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More "Curtsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... curtsy, whisper, hold your chin up, laugh and lisp, And then you're sure to take: I've known the day when brats, not quite Thirteen, got fifty pounds a night; Then why not ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... light knock at the door. She responded with the permission to enter, and a tall, slight girl, with red-brown hair, came in and closed the door, dropping her little curtsy to the Mother-Superior. She wore the plain black alpaca uniform of the Convent, with the ribbon of the Headship of the Red Class, to be resigned when she should become a pupil-teacher at the opening of the next term; and the rare and beautiful smile broke ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... train off the line. These sudden turns and jerks had the effect of making us all rather uncomfortable, and poor Baby and I felt quite sea-sick. The sensation was the same as when the ship makes a deep curtsy and seems to leave you behind as she dips into ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... over yonder the Ingmar Ingmarsson who had lived during her childhood had driven to church. She remembered that every time he had passed by her and her mother on their way to church, the mother had nudged her and said: "Now you must curtsy, Stina, fox here ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... and stood before their father. They put their feet together. Kit made a bow, and Kat bobbed a curtsy. ...
— The Dutch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... of curtsy and offered him her slender fingers; which, as well as the rest of her hand, he took and held. Its shapeliness together with her beauty of face and figure were instantly swept ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... spent in service, and now so very few of the employers are to be seen; and when they are with us we feel that we are still respected by them, for there is the usual welcome—for they would look back the same as we do on days that are gone by. In our young days the curtsy was fashionable; you would see every man's daughter bobbing whenever they met the lady or gentlemen or when they met their teacher. The custom is gone now, and we wonder why; but the days are changed, and some call it education that is so far doing this; it cannot be education, for ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... put his finger to his lips as his nephew approached, and gave him a look of mystery that was quite sufficient to put the latter on his guard. He therefore went forward, pulled off his cap, and bowed respectfully to Minnie, who replied with a stiff curtsy, a slight smile, ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... absently before him; but the lady was quick-eyed, and threw a nod and a "How do you do?" in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the entrance of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Mazarin expressed a wish to see his ugly niece again; and it was indeed a very different Marie who now made her curtsy to him. Gone were the angular figure, the awkward movements, the sallow face, the slow wits. Time and the healthy life of the cloisters had done their work well. What the Cardinal now saw was a girl of seventeen, of exquisitely modelled figure, graceful and self-possessed; a face piquant and full ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... excelling in that inclination of the body which the Russian ladies substitute for the curtsy, and which he justly regards as very becoming, the empress adding dignity and grace. He describes Orloff as an herculean figure, finely proportioned, with a cheerful eye, and, for a Russian, a good complexion: Potemkin as having stature and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... round to Rodney's chair to offer him her hand and drop her curtsy; took a carnation from a bowl on the table and tucked it into his button-hole, slid her arm around his ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... proprietorship of the room so entirely that the Juniors stopped short in amazement, too dumbfounded for the moment to do anything but stare. The stranger stepped forward with almost an air of welcome and, dropping a mock curtsy, ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... her as the child took hold of her arm in fear of losing her balance. "That was a 'thank-ye-ma'am,'" she said, as the wagon suddenly bounded over a little hillock. "Didn't you see what a pretty curtsy ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... to curtsy, whisp- er, hold your chin up, laugh and lisp, And then you're sure to take: I've known the day when brats, not quite Thirteen, got fifty pounds a night; Then why not ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... two, would turn Their flanks;—but it is hardly worth my while, With such small gear to give myself concern: Indeed I've not the necessary bile; My natural temper's really aught but stern, And even my Muse's worst reproof's a smile; And then she drops a brief and modern curtsy, And glides away, assured she never ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... effect, nor more prepossessing in favor of the performance to follow, than the bow or curtsy at the opening the dance, made with an air of dignity and freedom. On the contrary, nothing is more disgustful than that initial step of the minuet, when auckwardly executed. It gives such an ill impression as is not easily removed by even a good performance ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... are, sir," declared Mrs. McGregor, making a quaint English curtsy, "and it's scandalized enough I am to see my boy here racing at you as if he was a wild beast and forgetting all the etiquette I've taught him. He had a nice speech ready to say but where it is ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... stuff in the pot, which was quite cool by this time, and she went out under the fringe of snakes, and they all behaved like good Sunday-school children. Some of them even tried to drop a curtsy to her as she went by, though that is not easy when you are hanging wrong way up by your tail. But the snakes knew the Queen was friends with their mistress; so, of course, they had to do ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... dust a flying and de hoss come a-bringing Marse Tom down de road. Mammy drap everything in the dust and grab her apron to drap a curtsy. She 'low—'Git dat hat off dat head and bow your head ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... innosent fish with sharp hooks. father whispered to me that is a hell of a reeson for keeping a man starving to deth and i laffed but nobody paid attension to me. well they all shook hands with the minister and Cele made a curtsy and sed tea is ready and we all marched out into the dining room mother and the minister first, then father and Aunt Sarah and then Keene and Cele and then the little ones and Georgie and i come last as i always do when there ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... all shall find when he comes home. But what talk I of this? Call forth Nathaniel, Joseph, Nicholas, Philip, Walter, Sugarsop, and the rest; let their heads be sleekly combed, their blue coats brush'd and their garters of an indifferent knit; let them curtsy with their left legs, and not presume to touch a hair of my master's horse-tail till they kiss their ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... deal with them, one at a time, as we came to them. And so I did, with the gratifying result that when the sun's lower rim had reached to within a finger's breadth of the western horizon the Mercury slid out past the southern edge of the reef and made her first curtsy as she once more dipped to the swell of the open ocean, having triumphantly negotiated and overcome every one of the difficulties of that endless rock-bound channel. I sprang into the topgallant rigging and shinned up to the royal yard, from which elevation I was able to watch, over ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... — N. lowering &c. v.; depression; dip &c. (concavity) 252; abasement; detrusion[obs3]; reduction. overthrow, overset[obs3], overturn; upset; prostration, subversion, precipitation. bow; courtesy, curtsy; genuflexion[obs3], genuflection, kowtow, obeisance, salaam. V. depress, lower, let down, take down, let down a peg, take down a peg; cast; let drop, let fall; sink, debase, bring low, abase, reduce, detrude[obs3], pitch, precipitate. overthrow, overturn, overset[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ensued, and finally march off with the wearer of the favor. I saw a neighbor of mine, tall Jack Pride, who lived twelve miles above me, blush and stammer, and bow again and again to a milliner's apprentice of a girl, not five feet high and all eyes, who dropped a curtsy at each bow. When I had passed them fifty yards or more, and looked back, they were still bobbing and bowing. And I heard a dialogue between Phyllis and Corydon. ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Avenel, father," said the Maid of the Mill, dropping as low a curtsy as her rustic manners enabled her to make. The Miller, her father, doffed his bonnet, and made his reverence, not altogether so low perhaps as if the young lady had appeared in the pride of rank and riches, yet so as to give high birth the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... into Mrs Phillips's little drawing-room, accompanying, and strongly contrasting with, three gentlemen in scarlet and gold. Hurriedly did the good old lady seize her spectacles, and rising to receive her guests with a delighted curtsy, scan curiously for a few moments Turpin's athletic proportions, and the fox-hunter's close-fitting leathers and tops. As for Dawson, he stood like the clear-complexioned and magnificently-whiskered officer, who silently invites the stranger to enter the doors of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... Captain were sitting side by side, and the Gulab, when she had finished the song, had swept her sinuous lithe form back in a graceful curtsy in front of the two, and, as if by accident, a red rose had floated to the feet of Captain Barlow. Surely her soft, dark, languorous ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... gambols with their ridiculous titles which you young people call dancing nowadays. Fox-trot, indeed! And bunny-hug. And rag-time. I never heard such names in my life! We danced the Highland schottische, and the quadrille, and Sir Roger de Coverley. And do you remember your famous curtsy, Esther? And how Madame made you show off ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... said Miss Deborah, who had dropped her nephew's arm, so that she might be more cautious about the mud, and who lifted her skirt on each side, as though she was about to make a curtsy,—"he's right: a woman ought to think just as her husband does; it is quite wrong in dear Helen not to, and it will bring unhappiness. Indeed, it is a lesson to all ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... the Haughtons is reached, and the carriage rolls through the wide open gates. At the pretty lodge door stands the keeper and his wife, he pulls off his cap while she curtsies low, their future mistress tosses them a gold bit at which more curtsy and bow. What a magnificent avenue through the great park, the oak and elm mingling their branches and interlacing their arms overhead, through which a glimpse of blue heavens with golden gleams of sunlight are seen. A turn in the road and the grand entrance ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... business, sir," replied the housekeeper drily, measuring his distance off to him by an indicated curtsy. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Betty alighted at last, entered the wicket-gate, and approached the small, weather-stained, brick house. She made her curtsy to madam, asked the Vicar's blessing—though he was not twenty-five years her senior and scarcely so wise—hugged the little girls, particularly sick Fiddy, and showered upon them pretty tasteful town treasures, which little country girls, sick or well, dearly ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the brook just then, and she ran to check him up; not an easy task for little hands, as he preferred to nibble the grass on the bank. But she did it cleverly, smoothed the ruffled mane, and, dropping another curtsy, stood aside to let the little ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... they found her—bustling around, making the fire, her head tied up in a bandana, her sleeves rolled to the shoulders. She turned, as they entered, and dropped them an old-fashioned curtsy. ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... you're Mr. Bracken, Mrs. Bracken's husband?" she said. There was a tremble in her voice as she slipped from the davenport and bobbed a curtsy. There was a shake in her knees, also. Suppose this strange man should be a burglar? The thought was enough to make the voice and knees of any little girl tremble and shake. But the strange man nodded curtly ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... mine," returned Patty, dropping a pretty curtsy. Then they all went to the drawing-room, where Patty was praised and applauded till she blushed ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... of the two of us was the more dumbfounded; but this I do know; that I was still speechless and fair witless when she swept me a low-dipped curtsy ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... the rosy lips which had smiled upon us with so airy a welcome soon showed a discontented curve not to be belied by the merry words that issued from them, and when we would have escorted her across the fields to her father's house, she made a mocking curtsy, and wandered away with the ugliest old crone who mouths and mumbles in the meeting-house. Did she do this to mock us or him? If to mock him he had best take care, for beauty scorned is apt to grow dangerous. But perhaps it was to mock us? Well, well, there would ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... once Orderly to Garth himself—brings out her ain bottle from the spence—a hollow square, and green as emerald. Bless the gurgle of its honest mouth! With prim lips mine hostess kisses the glass, previously letting fall a not inelegant curtsy—for she had, we now learned, been a lady's maid in her youth to one who is indeed a lady, all the time her lover was abroad in the army, in Egypt, Ireland, and the West Indies, and Malta, and Guernsey, Sicily, Portugal, Holland, and, we think she said, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... cruel, so unjust a cause?" "Mr. Burke saw me," she says, "and he bowed with the most marked civility of manner." This, be it observed, was just after his opening speech, a speech which had produced a mighty effect, and which, certainly, no other orator that ever lived, could have made. "My curtsy," she continues, "was the most ungrateful, distant and cold; I could not do otherwise; so hurt I felt to see him the head of such a cause." Now, not only had Burke treated her with constant kindness, but the very last act which he performed on the day on which he was turned ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gratified than Aunt Rachel, who had hitherto looked rather askance upon the presumptuous damsel (as much so, peradventure, as her nature would permit), but who, on the first appearance of the new-married pair at church, honoured the bride with a smile and a profound curtsy, in presence of the rector, the curate, the clerk, and the whole congregation of the united ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... served your King. Here he is. Good-bye, Monsieur d'Argenton, may you find all well at Valmy; good night, Monsieur La Mothe, we shall meet again in the morning, or is it already the new day?" and with a smiling curtsy to each she was gone. To Stephen La Mothe it seemed a cold good night after all that had come and gone between them that day, the misunderstood question in her work-room, the shadow of death in the Burnt ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... be his partner in every sense of the term. If that's not high praise, tell me higher and I'll use it.... And when Mr. Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance—advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsy, thread the needle, and back to your place—Fezziwig "cut" so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... I thank you," said Grace, with a curtsy. "Now sit you down, I pray, for presently I have a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... and curtsy, concluded the interview; and the young ladies hastily left the shop. Mr. Bobbinet was disappointed, as, indeed, was Col. Silky, who was present, en amateur; but the matter could not be helped, as these were customers who ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... produce in this theatre. Where is the colonel of the 10th cohort? So it's you? Well then, my friend, your soldiers march past like so many pigs. Madame Marie-Claire, come forward a little, so that I may teach you how to curtsy." ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... more I made her a curtsy, and walked out of the room. I found the dressing-room where I had left my cloak, fully determined to go home at once, if I could only get the carriage. I had to wait some time, however, and whilst I sat alone the door opened and Rachel Leonard came ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... are,' retorted Miss Squeers with a low curtsy, 'almost as witty, ma'am, as you are clever. How very clever it was in you, ma'am, to choose a time when I had gone to tea with my pa, and was sure not to come back without being fetched! What a pity you never thought ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... ground-floor. In the main hall Alresca's housekeeper, evidently an old acquaintance, greeted Rosa with a curtsy, and she stopped to speak to the woman. I ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... she, with her forefinger up; and then when I tried to lay hands on her again, she gave a little dainty curtsy, and was off ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I was going up Pippen Hill, Pippen Hill was dirty; There I met a pretty Miss, And she dropped me a curtsy. ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... ye may t' squoire a curtsy, wench, an thonk him," said Tetlow, nudging his pretty wife, who had turned away, rather embarrassed by the free gaze of the squire. Nicholas, however, did not wait for the curtsy, but went away, laughing, to overtake Richard Assheton, who ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... autocratic vein strongly stood out even in this more sickly type of a barbarous autocracy. It is the fashion at present, at least among some who take the name of "philosophical Radicals" in vain when they curtsy before a Machiavellian tyrant, to dwell with admiring pride upon the philanthropic character of Alexander the Benevolent. All the cardinal virtues are his. He is the Liberator of the Serfs, the Deliverer of Downtrodden Nationalities, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... was a strange little figure, and showed a shy awkwardness at the grandeur of his surroundings. He bobbed a funny little curtsy to Ruth, whom he already adored, and with an embarrassed nod, included the rest of us in a ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... do you Of course I shall be pleased and" (making him a little curtsy) "honored, as one ought to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... girl had a lithe gracefulness and stately bearing unusual in those of her class—whose exhibitions were rather of the fast and furious kind with a liberal display of their forms—and when with a last low curtsy she ended, there was plenty of applause from all save the two monks. They eyed her with a displeasure they took no trouble to conceal; and when she tripped lightly over to them and extended her tambourine for an offering ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... to flatter you; and it is to this end I say, you are Italians without the subtlety of the Italian, and Greeks without their genius.—You need not curtsy so profoundly.—I could say worse than this, Kate, if I were minded ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... a deep curtsy when, opening the door to the autocratic summons of Crashaw's rat-a-tat, she saw the great man of the district at her threshold. Challis raised his hat. Crashaw did not imitate his example; he was all officiousness, he had the air of a chief ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... Bee Nurse came running up in an instant and opened the doors. "What are your graces' orders?" she asked, dropping a curtsy and scraping the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... family, not only at court, but elsewhere. It is not so strange-looking, the kneeling to a royal lady, but to see a stately mother or some soft maiden rendering such an act of homage to a chit of a boy or a gross young gentleman impresses one unpleasantly. The curtsy of a lady to a prince or princess is something between kneeling and that queer genuflection one meets in the English agricultural districts: the props of the boys and girls seem momentarily to be knocked away, and they suddenly catch themselves in descending. It ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... do you wish with me?' exclaimed I to her. 'Ah! you are a woman, and of a sex I abhor, and can no longer tolerate; the very gentleness of your look threatens me with some new treason. Go, leave me here alone!' She made me a curtsy without uttering a word, and turned to go out. I called to her to stop: 'Tell me at least,' said I, 'wherefore— how—with what design they sent you here? how did you discover my name, or the place where you ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... later, in Mrs. Littlefield's pretty drawing-room, amid music, lights, and talk, Miss Crowe was sweeping a grand curtsy before a tall, sallow man, whose name she caught from her hostess's redundant murmur as Bruce. Five minutes later, when the honest matron gave a glance at her newly started enterprise from the other side of the room, she said to herself that really, for a plain country-girl, Miss Crowe ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... She never comes down into the courtyard now to dance with us. She used to. Then I used to watch out of the window, and run down. It was so jolly, playing with her. We used to go round and round her and sing! 'We all bow to Hanne, we curtsy all to Hanne, we all turn round before her!' And then we bowed and curtsied and suddenly we all turned round. I tell you, it was jolly! You ought to have ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... door of the house in which they lodged, when his mistress, perceiving, by the countenance of her comrade, that she was on the point of desiring him to walk in, checked her intention with a frown; then, turning to Mr. Pickle, dropped him a very formal curtsy, seized the other young lady by the arm, and saying, "Come, cousin Sophy," ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... cousin's duty to make a curtsy, and say, "Father, as it please you;" but for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy, and say, "Father, as it pleases me." SHAKESPEARE, Much Ado ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... stately curtsy, and, taking her candle, went away through the tapestry door, which led to her apartments. Esmond stood by the fireplace, blankly staring after her. Indeed, he scarce seemed to see until she was gone, and then her image was impressed upon ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... points of etiquette and maintain a dignity befitting His Majesty's chosen representative. How did the seigneurs rank among themselves and with the leading English-speaking people? Who were to dance in the state minuet? Should dancing cease when the bishops came in, and for how long? Was that curtsy dropped quite low enough to her viceregal self, and did that debutante offer her blushing cheek in quite the proper way to Carleton when he graciously gave her the presentation kiss? How immeasurably ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... for a little while, and then she reached the foot of the steep hill which led up to her home. The artist gentleman was there as usual, a pipe in his mouth, and a palette on his thumb, painting busily: as she hurriedly dropped a curtsy in passing, ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... my arm and turned to the group about us. "Gentlemen," she said, with a little curtsy, "I know you will excuse us. My cousin Tom and I have not seen each other these three years, and have a hundred things to say;" and so I walked off with her, my head in the air, and my heart beating madly, the proudest man in the colony, I dare say, ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... figure with its flying pigtails swayed and swung, and the pink legs darted in and out. Backward, forward, right glide, left glide, two skips sidewise. Her breath was almost gone, but she rallied her forces for a grand finale. With a curtsy to the bedpost and hands all around, she dashed into the rollicking ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... this Town, says she, is too full: At the same time, Whether she knew enough of Breeding, as that if a Squire or a Gentleman, or one that was her Betters, should give her a civil Salute, she should curtsy and be humble, nevertheless. Her innocent forsooths, yess, and't please yous, and she would do her Endeavour, moved the good old Lady to take her out of the Hands of a Country Bumpkin her Brother, and hire her for her own Maid. I staid till I saw them all marched out to take Coach; ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... procession to me many years after, said that all the country-folk took her for a foreigner. Some dogs, and the boy who held them in charge, made up the company. They rode silently along, looking with grave, serious eyes at the people, who came out of the scattered cottages to bow or curtsy to the real Squire, 'come back at last,' and gazed after the little procession with gaping wonder, not deadened by the sound of the foreign language in which the few necessary words that passed among them were spoken. ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... unblushing impertinence of that countrywoman of mine who called your future king 'Tummy'! but she was a beauty, and I am not pretty enough to be anything but discreetly well-mannered. Shall you sit in his presence, or stand and grovel alternately? Does one have to curtsy? Very well, then, make any excuses you like for me, Hilda: say I'm eccentric, say I'm deranged, say I'm a Nihilist. I will hide under the scullery table, fling myself in the moat, lock myself in the keep, let the portcullis fall on me, die any appropriate early English death,—anything ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... estate during the marriage, and if a living child were born, he had, after the wife's death, a life estate in such property and might retain possession of it while he lived. This was known as the husband's title by curtsy. The wife took a dower, or life estate in one-third of the husband's lands after his death, whether there were children or not. This estate of dower was forfeited should the husband be found guilty of treason, but his ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... patronizing, rich lady, with her handkerchief to her nose and her lorgnette to her eyes—see, like this. I knew just what graft would work her. I knew what she wanted there. I'd learned. So I'd make her a curtsy like this, and in the ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... noise and not a little stench, to the real joy of most of the women present, who don't dislike an opportunity of finding fault. Lady Lucy, indeed, was plentifully abused, and Mr Hobart had his share; and common fame says he has never had a card since. Few women will curtsy to him; and I question if he ever will lead any one to their chair again as long as he lives. I leave you to judge how deeply he feels this wound. Every body says it would never have happened if you had not retired to your studies; and you are a little blamed for letting him out alone. He has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... all directions, and so curtsied herself to the door. But at the door, she stumbled backwards against a good-looking officer with a fresh, open face and splendid thick fair whiskers. This was the superintendent of the district himself, Nikodim Fomitch. Luise Ivanovna made haste to curtsy almost to the ground, and with mincing little steps, she fluttered ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... chair and breathed deeply, slowly—and Miss Sarah appeared that moment in the doorway, pinker of cheek and more tremulous of lip than her brother had ever seen her before. She dropped Allison an old-fashioned curtsy, which was an exceedingly frivolous ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... gathering, and sent the girls hurrying helter-skelter along the terrace in the direction of the house. Irene paused for a moment to look back at the sea and the sky, and the distant twinkling lights, and to curtsy to the crescent moon that hung like a good omen in the dome of blue. There was a scent of fragrant lemon blossoms in the air, and she trod fallen rose petals under her feet. Suddenly a remembrance ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... how to greet a Duke, for such I hear you are become," said Desire with a profound curtsy and ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... not. You will find that you have come among a set who are quite prepared to accept you as a friend." Here she made a little curtsy. "And now I have to offer my sincere apologies for the little proposition I am about to make." It immediately occurred to her that M. Le Gros had betrayed her. He was a very civil spoken, affable, kind old man; but he had betrayed ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... gave her something, and to my surprise after taking it she made me an elaborate curtsy. It rather upset me, for I had thought we had got on very well together and were quite free and easy in our talk, very much on a level. But she was not done with me yet. She followed to the gate, and holding out her open hand with ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... huge kitchen itself, an elderly woman, rolling pastry, paused to curtsy to them, with stolid curiosity in her heavy-featured face. In her character as "single-handed" cook, Mrs. Noakes had sent up uninviting meals to Lady Anstruthers for several years, but she had not seen her ladyship below stairs ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... half a crown to her. She regarded it, clasped it in the hand which was against her bosom, and at length dropped a curtsy, though without speaking. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... always some one higher up to whom German women must curtsy. All women, whatever their husband's rank, must curtsy to a Royal Prince. Unmarried girls curtsy to married women and kiss their hands. Men, on meeting women, always kiss ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... liked his manner, and, entering into the spirit of the thing, swept as grand a curtsy as her limited ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... might have been somebody else—a real Excellency—or heaven knows what! Or, what is worse in your new magnificence, you might have forgotten one of your oldest, most humble, but faithful subjects." She drew back and made him a mock ceremonious curtsy, that even in its charming exaggeration suggested to Paul, however, that she had ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... in merry glee, sprang up, and with a triumphant curtsy and a "No, you don't, sir—not this time," joined ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... you meet my doll in company with your go-cart, be pleased to pay my respects to them." Saying this, she made a low curtsy, and ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... William must have had a very large business. One likes to think that Major Washington dealt with Sewell, and it is not difficult to imagine on ball evenings Mrs. Carlyle's maid rushing in, making a hasty curtsy and breathlessly demanding Madam's wig; or perhaps Mrs. Fairfax's maid presents Mrs. Fairfax's compliments and "Please, will Mr. Sewell come at two o'clock to dress Mistress Fairfax's hair?" Nor, is it difficult to picture William, when the shop day is ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... lived in his cottage in the lane. The woman whose husband had died attended to things in general, the daughter assisted in the dairy, and worked very often up at the Hall. A pretty girl of a common, rustic style of beauty, and about sixteen years old; she used to curtsy to me when she met me, but I had never cast my eyes at her. As I skulked out through the rick-yard into the shrubbery-walk leading to the Hall I met her, stopped, and had a chat, a joke, and finished by a kiss, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... enough to hear his words. Rosalind tripped past her three fellow-students with an airy little nod and the faint beginning of a mocking curtsy. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... disappointed; for the hostess was no sooner asked the question than she readily agreed; and, with a curtsy and smile, wished them a good journey. However, lest Fanny's skill in physiognomy should be called in question, we will venture to assign one reason which might probably incline her to this confidence and good-humour. When Adams said he was going to visit his brother, he ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... corner suddenly, he came upon a little person in a large white cap, with a large white apron on, in which she was gathering sweet pot-herbs, thyme, and basil, and mint, and savory, and sage, and marjoram. She stood up and dropped a curtsy. ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... Prince Charming?' And Madame von Eisenthal swept him a deep curtsy with a killing glance ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be obeyed," said the little lady, making a low curtsy; and she and her company passed out through the window, ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... more. He called her in tones of command, entreaty, expostulation, and impatience. At last he shouted to her menacingly. She placed her thumbnail against the tip of her nose; spread her fingers; and made him a curtsy. He uttered an imprecation, and returned angrily to the house, saying, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... by the little by-play of the speakers, they gave rise to a considerable amount of ferment in the fashionable world. Lady Lufton, as she retreated back on to Dr. Easyman, curtsied low; she curtsied low and slowly, and with a haughty arrangement of her drapery that was all her own; but the curtsy, though it was eloquent, did not say half so much,—did not reprobate the habitual iniquities of the duke with a voice nearly as potent as that which was expressed in the gradual fall of her eye and the gradual pressure of her ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... more exciting occurrences; and when the girls reached the farm they were greeted by Mrs. Miles, her two big boys, and the farmer himself. Here Harris dropped a curtsy and disappeared. ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... not come forward and curtsy as she had done before, but she held Silas's hand in hers and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... another train leaves to-night," cried Lizzie; then she made an effort to compose herself, and a curtsy, rising from her seat. "I must do it myself, sir, thank you all the same," she said, and went away tottering and unsteady in her great trouble: yet only half believing him after all. For how, oh ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... moves away with an august curtsy. I can't tell how it is, or what it is, in that lady; but she says, "How do you do?" as nobody else knows how to say it. In all her actions, motions, thoughts, I would wager there is the same calm grace and harmony. She is not very handsome, being very thin, and rather sad-looking. She is ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... scullery were deemed sufficient at Fullerton, were here carried on in appropriate divisions, commodious and roomy. The number of servants continually appearing did not strike her less than the number of their offices. Wherever they went, some pattened girl stopped to curtsy, or some footman in dishabille sneaked off. Yet this was an abbey! How inexpressibly different in these domestic arrangements from such as she had read about—from abbeys and castles, in which, though certainly larger than Northanger, all the dirty work of the house was to be done ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... mother—God bless you!" cried Benita in Spanish. Then, in spite of her stiff joints, she made a deep, old-fashioned curtsy. ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... get on very well with poor people, George. It's very dreadful, I know, but there!—I'm not Lady Maxwell—and I can't help it. Of course, with the poor people at home in our own cottages it's different—they always curtsy and are very respectful—but Mrs. Matthews says the people here are so independent, and think nothing of being rude to you if they ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Malvina regarded the Professor as a person of importance. Evidently her intention was to curtsy, an operation that, hampered by those trailing yards of clinging khaki, might prove—so it flashed upon the Professor—not only difficult ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... what to do? You give your card to the aide-de-camp, he passes it on and spreads out your train, and you walk right up to His Excellency; he kisses you on both cheeks, you curtsy, and, at the far door, two aides-de-camp pick up your train and place it ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... obliged to you, miss," said the old dame with a curtsy. "'Tis kind of you to say that can stand over till Maggie's better. She just dropped off for a bit of sleep, and thought as how she would be safe like, seein' that we don't get no mor'n four or five of them things in a week these days—not but what there's more when the Major's ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... N. lowering &c v.; depression; dip &c (concavity) 252; abasement; detrusion^; reduction. overthrow, overset^, overturn; upset; prostration, subversion, precipitation. bow; courtesy, curtsy; genuflexion^, genuflection, kowtow, obeisance, salaam. V. depress, lower, let down, take down, let down a peg, take down a peg; cast; let drop, let fall; sink, debase, bring low, abase, reduce, detrude^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... into a chair, and asked Elsworthy if there was any news. Mrs Elsworthy, who had been telling the adventures of the holiday to her goodman, gathered up her basket of eggs and her nosegay, and made the clergyman a little curtsy as she hurried away; for the clerk's wife was a highly respectable woman, and knew her own place. But Rosa, who was only a kind of kitten, and had privileges, stayed. Mr Wentworth was by far the most magnificent figure she had ever seen in her little life. She looked at him ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... which it was charming to hear how my friend Samuel WOULD speak, what he called French, to a lady who could not understand one syllable of his jargon—the mutual hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the Captain a graceful French curtsy. "Adyou!" said Samuel, and waved his lily ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... long summer vacation they met on the street one day and exchanged a few rather forced pleasantries. It suddenly dawned on Fanny that he was patronizing her much as the scion of an aristocratic line banters the housemaid whom he meets on the stairs. She bit an imaginary apron corner, and bobbed a curtsy right there on Elm Street, in front of the Courier office and walked off, leaving him staring. It was shortly after this that she began a queer line of reading for a girl—lives of Disraeli, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Mozart—distinguished Jews who ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... condemned all the Venetian gondolas to perpetual and uniform blackness. Mr. Bernard, introduced by Mr. Geordie, made his bow to the Colonel and his lady and to Miss Matilda, from whom he got a particularly gracious curtsy, and then began looking about him for acquaintances. He found two or three faces he knew,—many more strangers. There was Silas Peckham,—there was no mistaking him; there was the inelastic amplitude of Mrs. Peckham; few of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the road. A young woman, with a pale face and sad-looking blue eyes, was standing at the gate with a baby in her arms. As the phaeton drove up, a faint colour came to her white face; she dropped a little curtsy and was turning away, but stopped when the old lady called to her. The young woman approached, with an air of timidity, of passive obedience, which was as ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... trouble, my lord," she retorted, sweeping him a curtsy. "I can guess what it is, without ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... best, if I could keep myself clear until Monday, the 7th of April. But in case that day should be too late for the beginning of your brief visit with a deference to any other engagements you have in contemplation, then fix an earlier one, and I will make "Little Dorrit" curtsy to it. My recent visit to London and my having only just now come back have thrown me a little behindhand; but I hope to come up with a wet sail in ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... songez, Mademoiselle," quoth he, interrupted in some observation rather better worth hearing, "que tout le monde ne possede pas votre force de caractere;" a compliment to which the young lady assented with a grateful curtsy. ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... John and the somewhat awesome Maria—to whom Grandpa and Grandma Burton never could learn not to curtsy—arrived; and almost at once Grandma Burton discovered that not only "farm things," but such precious treasures as the hair wreath and the parlor—set were auctionable. In fact, everything the house contained, except their clothing and a few crayon portraits, ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... the door with a smile of welcome upon his rugged features and a handshake and a pleasant word for everyone. His daughter Susan greeted the men with a little curtsy and kissed the girls upon the cheek. Susan was not pretty, though she was strong and healthy; her laughing blue eyes assured a sunny disposition, and she numbered her ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... old-fashioned dog-irons and fender are polished to exquisite brightness, a Brussels carpet spreads the floor, a bright surbase encircles the room; upon the flossy hearth-rug lies crouched the little canine pet, which Aunt Dolly has washed to snowy whiteness. Aunt Dolly enters the room with a low curtsy, gently raises the poodle, then lays him down as carefully as if he were an heir to the estate. Master is happy, "missus" is happy, and Aunt Dolly is happy; and the large bookcase, filled with well-selected volumes, adds to the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... his memory dwelling in scenes of the dimming past, while Donald's thoughts were busy with the story which he had just heard. The inherent difference between her personality and that of the average mountain girl was explained. The curtsy which she—a three-year-old baby—had made Big Jerry, seemed to indicate that she had been a flower of city hothouse culture before being transplanted to the wilds, and there growing up, in outward semblance ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... instrument or to change the barrels, except the clerk. He had also to place ten decent loaves in a row on the communion table every Sunday morning, which were provided by a charitable bequest for the benefit of the poor widows of the parish. If the widows did not attend service to curtsy for them, the loaves were given to any one who liked to take them. Old Clerk Briscall baked them himself. He kept a small village shop about two miles from the church. He was also the village shoemaker. A curious system prevailed. As you entered the church, near ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... to send for me! Oh, it was splendid! And Matthew galloped most all the way." She had come as a royal princess, but she was still our Kate. "And you are all out here to meet me!" Here she kissed Harry's mother—"and you too, Uncle George—and Sue—Oh, how fine you all look!"—and with a curtsy and a joyous laugh and a hand-clasp here and there, she bent her head and stepped into the wide hall under the ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... flash I had my whipping in a low dipped curtsy and a mocking smile like that she had ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... gudeman—Ex-sergeant in the Black Watch, and once Orderly to Garth himself—brings out her ain bottle from the spence—a hollow square, and green as emerald. Bless the gurgle of its honest mouth! With prim lips mine hostess kisses the glass, previously letting fall a not inelegant curtsy—for she had, we now learned, been a lady's maid in her youth to one who is indeed a lady, all the time her lover was abroad in the army, in Egypt, Ireland, and the West Indies, and Malta, and Guernsey, Sicily, Portugal, Holland, and, we think she said, Corfu. One of the children has been ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... joy of most of the women present, who don't dislike an opportunity of finding fault. Lady Lucy, indeed, was plentifully abused, and Mr Hobart had his share; and common fame says he has never had a card since. Few women will curtsy to him; and I question if he ever will lead any one to their chair again as long as he lives. I leave you to judge how deeply he feels this wound. Every body says it would never have happened if you had not retired to your studies; and you are a little blamed for letting him out alone. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... her feet and bobbed a curtsy. She was never lacking in respect to white people of proper quality; but Major Carteret, the quintessence of aristocracy, called out all her reserves of deference. The major was always kind and considerate to these old family retainers, brought up in the feudal ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... lounged with them to the door of the house in which they lodged, when his mistress, perceiving, by the countenance of her comrade, that she was on the point of desiring him to walk in, checked her intention with a frown; then, turning to Mr. Pickle, dropped him a very formal curtsy, seized the other young lady by the arm, and saying, "Come, cousin Sophy," ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Madame de Pompadour passed through the private apartments with the Prince de Soubise, and my patron hastened to point me out to the illustrious lady. She made me a graceful curtsy, and told me that she had been much interested in the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... his manner, and, entering into the spirit of the thing, swept as grand a curtsy as her limited drapery would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... already noticed, had discreetly retired to some distance, that her presence might be no check upon the private conversation of her lord and lady, now came forward; and as she made her reverential curtsy, the Earl could not help smiling at the contrast which the extreme simplicity of her dress, and the prim demureness of her looks, made with a very pretty countenance and a pair of black eyes, that laughed in spite of their mistress's desire ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Mistress Betty alighted at last, entered the wicket-gate, and approached the small, weather-stained, brick house. She made her curtsy to madam, asked the Vicar's blessing—though he was not twenty-five years her senior and scarcely so wise—hugged the little girls, particularly sick Fiddy, and showered upon them pretty tasteful town treasures, which little country girls, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... kind sir." Dropping him a curtsy, Trudy repaired to do the dishes and swiggle an oil mop about the floor briefly. Then she burnt some scented powder and pulled down the window shades. This constituted getting the establishment in order, the slavey having gone tootling ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... leave. I went away the more gratified that I had a chance of lifting my cap to a matron, dark-haired and comely, (who, I was sure, at a glance, had once been the maiden of Benjie Westham's "troth-plight,") and receiving a handsome curtsy in return. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... browse the hay-field's fragrant heats, Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats; 80 I dog thee through the market's throngs To where the sea with myriad tongues Laps the green edges of the pier, And the tall ships that eastward steer, Curtsy their farewells to the town, O'er the curved distance lessening down: I follow allwhere for thy sake, Touch thy robe's hem, but ne'er o'ertake, Find where, scarce yet unmoving, lies, Warm from thy limbs, thy last ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... placed the unwelcome hat therein and closed his fingers over it. "The explanation for all this," she went on, making him a curtsy, "is very simple. We have been invited to spend the ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... are you?" cried a silver-toned voice from a passage outside the drawing-room in which I had just seated myself. The next instant a lovely face appeared at the door, its owner tripped into the room, made a comical curtsy, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... peculiar. She never comes down into the courtyard now to dance with us. She used to. Then I used to watch out of the window, and run down. It was so jolly, playing with her. We used to go round and round her and sing! 'We all bow to Hanne, we curtsy all to Hanne, we all turn round before her!' And then we bowed and curtsied and suddenly we all turned round. I tell you, it was jolly! You ought to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... at the door with a smile of welcome upon his rugged features and a handshake and a pleasant word for everyone. His daughter Susan greeted the men with a little curtsy and kissed the girls upon the cheek. Susan was not pretty, though she was strong and healthy; her laughing blue eyes assured a sunny disposition, and she numbered her suitors by ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... I made her a curtsy, and walked out of the room. I found the dressing-room where I had left my cloak, fully determined to go home at once, if I could only get the carriage. I had to wait some time, however, and whilst ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... from their minds. "Mais, songez, Mademoiselle," quoth he, interrupted in some observation rather better worth hearing, "que tout le monde ne possede pas votre force de caractere;" a compliment to which the young lady assented with a grateful curtsy. ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... faces; square cut bodices, lace stomachers, paniers over brocaded skirts with lace panels; feet encased in high heel satin slippers with jewelled buckles; and gracefully managing their ostrich feather fans as they curtsy to their partners; the latter wearing wigs also powdered white, long coats of brocade, elaborately embroidered waistcoats with lace jabots, satin knee breeches, silk stockings and a garter with jewelled buckle on the right leg, and helping themselves to snuff out of gold or silver boxes during ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... her hand to touch a coffin-lid. She no longer saw the forms about her, scarce felt the pressure of Sidney's hand, knew not, so brave a lady was she, so fixed her habit of the court, that she smiled upon the group she was leaving and swept them a formal curtsy. She found herself in the deserted outer gallery with Sidney,—they were in the recess of a window, and he was speaking. She put her hand to her brow. "Is ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... it was charming to hear how my friend Samuel WOULD speak, what he called French, to a lady who could not understand one syllable of his jargon—the mutual hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the Captain a graceful French curtsy. "Adyou!" said Samuel, and waved his ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... embarrassment in her pleasure, and made him an elaborate curtsy, saying, with a half-merry, half-reproachful glance, "Mr. Talbot is welcome ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... refuse you the privilege of choosing your own Prince, Princess," said Miss Claydon with a graceful curtsy. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... be presented come along. They curtsy to the King, then to the Queen, and disappear in the rooms farther on. The Ambassadors (all in gaudy uniforms but me) stand near the throne—stand through the whole performance. One night after an hour or two of ladies coming along and curtsying and disappearing, I whispered ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... quick-eyed, and threw a nod and a "How do you do?" in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the entrance ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... found herself silently whispering, "Curtsy while you're thinking—it saves time," but ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... And do you Of course I shall be pleased and" (making him a little curtsy) "honored, as one ought to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was going up primrose Hill Primrose Hill was dirty; There I met a pretty Miss, And she dropped me a curtsy. ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... Dunshunner, welcome to my humble tabernacle. Let me present you to Mrs Sawley"—and a lady, who seemed to have bathed in the Yellow Sea, rose from her seat, and favoured me with a profound curtsy. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... manipulate the instrument or to change the barrels, except the clerk. He had also to place ten decent loaves in a row on the communion table every Sunday morning, which were provided by a charitable bequest for the benefit of the poor widows of the parish. If the widows did not attend service to curtsy for them, the loaves were given to any one who liked to take them. Old Clerk Briscall baked them himself. He kept a small village shop about two miles from the church. He was also the village shoemaker. ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... flatter you; and it is to this end I say, you are Italians without the subtlety of the Italian, and Greeks without their genius.—You need not curtsy so profoundly.—I could say worse than this, Kate, if I were minded to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... have been wrongfully condemned." My own experience in the law courts leads me to accept these statements without reserve, and I regard as one of the gravest scandals of our present penal system the ease with which a girl who makes a pretty curtsy to the court, and who appears to be shamefaced when giving her evidence, is believed by the judge or magistrate. The dangers involved in this are obvious to many, especially to those who have much to do with children. An actor personally known to me, constantly ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... by the hand and they moved toward the door. Polly turned just as they were passing through the door and made her quaint and graceful curtsy, saying, "I am glad I came, and I guess we will be ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... a stately curtsy, and, taking her candle, went away through the tapestry door, which led to her apartments. Esmond stood by the fireplace, blankly staring after her. Indeed, he scarce seemed to see until she was gone, and then her image was impressed upon him and remained forever fixed upon his memory. ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... Queen drank the stuff in the pot, which was quite cool by this time, and she went out under the fringe of snakes, and they all behaved like good Sunday-school children. Some of them even tried to drop a curtsy to her as she went by, though that is not easy when you are hanging wrong way up by your tail. But the snakes knew the Queen was friends with their mistress; so, of course, they had to do their best ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... laughing, singing, talking loudly. Stumbling over a log his burning eyes had not seen, he turned in grotesque humor to offer curtsy and abject apology, then hastened on upward. Later, carroming from a huge tree he had hit head on, he addressed it in grave good humor: "Please keep to the right." His flushed face purple in the green light of the deep woods, he hurried on, again worrying ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... was a vain one. The man smiled quizzically at Nora, who acknowledged the salutation by a curtsy which would have frightened away the banshees of her childhood. Nora hated scenes, and Courtlandt had the advantage of her in his knowledge of this. Celeste remained at the piano, but Nora turned as ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle, I can be content to pass for nothing ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... memory dwelling in scenes of the dimming past, while Donald's thoughts were busy with the story which he had just heard. The inherent difference between her personality and that of the average mountain girl was explained. The curtsy which she—a three-year-old baby—had made Big Jerry, seemed to indicate that she had been a flower of city hothouse culture before being transplanted to the wilds, and there growing up, in outward semblance ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... crown to her. She regarded it, clasped it in the hand which was against her bosom, and at length dropped a curtsy, though without speaking. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... the speech which has carried the opposition against him, and sees his honorable friend slipping into the place he has manoeuvred for at the expense of manliness, truth, consistency, and honesty, does he not conjugate the verb valoir negatively? When Madame Favorita has made her last curtsy for the night behind the foot-lights, has thrown off her tawdry frippery, and sits in her lonely chamber, glowering at the image of the young rival who has won all the applause,—when she bemoans her waning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... lifted, leaving the dew thick on the grass by the ditch, and on the moss and the ivy in the hedgerow bank. The larks soared once more into the sky; a robin sang wistfully in the ash; a brown wren, with many a flick of her tiny wings and many a merry curtsy, hopped in and out among the trees, trilling loudly a gleeful carol. The tits flew hither and thither, twittering to each other as they flew. The hedge-sparrows' metallic notes sounded clear amid all the varied music, as the birds, moving among the hazels and gently ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... In the main hall Alresca's housekeeper, evidently an old acquaintance, greeted Rosa with a curtsy, and she stopped to speak to the woman. I went ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... flitting about area-railings; dingy shawls which drop you furtive curtsies in your neighborhood; demure little Jacks, who start up from behind boxes in the pantry. Those outsiders wear Thomas's crest and livery, and call him "Sir;" those silent women address the female servants as "Mum," and curtsy before them, squaring their arms over their wretched lean aprons. Then, again, those servi servorum have dependants in the vast, silent, poverty-stricken world outside your comfortable kitchen fire, in the world of darkness, and hunger, and miserable cold, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to hear his words. Rosalind tripped past her three fellow-students with an airy little nod and the faint beginning of a mocking curtsy. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... that condemned all the Venetian gondolas to perpetual and uniform blackness. Mr. Bernard, introduced by Mr. Geordie, made his bow to the Colonel and his lady and to Miss Matilda, from whom he got a particularly gracious curtsy, and then began looking about him for acquaintances. He found two or three faces he knew,—many more strangers. There was Silas Peckham,—there was no mistaking him; there was the inelastic amplitude of Mrs. Peckham; few of the Apollinean girls, of course, they not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "You've only got to curtsy, whisper, hold your chin up, laugh and lisp, And then you're sure to take: I've known the day when brats, not quite Thirteen, got fifty pounds a night; Then why ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... face of Madame Cerise relaxed to allow a quaint smile to flit across it. She returned Fogerty's bow with a deep curtsy. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... lowering &c. v.; depression; dip &c. (concavity) 252; abasement; detrusion[obs3]; reduction. overthrow, overset[obs3], overturn; upset; prostration, subversion, precipitation. bow; courtesy, curtsy; genuflexion[obs3], genuflection, kowtow, obeisance, salaam. V. depress, lower, let down, take down, let down a peg, take down a peg; cast; let drop, let fall; sink, debase, bring low, abase, reduce, detrude[obs3], pitch, precipitate. overthrow, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... slight blush, and curtsy, concluded the interview; and the young ladies hastily left the shop. Mr. Bobbinet was disappointed, as, indeed, was Col. Silky, who was present, en amateur; but the matter could not be helped, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... him away. I walked beside, and as we came down across the sea-meadows, the sun broke out and we met little groups of schoolchildren making their way down to the beach to see what was doing with the wreck. They stood aside to let us go by, the boys pulling their caps and the girls dropping a curtsy, when they knew that it was a poor drowned body passing; and as I saw the children I thought I saw myself among them, and I was no more a man, but just come out from Mr. Glennie's teaching in the old ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... priest, The people shall all be bid to the feast! Pages so courtly shall guide your steed, And beautiful flowers be strewn at your feet, The peasant shall bow to the ground like a weed, His wife shall curtsy to you as is meet! The church bell shall ring to the countryside: Now rides Olaf Liljekrans home with ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... and her wide mouth distended from ear to ear, with a grin so truly uncouth and comic, that Mrs. Lyndsay could scarcely restrain her laughter; with a downward jerk of her broad shapeless person, meant for a curtsy, she burst out in a rude ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Phillips's little drawing-room, accompanying, and strongly contrasting with, three gentlemen in scarlet and gold. Hurriedly did the good old lady seize her spectacles, and rising to receive her guests with a delighted curtsy, scan curiously for a few moments Turpin's athletic proportions, and the fox-hunter's close-fitting leathers and tops. As for Dawson, he stood like the clear-complexioned and magnificently-whiskered officer, who silently invites the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... head in merry glee, sprang up, and with a triumphant curtsy and a "No, you don't, sir—not this time," joined her ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... could forbear playing the Wanton with Servants, and idle fellows, of which this Town, says she, is too full: At the same time, Whether she knew enough of Breeding, as that if a Squire or a Gentleman, or one that was her Betters, should give her a civil Salute, she should curtsy and be humble, nevertheless. Her innocent forsooths, yess, and't please yous, and she would do her Endeavour, moved the good old Lady to take her out of the Hands of a Country Bumpkin her Brother, and hire her ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... folding them in a red case, and leaning back in his arm-chair, turning the case about in his two hands, he gave my godmother a nod. Upon that, my godmother said, "You may go upstairs, Esther!" And I made him my curtsy ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... a sweeping impetuosity, drew up her slender height, and made him a curtsy, a flower bending buoyantly to the ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... Silly boy!" said she, with her forefinger up; and then when I tried to lay hands on her again, she gave a little dainty curtsy, and ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in order to divert her thought from the person of our knight errant, for his cruelty to her had been such that the very thought of that had now blotted him out of her memory forever. And, pretending to wipe a tear from her eye, she made a curtsy to the Duchess and ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... should you meet my doll in company with your go-cart, be pleased to pay my respects to them." Saying this, she made a low curtsy, and turned her ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... sweeping bow and great assumption of courtesy, made your great-great-grandmother welcome to remain in his house. After the suit had been settled, Williams had occasion to come again to the house, feeling, no doubt, rather crestfallen. Mrs. Devereux met him at the door and, making him a sweeping curtsy, quoted his exact words, making him welcome to ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... little by-play of the speakers, they gave rise to a considerable amount of ferment in the fashionable world. Lady Lufton, as she retreated back on to Dr. Easyman, curtsied low; she curtsied low and slowly, and with a haughty arrangement of her drapery that was all her own; but the curtsy, though it was eloquent, did not say half so much,—did not reprobate the habitual iniquities of the duke with a voice nearly as potent as that which was expressed in the gradual fall of her eye and the gradual pressure of her lips. When she commenced her curtsy she was ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... made him a curtsy, and papa made him a bow; and Dr. Snorter, the parson, seized his hand and shook it most warmly: then ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his chair and breathed deeply, slowly—and Miss Sarah appeared that moment in the doorway, pinker of cheek and more tremulous of lip than her brother had ever seen her before. She dropped Allison an old-fashioned curtsy, which was an exceedingly frivolous ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... and to my surprise after taking it she made me an elaborate curtsy. It rather upset me, for I had thought we had got on very well together and were quite free and easy in our talk, very much on a level. But she was not done with me yet. She followed to the gate, and holding out her open hand with that small gift in it, she said ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... overcast. In dumb despair Elena stared at the thick network of fast-falling drops. Her last hope of getting a sight of Insarov was vanishing. A little old beggar-woman came into the chapel, shook herself, said with a curtsy: 'Out of the rain, good lady,' and with many sighs and groans sat down on a ledge near the well. Elena put her hand into her pocket; the old woman noticed this action and a light came into her face, yellow and wrinkled ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... up to me. 'Well, miss,' says she, 'and what are you at work upon?' The word miss was a language that had hardly been heard of in our school, and I wondered what sad name it was she called me. However, I stood up, made a curtsy, and she took my work out of my hand, looked on it, and said it was very well; then she took up one of the hands. 'Nay,' says she, 'the child may come to be a gentlewoman for aught anybody knows; she has ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... and de hoss come a-bringing Marse Tom down de road. Mammy drap everything in the dust and grab her apron to drap a curtsy. She 'low—'Git dat hat off dat head and bow your head fo' ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... ought to banish the idea of death and such dismal bugbears from their minds. "Mais, songez, Mademoiselle," quoth he, interrupted in some observation rather better worth hearing, "que tout le monde ne possede pas votre force de caractere;" a compliment to which the young lady assented with a grateful curtsy. ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... the lane. The woman whose husband had died attended to things in general, the daughter assisted in the dairy, and worked very often up at the Hall. A pretty girl of a common, rustic style of beauty, and about sixteen years old; she used to curtsy to me when she met me, but I had never cast my eyes at her. As I skulked out through the rick-yard into the shrubbery-walk leading to the Hall I met her, stopped, and had a chat, a joke, and finished by a kiss, which she took in ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... sir—far from it. It's only a little matter of four or five hundred pounds, sir,' said Susy, dropping him an awkward little curtsy, which he thought most charming. 'The money is in the bank, and earns no interest, and I thought I would like to invest it where it would ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... the apartment, the two ladies facing inward, like soldiers on their post when about to salute a superior officer, dropped on either hand of the father a curtsy so profound that the hoop petticoats which performed the feat seemed to sink down to the very floor, nay, through it, as if a trap-door had opened for the descent of the dames who performed this act ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... facilities at their disposal, and in reviving their almost forgotten enthusiams. I have seen sons and daughters stand in complete surprise as their mother's knitting needles softly beat time to the song she was singing, or her worn face turned rosy under the hand-clapping as she made an old-fashioned curtsy at the end of a German poem. It was easy to fancy a growing touch of respect in her children's manner to her, and a rising enthusiasm for German literature and reminiscence on the part of all the family, an effort to bring together the old life and the new, a respect ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... very well with poor people, George. It's very dreadful, I know, but there!—I'm not Lady Maxwell—and I can't help it. Of course, with the poor people at home in our own cottages it's different—they always curtsy and are very respectful—but Mrs. Matthews says the people here are so independent, and think nothing of being rude to you if ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him that I could not possibly stay, it would bore my father stiff, as he hated sitting up late; also I was not dressed for dancing and had no idea there was going to be a ball. When supper was over, I made my best curtsy and, after presenting my father to the Prince, went ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... than his wonted care, the rev. junior bursar of Oriel was introduced into Mrs Phillips's little drawing-room, accompanying, and strongly contrasting with, three gentlemen in scarlet and gold. Hurriedly did the good old lady seize her spectacles, and rising to receive her guests with a delighted curtsy, scan curiously for a few moments Turpin's athletic proportions, and the fox-hunter's close-fitting leathers and tops. As for Dawson, he stood like the clear-complexioned and magnificently-whiskered officer, who silently invites the stranger ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... such persons, declaring that they have been wrongfully condemned." My own experience in the law courts leads me to accept these statements without reserve, and I regard as one of the gravest scandals of our present penal system the ease with which a girl who makes a pretty curtsy to the court, and who appears to be shamefaced when giving her evidence, is believed by the judge or magistrate. The dangers involved in this are obvious to many, especially to those who have much to do with children. ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... out her hand to him, and as he took it, sank to the stone floor in a superb curtsy. "Because I claim your gracious protection, my lord the king. I ask ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... with an august curtsy. I can't tell how it is, or what it is, in that lady; but she says, "How do you do?" as nobody else knows how to say it. In all her actions, motions, thoughts, I would wager there is the same calm grace and harmony. She is not very handsome, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... suddenly, he came upon a little person in a large white cap, with a large white apron on, in which she was gathering sweet pot-herbs, thyme, and basil, and mint, and savory, and sage, and marjoram. She stood up and dropped a curtsy. ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... Doctor,—an' dere's where I 'gree wid him," said Candace, as she gathered her baskets vigorously together, and, after a sweeping curtsy, went sailing down to her wagon, full laden with content, shouting a hearty "Good mornin', Missus," with the full power of her cheerful lungs, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... peruke. William must have had a very large business. One likes to think that Major Washington dealt with Sewell, and it is not difficult to imagine on ball evenings Mrs. Carlyle's maid rushing in, making a hasty curtsy and breathlessly demanding Madam's wig; or perhaps Mrs. Fairfax's maid presents Mrs. Fairfax's compliments and "Please, will Mr. Sewell come at two o'clock to dress Mistress Fairfax's hair?" Nor, is it difficult to picture William, when the shop day is over, with his ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... Miss Deborah, who had dropped her nephew's arm, so that she might be more cautious about the mud, and who lifted her skirt on each side, as though she was about to make a curtsy,—"he's right: a woman ought to think just as her husband does; it is quite wrong in dear Helen not to, and it will bring unhappiness. Indeed, it is a lesson to all ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... handkerchiefs. No, I can't say I'm shedding tears myself unless they're crocodile ones. Please to recollect in future, my dears, when you speak to me, that you're addressing a member of the Upper School! You're only little Junior girls! Ta-ta!" and with a mock curtsy, in process of which she nearly dropped her pile of books, Gwen retired laughing from the Fourth Form to take her place and try her luck among ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... Rodney's chair to offer him her hand and drop her curtsy; took a carnation from a bowl on the table and tucked it into his button-hole, slid her arm around his ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... for Mr. Casaubon was looking absently before him; but the lady was quick-eyed, and threw a nod and a "How do you do?" in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the entrance of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... hands I rudely repulsed her. 'What do you wish with me?' exclaimed I to her. 'Ah! you are a woman, and of a sex I abhor, and can no longer tolerate; the very gentleness of your look threatens me with some new treason. Go, leave me here alone!' She made me a curtsy without uttering a word, and turned to go out. I called to her to stop: 'Tell me at least,' said I, 'wherefore— how—with what design they sent you here? how did you discover my name, or the place where you could ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... last Week into a Coffee-house not far from the Exchange with my Basket under my Arm, a Jew of considerable Note, as I am informed, takes half a Dozen Oranges of me, and at the same time slides a Guinea into my Hand; I made him a Curtsy, and went my Way: He follow'd me, and finding I was going about my Business, he came up with me, and told me plainly, that he gave me the Guinea with no other Intent but to purchase my Person for an Hour. Did you so, Sir? says I: You gave it me then to make me ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... and then, for all her weight, bobbed a curtsy. "Dat's all right, Miss 'Chanda, yo' ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... up primrose Hill Primrose Hill was dirty; There I met a pretty Miss, And she dropped me a curtsy. ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... hear his words. Rosalind tripped past her three fellow-students with an airy little nod and the faint beginning of a mocking curtsy. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... ducking suddenly with a quaint curtsy. Her voice was shrill and piping, but softened somewhat by age. "Is dis yere whar Mistuh Ryduh lib, suh?" she asked, looking around her doubtfully, and glancing into the open windows, through which some of the preparations ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... puffing his way to Amsterdam. Equipped in skates wonderful to behold, with their superb strappings and dazzling runners curving over the instep and topped with gilt balls, he would open his fat eyes a little if one of the maidens chanced to drop him a curtsy but would not dare to bow in return for fear of losing ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... father," said the Maid of the Mill, dropping as low a curtsy as her rustic manners enabled her to make. The Miller, her father, doffed his bonnet, and made his reverence, not altogether so low perhaps as if the young lady had appeared in the pride of rank and riches, yet so as to give high ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... rather forced pleasantries. It suddenly dawned on Fanny that he was patronizing her much as the scion of an aristocratic line banters the housemaid whom he meets on the stairs. She bit an imaginary apron corner, and bobbed a curtsy right there on Elm Street, in front of the Courier office and walked off, leaving him staring. It was shortly after this that she began a queer line of reading for a girl—lives of Disraeli, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Mozart—distinguished ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... kitchen itself, an elderly woman, rolling pastry, paused to curtsy to them, with stolid curiosity in her heavy-featured face. In her character as "single-handed" cook, Mrs. Noakes had sent up uninviting meals to Lady Anstruthers for several years, but she had not seen her ladyship below stairs before. And this was ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... said Laura, with a curtsy, not quite so large as those that grow in dancing schools, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Semple so—though perhaps it ought not to go further just yet. I'd enjoy," said he, "just such work as yours. There's none finer. You'd like me immensely as your royal master, I suppose? Want nothing better than to curtsy and kowtow when I flung out a gracious order?—as, for instance, to shut up shop and go ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the minister's door first, of course; and when Mrs. Fairbanks opens the door I shall make my best curtsy, like this:" and Faith took a bit of her skirt in each hand, and bent in a very pretty curtsy indeed; "and I shall say: 'Good-morning, Mrs. Fairbanks. My Aunt Prissy will be very happy if you and the minister will come to her quilting bee to-morrow ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... rickety chaise over yonder the Ingmar Ingmarsson who had lived during her childhood had driven to church. She remembered that every time he had passed by her and her mother on their way to church, the mother had nudged her and said: "Now you must curtsy, Stina, ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... on two long benches made of split logs. Abe led Nat down the length of the front bench. Each girl rose and made a curtsy. Nat bowed. Each boy rose and bowed. Nat returned the bow. Abe kept saying funny things under his breath that the schoolmaster could not hear. But the children heard, and they could hardly ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... greet a Duke, for such I hear you are become," said Desire with a profound curtsy and ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... my cousin's duty to make a curtsy, and say, "Father, as it please you;" but for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy, and say, "Father, as it pleases me." SHAKESPEARE, Much Ado ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... the dew thick on the grass by the ditch, and on the moss and the ivy in the hedgerow bank. The larks soared once more into the sky; a robin sang wistfully in the ash; a brown wren, with many a flick of her tiny wings and many a merry curtsy, hopped in and out among the trees, trilling loudly a gleeful carol. The tits flew hither and thither, twittering to each other as they flew. The hedge-sparrows' metallic notes sounded clear amid all the varied music, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... passed before Mazarin expressed a wish to see his ugly niece again; and it was indeed a very different Marie who now made her curtsy to him. Gone were the angular figure, the awkward movements, the sallow face, the slow wits. Time and the healthy life of the cloisters had done their work well. What the Cardinal now saw was a girl of seventeen, of exquisitely modelled figure, graceful ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... therefore, at finding the lithe, dashing ensign transformed into a corpulent old general, with a double chin; though it was a perfect picture to witness their salutations; the graciousness of her profound curtsy, and the air of the old school with which the general took off his hat, swayed it gently in his hand, and bowed ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... I had my whipping in a low dipped curtsy and a mocking smile like that she had flung ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... you young people call dancing nowadays. Fox-trot, indeed! And bunny-hug. And rag-time. I never heard such names in my life! We danced the Highland schottische, and the quadrille, and Sir Roger de Coverley. And do you remember your famous curtsy, Esther? And how Madame made you ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... strongly stood out even in this more sickly type of a barbarous autocracy. It is the fashion at present, at least among some who take the name of "philosophical Radicals" in vain when they curtsy before a Machiavellian tyrant, to dwell with admiring pride upon the philanthropic character of Alexander the Benevolent. All the cardinal virtues are his. He is the Liberator of the Serfs, the Deliverer of Downtrodden Nationalities, the Educator and Friend of the People—a monstrous ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... court, but elsewhere. It is not so strange-looking, the kneeling to a royal lady, but to see a stately mother or some soft maiden rendering such an act of homage to a chit of a boy or a gross young gentleman impresses one unpleasantly. The curtsy of a lady to a prince or princess is something between kneeling and that queer genuflection one meets in the English agricultural districts: the props of the boys and girls seem momentarily to be knocked away, and they suddenly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... agreeably disappointed; for the hostess was no sooner asked the question than she readily agreed; and, with a curtsy and smile, wished them a good journey. However, lest Fanny's skill in physiognomy should be called in question, we will venture to assign one reason which might probably incline her to this confidence and good-humour. When Adams said he was going to visit his ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... Verner might be expected to—to—solicit the honour of my becoming his wife. How I laughed behind their backs! It would have been time enough to turn rebellious when the offer came—which I was quite sure never would come—to make them and him a low curtsy, and say, 'You are very kind, but I must decline the honour.' Did you get any teasings on your ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the unwelcome hat therein and closed his fingers over it. "The explanation for all this," she went on, making him a curtsy, "is very simple. We have been invited to spend the evening ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... brooding over the speech which has carried the opposition against him, and sees his honorable friend slipping into the place he has manoeuvred for at the expense of manliness, truth, consistency, and honesty, does he not conjugate the verb valoir negatively? When Madame Favorita has made her last curtsy for the night behind the foot-lights, has thrown off her tawdry frippery, and sits in her lonely chamber, glowering at the image of the young rival who has won all the applause,—when she bemoans her waning charms and the wearisome life which has lost its sparkle, and sees its emptiness and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... were sitting side by side, and the Gulab, when she had finished the song, had swept her sinuous lithe form back in a graceful curtsy in front of the two, and, as if by accident, a red rose had floated to the feet of Captain Barlow. Surely her soft, dark, languorous ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... hardly worth my while, With such small gear to give myself concern: Indeed I've not the necessary bile; My natural temper's really aught but stern, And even my Muse's worst reproof's a smile; And then she drops a brief and modern curtsy, And glides away, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... her uncle at Smithfield Market. They then went very lovingly together to an inn upon the paven stones, where Moll asked very readily at the bar if Mr. Tompkins (which was the name of her uncle) was there. The woman of the house made her a low curtsy and said he was only stepped over the way to be shaved, and she would call him. She went accordingly and brought the grave old man, who as soon as he came into the room said, Well, Mary, is this thy husband? Yes, sir, answered she, this is the person I have promised to bring you. Upon ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... unjust a cause?" "Mr. Burke saw me," she says, "and he bowed with the most marked civility of manner." This, be it observed, was just after his opening speech, a speech which had produced a mighty effect, and which certainly, no other orator that ever lived could have made. "My curtsy," she continues, "was the most ungrateful, distant and cold; I could not do otherwise; so hurt I felt to see him the head of such a cause." Now, not only had Burke treated her with constant kindness, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... so peculiar. She never comes down into the courtyard now to dance with us. She used to. Then I used to watch out of the window, and run down. It was so jolly, playing with her. We used to go round and round her and sing! 'We all bow to Hanne, we curtsy all to Hanne, we all turn round before her!' And then we bowed and curtsied and suddenly we all turned round. I tell you, it was jolly! You ought ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the house in which they lodged, when his mistress, perceiving, by the countenance of her comrade, that she was on the point of desiring him to walk in, checked her intention with a frown; then, turning to Mr. Pickle, dropped him a very formal curtsy, seized the other young lady by the arm, and saying, "Come, cousin Sophy," vanished in ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... men did was not to compare them two at all. They just stood in line and every one of 'em raised his glass like she was a real queen; and they give her three cheers. Bonnie Bell she drops them a curtsy. ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... her niece are welcome," and Lady Warner made a deep curtsy, not like one of Lady Fareham's sinking curtseys, as of one near swooning in an ecstasy of politeness, but dignified and inflexible, straight down and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... she returned, dropped him a bit of curtsy, and informed him that her mistress would ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... her hand, with a sort of curtsy. It was a pretty greeting, although somewhat mannered; and Dick felt himself among the gods. She led him through the kitchen to a parlour, and ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hear how my friend Samuel WOULD speak, what he called French, to a lady who could not understand one syllable of his jargon—the mutual hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the Captain a graceful French curtsy. "Adyou!" said Samuel, and waved ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... how witty you are,' retorted Miss Squeers with a low curtsy, 'almost as witty, ma'am, as you are clever. How very clever it was in you, ma'am, to choose a time when I had gone to tea with my pa, and was sure not to come back without being fetched! What a pity you never thought that other people might be as ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... moment came when, Lady Baird having preceded me, I handed my bit of pasteboard to the usher; and hearing 'Miss Hamilton' called in stentorian accents, I went forward in my turn, and executed a graceful and elegant, but not too profound curtsy, carefully arranged to suit the semi-royal, semi-ecclesiastical occasion. I had not divulged that fact even to Salemina, but I had worn Mrs. M'Collop's carpet quite threadbare in front of the long mirror, and had curtsied to myself so many times in its crystal surface that I ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... says, 'Colonel Foster, I s'pose,' and I say, 'Certainly.' We arrive at the office and when I introduce myself as Captain Carey's daughter I receive a glad welcome. The Colonel rings a bell and an aged beldame approaches, making a deep curtsy and offering me a beaker of milk, a crusty loaf, a few venison pasties, and a cold goose stuffed with humming birds. When I have reduced these to nothingness I ask if the yellow house on the outskirts of the village is still vacant, and the Colonel replies that it is, at which unexpected ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... radical. He'd like to think of something to say to him just to show him there was another side to it. Not that he gave a damn. Some other time would do. The red face turned with a great attentiveness toward the hoarsely oracular Mr. Warren, his eyes dropping a furtive curtsy in the ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... a wedding dinner. Though the lady, perhaps, has run off with a person below her in rank and station, see when they enter the room, how differently they behave.—How gracefully she waves her head in the fine recover from the withdrawing curtsy, and beautifully extends her hand to the bald-pated individual grinning to her on the rug! While the poor spoon, her husband, looks on, with the white of his eyes turned up as if he were sea-sick, and his hands dangle dangle on his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... half-curtsy, pale and tongue-tied. He turned to deliver hat and whip and gloves to Walters, who had followed him, then closed the door and came forward into ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... Rely on me; and now I must be off, for I have breakfast to get ready, but I'll call again to-morrow;" and with a curtsy she left the room. ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... educated, could forbear playing the Wanton with Servants, and idle fellows, of which this Town, says she, is too full: At the same time, Whether she knew enough of Breeding, as that if a Squire or a Gentleman, or one that was her Betters, should give her a civil Salute, she should curtsy and be humble, nevertheless. Her innocent forsooths, yess, and't please yous, and she would do her Endeavour, moved the good old Lady to take her out of the Hands of a Country Bumpkin her Brother, and hire her for her own Maid. I staid till I saw them all marched ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... genuine—but as for your premium"——So saying, he entered the parlour and made his bow to Mrs. Dods, who, seeing what she called a decent, purpose-like body, and aware that his pocket was replenished with English and Scottish paper currency, returned the compliment with her best curtsy. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... enough for me, and then I bored along tediously through the bill of fare, with a back-ache, not daring to get up and bow to the German family and leave. I meant to sit it through and make them get up and do the bowing; but at last Joe took pity on me and said he would get up and drop them a curtsy and put me out of my misery. I was grateful. He got up and delivered a succession of frank and hearty bows, accompanying them with an atmosphere of good-fellowship which would have made even an English family surrender. Of course ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... merry glee, sprang up, and with a triumphant curtsy and a "No, you don't, sir—not this time," joined her ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... called her in tones of command, entreaty, expostulation, and impatience. At last he shouted to her menacingly. She placed her thumbnail against the tip of her nose; spread her fingers; and made him a curtsy. He uttered an imprecation, and returned angrily to the house, saying, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... might mention—quite casually, of course—to the Prince that he had just given a decoration to Mrs. Poppit of Tilling. And it would make me feel very awkward to think that that had happened, and I was not somewhere about to make my curtsy." ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... Whitefield. But I was a member of the very church in which John Howe, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell, preached, and exercised the pastorate. I was ordained, too, by English Independents. Moreover, I am a Doctor too. Agnes and Janet, get up this moment and curtsy to his Reverence! John and Charles, remember the dream of the sheaves! I descended from kilts and Donald Dhus? Na, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... stench, to the real joy of most of the women present, who don't dislike an opportunity of finding fault. Lady Lucy, indeed, was plentifully abused, and Mr Hobart had his share; and common fame says he has never had a card since. Few women will curtsy to him; and I question if he ever will lead any one to their chair again as long as he lives. I leave you to judge how deeply he feels this wound. Every body says it would never have happened if you had not retired to your studies; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... her tambourine. The girl had a lithe gracefulness and stately bearing unusual in those of her class—whose exhibitions were rather of the fast and furious kind with a liberal display of their forms—and when with a last low curtsy she ended, there was plenty of applause from all save the two monks. They eyed her with a displeasure they took no trouble to conceal; and when she tripped lightly over to them and extended her tambourine for an offering they drew ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... again; but in the act she caught sight of the Signorina Americana dressed in white, smiling above a bouquet of oleanders. Her eyes widened with astonishment. It was long since such an apparition had presented itself at that door. She dropped a curtsy, and the ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... your King. Here he is. Good-bye, Monsieur d'Argenton, may you find all well at Valmy; good night, Monsieur La Mothe, we shall meet again in the morning, or is it already the new day?" and with a smiling curtsy to each she was gone. To Stephen La Mothe it seemed a cold good night after all that had come and gone between them that day, the misunderstood question in her work-room, the shadow of death in the Burnt Mill, and, above all, their nearness as he had stood behind her ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... drank the stuff in the pot, which was quite cool by this time, and she went out under the fringe of snakes, and they all behaved like good Sunday-school children. Some of them even tried to drop a curtsy to her as she went by, though that is not easy when you are hanging wrong way up by your tail. But the snakes knew the Queen was friends with their mistress; so, of course, they had to do ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... Mrs. McGregor, making a quaint English curtsy, "and it's scandalized enough I am to see my boy here racing at you as if he was a wild beast and forgetting all the etiquette I've taught him. He had a nice speech ready to say but where it is ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... the clock strike three-quarters past eleven, she made a low curtsey to the whole assembly, and retired in haste. On reaching home, she found her godmother, and after thanking her for the treat she had enjoyed, she ventured to express a wish to return to the ball on the following evening, as the prince had requested ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... Swimming Pool lives a very old negro woman. Her name is Daphney Wright, though that name has never been heard by those who affectionately know her as "Aunt Affie". She says she is 106 years old. She comes to the door without a cane and greets her guests with accustomed curtsey. She is neatly dressed and still wears a fresh white cap as she did when she worked for the white folks. Save for her wearing glasses and walking slowly, there are no evidences of illness or infirmities. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... slipped off the platform, and the band began to tune up. And the boy who had been sent off the platform to his bobbin frame went up to the pretty girl who had laughed at his oratorical efforts and asked her to dance. She made a mocking curtsey, and refused his request, and John who knew both of them said, "Don't be so saucy, Polly. Samuel will do better next time." But Polly with a little laugh ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... continued, making a curtsey, "if it weren't asking too much," and she curtsied once more, "if you would"—and her eyes begged—"a jar of brandy," she said at last, "and I'd rub your little one's feet with it; they're as tender as ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Hester, "it is only too plain that you are not getting it." She dropped him a small deprecatory curtsey and laughed. "And yet ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... o' mine—" began Captain Cai. But Fancy interrupted him, dropping a slight curtsey, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... memorising a child's catechism, and it was a most amusing picture to see her standing before him with fixed attention, as if she were straining every nerve, and reciting her answers with the drop of a curtsey at each word. She had not been taught to do this, but it was such an effort for her to learn that she ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... was heard from the direction of the house, and turning, Ken saw his sister dropping him a curtsey at the door. "That," she said, "is a poem, not a pome—a ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... the Beargarden exactly at four o'clock on the Monday, and there he found Didon standing in the hall. His heart sank within him as he saw her. Now must he certainly go to New York. She made him a little curtsey, and without a word handed him an envelope, soft and fat with rich enclosures. He bade her wait a moment, and going into a little waiting-room counted the notes. The money was all there;—the full sum of L250. He must certainly go to New York. 'C'est tout en regle?' ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... cunning little basket), and put in it a nice slice of bread and butter, and a peach, and gave her a little bouquet of flowers to present to her teacher, whom little Annie loved dearly; and then her Mamma said, "Good bye, my darling!" and Annie made her such a funny little curtsey, that she nearly tumbled over, and off she went to school with her Papa, who always saw her ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... years before had come to the dower-house as an apple-cheeked girl from the village school, answered the summons. She wore a cap with coloured ribbons—the two sisters still shook their heads together over her tendency to dressiness—and dropped a child's curtsey to Cicely as she came in. She had been far too well-trained to speak until she was spoken to, but Aunt Ellen said, "Here is Miss Clinton returned from London, Rose, where she has seen the King ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... woman stopped with the bellows on her knee, and said something that I thought sounded like 'My Charley!' but on seeing me come in too, she got up, and rubbing her hands made a confused sort of half curtsey. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... a kiss on the hand Helene held out to him. As Madame Desroches approached, Helene made a formal curtsey, which Gaston returned ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... glow of the fire, the bright light that revelled in every corner of the room, the savoury smells, the comfortable sounds of a boiling kettle, and the hissing, frizzling ham. With a little old-fashioned curtsey she shut the door, and replied with a loving heart to the boisterous and surprised ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and was by the lady honoured with an especially gracious curtsey, whilst the gaunt old man bade me good day in an accent decidedly foreign. I patted the cat of the basket, addressing it in French, and was in a moment overwhelmed by the delights of its mistress, who ciel'd, and mon-Dieu'd, and ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... the two ladies. "Whatever could be done, we know you would do, Mr. Dempster," says Mrs. Mountain, giving him her hand. "Make a curtsey to Mr. Dempster, Fanny, and remember, child, to be grateful to all who have been friendly to our benefactors. Will it please you to take any refreshment before you ride, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the little gypsy had uttered in jest seven years before, came true, and when Lady Wentworth drove in her chariot through the main street of Portsmouth none dropped a lower curtsey than the tavern-keeper's wife. The Earl of Halifax smiled serenely but ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... housekeeper, a sad-eyed little figure, appeared now from behind the bank of flowers. Her grief could not rob her of that Old World manner which was hers, and she saluted the visitors with a bow which promised to develop into a curtsey. Noting the direction of Phil Abingdon's glance, which was set upon a card attached to the wreath of hyacinths: "It was the first to arrive, Miss Phil," ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... woman?' says the Poknees. 'I would thank you, sir,' says I, 'for 'tis often we are asked about it.' 'Well, then,' says the Poknees, 'it is no language at all, merely a made-up gibberish.' 'Oh, bless your wisdom,' says I with a curtsey, 'you can tell us what our language is without understanding it!' Another time we meet a parson. 'Good woman,' says he, 'what's that you are talking? Is it broken language?' 'Of course, your reverence,' says I, 'we are broken people; give a shilling, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... his greatest care, Of what he should his paste prepare; For common clay or finer mold Was much too good, such stuff to hold At last he wisely thought on mud; So raised it up, and call'd it—CLUDD. With this, the lady well content, Low curtsey'd, and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... certain that there are now living hundreds, perhaps thousands, of persons born when others were still living who drew their first breaths in or before the year when Pamela made her modest, but very distinctly self-conscious, curtsey to the world. How soon it grew to a popular form of literature, and how steadily that popularity has continued and increased, there is not much need to say or to repeat. Statistical persons every year give us the hundreds of novels that appear from the presses, and the thousands ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... stately and with a fine dress. She curtseys. Aunts curtsey and sit down again. Prince bows uneasily ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... GERALD. "Person," mother.—Will you curtsey, Anabel? And I'll twist my handkerchief. We shall make a Cruikshank drawing, if mother makes her hair ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... and he knew it. As they walked along they met old Mrs. Kilpatrick returning from her brief noonday meal with little Maggie, whose childish face was radiant. The old woman recognized one of the directors and dropped him a decent curtsey as she had been taught to salute the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... me a little, distant curtsey. "There is no harm done," she said, with a pretty accent, most like the English (but more agreeable). "A cat may look ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Miss Sharp, starting back as timid as a fawn. She had previously made a respectful virgin-like curtsey to the gentleman, and her modest eyes gazed so perseveringly on the carpet that it was a wonder how she should have found ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for Chad when he came out on the porch, and she shook her curls and flashed her eyes in a way that almost alarmed him. Old Mammy dropped him a curtsey, for she had had her orders, and, behind her, Snowball, now a tall, fine-looking coal-black youth, grinned a welcome. The three girls were walking under the trees, with their arms mysteriously twined about one anther's waists, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... of our rejoicing that Piers set foot on the verandah. For a moment he stood staring, pardonably bewildered, at the two smugglers, who were saluting one another respectively with a profound curtsey and the most elaborate of bows. Then he pulled open the great window and stepped ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... with the corner of her apron, dropped me a curtsey, and withdrew. Feurgeres came in presently, and I avoided looking at him for the first few minutes. To tell the truth, there was a lump in my own throat. When he spoke, however, his tone was ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... where Sukey was standing on the steps, looking not a day older than she had done six years ago. She dropped a curtsey when she saw Florence, but Florence ran up ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... his word: five o'clock had not struck when he was standing before Madame Fritsche's gate. But to his surprise he did not find Emilie at home; he was met by the lady of the house herself who—wonder of wonders!—dropping a preliminary curtsey, informed him that Emilie had been obliged by unforeseen circumstances to go out but she would soon be back and begged him to wait. Madame Fritsche had on a neat white cap; she smiled, spoke in an ingratiating voice and evidently tried to give ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... low bow, which Bryda returned by a curtsey, and then was passing on laden with her heavy books, when the Squire said, 'Permit me,' putting his ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... a curtsey that was full of gratitude; and the glance of triumph that she cast at her other guests may be said to have terminated the discussion that was about to commence, as the dignitaries appeared. It disposed of the question of the wine at once, and ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... frate—sometimes two, once four—in her company. The number of religious was exorbitant, and even more remarkable was it to observe the respect in which they were held. Every woman, meeting one, dropped him a curtsey, every man saluted him. My gentleman, if you please, hardly gave himself the trouble of acknowledging the grace. I saw a couple of Theatines scolding a poor lady to tears; I saw another shake off a fine gentleman, who ran after him to kiss his hand. I saw beggars, cripples, sick ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... aside, looking on. After the first murmur of surprise and pleasure no one seemed to take any notice of him, or of what he had done. Only one old widow woman, as she slipped three bright guineas under the lid of her market-basket, dropped him a curtsey in passing by. ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... swallow a dozen at a mouthful." "Thank you, sir; my mother I am sure will believe me now. I will desire John to take away. Did you like our country oysters as well as those in foreign parts?" "They are," said I, "like you, excellent." "I will see if the horse is ready," said she, as she dropped a curtsey ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... appear so," he answered. And again with that graceful little curtsey of hers she went away, leaving him very puzzled. Two days later she appeared in his room, ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... ladies of the Embassy and the ladies to be presented. As they entered the room and made a change of direction toward the throne, pages in white straightened out the ladies' trains with long sticks. Arrived opposite the throne and about twenty feet from it, each Ambassador's wife made a low curtsey and then stood on the foot of the throne, to the left of the Emperor and Empress, and as each lady of the Embassy, not before presented, and each lady to be presented stopped beside the throne and made a low curtsey, the Ambassadress had to call out the name of each ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... you can do, and I know you will believe I shall be grateful. You can do no more, unless it be to say to your friends that Mrs. Belle Tucker remains here only for that purpose, and to carry out what she knows to be the wishes of her husband." She paused, bent her pretty crest, dropped a quaint curtsey to the superior age, the silver braid, and the gentlemanly bearing of Don Jose, and with the passing sunshine of a smile disappeared from ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... over her glossy bands of jet-black hair, and then seeing that the baron was quietly observing her, with eyes that showed no trace of drowsiness, she smiled radiantly upon him as she made a low and most graceful curtsey. ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... to lift your eyes from the ground," says she. "You don't know what to ask. I am tired of being a peasant woman and a moujik's wife. I was made for something better. I want to be a lady, and have good people to do the work, and see folk bow and curtsy to me when I meet them walking abroad. Go back at once to the fish, you old fool, and ask him for that, instead of bothering him for little trifles like bread troughs and moujiks' ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... Glory swept him a curtsy, flashed a radiant smile upon him and was tempted to hug him; but she refrained from this, not knowing how such a caress might be received. Then she thanked and thanked him till he bade her stop, and with her tin cup in her hand sped ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... parlour, she stood staring at her with her arms stuck in her sides, and her wide mouth distended from ear to ear, with a grin so truly uncouth and comic, that Mrs. Lyndsay could scarcely restrain her laughter; with a downward jerk of her broad shapeless person, meant for a curtsy, she burst out in ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... the forms about her, scarce felt the pressure of Sidney's hand, knew not, so brave a lady was she, so fixed her habit of the court, that she smiled upon the group she was leaving and swept them a formal curtsy. She found herself in the deserted outer gallery with Sidney,—they were in the recess of a window, and he was speaking. She put her hand to her brow. "Is Henry Sedley ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... nowadays. Fox-trot, indeed! And bunny-hug. And rag-time. I never heard such names in my life! We danced the Highland schottische, and the quadrille, and Sir Roger de Coverley. And do you remember your famous curtsy, Esther? And how Madame made you show ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... a vain one. The man smiled quizzically at Nora, who acknowledged the salutation by a curtsy which would have frightened away the banshees of her childhood. Nora hated scenes, and Courtlandt had the advantage of her in his knowledge of this. Celeste remained at the piano, but Nora turned ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... Mrs. Bracken's husband?" she said. There was a tremble in her voice as she slipped from the davenport and bobbed a curtsy. There was a shake in her knees, also. Suppose this strange man should be a burglar? The thought was enough to make the voice and knees of any little girl tremble and shake. But the strange man nodded curtly and Mary Rose laughed tremulously. ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... himself—brings out her ain bottle from the spence—a hollow square, and green as emerald. Bless the gurgle of its honest mouth! With prim lips mine hostess kisses the glass, previously letting fall a not inelegant curtsy—for she had, we now learned, been a lady's maid in her youth to one who is indeed a lady, all the time her lover was abroad in the army, in Egypt, Ireland, and the West Indies, and Malta, and Guernsey, Sicily, Portugal, Holland, and, we think ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... like; spiteful li'l toads, same as you or I might be if happen we'd died unchristened an' hadn' no share in heaven nor hell nor middle-earth. But that's no excuse. Aun' Mary, my dear, I want my cheeld back!" said she. That was all Lovey prayed. Without more ado she bobbed a curtsy, crept from the chapel, closed the door, and way-to-go back ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is my cousin's duty to make a curtsy, and say, "Father, as it please you;" but for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy, and say, "Father, as it pleases me." SHAKESPEARE, Much ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... the fields for bread than served your King. Here he is. Good-bye, Monsieur d'Argenton, may you find all well at Valmy; good night, Monsieur La Mothe, we shall meet again in the morning, or is it already the new day?" and with a smiling curtsy to each she was gone. To Stephen La Mothe it seemed a cold good night after all that had come and gone between them that day, the misunderstood question in her work-room, the shadow of death in the Burnt Mill, and, above all, their nearness as he had stood behind her chair. But she had her ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... bugbears from their minds. "Mais, songez, Mademoiselle," quoth he, interrupted in some observation rather better worth hearing, "que tout le monde ne possede pas votre force de caractere;" a compliment to which the young lady assented with a grateful curtsy. ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... yonder the Ingmar Ingmarsson who had lived during her childhood had driven to church. She remembered that every time he had passed by her and her mother on their way to church, the mother had nudged her and said: "Now you must curtsy, Stina, fox here ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... he a'n't, Doctor,—an' dere's where I 'gree wid him," said Candace, as she gathered her baskets vigorously together, and, after a sweeping curtsy, went sailing down to her wagon, full laden with content, shouting a hearty "Good mornin', Missus," with the full power of her cheerful lungs, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... N. lowering &c. v.; depression; dip &c. (concavity) 252; abasement; detrusion[obs3]; reduction. overthrow, overset[obs3], overturn; upset; prostration, subversion, precipitation. bow; courtesy, curtsy; genuflexion[obs3], genuflection, kowtow, obeisance, salaam. V. depress, lower, let down, take down, let down a peg, take down a peg; cast; let drop, let fall; sink, debase, bring low, abase, reduce, detrude[obs3], pitch, precipitate. overthrow, overturn, overset[obs3]; upset, subvert, prostate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... tell thee of my foes, Which art my near'st and dearest enemy? Thou that art like enough,—through vassal fear, Base inclination, and the start of spleen,— To fight against me under Percy's pay, To dog his heels, and curtsy at his frowns, To show how much thou ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... eyes from the ground," says she. "You don't know what to ask. I am tired of being a peasant woman and a moujik's wife. I was made for something better. I want to be a lady, and have good people to do the work, and see folk bow and curtsy to me when I meet them walking abroad. Go back at once to the fish, you old fool, and ask him for that, instead of bothering him for little trifles like bread troughs and ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... me a dainty curtsy, and I could only try and hide the pain which this last cruel stab had inflicted on my heart. So she was not "Mademoiselle" after all, and henceforth it would even be wrong to indulge ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... two long benches made of split logs. Abe led Nat down the length of the front bench. Each girl rose and made a curtsy. Nat bowed. Each boy rose and bowed. Nat returned the bow. Abe kept saying funny things under his breath that the schoolmaster could not hear. But the children heard, and they could hardly keep from ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... their disposal, and in reviving their almost forgotten enthusiams. I have seen sons and daughters stand in complete surprise as their mother's knitting needles softly beat time to the song she was singing, or her worn face turned rosy under the hand-clapping as she made an old-fashioned curtsy at the end of a German poem. It was easy to fancy a growing touch of respect in her children's manner to her, and a rising enthusiasm for German literature and reminiscence on the part of all the family, an effort to bring together the old life and the new, a respect for the older cultivation, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... singing, talking loudly. Stumbling over a log his burning eyes had not seen, he turned in grotesque humor to offer curtsy and abject apology, then hastened on upward. Later, carroming from a huge tree he had hit head on, he addressed it in grave good humor: "Please keep to the right." His flushed face purple in the green light of the deep woods, he hurried on, again ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... be very sure! She holds it fast— Religion undefiled and pure. And, at the last, When Life, from this sad house of her, Flits like a guest, She'll curtsy to the Judge: "O ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... little stench, to the real joy of most of the women present, who don't dislike an opportunity of finding fault. Lady Lucy, indeed, was plentifully abused, and Mr Hobart had his share; and common fame says he has never had a card since. Few women will curtsy to him; and I question if he ever will lead any one to their chair again as long as he lives. I leave you to judge how deeply he feels this wound. Every body says it would never have happened if you had not retired ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... to do? You give your card to the aide-de-camp, he passes it on and spreads out your train, and you walk right up to His Excellency; he kisses you on both cheeks, you curtsy, and, at the far door, two aides-de-camp pick up your train and place ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... Mr Gresham, I am under more than ordinary obligations to you; I am indeed," and Miss Oriel stood still in the path, and made a very graceful curtsy. "Dear me! only think, Lady Margaretta, that I should be honoured with an offer from the heir the very moment he is legally entitled ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... rap at the minister's door first, of course; and when Mrs. Fairbanks opens the door I shall make my best curtsy, like this:" and Faith took a bit of her skirt in each hand, and bent in a very pretty curtsy indeed; "and I shall say: 'Good-morning, Mrs. Fairbanks. My Aunt Prissy will be very happy if you and the minister will come to her quilting bee to-morrow ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... presented come along. They curtsy to the King, then to the Queen, and disappear in the rooms farther on. The Ambassadors (all in gaudy uniforms but me) stand near the throne—stand through the whole performance. One night after an hour or two of ladies coming ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... to think of something to say to him just to show him there was another side to it. Not that he gave a damn. Some other time would do. The red face turned with a great attentiveness toward the hoarsely oracular Mr. Warren, his eyes dropping a furtive curtsy in the direction of the ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... representative. How did the seigneurs rank among themselves and with the leading English-speaking people? Who were to dance in the state minuet? Should dancing cease when the bishops came in, and for how long? Was that curtsy dropped quite low enough to her viceregal self, and did that debutante offer her blushing cheek in quite the proper way to Carleton when he graciously gave her the presentation kiss? How immeasurably ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... of seventeen came clattering down the tiny stair, to smile at the visitors and drop an awkward, blushing curtsy to each. ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... growth of enormous, sickly toad-stools, supposed to be clouds. On the stage stood a girl of eighteen, (the handsomest in Kinesma), in hoops and satin petticoat, powdered hair, patches, and high-heeled shoes. She held a fan in one hand, and a bunch of marigolds in the other. After a deep and graceful curtsy to the company, she came forward ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... bless you!" cried Benita in Spanish. Then, in spite of her stiff joints, she made a deep, old-fashioned curtsy. ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... something, and to my surprise after taking it she made me an elaborate curtsy. It rather upset me, for I had thought we had got on very well together and were quite free and easy in our talk, very much on a level. But she was not done with me yet. She followed to the gate, and holding out her open hand with ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... Amsterdam. Equipped in skates wonderful to behold, with their superb strappings and dazzling runners curving over the instep and topped with gilt balls, he would open his fat eyes a little if one of the maidens chanced to drop him a curtsy but would not dare to bow in return for ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... wonted care, the rev. junior bursar of Oriel was introduced into Mrs Phillips's little drawing-room, accompanying, and strongly contrasting with, three gentlemen in scarlet and gold. Hurriedly did the good old lady seize her spectacles, and rising to receive her guests with a delighted curtsy, scan curiously for a few moments Turpin's athletic proportions, and the fox-hunter's close-fitting leathers and tops. As for Dawson, he stood like the clear-complexioned and magnificently-whiskered officer, who silently invites the stranger to enter the doors of Madame Tussaud's wax exhibition; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... roof. The rain fell in torrents; the sky was completely overcast. In dumb despair Elena stared at the thick network of fast-falling drops. Her last hope of getting a sight of Insarov was vanishing. A little old beggar-woman came into the chapel, shook herself, said with a curtsy: 'Out of the rain, good lady,' and with many sighs and groans sat down on a ledge near the well. Elena put her hand into her pocket; the old woman noticed this action and a light came into her face, ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... her hand to him, and as he took it, sank to the stone floor in a superb curtsy. "Because I claim your gracious protection, my lord the king. I ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... road. A young woman, with a pale face and sad-looking blue eyes, was standing at the gate with a baby in her arms. As the phaeton drove up, a faint colour came to her white face; she dropped a little curtsy and was turning away, but stopped when the old lady called to her. The young woman approached, with an air of timidity, of passive obedience, which was as ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... over which the rooks circled and cawed in the golden sky. The scene had a greatness that made it a different affair from my own scant home, and there immediately appeared at the door, with a little girl in her hand, a civil person who dropped me as decent a curtsy as if I had been the mistress or a distinguished visitor. I had received in Harley Street a narrower notion of the place, and that, as I recalled it, made me think the proprietor still more of a gentleman, suggested ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... she met a poor old woman walking along the road, who made a curtsy and was going on, when the queen had her stopped, and cried: 'You are a very impertinent person; don't you know that I am the queen? And how dare you not make me ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... her—bustling around, making the fire, her head tied up in a bandana, her sleeves rolled to the shoulders. She turned, as they entered, and dropped them an old-fashioned curtsy. ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... Cheron, while she spoke, would have touched almost any other heart; she made no other reply, but introduced Valancourt, who could scarcely stifle the resentment he felt, and whose bow Madame Cheron returned with a slight curtsy, and a look of supercilious examination. After a few moments he took leave of Emily, in a manner, that hastily expressed his pain both at his own departure, and at leaving her to ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... she dropped a stately curtsy, and, taking her candle, went away through the tapestry door, which led to her apartments. Esmond stood by the fireplace, blankly staring after her. Indeed, he scarce seemed to see until she was gone, and then her image was impressed upon him and remained forever fixed ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... with surrounding things, and took my leave. I went away the more gratified that I had a chance of lifting my cap to a matron, dark-haired and comely, (who, I was sure, at a glance, had once been the maiden of Benjie Westham's "troth-plight,") and receiving a handsome curtsy in return. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... Signore," or "Servo suo"; the humble words were as much her daily use as Padre nostro or Ave Maria. At the door she must have her hand kissed three times in face of the nudging neighbours; and to each salute her honesty prompted a fresh "Grazie, Signore," a curtsy, and a profound blush. Meleagro beat his forehead to see her so lovely and so unapproachable; Orsini bit his lip; but Alessandro, mindful of his nails, and not to be Sub-Prefect for nothing, went away to ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... though I did not know why neither; but Mrs. Mayoress comes up to me. 'Well, miss,' says she, 'and what are you at work upon?' The word miss was a language that had hardly been heard of in our school, and I wondered what sad name it was she called me. However, I stood up, made a curtsy, and she took my work out of my hand, looked on it, and said it was very well; then she took up one of the hands. 'Nay,' says she, 'the child may come to be a gentlewoman for aught anybody knows; she has a gentlewoman's hand,' says she. This pleased ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... before Mazarin expressed a wish to see his ugly niece again; and it was indeed a very different Marie who now made her curtsy to him. Gone were the angular figure, the awkward movements, the sallow face, the slow wits. Time and the healthy life of the cloisters had done their work well. What the Cardinal now saw was a girl of seventeen, of exquisitely modelled figure, graceful and self-possessed; a face piquant ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... suddenly with a quaint curtsy. Her voice was shrill and piping, but softened somewhat by age. "Is dis yere whar Mistuh Ryduh lib, suh?" she asked, looking around her doubtfully, and glancing into the open windows, through which some of the preparations for the ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... out of the brook just then, and she ran to check him up; not an easy task for little hands, as he preferred to nibble the grass on the bank. But she did it cleverly, smoothed the ruffled mane, and, dropping another curtsy, stood aside to let the ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... her. 'What do you wish with me?' exclaimed I to her. 'Ah! you are a woman, and of a sex I abhor, and can no longer tolerate; the very gentleness of your look threatens me with some new treason. Go, leave me here alone!' She made me a curtsy without uttering a word, and turned to go out. I called to her to stop: 'Tell me at least,' said I, 'wherefore— how—with what design they sent you here? how did you discover my name, or the place where you could ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... suite of rooms without drawing breath, and then he suddenly stopped and performed some new and unexpected steps. When at last, smartly whirling his partner round in front of her chair, he drew up with a click of his spurs and bowed to her, Natasha did not even make him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement, smiling as if she ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... you are,' retorted Miss Squeers with a low curtsy, 'almost as witty, ma'am, as you are clever. How very clever it was in you, ma'am, to choose a time when I had gone to tea with my pa, and was sure not to come back without being fetched! What a pity you never thought ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... off the line. These sudden turns and jerks had the effect of making us all rather uncomfortable, and poor Baby and I felt quite sea-sick. The sensation was the same as when the ship makes a deep curtsy and seems to leave you behind as she ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... rise to a considerable amount of ferment in the fashionable world. Lady Lufton, as she retreated back on to Dr. Easyman, curtsied low; she curtsied low and slowly, and with a haughty arrangement of her drapery that was all her own; but the curtsy, though it was eloquent, did not say half so much,—did not reprobate the habitual iniquities of the duke with a voice nearly as potent as that which was expressed in the gradual fall of her eye and the gradual pressure ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the street one day and exchanged a few rather forced pleasantries. It suddenly dawned on Fanny that he was patronizing her much as the scion of an aristocratic line banters the housemaid whom he meets on the stairs. She bit an imaginary apron corner, and bobbed a curtsy right there on Elm Street, in front of the Courier office and walked off, leaving him staring. It was shortly after this that she began a queer line of reading for a girl—lives of Disraeli, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Mozart—distinguished ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... how my friend Samuel WOULD speak, what he called French, to a lady who could not understand one syllable of his jargon—the mutual hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the Captain a graceful French curtsy. "Adyou!" said Samuel, and waved ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... leaving the dew thick on the grass by the ditch, and on the moss and the ivy in the hedgerow bank. The larks soared once more into the sky; a robin sang wistfully in the ash; a brown wren, with many a flick of her tiny wings and many a merry curtsy, hopped in and out among the trees, trilling loudly a gleeful carol. The tits flew hither and thither, twittering to each other as they flew. The hedge-sparrows' metallic notes sounded clear amid all the varied music, as the birds, moving among ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... she dotes on him!" signed pretty Mistress Polly after she had bobbed her curtsy to my lady. "The brave deeds he did for love of her! Rescued her from those murderers over in France and brought her to England safe and sound, having fought no end of them single-handed, so I've beard it said. Have you not, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... from it. It's only a little matter of four or five hundred pounds, sir,' said Susy, dropping him an awkward little curtsy, which he thought most charming. 'The money is in the bank, and earns no interest, and I thought I would like to invest it where it ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... sleek hair and some flicker of a girlhood that had its modicum of grace, flared up in the swift curtsy with ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... assumption of courtesy, made your great-great-grandmother welcome to remain in his house. After the suit had been settled, Williams had occasion to come again to the house, feeling, no doubt, rather crestfallen. Mrs. Devereux met him at the door and, making him a sweeping curtsy, quoted his exact words, making ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... to reprove thoughtless boys whitch were ketching small and innosent fish with sharp hooks. father whispered to me that is a hell of a reeson for keeping a man starving to deth and i laffed but nobody paid attension to me. well they all shook hands with the minister and Cele made a curtsy and sed tea is ready and we all marched out into the dining room mother and the minister first, then father and Aunt Sarah and then Keene and Cele and then the little ones and Georgie and i come last as i always do when there ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... you," Barbara said, and the man's nerves tingled as she rose and swept him a graceful curtsy. She had never looked more beautiful, never so desirable as at that moment. He had conquered so often and so carelessly that he could not think of ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... got to curtsy, whisp- er, hold your chin up, laugh and lisp, And then you're sure to take: I've known the day when brats, not quite Thirteen, got fifty pounds a night; Then ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Dropping him a curtsy, Trudy repaired to do the dishes and swiggle an oil mop about the floor briefly. Then she burnt some scented powder and pulled down the window shades. This constituted getting the establishment in order, the slavey having gone tootling off on a party ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... have a well dressed head. It was rare, too, to see a gentleman without his peruke. William must have had a very large business. One likes to think that Major Washington dealt with Sewell, and it is not difficult to imagine on ball evenings Mrs. Carlyle's maid rushing in, making a hasty curtsy and breathlessly demanding Madam's wig; or perhaps Mrs. Fairfax's maid presents Mrs. Fairfax's compliments and "Please, will Mr. Sewell come at two o'clock to dress Mistress Fairfax's hair?" Nor, is it difficult to picture William, ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... can't say I'm shedding tears myself unless they're crocodile ones. Please to recollect in future, my dears, when you speak to me, that you're addressing a member of the Upper School! You're only little Junior girls! Ta-ta!" and with a mock curtsy, in process of which she nearly dropped her pile of books, Gwen retired laughing from the Fourth Form to take her place and try her ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... that they have been wrongfully condemned." My own experience in the law courts leads me to accept these statements without reserve, and I regard as one of the gravest scandals of our present penal system the ease with which a girl who makes a pretty curtsy to the court, and who appears to be shamefaced when giving her evidence, is believed by the judge or magistrate. The dangers involved in this are obvious to many, especially to those who have much to do with ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... his lips as his nephew approached, and gave him a look of mystery that was quite sufficient to put the latter on his guard. He therefore went forward, pulled off his cap, and bowed respectfully to Minnie, who replied with a stiff curtsy, a slight ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... she stood staring at her with her arms stuck in her sides, and her wide mouth distended from ear to ear, with a grin so truly uncouth and comic, that Mrs. Lyndsay could scarcely restrain her laughter; with a downward jerk of her broad shapeless person, meant for a curtsy, she burst out in ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... was to meet her uncle at Smithfield Market. They then went very lovingly together to an inn upon the paven stones, where Moll asked very readily at the bar if Mr. Tompkins (which was the name of her uncle) was there. The woman of the house made her a low curtsy and said he was only stepped over the way to be shaved, and she would call him. She went accordingly and brought the grave old man, who as soon as he came into the room said, Well, Mary, is this thy husband? Yes, sir, answered she, this is the person I have promised ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... the country-folk took her for a foreigner. Some dogs, and the boy who held them in charge, made up the company. They rode silently along, looking with grave, serious eyes at the people, who came out of the scattered cottages to bow or curtsy to the real Squire, 'come back at last,' and gazed after the little procession with gaping wonder, not deadened by the sound of the foreign language in which the few necessary words that passed ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... stood before their father. They put their feet together. Kit made a bow, and Kat bobbed a curtsy. ...
— The Dutch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... him; mamma made him a curtsy, and papa made him a bow; and Dr. Snorter, the parson, seized his hand and shook it most warmly: then came ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hay-field's fragrant heats, Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats; 80 I dog thee through the market's throngs To where the sea with myriad tongues Laps the green edges of the pier, And the tall ships that eastward steer, Curtsy their farewells to the town, O'er the curved distance lessening down: I follow allwhere for thy sake, Touch thy robe's hem, but ne'er o'ertake, Find where, scarce yet unmoving, lies, Warm from thy limbs, thy last disguise; 90 But thou another shape ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of Avenel, father," said the Maid of the Mill, dropping as low a curtsy as her rustic manners enabled her to make. The Miller, her father, doffed his bonnet, and made his reverence, not altogether so low perhaps as if the young lady had appeared in the pride of rank and riches, yet so as to give high birth the due ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... moment she returned, dropped him a bit of curtsy, and informed him that her mistress ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... express unbounded astonishment, on being told that Taglioni was paid a hundred and fifty guineas a-night, "that such a sum should be paid to a woman to stand a long time like a goose on one leg, then to throw one leg straight out, twirl round three or four times with the leg thus extended, curtsy so low as nearly to seat herself on the stage, and spring from one side of the stage to another, all which jumping about did not occupy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... lowering &c v.; depression; dip &c (concavity) 252; abasement; detrusion^; reduction. overthrow, overset^, overturn; upset; prostration, subversion, precipitation. bow; courtesy, curtsy; genuflexion^, genuflection, kowtow, obeisance, salaam. V. depress, lower, let down, take down, let down a peg, take down a peg; cast; let drop, let fall; sink, debase, bring low, abase, reduce, detrude^, pitch, precipitate. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... walked beside, and as we came down across the sea-meadows, the sun broke out and we met little groups of schoolchildren making their way down to the beach to see what was doing with the wreck. They stood aside to let us go by, the boys pulling their caps and the girls dropping a curtsy, when they knew that it was a poor drowned body passing; and as I saw the children I thought I saw myself among them, and I was no more a man, but just come out from Mr. Glennie's teaching ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... that Malvina regarded the Professor as a person of importance. Evidently her intention was to curtsy, an operation that, hampered by those trailing yards of clinging khaki, might prove—so it flashed upon the Professor—not ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... out for me at York," said Miss Desborough, extending her gloved hand. "Good-by till then." The young girl respectfully touched the ends of Miss Desborough's fingers, dropped a curtsy, and Miss ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... in his cottage in the lane. The woman whose husband had died attended to things in general, the daughter assisted in the dairy, and worked very often up at the Hall. A pretty girl of a common, rustic style of beauty, and about sixteen years old; she used to curtsy to me when she met me, but I had never cast my eyes at her. As I skulked out through the rick-yard into the shrubbery-walk leading to the Hall I met her, stopped, and had a chat, a joke, and finished by a kiss, which she took in very bad part, and wiped away with her hand, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... buttoned it in front. "That will do for the present," cried Miss Dragwell; "now here's the cat, take it in your arms, go to the window and nurse it like a baby. I'll throw it open— you come forward and make them a curtsy; that will spread the report through the town that you are mad, and the rest will then ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... words, if so that any be Known guilty here of incivility: Let what is graceless, discompos'd, and rude, With sweetness, smoothness, softness, be endu'd. Teach it to blush, to curtsy, lisp, and show Demure, but yet full of temptation, too. Numbers ne'er tickle, or but lightly please, Unless they have some wanton carriages. This if ye do, each piece will here be good, And graceful made by your ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... proudest of you all shall find when he comes home. But what talk I of this? Call forth Nathaniel, Joseph, Nicholas, Philip, Walter, Sugarsop, and the rest; let their heads be sleekly combed, their blue coats brush'd and their garters of an indifferent knit; let them curtsy with their left legs, and not presume to touch a hair of my master's horse-tail till they kiss their hands. Are they ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... whoy dunna ye may t' squoire a curtsy, wench, an thonk him," said Tetlow, nudging his pretty wife, who had turned away, rather embarrassed by the free gaze of the squire. Nicholas, however, did not wait for the curtsy, but went away, laughing, to overtake Richard Assheton, who had ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... know how to greet a Duke, for such I hear you are become," said Desire with a profound curtsy and ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that's not high praise, tell me higher and I'll use it.... And when Mr. Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance—advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsy, thread the needle, and back to your place—Fezziwig "cut" so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... Cassidy,' she says, ''tis sthrange f'r ye that I've knowed so long to make scandal iv me before me neighbors,' she says. 'Mrs. Scanlan,' says he, 'we want th' boy. I'm sorry, ma'am, but he's mixed up in a bad scrape, an' we must have him,' he says. She made a curtsy to thim, an' wint indures. 'Twas less than a minyit before she come out, clingin' to th' la-ad's ar-rm. 'He'll go,' she says. 'Thanks be, though he's wild, they'se no crime on his head. Is there, dear?' 'No,' says he, like th' game kid he is. Wan iv th' polismin stharted to take hold ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... in a sweeping impetuosity, drew up her slender height, and made him a curtsy, a flower bending buoyantly to the breeze, and ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... than Aunt Rachel, who had hitherto looked rather askance upon the presumptuous damsel (as much so, peradventure, as her nature would permit), but who, on the first appearance of the new-married pair at church, honoured the bride with a smile and a profound curtsy, in presence of the rector, the curate, the clerk, and the whole congregation of the united parishes of ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... in the lead, Thereafter shall follow the steward and priest, The people shall all be bid to the feast! Pages so courtly shall guide your steed, And beautiful flowers be strewn at your feet, The peasant shall bow to the ground like a weed, His wife shall curtsy to you as is meet! The church bell shall ring to the countryside: Now rides Olaf Liljekrans home with ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... Where is the colonel of the 10th cohort? So it's you? Well then, my friend, your soldiers march past like so many pigs. Madame Marie-Claire, come forward a little, so that I may teach you how to curtsy." ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... been somebody else—a real Excellency—or heaven knows what! Or, what is worse in your new magnificence, you might have forgotten one of your oldest, most humble, but faithful subjects." She drew back and made him a mock ceremonious curtsy, that even in its charming exaggeration suggested to Paul, however, that she had already ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... more diverted with a Mrs. Holman, whose passion is keeping an assembly, and inviting literally everybody to it. She goes to the drawing-room to watch for sneezes; whips out a curtsy, and then sends next morning to know how your cold does, and to desire your ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... risen from their seats as their father entered, each made a deep curtsy as her name was mentioned, and Harry bowed deeply in return. Mademoiselle Marie was two years at least older than himself, and was already a young lady of fashion. Jeanne struck him as being about the same age as his sister Fanny, ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... mean to flatter you; and it is to this end I say, you are Italians without the subtlety of the Italian, and Greeks without their genius.—You need not curtsy so profoundly.—I could say worse than this, Kate, if I were minded ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... if you have, I'm sure you've never forgotten the droll way that Mademoiselle Folly stepped out upon a stage in her quaint green frock and made her frightened curtsy. Can you recall her low contralto drawl and ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... on the point of rising, when the mistress of Falla appeared in the doorway of the woodshed, and, with a charming curtsy, bade him come inside to have a peep ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... sits down after an awe-stricken curtsy to Burgoyne, which he acknowledges by a dignified bend ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... with the gratifying result that when the sun's lower rim had reached to within a finger's breadth of the western horizon the Mercury slid out past the southern edge of the reef and made her first curtsy as she once more dipped to the swell of the open ocean, having triumphantly negotiated and overcome every one of the difficulties of that endless rock-bound channel. I sprang into the topgallant rigging ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... her desk ready to receive each pupil with a gracious smile and bow; then one by one they entered with a solemn bow or curtsy and ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... made her a curtsy, and walked out of the room. I found the dressing-room where I had left my cloak, fully determined to go home at once, if I could only get the carriage. I had to wait some time, however, and whilst I sat alone the door opened and Rachel Leonard came hurriedly ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... and her niece are welcome," and Lady Warner made a deep curtsy, not like one of Lady Fareham's sinking curtseys, as of one near swooning in an ecstasy of politeness, but dignified and inflexible, straight down and straight ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Mrs. John and the somewhat awesome Maria—to whom Grandpa and Grandma Burton never could learn not to curtsy—arrived; and almost at once Grandma Burton discovered that not only "farm things," but such precious treasures as the hair wreath and the parlor—set were auctionable. In fact, everything the house contained, except their clothing and a few crayon portraits, ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... she knew that a year can effect an enormous alteration in a girl in her late teens—sometimes seeming to transform her all at once from immature girlhood into gracious and charming womanhood. Lady Doreen had "come out" since Ann had met her, made her curtsy at Court and taken part in her first London season, and it was not difficult to imagine her, delicate though she might be, as extremely attractive and invested with a certain ethereal grace and ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... suppose there must be lucid intervals, now that Norah is grown up, or imagines she is—not that she seems to me a bit different from the time when her hair was down. Still I suppose I must bring her to town, and let her make her curtsy at Government House, and do all the ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... call mincingly, and they drop their words slow, and there's no flash in their eyes, and no courage in them, and no daring in them. No doubt they are very respectable, and they are very proud of their family. Then they make their little curtsy, when their education is quite finished, to the Sovereign on the throne; and they go to many a party, and they dress like all the other girls—no individuality anywhere. That would not be thought right for such an English lady. She marries when she can get a man to have ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... an elderly woman, rolling pastry, paused to curtsy to them, with stolid curiosity in her heavy-featured face. In her character as "single-handed" cook, Mrs. Noakes had sent up uninviting meals to Lady Anstruthers for several years, but she had not seen her ladyship below stairs before. And this was the unexpected arrival—the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was no trifling with her. Besides, Tartar was again rising; he perceived symptoms of a commotion; he manifested a disposition to join in. There was evidently nothing for it but to go, and Donne made his exodus, the heiress sweeping him a deep curtsy as she closed the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... honorable friend slipping into the place he has manoeuvred for at the expense of manliness, truth, consistency, and honesty, does he not conjugate the verb valoir negatively? When Madame Favorita has made her last curtsy for the night behind the foot-lights, has thrown off her tawdry frippery, and sits in her lonely chamber, glowering at the image of the young rival who has won all the applause,—when she bemoans her waning charms and the wearisome life which has lost its sparkle, and sees its emptiness and hollowness,—does ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... her firmly by the hand and they moved toward the door. Polly turned just as they were passing through the door and made her quaint and graceful curtsy, saying, "I am glad I came, and I guess we will be ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... she got up and stepped to the platform. A smile curved her mouth, and she carried her pink chin high. As she received her gift, she paused for one moment to drop a dainty curtsy and to thank Santa Claus, a proceeding which filled all the other girls with envy, since they had omitted it. Then she proudly took her seat, the long, thick package in one hand. It was wrapped in brown paper and ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... affected to whisper; but her whisper would have been audible to a dozen, had a dozen been there—"I mustn't forget to wish you joy about Sir Lionel. Good morning to you, Miss Gaunt," and then Mrs. Leake dropt an old-fashioned gracious curtsy. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... then I bored along tediously through the bill of fare, with a back-ache, not daring to get up and bow to the German family and leave. I meant to sit it through and make them get up and do the bowing; but at last Joe took pity on me and said he would get up and drop them a curtsy and put me out of my misery. I was grateful. He got up and delivered a succession of frank and hearty bows, accompanying them with an atmosphere of good-fellowship which would have made even an English family surrender. Of course the Germans responded—then I got right up and they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... returned Patty, dropping a pretty curtsy. Then they all went to the drawing-room, where Patty was praised and applauded till ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... welcome, Mr Dunshunner, welcome to my humble tabernacle. Let me present you to Mrs Sawley"—and a lady, who seemed to have bathed in the Yellow Sea, rose from her seat, and favoured me with a profound curtsy. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... appearance at the corners of her mouth. She seemed to have assumed proprietorship of the room so entirely that the Juniors stopped short in amazement, too dumbfounded for the moment to do anything but stare. The stranger stepped forward with almost an air of welcome and, dropping a mock curtsy, ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... jingle of her tambourine. The girl had a lithe gracefulness and stately bearing unusual in those of her class—whose exhibitions were rather of the fast and furious kind with a liberal display of their forms—and when with a last low curtsy she ended, there was plenty of applause from all save the two monks. They eyed her with a displeasure they took no trouble to conceal; and when she tripped lightly over to them and extended her tambourine for an offering they ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... pleased. Don Rafael was shocked at my want of formality, but bowed to me in silence, very much as a monk bows, from the waist. If he had only crossed his hands flat on his chest it would have been perfect. Then, I don't know why, something moved me to make him a deep curtsy as he backed out of the room, leaving me suddenly impressed, not only with him but with myself too. I had my door closed to everybody else that afternoon and the Prince came with a very proper sorrowful face, but five ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Sir!" replied Amelia. "This is pretty indeed! But you need not thus affront me, because Miss Charlotte is your favourite!" So saying, and bestowing a contemptuous curtsy on him, she left him with an affected air of scorn ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... her head in merry glee, sprang up, and with a triumphant curtsy and a "No, you don't, sir—not this time," joined her ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was a very rare church-goer, had been to Mrs. Hackit to beg a bit of old crape, and with this sign of grief pinned on her little coal-scuttle bonnet, was seen dropping her curtsy opposite the reading-desk. This manifestation of respect towards Mr. Gilfil's memory on the part of Dame Fripp had no theological bearing whatever. It was due to an event which had occurred some years back, and which, I am sorry to say, had left ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
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