"Gossip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... daily to encounter a sort of opposition particularly trying to young and ardent spirits. It is related, that one day, when they had gently but steadily refused to pay some visits which, far from being absolute duties, were only pretexts for gossip and the most frivolous conversations, Francesca and Vannozza had retired into the garden oratory; and after spending some time in prayer, began conversing together on the life which the early Fathers were wont to lead ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... Maggie had seen their father considerably agitated by an item of gossip, casually received, to which it seemed to them he attached an excessive importance. Namely, that old Shushions, having been found straying and destitute by the authorities appointed to deal with such matters, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... The buzz of gossip once more filled the air of Glendow. This last affray between Parson John and Farrington and the part Nellie had taken gave greater scope to the numerous busy tongues. Up and down the shore road and throughout the back settlements the news travelled. It was discussed at the store, ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... care mightily, and to get that money he labored with a zeal which was not of this world alone. At the table of his hotel, and in the barroom of the same institution, and in the lobbies of the legislative hall, and in editorial sanctums and barbers' shops, and all other nooks of gossip, he trumpeted the claims of Fastburg as if that little city were the New Jerusalem and deserved to be the metropolis of the sidereal universe. All sorts of trickeries, too; he sent spurious telegrams and got fictitious items into the newspapers; he lied through every medium known to the ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... conversation amongst the country people. Dull country people who never go anywhere or see anything beyond their stupid selves, and who are therefore driven to do something or other to avoid suicide or the murdering of each other; gossip unlimited is their ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... sewing or our attention. At the end they played the "Star Spangled Banner," and we all stood up, the soldiers at attention, hat on breast. One of the passengers refused to take off his hat, so that we had something to gossip about ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... mean; for the older folk in the village, who reverenced Lady Louisa and loved him, respected her wishes too much to chatter. Which is saying a good deal, isn't it? For it takes a good bit to stay a gossip's tongue. But her will was law in the place, and I never heard of any one attempting to dispute it. I know she suffered agonies of mind, but I never knew her break down until just at the last, when she was dying. ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... gulf that separated me from my husband became still greater. If I could have entertained him with any kind of gossip we might have got on better. But I had no conversation that interested him, and he had little or none that I could pretend to understand. He loved the town; I loved the country; he loved the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... nothing, and had no more to say. She met the men returning from the stables; admired Jones and smiled at him, upon which he murmured "Oh fie!" as he passed her. The troop broke ranks and dispersed, to lounge and gossip until mess-call. Cumnor and Jones were putting a little snow down each other's necks with friendly profanity, when Jones saw the peddler standing close and watching them. A high collar of some ragged fur was ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... dignity or any indecision. That is too odious. And I must really think just a little of Mr. Barking and myself in the matter. It has all gone on in our house, you see. One must consider appearances, and with all the recent gossip about Shotover, we do not want another esclandre—the servants knowing all about it too. And then, with all your partiality for Constance, you cannot suppose she will have many opportunities of marrying men with forty or ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... gazed at her in silence. Was it possible that she had not heard the gossip about Benham and Mrs. Rokeby? Was she trying to mislead him by an appearance of flippancy? Or was there some deeper purpose, some serious attempt to learn the truth beneath her ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... part, to induce her to accept presents." Tallemant, indeed, says that she sometimes took money from her lovers, but this statement probably involves nothing beyond what is contained in Voltaire's remark, and, in any case, Tallemant's gossip, though usually well-informed, was not always reliable. All are agreed as to her ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... rattled on in a free, wild, racy talk, with an edge of satire for whoever came near, a fantastic excess in its drollery, and just a touch of native melancholy tingeing it. The last queer guest, some neighborhood gossip, some youthful folly or pretentiousness of Kitty's, some trait of their own, some absurdity of the boys if they happened to be at home, and came lounging in, were the themes out of which they contrived ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... novels proper almost anywhere and discover it in full operation. Like most great processes of art, this is an adoption and perfecting of habits usual with the most inartistic people—a turning to good account of the interminably circumstantial superfluities of the common gossip and newsmonger. Very often Defoe actually does not go beyond this—just as in The Shortest Way with the Dissenters he had simply reproduced the actual thoughts and wishes of those who disliked dissent. But sometimes he got the better of this also, as in the elaborate building ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... remember that it is the woman who suffers from the breath of slander or the pettiness of gossip. Such {37} things affect him but little, if at all. Suppose that two young people belong to a public tennis or dramatic club. The man singles out one particular girl by his attentions, makes a point of ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... good night, Prudence murmured hopefully, "I am sorry it happened, but it will be a good lesson for the twins. I am sure that after this, they will be less ready to listen to gossip, and more ready to give one the benefit of a doubt. It's a great responsibility, this raising a ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... nine o'clock, I to mine. After my ten-o'clock class, and on the way to my eleven-o'clock lecture, I always ran in to his office a second, to gossip over what mail he had got that morning and how things were going generally. Then, at twelve, in his office again. "Look at this telegram that just came in." "How shall I answer Mr. ——'s about that job?" And then home together; not once a ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... the last hurdle which often floors the rider, and Thomas too was doomed to find the final ordeal an insurmountable one. As he crossed the room some evil chance made him think of the gossip outside and of his allusion to the abstruse substance known as cacodyl. Once let a candidate's mind hit upon such an idea as this, and nothing will ever get it out of his thoughts. Tom felt his head buzz round, and he passed ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... what he'll do?" persisted Magdalen. "He'll romp with the miller's children, and gossip with the mother, and hob-and-nob with the father. At the last moment when he has got five minutes left to catch the train, he'll say: 'Let's go into the counting-house and look at the books.' He'll find the books dreadfully complicated; he'll suggest sending for an accountant; ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... she had reached the street that, with a shock, she remembered Beale's words and she stood stock-still, pinching her lip thoughtfully. Had he known? Why had he come that morning, hours before he was ordinarily visible—if the common gossip of Krooman Mansions be worthy of credence?—and then as though to cap the amazing events of the morning she saw him. He was standing on the corner of the street, leaning on his cane, smoking a long cigarette through a much longer holder, and he seemed wholly absorbed in watching a linesman, ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... proved that he had threatened to kill his master. His sullen and moody demeanor at the marriage of his mother told terribly against him, and the rumors of the previous quarrel when Ned had assaulted his stepfather, and which, related with many exaggerations, had at the time furnished a subject of gossip in the town, also told heavily to ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... to Hekekian Bey, he is absolutely the Good Samaritan, and these Orientals do their kindnesses with such an air of enjoyment to themselves that it seems quite a favour to let them wait upon one. Hekekian comes in every day with his handsome old face and a budget of news, all the gossip of the Sultan and his doings. I shall always fancy the Good Samaritan in a tarboosh with a white beard and very long eyes. I am out of bed to-day for the second time, and waiting for a warm day to go out. Sally saw the illuminations last night; the ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... he lived within twenty or thirty miles of those who did know something of the concerns of the house in question, and was in the way of catching scraps of the gossip that fell from disappointed creditors. How much of this is there in this good country of ours! Men who live just near enough to one another to feel the influence of all that rivalry, envy, personal strifes and personal malignancies, can generate, fancy they are acquainted, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... bear it better, but that it was known," she murmured. "All West Lynne had coupled us together in their prying gossip, and they have only pity to cast on me now. I would far rather you have killed ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in her mind; a newspaper paragraph made known, as if with authority, the great and noble work Mrs. Baske was about to undertake. For a day or two Miriam enjoyed the excitement this produced—the inquiries, the felicitations, the reports of gossip. She held her head more firmly than ever; she seemed of a sudden to ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... that's a little TOO strict?" asked Cecily anxiously. "Of course, it's not right to talk MEAN gossip, but the harmless kind doesn't hurt. If I say to you that Emmy MacPhail is going to get a new fur collar this winter, THAT is harmless gossip, but if I say I don't see how Emmy MacPhail can afford a new fur collar when her father can't pay my father ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... aristocratic people, of taking her place at last in society, the place that belonged to her as Edmund's wife, in spite of his queer miserly ways, ran again lightly through a mind that often harboured such dreams before—in vain. Her brow cleared. She made Thyrza leave the curtains, and sit down to gossip with her. And Thyrza, though perfectly conscious, as the daughter of a hard-working race, that to sit gossiping at midday was a sinful thing, was none the less willing to sin; and she chattered on in a Westmoreland dialect ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... limits of formality—my hostess had attended quite thoroughly to my being entertained. And at this point the other, the more severe and elderly lady, made her contribution to my entertainment. She had kept silence, I now felt sure, because gossip was neither her habit nor to her liking. Possibly she may have also felt that her displeasure had been too manifest; at any rate, she spoke out of her silence in ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... Sitting in the room where I had often been his companion, I turned page after page, and at moments it was as though my friend's voice sounded to me once more. I saw his worn visage, grave or smiling; recalled his familiar pose or gesture. But in this written gossip he revealed himself more intimately than in our conversation of the days gone by. Ryecroft had never erred by lack of reticence; as was natural in a sensitive man who had suffered much, he inclined to gentle acquiescence, shrank from argument, from self-assertion. Here he spoke to me without restraint, ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... the rain, or cowering in a smoky, ragged tent and sitting on the ground, but she had food, fire, and fun, with warm clothes, and believed herself happy. Truly, she had better reason to think so than any old maid with a heart run to waste on church gossip, or the latest engagements and marriages; for it is better to be a street-boy in a corner with a crust than one who, without it, discusses, in starvation, with his friend the sausages and turtle-soup in a cook-shop window, between which and themselves there is a great ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... the most abject poverty," replied Lucien, the tears rising to his eyes. "That is not calumny, but it is most ill-natured gossip. My sister now is a more than millionaire, and my mother has been dead two years.—This information has been kept in stock to use just when I should be on the verge ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... break out into downright foulness of speech, their comparatively silent enjoyment of detestable stories is a thing to make one shiver. Here again good-fellowship is absent. Comfortable tradesmen, prosperous dealers, sharp men who hold good commercial situations, meet to gossip and exchange dubious stories. They laugh a good deal in a restrained way, and they are apparently genial; but the hard selfishness of all is plain to a cool observer. The habit of self-indigence ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... slight or chimerical, may proceed to a very dangerous degree of the hysterical affection, unless it be nipt in the bud by some very effectual remedy. Then she recounts a surprising cure performed by a certain apothecary, and appeals to the testimony of the waiting-woman, who being the gossip of his wife, confirms the evidence, and corroborates the proposal. The apothecary being summoned, finds her ladyship in such a delicate situation, that he declines prescribing, and advises her to send for a physician ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... giving the impression of a mourner, to gain access. The murderers had not yet been caught. Because the public knew nothing of "Lefty" Louie, or "Gyp the Blood," or even of the late Lieutenant Becker, it was common gossip that the criminals lurked in the neighborhood, and that, in order to avoid suspicion, they would appear among the chief mourners. Therefore, each eye was turned against its neighbor, and each man, as ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... as utterly gone as those echoes of their deeds which he sang, and which faded with the last sound of his voice and the last tremble of his lyre. History relating outward events alone was an unmeaning gossip, with the world for a village. This life could only become other than phantasmagoric, could only become real, as it stood related to something that was higher and permanent. Hence the idea of Fate, of a higher power unseen—that shadow, as of an eagle circling to ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... supposed, and slept longer than he anticipated. It was eight o'clock before he came downstairs. Before going in to breakfast, he took a turn on the piazzas. Here he fell in with a sociable gentleman, much addicted to gossip. ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... beggars.[46] The legal circle was large, and was deeply engrossed by its own interests and troubles. The world of authorship, though extremely noisy and profoundly important, still made only a small group. One effect of a censorship is to produce much gossip and whispering about suspected productions before they see the light, and these whispers let the police into as many secrets as they ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... brocades are taken out, when curious fashions are displayed, when Honoria and Flavia, Fidelia and Gloriana dress and speak and ogle and flirt just as Addison saw and photographed them. We have their subjects of interest, their forms of gossip, the existing abuses of the day, their taste in letters, their opinions upon the works of literature, in all ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... "to return to our gossip. Here's Rick, a fine young fellow full of promise. What's to be ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... attorney, even Sir Geoffrey Mardykes, did not disdain on this occasion to take chairs and smoke their pipes by the kitchen fire, where they were in the thick of the gossip and discussion excited ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Caesar. It is an edifice of a type familiar in cities of the Roman world. You mount the steps from the Sacred Way and find yourself under an outer two-storied arcade suitable for lounging or promenading while discussing business or gossip with your friends. Passing from this inwards you are in a building which consists of a covered colonnade, or nave, about 270 feet in length, with a row of pillars on either hand. On each side is a gallery, or upper floor, from which spectators may look down ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... to the historian limited to actual experience of regiment, camp gossip about other commands and ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... shouting went up and down their dusty lengths, with a lively accompaniment of curry-combs knocking against back fences and stable walls, for the darkies loved to curry their horses in the alley. Darkies always prefer to gossip in shouts instead of whispers; and they feel that profanity, unless it be vociferous, is almost worthless. Horrible phrases were caught by early rising children and carried to older people for definition, sometimes ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... (which she much preferred) to hear the chronicles of Beechhurst. Miss Buff was the best authority for the village politics that she could have fallen in with. She knew everything that went on in the parish—not quite accurately perhaps, but accurately enough for purposes of popular information and gossip. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... you saunter in the Salle des Ambassadeurs; whole crowds jostling one another there; gossiping together in a diligent, insipid manner;" gossip all reported; snatches of which have acquired a certain flavor by long keeping;—which the reader shall imagine. "Meanwhile you keep your eye on the Grate of the Inner Court, which as yet is only ajar, Majesty inaccessible as yet. Behold, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Wrangerton people would gossip, and I should not like that,' said she; 'only it is very hard to make out for myself, and those things ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he replied, quietly: "you have never seen me in this costume before, and I had my back turned towards you. I saw you coming, though, walking as unsteadily as a duck in a storm. What a time you have been, Miss Mattie! You ladies are so fond of a gossip." ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Rogron started for a little walk. He was quite happy if some shopkeeper standing on the threshold of his door would stop him and say, "Well, pere Rogron, how goes it with you?" Then he would talk, and ask for news, and gather all the gossip of the town. He usually went as far as the Upper town, sometimes to the ravines, according to the weather. Occasionally he would meet old men taking their walks abroad like himself. Such meetings were joyful events to him. There happened ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... confidant and gossip, he knew his next step of promotion would necessarily be to the degree of her lover; and in that belief resolved to play the same game with Mademoiselle Wilhelmina, whose complexion was very much akin to that of her stepmother; indeed they resembled each other ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... their voices. The tones were the tones that come from deep chests, and with a prolonged, sustained capacity for enduring the toil of men. But the high-pitched laughter proved them women, as did their loud and unceasing gossip. The battle of the voices rose above the swash of the waves, above, also, another sound, as incessant as the women's chatter and the swish of the water as it hissed ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... I lay A sum as fair thy news is some dry tale Of courtly gossip, touching me as nigh As the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... the Coliseum with massacres of beasts and of men; in the Circus Maximus with combats of athletes and with chariot races; in the theater of Marcellus with pantomimes, plays, and the pageantry of arms and costume; she provided them with baths, to which they resorted to gossip, to contemplate statues, to listen to declaimers, to keep themselves cool in the heats of summer. All that had been invented of the convenient, agreeable, and beautiful, all that could be collected in the world that was curious and magnificent, was for them; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... the Royal Yacht. His Visit to Ireland. Entry into Dublin. Position of the King's Ministers. George IV. on the Field of Waterloo. The King's visit to his Hanoverian Dominions. Coalitions and Double Negotiation. Political Gossip. A New Club. Dismissal of Sir Robert Wilson from the Army. Public Subscription for ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... pug makes a bad pet; he is useless in the field, is somewhat snappish, has little sagacity, and is very cowardly: but there is an air of bon ton about him which renders him a fashionable appendage to a fine lady."—Parisian Gossip. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... stir the wonder of a lively and motley crowd. Thus the historian imbibed naturally the spirit of the taleteller. And he was driven to embellish his history with the romantic legend—the awful superstition—the gossip anecdote—which yet characterize the stories of the popular and oral fictionist, in the bazars of the Mussulman, or on the seasands of Sicily. Still it has been rightly said that a judicious reader is not easily led astray by Herodotus in important particulars. His ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... body, (except for the toothache,) and a very amusing person to know, with no quarrel against life in general or anybody in particular. Indeed, I find one advantage in the very credulous and inquisitive gossip against which I memorialize; for I think I may expect fact to be believed, when fiction is swallowed whole; and I feel sure of seeing, directly on the publication of this document, a notice in the "Snapdragon," the "Badger," or the "Coon," (whichever paper ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... his travels in Italy and Greece; and in the latter half of his life we follow him to the southern part of England, to Surrey and the Isle of Wight, where we find him in his "careless-ordered garden, close to the edge of a noble down," or "hear the magpie gossip garrulous under a roof of pine." But, to quote the lines that illustrate this autobiographic element in Tennyson's poetry, or that show his happy way of making use of his actual experiences, by which again we ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... only too rare in those days. She was a very well-informed and highly accomplished woman, and had made her daughter the same, keeping her children up in a somewhat exclusive style, away from all gossip or undesirable intimacies, as recommended by Miss Edgeworth and other more religious authorities, and which gave great offence in houses where there were girls of the same age. No one, however, could look at Ellen, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Calvaire, and they were able to disembark (in the language of the country) in safety if not in comfort at the door opened by Mme. Poussette. The parishes being nine miles apart, one entirely French, the other mostly English, not much gossip penetrated, and the Rev. Marcus and his wife were startled to hear that Henry Clairville had left his room, walked all over his house and even reached half-way to the bridge one afternoon. But as they were both cold and fatigued, madame ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... with which Higgins will regard me. He will look upon me as a sort of simpleton to whom the Lord had been unkind by not making England my native land. Now, Higgins must be led to believe that I am in his own class; that is, a servant of yours. Higgins and I will gossip over the fire together, should these spring evenings prove chilly, and before two or three weeks are past I shall have learned a great deal about your uncle that you never dreamed of. Higgins will talk more freely with a fellow-servant ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... counted as weakness. She knew her uncle and aunt would never believe that aught but compulsion had bound her to the rude outlaw, and her habit of submission was so strong that, only when her aunt was actually rising to go and consult her gossip, she ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not confine his more or less caustic commentary to the well-known folk of whom there seemed no dearth; in the ten or twenty minutes that we sat together he further revealed himself as a copious gossip, with a wide net alike for the big fish and for the smallest fry. There was a sheepish gentleman with a twitching face, and a shaven cleric in close attendance; the former a rich brand plucked from burning by the latter, whose temporal reward was the present trip, so Quinby assured me during the ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... found herself so much at home already, that without delay she instituted a preliminary examination of the children all round—which Mr Toodle much admired—and booked their ages, names, and acquirements, on a piece of paper. This ceremony, and a little attendant gossip, prolonged the time until after their usual hour of going to bed, and detained Miss Tox at the Toodle fireside until it was too late for her to walk home alone. The gallant Grinder, however, being still there, politely ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... in the secret laughed; the reference was to another of Pesach's early ideas. Some mischievous gossip had heard him arguing with another Greener outside a stationer's shop blazing with comic valentines. The two foreigners were extremely puzzled to understand what these monstrosities portended; Pesach, however, laid it down that the microcephalous gentlemen with ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... property classes, there were scare-heads about the verdict. It was of prime importance as news. Without removing her hat or coat, Isabelle read it all through,—the judge's charge to the jury, the verdict, the reporters' gossip of the court-room. The language of the judge was trenchant, and though his charge was worded in stiff and solemn form and laden with legal phrases, Isabelle understood it better even than the hot eloquence of ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... other workmen brought their wives and children. Once the boy had sat there himself. It was an orderly crowd that he had seen—children tumbling over each other on the grass; women seated on the benches and exchanging a bit of gossip; tired men stretched full-length on the turf resting in the ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... custom of setting two chairs at the table to which they may return at any minute? Miss Hunter, what I do in the loneliness of that great house is not worth the gossip of those ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... was by his manner of speaking to insinuate that he knew certain noble persons whom, as a matter of fact, he had never set eyes on; he would not have told a direct lie on the subject, but his conscience permitted him a slight equivocation. Major Forsyth was well up in all the gossip of the clubs, and if he could not call himself a man of the world, he had not the least notion who could. But for all that, he had the strictest principles; he was true brother to Mrs. Parsons, and though he concealed the fact like something disreputable, ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... I hope Trebell will believe I have no personal feelings in this matter, but we may as well face the fact even now that O'Connell holding his tongue to-morrow won't stop gossip in the House, club gossip, gossip in drawing rooms. What do the Radicals really care so long as a scandal doesn't get into the papers! There's an inner circle with its ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... matters over. He only came to see Yourii because, at home, by himself, he was sad and worried. Lida's refusal still distressed him, and he could not be sure if he felt grieved or humiliated. As a straightforward, indolent fellow, he had so far heard nothing of the local gossip concerning Lida and Sarudine. He was not jealous, but only sorrowful that the dream which brought happiness so ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... so apparent in his social intercourse; and before he has been three months in Ashfield, he has given tongue to gossip, and all the old ladies comment upon his enslavement to the pretty Rose Elderkin. And they talk by the book; he is desperately enamored. Young clergymen have this way of falling, at sight, into the toils, which is vastly refreshing to middle-aged observers. But we have no occasion to detail his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... not carry on the government themselves, they tried to make it impossible for any other party to do so. Nor was he less severe, on another occasion, in his reprehension of 'a certain high Tory clique who are always cavilling at royalty when it is constitutional; circulating the most miserable gossip about royal persons and royal entertainments,' &c.; busily 'engaged in undermining the foundations on which respect for human institutions rests.' Writing, in May 1850, to Mr. Gumming Bruce, a Tory and ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... an extraordinary situation," so ran his thought, while aloud he was talking Central Asian politics and the latest Simla gossip to his two companions. ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... escape notice, though she affected a continuance of the bright mood. Mr. Athel and his sister both observed her real preoccupation, as if of trouble, and mentally attributed it to something that had passed during the afternoon's ride. Mrs. Rossall did not look for confidences. Beatrice would gossip freely enough of trivial experiences, or of the details of faith and ritual, but the innermost veil of her heart was never raised; all her friends felt that, though they could not easily have explained in what way they became conscious ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... sake!" cried Isel. "She's a tongue as long as a yard measure, and there isn't a scrap of gossip for ten miles on every side of her that she doesn't hand on to the first comer. She'd know all I had on afore I'd been there one Paternoster, and every body else 'd know it too, afore ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... 'old maids,' and some wag having one day obliterated the 'h' in Chatts Chase, the house was now familiarly called 'Pussy's Chase.' This did not disturb the good ladies when it came to their ears, for they had large souls, a keen sense of humour, and too much interest in life to be fretted by village gossip. ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre
... the rank and file to do or talk about at the present moment, there is endless gossip and scandal going on. The subject of eggs is one of the most burning ones! Great numbers of eggs are being obtained by the payment of heavy sums to some of the more friendly soldiery around us, who steal in with baskets and sacks, and receive ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... that the left one was swollen and discolored and fearfully painful. He noted it with impersonal interest, realizing its need of medical attention—so left the cabin and walked down into the city. He encountered Dextry and Simms on the way, and they went with him, both flowing with the gossip ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... of it—the burning, unspeakable horror! In his ears there seemed to come ringing from the world without the great hum of gossip and lies which were dragging his name down into hell. A murderer! The time might come when she too would think thus of him, when the tragedy of her first love might fade away, and the lovelight might flash again in her eyes, ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of his information. In compiling from the first of these sources, he is very liable to mis-statement, by investing everything in a new dress to conceal his piracies; and the latter source leaves him open to imposition—for much of his matter will be sheer gossip, partial statements, or unfounded tradition, which a long experience only could detect, and place in a ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... Law will not even allow a man outside to walk up and down in the gray mist enjoying his own dreams without looking upon him with suspicion. The Law is a shatterer of dreams. The Law is as eager as a gossip to misinterpret; and this puts one, however ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Forever open; through which, on his back The prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack. And while the miller measures out his toll, Again I hear, above the cogs' loud roll,— That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,— The harmless gossip of the passing day: Good country talk, that tells how so-and-so Has died or married; how curculio And codling-moth have ruined half the fruit, And blight plays mischief with the grapes to boot; Or what the news from ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... occupation, he did some proof-reading for Messrs. Constable. Among other things he 'read' the journal of Lady Mary Coke, privately printed for Lord Home. Lady Mary, who appears as a lively child in The Heart of Midlothian, 'had a taste for loo, gossip, and gardening, but the greatest of these is gossip.' The best part of the book is Lady Louisa Stuart's inimitable introduction. Early in October he decided to give up proof-reading: the confinement had already told on his health. In the letter which announces this determination ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... to say the least. The Queen must say that there never was even the shadow of a doubt on Prince Frederick William's part as to where the marriage should take place, and she suspects this to be the mere gossip of the Berliners. Whatever may be the usual practice of Prussian Princes, it is not every day that one marries the eldest daughter of the Queen of England. The question therefore must be considered as settled ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... your gates, and call upon your name. I would write complaining sonnets on Olivia, and sing them in the dead of the night; your name should sound among the hills, and I would make Echo, the babbling gossip of the air, cry out Olivia. O you should not rest between the elements of earth and air, but you should pity me." "You might do much," said Olivia: "what is your parentage?" Viola replied, "Above my fortunes, yet my state is well. I am a gentleman." Olivia now reluctantly dismissed Viola, saying, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... could do, to all the disease herding animals together could create, and to all the starvation and cruelty an incompetent and intense caitiff government could accomplish. From the conversation and almost from the recollection of the northern people this place has dropp' d, but not so in the gossip of the Salisbury people, nearly all of whom say that the half was never told; that such was the nature of habitual outrage here that when Federal prisoners escaped the townspeople harbor'd them in their barns, afraid the vengeance of God would fall on them, to deliver even their ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and features, which might be those of a dying man, and to hear such utterances as his—now the strangest comments and insignificant incidents; now pregnant remarks on great subjects, and then malignant gossip, virulent and base, but delivered with an air and a voice of philosophical calmness and intellectual commentary such as caused the disgust of the listener to be largely qualified with amusement and surprise. One good ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... clergy will almost invariably be an antiquary of real merit. The mayor and corporation belong, as a rule, to the larger set, but the lawyers and doctors hold a neutral position and are welcomed everywhere, partly for the sake of gossip, partly for their own individual merits. Warwick has the additional advantage over many kindred places of the near neighborhood of Leamington, a fashionable watering-place two miles and a half distant, one of the mushrooms of this century, but in a practical point ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... proved to be correct, there being two, the last of which occurred late enough in the evening to necessitate the lighting of the lamps in the building. And it was while the lamps were being lighted that the two Englishmen learned, from the gossip of those engaged in illuminating the grand altar, that much perplexity and uneasiness had resulted from the fact that, despite the most rigorous search of the entire city, no trace of the missing prisoners had thus far been ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... which you must understand," I cried. "The hardest task that ever I had was to go to your uncle as I did, like a bearer of idle gossip. It would have been easier to let you go on as you were going, ignorant and blind. I knew that it meant an end of our friendship. That day when I spoke I believed that I was going out of your life forever. I was not surprised when, on the Avenue, ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... commonly called a falcon, signifies those whose "feet are swift to shed blood" (Ps. 13:3). The plover [*Here, again, the Douay translators transcribed from the Vulgate: charadrion; charadrius is the generic name for all plovers.], which is a garrulous bird, signifies the gossip. The hoopoe, which builds its nest on dung, feeds on foetid ordure, and whose song is like a groan, denotes worldly grief which works death in those who are unclean. The bat, which flies near the ground, signifies those who being gifted with worldly knowledge, seek none but earthly things. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... with their French governess, was on her way home. People were in the habit of dropping in between four and six, and of late she had become somewhat dependent on their company. They kept her from thinking. Their scraps of gossip provided her, when she talked to her husband, with topics that steered her away from dangerous ground. He himself had given her a hint that a certain ground was dangerous; and, though he had done it laughingly, she had grown so sensitive ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... a time when a man in search of the pleasures of gossip sought the society of ladies. The man knows better now. He goes to the ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... gambling-room were, for the most part, house employees who were waiting for business to begin. The majority of these employees were gathered about the faro layout, where the cards were being run in a perfunctory manner to an accompaniment of gossip and reminiscence. The sight of Ben Miller in company with a girl evoked some wonder. This wonder increased to amazement when Miller ordered the dealer out of his seat; it became open-mouthed when the girl took his place, then broke a new deck of cards, deftly shuffled them, and slipped ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... not think that teachers realise the harm and the suffering caused by gossip, which the Master calls a sin against love. Teachers should be very careful not to make difficulties for their boys by gossiping about them. No boy should ever be allowed to have a bad name in the school, and it should be the rule ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti
... this day I remember, with a tenderness which attaches to no other memories of mine, the books that I read to her, the sunny corner on the seashore where I sat with her, the games of cards that we played together, the little trivial gossip that amused her when she was strong enough for nothing else. These are my imperishable relics; these are the deeds of my life that I shall love best to look back on, when the all-infolding shadows of death ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... gave little heed to the gossip of the old man-servant, but a small incident occurred a few days later which left an unpleasant effect upon his mind, and brought the words of Styles forcibly to ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was but the gossip of savages that Dutremble communicated; still the purport was startling in the extreme. Governor Hamilton, so the story ran, had been organizing a large force; he was probably now on his way to the portage ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... a cozy little gardener's cottage, or lodge. Marsh was well pleased at this discovery, for he had hoped to locate something of the kind. Servants are more easily, questioned, more talkative, and usually in the possession of a larger amount of neighborhood gossip, than their employers. He approached the door ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... himself. Well embellished gossip, he had found, was a popular form of entertainment in camp and court alike, and his store of gossip was large and carefully gathered. Here at Dweros, far from the center of the kingdom, his store of tales would last for a long time—probably as ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... a general simmering down of coastwise gossip in the static-room when the frosted glass door of the Chief's office closed behind him. Voices trailed off ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... with the grasping Jewess; and, above all, she hoped that no one in the world knew anything of her troubles. Now, if Crevel went about so ready to talk of the Baron's excesses, Hector's reputation would suffer. She could see, under the angry ex-perfumer's coarse harangue, the odious gossip behind the scenes which led to her son's marriage. Two reprobate hussies had been the priestesses of this union planned at some orgy amid the degrading familiarities of two tipsy ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... all the families, high and low, at her finger-ends. New-comers she could only tolerate until they had lived respectably and paid their debts punctually for a good number of years. She had a kindly love of gossip, a simple real interest in the fortunes of all about her. There was little else for her to think of, for books and newspapers came seldom in her way, and were often far above her comprehension when ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... of Miss Flaven's marriage to my uncle 'twas a piece of gossip in every month that he had taken her for her dower, which was not inconsiderable; though to hear Mr. and Mrs. Grafton talk they knew not whence the next month's provender was to come. They went to live in Kent County, as I have said, spending some winters ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... with his smooth-shaven, sleek, demure countenance and moderately rotund belly, leaning on the half-door of his Almacen de Panos, and witnessed his bland smile as he stepped aside to give admission to a customer or gossip, would have deemed the utmost extent of his plottings to be, how he should get his cloths a real cheaper or sell them at a real more than their market value. There was no speculation, it seemed, in that dull placid countenance, save what related to ells of cloth and steady money-getting. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... is the growing passion for publicity. Plenty of ambitious people "make their beds in the face of the sun." Many things are now chronicled in the press that were formerly kept behind the closed doors of the home. The details of a dinner or a social company at the fireside become the topics for the gossip of strangers. I sometimes think that the young people of the present day lose much of the romance that used to belong to the halcyon period of courtship. In the somewhat primitive days of my youth, young lovers kept their own secrets, and were startled if their heart affairs were on other people's ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... chatter and movement. But Lily found herself with little to say. Her year away had separated her from the small community of interest that bound the others together, and she wondered, listening to them in her sitting room later, what they would all talk about when they had exchanged their bits of gossip, their news of this man and that. It would all be said ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and magnificent in guilt, Splendid in scorn, rapt in a cloudy dream, He paused at last upon the Stygian silt, And raised calm eyes above the angry stream.... Hand in his breast, he stood till Charon came, While Hades hummed with gossip of ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... Ministers appear to be going on. I always much enjoy political gossip and what you at home think will, etc., etc., take place. I steadily read up the weekly paper, but it is not sufficient to guide one's opinion; and I find it a very painful state not to be as obstinate as a pig in politics. I have watched how steadily ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... he averred, was the gossip of the village that the pig was dead, and that somebody would have to die for it. It was all right, he said, in reply to a query from the steward. It was the custom. Whenever a loved pig died its owners were in custom bound to go out and kill somebody, anybody. Of course, it ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... can be no more terrible than the one which confronted Israel. Duty lies on the other side, and I am going over! 'Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward.' The crimson waves of scandal, the white foam of gossip, shall part before me and heap themselves up as walls ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... says, "to loiter in the baths of Agrippa and to hear from the idlers there the gossip of the hour. The gladiatorial struggles in the Circus Maximus and the comedies in the theaters have lost for me their relish. For the civic rewards which Tiberius gives his favored ones I have no wish. Senatorships and proconsulships are like ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... very fact of living in isolated little communities of their own, are somewhat prone to gossip over purely garrison and regimental affairs. So some of the story would always have clung about Sergeant Overton's reputation among his ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... eyes, her small breast heaving with the intensity of her resentment. Without being in any way able to define her emotions, she felt that there was something horrible in their frank enjoyment of the steaming liquid, gulped down to the cheerful accompaniment of a running stream of intimate gossip, while all the time that quiet figure lay on the narrow bed—motionless, silent, wrapped in the strange and ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... was pleasant, very pleasant. She looked so beautiful, she smiled so kindly, always with her eyes, sometimes with the perfect, high-bred mouth; she entered so gaily into his gossip, his fancies, his jokes, allowing him to hold her parasol and arrange her shawls with such sweetness and good-humour, that Dick felt quite sorry to reach the Portugal laurels and trim lawns of their destination, when the drive was over from which he had derived this new and unforeseen ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Billy, and it would save burning the wood another day for the express purpose of cooking operations. So it appeared dame Peggy, with all her tempers, had one good point at least, and one but seldom found in servants,—a lookout for her employer's interests. The bluffy housekeeper was given to gossip, too, as all of her class are; and who could give her a better synopsis of the private affairs of half the families in Wimbledon, than Dilly Danforth, the washerwoman, who performed the drudgery and slop-work in many of the fine homes of ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... rode side by side on horseback, accompanied by only a few body servants. The governor, familiar with the clubs and the wits of England, entertained Franklin, in the highest degree, with the literary gossip of London, and probably excited in his mind an intense desire to visit those scenes, which he himself was so calculated to enjoy and to embellish. On the journey he wrote the following comic letter to his wife. He had been disappointed in not receiving ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Republican, whether, in their best judgment, it is better to be honest or dishonest, clean or dirty, false or true, intelligent or ignorant, an idler or a worker; whether it is better to be gentle and kind or brutal and cruel, a gossip and scandal monger or to mind our own business and to speak kindly of our fellow-man, whether, in short, it is better to be good or bad? And yet these are the real, the fundamental qualities that brand a man, or a woman, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... suspicions attaching to his former opinions lessened, and the community of Arcis gave him credit for intending to recover himself in public estimation. Unfortunately, at the very moment when public opinion was condoning his past a foolish affair, envenomed by the gossip of the country-side, revived the latent and very general belief in the ferocity of ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... occasionally, if a coat be required, a man is able to write. But what has a man to say to his friend,—or, for that matter, what has a woman? A Horace Walpole may write to a Mr. Mann about all things under the sun, London gossip or transcendental philosophy, and if the Horace Walpole of the occasion can write well and will labour diligently at that vocation, his letters may be worth reading by his Mr. Mann, and by others; ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... reaching the town she wisely covered the cup with snow, that no gossiping neighbor might catch sight of it; for she well knew that gossip was like the snow-ball that the little boys start rolling from the top of a hill—small in the commencement, but sure to grow before ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Flexen in a vexed tone. "But still, I should have thought you'd have heard something from some one, even if the matter had not come under your own eyes. Gossip moves pretty widely ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... impersonal in its absolute beauty) was Odette—Odette in her activities, her environment, her projects, and her past. At every other period in his life, the little everyday words and actions of another person had always seemed wholly valueless to Swann; if gossip about such things were repeated to him, he would dismiss it as insignificant, and while he listened it was only the lowest, the most commonplace part of his mind that was interested; at such moments he felt utterly dull and uninspired. But in ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... weeks ago I went to Washington to contradict under the solemn obligation of my oath a gross and wanton calumny which, based upon nothing but anonymous and irresponsible gossip, had ...
— The New York Stock Exchange and Public Opinion • Otto Hermann Kahn
... truth of personal gossip, there is no doubt that Bruckner lent himself and his art to a championing of the reactionary cause in the form that was intrinsically at odds with its spirit. Hence in later works of Bruckner these strange episodes ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... her boudoir upstairs when I got in.—She had a quaint expression upon her face. I was not certain that her greeting was as cordial as usual—Has gossip reached ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... sentient heart For crows and jays to peck, ofttimes to such He seemed a silent fellow, who o'ermuch Held from the general gossip-ground apart, Or tersely spoke, and tart: How should they guess what eagle tore, within, His quick of sympathy for humblest smart Of human wretchedness, or probed his spleen Of ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... better. Now I wouldn't gossip to you of my employer's affairs—I hope we're better than two common servants—but I want you to be as loyal to him as I am, and to understand a few of the reasons why he can't go giggling ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... compadrazgo (gossipry) is the relation which exists between the father of a child and its godfather, who call each other compadre (gossip). It is often used also as a mere friendly ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... the Granville Gower correspondence is to be believed—and how can it not—he was either a very bad rogue or a madman. Sheridan, after all's said, made a great figure in his day, and must stand the racket of it, so to speak. Gossip about Harriet may be left to the idle; ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and triviality—these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I am now going to the war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very amiable and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... literature, and his miscellaneous works include The Savages of Europe (London, 1764), a satire on the English which he translated from the French, and Anccdotes Ancient and Modern (London, 1789) a.n amusing collection of gossip. His chief work was a History of Great Britain connected with the Chronology of Europe from Caesar's Invasion to Accession of Edward VI., in 2 vols. (London, 1794-1795) . Its plan is somewhat singular, as a portion of the history of England ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... over him, but with gallantry and contempt of death enough for both sides of his profession; who took a cool head, a white handkerchief, and a case of instruments, where other men went hot blooded with weapons, and who was the biggest gossip, male or female, of the regiment. Not even the major's taciturnity ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... that of monastic seclusion. Rumour, with her thousand tongues, had never singled out these vestal ladies as objects of matrimonial schemes; no suitors darkened their doors or disturbed their peace; they made no enemies, and, perhaps, no very enthusiastic friends. They listened to the gossip retailed by their neighbours, as in politeness bound, but the imperturbable 'Really!' Indeed!' and 'Impossible!' gave no encouragement to gossip: they never asked questions, never propagated reports, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... "Spener's Journal always has some wonderful news, and amuses the Berlin people with all kinds of stupid gossip," grumbled he. "The rivalry of such a ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... said Mrs. Carrington, who for a moment rid herself of Raymond and now came near Ashton and Florence. She had heard them speak of Dr. Lacey and Fanny, and as she knew Florence was soon going to New Orleans, she wished to give her a little Frankfort gossip to take with her. ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... Causton came back they bombarded him with questions. But this bag had come through locked all the way from Miwasa Landing, and Ben, even Ben, the great purveyor of gossip in the North, had heard nothing of any Doctor Imbrie on his way in. Ben was more excited and more indignant than any of them. Somebody had got ahead of him in ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... were gay Lotharios in their way, as well as in more refined society, and it would be discovered that a favourite Adonis was keeping company with two or three young girls at the same time, and vice versa with some young coquettes. But such unprincipled conduct would furnish gossip for a whole neighbourhood, and be discountenanced by all. Nor must you for a moment imagine that there was anything wrong in this system of wooing. It was the custom of the country in an early day, and I think it is still continued in settlements remote ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... for any one to read if she had not seemed of all women I have ever seen the least shamefaced. Her brows were as unwritten as a child's, her smile as pure as a seraph's, and her eyes blue, unfaltering and candid. She laughed a greeting, exchanged gossip, did her sewing, watched events, as the case might be, was not conscious of her servitude or anxious to market it. Sometimes she shared her outlook with an old woman—a horrible, greasy go-between, with straggling ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... there. Being the near relative of Mr. Christian Curwen, long member of Parliament for Carlisle, and himself a native, he was well known in the neighbourhood. This, however, might be passed over as mere gossip, had not another circumstance happened just about the same time, for the truth of which the Editor does not hesitate ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... go," said Lulu, beginning again on the toffy. She was a heavily made girl of twenty, with sleepy eyes and a dull complexion. She took little exercise, was inordinately fond of sweet things, helped her mother a little in the housekeeping, and was intimately acquainted with all the gossip of the village. So was Sarah; but her tongue was sharper than Lulu's, and her brain quicker. She was therefore the unpopular sister; while for Lulu her acquaintances felt rather a contemptuous indulgence. Sarah had had various love affairs, which had come ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when the Wixon boy put Paris-green in the Trufants' well, because the oldest Trufant girl had given him the mitten, Marm Gossip gabbled in Smyrna until flecks of foam gathered in the corners of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... keeping a private mad-house. It was not quite so private as it might have been, for Mrs. Carlyle found in her grievances abundant food for her sarcastic tongue. Whatever she talked about she made interesting, and her relations with her husband became a common subject of gossip. It was said that the marriage had never been a real one, that they were only companions, and so forth. Froude was content to enjoy the society of the most gifted couple in London without troubling himself to solve mysteries which did not ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... name them not. I am coming to it all in good time. I was telling you how the poor lady failed and pined from that hour, and was like to die. My gossip Madge told me how when, next Midsummer, this unlucky babe was born they had to take him from her chamber at once because any sound of crying made her start in her sleep, and shriek that she heard a poor child wailing who had been left in a burning ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Among the theatrico-antiquarian gossip of The Fortune is, that it was once the nursery for Henry VIII.'s children—but "no ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... replied Grace, "I wanted to save it until you came home. I have been out to 'Heartsease' several times, too, and am quite in love with Miss Nevin. May Anne and I come to-morrow and have a good long gossip? You must hear all about Anne's triumphs in ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... one of my superintending companions with whom I established anything like a familiar acquaintance was Mother Martha. She had no outward attractions to recommend her; but she was simple, good-humored, ready to gossip, and inquisitive to a perfectly incredible degree. Her whole life had been passed in the nunnery; she was thoroughly accustomed to her seclusion, thoroughly content with the monotonous round of her occupations; not at all ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... of local gossip and scandal cleverly concealed. Andrew Hamilton figures in it as "Dapper Dumpling." J. N. Barker, the author of "Superstition," is "Billy Mushroom." Joseph Dennie is nicknamed "Oliver Crank." William Warren is dubbed ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... perfect gossip I ever knew; though, I must say, it is the kind of life I have advised him to ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... people could not understand it, and gossip was rife among them as to the meaning ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... and writing. P. Q. occasionally gave advice which John knew came from a man who took a secret pride in supervising the remarkable metamorphosis of a "cub" into a well trained reporter. It was the gossip of newspaper workers that P. Q. excelled in the training of his reporters whom he handled with the tact of a psychologist and the care of a manager of a baseball team for his players. Nothing gave him more pleasure than to develop a "cub" into a star and there were ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... of being a scornful person, very hard on lovers. And from that, added to the trifle of the two slaps, of the presumptuousness of Delphin, and of the wrath of Margot, one ought easily to comprehend the endless gossip of Coqueville. ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola
... and Harriet and Jessie and Mrs. Sproul all about it, as I see them coming, on gossip bent I feel sure," he said as he went halfway down the walk to meet the girls before I ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Dominicus Pike—had travelled seven miles through a solitary piece of woods without speaking a word to anybody but himself and his little gray mare. It being nearly seven o'clock, he was as eager to hold a morning gossip as a city shopkeeper to read the morning paper. An opportunity seemed at hand when, after lighting a cigar with a sun-glass, he looked up and perceived a man coming over the brow of the hill at the foot of which the pedler had stopped his ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... atmosphere of Powells, he felt with a shock of perception that in rattling off Love in Babylon he had been guilty of one of those charming weaknesses to which great and serious men are sometimes tempted, but of which great and serious men never boast. And he therefore confined his personal gossip with Sir George to the turkey, the mince-tarts, and the question of contagion. He plunged into his work with a feeling akin to dignified remorse, and Sir George was vehemently and openly delighted by the proofs which he gave of undiminished ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... ideal, the probability is that she had never heard the word, but she felt all of a sudden, standing there in the May sunshine, that something had gone out of her life for ever. That very night she spoke to Gladys, seizing a favourable opportunity, when Liz had gone to enjoy a gossip with that garrulous person, Mrs. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... be playing fine French airs, and have much gossip of the composers and will perchance bring music with him that will stir us ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... habits. Here we are distinguished unfavourably from our neighbours—exceptions, of course, there must always be—but in general to betray an acquaintance with any literature beyond the last novel, or the current trash and gossip of the day, might provoke the charge of pedantry, but at any rate would fail in exciting the slightest sympathy. Hence men of letters, and women of letters, form a caste by themselves much to their own disadvantage, and still more to the injury of those to the improvement ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Ultramontane works of fiction—the only ones admitted to the convent library—in which the hero was always a Legitimist vicomte who fought duels by the dozen but went twice a month to confession; and in part of the strong social scent of the gossip of her companions, many of them filles de haut lieu who, in the convent-garden, after Sundays at home, depicted their brothers and cousins as Prince Charmings and young Paladins. Euphemia listened and said nothing; she shrouded her visions of matrimony under a coronet in ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... 'Jane Eyre' are likely to suit a model governess or schoolmistress; and it amuses me to consider them in that particular relation. Your account falls like dew upon the parched curiosity of some of our friends here, to whom (as mere gossip, which did not leave you responsible) I couldn't resist the temptation of communicating it. People are so curious—even here among the Raffaels—about this particular authorship, yet nobody seems to have read 'Shirley'; we are too slow in getting ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... to go to war against the enemy, and to do something brave, so that we should be looked up to by the people. As we grew older the wish to do this increased. That summer, when the old men used to come out of their lodges, and sit in the sun, smoking, or to gather in little groups, and gossip with one another, I used to listen to their talk of the things that had happened in past years, when they were young. They told of many strange things that had happened; of war; journeys that they had ...
— When Buffalo Ran • George Bird Grinnell
... a sharp tongue that wrought discord wherever it went. She dealt in other people's shortcomings, and if Burleigh had not known her too well to give her false tales credence, she might have worked some serious mischief. As it was, everyone took her gossip with a grain of salt, remarking, with a smile and a shrug after she had gone away, "Of course, that may be true, but ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... her bright thick hair, and straighten belt and collar. There were always girls here: a late-comer eating her luncheon, two chatter-boxes sharing a bit of powdered chamois-skin at a mirror, a girl who felt ill drinking something hot at the stove. Here was always company, and gossip, Susan might stop for a half-cup of scalding hot tea, or a chocolate from a striped paper bag. Returning, refreshed and cheered, to the office, she would lay a warm, damp hand over Miss Thornton's, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Knocked from his pipe the ashes, and slowly extending his right hand, "Father Leblanc," he exclaimed, "thou hast heard the talk in the village, And, perchance, canst tell us some news of these ships and their errand." Then with modest demeanor made answer the notary public,— "Gossip enough have I heard, in sooth, yet am never the wiser; And what their errand may be I know not better than others. Yet am I not of those who imagine some evil intention Brings them here, for we are at peace; and why then ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the mellowing meadows thrill To his blithe music. Be it day or night, Close gossip of the grass, on field and hill He serenades the silence with delight: Silence, that hears the melon slowly split With ripeness; and the plump peach, hornet-bit, Loosen and fall; and everywhere the white, Warm, silk-like stir of leafy ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... that hour of waiting until darkness falls, for gossip is scarce in the trenches, and the display of fireworks in the shape of German star shells has long since ceased to interest us—always excepting those moments when we are in front of our trench on some patrol. Away to the left, where the artillery ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett |
