"Low-necked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... folks seem to know so much," I said, "and yet you bring a country play to the country! Why don't you bring out a play with women in low-necked gowns, and champagne suppers, and a scandal or two? They packed Pike's Opera-House three years ago with a play ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... beautiful porcelain, Queen Anne silver, exotic flowers, glittering glass, soft rosy light, creamy expanses of shirt-front, elegant low-necked dresses—all the conventional ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... away over the bay and entered the mouth of the Pasig River. At the wharf we were informally introduced to a crowd of curious natives. The men wore hat, shirt, and pants, and some of them wore shoes. The women wore a sort of low-necked body with great wide sleeves and a skirt not cut to fit the body, but of the same size at both bottom and top, the upper end not being belted or tied, but just drawn tightly around the waist and the surplus part knotted and tucked with the thumb under ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... me choose all my things, and I never could have got half so much for my money, or had half such pretty things if she hadn't; and she began right off to get the most elegant clothes for herself, too! I knew Sylvia was pretty, but I never knew how pretty until I saw her in a low-necked white dress! We went to the theatre almost every evening, and saw all the sights, besides—it didn't take long to get around in that automobile, I can tell you! Perfect rafts of people kept coming ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... unusual hours, and the household consisted largely of young women who received many men callers. For about a week Nellie did her work unmolested. At the end of the week her mistress presented her with a low-necked satin dress and asked her if she would not like to assist in entertaining the men. Simple-minded Nellie had to have the nature of the entertaining explained to her, and she had great difficulty in leaving the house after she had ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... wear a dress very long, let her do it; another to have her dress Bloomerized, let her do it. If one prefers a close bonnet, another an open; one thin shoes, another thick boots; one a flowing robe, another a tight dress; one a high-necked, another a low-necked dress, one a belted, another a bodiced waist, let it be as each one shall prefer. In a word, let each woman dress herself and her household as her judgment, skill, and taste shall dictate, without everlastingly consulting the last ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... for men, morning dress; for ladies, demi-toilet, with or without bonnet. No low-necked dress nor short sleeves should be seen at day receptions, nor white neck-ties and ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... dress for dinner, you know," came in a sarcastic sneer from Split. "She wants to show our dear cousin how swell we are. We all wear low-necked rigs, and father ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... these splendid shoulders, and the creamy whiteness of the skin, upon which, round the full throat, a chain of diamonds lay as upon satin—and recalled that he had not seen her before in what he phrased to himself as so much low-necked dress. The deep fire-gleam in her broad plaits of hair gave a wonderful brilliancy to this colouring of brow and throat and bosom. He marvelled at himself for discovering only now that she also was beautiful—and then thrilled with pride ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... in the fashion of "ye olden time," the boys in wigs and square cuts, the girls in short-waisted, low-necked gowns, with hair ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... matter with you, Bill?" asked the girl, as she threw off her motor coat and sat at the table in her low-necked party gown. ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... trunk, and finally a little blue and white lawn dress. It was too long in the skirt, and pending the moment when Samantha should "take a tack in it," it anticipated the present fashion, and made Lady Gay look more like a disguised princess than ever. The gown was low-necked and short-sleeved, in the old style; and Samantha was in despair till she found some little embroidered muslin capes and full undersleeves, with which she covered Gay's pink neck and arms. These things of beauty so wrought upon the child's excitable nature that she could hardly keep still long enough ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... scarcely suggested the school-teacher. To the man who confronted her, his left hand gripping the mantelpiece, his eyes filled with a flaming jealousy, there was something entirely new in the hang of her well-cut skirt, the soft colouring of her low-necked blouse, the greater animation of her piquant face with its somewhat dazzling complexion. His hand flashed out towards her ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said volantes, peculiar to the place, are gigs without hoods or aprons, perched on two huge wheels, and each drawn by one horse in silver-mounted trappings, ridden by a calassero or negro postilion in flaming livery, laced on every seam. In each volante two ladies lounged, in evening dress, low-necked, bare-headed, and armed with fans. Every pretty woman in Havana was there, talking to the occupiers of the next carriage, looking on and being looked at, and all under a lovely tropical sunset, which lighted up the sea, whence a soft refreshing ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... the show, cause we never could have any fun with a woman to look after. Pa says nowadays the men and women who ride on bareback horses in the ring dress in regular evening costume, the women with low-necked dresses and long trains, and the men with swallow-tail coats and patent leather shoes, and they are as polite as ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... bring a lot of old newspapers, the Jonesville "Augurses" and "Gimlets" and take patterns. Oh, my! wuzn't they grand, though our good Methodist sisters wouldn't dream of havin' their calico and woosted dresses with such long trains draggin' behind 'em or havin' 'em low-necked and short sleeves. I could hardly imagine how Sister Gowdey and Sister Henzy would look with their chocolate-colored calicos made without sleeves and dekolitay, as Miss Meechim called it; they would blush to entertain the thought, and so would ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... she ill-treated the girl, though it was more than once that Elsa's right cheek and ear were crimson when the left were quite pale, and that often, on the hot Sundays in July and August, when the girls go in low-necked corslets and shifts to church, Elsa wrapped a kerchief over her shoulders—the neighbours said in order to hide the corrections dealt by Irma neni's vigorous hand. But it was morally that her mother's authority weighed most heavily upon the girl. Her commands became more defined, and presently more ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... trial was not yet at its worst. The low-necked dress had been as unseasonable as the substitution of the hooped skirt for the quilted petticoat was imprudent. Before Madeline had been gone a week, she contracted, as was to be feared, a heavy cold, which within ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... Grand-I-Vert" (hiver). On the left of the door was a vulgar sign bearing, in colored letters, "Good March beer," and the picture of a foaming pot of the same, with a woman, in a dress excessively low-necked, on one side, and an hussar on the other,—both coarsely colored. Consequently, in spite of the blooming flowers and the fresh country air, this cottage exhaled the same strong and nauseous odor of wine and food which ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... in whom we felt the deepest interest was the Widow. She had all the grace and elegance of a hippopotamus, and her style was enchanting. She wore a low-necked dress, with a bouquet of cauliflowers and garlick in her bosom, a wreath of onion-greens in her hair, full, red dress, and elaborate hoops, which continually said, "Don't come a-nigh me." Her bashful behavior was ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... went to him in the first days of his presidency,—(they rather fell off later)—the Government and Republicans naturally and all the diplomatic corps. There were not many women, as it really was rather an effort to put one's self into a low-necked dress and start off directly after dinner to the Gare St. Lazare, and have rather a rush for places. We were always late, and just had time to scramble into ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... glove. Add a few powdered curls, high-heeled pantoufles, a cap with upstanding loops of lace, black mittens, and a decided taste for ombre. But to do full justice to the lady, it must be said that she appeared in low-necked gowns of an evening (so high an opinion of her ruins had she), wore long gloves, and raddled her cheeks with Martin's classic rouge. An appalling amiability in her wrinkles, a prodigious brightness in the old lady's eyes, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Perhaps after all it was a mistake to wish they were blue. A clumsy band and button fastened her unbleached night-gown about the throat. She undid it, freed her thin shoulders, and saw herself a bride in low-necked satin, walking down an aisle with Lucius Harney. He would kiss her as they left the church.... She put down the candle and covered her face with her hands as if to imprison the kiss. At that moment she heard Mr. Royall's step as he came up the stairs to bed, and a fierce revulsion of feeling ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... very quiet—so were his words; but his eye was upon Miss Cecilia Deacon, who in a low-necked blue silk, with an amber necklace and jet bracelets, was paying her respects to the Judge and his daughter. With equal quietness Mr. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the stump where kindlings were always split and opened her gown wider. She noticed how fair and smooth the skin on her shoulders still was and remembered that her husband had always been proud of her pretty neck. She had worn a low-necked dress when he had told her he loved her. That had been in the garden, into which she could now look as she sat on the stump. She had been picking currants for tea, and he had gone out to see her. The scene came up before her ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... consult comfort rather than ornament. Many of them wear cloth pantaloons under their petticoats, which, therefore, they are able to gather under their arms in wading through snow-drifts. I did not see a low-necked dress or a thin ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... said, "think of it! A party like that, an' not a low-necked waist in town, nor a swallow-tail! An' only two weeks to do anything in, an' only Liddy Ember for dressmaker, an' it takes her two weeks to make a dress. I guess Mis' Postmaster Sykes has got her. They say she read her invite in the post-office with one ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... her mammoth cheek in the breezes of Colorado canyon. The self-styled Emporium of the West has lost her British darling, Beaver Bill, the big swell who was first cousin to the Marquis of Buckingham and own grandmother to the Emperor of China, the man with the biled shirt and low-necked shoes. This curled darling of the Bonegulch aristocrat-worshippers passed through Deadhorse yesterday, clean bust. Those who remember how the four-fingered editor of the Bonegulch "Palladium" pricked up his ears and lifted up his falsetto crow when ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... with an austerity and elderliness before which every mental image of Man, even as the most poetical of abstractions, withers and dies. Every night, after the young ladies have retired, does Miss CAROWTHERS put on a freshening aspect, don a more youthful low-necked dress— ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... Letitia's loving effort; it would be clearly impossible to speak of them both as "white dresses." Her hair was piled high on her head in a way that Timothy had never seen her wear it, and that he vaguely did not like, because it made her look so much older. And in her low-necked gown and wearing the flowers another man had sent her, she seemed to Timothy more than ever of a world apart. She was like an Arethusa met for the first time. He wished intensely that he could gather ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... at the other end of the table, shining in her low-necked dress with diamonds on her breast and in her hair, leaned forward ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... of the Mexican village, Vicente Garcia's little sister. He had found her balancing on her stomach on the bank of the ditch. Three years old, she was, and slim and straight, with enormous eyes and a great tangle of sunburned brown curls. Her dress made her quainter still, for it was low-necked and sleeveless, and came to her tiny ankles so that she looked like a ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... the pathology of his guests before inviting them to a feast. If that is to be the rule, the delicate young lady with the seeds of consumption in her system must be left at home for fear she may come with bare arms and a low-necked dress, and expose herself after being heated with dancing to the draught of an open window. The bilious and dyspeptic must be omitted also, lest by imprudent eating and drinking they make themselves sick. We cannot regulate these things. ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... she paused. She remembered how, more than a year before, she had been invited to Eureka for a ball. She had stayed with her friend Miss Jennie Blood; by whose advice and with whose help she had worn for the first time a low-necked dress. She had been uncomfortable in it at first, very uncomfortable, but the men liked it, all of them. She had seen their admiration in their eyes; as Jennie had said, it fetched them. If only George could see her in a low-necked dress—she flushed as she thought of it—perhaps he'd admire ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... he got to see many changes in the world. I remember we did go to a party in Fredonia one time, where a woman from Buffalo wore a low-necked gown, and Jim never got over it. He swore to the day of his death that any woman who'd wear 'a dug-out dress' was a hussy. He didn't know what the world could be coming to, when they allowed such goings-on. Poor Jim! I was still young when he went, and of course—but I couldn't. I'd had my ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... well represented, so that the audience was a large one. Olga Hunter, who was a pretty girl with chestnut hair, looked charming in a white dress, and large ribbon knots of pink and light blue—the Rodenhurst colours—pinned beside her badge. Gwen, in plain serge skirt and low-necked muslin blouse looked prepared for business, if not so ornamental as her companion. Winnie had made her a little bouquet of roses and forget-me-nots to match her colours, and Beatrice had lent her a ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... resumed, with a pleased smile, "drew a funny picture just now of an election under the new idea. You all laughed heartily when he spoke of there being so many fine hats and waving plumes and women with low-necked dresses and open-work stockings about the polls that bashful men would be afraid to vote. But, mind you, Warren Wilks was making all that up. Listen to me, and I'll tell you what one of your elections ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... direction. She wore it with a touch of unusual color in her cheeks and, an added light in her dark eyes that gave a winsomeness to her beauty which it had not always. A cunningly bound spray of yellow-stamened lilies followed the curving line of her low-necked dress, ending in a cluster in her bosom; the glossy little leaves of the smilax the florist had wreathed in with them stood sharply against the whiteness of her neck. Her hair was massed at the back of her head simply and girlishly enough, and its fluffiness about her forehead ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... geography and history were but printed words on white paper, not places and events, Jane McCrea was to us no suffering woman, but a picture of a low-necked, long-skirted, scanty dress, long hair grasped by a half-naked Indian, and two unnatural-looking hands raised in entreaty. It was interesting as a picture, but it excited no pity, no horror, because it was only a picture. We never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with fair hair and eyes; Dr. and Mrs. Lush, Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Maundy, who came only upon the express understanding that there was to be no dancing, and a few other agreeable people. It was a Summer party, Abel said—mere low-necked muslin, strawberries and ice-cream. ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... and openly, as usual, but kept her head half turned so that the perfect line of her throat and chin was emphasized, and the tiny curls at the back of her neck set off the creamy whiteness of her skin. To tell the truth, Deena had never before worn a low-necked dress. Prior to her early marriage a simple white muslin, a little curtailed in the sleeves and transparent over the neck, had been sufficient for any college dance she went to, and after Simeon had assumed command, even ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... a perfectly splendid time?" sighed Jane, as they drove away. "I just wish I was a rich American and could spend my summer at a hotel and wear jewels and low-necked dresses and have ice cream and chicken salad every blessed day. I'm sure it would be ever so much more fun than teaching school. Anne, your recitation was simply great, although I thought at first you were never going to begin. I think it was ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a pause. He was looking down at her from the height of his six feet. The faint, sweet scent of orris root rose up from her warm skin. She was very attractive, dressed in a low-necked gown of that dull, satiny stuff women were wearing now. A thin band of white net was stretched across the top of her breasts; through it he could see the shadowy, arrow-headed groove between; her pendant—pearl bistre ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... children. There was Theodore, the boy, and Margaret-Mary, on the edge of three. They had their supper at five in the nursery, and after that there was always the story hour, with nurse safely downstairs for her dinner, their mother, lovely in a low-necked gown, and father coming in at the end. For several months their father had not come, and the best they could do was to kiss his picture in the frame with the eagle on it, to put flowers in front of it, and ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... him. "They won't keep company with me on land," Hefty complained, bitterly, "and they can't keep company with me in the water; so I lose both ways." Young Burke held these gentlemen of the rowing clubs in great contempt, and their outriggers and low-necked and picturesque rowing clothes as well. They were fond of lying out of the current, with the oars pulled across at their backs for support, smoking and commenting audibly upon the other oarsmen who passed ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... long-hoped-for meeting with James and Lucretia Mott and Lucretia's sister, Martha C. Wright. Only Paulina Wright Davis of Providence and Elizabeth Oakes Smith of Boston were disappointing, for they appeared at the meetings in short-sleeved, low-necked dresses with loose-fitting jackets of pink and blue wool, shocking her deeply intrenched Quaker instincts. Although she realized that they wore ultrafashionable clothes to show the world that not all woman's rights advocates were frumps wearing the hideous ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... the drawing-room; and FREDA stands restlessly tapping her foot against the bottom stair. With a flutter of skirts CHRISTINE KEITH comes rapidly down. She is a nice-looking, fresh-coloured young woman in a low-necked dress. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a performance on the piano by a sun-burnt young lady attired in a low-necked, short-sleeved dress, who accompanies another young lady who essays ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... formidable. That classic night of madness had brought together all that was young and pleasure loving, and now this smart world was wallowing in the coarseness and imbecility of the servants' hall. There was a fierce crush under the festoons of gas lamps, and men in evening coats and women in outrageous low-necked old toilets, which they did not mind soiling, were howling and surging to and fro under the maddening influence of a vast drunken fit. At a distance of thirty paces the brass instruments of the orchestra were inaudible. Nobody was dancing. Stupid witticisms, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... right—the things you were born to. Your father was a clergyman—a rector. Why, down at Apsley, the rector comes and dines—for the sake of God—and respectability—and brings his daughters, dressed in their Sunday best—with low-necked frocks that make no pretence to be puritanical. And you slave, day after day, because your father, through no fault of yours, happened to come down in the world, while they sit in a comfortable rectory accepting the invitations of the county. I wanted to give you things that 'ud make your life ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... meantime, what am I to do with this nice piece of gold? I could make a ring for each of your fingers, and some for your toes. I could pretty near make you a collarette, to wear when you go to evening parties in a low-necked dress, or a watch chain more massive than the bloomin' Mayor's. There's twelve pounds' worth ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... purchased, and is now but 140—so that a dress for which $150 was paid at the rate of high figures cannot be called cheap at half that sum, after it has been worn considerable, and perhaps passed out of fashion. The peculiarity of the dresses is that the most of them are cut low-necked—a taste which some ladies attribute to Mrs. Lincoln's appreciation ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... triumphantly, making room for the next batch. My three babies sang lustily too, whether they happened to know what was being sung or not. They had on white dresses in honour of the occasion, and the June baby was even arrayed in a low-necked and short-sleeved garment, after the manner of Teutonic infants, whatever the state of the thermometer. Her arms are like miniature prize-fighter's arms—I never saw such things; they are the pride ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... Matthews. "Do?" He allowed his imagination full rein for a moment. "Well," he said, "by way of a start I shall make my soldier brother take me to dinner somewhere where there's a band and fairies in low-necked dresses with ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... dressed, and put on two of everything; but she is luckier than the younger women. Monny and Mrs. East, though warned that nights would be chill, have come clothed in silk and gossamer, and have brought low-necked nightgowns of nainsook trimmed with lace. This was confided to me soon after sunrise by a blue-nosed Biddy, hovering over the kitchen fire and —incidentally—ingratiating herself with the cook. It wouldn't be Biddy ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... was thin," he said, "but even with her low-necked dresses, I did not think that it was as bad as ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... to it on one side and indecency on the other. A Moslem woman on the street looks like a bundle of bedclothes. Where all women so look one woman who left off her mantle would seem indecent, and the comparative display of the outlines of the figure would seem shameless. Where low-necked dresses are commonly worn they are not indecent, but they may become so at a point which varies according to custom from place to place and from class to class. The women in modern Jerusalem regard it as very indecent to show themselves decolletees. They sit, however, in postures which leave their ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... dear girl," pleaded Duvillard, "we can't take you into that den dressed as you are! Just fancy your entering that place in a low-necked gown and covered with diamonds! Why everyone would jeer at us! Come, Gerard, just tell her to be ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and this time, across one fair, polished shoulder, gleaming out from among the curls, in her low-necked dress, was marked a braided cut, from which the blood oozed in small round drops, staining also the waist of the dress, where the lash ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... bosom. This quadrangular opening, in spite of the bosom's being very white, or just because it was very white, deprived Levin of the full use of his faculties. He imagined, probably mistakenly, that this low-necked bodice had been made on his account, and felt that he had no right to look at it, and tried not to look at it; but he felt that he was to blame for the very fact of the low-necked bodice having been made. It seemed to Levin that he had deceived someone, that he ought to explain ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... rich, too? Why don't I live at the park like Maude, and wear low-necked aprons instead of this old high one?' Jerry asked; but Harold could not tell, ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... up my work with renewed vigor." She is very homesick, after the two years' absence, and so makes a visit to Rochester in August. For this she gets "a drab silk bonnet shirred inside with pink, and her blue lawn and her brown silk made over, half low-necked." She has "a beautiful green delaine and a black braise [barege] which are very becoming." She wants a fancy hat, a $15 pin and $30 mantilla, every one of which she resolves to deny herself, but afterwards writes: "There is not a ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the first ball-dress I ever detected her in. I was supposed to be fast asleep, and she had come to look at me before going out to some social function, as she has told me she never failed to do when leaving the house for a party. Her superb brocade, pale-tinted, low-necked, and short-sleeved, her happy, airy manner, her glowing though pale face, her dancing eyes, her ever-hovering smile of perfect kindness, all flashed upon me in the sudden light as I roused myself. I insisted upon gazing and admiring, yet I ended by indignantly weeping ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... its little close-clustered red roofs like a buttonhole bouquet floating on the sea. As the steamer brought us nearer the island something of the glamor faded; but there were about a dozen girls assembled to watch the arrival of the boat, wearing rather nice, winged white caps and low-necked black dresses. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... in that time-honored thin silk dress of hers stiffened into brocade by buckram underneath; the high, low-necked waist, hiding any evidences of breast, if there were such evidences to hide, and bringing the long neck into such faulty prominence; and the sleeves, crisp puffs of tulle divided by bands of red velvet, through ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... herself with most becoming phrases. The novels had done much; and then she had been living in society. At dinner she laughed rather too loud, it might be, and was too much given to addressing her husband as 'Willis;' but her undeniable prettiness in low-necked evening dress condoned what was amiss in manner. Mr. Rodman looked too gentlemanly; he reminded one of a hero of polite melodrama on the English-French stage. The Captain talked stock-exchange, and was continually inquiring about some one or ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... of the field guns going to the station. When Captain Kilburn announced that the entrainment was well under way, we started in his big limousine, shivering a little in evening cloaks flung on hastily over low-necked dresses. We waited till the platform was clear of the great mass of khaki-clad young men, and then timidly appeared, to stare through the dusk of early morning in search of friends. Ours wasn't the only party engaged in that business. Others were there; and swathed figures of girls and women, in ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... upon the clumsy-looking dress, which was made entirely whole, except the opening at the sleeves and neck, and was cut away above the shoulders, like a girl's low-necked dress, to admit the body of the wearer; the legs were footed off like stockings, and the wrists of the sleeves were terminated by tight, elastic rubber bands; a similar band surrounded the neck, which was also finished with a flap ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... streams of guests.—The drawing-rooms were brilliant with gaslight, and as hot as ovens. The host and hostess stood just within the door of entrance; Laura was presented, and then she passed on into the maelstrom of be-jeweled and richly attired low-necked ladies and white-kid-gloved and steel pen-coated gentlemen and wherever she moved she was followed by a buzz of admiration that was grateful to all her senses—so grateful, indeed, that her white face was ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... clothes, and I kept a-gettin' up to straighten 'em; and once he threw out his arms, and something bright fell out on to the pillow, and I went and looked, and it was a likeness that he wore by a ribbon round his neck. It was a woman—a real handsome one—and she had on a low-necked black dress, of the cut they used to call Marie Louise, and she had a string of pearls round her neck, and her hair curled with pearls in it, and very wide blue eyes. Well, you see, I didn't look but a minute before he seemed to wake up, and he caught at it and hid it in his clothes. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... it—a marquise," Abner observed on a certain occasion to one of the miniature painters. "This creature with a fluffy white wig and a low-necked dress is a marquise, is she? Do you like ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... address of the house in the Seventies which he was presently to occupy, added, "I wish you'd do what you can, for my sake," and signed it. He handed the girl the slip of paper, and she thrust it into her low-necked blouse. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... herself on her betrayer and the shopman and all those who had injured her. One of the things that tempted her, and was the cause of her decision, was the woman telling her she might order her own dresses—velvet, silk, satin, low-necked ball dresses, anything she liked. A mental picture of herself in a bright yellow silk trimmed with black velvet with low neck and short sleeves conquered her, and she gave up her passport. On the same evening the procuress took an isvostchik and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... on every pretext to smell her hair,—her body, through her low-necked dress—to breathe in giddily that delicate fragrance that emanates from the bodies of beautiful women, as ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... are costumed in white dresses, low-necked; sleeves five inches long, trimmed with narrow pink ribbon, a bow of the same at the top of the sleeves, fastened to the dress by a brilliant glass pin; over the skirt of the dress should be worn a half skirt of white tarleton muslin, which should be two feet long in front, ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... day what she wore. Black velvet lounging slacks, a low-necked amber satin blouse, caught at the "V" by a curiously wrought antique silver pin. It was round, about four inches in diameter. In its center was the carved figure of a serpent coiled to strike. Its eyes were deep amber topazes and its darting tongue was ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad
... a woman dressed in white, with that majesty of beauty that is accustomed to admiration. The aigrette of feathers and diamonds seemed to tremble on her tawny yellow curls, the curve of her breasts was outlined through the lace of her low-necked gown, her gloves reached above her elbows, in one of her hands she held a costly fan, in the other, a dark cloak, lined with flame-colored satin, that slipped from her bare shoulders, on the point of falling. The lower part of the figure was merely outlined ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... duke, gave us nice seats, and rakes to haul in the money; a countess, with a low-necked dress, winked at dad when he reached into his pistol pocket and brought out a roll of bills and handed them to the Dakota man, who bought $500 worth of red chips, and when the man looked the roulette table ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... the near and off sides, they have ridden astride (as the Mexicans, Indians, Tartars, Roumanians, Icelanders, &c., do to-day), and they have also ridden pillion. Queen Elizabeth rode thus behind the Earl of Leicester on public occasions, in a full hoop skirt, low-necked bodice, and large ruffs. Nevertheless, she dispensed with a cavalier when out hunting, at the ripe ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... sleeves, then the stockings, then the skirts, then the main portion of the garment covering the legs, successively disappeared, until the low-necked, sleeveless, legless one-piece suit became "the thing"; and women clad in garments scantier than the scantiest on the ballet stage, were parading Kalakaua avenue in the vicinity of the Moana hotel, ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... it, Floss, for she looked amazed when I showed her my Undine costume, and told her what I wanted the sea-weed for. 'Why, you won't stand before all those folks dressed that way, will you?' she said, "as much scandalized as if she'd never seen a low-necked dress and silk stockings before;" and Miss Perry tossed her head with an air of pity for a girl who could be surprised at the display of a pretty ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... English girl of eighteen would not flaunt unconcerned about my drawing-room in a shameless dressing-gown, and crinkle up her toes in front of me; still less would she tell me outrageous stories; but she will wear low-necked dresses and gaze at ladies in tights without the ghost of an immodest thought. I was right when I told Carlotta England was Alexandretta upside-down. What is immoral here is moral there, and vice-versa. There is no such ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... am improved by such little changes, and perhaps it will induce hor to let me go to the Bal Blanc that Madame d'Etaples is going to give on Yvonne's birthday. Mamma declined for me, saying I was not fit to wear a low-necked corsage, but you see she ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... other occasions, invariably hitched during the performances; and it often required the united energies of the Prince of Denmark, the King, and the Grave-digger, with an occasional band from "the fair Ophelia" (Pepper Whitcomb in a low-necked dress), to hoist ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... be impressed upon the mind of a lady is that very low-necked dresses are in exceeding bad taste, and are quite sure to leave upon the mind of a gentleman an equivocal idea, to say the least. A word to the wise on this subject is sufficient. If a young lady has no ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... to a delightful winter," Mary ventured, from her berth, as Dodo hid a low-necked lace nightgown under a pink ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson |
