to keep up the size and appearance. The goods thus taken out he concealed about his person, and went off with a careless swagger to the outskirts of the village, with Crusoe at his heels. Arrived there, he tied the goods in a small piece of deerskin, and gave the bundle to the dog, with the ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... or scold at any one; also to bluster, bounce, ding, or swagger. A captain huff; a noted bully. To stand the huff; to be answerable for the reckoning ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... repose, that kindliness which is the very marrow and pith of high-breeding, shock you in his manners as acutely by their absence as if they were rents in his waistcoat or gapes in his boot-leather. The "bluff," impudence, and swagger of the Stock Exchange cling to him in society like burrs to the hair of horse or dog. He would be far more endurable, this socially rampant and ubiquitous Wall Street man, if he revealed the least shred of respect for those ideas and faiths on which his hard, cold course of living has necessarily ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... fancy roping made up the main features of the programme and were to be set off by horse and foot racing and other county fair necessities. Altogether, the proud citizens of the town looked forward with keen anticipation to the coming excitements, and were prone to swagger a bit and to rub their hands in condescending egoism, while the crowded gambling halls and saloons, and the three-card-monte men on the street corners enriched themselves at the cost of ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... his men of "The young gaffer! We'll all stick to him!" And in spite of his youth, George was at once installed as captain of the little Fairburn band. He had always been highly popular with the men of the colliery; they liked his entire freedom from vain show and swagger, and ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... over to China, or to live in India, I should like to know who is to prevent me? This is the very thing above all others for me. I'll go off to the room where they are all assembled, and ask them why they want to disinherit me. I'll just swagger like Danjuro [91] the actor, and frighten them into giving me fifty or seventy ounces of silver to get rid of me, and put the money in my purse, and be off to Kioto or Osaka, where I'll set up a tea-house ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... carried in the gifts and Larry went back for his "courage" and donned his new suit of clothes to help him carry it, and then came walking in with a jovial swagger, and accepted the mother's thanks and Amalia's embrace with a marvelous ease, especially the embrace, with which he ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... pastry; the poor man licks his lips before the baker's window; people with patched eyes sprawl all night under the stalls; chuckling Tabary transcribes an improper romance; bare-bosomed lasses and ruffling students swagger in the streets; the drunkard goes stumbling homewards; the graveyard is full of bones; and away on Montfaucon, Colin de Cayeux and Montigny hang draggled in the rain. Is there nothing better to be seen than sordid misery and worthless joys? Only where the poor old mother of the poet kneels ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the lead, showed a tendency to swagger. She bounced and tossed. The fair lad, swaying to the motions of his horse, rode the ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... with such fittings; they form its very construction. Style does not exist in modern arrayings, for all their prettiness and precision, and for all the successes—which are not to be denied—of their outer part; the happy little swagger that simulates style is but another sign of its absence, being prepared by mere dodges and dexterities beneath, and the triumph and success of the present art of raiment—"fit" itself—is but the result of a masked and ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... and blunders, and there were hours when she still felt his dominion and exulted in it. But there were others when she saw his defects and was irritated by them: when his loudness and redness, his misplaced joviality, his familiarity with the servants, his alternating swagger and ceremony with her friends, jarred on perceptions that had developed in her unawares. Now and then she caught herself thinking that his two predecessors—who were gradually becoming merged in her memory—would have ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... were coming forward very well. Nothing could have been better than his manners—quiet, manly, civil, without the rather aggravating slyness of the ordinary French peasant, and with absolutely nothing of the infantine swagger of the small French bourgeois. These miners here wear a picturesque and practical costume, something between the garb of a sailor and the garb of a fireman, and as their life—like the life of a fireman or a sailor—is ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... proprietor labored heroically to supply their customers with the liquid stimulant which would nerve them to look upon Ben Allen's posters with a certain degree of equanimity. The reckless element—the gun-men who in a former day were wont to swagger forth with reckless disregard for the polite conventions—skulked in the background, sneering at this thing which had come to rob them of their power and which, they felt, presaged their ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... his left foot hacked off in the marketplace. No more were marriages to be celebrated with pomp and feasting, no more was the youthful warrior to swagger with flowing hair; henceforth, the believer must banquet on dates and milk, and his head must be kept shaved. Minor transgressions were punished by confiscation of property or by imprisonment and chains. But the rhinoceros whip was the favourite ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... and never hesitates to hit rich and poor alike in his discourses. He has been transplanted to the Parish Church, and he will stir up a few of the respectable otiose souls there if he has an opportunity. There is a good deal of swagger about him; he believes in carry a stick and turning it; in admiring himself and letting other people know that he is of a cypher; there is much conceit and ever so much bombast about him; he likes giving historical lectures; thinks he is an authority ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... once to Mrs. Bines and Psyche of the latest fashions for mourners. Crepe was more swagger than ever before, both as ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... then rose, resumed his fardel, and, creeping quick along the hedgerows, followed Leonard toward the town. Just in the last field, as he looked over the hedge, he saw Leonard accosted by a gentleman of comely mien and important swagger. That gentleman soon left the young man, and came, whistling loud, up the path, and straight toward the tinker. Mr. Sprott looked round, but the hedge was too neat to allow of a good hiding-place, so he put a bold front on it, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... clerical tennis players departed. Marmaduke was for taking his leave too. All his old loathing of Oliver had suddenly returned. His cousin stood for everything he detested—swagger, arrogance, self-assurance. He hated the shabby rakishness of his attire, the self-assertive aquiline beak of a nose which he had inherited from his father, the Rector. He dreaded his aggressive masculinity. He ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... As a matter of fact, I saw little of it and confessed to nothing. Certainly he was what some might call handsome, of a pictorial, exuberant style of beauty, all attitude, profile, and impudence: a man whom I could see in fancy parade on the grand stand at a race- meeting or swagger in Piccadilly, staring down the women, and stared at himself with admiration by the coal-porters. Of his frame of mind at that moment his face offered a lively if an unconscious picture. He was lividly pale, and his lip was caught up in a smile that could almost be called a snarl, of a sheer, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... assured her. "I like it better than anything else in the world. But what I mean is—I was thinking, seeing that this is such a great winter-resort, and all the swagger people of Europe come here—that probably you youngsters would enjoy seeing ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... species found in this region are more youthful in aspect, carry themselves with more swagger, wear their hats jantily, with greasy curls coaxed to project beyond the brim. They affect a sort of secondhand gentility, cultivate great brooches, silver guard-chains, and whiskers, and have the air of persons claiming vice-royalty ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... bordered on the truth? But doubtless there was a time when you ranged upon these heights—when Kazrac the magician was not too heavy for your art. In those soaring days, let us hope that you played the villain with a swagger, or being cast in a softer role, that you won a pink and fluffy princess before the play was done. Your earliest practice, it may be, was in rigging the parlor hangings as a curtain with brown string from the pantry and ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... perhaps have deserved more consideration. But Arnold was well known in the city. He had often come to Quebec from New England to buy horses for the West Indies trade in which he was engaged. Indeed he was nothing better than a Horse Jockey, with all the swagger, vulgarity and bounce appertaining to stablemen. He had been appointed to head this expedition, chiefly because of his local knowledge of the country. He boasted that he had friends in Quebec who could help him. It ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... case of artificial water. Pasture is "feed," herd and flock alike become "mob." "Country" is used as a synonym for grazing; "good country" means simply good grazing land. A man tramping in search of work is a "swagman" or "swagger," from the "swag" or roll of blankets he carries on his back. Very few words have been adopted from the vigorous and expressive Maori. The convenient "mana," which covers prestige, authority, and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... feared the servants' mockings Should they see him in his stockings, Racing along the corridor:— Not that he thought it horrid, or Harsh to transfix him with a dagger, (He could not bear the fiddler's swagger), But felt quite sure so droll a figure Would make ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... there!" he cried to the half-dozen of natives who stood upon the deck, gazing in wonder at all they saw, "here's for you;" and he handed them a tray of broken biscuit and a can of water. Then thrusting his hands into his pockets, he walked up and down the deck with an enormous swagger, whistling vociferously. ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... Bearwarden; "does he hope to impose on me with his half-bred swagger and Brummagem assurance?" but he only said, "I suppose, Tom, you're in great request with them—all ranks, all sorts, all ages! You fellows have such a pull over us poor soldiers; you can be improving the time ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... not the limited sense of the word. Nor is it difficult to observe in the shy philosopher a temperament which must have commended itself to Mr Arnold almost as strongly as his literary quality, and very closely indeed connected with that—the temperament of equity, of epieikeia, of freedom from swagger and brag and self-assertion. And here, once more, the things receive precisely their right treatment, the treatment proportioned and adjusted at once to their own value and nature and to the use which their ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... could not quite determine whether it was a trait of madness or of nobility. I could have told her with absolute confidence that it was neither the one nor the other, but a sort of epicurean selfishness with perhaps a little dash of swagger away down at the bottom of it. What had I ever had from my chronometer like the quiet thrill of satisfaction when the fellow brought me the pawn ticket and told me that the thirty shillings ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... three golden balls, with the swagger and general air of ownership I thought most likely to impose upon the self-satisfied female who presided over the desk, I asked ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... as he might have done, he would have had a character ready to his hand that would have added one of the most amusing and interesting portraits to his gallery. He faintly suggests a moral Falstaff, if we can imagine a Falstaff without vices. As a narrator he has the swagger of a Captain Dalghetty, but his actions are marked by honesty and sincerity. He appears to have had none of the small vices of the gallants of his time. His chivalric attitude toward certain ladies who appear in his adventures, must have been sufficiently amusing to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... thinks his work shall be done. And this is the difficulty you will be under in such a case. For the common soldier when he goes to the market or alehouse will offer this money, and if it be refused, perhaps he will swagger and hector, and threaten to beat the butcher or alewife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad halfpence. In this and the like cases, the shopkeeper or victualler, or any other tradesman has no more ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... of hues in garments. A doctor, a stout, tall, round-paunched, red-faced, brutal-looking old fellow, who gets drunk daily. He sat down on the step of our stoop, looking surly, and speaking to nobody; then got up and walked homeward, with a morose swagger and a slight unevenness of gait, attended by ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tooth and nail! Stop it somehow—anyhow—with your hands, your feet, your skirt, your stick. I believe there is an etiquette about it, don't you know, as there is about all those things, and that it's more swagger to stop it one way than another, but the main thing is to stop it somehow, and that you ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that when he should come to hold the position as officer of the guard that he would swagger over them; but he showed good sense and taste, merely assuming the rank formally and leaving his junior to carry out the duty."—New ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... Dared she trust? But he was no deceiver, no flirt, like the lady-killers who used to come to the Palazzo to bow over Lucia's hand and eye each other with that half hostile, half knowing swagger. She had watched them. . . . But ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... had the effect of revolutionising our domestic economy. It was at the time when the worst pinch was over, and when we had got back as far as butter and occasional tobacco, with a milkman calling daily; which gives you a great sense of swagger when you have not been ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... out of the doorway to the sidewalk. He was a big fellow, with something of the slouch and swagger that are to be observed in the tough the ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... see if I had juice in me," he explained, strutting beside Sam with an amusing little swagger of his shoulders. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... missionary's son and had come up from college at Montreal to help his father preach salvation to the Indians on Sundays, and to swagger around week-days in his brand new clerical-cut ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... to you how he said this. Simple as it now reads, he made it vital with meaning. The insolent boast was uttered with such a swagger that my face instantly flushed, and he ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... alternating play of a sympathy evidently more selfish than good-humored, and his eyes, in almost glassy clearness, for the first time distinctly showed the expression of that unrestrained ambition and tendency to swagger which afterwards revealed itself as so strong a motive in most ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... herself that morning with painstaking detail. Too late she had discovered that she didn't possess a dress fit to wear at any one's wedding, not to mention her own. From time to time she had dreamed of a swagger tailored suit, but the paradox of a swagger tailored suit in San Pasqual had been so apparent always that Donna could not bring herself to the point of submitting to a measurement in the local dry-goods emporium, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... tall, thin, aristocratic boy—spoke solemnly. He was a dandy, the understudy—as John soon discovered—of one of the "Bloods"; a "Junior Blood," or "Would-be," a tremendous authority on "swagger," a stickler for tradition, who had been nearly three years ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... as Nazinred suggested, the high crest might have been inconvenient, but out on the floes the unencumbered immensity of the Arctic sky afforded the boy room to swagger to his heart's content. ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... their bereavement, but lead a life of joyous, and rather indolent oblivion in their quarter of the city. They are often to be seen sauntering up and down the street by which the Charlesbridge cars arrive,—the young with a harmless swagger, and the old with the generic limp which our Autocrat has already noted as attending advanced years in their race.... How gayly are the young ladies of this race attired, as they trip up and down the side-walks, and in and out through the pendent garments at the shop-doors! They are the black ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... partaken of his fourth cuspidor of beer and was in a delightful state of swagger and fight when he saw an unusual commotion up the street. What was it, thought Bonaparte—a crowd of boys and men surrounding another man with an organ and leading a little devil of a hairy thing, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the file, Captain Tony advanced through the clearing, and what with his flowing black beard, his portly form, and a certain dramatic swagger which he possessed, he looked so entirely Italian and operatic that you expected to hear him at any moment burst out in a sonorous basso. With a sweeping gesture he flung down upon the table two brown canvas bags, which opened ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... club windows. My reputation is gone. I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled by whipper-snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. I am found out. And in the days of my triumphs, when people were yet afraid of me, and were taken in by my swagger, I always knew that I was a lily liver, and expected that I should ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... his experience of poverty at home, in his remarks in later life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to strut and swagger, but must be humble and learn to be silent and to trust in God, and to whom God also ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... changed since then, and our national spirit with them. The Secretary's Quaker-like protest offers a ludicrous contrast to the wolf-to-lamb swagger of our modern diplomacy. What faithful Democrat of 1801 would have believed that the day would come of the Kostza affair, of the African right-of-search quarrel, the Greytown bombardment, and the seizure of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... it no longer. Not even for you, not even for the chance of getting Christian back. It's empty swagger to say that I wish to GOD I'd the chance of giving my life to get him back for you. But you must come home now. I've bitten my lip through in holding my tongue, but I won't see you kneel another minute at the feet of that sulky old ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... the inn had his own individuality of swagger, his truculent independence of mien, which suggested a man by no means habitually used either to receive commands or to render unquestioning obedience. Each of the men resembled his fellows in a certain flamboyant air of ferocity, but no one of them ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... de plume ("Charles Ludhurst") for the occasion, Needless to say that I was delighted when I saw the article in print, and yet more so when I received for it a couple of guineas, which I speedily expended on gloves, neckties, and a walking-stick. Here let me say that we were rather swagger young fellows at Bonaparte. We did not have to wear hideous ill-fitting uniforms like other Lyceens, but endeavoured to present a very smart appearance. Thus we made it a practice to wear gloves and to carry walking-sticks or canes on our way to or from the Lycee. I even improved on ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... you didn't know me that first night; you had never seen me but once before, and you couldn't have known me. How did you know me to-night? You won't answer, or if you do you'll say you knew me by my swagger. Anything to insult a woman. I'd like to be a man for a few hours just to see how they feel toward women—just how much more contempt they feel than they show. I tell you, you didn't know ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... hopes in each one to find those qualities which she has elected to admire, and finally submits to be satisfied with far less than she had at first supposed could satisfy her. As for young men, they are mostly fools, and they talk of love with a vast deal of swagger and bravery, laughing it to scorn, as a landsman talks of seasickness, telling you it is nothing but an impression and a mere lack of courage, till one day the land-bred boaster puts to sea in a Channel steamer, and experiences a new sensation, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... me no ends; engage the whole estate, And force your spouse to sign it: you shall have Three or four thousand more to roar and swagger, And ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... expressions, which give such a peculiar flavour to the conversation of the 'people' in Southern France, rolled off his tongue with a sonority that could hardly have been excelled at Nimes or Tarascon. His swagger, his gestures, and his elocutionary power were amazing. He would stop walking, and, placing his stick—which he called his trique—under his arm, would speak in a tragic stage-whisper; then, clutching his trique and flourishing it over ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... critic's eyes; And should his humour, and his mimic art, Bear due proportion to his outer part, As once 'twas said of Macklin in the Jew, 'This is the very Falstaff Shakspeare drew.' To you, with diffidence, he bids me say, Should you approve, you may command his stay, To lie and swagger here another day. If not, to better men he'll leave his sack, And go as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... distend, dilate, expand, bloat, puff up, tumefy, intumesce; increase, augment; heave, surge; protuberate; strut, swagger. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... pervades whole sentences and paragraphs with an indefinable lightness and palatableness. It is a thoroughly American style, too, a little over-indifferent to tradition and convention, but quite free of the sic-semper-tyrannis swagger. Uncle Bull, who is just like his nephew in thinking that he has a divine right to the world's oyster, cannot swallow it properly till he has donned a white choker, and refuses to be comforted when Jonathan disposes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... had no heart for fishing, and especially in such company. She despised George Sherrard as a prig, fond of boasting of his means, and, indeed, so terribly self-conscious was he that in many circles he was declared impossible. Men disliked him for his swagger and conceit, and women despised him for his ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... "Never show your feelings—to do so is not manly and bores your fellows. Don't cry out when you're hurt, making yourself a nuisance to other people. Tell no tales about your companions, and no lies about yourself. Avoid all 'swank,' 'side,' 'swagger,' braggadocio of speech or manner, on pain of being laughed at." (This maxim is carried to such a pitch that the Englishman, except in his press, habitually understates everything.) "Think little of money, and speak less of it. Play ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Day—in fact, it would be true to say that a new Joanna had begun. Something in her was broken, melted, changed out of all recognition—she was softer, weaker, more excited, more tender. She had lost much of her old swagger, her old cocksureness, for Martin had utterly surprised and tamed her. She had come to him in a scheming spirit of politics, and he had kept her in a spirit of devotion. She had come to him as Ansdore to North Farthing—but ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... of precious "properties," this prodigious capital decoratively invested and scintillating throughout Christendom at effectively- scattered points. You see I am forced to agree after all, in spite of the sliding shutter and the profane swagger of the sacristan, that a certain pastoral majesty saved the situation, or at least made irony gape. Yet it was from a natural desire to breathe a sweeter air that I immediately afterwards undertook the interminable climb to the roof of the cathedral. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... he rarely sees. Sometimes a latch-key is heard about half-past six. The man is thick, strong, common, his jaws are heavy, his eyes are expressionless, there is about him the loud swagger of the caserne, and he suggests the inevitable question, Why did she marry him?—a question that every young man of refined mind asks a thousand times by day and ten thousand times by night, asks ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... suddenly opened. Fenn entered and received a little chorus of welcome. He was wearing a rough black overcoat over his evening clothes, and a black bowler hat. He advanced to the table with a little familiar swagger. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... friends would be sending you pistols by post, requesting you to use them like a gentleman. Horsham would grieve over ten dinner-tables in succession and then return to his philosophy. One really mustn't waste a life trying to shock polite politicians. There'd even be a suspicion of swagger ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... Servians, the Bulgarians, the Greeks, the Italians, the Austrians. Why, they can't even shoot! It's just the balance of power and all that foolery keeps this country a roadless wilderness. Good God, how I tire of it! These men who swagger and stink, their brawling dogs, their greasy priests and dervishes, the down-at-heel soldiers, the bribery and robbery, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... up-stairs he smoked a cigarette. But he sneaked away. He paused at the bend in the stairs. Below him was Gertie, silver-gowned, wonderful. He wanted to go down to her. He would have given up his chance for a motor-car to be able to swagger down like an Eddie Klemm. For the Carl Ericson who sailed his ice-boat over inch-thick ice was timid now. He poked into the library, and in a nausea of discomfort he conversed with Mrs. Cowles, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... a holiday shoe, What can old Betty do? Give her another To match the other, And then she may swagger in two. ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... air of modest swagger about Miles as he spoke, for he rather prided himself on his business acumen and general smartness, so Katherine's next words were a ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... hat far back upon his tight little curls, his swagger pronounced, his sweet blue eyes shining softly—his lips battered and bruised ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... Perfect behaviour at an enforced and public scrutiny may properly be esteemed an effect of talent—an effect which has not too often been rehearsed. There is no reason why the Scoundrel, fairly beaten at the last point in the game, should not go to his death without swagger and without remorse. At least he might comfort himself with such phrases as 'a dance without the music,' and he has not often been lacking in courage. What he has missed is dignity: his pitfalls have been unctuosity, on the one side, bravado on the other. It was the Prison Ordinary, who first ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... impassiveness when Europeans were trying to make them exhibit signs of surprise. Impassivity is a point of honour with many uncivilised races, and we cannot infer that a savage has no curiosity because he does not excite himself over a mirror, or when his European visitors try to swagger with their mechanical appliances. Mr. Herbert Spencer founds, on the statements of Mr. Bates already quoted, a notion that "the savage, lacking ability to think and the accompanying desire to know, is without tendency ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... shake of the hand and a fashionable greeting from stout, dandified Captain Cluffe, who was by no means so young as he would be supposed, and made up industriously and braced what he called his waist, with great fortitude, and indeed sometimes looked half-stifled, in spite of his smile and his swagger. Sturk, leaning at the window with his shoulders to the wall, beckoned Puddock gruffly, and cross-examined him in an undertone as to the issue of O'Flaherty's case. Of course he knew all about the duel, but the corps also knew that Sturk would not attend on the ground in any affair where the Royal ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and which conferred no great honour, though some profit, and a little snatching up of a few loose trifles such as the Society Islands, which we had, according to our custom, carelessly or benevolently left to gleaners), French arms, despite a great deal of brag and swagger, obtained little glory, while French diplomacy let itself wallow in one of the foulest sloughs in history, the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... sergeant—was one of those men who love a drop of the native, and whose heart besides it expands into a sort of surly kindness that has something comical and not disagreeable in it. In addition to this, he never felt a confidence in his own authority with half the swagger which he did when three quarters gone. Steen and he were never friends, nor indeed was Steen ever a popular man among his acquaintances. In matters of trade and business he was notoriously dishonest, and in the moral and social relations ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... my men on to make further investigations, and the Haslemere police told them that it is believed that the car was the property of a gentleman who lived in a lockup cottage some distance from Haslemere—evidently rather a swagger affair, because its owner had an electric cable and telephone wires laid in, and the cottage was altered and renovated twelve months ago at a very considerable cost. I shall be able to tell you more ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... Castagno, who succeeds well enough in one or two such single figures as his Cumaean Sibyl or his Farinata degli Uberti, which have great, if not the greatest, power, dignity, and even beauty, elsewhere condescends to mere swagger,—as in his Pipo Spano or Niccolo di Tolentino—or to mere strength, as in his "Last Supper," or, worse still, to actual brutality, as in his Santa Maria Nuova "Crucifixion." Nevertheless, his few remaining works lead us to suspect in him the greatest artist, and the most influential personality ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... steed, To accomplish a deed, Such as never before had been done by him; And the battery called Sherman's Was wheeled into line, While the beer-drinking Germans, From Neckar and Rhine, With minie and yager, Came on with a swagger, Full of fury and lager, (The day and the pageant were equally fine.) Oh! the fields were so green and the sky was so blue, Indeed 'twas a spectacle pleasant to view, As the column pushed ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... saved a small sum out of the wreck of his fortune, and with his family removed to the West, where they were obliged to adopt a very different style of living. Randolph is now an office boy at a salary of four dollars a week, and is no longer able to swagger and boast as he has done hitherto. Mr. Tomkins, Linton's father, was elected president of the Groveton Bank in place of Mr. Duncan, much ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... decrees there should be inscribed such a statement respecting a man that is a Caesarian." It was not the only instance of such an attitude, but he also refused to allow all the other imperial freedmen either to be insolent or to swagger; for this he was commended. The senate once, while chanting his praises, uttered without reserve no less a sentiment than this: "All do all things well since you ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... with a distinct swagger. He was plainly conscious of the cadet corporal's chevrons on his sleeve, and plainly regarded himself as a superior type of cadet. He was sworn and questioned about ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... of his fascinating ways and pretty broken English), had just facetiously chucked two of the women dressers under the chin; and these damsels were simpering at this mark of condescension, and evidently much impressed by the swagger and braggadocio of the miniature warrior. However, Mlle. Girond (the boy-officer in question) no sooner caught sight of the new-comer than she instantly and demurely altered her demeanor; and as she passed ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... he of sword or dagger, Cockt hat or ringlets of Geramb; Tho' Peers may laugh and Papists swagger, He doesn't care one ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... men had indulged in too many tests of Oak Creek whiskey, called "Pizen" by the natives. The cow-boys were picturesque enough. in their wide sombreros, woolly chaps, gay shirts, and a swagger that matched their trick of shooting. The miners were swarthy, bearded foreigners, who wore long boots, loose shirts, and belts from which ugly-looking ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... a Knight came in, Who look'd as he would swagger; And after follow'd him A merry needy ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... across Hyde Park, where a big company of girl guides was drilling, watched by a crowd of curious on-lookers. Across a belt of grass some boy scouts were performing similar evolutions, marching with all the extra polish and swagger they could command, just to show the guides that girls were all very well in their way, but that no one with skirts could really hope to do credit to a uniform. Cecilia paused to ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... not masquerade as Bayard, but "he excited no little attention. He wore the uniform of the 11th Dragoons at Culloden; and, with the costume, which became him extremely, he contrived to assume the portentous bearing, and the true jack-boot stride and swagger." ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... and has enjoyed, a reputation as a 'bad man,' a desperate and brutal ruffian. Free him to-day, and you set a premium on such reputations; acquit him of this crime, and you encourage others to like evil. Let him go, and he will walk the streets with a swagger, and boast that you were afraid to touch him—afraid, gentlemen—and children and women will point after him as the man who has sent nine others into eternity, and who yet walks the streets a free man. And he will become, in the eyes of the young ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... to meet him one day at Kolatschek's lodgings. The vicissitudes which had brought him to Zurich came to my knowledge afterwards in a somewhat offensive and aggressive manner. For the present, Herwegh put on an aristocratic swagger and gave himself the airs of a delicately nurtured and luxurious son of his times, to which a fairly liberal interpolation of French expletives at least added a certain distinction. Nevertheless, there was something about his person, with his quick, flashing eye and ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Bacon might swagger at the Council Board; but in his heart he was becoming exceedingly uneasy. We saw, at the end of the last chapter, that he had received a very sharp letter from the King; and now the royal favourite himself also wrote ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... we must not forget the French Zouave regiment—fine-looking men, with their elaborately frogged jackets, and trousers like big red bags, large enough to make balloons if filled with gas, and the whole topped off with a scarlet, "swagger" fez with a tassel hanging ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... as the appeal of Desire Edwards to Perez for protection. It was immensely flattering to the vanity of the mob, as typifying the state of terror to which the aristocrats had been reduced, and all the louts in town felt an inch the taller, by reason of it, and walked with an additional swagger. The demand for the details of the scene between Perez and Desire was insatiable and Obadiah was called on twenty times a day to relate to gaping, grinning audiences just how she looked, what she did, and said, and what Perez said. The fact that Obadiah's ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... perjury, or that a littery man has committed perjury and murder, or that a Duke has stabbed his wife in fifty places, or some story equally horrible; yet for all that it's admiral to see how the French gents will swagger—how they will be the scenters of civilization—how they will be the Igsamples of Europ, and nothink shall prevent 'em—knowing they will have it, I say I listen, smokin my pip in silence. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could not move. The red-nosed man heard all the questions and the landlord's answers, and could not even pretend that he did not hear them. "I am my cousin's clerk," said he, putting on his hat, and coming up to Mr Toogood with a swagger. "My name is Dan Stringer, and I'm Mr John Stringer's cousin. I've lived with Mr John Stringer for twelve year and more, and I'm a'most as well known in Barchester as himself. Have you anything to say to ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... manner, he was weak enough to imagine that he had provided a support against an evil day. He had the best among all false appearances of courage, which was a most unlimited assurance, whereby he would swagger the boldest men into a dread of his power, but had not the smallest portion of magnanimity, growing jealous, and disgracing every man, who was known to bear the least civility to those he disliked. He had some small smattering in books, but no manner of politeness; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... that frank and abundant gaiete de coeur, which powerfully attracts the less exuberant Englishman. For his part CASANUOVA (that was his name) bore all his successes with good-nature and without swagger. Of course there were whispers about him. Where so many women worshipped, it was certain that two or three would lose their heads. Amongst this limited number was little Mrs. MILLETT, one of Lady CALLENDER's most intimate friends. She made no secret of her grande passion. She ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... iron gates are thrown open to receive him, looks neither like a king or a gentleman. A thin, worn face, in which weakness and passion are at once pictured; a form buttoned and padded up to the chin; high Hessian boots without a wrinkle; a sword and a swagger, no more constituting him the military character than the 'your majesty' from every lip can make a poor thing of clay a king. Such was George II.: brutal, even to his submissive wife. Stunted by nature, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... with so much pleasure from the last immemorable Cohan Revue. I wait for her. I consider myself fortunate to be let in on James Watts. We thought our Eddy Foy a comic one. He was, for I remember the Gibson girl with the black velvet gown and the red flannel undershirt. I swing my swagger stick in the presence of Mr. Watts by way of applause. His art is very delicately understood and brought out. It has a fine quality of broad caricature with a real knowledge of economy such as Grock is master of. The three episodes are certainly funny enough. ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... and his colleague; but I apprehend that the General-in-Chief, Sang-ko- lin-sin, thought that they had compromised his military position by allowing our army to establish itself so near his lines at Chang-kia- wan. He sought to counteract the evil effect of this by making a great swagger of parade and preparation to resist when the Allied armies approached the camping-ground allotted to them. Several of our people, Colonel Walker, with his escort, my private Secretary, Mr. Loch, Baron Gros' Secretary of Embassy, Comte de Bastard, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... lift of the latch, and turned with a smile. But the smile faded almost at once as she recognised her visitor. It was Tom Trevarthen, and he entered with a grin and a defiant, jaunty swagger which did not at ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... can scrutinize their proportions. Being little or no fancy among it, the fast young gentlemen of the town, finding nothing worthy their attention and taste, make a few cursory observations, and slowly swagger out of the ring. The children are wonderfully attractive and promising; they are generally admired by the customers, who view them with suspicious glances. Annette's clean white skin and fine features are remarkably ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... can hang two handsome tools at his side, Go in disguis'd attire, wear iron enough, Is held a tall man and a soldier. He that with greatest grace can swear Gog's-zounds, Or in a tavern make a drunken fray, Can cheat at dice, swagger in bawdy-houses, Wear velvet on his face, and with a grace Can face it out with,—As I am a soldier! He that can clap his sword upon the board, He's a brave man—and such a ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... see him swagger along the sand and step out around the fallen logs. The nearer he came the bigger his horns looked; each palm was like an enormous silver fish-fork with twenty prongs. Then he went out of my sight for a minute as he passed around a little ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... clear congruity established between your versifying and your clothes; they will both be in the mode, and the mode the same. One feels about the Cavalier fashion that it was not serious either one way or the other. It had not the Elizabethan swagger; it had not the Restoration cynicism; it had not the Augustan urbanity. Go back now to the Elizabethan, and avoiding Shakespeare as a law unto himself, which is the right of genius—for the sonnets have wit as well as passion (but a mordant wit), everything that real love-poetry ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... hooped gown with her broaches and airs, as if we didn't know her!' If God keeps me in my seven senses, or five, or whatever number I have, I am not going to bring myself to such a pass; go you, brother, and be a government or an island man, and swagger as much as you like; for by the soul of my mother, neither my daughter nor I are going to stir a step from our village; a respectable woman should have a broken leg and keep at home; and to be busy at something is a virtuous damsel's holiday; be off ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a free swagger in time to the haunting waltz-music. Reaching her, he stopped and executed a sweeping bow, ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... his maniacal uncle. But that did not matter; he had achieved smartness; the Figaro had printed his name twice. And with his meager neck sticking up between the turndown points of his collar and his figure squeezed into all too short a coat, he would swagger about, uttering his parrotlike exclamations and affecting a solemn listlessness suggestive of an emotionless marionette. He so annoyed Nana that ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... take Edmund Burgess and one workman for use, and one of the new apprentices for pleasure, letting them change in the middle of the day. The swagger of Giles actually forfeited for him the first turn, which—though he was no favourite with the men—would have been granted to his elder years and his relationship to the master; but on his overbearing demand to enter the boat which was to carry down a little ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... April. Bewsher dropped in upon Morton in his chambers. Very handsome he looked, too, I dare say, in his evening clothes, with an opera-coat thrown back from his shoulders. I remember well myself his grand air, with a touch of cavalry swagger about it. I've no doubt he leaned against the chimney-piece and tapped his leg with his stick. And the upshot of it was that he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to a histrionic, prancing gait and to an elaborate exaggeration of the motions, whether of stealth or of onslaught, involved in their deeds of exploit. Similarly in athletic sports there is almost invariably present a good share of rant and swagger and ostensible mystification—features which mark the histrionic nature of these employments. In all this, of course, the reminder of boyish make-believe is plain enough. The slang of athletics, by the way, is in great part made ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... middle mass of Germany has never been on friendly terms with the Germany of the court and the landowner. It has inherited a burgerlich tradition and resented even while it tolerated the swagger of the aristocratic officer. It tolerated it because that sort of thing was supposed to be necessary to the national success. But Munich, the comic papers, Herr Harden, Vorwaerts, speak, I think, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... the idea implanted in your bosom that you are going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu to the boys on shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus all rolled into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn't come. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a little ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
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